The Culture Area Concept as a Research Lead

Wissler, Clark

doi:10.1086/214593

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Elements in the evil eye belief system that are shared across regions may reflect older beliefs. More than 80 years ago, Wissler (1927Wissler ( , 1928 presented the age-area concept as a device for inferring time sequences from geographic distribution of related culture traits throughout a culture area (Kroeber, 1931). In this formulation, the "center" of a culture area radiates cultural content to surrounding areas, which then radiates the content to more peripheral areas.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variation and Persistence in Latin American Beliefs About Evil Eye

Weller

Baer

García

et al. 2014

Cross-Cultural Research

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In a comparative study of evil eye (mal de ojo), we demonstrate a methodology appropriate for the study of cultural transmission of beliefs. We studied four diverse populations with historical links to Spain: Puerto Ricans in Connecticut, Mexican Americans in south Texas, Mexicans in Guadalajara, and rural Guatemalans. Using agreement on ideas or themes about evil eye within and across sites, we identify specific ideas that may have persisted through time. The relevance of specific themes was estimated with a cultural consensus analysis. Mal de ojo was widely recognized in each community and higher community prevalence was associated with higher agreement on reported causes, symptoms, and treatments. Each community exhibited a distinct model for ojo, although models were highly similar between sites.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variation and Persistence in Latin American Beliefs About Evil Eye

Weller

Baer

García

et al. 2014

Cross-Cultural Research

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“…Most of the museum’s collecting and ethnographic work in the Plains region was conducted between 1900 and 1920, when the Department of Anthropology was overseen by Clark Wissler. An early and strong proponent of the culture area paradigm, Wissler (1917, 1926, 1927a, 1928) had considerable influence on the content and curation of the collections during the most intensive period of acquisition. When Wissler was not himself collecting, he issued specific instructions to those collecting for the Museum at his behest (for a detailed history of Wissler’s career at the AMNH, see Freed 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

CLASSIFICATION, CULTURE AREAS, AND GIFTING ON THE GREAT PLAINS: Remobilizing Objects of Exchange at the American Museum of Natural History

Heckel

2021

Museum Anthropology

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The ethnological collecting expeditions conducted by museums in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have had impacts on source communities and on the composition and interpretation of museum collections that have been critically examined from a number of perspectives. Although categories such as ethnicity and tribal affiliation are now understood to be situational, relational, and contingent, systems of classification in museums remain in large part rigid and immutable. Concrete approaches to addressing these issues in museum collections have been slower to emerge. This article presents an approach to the description of objects, influenced by attribute analysis and thick description, that has the potential to make salient information about museum collections more accessible to source communities. With two case studies (parfleches and moccasins from the Great Plains collections at the American Museum of Natural History), this article demonstrates how collaborative object‐centered inquiry can help to disentangle objects from historical systems of classification in museum settings and “remobilize” them. Moving beyond classification to document the cultural practices documented in historical material culture can aid in reconstructing the complex movements of people, objects, and ideas in the past.

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Topical Summary of Current Literature: On Human Ecology

Quinn¹

1940

American Journal of Sociology

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The Culture Area Concept as a Research Lead

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Variation and Persistence in Latin American Beliefs About Evil Eye

Variation and Persistence in Latin American Beliefs About Evil Eye

CLASSIFICATION, CULTURE AREAS, AND GIFTING ON THE GREAT PLAINS: Remobilizing Objects of Exchange at the American Museum of Natural History

Topical Summary of Current Literature: On Human Ecology

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