ABOUT THE COLLECTION

The Arizona Anthropologist is a competitive high-quality annual journal designed, reviewed and published by an editorial board of graduate students in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. The open access archives are made available as a collaboration between the Arizona Anthropologist and the University of Arizona Libraries.

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Visit https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/arizanthro for more information about this journal, or contact the editors at arizonaanthropologist@gmail.com.

Recent Submissions

  • Arizona Anthropologist Number 8, 1992

    University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 1992
  • Anthropological Perspectives on Infanticide

    Brewis, Alexandra A. (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 1992)
    Infanticidal behavior has been very common through-out human history. It is suggested that progenicidal behavior, whether consciously or unconsciously practiced, be defined and considered within a cultural, ecological and historical matrix in anthropological studies. Sociobiological and materialist interpretive models are considered too extremist by many anthropologists. Both approaches have an inherent tendency to treat "culture" as a subsidiary variable in infanticide, rather than as encompassing progenicidal phenomena and strategies. A useful conceptual framework with which to approach data collection is one where individuals negotiate progenicidal and child care decision-making within a sociocultural, ecological, technological, demographic and economic framework.
  • Deodorized Culture: Anthropology of Smell in America

    MacPhee, Marybeth (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 1992)
    The sense of smell, though rarely considered important in America, clearly delineates cultural boundaries; this is both demonstrated and promoted through marketing and advertising of consumer products. Historical analyses is invoked to explain why Americans have different tolerances for body odor than their European predecessors. Cultural perceptions of smell are assessed according to Maiy Douglas's models; they are also related to American views of disease and social structure. Odor control manifests as both the American ideal of self-control and as individual expression, or release. The inherent contradictions of these cognitive models are underscored when American culture is examined in terms of its need to control body and environmental odors.
  • A Cognitive Model of Stress

    Van Dyke, Ruth (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 1992)
    Freely structured interviews conducted to discern the cognitive model of "stress" shared by a group of American graduate students are described. Interview data concern the perceived causes, effects, coping strategies, and inherency of stress. These data are organized according to categories and discrepancies inherent to the sample. Sets of propositional models are developed that illuminate some aspects of the cognitive model. Processes of externalization characterized the subjects' responses at every level and the concept of the individual in opposition to the social environment has figured prominently in this analysis. Although the model is composed of many parts, it may be reduced to a single principle: stress is a response to the perceived threat embodied in the appropriation by others of control over the self-image of the individual.
  • The Perception and Study of Rural Change in the Andes: The Inka Case

    Van Buren, Mary (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 1992)
    Archaeologists investigating social complexity often focus on traits that differentiate complex societies from the simpler organizational forms preceding them. Few approaches address the role of households or communities in the development and consolidation of complex polities. Those that do, notably hierarchy models, treat such constituent elements as unchanging and irrelevant to the operation of the system as a whole. An examination of the Inka empire indicates that imperial expansion both modified and was predicated upon the organization of conquered groups. This suggests that archaeologists must address both the structure and history of rural hinterlands in models of social complexity.
  • Japanese Social Organization in the Tokugawa and Post-World War II Periods: Changes in Family and Household Structure and Organization

    Poncelet, Eric C. (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 1992)
    The notion that economic changes embedded in Japan's transition from an agriculturally-based to an industrially-based economy have been associated with corresponding changes in family structure and organization is tested. Changes which did occur were relative and not absolute. Changes in Japanese social organization since 1600 have not been uniform but in fact have been quite varied depending on socio-economic and ecological conditions. Current Japanese trends of decreasing agriculture and increasing industrial urbanization will lead to a continuation in the emergence of the single-person and nuclear family households, equal succession and inheritance, "love" marriages, and neolocal residence as the dominant forms. Nevertheless, the Japanese people are unique in their ongoing attachment to their rich cultural heritage. As long as this loyalty continues, the ie principle will continue to hold an important position in their social lives.
  • Psychic Healing and Women: An Example from a Spiritualist-Metaphysical Church

    Hansen, K. Brooke (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 1992)
    Ten million Americans are involved in some way with psychic healing practices, yet biomedicine often neglects or ignores these alternative health care systems. This study describes a contemporaly example of psychic healing among middle-class white women as observed in a southwestern Spiritualist-metaphysical chapel. This work is placed in both historical and contemporary contexts. Alternative healing choices, specifically psychic-spiritual healing, may affect the autonomy and self-empowerment of women.
  • The Role of Craft Specialization in the Evolution of Prehistoric Societies in the American Southwest

    Cameron, Catherine M. (University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, 1992)
    Craft specialization is often used as one indicator of social complexity and even as a prime mover in the development of hierarchical social organization. In these arguments, the important distinction between craft specialization and craft industrialization is generally ignored. Claims for craft specialization are examined in three prehistoric cultures in the American Southwest for which complex social organization has been suggested: Chaco Canyon, the Hohokam, and the Western Anasazi. The material correlates of craft industries in a number of early state-level societies are briefly described and contrasted in both scale and level of organization with the Southwestern pattern. Finally, several models for the development of craft production are used to evaluate the role of craft specialization in the social organization of groups in the puebloan Southwest. The apparent inability of Southwestern groups to produce a surplus of subsistence goods inhibited development of a social hierarchy that could support craft industries. Production and exchange of craft goods at the household level may have been primarily a form of insurance against an uncertain environment.