Biocultural Anthropology
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 August 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 August 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0095
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 August 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 August 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0095
Introduction
Biocultural anthropology exists at the intersection of cultural and biological approaches. Given how concepts, methods, and institutions have changed with regard to “biology” and “culture” since the early 1900s, the biocultural intersection has proven a dynamic space. It is also a contested space, where claims about human nature and culture and about science and ethnography have often come into stark contrast. Biocultural anthropology is linked to the four-field holistic tradition of anthropology within the United States. Individuals who don the biocultural mantle often claim holism as well and the accompanying ability to cross among archaeology, biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. Other individuals often object to this presumptive turf-grabbing and the accompanying assumption that the biocultural tradition is somehow better through being more integrative (or “holistic”) and better able at getting at more “fundamental” questions within anthropology. Here too controversy can arise. Yet, over the course of one hundred years, the biocultural tradition has helped tie together anthropology, first in the United States and, then, increasingly so in Europe. Certainly biocultural anthropology—broadly conceived as drawing on biological and cultural theory and using an inherent interdisciplinary approach—has gone through periods of obscurity, where small groups of researchers kept some of the main ideas and ideological commitments alive for another generation. But today, biocultural approaches are experiencing a renaissance across many arenas within anthropology. The perception exists, however, that the present biocultural approaches largely come from the biology and science side of anthropology and aim to increasingly encroach on questions seemingly reserved for social and cultural theorists. This bibliography emphasizes both biological and cultural research, with the hope that this broader selection can help anthropologists understand the conflicts that arise at the biology/culture interface as well as find important texts outside their areas of expertise that can facilitate further developments in biocultural anthropology. The bibliography has a three-part organization: an overview at the beginning, a historical review in the middle, and particular examples at the end. The overview provides a selection of introductory texts, overviews, recent collections, Internet resources, methods, and applied work. The historical coverage comes in the sections Foundations of Biocultural Anthropology and Disciplinary Divisions, Controversies, and Syntheses. The Foundations of Biocultural Anthropology section begins with the origins of holistic anthropology, considers mediating traditions from earlier to recent research, covers evolutionary and cultural theory amenable to interdisciplinary work, and highlights research that crosses the biocultural divide. Disciplinary Divisions, Controversies, and Syntheses delves into the recent history of anthropology, examining the disciplinary divisions that sprang up in the 1970s; then tracks important controversies that cut across the biocultural divide in the ensuing decades; and finally examines recent integrative attempts and reworkings of anthropology’s holistic tradition. The final section covers neuroanthropology and addiction as two examples of biocultural research.
Introductory Works
Engaging books help students and the broader public to understand the biocultural approach in anthropology. Biocultural approaches lend themselves to both academic and popular engagement, and also to controversy. Questions about human nature, the impact of culture, and human diversity and variation fascinate readers, and they serve to attract the interest of the wider public. The books in this section provide good introductions to the holistic approach of anthropology from a variety of perspectives. Fuentes 2012, Holmes 2009, and Pagel 2012 work well from a more biological anthropology perspective. Joralemon 2010 and Sobo 2012 come from medical anthropology. Goodman, et al. 2012; Pollan 2006; and Small 1999 tend to concentrate more on the cultural side of the biocultural approach, and these works cover race, eating, and parenting in order.
Fuentes, Agustín. 2012. Race, monogamy, and other lies they told you: Busting myths about human nature. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
An accessible takedown of essentialist views about race, aggression, and sex differences that draws broadly on biological and cultural anthropology.
Goodman, Alan H., Yolanda T. Moses, and Joseph L. Jones. 2012. Race: Are we so different? Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
This publication from the American Anthropological Association builds on the popular museum exhibition, and it provides an illustration-rich overview of the broad anthropological approach to race.
Holmes, Hannah. 2009. The well-dressed ape: A natural history of myself. New York: Random House.
Humor and engaging style make this writer’s examination of human biology and behavior a useful book for introductory classes.
Joralemon, Donald. 2010. Exploring medical anthropology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
A short and accessible textbook that is explicitly biocultural in how it approaches medical anthropology.
Pagel, Mark. 2012. Wired for culture: Origins of the human social mind. New York: Norton.
Popular and well-received book on the impact of culture over the last eighty thousand years of human evolution, and what it means for life today.
