Best of
Anthropology

2001

A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons


Robert M. Sapolsky - 2001
    An exhilarating account of Sapolsky’s twenty-one-year study of a troop of rambunctious baboons in Kenya, A Primate’s Memoir interweaves serious scientific observations with wry commentary about the challenges and pleasures of living in the wilds of the Serengeti — for man and beast alike. Over two decades, Sapolsky survives culinary atrocities, gunpoint encounters, and a surreal kidnapping, while witnessing the encroachment of the tourist mentality on the farthest vestiges of unspoiled Africa. As he conducts unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes evermore enamored of his subjects — unique and compelling characters in their own right — and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevents him.By turns hilarious and poignant, A Primate’s Memoir is a magnum opus from one of our foremost science writers.

Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing


Robert Wolff - 2001
    Deep in the mountainous jungle of Malaysia the aboriginal Sng'oi exist on the edge of extinction, though their way of living may ultimately be the kind of existence that will allow us all to survive. The Sng'oi--pre-industrial, pre-agricultural, semi-nomadic--live without cars or cell phones, without clocks or schedules in a lush green place where worry and hurry, competition and suspicion are not known. Yet these indigenous people--as do many other aboriginal groups--possess an acute and uncanny sense of the energies, emotions, and intentions of their place and the living beings who populate it, and trustingly follow this intuition, using it to make decisions about their actions each day. Psychologist Robert Wolff lived with the Sng'oi, learned their language, shared their food, slept in their huts, and came to love and admire these people who respect silence, trust time to reveal and heal, and live entirely in the present with a sense of joy. Even more, he came to recognize the depth of our alienation from these basic qualities of life. Much more than a document of a disappearing people, Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing holds a mirror to our own existence, allowing us to see how far we have wandered from the ways of the intuitive and trusting Sng'oi, and challenges us, in our fragmented world, to rediscover this humanity within ourselves.

Light at the Edge of the World


Wade Davis - 2001
    In Light at the Edge of the World, Davis—best known for The Serpent and the Rainbow—presents an intimate survey of the ethnosphere in 80 striking photographs taken over the course of his wide exploration. In eloquent accompanying text, Davis takes readers deep into worlds few Westerners will ever experience, worlds that are fading away even as he writes. From the Canadian Arctic and the rain forests of Borneo to the Amazon and the towering mountains of Tibet, readers are awakened to the rituals, beliefs, and lives of the Waorani, the Penan, the Inuit, and many other unique and endangered traditional cultures. The result is a haunting and enlightening realization of the limitless potential of the human imagination of life. While globalization has become the battle cry of the 21st century, Davis's magisterial work points out that the erosion of the ethnosphere will diminish us all. “The human imagination is vast, fluid, infinite in its capacity for social and spiritual invention,” he writes, and reminds us that “there are other means of interpreting our existence, other ways of being.”

The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead


Heather Pringle - 2001
    Pringle tells how mummies have been venerated as saints, fought over by politicians, collected as artistic treasures and investigated for clues to ancient civilization's drug use. In these pages lie child mummies of northern Chile, preserved household pets of ancient Egypt and the new crop of mummification services being hyped on the internet. A powerful and stimulating look at mummies, The Mummy Congress also turns our vision inwards towards our fears of mortality and our dreams of eternal life.

Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity


David Hurst Thomas - 2001
    The explosive controversy and resulting lawsuit also raised a far more fundamental question: Who owns history? Many Indians see archeologists as desecrators of tribal rites and traditions; archeologists see their livelihoods and science threatened by the 1990 Federal reparation law, which gives tribes control over remains in their traditional territories.In this new work, Thomas charts the riveting story of this lawsuit, the archeologists' deteriorating relations with American Indians, and the rise of scientific archeology. His telling of the tale gains extra credence from his own reputation as a leader in building cooperation between the two sides.

Holocaust Survivor


Mike Jacobs - 2001
    With great clarity, Jacobs recounts five years of confinement in ghettos and concentration camps. A story told without hatred or bitterness, "Holocaust Survivor" teaches us that when we recognize that freedom comes from within, we are never completely powerless.

Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams


David Graeber - 2001
    David Graeber reexamines a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out of quandaries in current social theory, which have become critical at the present moment of ideological collapse in the face of Neoliberalism. Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects of cultural comparison are in a sense necessarily revolutionary projects: He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss, arguing that these figures represent two extreme, but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical processes, and recasts value as a model of human meaning-making, which far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist paradigms.

Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society


Beth A. Conklin - 2001
    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 on with their lives. Drawing on the recollections of Wari’ elders who participated in consuming the dead, this book presents one of the richest, most authoritative ethnographic accounts of funerary cannibalism ever recorded. Beth Conklin explores Wari’ conceptions of person, body, and spirit, as well as indigenous understandings of memory and emotion, to explain why the Wari’ felt that corpses must be destroyed and why they preferred cannibalism over cremation. Her findings challenge many commonly held beliefs about cannibalism and show why, in Wari’ terms, it was considered the most honorable and compassionate way of treating the dead.

On the Postcolony


Achille Mbembe - 2001
    In On the Postcolony he profoundly renews our understanding of power and subjectivity in Africa. In a series of provocative essays, Mbembe contests diehard Africanist and nativist perspectives as well as some of the key assumptions of postcolonial theory.This thought-provoking and groundbreaking collection of essays—his first book to be published in English—develops and extends debates first ignited by his well-known 1992 article "Provisional Notes on the Postcolony," in which he developed his notion of the "banality of power" in contemporary Africa. Mbembe reinterprets the meanings of death, utopia, and the divine libido as part of the new theoretical perspectives he offers on the constitution of power. He works with the complex registers of bodily subjectivity — violence, wonder, and laughter — to profoundly contest categories of oppression and resistance, autonomy and subjection, and state and civil society that marked the social theory of the late twentieth century.This provocative book will surely attract attention with its signal contribution to the rich interdisciplinary arena of scholarship on colonial and postcolonial discourse, history, anthropology, philosophy, political science, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism.

Introduction to Forensic Anthropology


Steven N. Byers - 2001
    This one-of-a-kind text offers comprehensive coverage of all of the major topics in the field of forensics with accuracy, intensity, and clarity. Extensive illustrations and photos ensure that the text is accessible for students. As one reviewer says, There is no other source available that is so comprehensive in its coverage of the methods and issues in the current practice of forensic anthropology. Another raves, The first edition has been a big hit with my students, and I have been very pleased with the ease with which this text has corresponded to my class lecture structure...I am anxiously awaiting the next edition!

The Ape and the Sushi Master: Reflections of a Primatologist


Frans de Waal - 2001
    The book's title derives from an analogy de Waal draws between the way behavior is transmitted in ape society and the way sushi-making skills are passed down from sushi master to apprentice. Like the apprentice, young apes watch their group mates at close range, absorbing the methods and lessons of each of their elders' actions. Responses long thought to be instinctive are actually learned behavior, de Waal argues, and constitute ape culture. A delightful mix of intriguing anecdote, rigorous clinical study, adventurous field work, and fascinating speculation, The Ape and the Sushi Master shows that apes are not human caricatures but members of our extended family with their own resourcefulness and dignity.

Tree of Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell Us about Human Social Evolution


Frans de Waal - 2001
    In Tree of Origin nine of the world's top primate experts read these clues and compose the most extensive picture to date of what the behavior of monkeys and apes can tell us about our own evolution as a species.It has been nearly fifteen years since a single volume addressed the issue of human evolution from a primate perspective, and in that time we have witnessed explosive growth in research on the subject. Tree of Origin gives us the latest news about bonobos, the make love not war apes who behave so dramatically unlike chimpanzees. We learn about the tool traditions and social customs that set each ape community apart. We see how DNA analysis is revolutionizing our understanding of paternity, intergroup migration, and reproductive success. And we confront intriguing discoveries about primate hunting behavior, politics, cognition, diet, and the evolution of language and intelligence that challenge claims of human uniqueness in new and subtle ways.Tree of Origin provides the clearest glimpse yet of the apelike ancestor who left the forest and began the long journey toward modern humanity.

