Best of
Anthropology

1975

Sociobiology: The New Synthesis


Edward O. Wilson - 1975
    When this classic work was first published in 1975, it created a new discipline and started a tumultuous round in the age-old nature versus nurture debate. Although voted by officers and fellows of the international Animal Behavior Society the most important book on animal behavior of all time, Sociobiology is probably more widely known as the object of bitter attacks by social scientists and other scholars who opposed its claim that human social behavior, indeed human nature, has a biological foundation. The controversy surrounding the publication of the book reverberates to the present day.In the introduction to this Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition, Edward O. Wilson shows how research in human genetics and neuroscience has strengthened the case for a biological understanding of human nature. Human sociobiology, now often called evolutionary psychology, has in the last quarter of a century emerged as its own field of study, drawing on theory and data from both biology and the social sciences.For its still fresh and beautifully illustrated descriptions of animal societies, and its importance as a crucial step forward in the understanding of human beings, this anniversary edition of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis will be welcomed by a new generation of students and scholars in all branches of learning.

Escape from Evil


Ernest Becker - 1975
    From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Denial of Death, a penetrating and insightful perspective on the source of evil in our world."A profound, nourishing book…absolutely essential to the understanding of our troubled times." —Anais Nin"An urgent essay that bears all the marks of a final philosophical raging against the dying of the light." —Newsweek

All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life


Loren Eiseley - 1975
    It was in pursuit of this interest, and in the expression of his natural curiosity and wonder, that Eiseley sprang to national fame with the publication of such works as The Immense Journey and The Firmament of Time. In All the Strange Hours, Eiseley turns his considerable powers of reflection and discovery on his own life to weave a compelling story, related with the modesty, grace, and keen eye for a telling anecdote that distinguish his work. His story begins with his childhood experiences as a sickly afterthought, weighed down by the loveless union of his parents. From there he traces the odyssey that led to his search for early postglacial man—and into inspiriting philosophical territory—culminating in his uneasy achievement of world renown. Eiseley crafts an absorbing self-portrait of a man who has thought deeply about his place in society as well as humanity’s place in the natural world.

Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society


Raymond Williams - 1975
    Now revised to include new words and updated essays, Keywords focuses on the sociology of language, demonstrating how the key words we use to understand our society take on new meanings and how these changes reflect the political bent and values of society.

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema (Reprint Series in Social Sciences)


Horace Miner - 1975
    

The Snow Walker


Farley Mowat - 1975
    In this moving collection, he allows these people to describe in their own words the adventures they experience as they struggle to survive in an isolated, untamed land. Stories of survival and courage, of superstition and fate, of uncompromising loyalty to family and tribe are presented here, offering a vivid portrait of a people whose existence is often beyond the comprehension of modern man.

Woman's Evolution: From Matriarchal Clan to Patriarchal Family


Evelyn Reed - 1975
    Assesses women's leading and still largely unknown contributions to the development of human civilization and refutes the myth that women have always been subordinate to men.

A Street in Marrakech: A Personal View of Urban Women in Morocco


Elizabeth Warnock Fernea - 1975
    As a Western stranger in Marrakech, Fernea was met with suspicion and hostility. The story of the slow growth of trust and acceptance between the author and her Moroccan neighbors involves the reader in everyday activities, weddings, funerals, and women's rituals. Both the author and her friends are changed by the encounters that she describes. A Street in Marrakech is a crosscultural adventure, ethnographically sound, and written in an accessible style. Titles of related interest from Waveland Press: Azoy, Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan, Third Edition (ISBN 9781577667209); Jordan, The Making of a Modern Kingdom: Globalization and Change in Saudi Arabia (ISBN 9781577667025); and Omidian, When Bamboo Bloom (ISBN 9781577667001).

The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost


Jean Liedloff - 1975
    The experience demolished her Western preconceptions of how we should live and led her to a radically different view of what human nature really is. She offers a new understanding of how we have lost much of our natural well-being and shows us practical ways to regain it for our children and for ourselves.

