Documents found
-
301.More information
Keywords: Ujfalvy-Bourdon, Marie de, récit de voyage, Asie centrale, ethnographie, anthropométrie, voyageuse, Orientalisme
-
302.More information
RésuméAlthough colonial expansion in the nineteenth century has usually been viewed in terms of "social imperialism", the contact with non-European peoples also resulted in the formulation of an anthropological science which translated inferiority in technical skills and material possessions into racial terms. Such theories were used to justify colonialism, especially the subjugation of "inferior" races. On the home front, they also provided a framework for depicting class structures. A study of Le Grand Dictionnaire of Pierre Larousse, a vast compendium of left republican beliefs, illustrates these links between anthropological science, racist notions, progress, and imperialism, while at the same time bringing out the tensions between the ideals of progress and perfectability.By analyzing the ideological assumptions laying behind many of the articles in this influential Dictionnaire, the author demonstrates how various anthropological concepts influenced French thought over a wide spectrum of issues. He also draws parallels between French ideas on anthropology, race, imperialism, and social reform, and similar currents of thought in the Anglo-Saxon world.
-
305.More information
AbstractThe Mirages of Rationality in Ethnomedicinal KnowledgesRationality is a key value in the management of health Systems. It is at the very heart of thé rationalization project of western care Systems and is referred to as the ultimate criterion in evaluation of world ethnomedicines. Anthropology has since the very beginning argued on the logical, illogical or alogical foundations of ethnomedical knowledges and practices and has contested the immanence of the rationality in the western medical system. We argue here that the main contribution of anthropology to the analysis of the place of rationality in ethnomedicinal knowledges and practices remains in the critical analysis of three reified mirages of rationality. These are the mirage of irrational beliefs as empiricist propositional statements, as products instead of as acts of language, the mirage of the systematicity and coherence of the interrelations linking those beliefs and the mirage of consistency between practices and goals or of the universality of instrumental reason. In order to go beyond a simple critique of the abuses of rationality, we propose that anthropology must go above and beyond the debate on the formai criteria defining rationality of practices and the logics of knowledges. It must redefine ethnomedical knowledges not as a product empirically expressed through a constellation of beliefs, even if systematically organized, but as a process of interpretation and explanation of illness and sickness. Knowledge is not a summation of propositional beliefs but a virtual reality, the matrix from which people build illness interpretations throughout complex therapeutic itineraries that cross a plurality of care Systems and ethnomedicines. Rationality must not be sought out in the formai characteristics of knowledges and practices but in thé process of meaning production.Key words : Masse, rationality, ethnomedicine, health, epistemology, knowledge