Chosen by the Spirits: Following Your Shamanic Calling


Sarangerel - 2001
    • Includes complete directions for traditional Siberian rituals, meditations, and divination techniques never before published. • Shows how to recognize and acknowledge a call from the spirits. • Offers traditional wisdom for nurturing a working relationship with personal spirit helpers to promote healing and balance in a community. The shaman's purpose is to heal and restore balance to his or her community by developing a working relationship with the spirit world. Mongolian shamanic tradition maintains that all true shamans are called by the spirits--but those who are not from shamanic cultures may have difficulty recognizing the call or nurturing the essential shamanic relationship with their helper spirits. Buryat shamaness Sarangerel has written Chosen by the Spirits as a guide for both the beginning shaman and the advanced practitioner. Although raised in the United States, she was drawn to the shamanic tradition, and in 1991 returned to her ancestral homeland in the Tunken region of southern Siberia to study with traditional Buryat shamans. Her first book, Riding Windhorses, provided an introduction to the shamanic world of Siberia. Chosen by the Spirits delves more deeply into the personal relationship between the shamanic student and his or her "spirit family." Sarangerel recounts her own journey into shamanic practice and provides the serious student with practical advice and hands-on techniques for recognizing and acknowledging a shamanic calling, welcoming and embodying the spirits, journeying to the spirit world, and healing both people and places.

Edward S. Curtis: Coming to Light


Anne Makepeace - 2001
    An intimate biography of the photographer known for his portraits of the American Indians explores the lasting impact of his work, which serves as a bridge between the romantic past and contemporary Native American communities, and details his life, including his impoverished boyhood, rise to succe

An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body


Hans Belting - 2001
    Rather than focus exclusively on pictures as they are embodied in various media such as painting, sculpture, or photography, he links pictures to our mental images and therefore our bodies. The body is understood as a living medium that produces, perceives, or remembers images that are different from the images we encounter through handmade or technical pictures. Refusing to reduce images to their material embodiment yet acknowledging the importance of the historical media in which images are manifested, An Anthropology of Images presents a challenging and provocative new account of what pictures are and how they function.The book demonstrates these ideas with a series of compelling case studies, ranging from Dante's picture theory to post-photography. One chapter explores the tension between image and medium in two media of the body, the coat of arms and the portrait painting. Another, central chapter looks at the relationship between image and death, tracing picture production, including the first use of the mask, to early funerary rituals in which pictures served to represent the missing bodies of the dead. Pictures were tools to re-embody the deceased, to make them present again, a fact that offers a surprising clue to the riddle of presence and absence in most pictures and that reveals a genealogy of pictures obscured by Platonic picture theory.

How to Keep Your Language Alive: A Commonsense Approach to One-On-One Language Learning


Leanne Hinton - 2001
    How to Keep Your Language Alive is a manual for students of all languages, from Yurok to Yiddish, Washoe to Welsh, complete with exercises that can -- and should -- be done in the most ordinary of settings, written with great simplicity and directness by a member of the linguistics faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Complete Yurt Handbook


Paul King - 2001
    It is easy to erect and can be taken down in an hour. It is cool in summer and, with a stove, warm in winter. For centuries, people throughout central Asia have made yurts their homes. Robust and versatile, the yurt has evolved into the ultimate portable dwelling.Yurts are perfect for offices, summer houses, meditation spaces, spare rooms, or just beautifully satisfying spaces to be in! Join the thousands of North Americans who are discovering the many virtues of the yurt.Part One of the book delves into the history of the yurt and the principles behind its construction, and explores modern life in a Mongolian ger and the culture and etiquette of ger living.Part Two gives fully illustrated and detailed instructions on how to make several of the most popular types of yurt, including the "weekend yurt." With a few common wood-working tools, even an absolute beginner could build the frame for this simple, elegant structure.

Skateboarding, Space and the City: Architecture and the Body


Iain Borden - 2001
    We are all aware of their often extraordinary talent and manoeuvres on the city streets. This book is the first detailed study of the urban phenomenon of skateboarding. It looks at skateboarding history from the surf-beaches of California in the 1950s, through the purpose-built skateparks of the 1970s, to the street-skating of the present day and shows how skateboarders experience and understand the city through their sport. Dismissive of authority and convention, skateboarders suggest that the city is not just a place for working and shopping but a true pleasure-ground, a place where the human body, emotions and energy can be expressed to the full.The huge skateboarding subculture that revolves around graphically-designed clothes and boards, music, slang and moves provides a rich resource for exploring issues of gender, race, class, sexuality and the family. As the author demonstrates, street-style skateboarding, especially characteristic of recent decades, conducts a performative critique of architecture, the city and capitalism. Anyone interested in the history and sociology of sport, urban geography or architecture will find this book riveting.

Don't Get Above Your Raisin': Country Music and the Southern Working Class


Bill C. Malone - 2001
    Malone explores how the music's defining themes (home and family, religion, rambling, frolic, humor, and politics) have emerged out of the particularities of working people's day-to-day lives. He traces the many contradictory voices and messages of a music that simultaneously extols the virtues of home and the joys of rambling, the assurances of the Christian life and the ecstasies of hedonism, the strength of working-class life and the material lure of middle-class aspirations. The resulting tensions, Malone argues, are a major reason for the music's enduring appeal.

The Age of Wild Ghosts: Memory, Violence, and Place in Southwest China


Erik Mueggler - 2001
    Here, people describe the present age, beginning with the Great Leap Famine of 1958-1960 and continuing through the 1990s, as "the age of wild ghosts." Their stories of this age converge on a dream of community—a bad dream, embodied in the life, death, and reawakening of a single institution: a rotating headman-ship system that expired violently under the Maoist regime. Displaying a sensitive understanding of both Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman language spoken in this region, Mueggler explores memories of this institution, including the rituals and poetics that once surrounded it and the bitter conflicts that now haunt it.To exorcise "wild ghosts," he shows, is nothing less than to imagine the state and its power, to trace the responsibility for violence to its morally ambiguous origins, and to enunciate calls for justice and articulate longings for reconciliation.

In the Kingdom of Gorillas: Fragile Species in a Dangerous Land


Bill Weber - 2001
    Poaching was rampant, but it was loss of habitat that most endangered the gorillas. Weber and Vedder realized that the gorillas were doomed unless something was done to save their forest home. Over Fossey's objections, they helped found the Mountain Gorilla Project, which would inform Rwandans about the gorillas and the importance of conservation, while at the same time establishing an ecotourism project -- one of the first anywhere in a rainforest -- to bring desperately needed revenue to Rwanda. In the Kingdom of Gorillas introduces readers to entire families of gorillas, from powerful silverback patriarchs to helpless newborn infants. Weber and Vedder take us with them as they slog through the rain-soaked mountain forests, observing the gorillas at rest and at play. Today the population of mountain gorillas is the highest it has been since the 1960s, and there is new hope for the species' fragile future even as the people of Rwanda strive to overcome ethnic and political differences.

The Gift to be Simple: Life in the Amish Country


Bill Coleman - 2001
    From breadmaking to haymaking to community barn raisings, he takes readers on a visual journey through a Pennsylvanian valley largely untouched by tourists and the trappings of modern existence. Whether it's a buggy traversing a winter farmscape, a woman quilting, or a group of children at play, Coleman captures with a perceptive eye the one unique and telling gesture that reveals the character of an individual and a community. The images gathered here--authentic in their subject matter and utterly simple in their presentation--celebrate the beauty and grace of a time-honored way of life.

The History and Culture of Japanese Food


Naomichi Ishige - 2001
    The History and Culture of Japanese Food provides an in-depth historical view of the origins of the Japanese diet and foodways.

Post-Colonial Transformation


Bill Ashcroft - 2001
    In his new book, Bill Ashcroft gives us a revolutionary view of the ways in which post-colonial societies have responded to colonial control.The most comprehensive analysis of major features of post-colonial studies ever compiled, Post-Colonial Transformation: * demonstrates how widespread the strategy of transformation has been* investigates political and literary resistance* examines the nature of post-colonial societies' engagement with imperial language, history, allegory, and place* offers radical new perspectives in post-colonial theory in principles of habitation and horizonality.Post-Colonial Transformation breaks new theoretical ground while demonstrating the relevance of a wide range of theoretical practices, and extending the exploration of topics fundamentally important to the field of post-colonial studies.

Book of Peoples of the World: A Guide to Cultures


Wade Davis - 2001
    National Geographic’s Book of Peoples of the World propels that important quest with concern, authority, and respect. Created by a team of experts, this hands-on resource offers thorough coverage of more than 200 ethnic groups—some as obscure as the Kallawaya of the Peruvian Andes, numbering fewer than 1,000; others as widespread as the Bengalis of India, 172 million strong. We’re swept along on a global tour of beliefs, traditions, and challenges, observing the remarkable diversity of human ways as well as the shared experiences. Spectacular photographs reveal how people define themselves and their worlds. Specially commissioned maps show how human beings have developed culture in response to environment. Thought-provoking text examines not only the societies and the regions that produced them, but also the notion of ethnicity itself—its immense impact on history, the effects of immigration on cultural identity, and the threats facing many groups today. Threading through the story are the extraordinary findings of the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project—a research initiative to catalog DNA from people around the world, decoding the great map of human migration embedded in our own genetic makeup.At once a comprehensive reference, an appreciation of diversity, and a thoughtful look at our instinct to belong, this uplifting book explores what it means to be human and alive.

