Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Anthropology - General

During the past twenty years of intellectual boundary-crossing and widespread borrowing between fields, Turner's notions of "liminality" and the "processual" have been adopted by many theorists of art and society. This is the first volume to place individual Turner concepts into the context of his entire career and to spell out their implications for literary studies.

"Peel is by training an anthropologist, but one possessed of an acute historical sensibility. Indeed, this magnificent book achieves a degree of analytical verve rare in either discipline." History Today

" T]his is scholarship of the highest quality.... Peel lifts the Yoruba past to a dimension of comparative seriousness that no one else has managed.... The book teems with ideas... about big and compelling matters of very wide interest." T. C. McCaskie

In this magisterial book, J. D. Y. Peel contends that it is through their encounter with Christian missions in the mid-19th...

The term "folkbiology" refers to people's everyday understanding of the biological world -- how they perceive, categorize, and reason about living kinds. The study of folkbiology not only sheds light on human nature, it may ultimately help us make the transition to a global economy without irreparably damaging the environment or destroying local cultures.

This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together the work of researchers in anthropology, cognitive and developmental psychology, biology, and philosophy of science. The issues covered include: Are folk taxonomies a...

The collapse of state socialism in 1989 focused attention on the transition to democracy and capitalism in Eastern Europe. But for many people who actually lived through the transition, the changes were often disappointing. Perhaps none were more disappointed than the villagers of rural Bulgaria whose very lifestyles and identities were threatened by the transition. Domesticating Revolution explains this unexpected outcome through a detailed study of economic reform in one Bulgarian village, from the beginning of collectivization in the 1940s to decollectivization efforts in the...

"Applied Anthropology: Domains of Application," edited by Satish Kedia and John van Willigen, comprises essays by prominent scholars on the potential, accomplishments, and methods of applied anthropology. Domains covered in the volume include development, agriculture, environment, health and medicine, nutrition, population displacement and resettlement, business and industry, education, and aging. The contributors demonstrate in compelling ways how anthropological knowledge, skills, and methodologies can be put to work in addressing social, economic, health, and technical problems facing...

Applied Anthropology: Domains of Application, edited by Satish Kedia and John van Willigen, comprises essays by prominent scholars on the potential, accomplishments, and methods of applied anthropology. Domains covered in the volume include development, agriculture, environment, health and medicine, nutrition, population displacement and resettlement, business and industry, education, and aging. The contributors demonstrate in compelling ways how anthropological knowledge, skills, and methodologies can be put to work in addressing social, economic, health, and technical problems...

Transnational migration is a controversial and much-discussed issue in both the popular media and the social sciences, but at its heart migration is about individual people making the difficult choice to leave their families and communities in hopes of achieving greater economic prosperity. Vicente Quitasaca is one of these people. In 1995 he left his home in the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca to live and work in New York City. This anthropological story of Vicente's migration and its effects on his life and the lives of his parents and siblings adds a crucial human dimension to statistics...

Winner, William P. Clements Prize, Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America, 2004

Not quite the United States and not quite Mexico, La Junta de los Rios straddles the border between Texas and Chihuahua, occupying the basin formed by the conjunction of the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the Chihuahuan Desert, ranking in age and dignity with the Anasazi pueblos of New Mexico.

In the first comprehensive history of the region, Jefferson Morgenthaler traces the history of La Junta de los Rios from the...

Brazilians are gracious, friendly, fun-loving people, which makes their country a very inviting place to visit for pleasure or business. So great is their cordiality that Brazilians will say "yes" to almost any request--even when they actually mean "no"--which can be quite confusing for U.S. visitors who are used to a more direct style of communication. In fact, as Americans spend time in Brazil, they discover a number of cultural differences that can hamper their communication with Brazilians. To overcome these barriers, this book analyzes Brazilian culture and modes of communication and...

A uniquely Tejano version of the old-fashioned political barbeque, the traditional South Texas pachanga allowed politicians to connect with voters in a relaxed setting where all could enjoy live music and abundant food and drink along with political speeches and dealmaking. Today's pachanga still combines politics, music, and votes--along with a powerful new element. Corporate sponsorships have transformed the pachanga into a major marketing event, replete with celebrity performers and product giveaways, which can be recorded and broadcast on TV or radio to vastly increase the reach of the...

Mourning the death of loved ones and recovering from their loss are universal human experiences, yet the grieving process is as different between cultures as it is among individuals. As late as the 1960s, the Wari' Indians of the western Amazonian rainforest ate the roasted flesh of their dead as an expression of compassion for the deceased and for his or her close relatives. By removing and transforming the corpse, which embodied ties between the living and the dead and was a focus of grief for the family of the deceased, Wari' death rites helped the bereaved kin accept their loss and go...

Dona Marina (La Malinche) ...Pocahontas ...Sacagawea--their names live on in historical memory because these women bridged the indigenous American and European worlds, opening the way for the cultural encounters, collisions, and fusions that shaped the social and even physical landscape of the modern Americas. But these famous individuals were only a few of the many thousands of people who, intentionally or otherwise, served as "go-betweens" as Europeans explored and colonized the New World.

In this innovative history, Alida Metcalf thoroughly investigates the many roles played by...

Winner, Julian Steward Award, Anthropology & Environment Section, American Anthropological Association, 2003

Zapotec farmers in the northern sierra of Oaxaca, Mexico, are highly successful in providing their families with abundant, nutritious food in an ecologically sustainable fashion, although the premises that guide their agricultural practices would be considered erroneous by the standards of most agronomists and botanists in the United States and Europe. In this book, Roberto Gonzalez convincingly argues that in fact Zapotec agricultural and dietary theories and practices...

Traje, the brightly colored traditional dress of the highland Maya, is the principal visual expression of indigenous identity in Guatemala today. Whether worn in beauty pageants, made for religious celebrations, or sold in tourist markets, traje is more than "mere cloth"--it plays an active role in the construction and expression of ethnicity, gender, education, politics, wealth, and nationality for Maya and non-Maya alike.

Carol Hendrickson presents an ethnography of clothing focused on the traje--particularly women's traje--of Tecpan, Guatemala,...

Where more poignantly than in a small country graveyard can a traveler fathom the flow of history and tradition? During the past twenty years, Terry G. Jordan has traveled the back roads and hidden trails of rural Texas in search of such cemeteries. With camera in hand, he has visited more than one thousand cemeteries created and maintained by the Anglo-American, black, Indian, Mexican, and German settlers of Texas. His discoveries of sculptured stones and mounds, hex signs and epitaphs, intricate landscapes and unusual decorations represent a previously unstudied and unappreciated wealth...

Brightly colored and intricately designed, molas have become popular with buyers across the United States, Europe, and Japan, many of whom have never heard of the San Blas Kuna of Panama who make the fabric pictures that adorn the clothing, wall hangings, and other goods we buy.

In this study, Karin Tice explores the impact of the commercialization of mola production on Kuna society, one of the most important, yet least studied, social changes to occur in San Blas in this century. She argues that far from being a cohesive force, commercialization has resulted in social...