Best of
Anthropology

2013

The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease


Daniel E. Lieberman - 2013
    Lieberman illuminates how these ongoing changes have brought many benefits, but also have created novel conditions to which our bodies are not entirely adapted, resulting in a growing incidence of obesity and new but avoidable diseases, including type-2 diabetes. He proposes that many of these chronic illnesses persist and in some cases are intensifying because of "dysevolution," a pernicious dynamic whereby only the symptoms rather than the causes of these maladies are treated. And finally—provocatively—he advocates the use of evolutionary information to help nudge, push, and sometimes oblige us to create a more salubrious environment.(With charts and line drawings throughout.)From the Hardcover edition.

Before They Pass Away


Jimmy Nelson - 2013
    With globalization, these societies are to be prized for their distinctive lifestyles, art and traditions. They live in close harmony with nature, now a rarity in our modern era. Jimmy Nelson not only presents us with stunning images of customs and artifacts, but also offers insightful portraits of people who are the guardians of a culture that they--and we--hope will be passed on to future generations in all its glory. Nelson's large-plate field camera captures every intricate detail and fine nuance for posterity. What's more, this splendid pageantry is set against a vivid backdrop of some of the world's most pristine landscapes. English/German/French edition.

Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States


Seth Holmes - 2013
       An anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, Seth Holmes shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and healthcare. Holmes’s material is visceral and powerful. He trekked with his companions illegally through the desert into Arizona and was jailed with them before they were deported. He lived with indigenous families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor camps in the U.S., planted and harvested corn, picked strawberries, and accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals. This “embodied anthropology” deepens our theoretical understanding of how health equity is undermined by a normalization of migrant suffering, the natural endpoint of systemic dehumanization, exploitation, and oppression that clouds any sense of empathy for “invisible workers.”  Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies is far more than an ethnography or supplementary labor studies text; Holmes tells the stories of food production workers from as close to the ground as possible, revealing often theoretically-discussed social inequalities as irreparable bodily damage done. This book substantiates the suffering of those facing the danger of crossing the border, threatened with deportation, or otherwise caught up in the structural violence of a system promising work but endangering or ignoring the human rights and health of its workers.All of the book award money and royalties from the sales of this book have been donated to farm worker unions, farm worker organizations and farm worker projects in consultation with farm workers who appear in the book.

Customs of the World: Using Cultural Intelligence to Adapt, Wherever You Are


David Livermore - 2013
    Based on groundbreaking research, these twenty-four lectures address dynamics and customs related to working, socializing, dining, marriage and family--all the areas necessary to help you function with a greater level of respect and effectiveness wherever you go. You'll also encounter practical tips and crucial context for greeting, interacting with, and even managing people from other parts of the world.In the first half, you'll analyze ten cultural value dimensions researchers have identified as helpful for comparing cultures, and you'll see how these "archetypes" play out in day-to-day lives. In the second half, you'll examine ten cultural clusters around the world that, when combined with your understanding of the ten cultural dimensions, provide strategic insight into how to be more effective as you live, work, and travel in the globalized world.

The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates


Frans de Waal - 2013
    Moral behavior does not begin and end with religion but is in fact a product of evolution.For many years, de Waal has observed chimpanzees soothe distressed neighbors and bonobos share their food. Now he delivers fascinating fresh evidence for the seeds of ethical behavior in primate societies that further cements the case for the biological origins of human fairness. Interweaving vivid tales from the animal kingdom with thoughtful philosophical analysis, de Waal seeks a bottom-up explanation of morality that emphasizes our connection with animals. In doing so, de Waal explores for the first time the implications of his work for our understanding of modern religion. Whatever the role of religious moral imperatives, he sees it as a “Johnny-come-lately” role that emerged only as an addition to our natural instincts for cooperation and empathy.But unlike the dogmatic neo-atheist of his book’s title, de Waal does not scorn religion per se. Instead, he draws on the long tradition of humanism exemplified by the painter Hieronymus Bosch and asks reflective readers to consider these issues from a positive perspective: What role, if any, does religion play for a well-functioning society today? And where can believers and nonbelievers alike find the inspiration to lead a good life?Rich with cultural references and anecdotes of primate behavior, The Bonobo and the Atheist engagingly builds a unique argument grounded in evolutionary biology and moral philosophy. Ever a pioneering thinker, de Waal delivers a heartening and inclusive new perspective on human nature and our struggle to find purpose in our lives.

Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction


Paul Farmer - 2013
    Drawn from a Harvard course developed by their student Matthew Basilico, this work provides an accessible and engaging framework for the study of global health. Insisting on an approach that is historically deep and geographically broad, the authors underline the importance of a transdisciplinary approach, and offer a highly readable distillation of several historical and ethnographic perspectives of contemporary global health problems. The case studies presented throughout Reimagining Global Health bring together ethnographic, theoretical, and historical perspectives into a wholly new and exciting investigation of global health. The interdisciplinary approach outlined in this text should prove useful not only in schools of public health, nursing, and medicine, but also in undergraduate and graduate classes in anthropology, sociology, political economy, and history, among others.

