Sei sulla pagina 1di 3

Housing, Culture, and Design: A Comparative Perspective by Setha M.

Low; Erve Chambers Review by: Denise Lawrence American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 92, No. 3 (Sep., 1990), pp. 805-806 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/680413 . Accessed: 20/04/2012 08:26
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Blackwell Publishing and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist.

http://www.jstor.org

APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY

805

tion, illness behavior, and health-care systems" (p. 8). The book consists of seven chapters. The first is introductory. The second presents a brief history of "The People and the Land." Although Young expands his scope, both in this chapter and others, to the entire Canadian subarctic, it is clear that he does so with caution; his geographic focus is on the Sioux Lookout Zone, a federal Indian health-services region in northwestern Ontario. While Young presents a reasonable overview of the impact of major agents of contact and change-fur traders, missionaries, governmental agents-he confusedly speaks of "radical" change within a temporal framework that assumes, in the labels used for major periods, nonradical change (pp. 14-15). The contemporary economy of the Cree and Ojibwa of the Sioux Lookout Zone is based on governmental assistance and temporary employment, with commercial fishing and wildrice gathering important in some communities; full-time jobs are few, and so-called "country foods" seem less important here than elsewhere in the subarctic. The third chapter discusses the changing patterns of health and disease, repeating the by-now familiar picture-to students of subarctic history and demography-of epidemic diseases from the 17th through 19th centuries, endemic tuberculosis by the early 20th century, and recent increase in fertility and decline in infant mortality that together produce the "wide-based" population pyramid typical of developing countries. The "measurement" of health today, which is the subject of the fourth chapter, shows that infectious diseases, including TB, are no longer important causes of Indian mortality but that accidents and violence are; that binge drinking plays an important role in morbidity and mortality; and that certain diseases of modernization, such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, are on the rise. Interesting discrepancies are revealed in an extensive community health questionnaire conducted in the mid-1970s in the Sioux Lookout Zone, in particular between the 74% of people who reported their own health as good and the determination of clinical examiners that only 3% were healthy; and between the high proportion of admissions in hospitals linked to alcohol abuse versus the one-fifth of the population who admitted that they drank alcohol. Moreover, a third discrepancy is revealed concerning use of the cradle board, which Euro-Canadian health professionals discourage, believing it to produce hip dislocations and to inhibit psychomotor development, but which Cree and

Ojibwa do not regard as disabling. Young sides with the Cree-Ojibwa on the use of the cradle board, but his discussions both on this issue and on discrepancies in perceptions of health and in alcohol use strike a social anthropologist as in need of a strong ethnographic-based cultural analysis-an unimportant criticism had Young not declared his intention to reveal cultural perspectives. Chapters 5 and 6 are on the evolution of health care services in native Canada in general and in the Sioux Lookout Zone in particular, which Young uses as a detailed case study to discuss problems in the quality of staffing in remote hospitals and nursing stations, the duties of nurses, and the training of nurse auxiliaries. In the final chapter, Young turns to policy implications, wondering how, if high-quality health care exists today-which he argues it does-poor health status can be improved. In recommendations that should be of use to policymakers in Canada, and that fit comfortably with a comparative literature, Young advocates general health, personal hygiene, and nutrition education within a balanced (curative and preventive) health care system, and argues for the greater use of (and appreciation for) local health auxiliaries and for improved sanitation facilities. One might add to his general recommendations the need for more extensive preventive dental care and alcohol abuse programs, because a large proportion of deviations from healthy status in the Sioux Lookout Zone require the attention of a dentist and because alcohol figures so prominently in morbidity and mortality; and for the more efficient use of technology to improve'diagnosis, emergency care, and medical evacuation.

