Word: anthropologists
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This fact is best seen from a perspective that flourished more than a century ago, as Emerson was fading from the intellectual scene. In the wake of Darwin's theory of natural selection, some anthropologists started viewing all human culture--music, technology, religion, whatever--as something that evolves rather as plants and animals evolve. "In the mental sphere the struggle for existence is not less fierce than in the physical," observed the British anthropologist Sir James Frazer. "In the end the better ideas carry...
...Judeo-Christian West, however, time is a line, marching steadily from the past to the future. As Lippencott puts it, "God never moves backward." Deward Walker, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, argues that this way of viewing time is "part of the reason we have such an advanced science, technology and economy, such mastery of nature and dominance of the universe...
...they belong to a tradition as old as recorded history--probably much older. Ever since our Neolithic ancestors invented art tens of thousands of years ago, humans have been painting, sculpting and otherwise decorating everything in sight. The human body is just the nearest and most intimate canvas. Says anthropologist Enid Schildkrout of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City: "There is no known culture in which people do not paint, pierce, tattoo, reshape or simply adorn their bodies...
...flimflam associated with the movement. But many adherents like Loving More leader Ryam Nearing prefer to dwell on science. "People are biologically poly," she asserts, noting that polyamory occurs even in societies that punish it by death. Polyamorists love the work of Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University anthropologist and author of Anatomy of Love. Fisher has written that only 16% of cultures on record actually prescribe monogamy; in most, polygamy is sought after by men as a sign of power. Fisher also completed a study of divorce in 62 societies, which revealed that people have a remarkable tendency to split...
With the scent of bacon still in the air, Nancy Giessmann, 62, has just cleared the last remnants of breakfast when it is time to get ready for lunch. Any anthropologist studying the tribes of a U.S. high school would envy the observation post Giessmann has manned for the past 19 years behind the cafeteria steam table. She has watched students' tastes shift from meat loaf to pizza and from nice skirts to shorts with panties hanging out--"If they even wore panties," Giessmann sniffs. She knows that most students these days earn spending money at part-time jobs...