Pollan, Michael. 2006. The omnivore’s dilemma: A natural history of four meals. New York: Penguin.
Written by a journalist, this book presents an ecology of eating with an explicit anthropological slant, from hunting and gathering to industrial production, using both the lens of participant observation and the history of our species.
Small, Meredith. 1999. Our babies, ourselves: How biology and culture shape the way we parent. New York: Anchor.
Excellent popular book that demonstrates how human development is intrinsically biocultural, focusing on the example of parenting.
Sobo, Elisa. 2012. Dynamics of human biocultural diversity: A unified approach. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast.
A new textbook written to engage students beyond anthropology. It uses new theoretical approaches, such as epigenetics and dynamic systems theory, as a complement to classic anthropological approaches to human variation.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Africa, Anthropology of
- Aging
- Agriculture
- Animal Cultures
- Animal Ritual
- Animal Sanctuaries
- Anorexia Nervosa
- Anthropocene, The
- Anthropological Activism and Visual Ethnography
- Anthropology and Education
- Anthropology and Theology
- Anthropology, Degrowth and
- Anthropology of Corruption
- Anthropology of Islam
- Anthropology of Kurdistan
- Anthropology of the Senses
- Anthrozoology
- Antiquity, Ethnography in
- Applied Anthropology
- Archaeobotany
- Archaeological Education
- Archaeologies of Sexuality
- Archaeology
- Archaeology and Museums
- Archaeology and Political Evolution
- Archaeology and Race
- Archaeology and the Body
- Archaeology, Gender and
- Archaeology, Global
- Archaeology, Historical
- Archaeology, Indigenous
- Archaeology of Childhood
- Archaeology of the Senses
- Archives
- Art Museums
- Art/Aesthetics
- Autoethnography
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bass, William M.
- Beauty
- Belief
- Benedict, Ruth
- Binford, Lewis
- Bioarchaeology
- Biocultural Anthropology
- Bioethics
- Biological and Physical Anthropology
- Biological Citizenship
- Boas, Franz
- Bone Histology
- Bureaucracy
- Business Anthropology
- Cancer
- Capitalism
- Cargo Cults
- Caribbean
- Caste
- Charles Sanders Peirce and Anthropological Theory
- Childhood Studies
- Christianity, Anthropology of
- Citizenship
- Class, Archaeology and
- Clinical Trials
- Cobb, William Montague
- Code-switching and Multilingualism
- Cognitive Anthropology
- Cole, Johnnetta
- Colonialism
- Commodities
- Consumerism
- Crapanzano, Vincent
- Cultural Heritage Presentation and Interpretation
- Cultural Heritage, Race and
- Cultural Materialism
- Cultural Relativism
- Cultural Resource Management
- Culture
- Culture and Personality
- Culture, Popular
- Curatorship
- Cyber-Archaeology
- Dalit Studies
- Dance Ethnography
- de Heusch, Luc
- Deaccessioning
- Design
- Design, Anthropology and
- Diaspora
- Digital Anthropology
- Digital Nomads
- Disability and Deaf Studies and Anthropology
- Douglas, Mary
- Drake, St. Clair
- Dreaming
- Durkheim and the Anthropology of Religion
- Economic Anthropology
- Embodied/Virtual Environments
- Embodiment
- Emotion, Anthropology of
- Environmental Anthropology
- Environmental Justice
- Environmental Justice and Indigeneity
- Ethics
- Ethnoarchaeology
- Ethnocentrism
- Ethnographic Documentary Production
- Ethnographic Films from Iran
- Ethnography
- Ethnography Apps and Games
- Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography
- Ethnomusicology
- Ethnoscience
- Europe
- Evans-Pritchard, E. E.