Bones: Discovering the First Americans


Elaine Dewar - 2001
    These bones, award-winning investigative journalist Elaine Dewar asserts, challenge the accepted theory that the first Americans descend from a Mongoloid people who migrated across the Bering land bridge to Alaska at the end of the Ice Age 11,000 years ago. With Native American activists, white supremacists, DNA experts, and physical anthropologists—all vying for control of ancient bones like those of the Caucasoid Kennewick Man—Dewar explores the politics of archaeology, history, law, native spirituality, and race relations at work in this scientific battlefield. She reports, too, on the contention among the experts over alternative theories that suggest the New World may have been populated as early as 60,000 years ago, perhaps by Polynesian voyagers who sailed to South America. "Bound to shake archaeologists out of their complacency."—Canadian Geographic "Provocative ... likely to rattle the old bones of orthodoxy."—Calgary Herald

Shamans Through Time


Jeremy Narby - 2001
    As written by priests, explorers, adventurers, natural historians, and anthropologists, the pieces express the wonder of strangers in new worlds. Who were these extraordinary magic-makers who imitated the sounds of animals in the night, or drank tobacco juice through funnels, or wore collars filled with stinging ants?Shamans Through Time is a rare chronicle of changing attitudes toward that which is strange and unfamiliar. With essays by such acclaimed thinkers as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Black Elk, Carlos Castaneda, and Frank Boas, it provides an awesome glimpse into the incredible shamanic practices of cultures around the world.

City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo


Teresa P.R. Caldeira - 2001
    Focusing on São Paulo, and using comparative data on Los Angeles, she identifies new patterns of segregation developing in these cities and suggests that these patterns are appearing in many metropolises.

ThePenguin Dictionary of English Idioms by Hinds-Howell, David G. ( Author ) ON Mar-29-2001, Paperback


Daphne M. Gulland - 2001
    This dictionary has been completely revised for its second edition and includes 2,000 new idioms. It provides clear and concise definitions and explains how the idioms should be used. At the same time, the dictionary's thematic arrangement makes it possible not only to study and compare all the idioms in a given subject area, but to match the right one to the right occasion.

Chauvet Cave: The Art of Earliest Times


Jean Clottes - 2001
    The full-color photographs make this tightly restricted site accessible to all.

Yellowstone & Grand Teton Wildlife


Henry Holdsworth - 2001
    But most people are there only in the summer. This collection brings everyone year-round coverage of all the parks' animals, large and small. In turn beautiful, amusing, and artistic, Holdworth's photographs take readers into all corners of the parks, in all seasons.Henry Holdsworth has spent two decades living in and photographing the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem while not traveling on assignment. His images have appeared in many national periodicals and books. He and his family live in Jackson, Wyoming.

The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice: Toward a Sustainable World


Leanne Hinton - 2001
    We all stand to suffer from such a loss, none of us more so than those whose unique expressiveness is threatened by the possible death of their languages. In response to the crisis, communities around the world have begun to develop ways to keep their languages alive.

Palmer: Evolutionary Psychology


Jack A. Palmer - 2001
     10 short chapters introduce the reader to the major topics within the field of evolutionary psychology (from "Social Order and Disorder" to "Mating and Reproduction" to "The Creative Impulse: The Origins of Technology and Art"). For psychologists, students, or anyone interested in evolutionary psychology.

Worked to the Bone: A History of Race, Class, Power, and Privilege in Kentucky


Pem Davidson Buck - 2001
    In an elegant and accessible style that combines thoroughly documented sociological insight with her own compelling personal narrative, Pem Buck illustrates the ways in which constructions of race and the promise of white privilege have been used at specific historical moments to divide those in the United Statesspecifically, in two Kentucky countieswho might have otherwise acted on common class interests. From the initial creation of the concept of "whiteness" and early strategies focused on convincing Europeans, regardless of their class position, to identify with the eliteto believe that what was good for the elite was good for themto the moment between 1750 and 1800 when most people who were identified by their European descent finally came to believe that skin color was as integral to their identity as gender, the promise of white privilege underpinned the Kentucky system. Pem Buck examines the long term effects of these developments and discusses their impact on the lives of working people in Kentucky. She also analyzes the role of local tobacco-growing and corporate elites in the underdevelopment of the state, highlighting the ways in which relationships between poor white and poor black working people were continuously manipulated to facilitate that process. Documentary material includes speeches, songs, photographs, charts, cartoons, and ads presented in a large, visually appealing format.

Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse


Laura E. Donaldson - 2001
    Contributors examine white feminist theology's misappropriations of Native North American women, Chinese footbinding, and veiling by Muslim women, as well as the Jewish emancipation in France, the symbolic dismemberment of black women by rap and sermons, and the potential to rewrite and reclaim canonical stories.

Dreaming Equality: Color, Race, and Racism in Urban Brazil


Robin E. Sheriff - 2001
    In so doing, he proposed that Brazil was relatively free of most forms of racial prejudice and could best be understood as a “racial democracy.” Over time this view has grown into the popular myth that racism in Brazil is very mild or nonexistent.This myth contrasts starkly with the realities of a pernicious racial inequality that permeates every aspect of Brazilian life. To study the grip of this myth on African Brazilians’ views of themselves and their nation, Robin E. Sheriff spent twenty months in a primarily black shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, studying the inhabitants’s views of race and racism. How, she asks, do poor African Brazilians experience and interpret racism in a country where its very existence tends to be publicly denied? How is racism talked about privately in the family and publicly in the community—or is it talked about at all?Sheriff’s analysis is particularly important because most Brazilians live in urban settings, and her examination of their views of race and racism sheds light on common but underarticulated racial attitudes. This book is the first to demonstrate that urban African Brazilians do not subscribe to the racial democracy myth and recognize racism as a central factor shaping their lives.

On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West


Ien Ang - 2001
    The starting point for Ang's discussion is the experience of visiting Taiwan. Ang, a person of Chinese descent, born in Indonesia and raised in the Netherlands, found herself faced with an almost insurmountable difficulty - surrounded by people who expected her to speak to them in Chinese. She writes: It was the beginning of an almost decade-long engagement with the predicaments of `Chineseness' in diaspora. In Taiwan I was different because I couldn't speak Chinese; in the West I was different because I looked Chinese. From this autobiographical beginning, Ang goes on to reflect upon tensions between `Asia' and `the West' at a national and global level, and to consider the disparate meanings of `Chineseness' in the contemporary world. She offers a critique of the increasingly aggressive construction of a global Chineseness, and challenges Western tendencies to equate `Chinese' with `Asian' identity. Ang then turns to `the West', exploring the paradox of Australia's identity as a `Western' country in the Asian region, and tracing Australia's uneasy relationship with its Asian neighbours, from the White Australia policy to contemporary multicultural society. Finally, Ang draws together her discussion of `Asia' and `the West' to consider the social and intellectual space of the `in-between', arguing for a theorising not of `difference' but of `togetherness' in contemporary societies.

Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeya's Earth


Elizabeth Cook-Lynn - 2001
    . . don't we?In this powerful and essential work, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn confronts the politics and policies of genocide that continue to destroy the land, livelihood, and culture of Native Americans. Anti-Indianism in Modern America tells the other side of stories of historical massacres and modern-day hate crimes, events that are dismissed or glossed over by historians, journalists, and courts alike. Cook-Lynn exposes the colonialism that works both overtly and covertly to silence and diminish Native Americans, supported by a rhetoric of reconciliation, assimilation, and multiculturalism. Comparing anti-Indianism to anti-Semitism, she sets the American history of broken treaties, stolen lands, mass murder, cultural dispossession, and Indian hating in an international context of ethnic cleansing, "ecocide" (environmental destruction), and colonial oppression.Cook-Lynn also discusses the role Native American studies should take in reasserting tribal literatures, traditions, and politics and shows how the discipline has been sidelined by anthropology, sociology, postcolonial studies, and ethnic studies. Asserting the importance of a "native conscience"--a knowledge of the mythologies, mores, and experiences of tribal society--among American Indian writers, she calls for the expression in American Indian art and literature of a tribal consciousness that acts to assure a tribal-nation people of its future.Passionate, eloquent, and uncompromising, Anti-Indianism in Modern America concludes that there are no real solutions for Indians as long as they remain colonized peoples. Native Americans must be able to tell their own stories and, most important, regain their land, the source of religion, morality, rights, and nationhood. As long as public silence accompanies the outlaw maneuvers that undermine tribal autonomy, the racist strategies that affect all Americans will continue.It is difficult, Cook-Lynn concedes, to work toward the development of legal mechanisms against hate crimes, in Indian Country and elsewhere in the world. But it is not too late.

