Volume 58, No. 4, Winter 1999
The Social Control of Illegitimacy Through Adoption
Diana S. Edward
Key Words: infant adoption, birth mothers, U. S. adoption, illegitimacy, social control
Birth is a culturally patterned life cycle event that has personal and political significance. Core cultural values are transmitted to participants during pregnancy and the post-partum period. For illegitimate births, cultural values may be transmitted by punishments for the unapproved mother that include abandonment or, in some instances, pressures to relinquish her child to adoption. In this article relinquishing mothers offer a cultural critique of American adoption programs enacted in earlier decades and provide support for the hypothesis that adoption was used as a form of social control.
Co-Management and Communities in the Barents Sea Fisheries
Geir Hønneland
Key Words: co-management, compliance, fisheries management, Barents Sea
There have recently been several calls for "thicker descriptions" of how co-management systems work, taking into account the embeddedness of such systems in more general social relations. In this article, the relations between co-management systems, various types of fishing communities, and compliance in the Barents Sea fisheries are discussed. Functional communities in Northwestern Russia and Norway, as well as the seafaring community constituted by all "those at sea," all contribute to compliance. Moreover, the co-management perspective ought to direct more attention toward specifying conditions under which such arrangements work, since there is no contradiction between this and an increased focus on human collectives.
United States Surveillance over Mexican Lives at the Border: Snapshots of an Emerging Regime
Josiah McC. Heyman
Key Words: U.S.-Mexico border, immigration, narcotics, contraband, surveillance, computer databases.
Two processes intersect at the U.S.-Mexico border. The first is U.S. database surveillance of undocumented immigration and narcotics smuggling required by new, punitive and indelible U.S. laws about ôcriminal aliens.ö The second is the deepening of the urbanization process, as new generations are born and raised in an border context. They intersect when young Mexican or Chicano men are interdicted carrying contraband drugs; their identities are entered into U.S. databases and their life options are significantly shaped thereby. The overall effect is the strengthening of a surveillance regime over border people in the two nations.
No Visible Means of Support: Child Labor in Urban, Northeast Brazil
Mary Lorena Kenny
Key Words: child labor, Northeast Brazil, informal economy, family studies
Child labor is one of the exigencies of life in poor households and a major aspect of the informal labor sector in urban, Northeast Brazil. This article examines how a depressed local economy, extensive adult unemployment, economic niches available to children and a general surplus of cheap labor reinforces a market for child labor. In poor households the loss of a child's earnings can lead to the disintegration of the household and be potentially life-threatening as savings, assets, credit and health plans are nonexistent. Households access and manage resources by minimizing consumption by children at home while increasing the number of hours children work and consume outside the home. In a context of scarce resources, limited choices and financial uncertainty, the necessity for immediate income obliterates the luxury of waiting for a return on investments in education. This article further documents how the meaning given to children's work is mediated by economic niche, income-earning capacity, gender, age, physical appearance, individual, family and community histories.
Numbers and Patterns: Heroin Indicators and What They Represent
Michael Agar and Heather Schacht Reisinger
Key Words: drug use, epidemiology, qualitative/quantitative, Baltimore
Trends in heroin or other substance use are typically monitored by quantitative epidemiological indicators. Recently the Baltimore metropolitan area has seen an increase in heroin use among suburban youth. In this article media and interviewee perceptions of the timing of this trend are compared to several different indicators. In general, the indicators do not reflect the timing as experienced by media/interviewees, though in some cases a more precise breakdown by location helps. Usually indicators are too distant and ambiguous to reveal details of changing patterns of use. However, qualitative indicators that are more local and anecdotal do show the pattern in a timely way, though in a superficial manner.
The Emerging Global Crisis and Development Anthropology: Can we have an impact?
Thayer Scudder
Key Words: globalization, technology, poverty
Scenarios for the 21st century range from technology and business-oriented visions of a global boom to more pessimistic ones based on increasing environmental degradation, poverty with a rising gap between rich and poor, and societal breakdown. Drawing on his own views and those of 53 other anthropologists, the author discusses the likelihood of the more pessimistic vision prevailing if present trends continue.
Puchuxwavaats Uapi (To Know About Plants): Traditional Knowledge and the Cultural Significance of Southern Paiute Plants
Richard W. Stoffle, David B. Halmo, and Michael J. Evans
Key Words: Ethnobotany, intracultural variation, cultural resource assessment, cultural significance, Southern Paiutes
This paper is about understanding the cultural significance of plants to the Southern Paiute people, who live in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah as members of 12 organized tribes, from both qualitative and quantitative, emic and etic, perspectives. Specifically, the analysis examines patterns of variation in plant cultural significance scores and the factors that account for variations in these patterns. Findings from the analysis, based on four cultural resource assessment projects, suggest that such studies should incorporate adequate fieldwork time for multiple interviews on the same plant with elders and women as consultants, especially elders who are female.
Third Party Role in Conflict Management in Turkish Organizations
M. Kamil Kozan and Canan Ergin
Key Words: conflict, third parties, mediators, culture, Turkey
Third party roles in conflict management in collectivistic cultures is a common but neglected phenomenon. This study surveyed 435 employees of 40 public and private organizations in Turkey. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents reported third party involvement in the conflicts they reported. Peers played a third party role almost as frequently as the immediate supervisors. Small- and medium-sized organizations reported both more third party intervention and more peer involvement in co-workers' conflicts. The initiation, timing, and style of supervisors and peers were dissimilar. While peers usually got involved from the start and on their own, superiors were invited to intervene when conflicts escalated or got out of control. Furthermore, superiors used incentives or their authority to resolve conflicts. Peers, in contrast, listened more and gave advice. Despite the authoritarian tone of administration, satisfaction with the outcome and the process of resolution was low when superiors used autocratic intervention. In contrast, the respondents saw the outcome and the process as fair when superiors or peers mediated. The frequent and informal involvement of peers in co-workers' conflicts is interpreted as a characteristic of the collectivism element in the Turkish culture. Training of managers and non-managerial personnel in mediation is suggested as a practical method for improving conflict management in this and similar cultures. Third party role variables are recommended to be included along with conflict management styles in future cross-cultural research.
