Anthropological Realities

Anthropological Realities PDF Author: Jeanne Guillemin
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412817295
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 540

Get Book Here

Book Description
The perspective of social anthropology is broadening to include the changing realities of both traditional and modern people. Anthropologists such as Oscar Lewis, Marvin Harris, Margaret Mead, Frederick Barth, and others represented in this volume apply comparative analysis to a wide spectrum of human groups--from urban villages to nomadic tribesmen. Anthropological Realities offers an up-to-date introduction to the standard areas of language, ritual, politics, and economics. In addition, special focus is given to the most current trends in field research. Essays on urbanization, Third World development, ethnicity, and professional ethics provide complte coverage of anthropology today. Jeanne Guillemin is associate professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Boston College.

Anthropological Realities

Anthropological Realities PDF Author: Jeanne Guillemin
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412817295
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 540

Get Book Here

Book Description
The perspective of social anthropology is broadening to include the changing realities of both traditional and modern people. Anthropologists such as Oscar Lewis, Marvin Harris, Margaret Mead, Frederick Barth, and others represented in this volume apply comparative analysis to a wide spectrum of human groups--from urban villages to nomadic tribesmen. Anthropological Realities offers an up-to-date introduction to the standard areas of language, ritual, politics, and economics. In addition, special focus is given to the most current trends in field research. Essays on urbanization, Third World development, ethnicity, and professional ethics provide complte coverage of anthropology today. Jeanne Guillemin is associate professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Boston College.

Living with Concepts

Living with Concepts PDF Author: Andrew Brandel
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823294285
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this anthology, philosophers and anthropologists examine a concept too often taken for granted: that of the concept itself. Concepts are often thought of as mere tools of analysis, or as straightforwardly equivalent to signs or symbols. But the contributors in this volume challenge these conventional frameworks, turning instead to the ways concepts are intrinsically embedded in our forms of life and how they constitute the very substrate of our conscious existence. Attending to our ordinary lives with concepts requires not an ascent from the rough ground of reality into the skies of theory, but rather acceptance of the fact that thinking is congenital to living with and through concepts. The volume offers a critical and timely intervention into both contemporary philosophy and anthropological theory by unsettling the distinction between thought and reality that continues to be too often assumed. showing how the supposed need to grasp reality may be replaced by an acknowledgement that we are in its grip. Contributors: Jocelyn Benoist, Andrew Brandel, Michael Cordey, Veena Das, Rasmus Dyring and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Michael D. Jackson, Michael Lambek, Sandra Laugier, Marco Motta, Michael J. Puett, and Lotte Buch Segal.

The Anthropology of Real Life

The Anthropology of Real Life PDF Author: Philip Carl Salzman
Publisher: Prospect Heights, Ill. : Waveland Press
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Anthropology of Real Life is about how events push and pull, oppress and liberate, enhance and destroy people's lives. While people are shaped by their cultures and their position in society, events--whether authored by natural forces, by other people, or by people themselves--take on a life of their own, and become independent forces determining human destinies. An anthropology of events shows the way in which the substance and texture of life change over time, as one major event fades and another arises, itself only to fade and be replaced by yet a new event.

The Real Economy

The Real Economy PDF Author: Federico Neiburg
Publisher: HAU Books
ISBN: 1912808269
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection highlights a key metaphor in contemporary discourse about economy and society. The contributors explore how references to reality and the real economy are linked both to the utopias of collective well-being, supported by real monies and good economies, and the dystopias of financial bubbles and busts, in which people’s own lives “crash” along with the reality of their economies. An ambitious anthropology of economy, this volume questions how assemblages of vernacular and scientific realizations and enactments of the economy are linked to ideas of truth and moral value; how these multiple and shifting realities become present and entangle with historically and socially situated lives; and how the formal realizations of the concept of the “real” in the governance of economies engage with the experiential lives of ordinary people. Featuring essays from some of the world’s most prominent economic anthropologists, The Real Economy is a milestone collection in economic anthropology that crosses disciplinary boundaries and adds new life to social studies of the economy.

The Slain God

The Slain God PDF Author: Timothy Larsen
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191632058
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
Throughout its entire history, the discipline of anthropology has been perceived as undermining, or even discrediting, Christian faith. Many of its most prominent theorists have been agnostics who assumed that ethnographic findings and theories had exposed religious beliefs to be untenable. E. B. Tylor, the founder of the discipline in Britain, lost his faith through studying anthropology. James Frazer saw the material that he presented in his highly influential work, The Golden Bough, as demonstrating that Christian thought was based on the erroneous thought patterns of 'savages.' On the other hand, some of the most eminent anthropologists have been Christians, including E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, and Edith Turner. Moreover, they openly presented articulate reasons for how their religious convictions cohered with their professional work. Despite being a major site of friction between faith and modern thought, the relationship between anthropology and Christianity has never before been the subject of a book-length study. In this groundbreaking work, Timothy Larsen examines the point where doubt and faith collide with anthropological theory and evidence.