Housing, Culture, and Design: A Comparative Perspective. Setha M. Low and Erve Chambers,eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. 439 pp. $49.95 (cloth), $29.95 (paper).
DENISE LAWRENCE

StatePolytechnic Pomona California University, and Housing,Culture, Designis a collection of interdisciplinary studies incorporating architecture and social science approaches (such as anthropology, geography, and psychology) that focuses on interactions of culture and the built environment. The volume develops further cultural investigations within the larger context of environmental design research, a

806

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

[92, 1990]

field of applied behavioral research concerned with improving the quality of physical environments for human habitation through design. Anthropologists will find many familiar themes, theoretical approaches, and methods, but may also find the emphasis on design a relatively new challenge for anthropological applications. A foreword by architect Amos Rapoport, a principal founder of the cultural subfield, outlines recent developments and elaborates a concept of culture for application to design issues. Editors Low and Chambers provide a useful general definition of design, the culture-making processes that transform "ideas, values, norms and belief into physical forms" and include both vernacular and popular house-building processes and "self-conscious professional intervention" (p. 5). The articles cover theoretical developments in cultural aspects of design research as well as design and policy recommendations. Prussin advances the theoretical concept of "placemaking," a panhuman activity expressing ideas and values through built form, in her study of Kenya's Gabra pastoralists. She argues that the disassembly and reassembly of homes by some nomadic peoples acts as a mnemonic reinforcing central social-symbolic structures. Duncan investigates how social identity is expressed in house styles in a Sri Lankan city and village. He finds that variations in house styles reflect increasing individualism and materialism linked to upward mobility. Privacy, a central theoretical concept in environmental design research, is challenged by Howell and Tentakoli, who consider its usual definition and use overly individualistic when contrasted with data fromJapan and Muslim Greece. R. Lawrence also takes an interest in domestic privacy, but in two Swiss housing projects. He considers the separation and linkage of household interior spaces expressed in boundary, threshold, and transition areas. Lawrence's structuralist approach for decoding spatial categories suggests two zones of meaning and use: a cellular plan for nocturnal, personal uses, and an open plan for diurnal, collective uses. Most contributions to the book focus on making specific design or policy recommendations. Robinson considers architecture a communicative medium, describing designers as culture makers who decode and encode cultural cues into built form. She contrasts institutional housing with homelike settings, cites conflicting or ambiguous messages conveyed in the former, and recommends developing new housing forms that better support residents' needs. Bechtel also makes specific rec-

ommendations for increasing domestic recreational spaces in American military and company housing he evaluated in Alaska and Saudi Arabia. A series of policy studies examines conflicts between modern and traditional processes. Pavlides and Hesser carefully describe a sociolinguistic methodology they use to study Greek houses. It reveals that traditional house styles are not fixed but undergo continuous changes. In analyzing the dualism of modern and traditional housing in Saudi Arabia, Rowe argues that design policies need to recognize the legitimacy of both past and present forms in developing alternative housing to meet current needs. Lang observes that housing policy in India is inappropriate to how the majority of the population actually lives. Robbins, however, pinpoints much of the problem in Sri Lankan housing policy, which supplies housing with a centralized, top-down plan, by suggesting that local-level policy development and construction would lead to better solutions. Overall the articles clearly develop their arguments and are well written. Occasionally irritating, however, is the tendency of some authors outside of anthropology to ignore rational aspects of behavior in their definitions of culture in favor of irrational ones. This complaint is minor since the volume not only makes a strong contribution to the development of built form and culture studies, but also introduces anthropologists to a field that should involve them more.

Involuntary Resettlement in Development Projects: Policy Guidelines in World Bank-Financed Projects. MichaelM. Cernea. World Bank Technical Paper No. 80. Washington, DC: World Bank, 1988. 96 pp. $6.50 (paper).
SUSAN HAMILTON

Syracuse University Displacement of human populations is a phenomenon with many causes, among them war and invasions, drought and flooding, famines and epidemics, nuclear accidents and earthquakes. Besides these unplanned dislocations, people also are forcibly removed from their homes in connection with development projects--dam building, urban renewal, highway construction, industrial and mine development, and so on. While such projects' overall and long-term benefits to the nation may justify the resettlement of some people, nega-

Potrebbero piacerti anche