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These fourteen original essays accept a dual premise: technology pervades and is embedded in all human activities. By taking that approach, studies of technology address two questions central in anthropological and archaeological research today-accounting for variability and change. These diverse yet interrelated chapters show that to understand human lives, researchers must deal with the material world that all peoples create and inhabit. Therefore an anthropology of technology is not a separate, discrete inquiry; instead, it is a way to connect how people make and use things to any activity studied, ranging from religion, to enculturation, to communication, to art. Each contributor discusses theories and methods and also offers a substantial case study. These detailed inquiries span human societies from the Paleolithic to the computer age. By moving beyond the usual approach of examining ancient technologies, particularly chipped stone and low-fired ceramics, this volume probes for the construction of meaning in the material world across millennia. The authors of these essays find technology to be an inclusive and flexible topic that merges with studies of everything else in human activity. "A provocative and powerful discussion of the role of technology in human cultures. At a time when archaeology has become less focused on theory, and archaeology and social anthropology seem to fracture farther and farther apart, the book is a breath of fresh air."--Professor John Douglas, University of Montana
"Cabana and Clark have chosen to base their research into migration on careful study of how real people actually behave over time and space. We are well served by this rugged empiricism and by the multidisciplinary breadth of their approach."?Dean R. Snow, Pennsylvania State University "A thorough survey of the ways in which anthropologists across the four subfields have defined and analyzed human migration."?John H. Relethford, author of Reflections of Our Past: How Human History Is Revealed in Our Genes All too often, anthropologists study specific facets of human migration without guidance from the other subdisciplines (archaeology, biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistics) that can provide new insights on the topic. The equivocal results of these narrow studies often make the discussion of impact and consequences speculative. In the last decade, however, anthropologists working independently in the four subdisciplines have developed powerful methodologies to detect and assess the scale of past migrations. Yet these advances are known only to a few specialized researchers. Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration brings together these new methods in one volume and addresses innovative approaches to migration research that emerge from the collective effort of scholars from different intellectual backgrounds. Its contributors present a comprehensive anthropological exploration of the many topics related to human migration throughout the world, ranging from theoretical treatments to specific case studies derived primarily from the Americas prior to European contact. Contributors: | Christopher S. Beekman | Wesley R. Bernardini | Deborah A. Bolnick | Graciela S. Cabana | Alexander F. Christensen | Jeffery J. Clark | J. Andrew Darling | Christopher Ehret | Alan G. Fix | Catherine S. Fowler | Severin M. Fowles | Susan R. Frankenberg | Jane H. Hill | Keith L. Hunley | Kelly J. Knudson | Lyle W. Konigsberg | Scott G. Ortman | Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda
This anthology explores the different approaches to and readings of 'Techno-Anthropology, ' which is a new interdisciplinary research and study area at Aalborg University. Techno-Anthropology is a hybrid that, in different ways, redefines and transcends distinctions, such as humans vs. technologies, or the natural sciences vs. the humanities. Thereby, gaps are bridged between different disciplines and professions working with new technologies, and between technological artifacts and their users. The book will appeal to scientists, anthropologists, engineers, philosophers, designers, sociologists, planners, educators, innovators, and decision makers. Its chapters are concerned with a wide range of issues related to Techno-Anthropology: ethnographic field work in expert and technology cultures * interdisciplinary perspectives on education * collaboration and communication * philosophical analyses and ethical judgments of new and emerging technologies * digital anthropology * anthropology-driven design. (Series: Series in Transformational Studies / Serie om Laerings-, forandrings- og organisationsudviklingsprocesser -- Vol. 3)Ã?Â?
This book straddles the disciplines of archaeology and social anthropology. Its 25 contributions (divided into 6 sections with separate introductions) successively scrutinise the concept of war in philosophy, social theory and the history of anthropological and archaeological research; discuss warfare in pre-state and state societies; and assess its relationship to rituals, social identification and material culture.
Provides an exciting approach to some of the most contentious issues in discussions around globalization—bioscientific research, neoliberalism, governance—from the perspective of the "anthropological" problems they pose; in other words, in terms of their implications for how individual and collective life is subject to technological, political, and ethical reflection and intervention. Offers a ground-breaking approach to central debates about globalization with chapters written by leading scholars from across the social sciences. Examines a range of phenomena that articulate broad structural transformations: technoscience, circuits of exchange, systems of governance, and regimes of ethics or values. Investigates these phenomena from the perspective of the “anthropological” problems they pose. Covers a broad range of geographical areas: Africa, the Middle East, East and South Asia, North America, South America, and Europe. Grapples with a number of empirical problems of popular and academic interest — from the organ trade, to accountancy, to pharmaceutical research, to neoliberal reform.
An exploration of anthropological perspectives on the cultures, moralities and politics of the world of aid and development.
'What does it mean to be human?' This age-old question has gained new urgency in the light of current technological developments. This volume addresses these developments, as well as the impact they have on human self-understanding, particularly from the perspective of Christian theological anthropology. This volume consists of fourteen chapters, divided into four different parts. The first part explores the challenges that contemporary technology poses with regard to human self-understanding. In the second part, the conceptual assumptions of technological developments themselves are critically questioned. The third part offers theological perspectives on technological developments and assumptions. The fourth and last part of the book returns to the empirical realm, describing the ethical challenges that can be experienced living with complex technology.
This book offers a political anthropological discussion of subversion, exploring its imbrication with technological and divinization practices, and uncovering some of its particular effects on human existence, from prehistory until the contemporary age. Subversion is often romanticized as a means of opposing or undermining power in the name of supposedly universal values, yet techniques of subversion are actually deployed by people of all modern political and philosophical persuasions. With subversion having become a tool of mainstream ‘power’ that threatens to dominate social and political reality and so render the populace servile and subject to a generalized culture industry, Divinization and Technology examines the ways in which technology and divinization, with their efforts to unite with divine powers, can be brought together as modalities of subversion.
For more than two decades, anthropologists have wrestled with new digital technologies and their impacts on how their data are collected, managed, and ultimately presented. Anthropological Data in the Digital Age compiles a range of academics in anthropology and the information sciences, archivists, and librarians to offer in-depth discussions of the issues raised by digital scholarship. The volume covers the technical aspects of data management—retrieval, metadata, dissemination, presentation, and preservation—while at once engaging with case studies written by cultural anthropologists and archaeologists returning from the field to grapple with the implications of producing data digitally. Concluding with thoughts on the new considerations and ethics of digital data, Anthropological Data in the Digital Age is a multi-faceted meditation on anthropological practice in a technologically mediated world.
In Portugal between 2005 and 2010, “modernization through technology” was the major political motto used to develop and improve the country’s peripheral and backward condition. This study reflects on one of the resulting, specific aspects of this trend—the implementation of public video surveillance. The in-depth ethnography provides evidence of how the political construction of security and surveillance as a strategic program actually conceals intricate institutional relationships between political decision-makers and common citizens. Essentially, the detailed account of the major actors, as well as their roles and motivations, serves to explain phenomena such as the confusion between objective data and subjective perceptions or the lack of communication between parties, which as this study argues, underlies the idiosyncrasies and fragilities of Portugal’s still relatively young democratic system.