Optimizing Stroke Treatment

Understanding Brain Cancer

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is a deadly cancer, and the current prognosis for patients diagnosed with this disease remains sub-optimal. Our project is looking at how we can better predict the prognosis of a specific individual, and suggest treatments that optimize survival and quality of life.

With the increasing amount of data in the electronic health record, new methods are required to help expedite a healthcare provider’s understanding of a patient’s medical history. The PARSE project explores the use of topic models for summarizing large, unstructured data collections to support PCPs.

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Wireless Health Institute

Research news

As clinical practice moves towards a more quantitative image evaluation to achieve better diagnosis, new needs have emerged in order to objectively evaluate the effect of a decision in disease progression and outcome. Especially when diagnosing and treating brain tumors, it is crucial to have accurate measurements and to know to what degree the variation of the tumor mass represents true disease progression to be able to generate insights about treatment effectiveness. This project centers on increasing the utility of imaging features from magnetic resonance imaging by developing a method for tumor segmentation variability quantification, towards a more objective disease understanding and improved decision making.

 more research news>

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Lab meeting resources (For students only)


The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

This historic event marks a key moment in the transition from over two decades of preparation to a new era of scientific discovery. “It’s a fantastic moment,” said LHC project leader Lyn Evans, “we can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.”

Once colliding beams have been established, there will be a period of measurement and calibration for the LHC’s four major experiments, and new results could start to appear in around a year. Experiments at the LHC will allow physicists to complete a journey that started with Newton’s description of gravity. Gravity acts on mass, but so far science is unable to explain the mechanism that generates mass. Experiments at the LHC will provide the answer.

LHC experiments will also try to probe the mysterious dark matter of the universe – visible matter seems to account for just 5% of what must exist, while about a quarter is believed to be dark matter. They will investigate the reason for nature’s preference for matter over antimatter, and they will probe matter as it existed at the very beginning of time.

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Nelson Mandela 'proven' to be a Communist

(TELEGRAPH) — A new book claims that, 50 years after he was first accused of being a Communist, Nelson Mandela was a Communist party member after all.

Now, nearly half a century after the court case that made him the world’s best-known prisoner of conscience, a new book claims that whatever the wider injustice perpetrated, the apartheid-era prosecutors were indeed right on one question: Mr Mandela was a Communist party member after all.


Vanguard Lifetime Income Program - Life Strategy Conservative Growth Fund [QF]
Risk Attributes

Historic Volatility Measures as of 07/31/2016

BenchmarkR-squared* Beta*
Conservative Growth Composite Index1.000.99
Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index

Risks Associated with Moderate Funds

Plain Talk About Risk

The fund is subject to several stock and bond market risks, any of which could cause an investor to lose money. However, based on the fund’s current allocation between stocks and the less volatile asset class of bonds, the fund’s overall level of risk should be higher than those funds that invest the majority of their assets in bonds, but lower than those investing entirely in stocks. As the fund’s allocation between underlying funds gradually changes, the fund’s overall level of risk also will decline. In addition to the risks inherent in the asset classes of the underlying funds, the fund also is subject to asset allocation risk, which is the chance that the selection of underlying funds and the allocation of fund assets will cause the fund to underperform other funds with a similar investment objective. For further details on all risks, please refer to the fund’s prospectus.


Can you give an overview of the Baby Blue project?

The Bluebook is nothing more than the expression of something called the uniform system of citation. The system is a set of rules, and The Bluebook is an expression of the system. The Bluebook editors have claimed copyright in that expression.

The problem with that is the law is supposed to be accessible to people, and The Bluebook is a basic piece of infrastructure for speaking the language of the law. Law firms and small practices need to use The Bluebook. Prisoners in jails who are writing pro se briefs need to use The Bluebook. It would be wonderful if The Bluebook were more widely accessible to people.

A problem with The Bluebook is the citation rules that it puts in place have devolved over a long period of time. They’re a little creaky – and antiquated. I’ll give you an example: The Bluebook says you can italicize case names or you can underline them. No one underlines anything anymore; underlining is what mechanical typewriters used to do because they couldn’t italicize. Eventually we can update things like this, and fit the citation format to a developing world. We can make it simpler and more effective – easier to use learn and less of a barrier. To do that I think it would be helpful to set The Bluebook free from copyright restrictions, both because this will ease access to it and also because over time, people can change it.

We’re re-expressing The Bluebook’s uniform system of citation, which is a system not covered by copyright and also not covered by patent in this case. Our goal is to re-express it in a simpler, more compact way that is fully compatible with The Bluebook version, just easier to use, more accessible and free of copyright restrictions.

What’s the process been like developing the project?

The first thing we did was look at The Bluebook and try to understand what the rules were, in distinction from the particular expression of the rules. Then, we tried to re-write those rules and express them accurately but a bit more simply, using different examples. We avoided copyrighted expression in The Bluebook wherever we could. Where there was really only one way to say something, we said it basically the same way because we had to. But the merger doctrine will cover us there because if there’s only one way to express a rule and the rule itself is not copyrighted, then you’re basically allowed to use that expression. We’re doing the best we can to minimize what we use from The Bluebook, but where we have to express a rule in a certain way, we do.

There’s been a team of NYU students that have done the bulk of the hard work from the beginning. They’ve been incredibly insightful, well organized and motivated. It’s just been and incredible pleasure to work with them. That’s been the best thing about this to me.

What’s the timeline for the project?

We started last year, we have a draft, and we’re refining it now. We’re hoping to be able to release something in beta form by Thanksgiving or at least by the end of the semester. People can then critique it, and we’ll try to improve it in the spring with the goal of getting this out to the world in its fully formed version sometime late spring 2016.

Our version of the uniform system of citation will be fully compatible with The Bluebook. In the future, if people want to propose changes that make the uniform system of citation a better system of citation, I think that would be a good thing. We’re going to start fully compatible but maybe we don’t end up there.

Who publishes The Bluebook and do they make profit from it?

A consortium of the Columbia Law Review, the Penn Law Review, the Harvard Law Review and the Yale Law Journal – that’s the cartel that publishes The Bluebook. Those are all very rich law schools and their law reviews realize revenues from this. This is all well and good, but they’ve had the copyright on this for a long, long time. I think the copyright on The Bluebook is very thin – it doesn’t actually cover the system of citation, which is uncopyrightable. It covers the expression of that system, which we’re going to re-express differently.

At the beginning of this process I had an exchange of letters with lawyers who represent The Bluebook. They wrote me back and said they were going to take some of the concerns on board and provide wider access to The Bluebook, which is in part what we were concerned about. I don’t see a lot of action on that front. But even if they did, I don’t think that would be enough. One thing that we’d like to do is to allow people to improve the system. Why should improvements to the system of legal citation be in the hands of the editors from four law reviews? That seems like a weird governance mechanism.

What kind of improvements do you think you might see?

Our system of legal citation is on the whole far too complicated. It’s a huge entry barrier to people trying to represent themselves in court. What a system of citation should do is allow people readily to find things that are being cited and to read those cited authorities. There are lots of pretty simple systems of citation that can do that reliably. The Bluebook is enormously over-prescriptive, too detailed, too rigid, and uselessly baroque. It’s a massive misallocation of resources. People should be thinking about arguments, not the fine points of how to cite something. I think generally we have a system of citation that’s relatively inaccessible because of its complexity and relatively inaccessible because of its cost. Neither of those things is good. This is why we have this project.

UPDATE February 9, 2016: Baby Blue is now available at

Kayla Wieche is a J.D. candidate, 2017, at NYU School of Law.


• September 1, 2016

Tips for choosing color and design

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Posted: Friday, May 23, 2014 4:30 am

Color and design are the two most important components of a quilt. Color is also the most personal choice when planning a new quilt. Even if we aren’t planning a quilt, color choice enters our lives on a daily basis. What we choose to wear when getting dressed in the morning, to planning a remodel of a room in our home. Color is a huge part of our existence. We can’t get away from it.

