Mental retardation in the United States is currently defined as " ... signif icantly subaverage general intellectual functioning existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior, and manifested during the development period" (Grossman, 1977). Of the estimated six million plus mentally retarded individuals in this country fully 75 to 85% are considered to be "func tionally" retarded (Edgerton, 1984). That is, they are mildly retarded persons with no evident organic etiology or demonstrable brain pathology. Despite the relatively recent addition of adaptive behavior as a factor in the definition of retardation, 1.0. still remains as the essential diagnostic criterion (Edgerton, 1984: 26). An 1.0. below 70 indicates subaverage functioning. However, even such an "objective" measure as 1.0. is prob lematic since a variety of data indicate quite clearly that cultural and social factors are at play in decisions about who is to be considered "retarded" (Edgerton, 1968; Kamin, 1974; Langness, 1982). Thus, it has been known for quite some time that there is a close relationship between socio-economic status and the prevalence of mild mental retardation: higher socio-economic groups have fewer mildly retarded persons than lower groups (Hurley, 1969). Similarly, it is clear that ethnic minorities in the United States - Blacks, Mexican-Americans, American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Hawaiians, and others - are disproportionately represented in the retarded population (Mercer, 1968; Ramey et ai., 1978)."

Over the past two decades increasing interest has emerged in the contribu tions that the social sciences might make to the epidemiological study of patterns of health and disease. Several reasons can be cited for this increasing interest. Primary among these has been the rise of the chronic, non-infectious diseases as important causes of morbidity and mortality within Western populations during the 20th century. Generally speaking, the chronic, non infectious diseases are strongly influenced by lifestyle variables, which are themselves strongly influenced by social and cultural forces. The under standing of the effects of the behavioral factors in, say, hypertension, thus requires an understanding of the social and cultural factors which encourage obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, non-compliance with anti-hypertensive medica tions (or other prescribed regimens), and stress. Equally, there is a growing awareness that considerations of human behavior and its social and cultural determinants are important for understanding the distribution and control of infectious diseases. Related to this expansion of epidemiologic interest into the behavioral realm 'has been the development of etiological models which focus on the psychological, biological and socio-cultural characteristics of hosts, rather than exclusive concern with exposure to a particular agent or even behavioral risk. Also during this period advances in statistical and computing techniques have made accessible the ready testing of multivariate causal models, and so have encouraged the measurement of the effects of social and cultural factors on disease occurrence."

Why did emigrants leave their homeland and move to Minnesota? Where in the state did they settle? What did they do, and how did they organize? How did they maintain their ethnicity? Based on ground-breaking research. Each chapter of "They Chose Minnesota" describes the unique concerns of individual groups and delves into personal stories. Farmers and factory workers, men, women, and children, families and single people, idealists and pragmatists, people who were devout or irreligious or enthusiastic or fearful, those who cut ties with their homeland or intended to return--all form part of Minnesota's ethnic saga.

Ethnographic Research: A Guide to General Conduct is the first in the ASA Research Methods series. This volume is about ethnographic research, the production of data, and the practical aspects of research practice. It is general and introductory in scope. Designed as a handbook, it is suitable for rapid reference. It provides basic outlines on general practical matters of concern to all those engaged in ethnographic research, introduces the series as a whole, and serves as a guide to existing literature on issues not specifically covered by the more specialized volumes which follow.

In the last few years there has been a great revival of interest in culture-bound psychiatric syndromes. A spate of new papers has been published on well known and less familiar syndromes, and there have been a number of attempts to put some order into the field of inquiry. In a review of the literature on culture-bound syndromes up to 1969 Yap made certain suggestions for organizing thinking about them which for the most part have not received general acceptance (see Carr, this volume, p. 199). Through the seventies new descriptive and conceptual work was scarce, but in the last few years books and papers discussing the field were authored or edited by Tseng and McDermott (1981), AI-Issa (1982), Friedman and Faguet (1982) and Murphy (1982). In 1983 Favazza summarized his understanding of the state of current thinking for the fourth edition of the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, and a symposium on culture-bound syndromes was organized by Kenny for the Eighth International Congress of Anthropology and Ethnology. The strong est impression to emerge from all this recent work is that there is no substantive consensus, and that the very concept, "culture-bound syndrome" could well use some serious reconsideration. As the role of culture-specific beliefs and prac tices in all affliction has come to be increasingly recognized it has become less and less clear what sets the culture-bound syndromes apart."