How to Think Like an Anthropologist

How to Think Like an Anthropologist PDF Author: Matthew Engelke
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691193134
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
"What is anthropology? What can it tell us about the world? Why, in short, does it matter? For well over a century, cultural anthropologists have circled the globe, from Papua New Guinea to suburban England and from China to California, uncovering surprising facts and insights about how humans organize their lives and articulate their values. In the process, anthropology has done more than any other discipline to reveal what culture means--and why it matters. By weaving together examples and theories from around the world, Matthew Engelke provides a lively, accessible, and at times irreverent introduction to anthropology, covering a wide range of classic and contemporary approaches, subjects, and practitioners. Presenting a set of memorable cases, he encourages readers to think deeply about some of the key concepts with which anthropology tries to make sense of the world--from culture and nature to authority and blood. Along the way, he shows why anthropology matters: not only because it helps us understand other cultures and points of view but also because, in the process, it reveals something about ourselves and our own cultures, too." --Cover.

The Anthropological Study of Class and Consciousness

The Anthropological Study of Class and Consciousness PDF Author: E. Paul Durrenberger
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1457111691
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
Presenting prehistoric, historic, and ethnographic data from Mongolia, China, Iceland, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States, The Anthropological Study of Class and Consciousness offers a first step toward examining class as a central issue within anthropology. Contributors to this volume use the methods of historical materialism, cultural ecology, and political ecology to understand the realities of class and how they evolve. Five central ideas unify the collection: the objective basis for class in different social orders; people's understanding of class in relation to race and gender; the relation of ideologies of class to realities of class; the U.S. managerial middle-class denial of class and emphasis on meritocracy in relation to increasing economic insecurity; and personal responses to economic insecurity and their political implications. Anthropologists who want to understand the nature and dynamics of culture must also understand the nature and dynamics of class. The Anthropological Study of Class and Consciousness addresses the role of the concept of class as an analytical construct in anthropology and how it relates to culture. Although issues of social hierarchy have been studied in anthropology, class has not often been considered as a central element. Yet a better understanding of its role in shaping culture, consciousness, and people's awareness of their social and natural world would in turn lead to better understanding of major trends in social evolution as well as contemporary society. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of anthropology, labor studies, ethnohistory, and sociology.

Why We Play

Why We Play PDF Author: Roberte Hamayon
Publisher: HAU Books
ISBN: 098613256X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Get Book Here

Book Description
Whether it’s childhood make-believe, the theater, sports, or even market speculation, play is one of humanity’s seemingly purest activities: a form of entertainment and leisure and a chance to explore the world and its possibilities in an imagined environment or construct. But as Roberte Hamayon shows in this book, play has implications that go even further than that. Exploring play’s many dimensions, she offers an insightful look at why play has become so ubiquitous across human cultures. Hamayon begins by zeroing in on Mongolia and Siberia, where communities host national holiday games similar to the Olympics. Within these events Hamayon explores the performance of ethical values and local identity, and then she draws her analysis into larger ideas examinations of the spectrum of play activities as they can exist in any culture. She explores facets of play such as learning, interaction, emotion, strategy, luck, and belief, and she emphasizes the crucial ambiguity between fiction and reality that is at the heart of play as a phenomenon. Revealing how consistent and coherent play is, she ultimately shows it as a unique modality of action that serves an invaluable role in the human experience.

Time and the Highland Maya

Time and the Highland Maya PDF Author: Barbara Tedlock
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 9780826313584
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
Described as a landmark in the ethnographic study of the Maya, this study of ritual and cosmology among the contemporary Quiché Indians of highland Guatemala has now been updated to address changes that have occurred in the last decade. The Classic Mayan obsession with time has never been better known. Here, Barbara Tedlock redirects our attention to the present-day keepers of the ancient calendar. Combining anthropology with formal apprenticeship to a diviner, she refutes long-held ethnographic assumptions and opens a door to the order of the Mayan cosmos and its daily ritual. Unable to visit the region for over ten years, Tedlock returned in 1989 to find that observance of the traditional calendar and religion is stronger than ever, despite a brutal civil war. ". . . a well-written, highly readable, and deeply convincing contribution. . . ." --Michael Coe

Real Black

Real Black PDF Author: John L. Jackson Jr.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226390020
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book Here

Book Description
New York's urban neighborhoods are full of young would-be emcees who aspire to "keep it real" and restaurants like Sylvia's famous soul food eatery that offer a taste of "authentic" black culture. In these and other venues, authenticity is considered the best way to distinguish the real from the phony, the genuine from the fake. But in Real Black, John L. Jackson Jr. proposes a new model for thinking about these issues--racial sincerity. Jackson argues that authenticity caricatures identity as something imposed on people, imprisoning them within stereotypes--turning them into racial objects and inanimate things, instead of living, breathing human beings. Contending that such assumptions deny people agency--not to mention humanity--in their search for identity, Jackson counterposes sincerity, an internal and more productive analytical model for thinking about race. Moving in and around Harlem and Brooklyn, Jackson offers a kaleidoscope of subjects and stories that directly and indirectly address how race is negotiated in today's world--including tales of name-changing hip-hop emcees, book-vending numerologists, urban conspiracy theorists, corrupt police officers, mixed-race neo-Nazis, and high-school gospel choirs forbidden to catch the Holy Ghost. Enlisting "Anthroman," his cape-crusading critical alter ego, Jackson records and retells these interconnected sagas in virtuosic detail and, in the process, shows us how race is defined and debated, imposed and confounded every single day.