Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Anthropology - General

Two Kinds of Rationality was first published in 1995. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Beginning with a discussion of mind-body dualism in social anthropology, Evens presents a profound theory of human conduct that deploys notions of hierarchy and practice. He uses the case study of an Israeli kibbutz to address the central anthropological problem of rationality.

Of particular interest is Evens's interpretation of...

Focusing on Australia, Allaine Cerwonka examines the physical and narrative spatial practices by which people reclaim territory in the wake of postcolonial claims to land by indigenous people and...

Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2002

An important collection of essays that looks at the changing relationships between anthropologists and Indians at the turn of the millennium.

Representing the synthesis of approximately ten years of archaeological research along the central Tombigbee River, this book offers new theoretical and interpretive contributions to the study of human activity in the Tombigbee River Valley from 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1450. The authors have devised a new taxonomic approach that allows them to portray cultures as they gathered momentum and peaked in their potential as social, economic, and political structures. The data acquired for this study are from the massive cultural resource management program that accompanied the construction of the...

During the vast stretches of early geologic time, the islands of the Caribbean archipelago separated from continental land masses, rose and sank many times, merged with and broke from other land masses, and then by the mid-Cenozoic period settled into the current pattern known today. By the time Native Americans arrived, the islands had developed complex, stable ecosystems. The actions these first colonists took on the landscape timber clearing, cultivation, animal hunting and domestication, fishing and exploitation of reef species affected fragile land and sea biotic communities in both...

Showcases the wealth of new research on sacred imagery found in 12 states and 4 Canadian provinces.

In archaeology, rock-art--any long-lasting marking made on a natural surface--is similar to material culture (pottery and tools) because it provides a record of human activity and ideology at that site. Petroglyphs, pictographs, and dendroglyphs (tree carvings) have been discovered and recorded throughout the eastern woodlands of North America on boulders, bluffs, and trees, in caves and in rock shelters. These cultural remnants scattered on the landscape can tell us much...

Presents a variety of archaeological case studies on daily life in a wide range of locations and circumstances.

Because archaeology seeks to understand past societies, the concepts of "home," "house," and "household" are important. Yet they can be the most elusive of ideas. Are they the space occupied by a nuclear family or by an extended one? Is it a built structure or the sum of its contents? Is it a shelter against the elements, a gendered space, or an ephemeral place tied to emotion? We somehow believe that the household is a basic unit of culture but have failed to...

Showcases the wealth of new research on sacred imagery found in 12 states and 4 Canadian provinces.

In archaeology, rock-art--any long-lasting marking made on a natural surface--is similar to material culture (pottery and tools) because it provides a record of human activity and ideology at that site. Petroglyphs, pictographs, and dendroglyphs (tree carvings) have been discovered and recorded throughout the eastern woodlands of North America on boulders, bluffs, and trees, in caves and in rock shelters. These cultural remnants scattered on the landscape can tell us much...

Presents a variety of archaeological case studies on daily life in a wide range of locations and circumstances.

Because archaeology seeks to understand past societies, the concepts of "home," "house," and "household" are important. Yet they can be the most elusive of ideas. Are they the space occupied by a nuclear family or by an extended one? Is it a built structure or the sum of its contents? Is it a shelter against the elements, a gendered space, or an ephemeral place tied to emotion? We somehow believe that the household is a basic unit of culture but have failed to...

A study of how doing field research submerged in a different culture impacts one's sense of identity.

"Wengle documents convincingly, and with a great deal of sensitivity to and empathy for his informants, what fieldworking ethnographers undergo while anthropologizing. . . . If one wants to understand what kind of data ethnographers generate, what kind of facts they notice, what kinds of events they record (rather than others that they could have generated, noticed or recorded, but did not) reading Wengle's book is indispensable. It goes a long way toward doing away with the mystique...

"Anthropological Contributions to Conflict Resolution" consists of ten essays that make vividly apparent the variety of ways that anthropological approaches and perspectives can be of practical worth in the resolution of conflicts. The essays represent various subdisciplines in anthropology, including legal and political anthropology, economic anthropology, cross-cultural studies, interpretive approaches, and social network approaches.

Conflicts and potential conflicts at many levels are the subjects of the essays. One contributor uses an ethnographic account of Sikh separatists in...

Trained as both a genealogist and a historian, Carolyn Earle Billingsley shows how the analytic category of kinship can add new dimensions to our understanding of the American South. In "Communities of Kinship," she studies a southern family---that of Thomas Keesee Sr.---to show how the biological, legal, and fictive kinship ties between him and some seven thousand of his descendants and relatives helped to shape the growth of the interior South. Keesee, who was born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, left there with his family when he was still a boy and subsequently lived in South...