Polyphonic Anthropology - Theor., Empirical Cross-Cult. Fieldwk.

256 Pages·2012·9.432 MB·English

by  M. Canevacci

POLYPHONIC
ANTHROPOLOGY –
THEORETICAL AND
EMPIRICAL
CROSS-CULTURAL
FIELDWORK

Edited by Massimo Canevacci
Polyphonic Anthropology – Theoretical and Empirical Cross-Cultural Fieldwork
Edited by Massimo Canevacci

Published by InTech
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Copyright © 2012 InTech
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First published March, 2012
Printed in Croatia

A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com
Additional hard copies can be obtained from [email protected]

Polyphonic Anthropology – Theoretical and Empirical Cross-Cultural Fieldwork,
Edited by Massimo Canevacci
p. cm.
ISBN 978-953-51-0418-6

Contents

Preface IX
Part 1 Anthropology and Theory 1
Chapter 1 The Matter of the Sovereignty
of the Heathen Peoples 3
Maria Stella Ferreira Levy
Chapter 2 Frontier Effects and Tidemarks:
A Commentary in the Anthropology of Borders 19
Cosmin Radu
Chapter 3 Culture, Language,
and Knowledge About the Syncretism 33
Cláudio Márcio do Carmo
Chapter 4 To Experience Differently:
On One Strand of Kant’s Anthropology 57
Motohide Saji
Chapter 5 The Relationship Between Clinical
Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis:
Anthropological Origins of Psychotherapy 81
Mareike Wolf-Fedida
Part 2 Ethnographic Fieldwork 91
Chapter 6 Contributions of Anthropology to the Study
of Organization: The Case of Funeral Home 93
Claudia Patricia Vélez-Zapata
Chapter 7 Imprints of the Entrepreneurial State
and Privatization on Worker Subjectivity –
A Study of Iron Ore Mine Workers
in Itabira – Minas Gerais, Brazil 111
Maria Cecilia Minayo
VI Contents

Chapter 8 Social Metabolism, Cultural Landscape,
and Social Invisibility in the Forests of Rio de Janeiro 139
Joana Stingel Fraga and Rogério Ribeiro de Oliveira
Chapter 9 Which Interdisciplinarity?
Anthropologists, Architects and the City 157
Angelo Romano
Chapter 10 An Anthropological Approach to Understanding
the Process of Legitimation: An Examination
of Major League Baseball Emergence 175
Aya Chacar and Sokol Celo
Chapter 11 Ethnic Identities, Social Spaces and Boundaries:
Habitus and Fundamentalist Doxa Among
Second-Generation Chinese American Evangelicals 187
James M. Smith
Chapter 12 Why Are Latin Europeans Less Happy?
The Impact of Hierarchy 203
Gaël Brulé and Ruut Veenhoven
Part 3 Bio-Physical Anthropology 217
Chapter 13 Bilogical, Archeological and Culturological Evidences
of Paleoasiatic Origin of Northern Mongoloids,
Caucasoids and American Indians 219
Ariadna Nazarova
Chapter 14 Applying Craniofacial Metrics
to Adapt 3D Generic Head Models 229
Katrina E. Wendel-Mitoraj and Michael E. Osadebey