In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez


Paul Farmer - 2013
    Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez joined in their option for the poor, their defense of life, and their commitment to liberation. Farmer has credited liberation theology as the inspiration for his effort to do "social justice medicine," while Gutierrez has recognized Farmer's work as particularly compelling example of the option for the poor, and the impact that theology can have outside the church. Draws on their respective writings, major addresses by both at Notre Dame, and a transcript of a dialogue between them.

The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement


David Graeber - 2013
    But can our current political system, one that seems responsive only to the wealthiest among us and leaves most Americans feeling disengaged, voiceless, and disenfranchised, really be called democratic? And if the tools of our democracy are not working to solve the rising crises we face, how can we—average citizens—make change happen? David Graeber, one of the most influential scholars and activists of his generation, takes readers on a journey through the idea of democracy, provocatively reorienting our understanding of pivotal historical moments, and extracts their lessons for today—from the birth of Athenian democracy and the founding of the United States of America to the global revolutions of the twentieth century and the rise of a new generation of activists. Underlying it all is a bracing argument that in the face of increasingly concentrated wealth and power in this country, a reenergized, reconceived democracy—one based on consensus, equality, and broad participation—can yet provide us with the just, free, and fair society we want. The Democracy Project tells the story of the resilience of the democratic spirit and the adaptability of the democratic idea. It offers a fresh take on vital history and an impassioned argument that radical democracy is, more than ever, our best hope.

Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us


Avi Tuschman - 2013
    It shows how political orientations across space and time arise from three clusters of measurable personality traits. These clusters entail opposing attitudes toward tribalism, inequality, and differing perceptions of human nature. Together, these traits are by far the most powerful cause of left-right voting, even leading people to regularly vote against their economic interests.      As this book explains, our political personalities also influence our likely choice of a mate, and shape society's larger reproductive patterns. Most importantly of all, it tells the evolutionary stories of these crucial personality traits, which stem from epic biological conflicts.     Based on dozens of exciting new insights from primatology, genetics, neuroscience, and anthropology, this groundbreaking work brings core concepts to life through current news stories and personalities. For instance, readers will meet Glenn Beck and Hugo Chavez and come to understand the underlying evolutionary forces they represent. By blending serious research with relevant contemporary examples, Our Political Nature casts important light onto the ideological clashes that so dangerously divide and imperil our world today.

To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation


Paul Farmer - 2013
    One of the most passionate and influential voices for global health equity and social justice, Farmer encourages young people to tackle the greatest challenges of our times. Engaging, often humorous, and always inspiring, these speeches bring to light the brilliance and force of Farmer’s vision in a single, accessible volume.A must-read for graduates, students, and everyone seeking to help bend the arc of history toward justice, To Repair the World:-Challenges readers to counter failures of imagination that keep billions of people without access to health care, safe drinking water, decent schools, and other basic human rights;-Champions the power of partnership against global poverty, climate change, and other pressing problems today;-Overturns common assumptions about health disparities around the globe by considering the large-scale social forces that determine who gets sick and who has access to health care;-Discusses how hope, solidarity, faith, and hardbitten analysis have animated Farmer’s service to the poor in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, Russia, and elsewhere;-Leaves the reader with an uplifting vision: that with creativity, passion, teamwork, and determination, the next generations can make the world a safer and more humane place.

The Path of the Spiritual Sun


Belsebuub - 2013
    Its major stages at the solstices and equinoxes became the dominant alignment of sacred sites all over the world, as well as central events in the lives of many spiritual figures. Today, these ancient remains can still be decoded to reveal their message of spiritual enlightenment.The roots of this knowledge trace to a distant time before a global cataclysm destroyed a prior civilization. After this disaster, mysterious sages are recorded as traveling the world on a divine mission to establish this cosmic knowledge anew and initiate the spiritual beginnings of our current human age. They oversaw the building of some of the most enigmatic sacred sites on the planet, and gave rise to a civilization that extended across much of the earth.However, over time, strife and persecution took its toll, and after a while it was lost--left in scattered fragments that echo a bygone era of great spiritual knowledge. The Path of the Spiritual Sun aims to restore this lost knowledge--exploring the sites, symbols, and sacred texts connected to the ancient spirituality of the sun--and provide celebrations and ceremonies to re-enliven its transformative practice once more.About the authorBelsebuub is the author of a number of books on spirituality, out-of-body experiences, dreams, self-discovery, and ancient knowledge. He has appeared on radio and television programs internationally, and writes from decades of spiritual and mystical experience.

Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science


Kim TallBear - 2013
    The rise of DNA testing has further complicated the issues and raised the stakes.In Native American DNA, Kim TallBear shows how DNA testing is a powerful—and problematic—scientific process that is useful in determining close biological relatives. But tribal membership is a legal category that has developed in dependence on certain social understandings and historical contexts, a set of concepts that entangles genetic information in a web of family relations, reservation histories, tribal rules, and government regulations. At a larger level, TallBear asserts, the “markers” that are identified and applied to specific groups such as Native American tribes bear the imprints of the cultural, racial, ethnic, national, and even tribal misinterpretations of the humans who study them.TallBear notes that ideas about racial science, which informed white definitions of tribes in the nineteenth century, are unfortunately being revived in twenty-first-century laboratories. Because today’s science seems so compelling, increasing numbers of Native Americans have begun to believe their own metaphors: “in our blood” is giving way to “in our DNA.” This rhetorical drift, she argues, has significant consequences, and ultimately she shows how Native American claims to land, resources, and sovereignty that have taken generations to ratify may be seriously—and permanently—undermined.