After putting down this weighty (in all senses of the word) collection, the reader, be she or he physician or social scientist, will (or at least should) feel uncomfortable about her or his taken-for-granted commonsense (therefore cultural) understanding of medicine. The editors and their collaborators show the medical leviathan, warts and all, for what it is: changing, pluralistic, problematic, powerful, provocative. What medicine proclaims itself to be - unified, scientific, biological and not social, non-judgmental - it is shown not to resemble very much. Those matters about which medicine keeps fairly silent, it turns out, come closer to being central to its clinical practice - managing errors and learning to conduct a shared moral dis course about mistakes, handling issues of competence and competition among biomedical practitioners, practicing in value-laden contexts on problems for which social science is a more relevant knowledge base than biological science, integrating folk and scientific models of illness in clinical communication, among a large number of highly pertinent ethnographic insights that illuminate medicine in the chapters that follow."

Within the past two decades, there has been an increased interest in the study of culture and mental health relationships. This interest has extended across many academic and professional disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, sociology, psychiatry, public health and social work, and has resulted in many books and scientific papers emphasizing the role of sociocultural factors in the etiology, epidemiology, manifestation and treatment of mental disorders. It is now evident that sociocultural variables are inextricably linked to all aspects of both normal and abnormal human behavior. But, in spite of the massive accumulation of data regarding culture and mental health relationships, sociocultural factors have still not been incorporated into existing biological and psychological perspectives on mental disorder and therapy. Psychiatry, the Western medical specialty concerned with mental disorders, has for the most part continued to ignore socio-cultural factors in its theoretical and applied approaches to the problem. The major reason for this is psychiatry's continued commitment to a disease conception of mental disorder which assumes that mental disorders are largely biologically-caused illnesses which are universally represented in etiology and manifestation. Within this perspective, mental disorders are regarded as caused by universal processes which lead to discrete and recognizable symptoms regardless of the culture in which they occur. However, this perspective is now the subject of growing criticism and debate.

With contributions from 70 experienced practitioners from around the world, this second edition of the authoritative Handbook of Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology provides a solid foundation in both the practical and ethical components of forensic work. The book weaves together the discipline's historical development; current field methods for analyzing crime, natural disasters, and human atrocities; an array of laboratory techniques; key case studies involving legal, professional, and ethical issues; and ideas about the future of forensic work--all from a global perspective. This fully revised second edition expands the geographic representation of the first edition by including chapters from practitioners in South Africa and Colombia, and adds exciting new chapters on the International Commission on Missing Persons and on forensic work being done to identify victims of the Battle of Fromelles during World War I. The Handbook of Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology provides an updated perspective of the disciplines of forensic archaeology and anthropology.

Based on a 500,000 word corpus of early sources collected from ex-slave narratives, ex-slave recordings, and interviews with hoodoo priests, this book reconstructs the English spoken by African Americans between 1830 and 1920. By means of detailed quantitative analyses, three linguistic features (negation patterns, copula usage, and relative marker choice) are interpreted along the lines of temporal change, regional diversity, and variation across gender. Additionally, some 300 non-standard letters written by African Americans in the 19th century are compared to the main corpus in order to identify differences between speech and writing.

