Sybil Amber

Until the 1940s the predominant view concerning the field of investigation of anthropology had been centred on "primitive" societies and their cultures. All the various aspects of anthropological studies were primarily absorbed in descriptive and analytical surveys of non-literate people: how they expressed themselves, projected, felt, judged, mastered artistic heritages and so on. From the time of its emergence down to the mid-1940s anthropology remained preoccupied with the socio-cultural studies of "primitive" people. Almost all the schools of anthropology from the midnineteenth century until the early fourties kept a strict line of demarcation of human societies for their socio-cultural analyses: the human problems and cultural norms of "primitive" communities were regarded as distinct from those of developed or "civilized" societies. The end of World War II posed new problems for mankind; it was therefore inevitable for the science of man - anthropology - to free itself from its narrow scope and to respond to the challenge of time.

This book was introduced to the public by a reprint of Elfriede Jelinek s Das weibliche Nicht – Opfer (The female non – casuality) in Oesterreich magazine. I was so impressed by this literary way to express female webs of oppression, slavery and torture, that I ordered a copy immediately from Milena publishers in Vienna. It arrived within three days, in a handy format on 185 pages. Frauen 1938 (Women 1938) has fifteen narrative pieces on the female condition during WWII and nowadays perspective on it.

What amuses me by watching children is their persistent interest in the new; the ability to find always new aspects in their toys; their eagerness to change the meanings of toys; to play roles in games; their power of imagination; their patience and enduring detailing in play. Just when my April 2008 copy arrived in my mailbox, there were many children playing in the park while I read about the anthropology of childhood. In Focus of AN promotes a sophisticated approach to the anthropology of childhood. The dynamics of the time of transition to adulthood are presented through a contemporary lens in reference to past processes. Children are considered independent actors navigating through social, cultural and ecological settings. The development of competencies, the growth and maturation differs human beings from primate relatives (rf. Bock / Gaskins / Lancy 2008: 4)

AAA, short for the American Anthropological Association, launched a new blog for readers to “discuss issues central to ‘In Focus’ thematic commentary series and other AN content”. I did not receive my AN of February 2008, yet, so I read the topics under the publications and articles section on the organisation s website. These full texts will be available for the public until March 1, 2008. Five authors, namely Lee D Baker, Don Brenneis, Melissa Cefkin, Jason Cross and Christopher Kelty, discuss the organisation of Open Access in science and “The State of Open Access” in Anthropology. Comments are warmly appreciated, and I think, that nowadays students should make use of this kind of 24h-Anthropology. For quite a while now, I kept receiving the BOAI list s mailings focussing on the Budapest Open Access Initiative and, of course, I signed it. Various tips and hints were permanently communicated and a wealth of knowledge already is presented online. Proper citation opportunities given,

Kenneth W. Estes s paper published at Gutenberg-e by the Columbia University Press introduces European volunteers in the German army (Wehrmacht) and SS from 1940-1945. Accomplishments, interests and subjectivity of "quasi-Nazi militias" "in an ideologically charged struggle in which their homelands remained to the end non-belligerents" are focused upon. Estes discusses his surprise about right-wing revisionist reports referring to an European army as a forerunner of the NATO alliance, whereas ethnic interpretations serve ideologies of crusades against a bloodthirsty and sneaky other in the east. Estes attempts "to provide a more logical basis for understanding the volunteer phenomenon in the ensuing pages" opposing to - what I would call - a mystifying polemic/apology of WWII in Europe based on revisionist raze by devious means. Six chapters, a selected bibliography and maps, as well as audio, image and video files, plus archived documents illustrate the 128 pages issue.

Also known as Anarchy Brown for his political activities, Alfred R. Radcliffe – Brown was born in Birmingham 1881. Having studied at Trinity, Cambridge, he enrolled in the university s anthropology department and was the first student to receive education in anthropology. W. H. R. Rivers and A. Haddon taught him, and from 1906 – 1908 Radcliffe – Brown conducted fieldwork in the Andaman Islands (Barth 2005; Gaillard 2004). Data acquired through a Hindi – speaking interpreter was collected throughout approximately ten months in a British Indian settlement with the closest living Andaman tribes, who were in majority rather perceived hostile then.

Two anthropologists formed the discipline in France and they were both Marcel Mauss s followers, namely Claude Levi –Strauss (born 1908) and Louis Dumont (1911 – 1998). Claude Levi – Strauss, one of the most famous anthropologists and structuralists, influenced this branch of science like no other. Levi – Strauss was born in Brussels in November 1908. He grew up in Paris and studied philosophy and law at the Sorbonne. Some years Levi – Strauss taught in a secondary school, in 1935 he took the chance to be a part of the French cultural mission and to work as a professor at the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil. Until 1938, he travelled to central Brazil often, but critics noted, that his travels were more or less expeditions to the Amazonas region, “that intervened chronologically between armchair anthropology and long – term fieldwork” (Parkin 2005: 209). During WWII Levi – Strauss lived in New York, where he adapted the work of his friend Roman Jakobson in terms of linguistics. His quotidian presence at the New York Public Library underpinned his interest in human mental patterns, Boasian anti-evolutionist and anti-racist positions, and the “reification of culture” (Parkin 2005: 209). He returned to Paris in 1947 and soon became,