Personality Theories: Basic Assumption, Research and Applications


Larry A. Hjelle - 1975
    This edition retains a distinctive presentation of theories on the framework of their underlying basic assumptions. This edition has been thoroughly updated mixing research and personal applications in each chapter. Some new theorists have been added and a new chapter covers research methods, assessment techniques and ethical issues. Now available with the third edition, a current research application manual.

The Nacirema: Readings on American Culture


James P. Spradley - 1975
    The existence of a national culture is illustrated in a collection of anthropological essays considering social values, beliefs, and practices in the United States.The title is inspired by the essay "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" by Horace Miner in American Anthropologist, 1956, 58(3), 503-507.

The Gentle Tasaday: A Stone Age People in the Philippine Rain Forest


John Nance - 1975
    

December's Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives


Thomas C. Blackburn - 1975
    Anderson, University of California, Riverside in The Journal of California Anthropology, Vol. 2, No. 2 (WINTER 1975), pp. 241-244:A child born in December is "like a baby in an ecstatic condition, but he leaves this condition" (p. 102). The Chumash, reduced by the 20th century from one of the richest and most populous groups in California to a pitiful remnant, had almost lost their strage and ecstatic mental world by the time John Peabody Harrington set out to collect what was still remembered of their language and oral literature. Working with a handful of ancient informants, Harrington recorded all he could--then, in bitter rejection of the world, kept it hidden and unpublished. After his death there began a great quest for his scattered notes, and these notes are now being published at last. Thomas Blackburn, among the first and most assiduous of the seekers through Harrington's materials, has published her the main body of oral literature that Harrington collected from the Chumash of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties. Blackburn has done much more: he has added to the 111 stories a commentary and analysis, almost book-length in its own right, and a glossary of the Chumash and Californian-Spanish terms that Harrington was prone to leave untranslated in the texts.

An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs


Sylvanus Griswold Morley - 1975
    Extremely full in interpretation; very thorough in exposition of variants and unusual features, with reproductions of many inscriptions unavailable elsewhere. Material from Old and New Empires. Includes an Introduction by noted Mayologist J. Eric S. Thompson.

Field Methods in Archaeology


Thomas R. Hester - 1975
    The contributors to the volume bring a wealth of expertise on diverse subjects and offer practical advice on their areas of special interest.

Legitimation of Belief


Ernest Gellner - 1975
    

The People's Land: Eskimos and Whites in the Eastern Arctic


Hugh Brody - 1975
    His book, The People's Land , describes their recent past with sympathy and indignation. He tells how the Whites came as fur traders and missionaries -- and stayed on as administrators, transferring their suburban world incongruously to the north.The predicament of the contemporary Inuit is deeply troubling, embodying as it does -- within a very short history -- the destructive processes and social deformations that colonialism everywhere entails. As the author writes in the Foreword, this book "is a way of expressing my solidarity with the people who have so tirelessly tried to help me understand what is happening to them now and what they fear might happen to them in the future."

The Christian Looks at Himself


Anthony A. Hoekema - 1975
    What kind of self-image should Christians have? Should they see themselves primarily as unworthy sinners before a holy God? The biblical view, Anthony A. Hoekema argues in this brief and readable study, is that man, having been made in God's own image, was the capstone of God's creation. Even when he fell, God considered him of such worth that he gave up his only Son to redeem him. And in Christ, as Paul makes plain, men are made into new creatures. This does not mean that the redeemed live a life of sinless perfection; it does mean that what is most distinctive about them is the new life they have in Christ. And this new life entitles Christians to a self-image which is essentially positive. But accepting the biblical view of their worth can be difficult for Christians burdened with feelings of guilt. How can such Christians learn to see themselves in a better light? And how can others in the Christian community — preachers, counselors, teachers, parents — help fellow members to attain the positive self-image that is essential to the Christian faith? Part Two of The Christian Looks at Himself offers concrete answers to these questions and in doing so points up the social dimension of being in Christ. As the Christian accepts himself as a creature made new in Christ, so in love he must also fully accept fellow Christians as recreated in that same Christ.

Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology


Mary Douglas - 1975
    This book provides a splendid answer as to why anthropology goes on mattering and also to why no surgery can separate it from sociology '-The Economist from the reviews of the first edition This new edition of a classic work provides an excellent introduction to the thought of anthropologist Mary Douglas. First published to great acclaim in 1975, Mary Douglas has now revised the text to include additional chapters and a new introduction.Implicit Meanings includes writings on the key themes which are associated with Mary Douglas's work and which have had a major influence on anthropological thought, such as: *food *pollution *risk *animals *myth. Among the new pieces inluded in this edition are: The Lele of the Kasai * Techniques of Socrcery Control in Central Africa * The Lele Revisited * Obituary of Godfrey Lienhardt * The Depolitzation of Risk * Rightness of Categories

Cultural Anthropology


Paul G. Hiebert - 1975
    This introduction to the field of cultural anthropology from a Christian perspective exposes students to the excitement and significance of human history and culture.

Demon Possession: A Medical, Historical, Anthropological, and Theological Symposium


John Warwick Montgomery - 1975
    The uncanny phenomenon, seen through the eyes of doctors, psychiatrists, historians, anthropologists, and theologians.

The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy


Jeffrey Henderson - 1975
    This acclaimed book, now in a new edition, offers both a comprehensive discussion of the dynamics of Greek obscenity and a detailed commentary on the terminology itself.After contrasting the peculiar characteristics of the Greek notion of obscenity to modern-day ideas, Henderson discusses obscenity's role in the development of Attic Comedy, its historical origins, varieties, and dramatic function. His analysis of obscene terminology sheds new light on Greek culture, and his discussion of Greek homosexuality offers a refreshing corrective to the idealized Platonic view. He also looks in detail at the part obscenity plays in each of Aristophanes' eleven surviving plays. The latter part of the book identifies all the obscene terminology found in the extant examples of Attic Comedy, both complete plays and fragments. Although these terminological entries are arranged in numbered paragraphs resembling a glossary, they can also be read as independent essays on the various aspects of comic obscenity. Terms are explained as they occur in each individual context and in relation to typologically similar terminology. With newly corrected and updated philological material, this second edition of Maculate Muse will serve as an invaluable reference work for the study of Greek drama.

Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual


Victor Turner - 1975
    Written by an internationally-known social scientist, the book demonstrates how the study of small-scale events may reveal as much about what it means to be a human being in society as do grand macrosocial and macrocultural surveys.Drawing on two and a half years of fieldwork, Victor Turner offers two thorough ethnographic studies of Ndembu revelatory ritual and divinatory techniques, with running commentaries on symbolism by a variety of Ndembu informants. Striking a personal note in the introductory chapter, Turner acknowledges his indebtedness to Ndembu ritualists for alerting him to the theoretical relevance of symbolic action in understanding human societies. He believes that ritual symbols, like botanists' stains, enable us to detect and trace the movement of social processes and relationships that often lie below the level of direct observation.

The Peoples of Kenya


Joy Adamson - 1975
    

Origins of the State and Civilization


Elman Rogers Service - 1975
    

Games Nations Play


John W. Spanier - 1975
    The authors also reveal the disturbing continuation of the dangerous adversary games that nations play.

All Silver and No Brass


Henry Glassie - 1975
    . . . This book is most impressive and can be recommended for any level of adult audience."--"Choice" "A beautifully written exploration of a vanishing holiday ritual that can be traced back to the dramas of the sixteenth century and beyond." --"Philadelphia Inquirer" "An excellent book recommended both to the student of literature and the general reader interested in folklore."--"Irish Echo" "A magnificently comprehensive book. . . . Whether you are a mumming or Wran Boy enthusiast or not, this beautifully produced book will take you into a world of suspended reality, gone, but not quite."--"Books Ireland" "Glassie has captured the authentic tang of the Ulster countryman's speech, laconic with surprising shots of hyperbole. . . . A beautifully produced book."--"Irish Independent" For the general reader as for the folklorist, this is a fascinating, vivid, and sensitive account that, through its portraits of individuals and of a community, offers a unique insight into a folk custom of the Christmas season. Henry Glassie is College Professor of Folklore at Indiana University. He is the author of "Art and Life in Bangladesh," "Irish Folktales," "The Spirit of Folk Art," and "Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States," which is also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. 1976 224 pages 6 x 9 1/4 27 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-1139-9 Paper $24.95s 16.50 World Rights Anthropology, Cultural Studies

World of the Past


Jacquetta Hawkes - 1975
    Volume One is 601 pages. Volume Two is 709 pages. The set covers "a world -wide history of archaeology and its greatest discoveries, area by area, in the eloquent words of the original discoverers, observers, and interpreters".