Beginning quilters get very anxious when it comes to choosing colors for their quilts. When I took my first quilting class, which was making a quilted jacket, the instructor showed me a method, which I still use today.

First, choose a fabric you love. Make sure it has lots of colors in it like a big busy print. Then, choose the remaining fabrics that match the colors in your first “focus” fabric. Finding those remaining colors is much easier than it was 30 years ago when I took that class. Now, the manufacturer puts color dots on the salvage of fabrics so you can see at a glance what colors are in the print fabric.

Another method many quilters use is a color wheel. A color wheel can lead you to choose fabrics that are complimentary (colors next to each other on the wheel), analogous (colors next to each other on the wheel), triad (colors evenly spaced around the wheel), split-complimentary, etc. Using a color wheel can reveal creative color combinations you never thought you’d come up with on your own. I’ve never been a big fan of the color wheel, but it works. Many artists use a color wheel to create their works of art.

Finding help in color selection is very easy these days. There are hundreds of books on the subject, along with gadgets and color cards you can purchase. Even after using some of these resources, I still fall back to my first “focus” fabric color choosing method. If you are making a quilt for someone else, and they have told you, or you know, their favorite colors, the color choices may be easier. If you’re making a baby quilt for a new arrival, find out the colors of the nursery and go from there. If there are no specific nursery colors, then find out what the mother’s favorite colors are. You can’t go wrong with pleasing the mother’s color preference.

Taking a new quilter into a fabric store to purchase fabric for a project can be somewhat of a trial. My first question is what their favorite color is, or if they are making this project for someone else, what colors are requested or preferred. Most people have a favorite color, or two. So that makes a starting point easier. But I have encountered people who do not have a favorite color. It’s much harder to begin choosing fabric, but it can still be done. As we wander around the fabric store we eventually come across fabric that catches their eye.

Once that first fabric is discovered, the rest can be collected to match it. If the first fabric is a print, it makes it much easier to find the remaining fabric needed. If the fabric is a solid, then we can concentrate on that fabric’s color family or find complimentary colors to go with it.

One question that comes up is: How can judges be fair in their judging if the quilt is not in colors she likes? Good question.

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Welcome to the discussion.


computer based information system

Category: Education

Presentation Description

No description available.

Presentation Transcript

Slide 1:

Slide 2:

Computer Based Information System (CBIS)

Slide 3:

CBIS consists of following applications Management Information Systems. Decision Support Systems. The Virtual Office. Knowledge Based Systems. The fundamental work of CBIS is to manage information in an efficient way such that it can be utilized by the managers effectively to solve problems. Computer Based Information System

Slide 4:

Information is the method of efficiently manage the Resources. There are basically five types of resources that need to be managed by the managers. Personnel Material Machines (includes energy and facilities) Money Information (includes data) The first four resources are tangible i.e. they exist physically, they are also known as physical resources. The fifth resource type is not tangible hence called as conceptual resource. Managers use conceptual resources to manage physical resources. Information Management

Slide 5:

Resource and Information Management Management of resources. Resources are acquired and assembled to make it available for use any time. The manager always tries to maximize the usage of the assembled resources by minimizing the idle time and functioning at peak of efficiency. Finally the manager replaces those resources which have become obsolete or inefficient. Management of Information The manager ensures that all the necessary data is gathered and then the process of conversion of data to information is done. The manager ensures that the information is received to proper individuals at proper time and in proper form. Finally the manager discards all those information which have become obsolete and replaces those with the latest and useful information. This entire process of gathering information, using it in the most effective manner and discarding it in proper time is called Information Management.

Slide 6:

The Information Users The users of computer based information are Managers. Non managers. Persons and organizations included in the firm. In the early years of development of computers in information management the users of the computers were clerical employees who used computers in accounting area, billing, etc. When the concept of MIS was developed then computers were implemented for management support. Among other users were the users outside the firm,like customers received receipts, stock holders receiving dividend checks etc.

Slide 7:

Manager and Systems

Slide 8:

System A system is a group of elements that are integrated with a common purpose of achieving a common objective. An organization contains resources, they work hard towards achieving particular objectives that are specified by the management. System Elements. The basic elements of a system is as follows Input element. Transformation element. Output element. Control mechanism. Objectives.

Slide 9:

System Elements fig 2.1 Objectives Transformation Input Output Control Mechanism

Slide 10:

System Elements Figure 2.1 shows the diagram for system elements. The resources flow from the input element, through the transformation element and to the output element. A control mechanism monitors the transformation process to ensure that the system meets the objectives laid down by the management. The control mechanism is connected with the resource flow by the means of the feedback loop from output. The control mechanism compares the output with the objectives and accordingly directs the input system to make the necessary changes ( if required). The various category of systems are Open loop & Closed loop System. Open Systems & Closed System. Sub Systems & Super Systems. Physical Systems & Conceptual Systems.

Slide 11:

Open Loop & closed Loop Systems fig 2.2 Transformation Input Output An open loop system does not have a feedback or control mechanism. These are very simple systems that do not require monitoring. For example simple space heaters. In case of closed loop systems there is a feedback mechanism that monitors the output with respect to objectives. For example room air conditioners. Refer fig 2.1

Slide 12:

Open Systems & Closed Systems Open systems are connected to their environment through resource flows. These systems require the help of systems in the environment to accomplish their completion. For example, a centralized air conditioning system requires a cooling plant for it to cool the entire building, here the centralized air conditioning system is an open system. A closed system does not have connection with the environment with which its connected. Closed systems exist in controlled laboratory conditions. They are kept in ideal conditions which are not possible in actual environment.

Slide 13:

Sub-system & Super-system A sub-system is a system that exists in another system. Its existence depends up on the existence of its super-system. The sub-system contributes in the proper working of the entire system. The proper functioning of the sub-systems ensure proper functioning of the entire system. For example an Automobile system, it consists of many sub-systems like acceleration system, fuel injection system, breaking system etc., every sub-system is responsible for the proper functioning of the entire automobile system. A super-system is a system which contains many sub-systems. The super-system is responsible for monitoring the overall working of its sub-systems. The super-system decides the constrains and resources to be put on its sub-systems. For example, a Central government system, it is a super-system which has under its control the state government systems which form the sub-systems.

Slide 14:

Physical & Conceptual Systems Physical Systems use physical resources or tangible resources. A physical system represents a working model for any conceptual system. A physical system is completely practical oriented and interacts continuously with the environment. For example, a computer is a physical system which has practical implementations and inter acts a lot with the users. Conceptual Systems use abstract and conceptual resources. Conceptual systems can make the physical resources work in a proper manner. They basically consist of data, information and mental concepts. Both Physical and Conceptual systems require each other for proper functioning and effective practical implementation respectively.

Slide 15:

Evolution of Computer Based Information Systems (CBIS)

Slide 16:

The Initial Focus on Data During the first half of twentieth century, when punch cards were used, firms generally ignored the information needs of managers. The first computers were only used for accounting applications. The name given to these early computer based applications was Electronic Data Processing (EDP). Now a days the term Accounting Information System (AIS) is used to describe those applications. The New Focus on Information In 1964, a new generation of computing equipment was introduced that influenced strongly on the manner in which computers were employed. They were the computers using the silicon technology. The concept of using computers as Management Information System was promoted.The MIS initiated that the computers should be applied for the management of information. This concept was adopted slowly by larger firms. The revised focus on Decision Support A Decision Support System (DSS) is an information-producing system aimed at a particular problem that a manager must solve and the decisions the manager must take. The manager can be located any where, at any level in the organization. These DSS were used widely in the organizations.