A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan


Karen Nakamura - 2013
    

Cave and Cosmos: Shamanic Encounters with Another Reality


Michael Harner - 2013
    In this long-awaited sequel, he provides new evidence of the reality of heavens. Drawing from a lifetime of personal shamanic experiences and more than 2,500 reports of Westerners’ experiences during shamanic ascension, Harner highlights the striking similarities between their discoveries, indicating that the heavens and spirits they’ve encountered do indeed exist. He also provides instructions on his innovative core-shamanism techniques, so that readers too can ascend to heavenly realms, seek spirit teachers, and return later at will for additional healing and advice. Written by the leading authority on shamanism, Cave and Cosmos is a must-read not only for those interested in shamanism, but also for those interested in spirituality, comparative religion, near-death experiences, healing, consciousness, anthropology, and the nature of reality.Praise for Michael Harner and The Way of the Shaman   “What Yogananda did for Hinduism and D. T. Suzuki did for Zen, Michael Harner has done for shamanism—namely, bring the tradition and its richness to Western awareness.” —from Higher Wisdom, by Roger Walsh and Charles S. Grob   “Wonderful, fascinating.… Harner really knows what he’s talking about.” —Carlos Castaneda, best-selling author of The Teachings of Don Juan and The Active Side of Infinity   “An intimate and practical guide to the art of shamanic healing and the technology of the sacred. Michael Harner is not just an anthropologist who has studied shamanism; he is an authentic white shaman.” —Stanislav Grof, author of The Adventure of Self-Discovery   “Harner has impeccable credentials, both as an academic and as a practicing shaman. Without doubt (since the recent death of Mircea Eliade) the world’s leading authority on shamanism.” —Nevill Drury, author of The Elements of Shamanism   “Michael Harner is a great shaman. He also proves that a person can be both a scientist and a shaman.” —Bo Bair Rinchinov, Siberian Buryat shaman

When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the US-Mexico Borderlands


Shaylih Muehlmann - 2013
    In particular, the book explores a crucial tension at the heart of the war on drugs: despite the violence and suffering brought on by drug cartels, for the rural poor in Mexico’s north, narcotrafficking offers one of the few paths to upward mobility and is a powerful source of cultural meanings and local prestige. In the borderlands, traces of the drug trade are everywhere: from gang violence in cities to drug addiction in rural villages, from the vibrant folklore popularized in the narco-corridos of Norteña music to the icon of Jesús Malverde, the patron saint of narcos, tucked beneath the shirts of local people. In When I Wear My Alligator Boots, the author explores the everyday reality of the drug trade by living alongside its low-level workers, who live at the edges of the violence generated by the militarization of the war on drugs. Rather than telling the story of the powerful cartel leaders, the book focuses on the women who occasionally make their sandwiches, the low-level businessmen who launder their money, the addicts who consume their products, the mules who carry their money and drugs across borders, and the men and women who serve out prison sentences when their bosses' operations go awry.

The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance


Elizabeth Wayland Barber - 2013
    So appealing were these spirit-maidens that they also took up residence in nineteenth-century Romantic literature.Archaeologist and linguist by profession, folk dancer by avocation, Elizabeth Wayland Barber has sleuthed through ethnographic lore and archaeological reports of east and southeast Europe, translating enchanting folktales about these “dancing goddesses” as well as eyewitness accounts of traditional rituals — texts that offer new perspectives on dance in agrarian society. She then traces these goddesses and their dances back through the Romans and Greeks to the first farmers of Europe. Along the way, she locates the origins of many customs, including coloring Easter eggs and throwing rice at the bride. The result is a detective story like no other and a joyful reminder of the human need to dance.

Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran


Afsaneh Najmabadi - 2013
    In Professing Selves, Afsaneh Najmabadi explores the meaning of transsexuality in contemporary Iran. Combining historical and ethnographic research, she describes how, in the postrevolutionary era, the domains of law, psychology and psychiatry, Islamic jurisprudence, and biomedicine became invested in distinguishing between the acceptable "true" transsexual and other categories of identification, notably the "true" homosexual, an unacceptable category of existence in Iran.Najmabadi argues that this collaboration among medical authorities, specialized clerics, and state officials--which made transsexuality a legally tolerated, if not exactly celebrated, category of being--grew out of Iran's particular experience of Islamicized modernity. Paradoxically, state regulation has produced new spaces for non-normative living in Iran, since determining who is genuinely "trans" depends largely on the stories that people choose to tell, on the selves that they profess.

Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us


S. Lochlann Jain - 2013
    Through a powerful combination of cultural analysis and memoir, this stunningly original book explores why cancer remains so confounding, despite the billions of dollars spent in the search for a cure. Amidst furious debates over its causes and treatments, scientists generate reams of data—information that ultimately obscures as much as it clarifies. Award-winning anthropologist S. Lochlann Jain deftly unscrambles the high stakes of the resulting confusion. Expertly reading across a range of material that includes history, oncology, law, economics, and literature, Jain explains how a national culture that simultaneously aims to deny, profit from, and cure cancer entraps us in a state of paradox—one that makes the world of cancer virtually impossible to navigate for doctors, patients, caretakers, and policy makers alike. This chronicle, burning with urgency and substance leavened with brio and wit, offers a lucid guide to understanding and navigating the quicksand of uncertainty at the heart of cancer. Malignant vitally shifts the terms of an epic battle we have been losing for decades: the war on cancer.

Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the Private Sector


Sam Ladner - 2013
    Sam Ladner fills the gap by advancing rigorous ethnographic practice that is tailored to corporate settings where colleagues are not steeped in social theory, research time lines may be days rather than months or years, and research sponsors expect actionable outcomes and recommendations. Ladner provides step-by-step guidance at every turn--covering core methods, research design, using the latest mobile and digital technologies, project and client management, ethics, reporting, and translating your findings into business strategies. This book is the perfect resource for private-sector researchers, designers, and managers seeking robust ethnographic tools or academic researchers hoping to conduct research in corporate settings. More information on the book is available at http://www.practicalethnography.com/.

The Method of No-Method: The Chan Practice of Silent Illumination


Sheng Yen - 2013
    

Jordan's Stormy Banks


Jefferson Bass - 2013
    Bill Brockton—a bright, ambitious young forensic scientist—is hired by the University of Tennessee to head, and to raise the profile of, the school's small Anthropology Department. Six months later, the ink on his contract barely dry, Brockton is called to a gruesome crime scene in a rural area to identify a corpse and determine how the woman died. But the case—one of Brockton's first murder investigations in Tennessee—could also prove to be his last when he runs afoul of both the county sheriff and an angry mob intent on administering their own swift, rough brand of "justice." With his back to the wall, Brockton is forced to think fast, talk faster, and hope for a miracle.

Big History: Between Nothing and Everything


David Christian - 2013
    In reading this book instructors and students will retrace a voyage that began 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang and the appearance of the universe. Big history incorporates findings from cosmology, earth and life sciences, and human history, and assembles them into a single, universal historical narrative of our universe and of our place within it.The first edition of Big History: Between Nothing and Everything, is written by the pioneers of the field, and presents a framework for learning about anything and everything. It encourages students to think critically about our cumulative history and the future of the world through a variety of lenses.Instructors and students can now access their course content through the Connect digital learning platform by purchasing either standalone Connect access or a bundle of print and Connect access. McGraw-Hill Connect(R) is a subscription-based learning service accessible online through your personal computer or tablet. Choose this option if your instructor will require Connect to be used in the course. Your subscription to Connect includes the following:- SmartBook(R) - an adaptive digital version of the course textbook that personalizes your reading experience based on how well you are learning the content.- Access to your instructor's homework assignments, quizzes, syllabus, notes, reminders, and other important files for the course.- Progress dashboards that quickly show how you are performing on your assignments and tips for improvement.- The option to purchase (for a small fee) a print version of the book. This binder-ready, loose-leaf version includes free shipping.Complete system requirements to use Connect can be found here: http: //www.mheducation.com/highered/platform...

First Footprints: The Epic Story of the First Australians


Scott Cane - 2013
    It is a story of ancient life on the driest continent on earth through the greatest environmental changes experienced in human history: ice ages, extreme drought and inundating seas. It is chronicled through astonishing archaeological discoveries, ancient oral histories and the largest and oldest art galleries on earth. Australia's first inhabitants were the first people to believe in an afterlife, cremate their dead, engrave representations of the human face, and depict human sound and emotion. They created new technologies, designed ornamentation, engaged in trade, and crafted the earliest documents of war. Ultimately, they developed a sustainable society based on shared religious tradition and far-reaching social networks across the length and breadth of Australia.

Walls of Freedom: Street Art of the Egyptian Revolution


Don Stone Karl - 2013
    Created in close collaboration with artists on the frontlines of the battle, the book documents how they converted the streets into a dynamic newspaper of the people, providing a much needed alternative to the propaganda-fueled media.This comprehensive survey of iconic street art of the Egyptian revolution includes a chronicle of the day-to-day volatile political situation as it rapidly unfolded. Walls of Freedom traces the revolutionary journey, from the early pinnacle of extraordinary hope and inspiration, to its decline into today's violent Orwellian nightmare. Haunting images of key events captured by acclaimed photographers and activists set the stage for this political drama. Enriched with essays by artists and experts across many fields, Walls of Freedom contextualizes the graffiti in the historical, socio-political, and cultural backgrounds that have shaped this art of the revolution.