- Evolution, Cultural
- Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology
- Evolutionary Theory
- Experimental Archaeology
- Federal Indian Law
- Feminist Anthropology
- Film, Ethnographic
- Folklore
- Food
- Forensic Anthropology
- Francophonie
- Frazer, Sir James George
- Geertz, Clifford
- Gender
- Gender and Religion
- Gene Flow
- Genetics
- Genocide
- GIS and Archaeology
- Global Health
- Globalization
- Gluckman, Max
- Graphic Anthropology
- Grass
- Haraway, Donna
- Healing and Religion
- Health and Social Stratification
- Health Policy, Anthropology of
- Health, Race and
- Heritage Language
- HIV/AIDS
- House Museums
- Human Adaptability
- Human Evolution
- Human Rights
- Human Rights Films
- Humanistic Anthropology
- Hurston, Zora Neale
- Identity
- Identity Politics
- India, Masculinity, Identity
- Indigeneity
- Indigenous Boarding School Experiences
- Indigenous Economic Development
- Indigenous Media: Currents of Engagement
- Industrial Archaeology
- Institutions
- Interpretive Anthropology
- Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity
- Kinship
- Laboratories
- Landscape Archaeology
- Language and Emotion
- Language and Law
- Language and Media
- Language and Race
- Language and Urban Place
- Language Contact and its Sociocultural Contexts, Anthropol...
- Language Ideology
- Language Socialization
- Leakey, Louis
- Legal Anthropology
- Legal Pluralism
- Levantine Archaeology
- Liberalism, Anthropology of
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Historical
- Literacy
- Literary Anthropology
- Local Biologies
- Lévi-Strauss, Claude
- Magic
- Malinowski, Bronisław
- Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Visual Anthropology
- Maritime Archaeology
- Marriage
- Material Culture
- Materiality
- Mathematical Anthropology
- Matriarchal Studies
- Mead, Margaret
- Media Anthropology
- Medical Activism
- Medical Anthropology
- Medical Technology and Technique
- Mediterranean
- Memory
- Mendel, Gregor
- Mental Health and Illness
- Mesoamerican Archaeology
- Mexican Migration to the United States
- Migration
- Militarism, Anthropology and
- Missionization
- Mobility
- Modernity
- Morgan, Lewis Henry
- Multimodal Ethnography
- Multispecies Ethnography
- Museum Anthropology
- Museum Education
- Museum Studies
- Myth
- NAGPRA and Repatriation of Native American Human Remains a...
- Narrative in Sociocultural Studies of Language
- Nationalism
- Needham, Rodney
- Neoliberalism
- NGOs, Anthropology of
- Niche Construction
- Northwest Coast, The
- Object-Based Teaching and Learning in the University with ...
- Oceania, Archaeology of
- Paleolithic Art
- Paleontology
- Performance Studies
- Performativity
- Personhood
- Perspectivism
- Philosophy of Museums
- Pilgrimage
- Plantations
- Political Anthropology
- Postprocessual Archaeology
- Postsocialism
- Poverty, Culture of
- Primatology
- Primitivism and Race in Ethnographic Film: A Decolonial Re...
- Processual Archaeology
- Psycholinguistics
- Psychological Anthropology
- Public Archaeology
- Public Sociocultural Anthropologies
- Race
- Religion
- Religion and Post-Socialism
- Religious Conversion
- Repatriation
- Reproductive and Maternal Health in Anthropology
- Reproductive Technologies
- Rhetoric Culture Theory
- Rural Anthropology
- Sahlins, Marshall
- Sapir, Edward
- Scandinavia
- Science Studies
- Secularization
- Semiotics
- Settler Colonialism
- Sex Estimation
- Sexuality
- Shamanism
- Sign Language
- Skeletal Age Estimation
- Social Anthropology (British Tradition)
- Social Movements
- Socialization
- Society for Visual Anthropology, History of
- Socio-Cultural Approaches to the Anthropology of Reproduct...
- Sociolinguistics
- Sound Ethnography
- Space and Place
- Stable Isotopes
- Stan Brakhage and Ethnographic Praxis
- Structuralism
- Studying Up
- Sub-Saharan Africa, Democracy in
- Surrealism and Anthropology
- Technological Organization
- Tourism
- Trans Studies in Anthroplogy
- Transhumance
- Transnationalism
- Tree-Ring Dating
- Turner, Edith L. B.
- Turner, Victor
- University Museums
- Urban Anthropology
- Value
- Violence
- Virtual Ethnography
- Visual Anthropology
- Whorfian Hypothesis
- Willey, Gordon
- Witchcraft
- Wolf, Eric R.
- Writing Culture
- Youth Culture
- Zoonosis
- Zora Neale Hurston and Visual Anthropology