Setha M. Low

Engaged Anthropology: Diversity and Dilemmas

As a discipline, anthropology has increased its public visibility in recent years with its growing focus on engagement. Although the call for engagement has elicited responses in all subfields and around the world, this special issue focuses on engaged anthropology and the dilemmas it raises in U.S. cultural and practicing anthropology. Within this field, the authors distinguish a number of forms of engagement: (1) sharing and support, (2) teaching and public education, (3) social critique, (4) collaboration, (5) advocacy, and (6) activism. They show that engagement takes place during fieldwork; through applied practice; in institutions such as Cultural Survival, the Institute for Community Research, and the Hispanic Health Council; and as individual activists work in the context of war, terrorism, environmental injustice, human rights, and violence. A close examination of the history of engaged anthropology in the United States also reveals an enduring set of dilemmas, many of which persist in contemporary anthropological practice. These dilemmas were raised by the anthropologists who attended the Wenner‐Gren workshop titled “The Anthropologist as Social Critic: Working toward a More Engaged Anthropology,” January 22–25, 2008. Their papers, many of which are included in this collection, highlight both the expansion and growth of engaged anthropology and the problems its practitioners face. To introduce this collection of articles, we discuss forms of engaged anthropology, its history, and its ongoing dilemmas.

Culturally interpreted symptoms or culture-bound syndromes: A cross-cultural review of nerves

This paper explores a new approach to culture-specific mental disorders through cross-cultural examination of nerves. A number of case studies are presented from contrasting cultures. It is proposed that nerves be considered a culturally interpreted symptom rather than being culture-bound.

Symbolic Ties That Bind

Place attachment is the symbolic relationship formed by people giving culturally shared emotional/affective meanings to a particular space or piece of land that provides the basis for the individual’s and group’s understanding of and relation to the environment. This chapter applies this definition of place attachment in order to identify a range of types of place attachment in cultural terms, and to present ethnographic examples of each type. It is argued that while there are often strong individualistic feelings that may be unique to specific people, these feelings are embedded in a cultural milieu. Thus, place attachment is more than an emotional and cognitive experience, and includes cultural beliefs and practices that link people to place. This discussion is illustrated with examples of how these often overlapping place attachment processes occur in the central plaza of San Jose, Costa Rica. Future research directions for a cultural analysis of place attachment are suggested as part of the conclusion.

Embodied Space(s) Anthropological Theories of Body, Space, and Culture

Embodied space is the location where human experience and consciousness takes on material and spatial form. After identifying the inherent difficulties in defining the body, body space, and cultural explanations of body experience, the author traces the evolution of approaches to embodied space including proxemics, phenomenological understandings, spatial orientation, and linguistic dimensions. Embodied space is presented as a model for understanding the creation of place through spatial orientation, movement, and language.

The meaning of nervios: A sociocultural analysis of symptom presentation in San Jose, Costa Rica

AbstractThe foundation of the symbolic tradition in medical anthropology is the examination of a patients experience of a category of illness. The interpretation of folk explanations of etiology and nosology provides insight into the cultural definition of what constitutes an illness, how and why an illness is labeled, and how the afflicted individual should be treated. Further, the analysis of sociocultural meaning emerges as a critical theoretical contribution to our understanding of health and culture.Allen Young in his article “Some Implications of Medical Beliefs and Practices for Social Anthropology” suggests “... that if we want to learn the social meaning of sickness, we must understand that ‘signs,’ whatever their genesis, become ‘symptoms’ because they are expressed, elicited, and perceived in socially acquired ways” (1976: 14). He further states that some categories of sickness are particularly interesting in that they enable people to organize the illness event into an episode that has form and meaning (1976: 19–20). Nervios is an example of a symptom that has acquired a special sociocultural pattern of expression, elicitation and perception in San José, Costa Rica. The empirical study of symptom presentation in general medicine and psychiatric outpatient clinics describes the patients who present the symptom and their associated attributes and explanations of the symptoms occurrence. The meaning of nervios is then discussed within a social interactional and symbolic framework.

Towards an anthropological theory of space and place

Abstract This article takes a first step in linking anthropological analyses of the body in space (embodied space), the global/local power relations embedded in space (transnational/translocal space), the role of language and discourse in the transformation of space into place (meaning), and the material and metaphorical importance of architecture and urban design (the built environment). Embodied space, language and discourse, and transnational/translocal spaces are discussed based on a brief review of the literature and then combined with the co-production (social production and social construction) model of space. A preliminary theory of space and place developed for contemporary settings is explored and illustrated with examples drawn from ethnographic studies of gated communities in the United States and the plaza in Latin America.

Urban Public Spaces as Representations of Culture: The Plaza in Costa Rica

This article illustrates how spatial/cultural representations come into being with data collected during a 7-month ethnographic study of two plazas, the Parque Central and the Plaza de la Cultura in San Jose, the capital city of Costa Rica. The comparison of their history, physical and spatial symbolism, user activities and daily behaviors, and news reports and commentaries demonstrates how these cultural representations reflect meanings that change in response to the material conditions and social values of the historical period. Further, the analysis uncovers that moral contradictions in those meanings are expressed first in the traditional plaza setting, and then, are transformed into contradictions across both plazas.

Fortification of Residential Neighbourhoods and the New Emotions of Home

Research on the fortification of residential environments and the spatial production of “security” within gated communities has lead to a broader understanding of how everyday emotions are being transformed by post 9/11 measures and terror talk. A new structure of feeling is infiltrating the most private of spatial domains, that of home, and further rationalizes and legitimates the practices of social exclusion, fortification, and racialization of space that mark current sociospatial politics. This article presents ethnographic illustrations from gated communities in New York and San Antonio, Texas, of how new emotive institutions are emerging and transforming the domestic emotional climate.

Gender, emotion, and nervios in urban Guatemala

This study of nervios in a poor, resettled colonia (neighborhood) outside Guatemala City is part of an ongoing analysis of the cross‐cultural significance and meaning of nerves. In the Guatemalan context, nervios is treated by sufferers as an illness, rather than a symptom, and is associated with experiencing strong emotions, particularly anger (colera, se enoja) and grief or sorrow (pena), and with problems related to reproduction and child rearing. It is generally treated with “nerve pills”; purchased at a local store or with home remedies. Nervios is predominantly reported by women, and the etiological explanations of emotion and childbearing problems suggest that at least part of the meaning of the Guatemalan version of nervios is linked to gender and gender‐based concerns. The Guatemala data on nervios provide an excellent opportunity to explore the relationships between gender, emotion, and illness.

Battery Park City An Ethnographic Field Study of the Community Impact of 9/11

The authors report on an ethnographic study of Battery Park City in summer 2002, less than 1 year after 9/11. They sought to understand the impact of the disaster on this affluent residential enclave across the street from Ground Zero. The research team used rapid ethnographic assessment procedures (REAP), a productive yet relatively inexpensive rapid assessment methodology. The methods included participant observation, on-site interviews with a range of residents, and interviews with public officials and community leaders. The authors evaluate their data within a framework of hypothesized alternative “folk models” through which residents interpreted the rapid community change. Some friends and neighbors had left permanently, and many newresidents arrived the following winter and spring in response to strong rent incentives. Findings include a rise in community activism, lingering fear, and a significant fissure in the community between residents who had survived the disaster and the many new residents.