All works published in the first phase of British anthropology were based on written sources mainly, and all of the authors were armchair anthropologists, which means they did not conduct systematic fieldwork by participant observation fashioned by Malinowski. Critical and searching, they used new methods to further scholarly achievements and they found and described basic concepts like animism, endogamy, exogamy, totemism, taboo or matriliny on the basis of philosophical thought. British evolutionists read widely and exchanged ideas throughout the four tradtitions elaborated in One Discipline, Four Ways. They asked for gradual developments, questions of origins and the reconstruction of human history.

E. B. Tylor and a group of anthropologists were the first to support significant scholarly achievments in Britain of the 19th century. Anthropology arose out of Quaker and Nonconformists activities, and the Aborigines Protection Society was found, influenced by the abolition of slavery in 1833. After British trade and colonial expansion had furthered, scholarly and public interest increased in knowledge, mainly of naturalistic orientation in geography, zoology and botany; travel literature was readily welcome to the public, and there were published two outstanding studies to mention: First, E. W. Lane s An Account of the Manner and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), and second, Mountstuart Elphinstone s An Account on the Kingdom of Caubul (1839), both of which failed to generalize in theory. So called savages did not receive much attention, and writers referred to geography and history to garnish their literature.

"French anthropology can thus be seen as a confluence of various currents of thinking and research, each with a distinct spirit and style. The discipline merged the colonial explorations, the anthropology of the Musee d histoire naturelle, the thought of the Ecole de Sociologie francaise and the erudite belles lettres tradition. The Institut d ethnologie awarded both arts and sciences degrees, and its founders became the discipline s sole guardians, exercising their authority by controlling the way it was taught, choosing what research to fund, and deciding what to admit for publication in the series Travaux et memoires de l Institut d ethnologie [Papers and Memoranda of the Institute of Ethnology]" (Gaillard 2004: 87).

James George Frazer was born in Glasgow into a Presbyterian family. His dad was a pharmacist, he built and owned a chemical factory, and he wrote two books about local history. Frazer studied at the University of Glasgow and later attended Cambridge University, where he had lectures in law and classical literature. He finished with a doctorate on a thesis on Plato and from then on he taught until 1922. At the Liverpool University a chair of sociology and anthropology was created for him in 1907, but he lectured for only one year there. J. G. Frazer, who was interested in folklore and anthropology inspiring his work, wrote two entries on taboo and totemism for the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Marcel Griaule was born 1898 in Aisy – sur – Armacon in France. In 1917, he left the Lycee for his profession in aviation and stayed with the military until 1920. Griaule studied ethnology hearing Marcel Mauss s lectures, “[…] he had a definite enthusiasm for fieldwork, which he promoted as a scientific form of travel and exploration and as a sort of adventure that was also represented by his experiences as an aviator […] ” (Parkin 2005: 202). In 1927, he finished his studies in Amharian and Gueze with a diploma, and with Marcel Larget he travelled to Ethiopia for a year, collecting artifacts and fieldworking. In the 1930ies, Griaule led the Dakar – to – Djibouti expedition, the Sahara – Sudan and Sahara – Cameroon missions. Due to his publications about the Masques Dogons (Dogon Masks) and the Jeux Dogons (Dogon Games) his doctoral degree was conferred. He was the first professor of general anthropology at the Sorbonne by 1943, after he acquired his diploma in religious sciences.

Marcel Mauss was born to Emile Durkheim s elder sister in Epinal 1872. He was Durkheim s nephew, and his uncle was his first mentor. Mauss studied Philosophy, the History and Sociology of Religions and with his uncle he went to Paris in 1902. He taught religion of the “noncivilized” people at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, later on at the newly found Institute d Ethnologie and the College de France. “In his youth Mauss associated with C. Peguy, P. Janet, L. Levy – Bruhl and J. Jaures. He played an important role in founding the newspaper L Humanite and was active in radical circles and as a Dreyfusard” (Gaillard 2004: 90). Robert Parkin refers to Marcel Mauss as a scientist by mentioning, that he trained Claude Levi – Strauss and Louis Dumont.

"Steward taught at Columbia from 1946 to 1952, and a number of his students there founded the facetiously named Mundial Upheaval Society, whose members included E. Wolf, S. Mintz, E. R. Service, S. Diamond, D. McCall and R. Manners. As Mintz has explained to me, the Society met to discuss Marxism and new trends in anthropology. A few years later Wolf, Mintz, Diamond and Manners would be working from a Marxist perspective, while Service, together with M. Sahlins, R. Rappaport and M. Harris, continued with the evolutionist approaches first developed by White and Steward and edited Evolution and Culture (Michigan UP, 1960)" (Gaillard 2004: 325).

