@article{5347296bea3c4182950594023d36bf30,
title = "Crossing at y/our own peril: Biocultural boundary crossing in anthropology",
abstract = "Biocultural approaches in anthropology originated from a desire to dissolve the nature/culture divide that is entrenched in the discipline. Whereas biocultural approaches were born under the umbrella of medical anthropology, by the late 1990s, biology-centered approaches to bioculturalism had been mostly taken up by human biologists in biological anthropology. It was at this point that biology-inclined approaches began to gel into an informal interdiscipline, biocultural anthropology. Much like any other discipline, biocultural anthropology developed research and professional norms with erected boundaries around acceptable work and workers. We draw from scholarly work in interdisciplinary studies to explore those norms and boundaries from the perspective of our collaborative, multimethod, and interdisciplinary project that combines “biology” and “culture” in unconventional ways. We provide examples of the obstacles, barriers, and risks we experienced and the costs exacted on the research project and the researchers due to the nature of our boundary crossings. By exploring biocultural anthropology from the edges of acceptability, we expose the unacknowledged boundary work in contemporary biocultural anthropology, and by extension, in its parent discipline, anthropology.",
keywords = "biocultural, bioculturalism, biosociality, boundary work, interdisciplinarity",
author = "Cabana, {Graciela S.} and Marcela Mendoza and Smith, {Lindsay A.} and Hugo Delfino and Carla Mart{\'i}nez and B{\'a}rbara Mazza and {Teruya Rossi}, Loruhama and {Di Fabio Rocca}, Francisco",
note = "Funding Information: The Genetic Ancestry, Race, and National Belonging project was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF SES‐1354185) and the University of New Mexico's Latin American and Iberian Institute. The work and research stay at the University of Tennessee of Francisco Di Fabio Rocca was possible thanks to a postdoctoral fellowship granted by CONICET and Universidad Maim{\'o}nides and supported by Agencia Nacional de Promoci{\'o}n Cient{\'i}fica y Tecnol{\'o}gica (Grant Number: PICT 2014–3012), Fundaci{\'o}n Cient{\'i}fica Felipe Fiorellino (Subsidio intramuros 2018), and Fundaci{\'o}n de Historia Natural F{\'e}lix de Azara (Subsidio intramuros 2018). Funding Information: We are grateful to the residents of Luj{\'a}n, Argentina, who made this collaboration possible. The project was carried forward with a Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA, and the Universidad Nacional de Luj{\'a}n, Argentina. We thank Dr. Jana Morgan and Dr. Patrick Grzanka, both at the University of Tennessee, for valuable insights on the nature of boundary work. The insightful comments of two anonymous reviewers immeasurably improved this paper; we are grateful to those reviewers. This paper is based on a presentation in an invited symposium entitled “Collaborations across Anthropology and Genetics: Examples of Transdisciplinary Work,” organized by Connie Mulligan and Catherine Panter-Brick at the 86th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (Cabana, Mendoza, and Smith 2017). The Genetic Ancestry, Race, and National Belonging project was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF SES-1354185) and the University of New Mexico's Latin American and Iberian Institute. The work and research stay at the University of Tennessee of Francisco Di Fabio Rocca was possible thanks to a postdoctoral fellowship granted by CONICET and Universidad Maim{\'o}nides and supported by Agencia Nacional de Promoci{\'o}n Cient{\'i}fica y Tecnol{\'o}gica (Grant Number: PICT 2014–3012), Fundaci{\'o}n Cient{\'i}fica Felipe Fiorellino (Subsidio intramuros 2018), and Fundaci{\'o}n de Historia Natural F{\'e}lix de Azara (Subsidio intramuros 2018). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 by the American Anthropological Association.",
year = "2022",
month = sep,
doi = "10.1111/aman.13729",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "124",
pages = "479--489",
journal = "American Anthropologist",
issn = "0002-7294",
publisher = "Wiley-Blackwell",
number = "3",
}