Slide 17:

The Current Focus on Communication During the time DSS evolved, interest was focused on another computer application called Office Automation (OA) which facilitates communication and increases productivity among the managers and office workers through the use of electronic devices. OA got started in 1964, when IBM announced its Magnetic tape and electronic typewriter (called Selectric typewriter). The selectric typewriter could type the information stored in the magnetic tapes. This lead to an OA application called word processing. The Office Automation grew to such levels that applications such as video conferencing, e-mail, desktop publishing etc started. In a collective term it was given the name Virtual Office. Potential Focus on Consultation The development of computers had made it possible to perform tasks of logical reasoning just like humans. The application called Artificial Intelligence (AI) were developed. Now a days a subclass of AI known as Expert Systems are growing which works as a specialist in a particular area. To solve the problems using AI the applications were given the name Knowledge-based Systems. From 1990s the use of knowledge-based systems were extensively used by large firms.

Slide 18:

A Model of Computer Based Information System CBIS AIS DSS Virtual Office Knowledge Based System Information Decisions Problem Problem Solution MIS Fig 2.3

Slide 19:

A Model of Computer Based Information System Managers make decisions to solve problems, and decisions are made based on the available information. Information is presented both in oral as well as in written form using information processors. The computer portion of the information processors contain each of the computer based application areas :- AIS ( Accounting Information System), MIS (Management Information System), DSS (Decision Support System), Virtual Office and Knowledge Based Systems. They are collectively called CBIS ( Computer Based Information System). The CBIS collectively provides necessary information for problem solving.

Slide 20:

Information Services Organization The firms using computers realized that there was a need to form separate organizational units of specialists who would be responsible for implementing the systems. These specialists were known as Information Specialists. Information Specialists Information specialists have the complete responsibility of developing and managing the computer based systems in the firm.There are five main categories of information specialists. System Analyst. Database Administrators. Network Specialists. Programmers. Operators.

Slide 21:

Traditional Communication Chain The concept of Traditional Communication Chain connects the Users, Information Specialists and the Computer. This communication is named traditional because they have been communicating with each other traditionally (since old times). From fig 2.4 it can be seen the various levels in a communication chain. The functions of the members of a traditional communication chain are as follows. System Analysts They work with the users to develop new systems and in improving the present system. They are expert in defining problems and at preparing written documents on how the computer will assist in solving the problem. They are expert in computer systems as they require to know the capabilities of the software and hardware in which the solution of the problem is to be accomplished.

Slide 22:

Database Administrators (DBA s) They work with users and system analysts to create the appropriate databases that would help in effectively solving the problem. Once the database is created, the DBAs frequently monitor and manage these resources. Network Specialists They work with systems analysts and users to establish the data communication networks that would connect users with the required systems that are widespread. They combine the expertise from the fields of computing and telecommunications. Another form of Network specialists are called Web Masters who are expert on the World Wide Web.

Slide 23:

Programmers They use the documentation prepared by the System analysts to encode the instructions. They require to be very conversant with the software they are working on. Operators They are responsible for handling the computing equipments. They are expected to be able to handle mainframes to mini computers. They monitor the consoles, manage memory libraries etc.

Slide 24:

User System Analyst Network Specialist Database Administrator Operator Programmer Computer The Traditional Communication Chain Fig 2.4

Slide 25:

End-User Computing In the late 1970s the trend of end user computing started growing. The users started growing interest in developing their own computer applications. Following are the reasons for the development of en-user computing. Increase in Computer Literacy. During the early 1980s, good education programs related to computers were conducted in colleges and institutions which caused a computer awareness between the students. The management ranks, especially on the lower levels started filling up with computer literate people. The Information services backlog The situation of the information specialists became critical during early 1980s when the work load increased beyond accepted limits as the users started demanding more information services and so the specialist could not cope up with the demands. Low-Cost Hardware The market got filled up low cost minicomputers, so the users could afford them at their homes making it easier for them to develop applications. Prewritten Software Both the hardware and software companies produced software that would do the accounting, word processing, facilitate development of applications etc. made it easy for the users to rely more up on themselves rather that in information specialists.

Slide 26:

Assignment #2 What are the resources a manager handles? What is a System? Explain its elements. Explain a) Open loop & closed loop systems b) Open & closed systems c) Super & Sub systems. d) Physical & Conceptual systems. 4) Explain the evolution of Computer based Information Systems. 5) Explain the model of CBIS with diagram. 6) Explain the categories of Information Specialists. 7) Explain with diagram the Traditional Communication Chain. 8) Explain the reasons for the evolution of End-User Computing.

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Network Forensic: Track A

LMG Security Dec 3-4

Ends october 15

Ends December 2

Ends December 6

From the authors of “Network Forensics: Tracking Hackers Through Cyberspace” (Prentice Hall, 2012) comes Network Forensics Track A: Packets & Covert Tunnels. This fast-paced class includes packet analysis, wireless forensics, network tunneling—all packed into a dense 2 days, with hands-on technical labs throughout the class.

Carve out suspicious email attachments from packet captures. Analyze a real-world wireless encryption-cracking attack (and then crack the key yourself) from captured traffic. Dissect DNS-tunneled traffic and learn to carve smuggled TCP segments with your eyeballs.

Topics covered in Track A:

Forensic investigators must be savvy enough to find network-based evidence, preserve it and extract the evidence. Network Forensics will give you hands-on experience analyzing network transactions, identifying covert tunnels, reconstructing and carving files from packet captures, and correlating the evidence to build a solid case.

Network Forensics will teach you to how to follow the attacker’s footprints and analyze evidence from the network environment. Every student will receive a fully-loaded, portable forensics workstation, designed by network forensics experts and distributed exclusively to Network Forensics students.

Course Timeline:

Each day will consist of 6 hours of instruction, as follows:

Day 1:

Day 2:

Each module of this course consists of instructor lecture, followed by instructor-led hands-on labs which are designed to explore the tools and techniques discussed. Additional reading materials are supplied by the accompanying Prentice Hall text (by the authors of the class). Students will be provided with a USB containing a VMWare virtual machine to use as a network forensic workstation.

Who Should Take This Class:

Information security professionals with some background in hacker exploits, penetration testing, and incident response

Incident Response Team Members who are responding to complex security incidents/intrusions and need to utilize network forensics to help solve their cases

Law enforcement officers, federal agents, or detectives who want to master network forensics and expand their investigative skill set to include packet captures, IDS/IPS analysis, web proxies, covert channels, and a variety of network-based evidence.

Network and Computer Forensic Professionals who want to solidify and expand their understanding of network forensic and incident response related topics

Networking professionals who would like to branch out into forensics in order to understand information security implications and work on investigations

Anyone with a firm technical background who might be asked to investigate a data breach incident, intrusion case, or investigates individuals that are considered technical savvy

Student Requirements, experience/expertise:

Student Requirements, equipment/software:

List of Materials You Will Provide to Students:

Jonathan Ham, Certified SANS Instructor, CISSP, GCIA, GCIH

Sherri Davidoff, MIT (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering), GCFA, GPEN
Sherri Davidoff has more than a decade of experience as an information security professional, specializing in penetration testing, forensics, social engineering testing and web application assessments. She has consulted for a wide variety of industries, including banking, insurance, health care, transportation, manufacturing, academia, and government institutions. Sherri is the co-author of the SANS training course “Network Forensics,” and co-author of the Prentice Hall textbook, “Network Forensics: Tracking Hackers Through Cyberspace.” She is a GIAC-certified forensic examiner (GCFA) and penetration tester (GPEN), and holds her degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT.