The Science of the Rishis: The Spiritual and Material Discoveries of the Ancient Sages of India


Vanamali - 2013
    They developed the spiritual science of Hinduism, Sanatana Dharma, as their way of ensuring the constant renewal and progress of India’s spiritual tradition and culture. Sanatana Dharma permeates every aspect of Hindu culture, from religion to the arts to the sciences. Woven within its Vedic texts lie all of the essential concepts of quantum physics and other modern scientific discoveries. Providing a complete introduction to the science of Sanatana Dharma, Vanamali reveals how the core concepts of Hinduism, including Brahman, Atman, bhakti, karma, and reincarnation, relate to modern science and how the scientific discoveries of the ancient rishis have been recently rediscovered by the West. She examines the scientific principles within the classic stories and texts of India, including the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and the Puranas. Within the teachings of the ancient Puranic sages and saints such as Valmiki and Vyasa and legendary physicians and mathematician-philosophers such as Aryabhatta and Varahamihir, the author reveals great scientific truths--not those believed by the ancient world, but truths still upheld by modern science, particularly quantum physics. She explores Desha and Kaala (Space and Time), Shankara and his philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, and the Hindu sciences of mathematics, astronomy, and Vedic astrology. In illustrating the scientific basis of Hinduism and the discoveries of its sages, Vanamali provides a window into the depths of this most ancient spiritual way of life.

Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing


Didier Fassin - 2013
    Usually these take place in disadvantaged neighborhoods composed of working-class families of immigrant origin or belonging to ethnic minorities. These tragic events have received a great deal of media coverage, but we know very little about the everyday activities of urban policing that lie behind them. Over the course of 15 months, at the time of the 2005 riots, Didier Fassin carried out an ethnographic study in one of the largest precincts in the Paris region, sharing the life of a police station and cruising with the patrols, in particular the dreaded anti-crime squads. Far from the imaginary worlds created by television series and action movies, he uncovers the ordinary aspects of law enforcement, characterized by inactivity and boredom, by eventless days and nights where minor infractions give rise to spectacular displays of force and where officers express doubts about the significance and value of their own jobs. Describing the invisible manifestations of violence and unrecognized forms of discrimination against minority youngsters, undocumented immigrants and Roma people, he analyses the conditions that make them possible and tolerable, including entrenched policies of segregation and stigmatization, economic marginalization and racial discrimination.Richly documented and compellingly told, this unique account of contemporary urban policing shows that, instead of enforcing the law, the police are engaged in the task of enforcing an unequal social order in the name of public security.

Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-Oriented Theology


Adam S. Miller - 2013
    In the process, it also provides a systematic and original account of Latour's overall project. The account of grace offered here redistributes the tasks assigned to science and religion. Where now the work of science is to bring into focus objects that are too distant, too resistant, and too transcendent to be visible, the business of religion is to bring into focus objects that are too near, too available, and too immanent to be visible. Where science reveals transcendent objects by correcting for our nearsightedness, religion reveals immanent objects by correcting for our farsightedness. Speculative Grace remaps the meaning of grace and examines the kinds of religious instruments and practices that, as a result, take center stage.

The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals


Thomas Suddendorf - 2013
    Our minds have spawned civilizations and technologies that have changed the face of the Earth, whereas even our closest animal relatives sit unobtrusively in their dwindling habitats. Yet despite longstanding debates, the nature of this apparent gap has remained unclear. What exactly is the difference between our minds and theirs? In The Gap, psychologist Thomas Suddendorf provides a definitive account of the mental qualities that separate humans from other animals, as well as how these differences arose. Drawing on two decades of research on apes, children, and human evolution, he surveys the abilities most often cited as uniquely human -- language, intelligence, morality, culture, theory of mind, and mental time travel -- and finds that two traits account for most of the ways in which our minds appear so distinct: Namely, our open-ended ability to imagine and reflect on scenarios, and our insatiable drive to link our minds together. These two traits explain how our species was able to amplify qualities that we inherited in parallel with our animal counterparts; transforming animal communication into language, memory into mental time travel, sociality into mind reading, problem solving into abstract reasoning, traditions into culture, and empathy into morality. Suddendorf concludes with the provocative suggestion that our unrivalled status may be our own creation -- and that the gap is growing wider not so much because we are becoming smarter but because we are killing off our closest intelligent animal relatives. Weaving together the latest findings in animal behavior, child development, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience, this book will change the way we think about our place in nature. A major argument for reconsidering what makes us human, The Gap is essential reading for anyone interested in our evolutionary origins and our relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom.

War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views


Douglas P. Fry - 2013
    Fry brings together leading experts in such fields as evolutionary biology, archaeology, anthropology, and primatology to answer fundamental questions about peace, conflict, and human nature in an evolutionary context. The chapters in this book demonstrate that humans clearly have the capacity to make war, but since war is absent in some cultures, it cannot be viewed as ahuman universal. And counter to frequent presumption the actual archaeological record reveals the recent emergence of war. It does not typify the ancestral type of human society, the nomadic forager band, and contrary to widespread assumptions, there is little support for the idea that war isancient or an evolved adaptation. Views of human nature as inherently warlike stem not from the facts but from cultural views embedded in Western thinking.Drawing upon evolutionary and ecological models; the archaeological record of the origins of war; nomadic forager societies past and present; the value and limitations of primate analogies; and the evolution of agonism, including restraint; the chapters in this interdisciplinary volume refute manypopular generalizations and effectively bring scientific objectivity to the culturally and historically controversial subjects of war, peace, and human nature.