The Essential Edmund Leach: Volume 1: Anthropology and Society


Edmund Leach - 2001
    Leach perceived anthropology as a vital and broadly based study of the human condition, encompassing methods and ideas from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. His writings reflect the conviction that anthropology is of direct and practical importance to social policy and political debate. These two volumes present more than fifty items—many difficult to obtain and several never before published—displaying the considerable range of Leach’s anthropological interests, the debates he provoked, and the issues he championed.Volume 1Anthropology and Society contains a selection of Leach’s writings on “society,” taken largely though not exclusively from the early part of his career. Here his writings on social structure, social relations and social practices were heavily informed by the functionalism of Malinowski and Firth, and by an old-style ethnographer’s insistence on the importance of ethnographic detail. His discussions about political institutions and about kinship were generally part of theoretical debates on how to model social systems and describe human action, and Leach was a searching critic of some of the bedrock assumptions of mid-twentieth century functionalist social theory.The volume includes some of Leach’s best-known and most influential professional writings: such essays as “Rethinking Anthropology” and extracts from Political Systems of Highland Burma, persuasive re-analyses of the work of earlier anthropologists, and major statements on kinship, ritual, classification, and taboo. “Once a Knight is Quite Enough,” a hitherto unpublished piece, is a vivid and amusing comparison of the ceremony in which Leach was given a knighthood and a pig-sacrifice in Borneo.

Art and Faith in Mexico: The Nineteenth-Century Retablo Tradition


Elizabeth Netto Calil Zarur - 2001
    One result of this instability was that many religious practices moved from the church to the home, and the retablo art form--sacred paintings on tin--flourished.With over 1,700 objects, New Mexico State University holds the largest collection of retablos of any museum in the United States. Eleven eminent Latin Americanists from the U.S. and Mexico have studied this collection and placed it in a broad cultural context. They have looked at the retablos from the standpoint of art history, history, anthropology, folk art, and religion to bring a new understanding of and appreciation for these paintings. This interdisciplinary approach brings together multiple influences in considering, for example, Baroque images as popular icons, Aztec gods and home altars, popular images in nineteenth-century Mexico, European and viceregal paintings, and bultos and santos from New Mexico. The richly varied retablo tradition continues to the present, making this volume a much-needed addition to the literature on the complex society that formed along the Camino Real between Mexico City and Santa Fe.In addition to the essays, the book includes restoration philosophy and conservation methods, a glossary, chronology, maps, and a comprehensive section on the art and iconography of each object in the Art Gallery collection.

Don Juan and the Art of Sexual Energy: The Rainbow Serpent of the Toltecs


Merilyn Tunneshende - 2001
    The author studied with don Juan Matus and the same circle of Nagual sorcerers who taught Carlos Castenada. Offers specific step-by-step instructions for mastering the ancient sexual techniques that lead to spiritual transformation.Readers of Carlos Casteneda have often complained that his work in ancient Meso-american shamanism never covered sexual practices beyond celibacy. With his death in 1998 it seemed that these practices might never be revealed, but fortunately Merilyn Tunneshende has stepped in. Set against the backdrop of the golden deserts of Sonora, Mexico, Don Juan and the Art of Sexual Energy recounts Tunneshende's initiation into the ancient sexual energy practices of the Toltec-Mayan tradition. Under the tutelage of don Juan Matus, Chon Yakil (whom Castenada referred to as Don Genaro), and dona Celestina de la Soledad, she learns to reclaim her feminine power and balance the masculine and feminine forces within herself. At the heart of the book is the mythical Rainbow Serpent: the phallic energy within women, the creative power within men. Each chapter focuses on a particular technique for awakening the serpent and connecting with its energy. Twenty-two sequential practices are covered, providing a powerful program for serious spiritual transformation.

The Drug of the New Millennium - The Brain Science Behind Internet Pornography Use


Mark B. Kastleman - 2001
    Pornography is rapidly destroying the most precious foundation of our society - the family! Now, via the Internet, and accessed by computers, cell phones and even video gaming systems, every variety of pornography is instantly available to anyone, regardless of age or gender. Parents, spouses, educators and religious leaders must learn how to protect themselves and their families from this brain-altering "super-drug." After 10 years of testing and proving with more than 10,000 families, nationally renowned author and researcher Mark Kastleman reveals the 3 Power Principles that are guaranteed to protect your family from this devastating plague. This remarkable guidebook is one that you cannot afford to be without!

Lithic Debitage


William Andrefsky Jr. - 2001
    For much of the period in which archaeology has employed scientific methodology, debitage has been discarded or ignored as debris. Now archaeologists have begun to recognize its potential to provide information about the kinds of tools produced and the characteristics of the technology being employed. Debitage can even provide clues regarding human organizational systems such as settlement mobility and site functions.This volume brings together some of the most recent research on debitage analysis and interpretation. It presents stone tool production experiments and offers detailed archaeological investigations for interpreting variability at the individual and collective levels. Although there are a number of volumes that focus on general analysis of lithic artifacts, this is the first volume to address debitage and should be of use to a wide range of archaeological researchers.

The Author and His Doubles: Essays on Classical Arabic Culture


Abdelfattah Kilito - 2001
    Called the most inventive and provocative critic of Arabic literature writing in the Middle East today, Kilito opens our perception with the same breadth of vision, seeking to define the traditional and historical forces that bind one writer to another and that inextricably link an author to a text.This volume benefits from Cooperson's accomplished translation. While rigorously precise, it also allows the wit and humor and the lyricism of Kilito's prose full expression. Drawing on major themes of classical Arabic literature, the essays use simple, poetic language to argue that genre, not authorship, is the single most important feature of classical works. Kilito discusses love poetry and panegyric, the Prophet's Hadith, and the literary anecdote, as well as offering novel readings of recurrent themes such as memorization, plagiarism, forgery, and dream visions of the dead.

The Archaeology Coursebook: An Introduction to Themes, Sites, Methods and Skills


Jim Grant - 2001
    Including new methods and case studies in this third edition, it provides pre-university students and teachers, as well as undergraduates and enthusiasts, with the skills and technical concepts necessary to grasp the subject.The Archaeology Coursebook:introduces the most commonly examined archaeological methods, concepts, and themes, and provides the necessary skills to understand them explains how to interpret the material students may meet in examinations and how to succeed with different types of assignments and exam questions supports study with case studies, key sites, key terms, tasks and skills development illustrates concepts and commentary with over 300 photos and drawings of excavation sites, methodology and processes, tools and equipment links from its own website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/978041546... to other key websites in archaeology at the right level contains new material on "Issues in Modern Archaeology," "Sites and People in the Landscape" and "People and Society in the Past," new case studies, methods, examples, boxes, photographs and diagrams; as well as updates on examination changes for pre-university students.This is definitely a book no archaeology student should be without.

Power of the Machine


Alf Hornborg - 2001
    He demonstrates how the power of the machine generates increasingly asymmetrical exchanges and distribution of resources and risks between distant populations and ecosystems, and thus an increasingly polarized world order. The author challenges us to reconceptualize the machine-"industrial technomass"-as a species of power and a problem of culture. He shows how economic anthropology has the tools to deconstruct the concepts of production, money capital, and market exchange, and to analyze capital accumulation as a problem at the very interface of the natural and social sciences. His analysis provides an alternative understanding of economic growth and technological development. Hornborg's work is essential for researchers in anthropology, human ecology, economics, political economy, world-systems theory, environmental justice, and science and technology studies. Find out more about the author at the Lund University, Sweden web site.

Primitive Technology II: Ancestral Skill - From the Society of Primitive Technology


David Wescott - 2001
    In this collection, drawn from the pages of the Bulletin of Primitive Technology, learn to create tools to fabricate more complex technologies; master the arts of the bow and arrow; build a shelter or fashion clothing from fibers or buckskin. /pPrimitive Technology II: Ancestral Skills provides the guide to rediscovery of the skills and crafts that bind us all into this great human family. /p

Teaching Spirits: Understanding Native American Religious Traditions


Joseph Epes Brown - 2001
    Through years of living with and learning about Native traditions across the continent, Joseph Epes Brown learned firsthand of the great diversity of the North American Indian cultures. Yet within this great multiplicity, he also noticed certain common themes that resonate within many Native traditions. These themes include a shared sense of time as cyclical rather than linear, a belief that landscapes are inhabited by spirits, a rich oral tradition, visual arts that emphasize the process of creation, a reciprocal relationship with the natural world, and the rituals that tie these themes together. Brown illustrates each of these themes with in-depth explorations of specific native cultures including Lakota, Navajo, Apache, Koyukon, and Ojibwe. Brown was one of the first scholars to recognize that Native religions-rather than being relics of the past-are vital traditions that tribal members shape and adapt to meet both timeless and contemporary needs. Teaching Spirits reflects this view, using examples from the present as well as the past. For instance, when writing about Plains rituals, he describes not only building an impromptu sweat lodge in a Denver hotel room with Black Elk in the 1940s, but also the struggles of present-day Crow tribal members to balance Sun Dances and vision quests with nine-to-five jobs. In this groundbreaking work, Brown suggests that Native American traditions demonstrate how all components of a culture can be interconnected-how the presence of the sacred can permeate all lifeways to such a degree that what we call religion is integrated into all of life's activities. Throughout the book, Brown draws on his extensive personal experience with Black Elk, who came to symbolize for many the richness of the imperiled native cultures. This volume brings to life the themes that resonate at the heart of Native American religious traditions.

