"One Discipline, Four Ways" offers the first book-length introduction to the history of each of the four major traditions in anthropology British, German, French, and American. The result of lectures given by distinguished anthropologists Fredrik Barth, Andre Gingrich, Robert Parkin, and Sydel Silverman to mark the foundation of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, this volume not only traces the development of each tradition but considers their impact on one another and assesses their future potentials.
Moving from E. B. Taylor all the way through the development of modern...

"One Discipline, Four Ways" offers the first book-length introduction to the history of each of the four major traditions in anthropology-British, German, French, and American. The result of lectures given by distinguished anthropologists Fredrik Barth, Andre Gingrich, Robert Parkin, and Sydel Silverman to mark the foundation of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, this volume not only traces the development of each tradition but considers their impact on one another and assesses their future potentials.
Moving from E. B. Taylor all the way through the development of modern...

Recent years have seen a growing impetus to explain social life almost exclusively in biological and mechanistic terms, and to dismiss cultural meaning and difference. Daily we read assertions that everything from disease to morality not to mention the presumed characteristics of race, gender, and sexuality can be explained by reference primarily to genetics and our evolutionary past.
Complexities mobilizes experts from several fields of anthropology cultural, archaeological, linguistic, and biological to offer a compelling challenge to the resurgence of reductive theories of human...

This collection of twenty-eight essays by renowned anthropologist Eric R. Wolf is a legacy of some of his most original work, with an insightful foreword by Aram Yengoyan. Of the essays, six have never been published and two have not appeared in English until now. Shortly before his death, Wolf prepared introductions to each section and individual pieces, as well as an intellectual autobiography that introduces the collection as a whole. Sydel Silverman, who completed the editing of the book, says in her preface, "He wanted this selection of his writings over the past half-century to serve as...

Visionary Observers explores the relationship between anthropology and public policy, examining the careers of nine twentieth-century American anthropologists who made important contributions to debates about race, ethnicity, socialization, and education. Included are Franz Boas, the founder of American anthropology; Ruth Benedict, who analyzed modern societies during and after World War II; Margaret Mead, anthropology's most recognized public educator; Gene Weltfish, whose "pragmatic anthropology" positioned education at the core of culture; Hortense Powdermaker, whose fieldwork embraced...