A Red Woman was Crying


Don Mitchell - 2013
    Beautifully written, evocative, and utterly original, A Red Woman Was Crying takes the reader into the rich and complex internal lives of South Pacific rainforest cultivators - young and old, male and female, gentle and fierce - as they grapple with predatory miners, indifferent colonial masters, introduced religion, their own changing culture, their sometimes violent past, and the “other” who has come to live with them.Don Mitchell’s newly revised and expanded collection of short stories, all but one set among tribal people on Bougainville Island in the late 1960s, demystifies ethnography by turning it on its head.The narrators are Nagovisi, and it’s through their eyes that the reader knows the young American anthropologist, himself struggling with his identity as a Vietnam-era American, who’s come to study their culture in a time of change.

Forensic Anthropology: Current Methods and Practice


Angi M. Christensen - 2013
    This text guides the reader through all aspects of human remains recovery and forensic anthropological analysis, presenting principles at a level that is appropriate for those new to the field, while at the same time incorporating evolutionary, biomechanical, and other theoretical foundations for the features and phenomena encountered in forensic anthropological casework.Attention is focused primarily on the most recent and scientifically valid applications commonly employed by working forensic anthropologists. Readers will therefore learn about innovative techniques in the discipline, and aspiring practitioners will be prepared by understanding the necessary background needed to work in the field today. Instructors and students will find Forensic Anthropology: Current Methods and Practice comprehensive, practical, and relevant to the modern discipline of forensic anthropology.

Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans


Matt Sakakeeny - 2013
    These young men are celebrated as cultural icons for upholding the proud traditions of the jazz funeral and the second line parade, yet they remain subject to the perils of poverty, racial marginalization, and urban violence that characterize life for many black Americans. Some achieve a degree of social mobility while many more encounter aggressive policing, exploitative economies, and a political infrastructure that creates insecurities in healthcare, housing, education, and criminal justice. The gripping narrative moves with the band members from back street to backstage, before and after Hurricane Katrina, always in step with the tap of the snare drum, the thud of the bass drum, and the boom of the tuba.

Atlas of Indian Nations


National Geographic Society - 2013
    Told through maps, photos, art, and archival cartography, this is the story of American Indians that only National Geographic can tell.   In the most comprehensive atlas of Native American history and culture available, the story of the North American Indian is told through maps, photos, art, and archival cartography. This illustrated atlas is perfect for fans of Empire of the Summer Moon, Blood and Thunder, and National Geographic atlases, as well as those fascinated with the Old West. Organized by region, this encyclopedic reference details Indian tribes in these areas: beliefs, sustenance, shelter, alliances and animosities, key historical events, and more. See the linguistic groupings and understand the constantly shifting, overlapping boundaries of the tribes. Follow the movement, growth, decline, and continuity of Indian nations and their lifestyles.

Lessons in Courage


Bonnie Glass-Coffin - 2013
    To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.” This book provides just that model, as well as concrete practices for living it. The model is derived from ancient wisdom traditions, modeled on the pulses, cycles, and seasons of our beloved Earth Mother. It deeply grounds the reader in a “this world” spirituality that blends indigenous cosmologies, earth-honoring ritual, and time-tested models for living with modern sensibilities. The proposed text presents the biography of an extraordinary man, who has awakened to his own purpose in life as a servant to conscious evolution for all humanity. His life story, full of adventure, cosmic “interventions,” and synchronicity is on par with that of the luminaries documented in these biographies and the time has come for his story to be told. don Oscar’s story is also the story of each one of us. The only reason his story has not been told until now is that he was first charged with creating opportunities for others to awaken to their higher purpose through his teachings as part of an oral tradition. Now, after completing his “compacto” (sacred contract) with his Andean teachers and mentors, he has been released from service to tell his story in writing. And it is an extraordinary story, dealing with nothing less than individual, spiritual, and planetary transformation. OSCAR MIRO-QUESADA originated the Pachakuti Mesa tradition of cross-cultural shamanism, and is the visionary founder of The Heart of the Healer (THOTH) Foundation. He is a respected kamasqa curandero and altomisayoq adept from Peru and has been guiding cross-cultural ethno-spiritual apprenticeship expeditions to sacred sites of the world since 1986, with special emphasis on Peru and Bolivia. He has been a popular faculty member at numerous U.S. educational centers. His work and programs have been featured on CNN, Univision, A&E, and the Discovery Channel. BONNIE GLASS-COFFIN, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized professor of anthropology at Utah State University. She has studied with Peruvian curanderos since 1982 and is author of The Gift of Life: Female Spirituality and Healing in Northern Peru. She began apprenticing with don Oscar in 2005, experiencing the transformative power of these wisdom teachings and integrating these deeply into her life. This deep apprenticeship has enabled her to take a leading role in presenting OMQ's life-work to a wide audience. She currently lives in Logan, Utah. "Oscar Miro-Quesada, my dear friend of over thirty years, is both a Western-educated psychologist and traditionally initiated shaman. His book, Lessons in Courage, is a profound, articulate, and gripping account of Oscar's deep-rooted apprenticeship with don Celso Rojas, a renowned curandero from Salas, Peru. Oscar is a true genius, a genuinely warm and loving individual, and these qualities shine through in the book. A compelling tale about our human quest for wholeness, Lessons in Courage openly chronicles Oscar's befriending of sacred and profane dimensions of life, giving us a brilliant rendition of the uncompromising light so often encountered at the end of the tunnel." — Raymond Moody, M.D., Ph.D., author of Life After Life "This is a great book that can attune the worlds of indigenous peoples with the rational scientific traditions of the modern world. It guides us toward incarnation of all levels of ourselves. Oscar embodies this wholeness and reveals the processes learned in his own epic journey through fields of reality from the Earth to the Star people, from contemporary academic knowledge to the depth and power of indigenous wisdom and ritual, most especially the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition of cross-cultural shamanism.