Preface

The concept of polyphony was incorporated by many anthropologists thanks to Mikhail
Bakhtin’s work. Analyzing Dostoevsky’s literature, Bakhtin conclusion was the
following: he was the first to multiply any character; so the relationship between hero
and author was decentralized. Before him, the writing was a monological projection of
the author’s psychology and style on the hero and, consequently, the making peripheral
all the other characters. Polyphony is a method that multiplies the researcher’s glance,
the style of representation, the presence of several subjectivities inside the text expressing
their own voices. Polyphony is in the object (the fieldwork), in the subject (the
ethnographer and the informants), and in the method (different styles of representation).
It is possible to read this book as a polyphonic textualization, in which every author
has his/her own way to elaborate contemporary anthropology. Polyphony is inside the
anthropological corpus. Such an “undisciplined discipline” has an articulated complex
of focuses: physical, cultural, social, psychological, communicational and so on. Many
of these approaches are present here. In the same time, the concept of anthropology
itself is a polyphonic junction between two different words: anthropos meaning human
being (not “man”) and so it refers to any gender; logos may be translated by logics, i.e.
a rational system of human thought based on the principle of identity and so of
objectivity; or yet with discourse, making explicit both subjectivity and inter-
subjectivity dialogical imagination.
My final translation of anthropology is a dialogical research on human being through a
polyphonic inter-subjectivity representation; and a syncretic mix of writing, visual,
musical, performative multi-sensorial and multi-logical textualization.
As other human sciences, recently cultural anthropology has been suffering hard
challenges. A radical mutation happened about its traditional “object” of study. The so
called “natives” cultures are changing their life system in many different ways. They
are rejecting both the homologation and museification; they are facing a process of
criticizing the same concept of “native”, the one that has a problematic and perhaps
colonial matrix. Many so called “native” persons are affirming their de-nativization
claim as a political and cultural statement. Everybody is native in his/her own place.
So there is no need to employ such a term only for Cherokee, Xavante, Txotxil, Bororo.
It is more correct to use their own system of calling themselves: Cherokee or Bororo.
X Preface

They are using digital technology in order to represent their own rituals as well as to
represent anthropologists. So, the fundamental concept of representation is going to
change: there is a political and communicational self-representation growing practice.
This concept is a key-word in order to develop a relation with such changing cultures.
This same process has been changing Cultural Studies paradigms: every young person
at any central metropolis or peripheral places has the power both to represent
him/herself and to interpret the “other”: the ethnographer.
At the same time, digital culture and communication has been transforming not only
traditional way of life, but also psychologies, styles of writing and knowledge,
bodyscape and gender relationships, the way one works, territorial friendship and so
on. Ubiquity is another key-word if you want to understand the psycho-cultural
context of any subjectivity nowadays. “Identity” has become always less singular and
every time more plural. Is it possible to understand contemporary cultures without
penetrating into digital communication?
Finally, another hard crisis grows inside the classic space of university: the traditional
system of defining faculty and department does not work anymore. It is urgent
favoring trans-disciplinary for students, scholars, researchers, professors. This
problem also directly affects our anthropology: but, at the same time, it is possible to
discover that any reader of this book has to cross philosophy, anatomy, psychology,
psychoanalysis, sociology, architecture, archeology, biology and urban rituals,
systemic sports, working class struggle, a tropical forest inside Rio de Janeiro or
Chinese immigrants in USA…. I believe in an anthropological mutation inside
anthropology discipline. And I hope this book may face such a challenge.
“Polyphonic Anthropology” has three sections:
1. Anthropology and Theory is the first one. I think is still important to present at the
beginning five essays that are offering different theoretical perspective about our book:
a. Prof. Ferreira Levy Maria Stella, The matter of the sovereignty of the heathen peoples: in
this ethno-historical excursus about the conquest of the American peoples, the kings of
Portugal and Spain, the Catholic Church and the colonists of the New World were the
main players, in the sense that they all subjugated the natives of Brazil.
b. Prof Radu Cosmin, Frontier effectand tidemarks: a commentary in the Anthropology of
Borders: this paper is dealing with the transformation of the borders. It claims that the
border is not just enacted, but an actant. Consequently, the border is considered beyond
the territorial dimension - a multiplicity of spaces imbued with subjectivity reflected in
areas of crossing and dwelling, a space in its continuous becoming: a tidemark.
c. Dr. Do Carmo Claudio, Culture, language , and knowledge about the syncretism: his
paper intends to review the phenomenon called syncretism in Brazil in its possible
relation to the racial issue, presenting previous studies on the subject within the social
sciences, particularly anthropology in an interdisciplinary way.