Eric Fulton, Certified Web Application Penetration Tester (GWAPT)
Eric Fulton is a specialist in network penetration testing and web application assessments. His clients have included Fortune 500 companies, international financial institutions, global insurance firms, government entities, telecommunications companies, as well as world-renowned academic and cultural institutions. In his spare time, Eric works with local students to provide hands-on security training, and conducts independent security research on magnetic access cards and mobile network forensics. He publishes network forensics contests on

Scott Fretheim, Certified Web Application Penetration Tester (GWAPT)


Several Madison residents went to Austin for the music, films, food and party atmosphere. The SXSW Festival draws tens of thousands of visitors each year. When a suspected drunk driver’s car plowed into a crowd of pedestrians killing two people, they were there.

“I wanted to come down to SXSW to take a look at the city and how they handle large events like this,” Maniaci said.

“I think we saw through this that when people say we’re more connected through social media that that is true and that people are being able to put important messages through the media like, 'I’m OK,'” Braus said.

“Here’s a city that put this on for many years and every year they go back and tweak it, much like Madison does with many of its large events, whether it is Iron Man or Taste of Madison or Halloween. So there’s always new lessons that can be learned and more things to look at. As perfect as you think a security plan is, clearly something can always go wrong,” Maniaci said.


Lee Evans was born in Avonmouth, England in 1964. Best known for his role in "Fifth Element, The" (1997).
Please submit only sites focusing on Lee Evans in this category.


(and, prefatory to Chapter 1 of A SHINING AFFLICTION.  A STORY OF HARM AND HEALING IN PSYCHOTHERAPY, by Annie G. Rogers, Ph.D)

Psychological Anthropology

Fall semester 2006

Steven Piker(Kohlberg 244, x-8111, spiker1, office hours TTh 8:30 - 11, or by appt.)

Table of Contents of the Syllabus

I)      Introduction, class procedures

II)    Organization of subject matter outline, and narrative overview of the course

III)   Readings

IV)   Schedule of class meetings, with topics, schedules of class activities, and readings correlated

V)    Required work

VI)   Paper assignments

VII)  Final exam

VIII) Terms and concepts

  And now permit me briefly to introduce myself.  I'm Steve Piker, an anthropologist.  Earlier in my career I did field work in the Thai rice village of Baan Oi, where I lived for two years with my spouse and - for the second of the two years - with our infant son, Josh.  The field work focused on issues central to this course, how meaningfulness arises in life history perspective(socialization of infants and children), and is expressed by religiousness, which in Thailand is Theravada Buddhism.  More recently I've worked with religious conversion in the United States.  I've been teaching anthropology at Swarthmore for a long time; and for the past several years my Swarthmore work time has been divided between teaching and working with the College's semester/year abroad program.

  What you can expect of me:  You can expect me to be informal, friendly, always welcoming of your contributions(including suggestions about the course), responsive to your questions and expressed interests, and accessible.  I will be glad to see you out of class, either during office hours or by other arrangement, and will be glad to hear from you by e-mail.

  What I expect of you:  The specifics of what the course calls upon you to do are set forth, below.  Generally, I expect you to be unfailingly considerate of your fellow students in the work that we will be doing together during the coming semester; I expect you to produce your work for this course in the manner suggested by the syllabus; I expect you to be punctual, in the production of your work and in unfailingly getting to class on time.  In other words, I expect you to be adults.

  Our class meetings will be devoted to a mix of full group discussion, small group(buzz group)projects, and lecture.  You will be called upon, especially with the buzz group assignments, to produce work in conjunction with other students.  Generally, class meetings occur so that we can help each other in our exploration of psychological anthropology.  Cooperation, informality, and participation should be our watch words.

  And.........I expect to be sending you a lot of e-mails as the semester unfolds.  Mainly, I will be using e-mail for two interrelated purposes:  to identify issues for you to pay attention to in your reading for our next class meeting, and to comment upon what we have been doing in class.  In other words, this will be like lecture, except that it will be coming at you electronically and not orally.  You are responsible for being familiar with the content of all of the e-mails that I send to you.

  And.......some of you will(I hope !)want to use all class e-mail for, e.g., raising questions or sharing thoughts or observations or identifying germane and interesting outside stuff(e.g., books or articles, movies, events), this for the benefit and interest of the rest of us.  Doing so will be most welcome, it will be a service to us all.  There are two easy ways for you to do this by e-mail: either you can send it to me, and I'll all-class it; or, if you prefer, I can(I think)provide you with the e-mail address list for the class.

A)  Introduction.  Anthropology, psychological anthropology, and distinctive perspectives of the latter upon meaningfulness.

B)  Meaningfulness and its acquisition through growing up(1):  misogyny.

C)  Meaningfulness and its acquisition through growing up(2):  religiousness

D)  Evolutionary perspectives on human meaningfulness.

E)  Summation and suggestions

  Anthropology emerged as a distinctive discipline in the last half of the 19th century.  Especially American anthropology, for almost its entire history, has emphasized a holistic understanding of humankind, in pursuit of which it early on developed a four fields approach:  1)  Cultural(or social)anthropology has been dedicated to the comparative study of extant cultures.  2)  Archeology(or prehistory)has been dedicated to the study of extinct cultures, insofar as the archeological record permits.  3)  Linguistic anthropology has been dedicated mainly to the study of speech, which anthropologists(along with others)early on took to be a - some would say, the - distinctive behavioral feature of our species; and has studied living languages as well as the history of languages.  4)  Biological(or physical)anthropology studies human biology, especially as germane to culturally elaborated human behavior; human adaptation; human evolution; and non-human Primates.

  Psychological anthropology(earlier often called culture and personality)came together as a sub-field of cultural anthropology in the period between the two world wars.    It is largely just a part of American anthropology, although it has important immediate European antecedent figures, e.g., Bronislaw  Malinowski, a giant of pre WW II British social anthropology, and Sigmund Freud.  Between-the-wars intellectual exchanges between American cultural anthropologists and(more or less)eclectic psychiatrists were importantly implicated in the emergence of the field.   Perhaps the most important figure in these exchanges, because he founded the original school of culture and personality, was the psychiatrist Abram Kardiner.

  This course does not attempt a whole or partial intellectual history of the field(although two optional papers, authored by yours truly, do take a stab at this for any members of the class whose interests may so incline).  Rather, the course focuses on, arguably,  the core issue of the field, viz.,  the psychological mediation of the individual/culture relationship(or, in our lingo, meaningfulness).  And it asks:  A)  Of what does meaningfulness consist?  B)  How does meaningfulness arise ontogenetically?  And, C) going beyond the work of recognized psychological anthropologists, how might human meaningfulness have arisen phylogenetically?

  Week 1 begins our attempt to construct 'meaningfullness' by introducing the psychological concept of projection.  Here we also introduce central emphases of all of cultural anthropology(including psychological anthropology), viz.,  A)  field work as the suite of empirical methods par excellence by which anthropologists learn about living cultures;  B) as regards culturally elaborated behavior, the seemingly endless variability of human lifeways from time to time and place to place; and, C) the challenges entailed by seeking to comprehend other cultures.

  Approximately the next two thirds of the course looks at two cross culturally universal and important instances of meaningfulness:  misogyny and religiousness.  For each, relying upon ethnographic studies, we ask:  How do culturally distinctive instances of the general phenomenon arise and become established in the lives of natives of specific cultures?  How does the specific meaningfulness(whether misogyny as a vital feature of male gender definitions and male/female relationships, or religiousness) inform natives' involvement in their cultures?  In trying to puzzle this out, we will be looking in detail at specifically relevant ethnographic case studies which will - inter alia - also provide us with the wherewithal to think about ethnography(or field work)as a distinctive way of learning about human lifeways generally and meaningfulness specifically.

