Where did anthropology go?: or the need for 'human nature'

I was recently asked the question: “Where did anthropology go? ” by a psycholinguist from a famous American university. She was commenting on the fact that she had tried to establish contact with the anthropology department of her institution, hoping that she would find somebody who would contribute to a discussion of her main research interest: the relation of words to concepts. She had assumed that the socio- cultural anthropologists would have general theories or, at least, ask general questions, about the way children’s upbringing in different cultures and environments would constrain, or not constrain, how children represented the material and the social world. She was hoping for information about exotic societies in order to gain a broader cross-cultural perspective. She was hoping that her enquiry about a topic that is inevitable in any discussion about culture would be equally central to the three disciplines of psychology, linguistics and anthropology, and would therefore be an ideal ground for constructive co-operation, that is, one where the different parties could articulate and challenge the theories on which their different disciplines are built. In fact she found that nobody was interested in working with her, but what surprised her most was the hostility she perceived, caused, not only by the suggestion that cultural social anthropologists were interested in simple exotic societies, but even more by the idea that they might be interested in formulating and answering general questions about the nature of the human species and that, therefore, their work could be compatible with disciplines such as hers. The lack of any generalising theoretical framework within which her research interest might find a place is not surprising when we look at what kind of thing is done in many university departments under the label social or cultural anthropology. Take for example the interests listed on the web site of th

PLEs from virtual ethnography of social web

This article presents an exploratory research based on the virtual ethnography from an environment of research and learning including new technologies. The ethnography is a method of qualitative research of social sciences that is mainly used in the socio-cultural anthropology, where it has its theoretical basis. The target was to explore the web 2.0 and its tools. The process of participant observation is by means of a blog, other tools and virtual communities. The result is a descriptive model of the web 2.0 based on a Personal Learning Environment which developed in the ethnographic experience.Postprint (published version

Sustainability or Sustainable Development: An Anthropological Perspective

Occasional Papers in Sociology and Anthropology - Volume 9, 200

Theoretical Approaches and Key Concepts in Medical Anthropology

The theoretical views and ideas offered in the following pages – which are quite long in order to offer a through explanation of the vast and diverse medical and anthropological literature we have available – regard specific concepts and paradigms that will be useful in order to create a solid framework for the ethnographic material we have gathered