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General Stress in Anthropological Fieldwork
Author(s) -
Brown Daniel E.
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1981.83.1.02a00050
Subject(s) - sociocultural evolution , adaptation (eye) , anthropology , biological anthropology , stress (linguistics) , human culture , ecological anthropology , ecology , psychology , identification (biology) , sociology , biology , history , anthropology of art , philosophy , linguistics , neuroscience , contemporary art , performance art , art history
Human stress reactions are responses to physical, biotic, and sociocultural stimuli that lead to appraisal of the need for adaptive activity. Commonly used measures of stress in anthropology, such as questionnaires, are subjective in nature and inappropriate for cross‐cultural comparisons. Physiological measures of stress, such as urinary levels of catecholamines and corticosteroids, are applicable for these comparisons and may have wide utility in anthropological fieldwork, particularly for: studies of culture change, identification of highly stressed groups or individuals within groups, and observations of temporal patterns of stress in human populations . [stress, biocultural anthropology, adaptation, physiological anthropology, human ecology]