The Code of Pangolins Ishii, Miho
Current anthropology,
10/2021, Letnik:
62, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
More than two decades ago, Lévi-Strauss argued that bovine spongiform encephalopathy was the result of forced cannibalism among cattle. He pointed out that not only the consumption of cattle organs ...by cattle but also the eating of beef by humans is a kind of cannibalism among animals. His argument highlighted the negative aspects of connection and assimilation in the act of eating. Today, several anthropological responses have been evoked to address the social, (bio)political, and economic problems caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Although this article is part of that wider corpus, it focuses not on the novel aspects of the phenomenon but on relatively familiar aspects using “classic” anthropological ideas such as substance code, dividual personhood, and taboo. By comparing the circulation of viruses within and beyond species boundaries with the circulation of substance codes observed in South Asian societies, I point out the imaginariness not of dividual personhood but of our existence as individuals. These examinations raise the significance of the anthropological understanding of people’s practices regarding boundary making and unmaking between the human and the wild to consider the problem of zoonoses originating from wild animals.
Documented plaza use in the southern Nasca region (SNR) has demonstrated that communal spaces were absent at residential sites during the Early Nasca epoch. Indeed, communal rituals and performance ...were apparently limited to the pilgrimage center of Cahuachi and associated features of the built environment such as the Nasca geoglyphs. This pattern differs significantly from the pre and post-Cahuachi eras, when plazas, and the communal activities that took place in them, were central to many settlements. In this article, we build on previous work to evaluate the use of communal ritual space in the form of plazas and other aspects of the "built exterior" through time in the Nasca region. We employ data collected from multiple sites, from the SNR to the northern Nasca region (NNR) in Ica. We conclude that cycles of sociopolitical complexity, integration, and patterns of pilgrimage were factors in determining the amount, kind, and arrangement of public ritual space in the Nasca region during the Formative and Early Intermediate periods.
The dynamic processes of knowledge production in archaeology and elsewhere in the humanities and social sciences are increasingly viewed as the collaborative effort of groups, clusters and ...communities of researchers rather than the isolated work of so-called ‘instrumental’ actors. Shifting focus from the individual scholar to the wider social contexts of her work and the dynamic creative processes she participates in, this volume critically examines the importance of informal networks and conversation in the creation of knowledge about the past. Engaging with theoretical approaches such as the sociology and geographies of knowledge and Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and using examples taken from different archaeologies in Europe and North America from the seventeenth to the mid-twentieth century, the book caters to a wide readership, ranging from students of archaeology, anthropology, classics and science studies to the general reader.
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