This groundbreaking book addresses issues of the keenest interest to anthropologists, specialists on Africa, and those concerned with international aid and development. Drawing on extensive research among the Luo people in western Kenya and abroad over many years, Parker Shipton provides an insightful general ethnography. In particular, he focuses closely on nonmonetary forms of exchange and entrustment, moving beyond anthropology's traditional understanding of gifts, loans, and reciprocity. He proposes a new view of the social and symbolic dimensions of economy over the full life course, including transfers between generations. He shows why the enduring cultural values and aspirations of East African people--and others around the world--complicate issues of credit, debt, and compensation.
The book examines how the Luo assess obligations to intimates and strangers, including the dead and the not-yet-born. Borrowing, lending, and serial passing along have ritual, religious, and emotional dimensions no less than economic ones, Shipton shows, and insight into these connections demands a broad rethinking of all international aid plans and programs.

In contrast to other disciplines, social psychology has been slow in responding to the questions posed by the issue of ethnicity. The Social Psychology of Ethnic Identity, Second Edition, demonstrates the important and diverse contribution that social psychology can make. Comprehensively updated to include the latest research on dual and multiple identities, mutual links between sense of ethnic identity and social contexts, and the development of ethnic identity in adolescence, this new edition now also features research from non-European cultural contexts, including Turkey, Mauritius and Myanmar. The book shows, on the one hand, that social psychology can be used to develop a better understanding of ethnicity and, on the other hand, that increased attention to ethnicity can benefit social psychology. By filling in theoretical and empirical gaps, Maykel Verkuyten brings an original approach to subjects such as: ethnic minority identity - place, space and time; hyphenated identities and duality; and self-descriptions and the ethnic self. Featuring the latest theoretical ideas and research, the combination of diverse approaches to this burgeoning field make this book invaluable reading for students of psychology and related disciplines, as well as researchers and professionals.

The rise of the health, beauty and fitness industries in recent years has led to an increased focus on the body. Body image, gender and health are issues of long-standing concern in sociology and in youth studies, but a theoretical and empirical focus on the body has been largely missing from this field. This book explores young people's understandings of their bodies in the context of gender and health ideals, consumer culture, individualisation and image. Body Work examines the body in youth studies. It explores paradoxical aspects of gendered body work practices, highlighting the contradiction in men's increased participation in these industries as consumers alongside the re-emphasis of their gendered difference. It explores the key ways in which the ideal body is currently achieved, via muscularising practices, slimming regimes and cosmetic procedures. Coffey investigates the concept of 'health' and how it is inextricably linked both to the bodily performance of gender ideals and an increased public emphasis on individual management and responsibility in the pursuit of a 'healthy' body. This book's conceptual framework places it at the forefront of theoretical work concerning bodies, affect and images, particularly in its development of Deleuzian research. It will appeal to a wide range of scholars and students in fields of youth studies, education, sociology, gender studies, cultural studies, affect and body studies.

39 Medical sociology, on the other hand, is only beginning to be perceived as an established partner in medical education. What was still described in 1963 as its 'promise' (Reader, 1963) became a decade later the unequivocal assertion: 'Sociology has already contributed much to medicine ... has (in its work related to medicine) developed a distinct body of knowledge, and in fact, reached the position where it can contribute substantially to decision making in medicine'. (Kendall and Reader, 1972) As it has established its position, both as a legitimate sub-field of sociology as a collaborator with the medical professions, there is evidence of increasing attention by medical sociology to the applica tions of its knowledge. The literature reveals a remarkable degree of concern about its development. (Caudill, 1953; Clausen, 1956; Reader and Goss, 1959; Reader, 1963; Suchman, 1964; Graham, 1964; Bloom, 1965; McKin lay, 1972). Most of its continuing self-scrutiny, however, was - at least until recently - focused on the evaluation of its contribution to knowledge. We seem now to have found security in the legitimacy of this contribution, and to be turning to the effort to establish an organized dimension of applied social science - of which an example is seen in table 2.1. Williams, first in 1963 and again in 1972, sought to show how the knowledge of medical sociology was actually being applied. Hyman (1967) reviewed 'the uses of sociology for the problems of medicine'."

