Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle

Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle PDF Author: Daniel A. Segal
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
A collection that debates and studies how to revise the four-field approach of anthropology.

Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle

Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle PDF Author: Daniel A. Segal
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
A collection that debates and studies how to revise the four-field approach of anthropology.

Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle

Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle PDF Author: Daniel A. Segal
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822386844
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Lively, forceful, and impassioned, Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle is a major intervention in debates about the configuration of the discipline of anthropology. In the essays brought together in this provocative collection, prominent anthropologists consider the effects of and alternatives to the standard definition of the discipline as a “holistic” study of humanity based on the integration of the four fields of archaeology, biological anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. Editors Daniel A. Segal and Sylvia J. Yanagisako provide a powerful introduction to the volume. Unabashed in their criticism of the four-field structure, they argue that North American anthropology is tainted by its roots in nineteenth-century social evolutionary thought. The essayists consider the complex state of anthropology, its relation to other disciplines and the public sphere beyond academia, the significance of the convergence of linguistic and cultural anthropology, and whether or not anthropology is the best home for archaeology. While the contributors are not in full agreement with one another, they all critique “official” definitions of anthropology as having a fixed, four-field core. The editors are keenly aware that anthropology is too protean to be remade along the lines of any master plan, and this volume does not offer one. It does open discussions of anthropology’s institutional structure to all possible outcomes, including the refashioning of the discipline as it now exists. Contributors. James Clifford, Ian Hodder, Rena Lederman, Daniel A. Segal, Michael Silverstein, Sylvia J. Yanagisako

Privilege and Diversity in the Academy

Privilege and Diversity in the Academy PDF Author: Frances A. Maher
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113593990X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Over the past several decades, higher education has been transformed by the entry of faculty of color and women into the university system. Through detailed institutional ethnographies of three very different universities, Privilege and Diversity in the Academy explores how this diversification has dismantled and reconfigured relationships of privilege and diversity in higher education. Authors Maher and Tetreault use examples from a top-ranked private university, a comprehensive urban university, and a major public university to illustrate how privilege is enacted, resisted, and transformed as changes occur in the student bodies and faculties of these schools. In their analyses, they identify the institutional structures that facilitate the success of a diverse faculty and make valuable observations about patterns of institutional change and resistance.

Native American Myths and Beliefs

Native American Myths and Beliefs PDF Author: Tom Lowenstein
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 1448860490
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
Readers explore the rich worldview of the Native Americans through myths and legends. Tales originating from various tribes functioned in a number of important ways: they explained the story of creation, described the relationship of humans to the rest of the universe, and preserved the sacred history of the tribe. In addition, myths and storytelling helped Native Americans pass on knowledge related to hunting, fishing, farming, healing the sick, and dealing with conflict or disaster. This book also places their mythology in historical context, for example, connecting earth myths with the Native Americans’ real-life, tragic struggle to preserve their lands. Filled with colorful photographs and works of art, Native Americans’ beliefs are beautifully illustrated, including their reverence for animals and the earth.

Nature, Culture and Society

Nature, Culture and Society PDF Author: Gísli Pálsson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107085845
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Reflecting upon the changing human condition, Palsson addresses various conflated zones of life at particular times and scales. Engaging with topical issues on the public agenda, from personal genomics to human-animal relations to the global environment, the book sets out a compelling case for meaningful change.

