J. Anthony Paredes

Analogy and Mysticism and the Structure of Culture [and Comments and Reply]

Examples are drawn from the cultures of China, Africa, Tibet and Japan, and the Navaho in support of a model for human cognitive processing which assumes that a major component of the rules for calculating human behavior is resident outside the individual in the symbolic artifacts of culture. An Appositional Transformation Operator (ATO) is specified that can relate semantic concepts and patterns of behavior by analogy. The ATO is shown to work with great computational efficiency for verbal and visual analogies. The I Ching, a philosophical divination mechanism of classical Chinese culture, is shown to be constructed on the basis of an ATO logic. The existence of such an ATO divination system throughout much of Africa is also discussed, as well as the apparent encoding of ATO structures in the iconic imagery of Buddhism and of Navaho sand painting. This analysis is intended as part of a cross-cultural validation of a theory which posits that ATOs are the basis for human calculation of behavior by analogy and for perception and use of metaphor.

Some Anthropological Observations on Capital Punishment in the USA

Two recent highly publicized executions prompt reexamination of the bases for widespread support for capital punishment in the USA. A brief review of the history of executions in the U.S. shows a general increase following a de facto moratorium on capital punishment during 1967–77. Among developed democracies, only the USA and Japan have retained the practice of the death penalty, and far fewer people are executed in Japan than in the USA. Likewise, the USA stands out among other developed countries for its high murder rate and other peculiar social ills. It can be argued that the death penalty not only serves to gratify a need for retribution and for reassurance that the system of social order is maintained but also functions as imitative magic in attempting to rid US society of its social problems and cultural incongruities. Magical belief in the deterrence value of the death penalty is illustrated with native testimony.

“On the other side"‐reflections on Galicians familiar and strange

Hans C. Buechler and Judith‐Maria Buechler. Carmen: The Autobiography of a Spanish Galician Woman. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1981. xxxi + 242 pp. Index, illustrations.

Cowboys, Indians, and being human

16.95 cloth,

New Indians, new edition

7.95 paper.

Windigo Psychosis: The Anatomy of an Emic-Etic Confusion [and Comments and Reply]

Niels Winther Braroe. Indian and White: Self‐image and Interaction in a Canadian Plains Community. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975. x + 205 pp. Dlustrations, bibliography and index.

Bridging Levels of Systemic Organization [and Comments and Reply]

8.50.

Introduction to “The Impact of the Hurricanes of 2005 on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the United States”

Wendell H. Oswalt. This Land Was Theirs: A Study of the North American Indian, Second Edition. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1973. xx + 617 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, and index.

Multiculturalism with an Attitude

13.00.