  The final part of the course looks at our species in both cross-species and evolutionary perspective; and explores how the meaningfulness, which everywhere suffuses human lifeways and imparts distinctive flavor and content to them, may have arisen phylogenetically; and also explores, in an evolution science frame of reference, the adaptive significance of patterns of meaningfulness(especially morality)for our species.  This will, inter alia, give us the chance to explore alternative strategies of evolutionary interpretation, especially with reference to evolutionary perspectives on human nature and cultural elaboration of same.  So also will this section introduce us to the foraging band lifeway as the basic human pattern.

  And......this course has its share of theoretical and conceptual and interpretive content.  But most of our readings are either ethnographic case studies, arising from field work(please see 'terms and concepts' section of the syllabus for 'field work'); or are grounded in such studies.  This is because, for anthropology, ethnographic description of cultures is - finally - where it's at.   All of anthropology's theoretical and conceptual and interpretive content, and there is plenty of same, finally does, or should, come back to the ethnographic record.  So we will look at alot of ethnography; and our intention should be really to roll up our collective sleeves and delve deeply and thoroughly into these ethnographic materials.

  The following volumes, each of which is assigned in its entirety, are available for purchase in the College bookstore.  Multiple copies of each will also be available on general reserve in McCabe.  You are not required to buy any books, and I don't think that you need to do so to get the reading done on time.

Gananath Obeyesekere.  MEDUSA'S HAIR

  As well,  the following articles will be assigned. Copies of each will be handed out to all members of the class.

Clifford Geertz.  "The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man."

________  "From the native's point of view:  on the nature of anthropological understanding."

Horace Miner.  "Body ritual among the Nacirema."

Gananath Obeyesekre.  "Psycholcultural exegesis of a case of spirit possession from Sri Lanka."

________  "Depression, Buddhism, and the work of culture in Sri Lanka."

Richard Lee.  "Reflections on primitive communism."

S. J. Gould and R C. Lewontin.  "The spandrels of San Marco and the panglossian paradigm:  a critique of the adaptationist programme."

8 September.  INTRODUCTION.

Topics:  Meaningfulness in cross cultural perspective; cultural diversity; field work; course procedures.

Clifford Geertz.  'The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man.'

________  'From the native's point of view:  on the nature of anthropological understanding."

Horace Miner.  'Body ritual among the Nacirema.'

Buzz group exercise:  menstrual taboos

  Menstrual taboos occur in many, perhaps most, cultures of the world.  They range from fear and loathing of menstrual fluids and menstruating women, to elaborate avoidances of menstruating women, to complete social and physical isolation of menstruating women.  Thus, in rural Thailand, a menstruating woman should not prepare food for others; nor should women's skirts ever be washed in the same tub as men's clothes, because the skirts may have come into contact with menstrual blood; nor should anyone walk under a clothes line on which women's skirts are hung, for the same reason.  In many Melanesian cultures, women during their menstrual periods are expected to isolate themselves from all others in specially constructed huts, which are well removed from villages and fields.  And in many traditional European cultures menstruating women refrained from participation in subsistence activities, lest the products of these endeavors be ruined.  The beliefs, which for natives render menstrual taboos compelling, although variable from culture to culture, largely agree in assigning unique powers and dangerousness to women.

  The buzz groups are asked to see what they can come up with by way of an explanation for the occurrence of menstrual taboos.

Discussion issues:

1)  Geertz, in "The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man," has a point to make, one might say, an axe to grind.  What is his point?  Why is it important to students of humankind and human lifeways?

2)  Geertz, in "From the native's point of view....,"  has a point to make, specifically about the doing of field work.  What is his point?  Why is it important to field workers(or ethnographers)and therefore, by implication, to anthropology?

3)  Miner's paper is, transparently, a spoof.  So also does it contain content and emphases that are important, especially to those who seek to comprehend other cultures, e.g., anthropologists.  Of what do the content and emphases consist?

15 September.  MISOGYNY.

Topics:  Introduction to misogyny; the Sambia case;  sex antagonism; Herdt's inquiry agenda; Herdt's ethnographic methodology, for the pursuit of his agenda; person centered ethnography.

Discussion issues:

1)  What is misogyny?

2)  What is person centered ethnography?  Geertz, in "From the native's point of view...,"  sets forth what he considers to be a good psychological posture, if you will, for the field worker to adopt in his association with natives.  How does Herdt's person centered ethnography measure up, by Geertz' criteria?

3)  Sambia boys, approaching and during puberty, undergo an extended rite of passage to culturally defined and valued adult masculinity.  What is a rite of passage?  How are rites of passage different from other rites, e.g., midnight Mass on Christmas eve, or Yum Kippur services, or weekly services for worship in one of the American faiths?

4)  Masculinity and femininity everywhere compliment and, therefore, depend upon each other.  How do Sambia masculinity and femininity, respectively, compliment and depend upon  each other?

22 September.  MISOGYNY(continued)

Topics: Misogyny as a cross cultural universal; the explanation of the occurrence of mysogyny.

Buzz group exercise:  Sambian and American misogyny

  Misogyny occurs among both the Sambia and among middle class Americans.  The groups are asked to compare and/or contrast the two misogynies.

29 September.  MISOGYNY(continued)

Topics:  Misogyny as a cross cultural universal; the explanation of misogyny(continued)

Buzz group exercise:  Gilmore's explanation of the occurrence of Misogyny.

  The groups re asked, first, to summarize Gilmore's explanation and, second, to take a stab at evaluating Gilmore's explanation.  Taken literally, this last is a big order, which you all are not competent to carry out.  Let's  see if we can whittle it down.  So far, re misogyny, we have consulted Gilmore's book, which contains his explanation of misogyny.  And we have consulted Herdt's book, which contains a detailed and contextual and circumstantial description of a hyper-misogynous culture(and, in the bargain, a culture to which Gilmore alludes in his discussion of misogyny).  Take a  stab just at using Herdt's  book to evaluate Gilmore's explanation.   And(not coincidentally) this is essentially your first short paper topic.

6 October.  MISOGYNY(continued)

Topics:  Mehinaku and Sambian misogynies.

Buzz group exercise:  Sambia and Mehinaku conceptions of women

  Misogyny, by definition, comprises beliefs about and feelings toward women, pre-eminently on the part of men. Sambia and Mehinaku cultures, respectively,  are each hyper-misogynous.  The groups are asked to compare and/or contrast the conceptions of women which prevail in these two cultures.

Discussion issue:

  Sambia and Mehinaku misogynies are grounded in beliefs about women which are untrue.  Yet, arguably(e.g., our two ethnographers, Herdt and Gregor, so argue), the actual experiences that Sambia and Mehinaku males, respectively, have with women are importantly implicated in the processes by which these same males become hyper-misogynous adults.  How so?

13 October.

  No class meeting for this week.  Rather, each member of the class will have a scheduled conference with SP to discuss the first short paper.

20 October.  FALL BREAK

27 October.  FIELD WORK

Topics:  The Achuar(yet another hyper misogynous culture);  the strengths and limitations of field work

Gananath Obeyesekere.  "Psychocultural exegesis of a case of spirit possession from Sri Lanka."

Buzz group exercise:  field work

  Our general conception of field work(Terms and Concepts section of the syllabus)emphasizes that the field worker typically merges his or her life in socially important ways with the natives about whom he or she is learning.  Especially Herdt and Descola write at some length about this aspect of their field work.  On the basis of what Herdt and Descola have to say on this score,  the groups are asked to consider:  How does this particular feature of field work influence what can be learned from field work?  Re especially the kinds of things that Herdt and Descola(and Gregor)are interested in learning about, does field wok confer some distinctive advantages?  If so, what are they? And, how much confidence can we have in what is learned by field work.  It's open season:  Please feel free to consider both plusses and minuses.

Discussion issues:

1)  Laboratory research and field work research each emphasize the empirical study of the object of inquiry.  Let's compare and/or contrast the methodological similarities and differences of the two approaches.  And, especially as regards differences, let's consider implications of same for the kinds of knowledge promised by the respective approaches.

