Anthropologists since Franz Boas and Margaret Mead have traditionally gone off to study primitive cultures. This collection of original essays breaks new ground in showing how anthropological theories and techniques can be applied to the culture of contemporary middle-class Americans.
In Symbolizing America, ten well-known anthropologists pursue self and identity as cultural rather than psychological matters. Looking homeward, they ask What Is American about America? How do we know? and What difference does it make? They analyze such aspects of American culture as...
Anthropologists since Franz Boas and Margaret Mead have traditionally gone off to study primitive cultures. This collection of original essays brea...
In this controversial work, Herve Varenne and Ray McDermott explore education as cultural phenomenona construct of artifice and reality we impose upon ourselves. The authors discuss in five case studies how the American education system defines and measures success and failure, why there is polarization between suburban schools and urban schools, and what about our system leads us to focus on the negative. Their exploration focuses not on the people or the activities of the system, but on the institutions themselves: who decided what was a success or failure? How was the identification done,...
In this controversial work, Herve Varenne and Ray McDermott explore education as cultural phenomenona construct of artifice and reality we impose upon...
The authors first indicate how one must understand the old recognition that apparently individual behavior within any family must be understood in terms of the whole. They then investigate features of this whole, first as a local production and then in the historical context to which it is respons
The authors first indicate how one must understand the old recognition that apparently individual behavior within any family must be understood in ter...