Contemporary Archaeology in Theory

Contemporary Archaeology in Theory PDF Author: Robert W. Preucel
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444358510
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
The second edition of Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: The New Pragmatism, has been thoroughly updated and revised, and features top scholars who redefine the theoretical and political agendas of the field, and challenge the usual distinctions between time, space, processes, and people. Defines the relevance of archaeology and the social sciences more generally to the modern world Challenges the traditional boundaries between prehistoric and historical archaeologies Discusses how archaeology articulates such contemporary topics and issues as landscape and natures; agency, meaning and practice; sexuality, embodiment and personhood; race, class, and ethnicity; materiality, memory, and historical silence; colonialism, nationalism, and empire; heritage, patrimony, and social justice; media, museums, and publics Examines the influence of American pragmatism on archaeology Offers 32 new chapters by leading archaeologists and cultural anthropologists

Social Knowledge in the Making

Social Knowledge in the Making PDF Author: Charles Camic
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226092100
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these advances, the contributors to Social Knowledge in the Making turn their attention to the social sciences, broadly construed. The result is the first comprehensive effort to study and understand the day-to-day activities involved in the creation of social-scientific and related forms of knowledge about the social world. The essays collected here tackle a range of previously unexplored questions about the practices involved in the production, assessment, and use of diverse forms of social knowledge. A stellar cast of multidisciplinary scholars addresses topics such as the changing practices of historical research, anthropological data collection, library usage, peer review, and institutional review boards. Turning to the world beyond the academy, other essays focus on global banks, survey research organizations, and national security and economic policy makers. Social Knowledge in the Making is a landmark volume for a new field of inquiry, and the bold new research agenda it proposes will be welcomed in the social science, the humanities, and a broad range of nonacademic settings.

How Nature Works

How Nature Works PDF Author: Sarah Besky
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826360866
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
We now live on a planet that is troubled—even overworked—in ways that compel us to reckon with inherited common sense about the relationship between human labor and nonhuman nature. In Paraguay, fast-growing soy plants are displacing both prior crops and people. In Malaysia, dispossessed farmers are training captive orangutans to earn their own meals. In India, a prized dairy cow suddenly refuses to give more milk. Built from these sorts of scenes and sites, where the ultimate subjects and agents of work are ambiguous, How Nature Works develops an anthropology of labor that is sharply attuned to the irreversible effects of climate change, extinction, and deforestation. The authors of this volume push ethnographic inquiry beyond the anthropocentric documentation of human work on nature in order to develop a language for thinking about how all labor is a collective ecological act.

Relations

Relations PDF Author: Marilyn Strathern
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478009349
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
The concept of relation holds a privileged place in how anthropologists think and write about the social and cultural lives they study. In Relations, eminent anthropologist Marilyn Strathern provides a critical account of this key concept and its usage and significance in the English-speaking world. Exploring relation's changing articulations and meanings over the past three centuries, Strathern shows how the historical idiosyncrasy of using an epistemological term for kinspersons (“relatives”) was bound up with evolving ideas about knowledge-making and kin-making. She draws on philosophical debates about relation—such as Leibniz's reaction to Locke—and what became its definitive place in anthropological exposition, elucidating the underlying assumptions and conventions of its use. She also calls for scholars in anthropology and beyond to take up the limitations of Western relational thinking, especially against the background of present ecological crises and interest in multispecies relations. In weaving together analyses of kin-making and knowledge-making, Strathern opens up new ways of thinking about the contours of epistemic and relational possibilities while questioning the limits and potential of ethnographic methods.

Experiments in Holism

Experiments in Holism PDF Author: Ton Otto
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444351850
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Experiments in Holism Experiments in Holism: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology presents a series of essays that critically examine the ongoing relevance of holism and its theoretical and methodological potential in today’s world. Contributions from a diverse collection of leading anthropologists reveal how recent critiques of the holistic approach have not led to its wholesale rejection, but rather to a panoply of experiments that critically reassess and reemploy holism. The essays focus on aspects of holism including its utilization in current ethnographic research, holistic considerations in cultural anthropology, the French structuralist tradition, the predominantly English tradition of social anthropology, and many others. Collectively, the essays show how holism is simultaneously central to, and problematically a part of, the theory and practice of anthropology. Experiments in Holism reveals how contemporary attempts to rescale and retool anthropology entail new ways of coming to terms with anthropology’s heritage of holism, seeking to obviate its current excesses while recapturing its critical potential to meet the challenges of our contemporary world.