2)  Looking toward the next couple of weeks.......   Introduction to Theravada Buddhism and Buddhist Sri Lankan culture.

Topics:  Religiousness; emic and etic perspectives on religious meaningfulness

Gananath Obeyesekere.  MEDUSA'S HAIR

Buzz group exercise:  The meaning of religious ritual

  Obeyesekere presents a detailed case study of a young Sinhalese woman, Somavati, who underwent an episode of possession, crowned by a rite of exorcism.  Sambia boys, on the threshold of puberty, undergo rites of passage to male adulthood.  The groups are asked to compare and/or contrast the meanings of these rites to, respectively, Somavati and Sambia boys.  Please n.b.,  our readings present two sets of meanings for the rites at issue:  The meaning contained in the native's understanding and experience of the rite; and the meaning contained in the author's interpretation of the rite.

10 November.  RELIGIOUSNESS(continued)

Topics:  The performance of the work of culture; religion as a projective institution.

Gananath Obeyesekere:  MEDUSA'S HAIR

Buzz group exercise:  The performance of the work of culture

  Obeyesekere(MEDUSA'S HAIR, "Psychocultural exegesis....")presents a number of biographically flavored case studies of individual religiousness.  For any one of the women, as well as for Tuan the hook hanger, the groups are asked to show how the religiousness depicted by the case studies illustrates the performance of the work of culture.

Discussion issues:

1)  The success and failure of the work of culture

2)  Religiousness is universal to human cultures.  Religiousness everywhere performs the work of culture.  Why is this work universally needed?

Topics:  Intro to human evolution; bio-evolutionary perspectives on human nature and cultural elaboration of same; chimpanzee social morality

Discussion issues:

1)  Following de Waal, what does it mean to be moral?

2)  de Waal considers that both chimpanzees and human are, perhaps inter alia, moral.  How does he understand the roots of morality in members of these two species?

3)  As a Primatologist, de Waal is most certainly an evolutionist.......which means that he seeks evolutionary interpretations or explanations for that, e.g., morality, which interests him in Primate(non-human and human)species......... which means, finally, explanations or interpretations which are in significant part biological.  Of what does de Waal's understanding of human morality consist?  Can we sensibly, or correctly, think about human morality in terms of a frame of reference that is in part biological?  Many have answered 'no.'  Why?

17 November.    READING WEEK.

  Reading week is scheduled here, instead of immediately prior to exam period, with the intention that members of the class will use this time to prepare draft essays for a number of the final exam questions.   This will leave sufficient time for full review of these draft essays with yours truly, and revision as indicated toward final drafts.  And, members of the class are strongly encouraged to get started, this week, on Robert Wright's THE MORAL ANIMAL, although it is not assigned as a basis for class discussion until the week of 8 December.  Wright's thesis on social morality is the focus of the second short paper assignment.  You will be expected, for this paper, to use the rest of the readings for the third - Evolution - section of the course to evaluate this thesis.  So it will be useful to you to have this thesis in mind while you are doing these other readings.  Please see the second short paper assignment(section VI of the syllabus, below)for guidelines as to what parts of Wright's book are most germane to the paper.

Topics:  The human foraging band way of life as the basic human pattern

Richard Lee.  "Reflections on primitive communism."

Buzz group exercise:  Ape and human social morality

  de Waal discusses social morality among chimpanzees.  Brody and Lee discuss social morality among human foragers.  Evolution science teaches us to expect behavioral as well as biological similarities among closely related species.  As regards specifically social behavior, can we plausibly see a non-human Primate very much like de Waal's chimpanzees to be the most recent common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans?  Differently put, in what ways and to what extent are  de Waal's chimpanzees and the foragers depicted by Lee and Brody significantly similar, as regards social behavior and, especially, social morality?

Discussion issues:

1)  Now that we have looked at foraging band materials, let's return to the question:  what is morality?

2)  Brody and Lee consider that social morality  is highly developed among foragers.  Forager social morality, further, would appear to be highly specific to forager lifeways.  Our lifeways are vastly different from those of foragers.  Is the forager kind of social morality possible for us?  If not, what - if anything - are the alternatives?

3)  Do the perspectives of Lee and Brody on forager lifeways contain, or suggest,  a critique of our lifeways?  If so, of what does the critique consist?

Topics:  Evolutionary foundations of human morality

Robert Wright.  THE MORAL ANIMAL

Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin.  'The spandrels of San Marco...'

Buzz group exercise:  evolutionary perspectives on morality

  For Robert Wright, of what does social morality consist?  Why does it exist?  Why is the second question an important question for evolutionists(such as Wright, and evolutionary psychologists, generally)?

12 December.  WRAP UP

  Please n.b.,  this class meeting, which occurs on Tuesday, replaces the Friday 24 November class meeting that we miss because of Thanksgiving break.

  We will devote this class meeting to summation, and discussion of the final exam.

A)  Since it is intended that a main part of this course will be working with and helping each other, and since class meetings are the obvious main venue for such occurrences, class attendance is required.  There will be grade penalties for unexcused absences.  A scheduled  extra curricular activity which conflicts with some or all of our regular class time will not warrant an excused absence.  And, for each week, it is expected that you will have completed the assigned reading for that week by the time of our class meeting.  Our in class discussions will presuppose this.

B)  When we are producing work, at the early stage what we can put on the table is, necessarily, rough and partial and tentative.   We've only just taken our first swipe at it.    At this stage, it is especially helpful to be able to share our preliminary impressions and questions with others who are working on the same project.  Building on this, we realistically hope and expect that later on we will come up with a polished and complete and worthwhile product.  The point is, the first,  rough, preliminary stage is a vital and valuable way station on the road to the later polished final draft stage.

Our required work is intended to give you experience with both stages.

1)  Of course, our in class discussions will be prime stage one stuff.

2) And, in somewhat more focused fashion, so also will the buzz group exercises.  These are scheduled in section IV(just above), and will unfold as follows:  a) The assigned buzz group topics are in section IV of the syllabus, for those weeks when we will do buzz groups.  b)  In class on those days, the class will be divided into buzz groups of four or five students each; and each group will spend about fifteen or twenty minutes discussing the assigned topic.  c)  We will then reassemble as a class, and each group will report, orally and briefly, to the rest of the class on the gist of its discussion; and this will be the basis for entire class discussion of the topic.  The buzz group projects will be ungraded.  Their topics, however, lead into and help you prepare for the paper assignments and some of the final exam essays.

3)  For more polished, final draft work, we look to the two short papers and the final exam essays, assigned in sections VI and VII, just below.  These will be graded.  The two papers, combined, will be half of your course grade, and the final exam will be the other half.  And, you can improve - but not harm - your course grade by participation in class discussions.

4)  Happily two writing associates(WAs) will be working with us on this course.  For the first short paper, you are required to produce a WA draft on your way to the final draft.  Not so for the second short paper, or the final exam essays.  You are, however, encouraged to review your second short paper and final exam preparation with the WAs.

5)  For the first short paper, I will not be available to review your preparation with you before you submit the final draft.  For the second short paper, as well as the final exam essays, I will be glad to review your preparation with you at the rough draft stage.

First paper.  Final draft due 10 October, noon.  WA draft due 1 October, 6 p.m.

David Gilmore has attempted a general interpretation of misogyny.  Gilbert Herdt has presented a detailed case study of a very misogynous culture, the Sambia.  You are asked to use the Sambia case to evaluate Gilmore's general interpretation of misogyny.

Second paper.  Final draft due 11 December, 6 p.m.