With more than 40% of people eventually facing a cancer diagnosis, Conversing with Cancer is a much-needed addition to understanding and improving cancer care through strong communication among providers, patients, and caregivers. Each person whose life is affected by a cancer diagnosis-patient, healthcare provider, caregiver-has information and needs information in order to make the best decisions possible under the circumstances. After studying and writing about the topics of communication and cancer for many years separately, authors Lisa Sparks and Anna Leahy combine their expertise in this new tour de force. Here, they apply principles from the field of health communication to the cancer care experience, drawing from a wide range of scholarship to offer a comprehensive view of cancer care communication and extend existing work into new insights. Engaging chapters cover all phases of the journey through cancer, from prevention to recovery or end-of-life; analyze the roles of the variety of cultural and social identities and relationships; and explore written, verbal, non-verbal, and electronic communication. In addition, this book draws from the real-life stories of cancer patients themselves to enrich the book's unique discussions and to better understand how theory can be put into practice. Conversing with Cancer is ideal for use in health communication classes, medical and nursing programs, and formal caregiver training. In addition, it is useful for cancer patient and caregiver supports groups and for individual providers, patients, and caregivers.

Daniel O'Connell, as we bring him into focus, after generations of bitter criticism, misrepresentation, and neglect, becomes a very modern man. The principles which he held with such consistency and expounded with such consummate eloquence are, by modern standards, enlightened, even prescient. They are wholly pertinent questions which are of deep concern to all of us. The reader of history will perceive that the span of O'Connell's life, 1775-1847, witnessed profound changes in political arrangements, in power structures, and in national boundaries in the Western world. One of the more important of these developments has been the growth of nationalism, not only here but throughout the world. As the national consciousness affected Ireland, it cannot be interpreted, even understood, except as it was awakened by O'Connell. He entered public life as an opponent of the Act of Union of 1800, a measure which was to infect British relations with Ireland for a century and a quarter. O'Connell earned and held in the Western world high rank among the individuals who promoted religious liberty and separation of Church and State, cardinal principles in the American tradition. Since the first half of his public life was devoted to the restoration of Catholic rights, he realized that he could not rationally insist upon rights for his fellow communicants which he would deny to others. His concept of true religion was of something lived wholly apart from interference or support by civil authority. As we shall see, he carried his zeal for religious liberty to the support of the Jews in their struggle to life the disabilities imposed by English law.

The impact of the U.S. immigration and legal systems on children and youth In the United States, millions of children are undocumented migrants or have family members who came to the country without authorization. The unique challenges with which these children and youth must cope demand special attention. Illegal Encounters considers illegality, deportability, and deportation in the lives of young people-those who migrate as well as those who are affected by the migration of others. A primary focus of the volume is to understand how children and youth encounter, move through, or are outside of a range of legal processes, including border enforcement, immigration detention, federal custody, courts, and state processes of categorization. Even if young people do not directly interact with state immigration systems-because they are U.S. citizens or have avoided detention-they are nonetheless deeply affected by the reach of the government in its many forms. Contributors privilege the voices and everyday experiences of immigrant children and youth themselves. By combining different perspectives from advocates, service providers, attorneys, researchers, and young immigrants, the volume presents rich accounts that can contribute to informed debates and policy reforms. Illegal Encounters sheds light on the unique ways in which policies, laws, and legal categories shape so much of daily life for young immigrants. The book makes visible the burdens, hopes, and potential of a population of young people and their families who have been largely hidden from public view and are currently under siege, following their movement through complicated immigration systems and institutions in the United States.

"The thesis is radical," writes Marshall Sahlins of this landmark text in anthropology and political science. "We conventionally define the state as the regulation of violence; it may be the origin of it. Clastres's thesis is that economic expropriation and political coercion are inconsistent with the character of tribal society - which is to say, with the greater part of human history."Can there be a society that is not divided into oppressors and oppressed, or that refuses coercive state apparatuses? In this beautifully written book, Pierre Clastres offers examples of South American Indian groups that, although without hierarchical leadership, were both affluent and complex. In so doing he refutes the usual negative definition of tribal society and poses its order as a radical critique of our own Western state of power.Born in 1934, Pierre Clastres was educated at the Sorbonne; throughout the 1960s he lived with Indian groups in Paraguay and Venezuela. From 1971 until his death in 1979 he was Director of Studies at the fifth section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris and held the Chair of Religion and Societies of the South American Indians there.Robert Hurley is the translator of the History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault and cotranslator of Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.