The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language


John McWhorter - 2001
    While laying out how languages mix and mutate over time, linguistics professor John McWhorter reminds us of the variety within the species that speaks them, and argues that, contrary to popular perception, language is not immutable and hidebound, but a living, dynamic entity that adapts itself to an ever-changing human environment.Full of humor and imaginative insight, The Power of Babel draws its illustrative examples from languages around the world, including pidgins, Creoles, and nonstandard dialects.

Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca


Roberto J. González - 2001
    In this book, Roberto González convincingly argues that in fact Zapotec agricultural and dietary theories and practices constitute a valid local science, which has had a reciprocally beneficial relationship with European and United States farming and food systems since the sixteenth century.González bases his analysis upon direct participant observation in the farms and fields of a Zapotec village. By using the ethnographic fieldwork approach, he is able to describe and analyze the rich meanings that campesino families attach to their crops, lands, and animals. González also reviews the history of maize, sugarcane, and coffee cultivation in the Zapotec region to show how campesino farmers have intelligently and scientifically adapted their farming practices to local conditions over the course of centuries. By setting his ethnographic study of the Talea de Castro community within a historical world systems perspective, he also skillfully weighs the local impact of national and global currents ranging from Spanish colonialism to the 1910 Mexican Revolution to NAFTA. At the same time, he shows how, at the turn of the twenty-first century, the sustainable practices of "traditional" subsistence agriculture are beginning to replace the failed, unsustainable techniques of modern industrial farming in some parts of the United States and Europe.

Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics


Irma McClaurin - 2001
    Women and black scholars were relegated to the field's periphery. From this marginal place, white feminist anthropologists have successfully carved out an acknowledged intellectual space, identified as feminist anthropology. Unfortunately, the works of black and non-western feminist anthropologists are rarely cited, and they have yet to be respected as significant shapers of the direction and transformation of feminist anthropology. In this volume, Irma McClaurin has collected-for the first time-essays that explore the role and contributions of black feminist anthropologists. She has asked her contributors to disclose how their experiences as black women have influenced their anthropological practice in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, and how anthropology has influenced their development as black feminists. Every chapter is a unique journey that enables the reader to see how scholars are made. The writers present material from their own fieldwork to demonstrate how these experiences were shaped by their identities. Finally, each essay suggests how the author's field experiences have influenced the theoretical and methodological choices she has made throughout her career. Not since Diane Wolf's Feminist Dilemmas in the Field or Hortense Powdermaker's Stranger and Friend have we had such a breadth of women anthropologists discussing the critical (and personal) issues that emerge when doing ethnographic research.

The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848-1914


Keely Stauter-Halsted - 2001
    Keely Stauter-Halsted argues that such models overlook the independent contribution of peasant societies. She explores the complex case of the Polish peasants of Austrian Galicia, from the 1848 emancipation of the serfs to the eve of the First World War.In the years immediately after emancipation, Polish-speaking peasants were more apt to identify with the Austrian Emperor and the Catholic Church than with their Polish lords or the middle classes of the Galician capital, Cracow. Yet by the end of the century, Polish-speaking peasants would cheer, "Long live Poland" and celebrate the centennial of the peasant-fueled insurrection in defense of Polish independence.The explanation for this shift, Stauter-Halsted says, is the symbiosis that developed between peasant elites and upper-class reformers. She reconstructs this difficult, halting process, paying particular attention to public life and conflicts within the rural communities themselves. The author's approach is at once comparative and interdisciplinary, drawing from literature on national identity formation in Latin America, China, and Western Europe. The Nation in the Village combines anthropology, sociology, and literary criticism with economic, social, cultural, and political history.

The Grand Option: Personal Transformation and a New Creation


Beatrice Bruteau - 2001
      “I know of scarcely anybody,” Bede Griffiths has said, “who goes to the heart of reality as profoundly as Beatrice Bruteau does.” Here Bruteau develops a Trinitarian anthropology with the potential for healing our conflict-ridden planet by transforming us from riven and conflicting individuals, into open, sharing persons of the New Creation. In transcendent freedom, a profound communion consciousness gives birth to global, wholistic community.   Bruteau’s integral vision is as compelling as it is concrete. In this work of philosophical, theological, and psychological anthropology, she presents a cogent spiritual praxis that possesses the power to initiate a psychic revolution. “A new way of seeing,” Teilhard has exclaimed, “combined with a new way of acting—that is what we need.” This is precisely what Beatrice Bruteau offers in The Grand Option.

Peoples of the World: Their Cultures, Traditions, and Ways of Life


David Maybury-Lewis - 2001
    This title captures the diversity of traditions and ways of life of remote ethnic groups around the globe, covering their customs, religions, livelihoods, and how each culture has developed in response to its environment.

The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist's Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo


Clea Koff - 2001
    Two years later, Clea Koff, a twenty-three-year-old forensic anthropologist, left the safe confines of a lab in Berkeley, California, to serve as one of sixteen scientists chosen by the United Nations to unearth the physical evidence of the Rwandan genocide. Over the next four years, Koff’s grueling investigations took her across geography synonymous with some of the worst crimes of the twentieth century. The Bone Woman is Koff’s unflinching, riveting account of her seven UN missions to Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, and Rwanda, as she shares what she saw, how it affected her, who was prosecuted based on evidence she found, and what she learned about the world. Yet even as she recounts the hellish nature of her work and the heartbreak of the survivors, she imbues her story with purpose, humanity, and a sense of justice. A tale of science in service of human rights, The Bone Woman is, even more profoundly, a story of hope and enduring moral principles.

Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany


Andrew Zimmerman - 2001
    Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there, Andrew Zimmerman argues, that the battle lines of today's "culture wars" were first drawn when anthropology challenged humanism as a basis for human scientific knowledge.Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of "freak shows," Zimmerman demonstrates how German imperialism opened the door to antihumanism. As Germans interacted more frequently with peoples and objects from far-flung cultures, they were forced to reevaluate not just those peoples, but also the construction of German identity itself. Anthropologists successfully argued that their discipline addressed these issues more productively—and more accessibly—than humanistic studies.Scholars of anthropology, European and intellectual history, museum studies, the history of science, popular culture, and colonial studies will welcome this book.

Advances In Forensic Taphonomy: Method, Theory, And Archaeological Perspectives


William D. Haglund - 2001
    Conversely, advances in understanding the early and intermediate postmortem period generated in the forensic realm can and should be brought to the attention of scientists who study the historic and prehistoric past.Building on the success of Forensic Taphonomy: The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains, Advances in Forensic Taphonomy: Method, Theory, and Archaeological Perspectives presents new and updated techniques. It expands the taphonomic focus on biogeographic context and microenvironments and integrates further the theoretical and methodological links with archaeology and paleontology.Topics covered include: Microenvironmental variation and decomposition in different environments Taphonomic interpretation of water deaths Mass graves, mass fatalities and war crimes, archaeological and forensic approaches Updates in geochemical and entomological analysis Interpretation of burned human remains Discrimination of trauma from postmortem change Taphonomic applications at the scene and in the labThis comprehensive text takes an interdisciplinary and international approach to understanding taphonomic modifications. Liberally illustrated with photographs, maps, and other images, Advances in Forensic Taphonomy: Method, Theory, and Archaeological Perspectives is a valuable source of information for postmortem death investigation.