Ruth Benedict belongs to G. Stocking s third group of Boasians, namely the evolved ones. As a second generation Boasian she co – shaped the so called culture – and – personality school with Margaret Mead, Irving Hallowell and Clyde Kluckhohn. She was born into a Baptist family in New York and studied literature at Vassar College. Some years later, namely from 1919 to 1922 Benedict attended the New School for Social Research in New York, then she was taught by Alexander A. Goldenweiser and Elsie C. Parsons (rf. Gaillard 2004: 104).

Recently, I received a newsletter sent by the Museum of Ethnology on the discussion of the local positioning in a global culture – of museums. The Vienna museum was closed for refurbishment in 2004, and since then only the Benin and the TutAnkhAmun exhibition were exposed. The library was and is open to the public. Rita Demmerle had a plenty of questions relating to the subtle situation of the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna; subtle, because of predatory art objects. A gem in worldwide museums related to ethnology, the museum holds rare pieces,

In focus of my work this year are not only tests at the university, but also urban anthropology. Bridges and live under bridges are explored through the lens of non – places of communication. This work will describe frames of action within urban areas by considering Marc Auge s theory of non – places. Central questions are: What is urban anthropology in the 21st century? How will I define urban – scapes in research? What is urban communication? How do public urban communicative processes work? How are urban spaces used by human beings? How do passers – by move within given frames of the city? How is the status of transition perceived? Which processes are taken notice of and which not? Cities are areas and spatial centers of social and cultural diversity, I think. These urban areas share economic hot spots of agency, like petrol stations with nearby food supply stores, supermarkets or fast-food restaurants. To me, cities are areas of condensed interests in survival, leisure and entertainment.

When I delved into papers of the journal City & Society at AnthroSource, I found that scientists inhabit various positions on the beginnings of Urban Anthropology as a discipline of research. Kathleen Bubinas refers to the Chicago School as an early focus of the studies of urban communities. Caroline Brettell refers to the year 1969 and the volume Nineteenth Century Cities (Thernstrom/Sennet) for the birth of "new" urban history and self-conscious urban anthropology. I prefer to work with,

"The Chicago School s theoretical concept of the city as a series of human ecological zones competing for survival remains one of the first systematic attempts to examine the explanatory power of urban space" (Bubinas 2005: 157).

The online journal Liminalities has its special edition about cities out. The journal of performance studies issued volume four in March 2008. The authors focused on new communication technologies, which create perfomance contexts to feature farragoes of play and cultural disruption (rf. Makagon 2008: 2) in urban settings. This enterprise propounds, that,

"[…] this playfulness has been a feature of cultural disruption throughout history. However, the sheer quantity of do – it – yourself (DIY) activities in recent years has created a new landscape for alternative cultural practitioners, who seem to motivated by a range of social, political and economic goals. The availability and portability of new communication technologies contributes to the speed with which these performance actions can take shape, further allowing performers to re – imagine spectation, participation, and the use of the city as a site to create and stage a variety of playful tactics" (Makagon 2008: 3).

Having received the book Urban Outcasts today, I start writing about a presentation of a topic urban phenomenon accompanied by an exhibition in Vienna. The latter is to be found in Kunsthalle Vienna, it is called Punk. No One is Innocent. Punk was not the last global culture movement, because this lifestyle as a metaphor of revolt did not occur globally, but in cities. In the mid seventies, when nihilisms of all kind caused the Punk movement to become active in the arts, music or fashion, codes of radical left became understandable for a wider audience. Punk. No One is Innocent provides various artists work from London, New York and Berlin, as well as artefacts, like flyers, covers or manifests are exposed. Claudia Bauer additionally lists typical elements of style genetically coded in a what she calls White Riot pop culture perceptible until nowadays.

Raymond Lucas s article in Anthropology Matters 2004 introduces the consideration of "architecture as a practice of representation as well as of space- and place-making" in urban anthropology. He takes a journey through Tokyo and explores the Shinjuku station by using the city "to develop a theory of inscriptive practices, particularly sketching, drawing and notation as 'thinking tools' that extend and run parallel to theoretical text". The author s methodology consists of a series of experiments, where each project includes aspects of more concerns. "I aim also to show that these choices of events are not accidental, but express issues to the benefit of my overall project: to understand inscriptive practices as creative modes of thinking rather than ways of expressing a pre-formed idea" (Lucas 2004: 2).

Westernized history, and I mean the written construction of a remembered past and its interpretation by European historians with it, informs about impoveríshment by contextualizing actions of rich peoples good will. Materially speaking, donors and wealth correlate with social cabilities in the records. To be impoverished and pauper is put on a level of being socially weak. Professor Akin L. Mabogunje presented a seminar series on global urban poverty research in December 2005, whereas issues in question covered the definition of urban poverty examining special characteristics of poverty in cities, case studies of the sub-Saharan region in Africa, a clearing of political economy concepts referring to poverty and an attempt to set up a research agenda, "emphasizing the policy and practical implications of the conjunctural situation of poor municipalities confronting the challenges of urban poverty" (Mabogunje 2005: 2).