Robert Wright, and evolutionary psychologists generally, posit that human nature was forged and refined in the crucible of what those folks call the environment of evolutionary adaptation(EEA)or, sometimes, the ancestral environment.  The EEA is the world of foragers, which is how all human lived for by far the longer part of human history, until very recently by the evolutionary clock.  From these evolutionary premises, Wright and other evolutionary psychologists derive a picture of human nature which prominently features a conception of human morality.  Vide the title of Wright's book.  You are asked to evaluate Wright's thesis on human morality.  The materials you should consult for this are the books by Brody and de Waal, and the paper by Lee and, for hardy souls, the paper by Gould and Lewontin.

And a procedural suggestion:  Wright's big book covers an awful lot of ground.  You don't need to read it carefully from cover to cover to do this short paper well.  I expect that if you spend just a few hours with this book - guided, say, by the introduction and especially the index references to 'ancestral environment' - you can attain sufficient traction with relevant parts of Wright's thesis to do real well with this paper.

For both papers:  5-7 pages(double spaced), title page, abstract, main body, conclusion, numbered pages, references, bibliography, to be submitted on paper - not electronically - at my office.  For a suitable and easy to use referencing and bibliography system, please consult any article in any recent issue of the journal, American Anthropologist.  If, however, you regularly use another standard referencing system, that should be just fine.

Below, please find a list of final exam questions.  At the beginning of the scheduled three hour exam time for this class, during final exam period in December, three from this list will be specified for you to answer.  Completed exams will be due at the end of the three hour exam time.

1)  Two and a half to three pages(double spaced)per essay; referencing not required except for direct quotes; completed exams to be submitted on paper - not electronically - at my office.

2)  I will be glad to review your preparation with you

3)  You are encouraged to do your preparation in small groups, cooperatively.  If you do so, following brief discussion with me, you may if you wish submit group exams.

4)  The final exam will be discussed further in class

Exam Questions

1)  What is ethnography(or field work)?  Why is this a good method for studying meaningfulness?  Please answer this with reference to Descola, and either Obeyesekere or Herdt.

2)  Gilmore considers misogyny to be a major league misfortune.  So also does he consider amelioration, if not a full cure, to be possible.  What scenarios for improvement does he posit?  Please evaluate this part of Gilmore's overall argument.  In doing so, please attend to the consistency issue, viz., given his understanding of why misogyny is so widespread and deep, are his palliatives realistic?  Might we not better argue, on the basis of the rest of the book, that misogyny is here to stay?

3)  One of the knowledge dividends, many say, paid by anthropology is that the study of the other helps us to attain perspectives on ourselves and our own ways of life that otherwise would be difficult or impossible to attain.  Evidently, Brody and Descola suppose this to be so.  And, in seeking out 'others' to study, each went about as far from us on the cultural spectrum as it is possible to go in our times.  You are asked to compare and/or contrast the perspectives on ourselves that each author gleaned from his study of the other.

4)  'It could be said that Herdt has taught us how Sambia men become misogynist in their culturally specific way, and that Obeyesekere has taught us how Somavati became religious in her culturally specific way."

Please discuss and evaluate.

5)  The misogyny of the Sambia, as described by the anthropologist Herdt, is - for the Sambia - motivationally compelling and morally correct, indeed, imperative.  It is integral and fundamental to their culturally grounded lifeways.  The anthropologist Gilmore insists that, in any and all of its culturally specific flavors and textures, misogyny is a malady.  Can these two viewpoints be reconciled?  If so, how?  If not, where does this leave us?

6)  Please compare and/or contrast the culturally valued adult male identity of the Sambia and the Mehinaku, respectively.  In so doing, please be sure that you take into account, in each case, how male identity is defined in significant part by references to cultural conceptions of the female.

7)  A quote from George Eliot's MIDDLEMARCH heads the syllabus for our course.  The intention is that the quote evokes ideas and emphases which are central to the subject matter of our course.  Please write an essay which illustrates how this is so.

The following terms and concepts will be important to us throughout the semester.

1)  Culture.  Anthropologists use the term 'culture' in at least the following two ways:

A)  General and evolutionarily.  Culture is the mode of adaptation of the human species.  All human groups, now and in the past, are fully cultural.  The cultural mode of adaptation prominently features, e.g., speech, technology, learned and diversifiable social relationships, and religion, each of which presupposes capacity for symbolization.  In cross species perspective, it is evident that culture in this sense is not an all or none matter.  Many species - extant and extinct - other than the human species are cultural to significant extents and in different ways.

B)  Specific and contemporary.  A specific culture - e.g., Sambia, Mehinaku, Achuar, Sinhalese, Inuit - is the lifeway of a particular human group.  Human cultures are highly diverse.  Please N.B., this does not entail that any specific culture must be a neatly bounded, self contained entity.  i)  Distinct cultures share traits.  ii)  Cultural boundaries are permeable:  both people and traits cross them.  iii)  Many 'named cultures - e.g., American, Creek Indian - are actually historically recent amalgams of several disparate cultures.  iv)  All cultures, by virtue of the ubiquity of the diffusion of culture traits, adopt and adapt and incorporate exogenous culture traits.  v)  All cultures change.  vi)  An individual may have a multi cultural identity.

2)  Cultural relativism.  This expression has many uses.  Here we note two of them.

A)  World views - how people think about and experience the world, especially life as we live it day by day - are to a significant extent specific to cultures.  This is an empirical proposition.  It is indisputably true(although the limits to the proposition implied by, '...to a significant extent...' are debated).

B)  Because, inescapably, we think about things in terms of the symbols and meanings provided for  us by our culture(A, just above), universal, cross culturally valid, timeless truth is not possible.  This is a philosophical  issue.  The truth of (A) does not, on logical grounds, address this issue.

  Taken in conjunction, (A) and (B) can often, for anthropologists and others, be vexing.  Thus, accepting (A), as most anthropologists do, we are disposed to respect cultural practices and the natives who enact them, even if the practices are alien or even obnoxious to us.  But sometimes we find the practices - e.g., what the Nazis did, or female genital mutilation - to be so abhorrent that we feel obligated morally to condemn them.  When this occurs, we often find ourselves groping for a universally valid ethical principal to justify our moral condemnation.  Impressionistically, these gropings often have recourse to the device of 'self evident truth' - either negatively, through use, e.g., of the term 'evil,' or positively, e.g., by positing inalienable human rights.

3)  Religion.  A definition of religion widely adopted by anthropologists goes like this:  'Religion is an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated(and anthropomorphized)superhuman beings.'  Accepting this definition, we can think sensibly of a particular religion, e.g., Judaism, Buddhism, native American shamanism, without knowing anything at all about anyone who embraces the religion.  We would do so by thinking about, e.g., the beliefs and symbols and icons and rites of the religion.  Alternately, we can focus on religiousness, which refers to religion as lived and experienced by individuals and groups.  Anthropologists interested in studying religion focus mainly on the latter, religiousness, the lived experience of interaction and association with anthropomorphized superhuman beings.  Since the anthropomorphized superhuman beings who populate the pantheons of the religions of the world are so variable in their characteristics, and since the needs and hopes that natives bring to their association with these superhuman beings are also variable(both within and across cultures), religiousness is enormously variable from time to time and place to place.

4)  Ethnography(or field work).  For our understanding of ethnography, or field work, in the book review article for week 1 by yours truly, read the paragraph which begins on the bottom of pg. 227('Field work is the main empirical method...'), and the following paragraph.

  And.............  Anthropologists purport to study culture.  So also do the members of a much newer field of inquiry called cultural studies, most members of which are not anthropologists.  Are the two fields studying the same thing?  To make useful headway with this question we have to go beyond the term 'culture,' which the two fields commonly deploy; and ask, when members of the respective fields say they are studying culture, what are they actually looking at?  For anthropologists, culture as the object of empirical study is embodied par excellence in local life, as understood in the book review article just alluded to.  For cultural studies folks, on the other hand, culture as an object of empirical study is embodied mainly in, e.g., texts and films and styles,  and works of art or music or design or architecture or technology.  In other words, when anthropologists study culture, mainly they are studying real human beings in naturalistic everyday situations.  When cultural studies folks study culture,  mainly they are studying disembodied expressions of culture, not real people.  Hence, the correct answer to our initial question is, substantially, 'no.'  Sometimes the cultural studies folks seem to be unaware of this.