A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness


Merlin Donald - 2001
    Donald makes "a persuasive case...for consciousness as the central player in the drama of mind" (Peter Dodwell), as he details the forces, both cultural and neuronal, that power our distinctively human modes of awareness. He proposes that the human mind is a hybrid product, interweaving a super-complex form of matter (the brain) with an invisible symbolic web (culture) to form a "distributed" cognitive network. This hybrid mind, he argues, is our main evolutionary advantage, for it allowed humanity as a species to break free of the limitations of the mammalian brain. "Donald transcends the simplistic claims of Evolutionary Psychology,...offering a true Darwinian perspective on the evolution of consciousness."—Philip Lieberman

Tyranny of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age


Thomas Hylland Eriksen - 2001
    brilliantly original ... brings cultural and post-colonial theory to bear on a wide range of authors with great skill and sensitivity.' Terry Eagleton

The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation


Frederick Matthew Wiseman - 2001
    The first strand is the remembered wisdom of the Abenaki community. The second strand is our history and that of our relatives, written down by European, Native American, and Euroamerican observers. The third strand is what our Mother the Earth has revealed to us through the studies and writings of those who delve in her, the archaeologists and paleoecologists. The fourth strand is my own family history and its stories. The fifth strand is, of course, that which has come to me alone, stories which I create with my own beliefs and visions." So begins the first book about Abenaki history and culture written from the inside. Frederick Matthew Wiseman's extensive research and personal engagement breathe life into Voice of the Dawn, making it truly unique. Colin Calloway, Chair of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College, writes, "Going beyond all previous works on the Abenakis, Wiseman draws on family and community knowledge in a way that none of those authors could, speaks from an avowedly Abenaki perspective, and addresses aspects and issues ignored in other works. Moreover, no one that I know of has done as much work in locating and regathering items of Western Abenaki material culture. The quality and quantity of illustrations alone make this an attractive book, as well as a valuable visual record of change and persistence over time. As someone personally and pivotally involved in the Abenaki renaissance, Wiseman brings the story up to date without closing it."

God: An Itinerary


Régis Debray - 2001
    He may have kept the same name throughout, but God has been addressed in many different ways and cannot be said to have the same characteristics in the year 500 BC as in AD 400 or in the twenty-first century, nor is He the same entity in Jerusalem or Constantinople as in Rome or New York. The omnipotent and punitive God of the Hebrews is not the consoling and intimate God of the Christians, and is certainly not identical with the impersonal cosmic Energy of the New Agers.Regis Debray's purpose in this major new book is to trace the episodes of the genesis of God, His itinerary and the costs of His survival. Debray shifts the spotlight away from the theological foreground and moves it backstage to the machinery of divine production by going back, from the Law, to the Tablets themselves and by scrutinizing Heaven at its most down-to-earth. Throughout this beautifully illustrated book, he is able to focus his attention not just on what was written, but on how it was written: with what tools, on what surface, for what social purpose and in what physical environment.Debray contends that, in order to discover how God's fire was transferred from the desert to the prairie, we ought first to bracket the philosophical questions and focus on empirical information. However, he claims that this does not lessen its significance, but rather gives new life to spiritual issues. God: An Itinerary uses the histories of the Eternal and of the West to illuminate one another and to throw light on contemporary civilization itself.

Origins of Difference: The Gender Debate Revisited


Elaine Storkey - 2001
    A sociologist and theologian proposes a framework for understanding the origins of the differences between women and men

Landscape Traveled by Coyote and Crane: The World of the Schitsu'umsh


Rodney Frey - 2001
    The result of an intensive collaboration between investigator and Native people, the book includes many traditional stories that invite the reader's participation in the world of the Schitsu'umsh.The Schitsu'umsh landscape of lake and mountains is described with a richness that emphasizes its essential material and spiritual qualities. The historical trauma of the Schitsu'umsh, stemming from their nineteenth-century contacts with Euro-American culture, is given dramatic weight. Nonetheless, examples of adaptation and continuity in traditional cultural expression, rather than destruction and discontinuity, are the most conspicuous features of this vivid ethnographic portrait.Drawing on pivotal oral traditions, Frey mirrors the Schitsu'umsh world view in his organization and presentation of ethnographic material. He uses first-person accounts by his Native consultants to convey crucial cultural perspectives and practices. Because of its unusual methodology, Landscape Traveled by Coyote and Crane is likely to become a model for future work with Native American peoples, within the Plateau region and beyond.

Remembering to Live: Illness at the Intersection of Anxiety and Knowledge in Rural Indonesia


M. Cameron Hay - 2001
    But anxiety, in the presence and absence of illness, profoundly shapes the ways Sasaks use healing and knowledge. Hay addresses complex questions regarding cultural models, agency, and other relationships to conclude that the ethnomedical knowledge they use to cope with their illnesses ironically inhibits improvements in their health care.M. Cameron Hay is a NSF Advance Fellow and an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the UCLA Center for Culture and Health.

Eternal Egypt: Masterworks of Ancient Art from the British Museum


Edna Russmann - 2001
    Created to accompany one of the greatest loan exhibitions ever to have been mounted from the collections of the British Museum, Eternal Egypt illustrates the development and achievements of ancient Egyptian art over a period of more than 3,000 years. Almost all of the artifacts have been drawn from the Museum's permanent exhibitions; many are among the finest examples of their kind to have survived from antiquity. Handsomely produced, this book reveals these objects—including sculpture, relief, papyri, hieroglyphic writing, jewelry, painting, cosmetic objects, and items of funerary equipment—as a means of extraordinary artistic expression rather than simply as historical documents. The book and the exhibit, which will travel to eight U.S. cities over the course of three years, provide a remarkable opportunity to explore the creative genius of one of the world's most extraordinary civilizations.Eternal Egypt features the unique and innovative aspects of art from each period, as well as characteristic styles, forms, and genres. Edna Russmann, one of the world's leading authorities on ancient Egyptian art and curator of the exhibition, offers a wide-ranging and authoritative introductory essay that covers archaism, portraiture, and stylistic innovation in Egyptian art. The text also relates the history of the British Museum collection of Egyptian antiquities, showing how these exquisite art works came together. Each piece in the exhibition is given a separate explanatory entry in the book. With its superb color photographs and accessible yet informative text, Eternal Egypt marks a substantial step forward in scholarly understanding of its subject, embodying the results of the very latest research and containing many new and original insights and observations. It will be a must read for anyone with a passion for ancient Egypt.Published in association with the American Federation of Arts by arrangement with the British Museum Press

Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset


Leigh Summers - 2001
    This Victorian icon has inspired more passionate debate than any other article of clothing. As a means of body modification, perhaps only foot binding and female genital mutilation have aroused more controversy.Summers' provocative book dismantles many of the commonly held misconceptions about the corset. In examining the role of corsetry in the minds and lives of Victorian women, it focuses on how corsetry punished, regulated and sculpted the female form from childhood and adolescence through to pregnancy and even old age. The author reveals how the ‘steels and bones', which damaged bodies and undermined mental health, were a crucial element in constructing middle-class women as psychologically submissive subjects. Underlying this compelling discussion are issues surrounding the development and expression of juvenile and adult sexuality. While maintaining that the corset was the perfect vehicle through which to police femininity, the author unpacks the myriad ways in which women consciously resisted its restrictions and reveals the hidden, macabre romance of this potent Victorian symbol.

Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru


Elizabeth P. Benson - 2001
    Ritual sacrifices were considered necessary for this propitiation and for maintaining a proper reciprocal relationship between humans and the supernatural world. The essays in this book examine the archaeological evidence for ancient Peruvian sacrificial offerings of human beings, animals, and objects, as well as the cultural contexts in which the offerings occurred, from around 2500 B.C. until Inca times just before the Spanish Conquest. Major contributions come from the recent archaeological fieldwork of Steve Bourget, Anita Cook, and Alana Cordy-Collins, as well as from John Verano’s laboratory work on skeletal material from recent excavations. Mary Frame, who is a weaver as well as a scholar, offers rich new interpretations of Paracas burial garments, and Donald Proulx presents a fresh view of the nature of Nasca warfare. Elizabeth Benson’s essay provides a summary of sacrificial practices.

Completing Distinctions: Interweaving the Ideas of Gregory Bateson and Taoism into a unique approach to therapy


Douglas G. Flemons - 2001
    The author suggests that addiction and other social and ecological dilemmas stem from the belief that distinctions such as hate and love, sickness and health, or problem and solution are irreconcilable oppositions. Flemons shows how much separations can be completed so that genuine healing can occur in individuals, families, organizations, and ecologies. Written in a playful style, the book includes short client-therapist dialogues that illustrate the author's approach.

Africa


John Reader - 2001
    57 photos. 8 maps.

Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba


J.D.Y. Peel - 2001
    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. McCaskieIn this magisterial book, J. D. Y. Peel contends that it is through their encounter with Christian missions in the mid-19th century that the Yoruba came to know themselves as a distinctive people. Peel's detailed study of the encounter is based on the rich archives of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, which contain the journals written by the African agents of mission, who, as the first generation of literate Yoruba, played a key role in shaping modern Yoruba consciousness. This distinguished book pays special attention to the experiences of ordinary men and women and shows how the process of Christian conversion transformed Christianity into something more deeply Yoruba.

