Annual Review of Anthropology - Volume 45, 2016

Studies of Native American genetic diversity and population history have been transformed over the last decade by important developments in anthropological genetics. During this time, researchers have adopted new DNA technologies and computational approaches for analyzing genomic data, and they have become increasingly sensitive to the views of research participants and communities. As new methods are applied to long-standing questions, and as more research is conducted in collaboration with indigenous communities, we are gaining new insights into the history and diversity of indigenous populations. This review discusses the recent methodological advances and genetic studies that have improved our understanding of Native American genomics and population histories. We synthesize current knowledge about Native American genomic variation and build a model of population history in the Americas. We also discuss the broader implications of this research for anthropology and related disciplines, and we highlight challenges and other considerations for future research.

Pastoral nomadism encompasses an array of specialized knowledge concerned with the daily rhythms and long-term tempos of caring for herd animals in order to extract subsistence livelihoods. It also embodies the relational lives of herders and the diverse ways in which herd animals structure the social and symbolic worlds of mobile pastoralists. This article reviews the latest research on ancient pastoral nomadic communities that is emerging in many parts of the world. We emphasize the importance of revolutionary advances in archaeological methods and biomolecular approaches that have made visible mobile pastoralist behaviors and decision-making processes previously concealed in the archaeological record. Archaeologists are gradually producing the high-resolution, multiscalar data sets required to link together the individual, community, and regional interactions that, over time, structured pastoral nomadic economies, social and ritual lives, and political organization.

Humans consistently modify their environments—both directly and indirectly. However, the linkage between human activity and anthropogenic landscapes intensifies in urban situations. The artificial landscapes and dense concentrations of human populations encountered in urban environments create a centripetal pull for resources that results in continual and distant landscape changes, thus inextricably linking urbanism and anthropogenic landscapes. Examining past and present patterns of urban settlement and environmental impact provides context for this symbiotic relationship. Archaeological data, methodology, and technology offer insight into the similarities and variations in urban anthropogenic landscapes across time and space, suggesting that ancient practices can be compared with contemporary ones and that ancient models may have applicability for future-focused urban planning.

Although the notion of world anthropology has opened up a space to consider non-Western scholarly traditions as crucial in the making of anthropology as a discipline, it is still too readily assumed that the boundaries of the political community are coterminous with the boundaries of scholarly traditions. This article departs from this assumption by arguing that the privileging of a regional tradition, that of folklore studies in Bengal, provided Bengali intellectuals with a language to contest both colonial and nationalist modes of representing India. The region becomes the space for a critical reflection on nationhood that reflects a specific conjuncture of language, politics, and culture. Although Bengal was not the only region in India that used the local to explore the potential of nationhood while India was still in the making, it offers a unique example of how the category of folk allows tradition and newer social formations to coexist.

Understanding pathogen exchange among human, wildlife, and livestock populations, and the varying ecological and cultural contexts in which this exchange takes place, is a major challenge. The present review contextualizes the risk factors that result from human interactions with livestock, companion animals, animal exhibits, wildlife through nature-based tourism, and wildlife through consumption. Given their phylogenetic relatedness to humans, primates are emphasized in this discussion; primates serve as reservoirs for several human pathogens, and some human pathogens can decimate wild primate populations. Anthropologists must play a central role in understanding cultural variation in attitudes toward other species as well as perceived risks when interacting with animals. I argue that the remediation of emerging infectious diseases will be accomplished primarily through human behavioral changes rather than through efforts in pathogen discovery. Given the history of human interactions with wildlife, candid discussions on zoonotic diseases will be increasingly important for our combined survival.

This review analyzes the emerging literature on reproductive tourism through a metaphorical “reproscope,” focusing largely on cross-border egg donation and surrogacy as the prime areas of contemporary anthropological investigation. While acknowledging that reproductive travel is not new, this article recognizes that there has been an increased volume of such travel over the past couple of decades. It provides an overview of the major areas of anthropological investigation into these transnational phenomena, globalization, stratification, exploitation, race, nationalism, religion, biopower, and bioethics. I propose that these areas of investigation may provide key indications about the preoccupations of anthropology today. Namely, what kind of discipline does anthropology imagine itself to be?

In this review, I examine the recent turn to design in anthropology in three different configurations: anthropology of design, anthropology for design, and design for anthropology. Although these three configurations represent different cuts in a complex set of relations between these two disciplines, I have chosen to discuss them together because they all represent—though not always obviously so—attempts to contend with the moral implications of humans intervening in the lives of other humans. One goal of this article is to specify and evaluate a long-standing but underarticulated regard for design and designed things in anthropology while also offering a framework for critically engaging anthropology's relationship with design in its multiple configurations.

This review examines the ambiguous condition of unfree labor in modern, Fordist, or postindustrial systems of exploitation. Unfree labor is reviewed across two multidisciplinary strands of research. The first pertains to forms of coercion and exploitation of labor in situations of human mobility or bondage—so-called modern-day slavery and human trafficking. The second attends to the effects of precariousness and dependency conceived at the interstice of recent theorizations of affect and belonging. Whereas the first case is framed as an exception, morally and legally condemned, the second is presented as a new ordinary form of inequality. A theoretical and empirical engagement that straddles both literatures under the prism of unfree labor consolidates this renewed anthropological focus on work. This review suggests that the objectification and dehumanization of labor should be placed back at the heart of anthropological reflection to pave the way for a refined scrutiny of exploitation, inequality, and dispossession.

Decolonizing archaeological thought in South America happens through three paths: (a) a critical approach to the ways archaeology contributes to coloniality, (b) a criticism of the mechanisms by which coloniality informs archaeology, and (c) a varied exposure of archaeology to subaltern (that is, non-hegemonic and counter-hegemonic) knowledge. These three paths are sometimes taken together and sometimes alone, and the diverse pieces of thought reviewed herein provide examples of each. South America as a locus for the enunciation of archaeological theory opens the epistemic range of the discipline to include indigenous and African-descendant communities' theories of history and materiality. Ongoing research prefigures future trends in decolonizing archaeological thought around issues of land, memory, and knowledge.

A rapprochement between the anthropology of history and the anthropology of capitalism has created a temporal turn. This temporal turn has generated new theoretical insights into the times of capitalist modernity and vectors of inequality. Yet research has so far been divided into three separate streams of inquiry. Work addresses the techne (techniques), episteme (knowledge), or phronesis (ethics) of time, following traditions in the social sciences derived from Aristotelian categories. This review explores the potential and limits of such distinctions. It also traces contemporary dominant representations and experiences of time such as short-term market cycles, the anticipatory futures of the security state, and precarity. It follows how time-maps are assembled into technologies of imagination with associated material practices. In conclusion, it proposes a new theoretical vista on time for anthropology based on the heuristic of timescapes. From this perspective, the dynamic interrelationships among techniques, knowledge, and ethics of time can be traced and the inequalities generated by conflicts in time become visible.