Lars Rodseth

Violence and Sociality in Human Evolution [and Comments and Replies]

A high gain digital phase comparator which in digital phase lock loop systems can give a thousand-fold reduction in ripple and close-in noise sideband amplitudes. The comparator is of the sample-and-hold type but the normal ramp reference waveform is replaced by a trapezoidal waveform with a very steep rising or falling slope generated by a trapezoidal waveform generator. This slope is sampled by a sampling circuit coupled to said generator and its steepness gives the increased gain of the phase comparator leading to the reduced noise and ripple. Additional logic and switching circuits are added to make the comparator operate only during a rising edge of the trapezoidal waveform.

From Bachelor Threat to Fraternal Security: Male Associations and Modular Organization in Human Societies

Humans live in modular societies with a minimum of two levels of organization, the conjugal family and the local community. Yet any human community is likely to contain at least one other social unit whose evolutionary significance has not always been recognized: a same-sex association, such as a men’s “club” or “brotherhood.” The purpose of this article is to explore the role of all-male associations in relation to the conjugal families that are often taken to be the main constituents of human groups. What has been called bachelor threat in other mammalian species is a major problem in human societies, which may include follower males as well as all-male units. Yet tensions between married men and bachelors are often eclipsed by the need for warriors to defend the local community. The ethnographic record includes many cases in which fraternal security takes precedence over conjugal bonds, resulting in the physical segregation of the sexes, including husbands and wives. At the extreme, a husband usually sleeps at a men’s house while making regular visits to his conjugal family. Though this pattern is classically associated with tribal Amazonia and Melanesia, it is seen here as part of a continuum of variation in small-scale societies worldwide. These societies reflect a series of historical compromises, it is argued, between bachelors and elders, on the one hand, and between men’s associations and conjugal families, on the other.

Mystics against the Market: American religions and the autocritique of capitalism

This article asks what might be learned about Western cosmology by focusing on religious traditions that originated in the United States and have developed outside the mainstream of Christianity. Mormonism and other American religions, we argue, carry a hidden repertoire of mystical and communal themes that directly conflict with the Western ‘market mentality’ as often described in the anthropological literature. These religions, furthermore, have surprising affinities with mystical and communal traditions outside the West, affinities that are fully revealed, ironically enough, only in the context of American cultural expansion in the non-Western world.

Back to Boas, Forth to Latour: An Anthropological Model for the Ontological Turn

How could Franz Boas, trained in physics and geography in Bismarck’s Germany, carry any weight for twenty-first century anthropology, given the theoretical upheavals of the past few decades? As early as 1887, I argue, Boas foreshadowed certain theoretical innovations of recent years, especially Bruno Latour’s ethnographic and philosophical analysis of science and modern society. My thesis is that Latourian and Boasian anthropologies are surprisingly alike, first in their rejection of “purified” high-modernist imagery, but more distinctively in their development of an ontologically “reckless” approach that traces the interwoven pathways of humans and nonhumans. Latour’s resonance with Boas has less to do with any direct Boasian influence on his thinking than with their parallel alignments against the same hegemonic rationalism, which reached its climax in the long century of high modernism (ca. 1880–1990). At the same time, I argue, Latour and Boas are sharply contrasting in their treatment of elite or esoteric doctrines as opposed to general or exoteric culture. This difference turns out to be instructive, as it suggests what a Latourian anthropology stands to gain from a neo-Boasian one and vice versa.

Introduction Giving Up the Geist: Power, History and the Culture Concept in the Long Boasian Tradition

For most of the 20th century, American anthropology lacked an adequate theoretical framework for dealing with power. In 1982, Wolf not only provided such a framework but placed power at the top of the anthropological agenda. In this light, Wolf’s project anticipates many of the later themes that would come to be developed by post-structuralist and postmodernist theorists. Yet, even as Wolf envisaged an anthropology of the future, he paid generous tribute to the past. Europe and the People without History brought the Boasian position full circle by returning to the concerns of the early German diffusionists who, whatever their other shortcomings, could think world-historically without resorting to progressive evolutionism or essentialist notions of Volksgeist. Reactivating the diffusionist wing of American anthropology by injecting it with a theory of power, Wolf cleared the path for a belated synthesis of Boasian and Marxian thought.For most of the 20th century, American anthropology lacked an adequate theoretical framework for dealing with power. In 1982, Wolf not only provided such a framework but placed power at the top of ...