5)  Reductionism, reductionist explanation or interpretation.  This is another one that has a number of widely used meanings.  One widely adopted use, and one that is directly germane to our course, goes like this:  One can conceive of the universe in terms of levels of organization, the lower ones of which are necessary for and constitutive of the higher ones.  Thus, physico-chemical, biological, psychological, socio-cultural levels.  Reductionist explanation involves understanding or interpreting something from a higher level in terms of what goes on at one or more lower levels.  Thus, psychological anthropology, which is a largely reductionist field,  is heavily into understanding socio-cultural phenomena(e.g., menstrual taboos, sex antagonism, demon possession)in significant part in terms of the psychological properties of the individuals who are involved in these phenomena in specific cultures; and it is also interested in how these psychological properties arise in these individuals.  Social history, on the other hand, is a (mainly)non-reductionist field, and is heavily into understanding sociocultural phenomena(e.g., the rise of modern capitalism)in terms of other socio-cultural phenomena(e.g., certain forms of early Protestantism, along  with, e.g.,  certain kinds of political institutions, systems of book keeping and  monetary exchange, level of technological development, literacy, travel and communication infrastructure)

A)  Typically, a successful explanation or interpretation, whether reductionist or non-reductionist, answers only some, but not all, of the important and interesting questions about the object of analysis.

B)  Explanation of both types can yield worthwhile knowledge.  Thus, most or much interpretation in, e.g., psychological anthropology or psychobiology of biochemistry is reductionist.  Most interpretation in, e.g., history or political science or economics(to mention three other fields devoted to the systematic empirical study of humankind)is non-reductionist(although a bit of psychology may creep in).

C)  A field may prominently feature both modes of explanation.  Vide linguistics.  The historical linguists have developed sophisticated understanding of how languages  change, as well as of the relationships between languages and language families, without knowing anything whatsoever about any individual speaker of any language anywhere, now or in the past.  On the other hand, much of post-Chomsky linguistics is dedicated  to understanding in part the design features of speech in terms of psychological and biological properties of speakers.

D)  Now, and especially in the past, some folks have posited(typically on a priori, sometimes cosmological, grounds)that, finally, valid explanation can ONLY be reductionist or can ONLY be non-reductionist.  What should we do with this?  We can engage these folks on their own a priori-istic terms; but such discourse is likely to be inconclusive.  Flying on a lower plane, we can turn the debate into an empirical question, we can say in effect that the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.  We can inspect explanations of both types and ask, do either or both significantly illuminate what we are interested in?  Of course, to do this effectively, we must be working from satisfactory prior criteria for brighter and dimmer illumination.

6)  Emic and etic.   these funny sounding paired terms refer to two different perspectives on the same thing, the perspective of the insider(native)and of the outsider(researcher, e.g., anthropologist).  They come from descriptive linguistics, where the 'same thing' is a speech sound.  For any speech sound, phonetics describes the sound in physical terms.  You have to be a trained linguist to do phonetics; natives typically cannot do phonetic analyses of their own speech.  Phonemics, on the other hand, treats what makes the sound(s) meaningful to native speakers.  Whereas phonetics is not grounded in a speaker's understanding of his or her speech, phonemics is expressly grounded in the speaker's understanding of what his or her own speech means, it embodies the speaker's perspective on his or her own speech.

  Let's take this to some real cultural case material.  During our field work in a Thai rice village, we came to know an elderly lady who had been bed ridden for weeks with the following symptoms:  abdominal pain, sometimes severe; nausea and vomiting; appetite loss; weakness; episodic disorientation; weight loss.  The emic, the native, perspective on her situation said that she was possessed by a specific type of predatory ghost who was eating out her insides, and that she should receive the locally appropriate exorcism for this specific affliction.  An etic perspective on the same thing, which would be sensible to us and is grounded in biomedicine, would posit that she is afflicted by a serious gastro-intestinal disorder, would name the disorder, interpret its etiology, and recommend a very different kind of therapeutic rejoinder.  Or, from the readings of the week of 27 October,  Gananath Obeyesekere presents for us the case of Somavati, a Sinhalese woman who is also afflicted.  Obeyesekere gives us the emic perspective on Somavati's affliction(she is possessed by a spirit), as well as a psychologically flavored etic perspective grounded in the field of psychological anthropology, in which he is an esteemed scholar.

  Further:  A)  For our two examples of affliction, the respective emic and etic perspectives certainly disagree.  Which is correct?  Almost always, for the anthropologist, this is not a useful question, we shouldn't spend time on it.  Thus, I expect that most anthropologists don't believe in the existence of ghosts and spirits and demons.  But it is not part of our anthropological calling to treat native beliefs(and practices rationalized by them)as empirical propositions to be tested according to the procedures and criteria of Western science.  Rather, it's our job, first, fully and accurately and contextually to describe the usages which are important in the lives of the natives that we are learning about; and, second, to try to figure out why, in the contexts of these lives, these usages are compellingly sensible to the natives.  B)  It is increasingly commonplace, as literacy overtakes even the most remote parts of the third world,  for natives to read studies of them produced by outsiders.  Often these studies contain etic perspectives on native life and culture.  Sometimes native readers criticize these etic perspectives on the grounds that, as natives, they know the significance of the usages of their own culture; and, if the native knowledge disagrees with the outsider's knowledge, the outsider is ipso facto wrong.  What about this?  The point to remember is this:  Emic and etic are disjunctive frames of reference.  The validity of etic knowledge is properly judged within the frame of reference which generates it.  Of course, if we don't think that a frame of reference is valid, then we won't be interested in any of the knowledge that it generates.  Thus, modern chemists don't have much time for anything that comes from alchemy.  C)  Much of anthropology addresses the meaningfulness to natives of local life.  If we wish to interpret this etically, as does Obeyesekere,  it is imperative that we first learn and faithfully describe the emic perspective, as does Obeyesekere.  The emic perspective - e.g., Somavati's understanding and experience of her possession episode and its sequalae, as well as much in her life that came before this - is what Obeyesekere wants to interpret.  If he doesn't have this in proper focus, he can't get anywhere, no matter how valid his etic interpretive frame of reference may be.

7)  Ontogenesis and phylogenesis.  Both of these terms refer to developmental processes.  Ontogenesis refers to development in individual life history perspective.  Thus, embryology studies ontogenetic processes, as do schools of personality development or language acquisition.  Phylogenesis refers to the evolutionary development of species.  Evolution science is the field par excellence of phylogenesis.  Human evolution is the branch of evolution science which treats, specifically, the phylogenetic development of the species homo sapiens from an ancestral ape species which lived about six million years ago.

  And, a caveat.......  We often hear or read the expression, 'social evolution.'  'Social evolution' and 'history' are effectively synonomous.  Like ontogenesis and phylogenesis, history is a developmental process.  But many, including yours truly, fear that it can be misleading to refer to historical process by the expression 'social evolution,' because the underlying mechanisms which fuel history and phylogenesis, respectively,  are completely different.  And this is not just an abstract concern.  E.G., in the latter part of the 19th century, attempts to model human  history on a phylogenesis eventuated in some real bad history.

8)  Native.  We are all natives.  We differ from each other according to what culture(s), and/or sub-cultures,  we are natives of.

"It rains on both the just and the unjust fella

But it rains mainly on the just, because the unjust has stolen his umbrella"