Books by Benjamin Blount
The study of language, culture, and cognition has become increasingly fragmented into separate di... more The study of language, culture, and cognition has become increasingly fragmented into separate disciplines and paradigms. This volume aims to re-establish dialogue between cognitive linguists and linguistic anthropologists with 11 original papers on language, culture and cognition, and an editorial introduction. It demonstrates that cognitively-informed perspectives can contribute to a better understanding of social, cultural, and historical phenomena, and argues that cognitive theories are relevant to linguistic anthropology.
Papers by Benjamin Blount
American Journal of Primatology, 1992
The history of the participation of African- Americans in the coastal marine fisheries of Georgia... more The history of the participation of African- Americans in the coastal marine fisheries of Georgia (USA) is described from a cul- tural landscape perspective. The nature of the participation was tied to characteristics of landscape, and a series of landscapes existed over a period of 250 years. In the plantation period, African-Americans were virtually the only marine fishermen. Fishing was subsistence and low- level artisanal. In the postbellum period, that pattern was expanded in scope, since fishing was one of the few livelihoods available to freed African- Americans. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, however, African- Americans were marginalized in the oyster fishery, due prima- rily to commercialization. The new landscape included migrant fisher- men who had more capital and more modern technology. During the twentieth century, similar developments occurred first in the shrimp and then the blue crab fisheries. Marginalization was due to lack of resources to compete effectively in the newly mechanized and capitalized land- scapes but also to cultural patterns of risk management. African- Ameri- cans were less willing to take capitalization risks if loss of livelihood was a possibility. Their modes of fishing, however, were less destructive of the environment and were more sustainable in the long term. The mecha- nized commercial fisheries have either collapsed or are under consider- able economic and environmental stress at the present.
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 1990
African Studies Review, Dec 1, 1990
... Photographs Photographs follow page 168 Girl carrying water pot, Mgbom Village Title taker da... more ... Photographs Photographs follow page 168 Girl carrying water pot, Mgbom Village Title taker dancing in front of shrine house Mother and child Boy wrestlers at a match Boys at a market Boys eating yam fufu Decorating men's secret society dressing house Whipping day ...
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 1994
African Studies Review, Dec 1, 1994
Codeswitching may be broadly defined as the use of two or more linguistic varieties in the same c... more Codeswitching may be broadly defined as the use of two or more linguistic varieties in the same conversation. Using data from multilingual African context, Carol Myers-Scotton advances a theoretical argument which aims at a general explanation of the motivations underlying the phenomenon. She treats codeswitching as a type of skilled performance, not as the 'alternative strategy' of a person who cannot carry on a conversation in the language in which it began. Speakers exploit the socio=psychological values associated with different linguistic varieties in a particular speech community: by switching codes speakers negotiate a change in social distance between themselves and other participants in a conversation. Switching between languages has much in common with making stylistic choices within the same language: it is as if bilingual and multilingual speakers have an additional style at their command when they engage in codeswitching. _
John Benjamins Publishing Company eBooks, 2009
Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems …, 2000
... Page 3. Blount: MARGINALIZATION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS 287 cans in each marine fishery was thus... more ... Page 3. Blount: MARGINALIZATION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS 287 cans in each marine fishery was thus tied to larger regional ... Several cultural landscapes have thus been overlaid through time on Page 5. Blount: MARGINALIZATION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS 289 ...
Fisheries, 2003
... marine protected areas. P Christie, BJ McCay, ML Miller, C Lowe, AT White, R Stoffle, DL Fluh... more ... marine protected areas. P Christie, BJ McCay, ML Miller, C Lowe, AT White, R Stoffle, DL Fluharty, LT McManus, R Chuenpagdee, C Pomeroy, DO Suman, BG Blount, D Huppert, R-LV Eisma Fisheries 28:1212, 22-25, 12/2003. ...