The Conjure Workbook Volume 1: Working the Root


Starr Casas - 2013
    There's something special in this 'traditional conjure diamond in the rough' for all magical workers Christian and non-Christian alike. Are you ready to learn how truly seasoned and experienced conjure w... Full description

The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer


Lisa Downing - 2013
    But, since at least the nineteenth century, we have seen the murderer as different from the ordinary citizen—a special individual, like an artist or a genius, who exists apart from the moral majority, a sovereign self who obeys only the destructive urge, sometimes even commanding cult followings. In contemporary culture, we continue to believe that there is something different and exceptional about killers, but is the murderer such a distinctive type? Are they degenerate beasts or supermen as they have been depicted on the page and the screen? Or are murderers something else entirely?In The Subject of Murder, Lisa Downing explores the ways in which the figure of the murderer has been made to signify a specific kind of social subject in Western modernity. Drawing on the work of Foucault in her studies of the lives and crimes of killers in Europe and the United States, Downing interrogates the meanings of media and texts produced about and by murderers. Upending the usual treatment of murderers as isolated figures or exceptional individuals, Downing argues that they are ordinary people, reflections of our society at the intersections of gender, agency, desire, and violence.

The Day of Shelly's Death: The Poetry and Ethnography of Grief


Renato Rosaldo - 2013
    Just the day before, Shelly and her family had arrived in the northern Philippine village of Mungayang, where she and her husband Renato, both accomplished anthropologists, planned to conduct fieldwork. On October 11, Shelly died after losing her footing and falling some sixty feet from a cliff into a swollen river. Renato Rosaldo explored the relationship between bereavement and rage in his canonical essay, "Grief and a Headhunter's Rage," which first appeared in 1984 and is reprinted here. In the poems at the heart of this book, he returns to the trauma of Shelly's death through the medium of free verse, maintaining a tight focus on the events of October 11, 1981. He explores not only his own experience of Shelly's death but also the imagined perspectives of many others whose lives intersected with that tragic event and its immediate aftermath, from Shelly herself to the cliff from which she fell, from the two young boys who lost their mother to the strangers who carried and cared for them, from a tricycle taxi driver, to a soldier, to priests and nuns. Photographs taken years earlier, when Renato and Shelly were conducting research across the river valley from Mungayang, add a stark beauty. In a new essay, "Notes on Poetry and Ethnography," Rosaldo explains how and why he came to write the harrowing yet beautiful poems in The Day of Shelly's Death. More than anything else though, the essay is a manifesto in support of what he calls antropoesía, verse with an ethnographic sensibility. The essay clarifies how this book of rare humanity and insight challenges the limits of ethnography as it is usually practiced.

Identifying and Interpreting Animal Bones: A Manual


April M. Beisaw - 2013
    Using the basic principles outlined here, the bones of any vertebrate animal, including humans, can be identified and their relevance to common research questions can be better understood. Because the interpretation of archaeological sites depends heavily on the analysis of surrounding materials—soils, artifacts, and floral and faunal remains—it is important that non-human remains be correctly distinguished from human bones, that distinctions between domesticated and wild or feral animals be made correctly, and that evidence of the reasons for faunal remains in the site be recognized. But the ability to identify and analyze animal bones is a skill that is not easy to learn from a traditional textbook. In Identifying and Interpreting Animal Bones, veteran archaeologist and educator April Beisaw guides readers through the stages of identification and analysis with sample images and data, also illustrating how specialists make analytical decisions that allow for the identification of the smallest fragments of bone. Extensive additional illustrative material, from the author’s own collected assemblages and from those in the Archaeological Analytical Research Facility at Binghamton University in New York, are also available in the book’s online supplement. There, readers can view and interact with images to further understanding of the principles explained in the text.

Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt


Farha Ghannam - 2013
    These events gave renewed urgency to the fraught topic of gender in the Middle East. The role of women in public life, the meaning of manhood, and the future of gender inequalities are hotly debated by religious figures, government officials, activists, scholars, and ordinary citizens throughout Egypt. Live and Die Like a Man presents a unique twist on traditional understandings of gender and gender roles, shifting the attention to men and exploring how they are collectively "produced" as gendered subjects. It traces how masculinity is continuously maintained and reaffirmed by both men and women under changing socio-economic and political conditions.Over a period of nearly twenty years, Farha Ghannam lived and conducted research in al-Zawiya, a low-income neighborhood not far from Tahrir Square in northern Cairo. Detailing her daily encounters and ongoing interviews, she develops life stories that reveal the everyday practices and struggles of the neighborhood over the years. We meet Hiba and her husband as they celebrate the birth of their first son and begin to teach him how to become a man; Samer, a forty-year-old man trying to find a suitable wife; Abu Hosni, who struggled with different illnesses; and other local men and women who share their reactions to the uprising and the changing situation in Egypt. Against this backdrop of individual experiences, Ghannam develops the concept of masculine trajectories to account for the various paths men can take to embody social norms. In showing how men work to realize a "male ideal," she counters the prevalent dehumanizing stereotypes of Middle Eastern men all too frequently reproduced in media reports, and opens new spaces for rethinking patriarchal structures and their constraining effects on both men and women.

