tructuralism and network analysis have a long and distinguished history in communication and the social sciences. Spencer (1982) and Durkheim (1964) in sociology, Radcliff-Brown (1959) in anthropology, Piaget (1971) in cognitive development, and de Saussure (1966) in linguistics all pioneered structuralism in their respective fields. Monge and Eisenberg (1987) trace the history of organizational

In social neuroscience, empathy is often approached as an individual ability, whereas researchers in anthropology focus on empathy as a dialectic process between agents. In this perspective paper, we argue that to further elucidate the mechanisms underlying the development of empathy, social neuroscience research should draw on insights and methods from anthropology. First, we discuss neuropsyc...

In this article, I lay out some of the cultural assumptions in recent accounts of mind and brain in neuroscience, in which it is argued that human social activities can be reduced to neural processes in the brain. Since the current dominance of these accounts in the United States threatens the work of social and cultural anthropology and other non-reductionist disciplines, I develop some ways t...

This article argues the virtues of a particular research methodology, the confrontational stance, for making theory count by helping it to formulate approximate truths of some rigor. Argument proceeds by first showing how a particular anthropological tradition, social anthropology, achieved success by haphazardly adopting such a stance; and then by suggesting certain requirements needed to syst...

1 Ecosystem Science and Geoarchaeology, Institute of Ecosystem Science, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany 2 Archaeology, School of Social Science, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Australia 3 Anthropology, The College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, USA 4 Manu Iri–Rapa Nui Heritage Guardians, Terevaka Archaeological Outreach, Ka’ara Environmental Conscience, Hanga Roa, Chile *Correspondenc...

There are a variety of ways that one could examine feminist contributions to anthropology and sociology within the context of a handbook on philosophy of science. The first and most obvious is to simply catalogue the various contributions that feminism has made to each of these disciplines, in part through the increasing presence of women in these fields. Sandra Harding refers to this approach ...

What makes us humans so special? Our language, our genes, our culture, our cognitive skills? At the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, psychologists, linguists and biologists tackle this old question in a truly multidisciplinary way. Their results have implications not just for our understanding of human evolution--they also touch directly on many social and environm...