Beast and Man in India A Popular Sketch of Indian Animals in their Relations with the People


John Lockwood Kipling - 2001
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

The Sport of Life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame


E. Michael Whittington - 2001
    This book accompanies an exhibition at the Mint Museum of Art in North Carolina and includes 11 essays from the world's leading authorities on Mesoamerican art and culture. The contributors consider all aspects of ballgames, enactment, gender and symbolic aspects, the regalia worn, performance', the court setting, and the legacy of the game. The catalogue contains many superb colour photographs of figurines, painted and sculpted vessels and relief panels.

Fairies in Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature


Nicola Bown - 2001
    Nicola Bown explores what the fairy meant to the Victorians, and why they were so captivated by a figure which nowadays seems trivial and childish. She argues that fairies were a fantasy that allowed the Victorians to escape from their worries about science, technology and the effects of progress. The fairyland they dreamed about was a reconfiguration of their own world, and the fairies who inhabited it were like themselves.

สังคมจีนในไทย


G. William Skinner - 2001
    Published in 1957, it includes a contemporary description of Chinese society in Thailand at a time when China was a newly-emerged major Communist power. This digital edition was derived from ACLS Humanities E-Book's (http: //www.humanitiesebook.org) online version of the same title.

On Post-Colonial Futures: Transformations of a Colonial Culture


Bill Ashcroft - 2001
    He demonstrates the remarkable capacity for change and adaptation emanating from postcolonial cultures both in everyday life and in the intellectual spheres of literature, history and philosophy. The transformations of postcolonial literary study have not been limited to a simple rewriting of the canon but have also affected the ways in which all literature can be read and have led to a more profound understanding of the network of cultural practices that influence creative writing.

Where Do We Come From?: The Molecular Evidence for Human Descent


Jan Klein - 2001
    Here, the authors describe how scientists decipher human origin from the record encrypted in the DNA and protein molecules. After explaining the nature of descent and the methods available for studying genealogical relationships, they summarize the information revealed by the molecular archives about the Tree of Life and our location on one of its branches. The knowledge thus gleaned allows them to draw conclusions about our identity, our place in the living world, our future, and the ethical implications of the changed perspective.

Suspended Conversations


Martha Langford - 2001
    Contrary to those who isolate the individual photograph, treat albums as texts, or argue that photography has supplanted memory, she shows that the photographic album must be taken as a whole and interpreted as a visual and verbal performance that extends oral consciousness.Suspended Conversations brings to light a rich collection of photographic travelogues, memoirs, thematic collections, and family sagas compiled between 1860 and 1960 and held by the McCord Museum of Canadian History. Martha Langford not only provides a fascinating glimpse of a previous century's preoccupations and mores but brings photography into the great conversation about how we remember and how we send our stories into the future.

Healing Cultures: Art and Religion as Curative Practices in the Caribbean and its Diaspora


Margarite Fernandez Olmos - 2001
    What happens, however, when cultures themselves are in jeopardy? What are the "antidotes" or healing modalities for an ailing culture? Healing Cultures addresses these questions from a variety of disciplines--anthropology, holistic folk traditions, literature, film, cultural and religious studies--bringing together the broad range of beliefs and the spectrum of practices that have sustained the peoples and cultures of the Caribbean.

Handbook Of Rock Art Research


David S. Whitley - 2001
    But intensive amounts of research has revolutionized this field in the past decade. New methods of dating and analysis help to pinpoint the makers of these beautiful images, new interpretive models help us understand this art in relation to culture. Identification, conservation and management of rock art sites have become major issues in historical preservation worldwide. And the number of archaeologically attested sites has mushroomed. In this handbook, the leading researchers in the rock art area provide cogent, state-of-the-art summaries of the technical, interpretive, and regional advances in rock art research. The book offers a comprehensive, basic reference of current information on key topics over six continents for archaeologists, anthropologists, art historians, and rock art enthusiasts.

Chauvet Cave


Jean-Marie Chauvet - 2001
    Inside, they picked out traces of colour on the cave walls: pictures of a mammoth, a huge bear, rhinoceroses and lions.

Human Experience of Time: The Development of Its Philosophic Meaning


Charles Sherover - 2001
    Encompassing a wide range of writings, from the Book of Genesis and the classical thinkers to the work of such twentieth-century philosophers as Collingwood and McKeon, all with introductory essays by the editor, this classic anthology offers a synoptic view of the changing philosophic notions of time.

The Sound of the Ancestral Ship: Highland Music of West Java CD-ROM Included


Sean Williams - 2001
    This is the first book on Indonesian music that focuses on a non-gamelan ensemble as well as the first book to highlight Sundanese cosmological and cultural practices through an examination of musical performance. It reveals some of the musical tensions and points of connection between men and women, rural people and urbanites, and the classes. Illustrated with photographs and brief musical examples, this book also includes a CD.

Sanity and Sanctity: Mental Health Work Among the Ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem


David Greenberg - 2001
    Their relationship with secular society is characterized by social, religious, and political tensions. The differences between the ultra-orthodox and secular often pose special difficulties for psychiatrists who attempt to deal with their needs. In this book, two Western-trained psychiatrists discuss their mental health work with this community over the past two decades. With humor and affection they elaborate on some of the factors that make it difficult to treat or even to diagnose the ultra-orthodox, present fascinating case studies, and relate their observations of this religious community to the management of mental health services for other fundamentalist, anti-secular groups.

Anthropology of Marxism (Race and Representation)


Cedric J. Robinson - 2001
    The socialist ideal was, he suggests, embedded in Western civilization and its progenic cultures long before the opening of the modern era - and socialist thought did not begin with or depend on the existence of capitalism. Robinson proposes that the cultural, economic and social circumstances which spawned socialism are so diverse that the notion of socialism is best understood as a genetic phenomenon of resistance and should be treated in terms of "socialisms" rather than an enduring singular world-view. Paying particular attention to the impact of social conflicts and political competitions, the book interrogates the social, cultural, institutional and historical materials from which socialisms emerged. In doing so, it exposes the conceptual boundaries and restraints, and the definitive narrative and discursive structures, imposed on and by Engels and Marx in the process of giving a "destiny" to scientific socialism.

Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century


Joseph A. Conforti - 2001
    Such images remind us that, as Joseph Conforti notes, a region is not just a territory on the ground. It is also a place in the imagination. This ambitious work investigates New England as a cultural invention, tracing the region's changing identity across more than three centuries. Incorporating insights from history, literature, art, material culture, and geography, it shows how succeeding generations of New Englanders created and broadcast a powerful collective identity for their region through narratives about its past. Whether these stories were told in the writings of Frost or Harriet Beecher Stowe, enacted in historical pageants or at colonial revival museums, or conveyed in the pages of a geography textbook or Yankee magazine, New Englanders used them to sustain their identity, revising them as needed to respond to the shifting regional landscape.

Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan


E. Taylor Atkins - 2001
    Underpinning this tentative admiration, however, has been a tacit agreement that, for cultural reasons, Japanese jazz “can’t swing.” In Blue Nippon E. Taylor Atkins shows how, strangely, Japan’s own attitude toward jazz is founded on this same ambivalence about its authenticity. Engagingly told through the voices of many musicians, Blue Nippon explores the true and legitimate nature of Japanese jazz. Atkins peers into 1920s dancehalls to examine the Japanese Jazz Age and reveal the origins of urban modernism with its new set of social mores, gender relations, and consumer practices. He shows how the interwar jazz period then became a troubling symbol of Japan’s intimacy with the West—but how, even during the Pacific war, the roots of jazz had taken hold too deeply for the “total jazz ban” that some nationalists desired. While the allied occupation was a setback in the search for an indigenous jazz sound, Japanese musicians again sought American validation. Atkins closes out his cultural history with an examination of the contemporary jazz scene that rose up out of Japan’s spectacular economic prominence in the 1960s and 1970s but then leveled off by the 1990s, as tensions over authenticity and identity persisted. With its depiction of jazz as a transforming global phenomenon, Blue Nippon will make enjoyable reading not only for jazz fans worldwide but also for ethnomusicologists, and students of cultural studies, Asian studies, and modernism.

Nimrud - An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed


Joan Oates - 2001
    This authoritative account, written by two of the excavators of the site, traces its history and its gradual revelation through archaeological excavation, begun by Layard in the 19th century and continuing to the present day. The volume is abundantly illustrated and includes finds that have not previously been published, together with illustrations and the most complete account in English so far of the remarkable discoveries made in recent years by Iraqi archaeologists in the tombs of the Assyrian Queens. Contents: Introduction; Chapter 1: The Land of Assyria - Setting the Scene; Chapter 2: Major Palaces on the Citadel; Chapter 3: Tombs, Wells and Riches; Chapter 4: Temples, Minor Palaces and Private Houses; Chapter 4: Fort Shalmaneser: the ekal masarti; Chapter 6: The Written Evidence; Chapter 7: Types of Object and Materials from Nimrud; Chapter 8: Post-Assyrian Nimrud; Epilogue.

Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades: Society, Landscape and Art in the Holy City Under Frankish Rule


Adrian J. Boas - 2001
    Adrian Boas's combined use of historical and archaeological evidence together with first-hand accounts written by visiting pilgrims results in a multi-faceted perspective on Crusader Jerusalem.Generously illustrated, this book will serve both as a scholarly account of this city's archaeology and history, and a useful guide for the interested reader to a city at the centre of international and religious interest and conflict today.

Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community


John A. Grim - 2001
    The authors, a diverse group of indigenous and non-native scholars and environmental activists, address compelling and urgent questions facing indigenous communities as they struggle with threats to their own sovereignty, increased market and media globalization, and the conservation of endangered bioregions.Drawing attention to the pressures threatening indigenous peoples and ways of life, this volume describes modes of resistance and regeneration by which communities maintain a spiritual balance with larger cosmological forces while creatively accommodating current environmental, social, economic, and political changes.

Northern Haida: Master Carvers


Robin Kathleen Wright - 2001
    While Haida art has long been recognized as central to the development of the highly formalized northern Northwest Coast style of design, it has often been viewed as somewhat static and anonymous. Robin K. Wright highlights for the first time the distinctive achievements of several of the most important Northern Haida artists and analyzes the art historical developments and stylistic changes in pole carving."Northern Haida Master Carvers" traces the making of monumental poles from the days of first white contact to the present, illuminating the variations in style that resulted from historical, cultural, and individual circumstances. Wright examines the work of the earliest named Haida pole carver, Sqiltcange, and separates the carvings that can be attributed to the legendary Albert Edward Edenshaw from the large body of work produced by his nephew, Charles Edenshaw. She discusses the legacy of the nineteenth-century artists carried on through the work of their twentieth and twenty-first century descendants and artistic heirs: Jim Hart, current holder of the name Edenshaw; Robert Davidson, Charles Edenshaw's great grandson; and Freda Diesing and Donald Yeomans, descendants of Simeon Stilthda.In her impeccable and fascinating study, Wright masterfully interweaves the historical and artistic developments of a great sculptural tradition. The book belongs in the library of every Native American art historian, Northwest Coast anthropologist and historian, and indeed every person interested in or engaged in making Northwest Coast art. Its groundbreaking scholarship makes it the definitive work for serious students of this magnificent art.

Foundations of an African Ethic: Beyond the Universal Claims of Western Morality


Bénézet Bujo - 2001
    By skillfully drawing on themes from African life such as marriage, therapy, and art, Bujo exposes the shortcomings of the philosophical anthropology implicit in Western ethics, comparing Western theories of natural law, discourse ethics, and communitarianism with the African emphasis on community and remembrance. He then considers whether African ethics can account for central Western values such as autonomy, freedom, and individual identity. Finally, he considers how African ethics both challenges the Church and contributes to its richness, suggesting that an African palaver ethic can integrate the best features of communitarianism and discourse ethics. This timely contribution to African theology will be of special interest to students of religion, comparative and non-Western philosophy, anthropology, and African studies, as well as those intrigued by ongoing debates about universal ethical norms.

Precolonial India in Practice: Society, Region, and Identity in Medieval Andhra


Cynthia Talbot - 2001
    This study challenges older interpretations, arguing that medieval India was actually a time of dynamic change and fluid social identities. Using records of religious endowments from Andhra Pradesh, author Cynthia Talbot reconstructs a regional society of the precolonial past as it existed in practice.

Race Critical Theories


Philomena Essed - 2001
    Each previously published text is accompanied by a fresh statement - in most cases written by the authors themselves - regarding the political context, implications and effects of the original contribution.

The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point: Place of Rings


Jon L. Gibson - 2001
    He recounts (in his equally mysterious Louisiana voice) the setting, meaning, and history of archaeological thought that surround the site."--Mike Russo, National Park ServiceJon Gibson confronts the intriguing mystery of Poverty Point, the ruins of a large prehistoric Indian settlement that was home to one of the most fascinating ancient cultures in eastern North America. The 3,500-year-old site in northeastern Louisiana is known for its large, elaborate earthworks—a series of concentric, crescent-shaped dirt rings and bird-shaped mounds. With its imposing 25-mile core, it is one of the largest archaic constructions on American soil. It's also one of the most puzzling—perplexing questions haunt Poverty Point, and archaeologists still speculate about life and culture at the site, its age, how it was created, and if it was at the forefront of an emerging complex society. Gibson's engaging, well-illustrated account of Poverty Point brings to life one of the oldest earthworks of its size in the Western Hemisphere, the hub of a massive exchange network among native American peoples reaching a third of the way across the present-day United States.Gibson, the eminent authority on the site, boldly launches the first full-scale political, economic, and organizational analysis of Poverty Point and nearby affiliated sites. Writing in an informal style, he examines the period's architecture, construction, tools and appliances, economy, exchange, and ceremonies.

Ecstasy and the Rise of the Chemical Generation


Richard Hammersley - 2001
    In the UK, where the study was conducted, over fifty per cent of young people use drugs, a quarter of them regularly. The people in this book are ordinary, decent, family-loving people, with normal lives, normal problems and normal aspirations. Through their own words we hear how they first started using ecstasy, how they use it in different ways, why clubbing and raving are so important, how good sex is on ecstasy, how they chill out, how they come down, what problems they encountered and why they quit.This path-breaking book ends by trying to answer the questions on the lips of every member of the chemical generation: what are the long-term effects of ecstasy? Because we can't answer them, the authors claim, we are failing in our duty to our children: telling them not to take ecstasy is alienating and pointless.

Oral Traditions as Philosophy: Okot p'Bitek's Legacy for African Philosophy


Samuel Oluoch Imbo - 2001
    In his poems and critical essays, Okot engages with the oral traditions of his people-the songs, dances, funeral dirges, and so forth-seeing them as manifestations of the people's philosophy of life. Imbo's book makes explicit the philosophical questions raised in Okot's work and places them within the wider picture of contemporary African philosophy.

The Shaping of American Ethnography: The Wilkes Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842


Barry Alan Joyce - 2001
    Over the course of four years the expedition made stops on the east and west coasts of South America; visited Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, and Tahiti; discovered the Antarctic land mass; and explored the Fiji Islands, Tonga, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Pacific Coast of North America. In The Shaping of American Ethnography Barry Alan Joyce illuminates the process by which the Americans on the expedition filtered their observations of the indigenous peoples they encountered through the lens of their peculiar constructions of "savagery" as shaped by the American experience. The native peoples were classified according to the prevailing American perceptions of Native Americans as "wild" and African American slaves as "docile." The use of physical characteristics such as skin color as a classificatory tool was subordinated to the perceived image of the prototypical savage. Joyce argues that the nineteenth-century explorers shared the attributes that characterize the discipline of anthropology in any age—a reliance on synthetic systems that are period- and culture-dependent. By applying American images of savagery to world cultures, American scientists and explorers of this period helped construct the foundation for an American racial weltanschauung that contributed to the implementation of manifest destiny and laid the ideological foundations for American expansion and imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Deadly Landscapes: Case Studies in Prehistoric Southwestern Warfare


Glenn E. Rice - 2001
    The studies encompass examples from the Hohokam, Sinagua, Mogollon, and Anasazi regions, plus a pan-regional study of iconography covering the Colorado Plateau and the Rio Grande Valley. All of the cases focus on the narrow time frame from AD 1200 to the early-1400s, during which evidence for warfare is most pervasive.Contributors to this volume present varying definitions of warfare and use differing types of data to test for the presence of warfare. These detailed case studies give clear demonstration of a pattern of significant warfare in the late prehistoric period that will alter our understanding of ancient Southwestern cultures.

An Amazonian Myth And Its History


Peter Gow - 2001
    It is an important contribution to anthropological debates on the nature of history and social change, as well as on neglected areas such as myth, visual art, and the methodological issues involved in fieldwork and archival data.

Gender in Amazonia and Melanesia: An Exploration of the Comparative Method


Thomas Gregor - 2001
    Although the two regions are separated by half a world in distance and at least 40,000 years of history, their cultures nonetheless reveal striking similarities in the areas of sex and gender. In both Amazonia and Melanesia, male-female differences infuse social organization and self-conception. They are the core of religion, symbolism, and cosmology, and they permeate ideas about body imagery, procreation, growth, men's cults, and rituals of initiation. The contributors to this innovative volume illuminate the various ways in which sex and gender are elaborated, obsessed over, and internalized, shaping subjective experiences common to entire cultural regions, and beyond. Through comparison of the life ways of Melanesia and Amazonia the authors expand the study of gender, as well as the comparative method in anthropology, in new and rewarding directions.