Encounter with an Angry God: Recollections of My Life with John Peabody Harrington


Carobeth Laird - 1975
    It was in a summer class in 1915 that Carobeth Laird first met him, handsome and sun-tanned from the field. Her story of their seven-year marriage, written when she was in her seventies and published when she was eighty years old, is a compelling tale that has sold over 250,000 copies. In one sense a chronicle of what it meant to an anthropologist in the early twentieth century, it is also a love story, portraying the curious triangle that developed when a Chemehuevi informant entered the lives of Harrington and the young wife he drove as ruthlessly as he did himself.

Principles of Visual Anthropology


Paul Hockings - 1975
    The book covers ethnographic filming and its relations to the cinema and television; applications of filming to anthropological research, the uses of still photography, archives, and videotape; subdisciplinary applications in ethnography, archeology, bio-anthropology, museology and ethnohistory; and overcoming the funding problems of film production.

Toward an Anthropology of Women


Rayna R. Reiter - 1975
    Collected studies explore sexual equality and inequality in various societies and provide a foundation for social change.

Literacy in Traditional Societies


Jack Goody - 1975
    It objectifies speech, provides language with a material correlative, and in this material form speech can be transmitted over space and preserved over time. In this book the contributors discuss cultures at different levels of sophistication and literacy and examine the importance of writing on the development of these societies. All the articles except the first were specially written for this book and the extensive introduction unites and synthesizes the material.

Psychology of the Mexican: Culture and Personality


R. Diaz-Guerrero - 1975
    Díaz-Guerrero combines a strong theoretical interest in the relationship of culture to personality with a pragmatic concern for methodology. This collection of essays is rooted both in studies of Mexican psychology as an independent phenomenon and in cross-cultural comparisons of Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and Anglo-Americans. Dr. Díaz-Guerrero discusses Mexican attitudes toward sex roles and the family, motivations of the Mexican worker, and other topics. He compares Mexican and American concepts of respect and analyzes the relation between neurosis and the Mexican family structure. He attempts to determine the degree of mental, personal, and social health of urban Mexicans. The importance of basic sociocultural premises, such as "The mother is the dearest person in existence," and "The stricter the parents are, the better the children turn out," is explored. In one essay, Díaz-Guerrero notes the differences in typical reactions to stress in Mexico and the United States, concluding that the American pattern involves active response to stress, whereas the Mexican response tends to be more passive. Psychology of the Mexican deals with a variety of historical, psychological, biological, social, economic, and anthropological variables, attempting to treat them in a scientific way through the use of carefully constructed questionnaires, with detailed statistical analyses of the results. On the basis of data obtained in this way, the author formulates broad conceptual schemes with immediate application to the understanding of human behavior in real situations. He is particularly intrigued by the way the individual relates to the significant people in his environment. For the Mexican, he says, such interpersonal relationships are the most important part of life; in contrast to the American insistence on liberty and equality, Mexican culture emphasizes affiliation and love.

Reading Castaneda: A Prologue to the Social Sciences


David Silverman - 1975
    Using material largely from Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan, David Silverman here seeks to introduce the student of Sociology to some of the central epistemological concerns of social science. First published in 1975, the title assumes no previous knowledge of Castaneda but instead uses his work as a springboard to wider issues, in particular making sense of our reality and understanding each other by using language and communication. This is an interesting reissue, which will be of particular value to students of the sociology of language and communication, as well as Communication Studies more generally.

When the Spider Danced: Notes from an African Village


Alexander Alland - 1975
    

The Shaman and the Jaguar: A Study of Narcotic Drugs Among the Indians of Colombia


Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff - 1975