Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Anthropology - General

Through a critical analysis of ancient African texts that predate Greco-Roman treatises Cecil Blake revisits the roots of rhetorical theory and challenges what is often advanced as the "darkness metaphor" -- the rhetorical construction of Africa and Africans. Blake offers a thorough examination of Ptah-hotep and core African ethical principles (Maat) and engages rhetorical scholarship within the wider discourse of African development. In so doing, he establishes a direct relationship between rhetoric and development studies in non-western societies and highlights the prospect for applying...

Does multiculturalism work ? Does multiculturalism policy create social cohesion, or undermine it? Multiculturalism was introduced in Canada in the 1970s and widely adopted internationally, but more recently has been hotly debated, amid new concerns about social, cultural, and political impacts of immigration. Advocates praise multiculturalism for its emphasis on special recognition for cultural minorities as facilitating their social integration, while opponents charge that multiculturalism threatens social cohesion by encouraging social isolation.

Multiculturalism is thus rooted...

This book assembles researchers in demography, statistics, political science, sociology, anthropology, history, geography, economics and law to offer fresh insight on the demographic causes and consequences of armed conflict. Cause studies consider migration, ethnicity, population growth and youth bulges. Studies on consequences of conflict include mortality from conflict, casualty estimation for prosecution of war crimes, and case studies of conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Kenya, Mali, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda.

"An essential addition to the bookshelves of Mayanists and anyone interested in long-term processes of culture change."--Edward Schortman, Kenyon College

"Spans time, space, and disciplines to present well-rounded and actively contested views of the southeastern Guatemala and the northern frontier areas of Honduras and El Salvador. The diversity of the authors and their themes brings something for every reader, including the Ch'orti'."--Judith M. Maxwell, Tulane University

The Ch'orti' area--located in present-day Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador--was once the southernmost...

How does the experience of sickness, death, and loss change over time? We know that the incidence and virulence of particular diseases have varied from one period to another, as has their medical treatment. But what was it like for the individuals who suffered and died from those illnesses, for the health practitioners and institutions that attended to them, and for the families who buried and mourned them?

In Shadows in the Valley, Alan Swedlund addresses these questions by closely examining the history of mortality in several small communities in western Massachusetts from the...

Fights, fraud and drugs racketeering regularly hit the headlines, but they are just news stories for most of us. For others, they constitute a way of life. This book uncovers a world where male identity is expressed each day through physical strength and power. Focusing on professional criminals and violent men, the author shows how workshop camaraderie, hard physical work and criminal reputations allow for changing masculinities. It is all too easy to stereotype criminals, when, in fact, their world is complex and creative. Criminal men adapt and modify their forms of gender expression to...

In the early 1970s many social scientists and critics noted the emergence of a new elite based in the -Knowledge Industry- and pitted against the old business-based middle class both politically and culturally. Because of its close ties to academia and the media, this New Class was conceived by both its critics and its proponents to be in an advantageous position to influence the rest of society. The Hidden Technocrats attempts to delineate the features of the New Class phenomenon and map its structural location in contemporary American and Western European societies.

In...

This is the third in the series of volumes of essays that Robin Fox began with Reproduction and Succession and continued with The Challenge of Anthropology. Fox who has been described as "the conscience of anthropology" continues to have the same aim: to expose readers in the social sciences and beyond to the consequences of "the biosocial orientation," and to assess the "state of the art" in anthropology in particular and the social sciences in general.

As always he encompasses a wide range of topics: Why do bureaucracies fail? Are we really an innovative animal?...