Encompassing more than a decade of research around the globe, this book shows that cultural capital has far more impact than politics, prejudice, or genetics on the social and economic fates of minorities, nations, and civilizations. Multiculturalism and affirmative action policies are only distractions likely to make matters worse.

A classic and highly influential ethnography, which explores political leadership among Swat Pathans - and which emphasizes the importance of individual decision-making for wider social processes.

This collection of original work demonstrates the new ways in which particular research methodologies are used, valued and critiqued in the field of race and ethnic studies. Contributing authors discuss the ways in which their personal and professional histories and experiences lead them to select and use particular methodologies over the course of their careers. They then provide the intellectual histories, strengths and weaknesses of these methods as applied to issues of race and ethnicity and discuss the ethical, practical, and epistemological issues that have influenced and challenged their methodological principles and applications. Through these rigorous self-examinations, this text presents a dynamic example of how scholars engage both research methodologies and issues of social justice and ethics. This volume is a successor to Stanfield's landmark Race and Ethnicity in Research Methods.

Darrell A Posey died in March 2001 after a long and distinguished career in anthropology and ecology. Kayapo Ethnoecology and Culture presents a selection of his writings that result from 25 years of work with the Kayapo Indians of the Amazon Basin. These writings describe the dispersal of the Kayapo sub-groups and explain how with this diaspora useful biological species and natural resource management strategies also spread. However the Kayapo are threatened with extinction like many of the inhabitants of the Amazon basin. The author is adamant that it is no longer satisfactory for scientists to just do 'good science'. They are are increasingly asked and morally obliged to become involved in political action to protect the peoples they study.

Cultures in Conversation introduces readers to the ethnographic study of intercultural and social interactions through the analysis of conversations in which different cultural orientations are operating. Author Donal Carbaugh presents his original research on conversation practices in Britain, Finland, Russia, Blackfeet County, and the United States, demonstrating how each culture is distinctive in its communication codes, particularly in its use of symbolic meanings, forms, norms, and motivational themes. Examining conversation in this way demonstrates how cultural lives are active in conversations and shows how conversation is a principle medium for the coding of selves, social relationships, and societies. Representing 20 years of research, this text offers unique insights into the social interaction within distinct cultures. It makes a significant contribution to communication scholarship, and will be illuminating reading in cultural communication, language and social interaction, and linguistics courses. In addition, it invites others to examine ethnographic inquiry as a way of studying intercultural conversations in particular, and communication practices in general.

Probationary Americans examines contemporary immigration rules and how they affect the make-up of immigrant communities. The authors' key argument is that immigration policies place race and class as important criteria for gaining entry to the United States, and in doing so, alter the makeup of America's immigrant communities.

Comprehensive selection of 126 myths, including sacred stories, animal myths, local legends, wonder stories, historical traditions and miscellaneous myths and legends. Also, extensive background on Cherokee history, notes on the myths, parallels between Cherokee and other myths, much more. 20 maps and illustrations.

Changing Lapps A Study in Culture Relations in Northernmost Norway is a study of culture contact between the Saami and the Scandinavians, chiefly Norwegians, in an historical perspective. This study is based primarily on literary sources and official records supplemented by field work. In order to correct the stereotype of the Saami as being a homogeneous people and entirely nomadic reindeer breeders, Gjessing describes Saami social structure and the functional aspects of the contact in terms of three Saami sub-cultures, those of the sea Saami, Reindeer Saami, and the permanently settled inland Saami. Gjessing points out that there is an increasing feeling of solidarity following economic lines rather than the local and cultural lines among the Saami