International Journal of American Linguistics, 1995
... Cancer of the stomach has been shown (Halperin and Mohar 1987) to occur at high rates among p... more ... Cancer of the stomach has been shown (Halperin and Mohar 1987) to occur at high rates among patients in the nearby town of ... Finally, binge drinking and heavy alcohol consumption in general make Maya males especially susceptible to esophageal and pancreatic disease. ...
Geographical Review, 2001
BLACK RICE: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas. By JUDITH A. CARNEY. xiv and... more BLACK RICE: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas. By JUDITH A. CARNEY. xiv and 240 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. $37.50 (cloth), ISBN 0674004523; $15.95 (paper), ISBN 0674008340. ETHNOBIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies. By BRENT BERLIN. xvii and 364 pp.; ills., bibliog., index. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. $82.50 (cloth), ISBN 0691094691. ETHNOECOLOGY: Knowledge, Resources, and Rights. Edited by TED L. GRAGSON and BEN G. BLOUNT. xviii and 163 pp.; maps, bibliog., index. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 0820320676; $25.00 (paper), ISBN 0820321281. FOLKBIOLOGY. Edited by DOUGLAS L. MEDIN and SCOTT ATRAN. ix and 504 pp.; diagrs., ills., index. Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford Books and MIT Press, 1999. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 0262133490; $32.50 (paper), ISBN 026263192X. MAYA ATLAS: The Struggle to Preserve Maya Land in Southern Belize. By the TOLEDO MAYA CULTURAL COUNCIL and the TOLEDO ALCALDES ASSOCIATION. xi and 154 pp.; maps, ills., index. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1997. $25.00 (paper), ISBN 1556432569. NATURE AND CULTURE IN THE ANDES. By DANIEL W. GADE. xiv and 287 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 0299161120X; $18.95 (paper), ISBN 0299161242. PLANTS, PEOPLE, AND CULTURE: The Science of Ethnobotany. By MICHAEL J. BALICK and PAUL ALAN Cox. ix and 228 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. New York: Scientific American Library, 1996. $32.95 (cloth), ISBN 0716750619; $19.95 (paper), ISBN 0716760274. REDEFINING NATURE: Ecology, Culture, and Domestication. Edited by ROY ELLEN and KATSUYOSHI FUKUI. xxii and 642 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Oxford, England, and Washington, D.C.: Berg, 1996. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 1859731309; $24.50 (paper), ISBN 185973135X. SACRED LEAVES OF CANDOMBLE: African Magic, Medicine, and Religion in Brazil. By ROBERT A. VOEKS. xvii and 236 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. $37.50 (cloth), ISBN 0292787308; $17.95 (paper), ISBN 0292787316. A promising web of connections is being interwoven between geography and ethnobiology, longtime cognate fields. Compelling shared interests are evident in a series of major new works that stem from field research, policy analysis, and political activism. This report evaluates recent advances around three themes: geographical meanings and environmental change; proliferation of landscape-based issues involving indigenous rights (political, territorial, intellectual property), plant and animal domestication, and environmental justice; and the innovation and diffusion of local or indigenous knowledge systems. Works on each theme build on the centrality of landscape concepts. To analyze each theme, and to aim for synthesis, I draw on nine important texts, on field research undertaken not long ago in Bolivia and Peru, and on my attendance and delivery of the keynote lecture at the Seventh International Congress of Ethnobiology, held in October 2000 in Athens, Georgia. "Ethnolandscape ecology" is a term that effectively entwines the new melding of geography and ethnobiology in the research under review. As a perspective, ethnolandscape ecology refers to the analysis of cultural environmental knowledge in relation to humanized landscapes that are often highly politicized. The knowledge itself includes both site-specific vernacular (or folk) knowledge and scientific knowledge. Like contemporary ethnobiology, the works in ethnolandscape ecology are concerned with comparisons of vernacular knowledge, often of indigenous people or other local cultural groups, and the scientific know-how of various coteries of technicians, development agents, and Western-trained experts. Unlike older ethnobiology, the new works see knowledge of environments as culturally conditioned in both the vernacular and scientific contexts. …
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Jun 1, 1991
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Books by Benjamin Blount
Papers by Benjamin Blount