The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum


Robert L. Kelly - 2013
    Kelly challenges the preconceptions that hunter-gatherers were Paleolithic relics living in a raw state of nature, instead crafting a position that emphasizes their diversity, and downplays attempts to model the original foraging lifeway or to use foragers to depict human nature stripped to its core. Kelly reviews the anthropological literature for variation among living foragers in terms of diet, mobility, sharing, land tenure, technology, exchange, male-female relations, division of labor, marriage, descent, and political organization. Using the paradigm of human behavioral ecology, he analyzes the diversity in these areas and seeks to explain rather than explain away variability, and argues for an approach to prehistory that uses archaeological data to test theory rather than one that uses ethnographic analogy to reconstruct the past.

D'harawal Climate and Natural Resources


Frances Bodkin - 2013
    This custodial relationship, expressed through cultural practices, sustained the natural environment and secured the viability of resources necessary to sustain the continuing existence of Aboriginal society over many millennia.This book containing the words of Frances Bodkin and visual imagery of Lorraine Robertson will take you on a journey of understanding the ancient knowledge of the original People of This Land of the D'harawals.Gavin AndrewsD'harawal Man

The Handbook of Contemporary Animism


Graham Harvey - 2013
    The volume opens with an examination of recent approaches to animism. This is followed by evaluations of ethnographic, cognitive, literary, performative, and material culture approaches, as well as advances in activist and indigenous thinking about animism. This handbook will be invaluable to students and scholars of Religion, Sociology and Anthropology.

Unearthing Venus: My Search for the Woman Within


Cate Montana - 2013
    Then, on assignment, a shocking interview with a shaman changes her life and sets her on the path of discovering the illusive power of the feminine. In a wrenching recapitulation of her life, she realizes the devastating absence of feminine qualities within herself and the terrifying global consequences having only one paradigm available for women to express through: the masculine world of Power, Control, Possessions, Profit, and Progress. A riveting, intelligent, and frequently funny memoir, Cate takes readers on an amazing journey into the heart of the Amazon jungle, up staggering peaks in the Andes, and halfway across the globe to the consecration of a temple to the Great Goddess in southern India as she searches for the missing Feminine within herself and Western Culture. Unearthing Venus is a visionary everywoman story and social commentary that brilliantly captures what it is to be a woman today and everyday.

Традиция, трансгрессия, компромисс: Миры русской деревенской женщины


Laura J. Olson - 2013
    Throughout the years of collectivization, industrialization, and World War II, women played major roles in the evolution of the Russian village. But how do they see themselves? What do their stories, songs, and customs reveal about their values, desires, and motivations?    Based upon nearly three decades of fieldwork, from 1983 to 2010, The Worlds of Russian Rural Women follows three generations of Russian women and shows how they alternately preserve, discard, and rework the cultural traditions of their forebears to suit changing needs and self-conceptions. In a major contribution to the study of folklore, Laura J. Olson and Svetlana Adonyeva document the ways that women’s tales of traditional practices associated with marriage, childbirth, and death reflect both upholding and transgression of social norms. Their romance songs, satirical ditties, and healing and harmful magic reveal the complexity of power relations in the Russian villages.

Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived


Chip Walter - 2013
    These weren't simply variations on apes, but upright-walking humans who lived side by side, competing, cooperating, sometimes even mating with our direct ancestors. Why did the line of ancient humans who eventually evolved into us survive when the others were shown the evolutionary door? Chip Walter draws on new scientific discoveries to tell the fascinating tale of how our survival was linked to our ancestors being born more prematurely than others, having uniquely long and rich childhoods, evolving a new kind of mind that made us resourceful and emotionally complex; how our highly social nature increased our odds of survival; and why we became self aware in ways that no other animal seems to be. Last Ape Standing also profiles the mysterious "others" who evolved with us-the Neanderthals of Europe, the "Hobbits" of Indonesia, the Denisovans of Siberia and the just-discovered Red Deer Cave people of China who died off a mere eleven thousand years ago. Last Ape Standing is evocative science writing at its best-a witty, engaging and accessible story that explores the evolutionary events that molded us into the remarkably unique creatures we are; an investigation of why we do, feel, and think the things we do as a species, and as people-good and bad, ingenious and cunning, heroic and conflicted.

How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement


Lambros Malafouris - 2013
    In How Things Shape the Mind, Lambros Malafouris proposes a cross-disciplinary analytical framework for investigating the ways in which things have become cognitive extensions of the human body. Using a variety of examples and case studies, he considers how those ways might have changed from earliest prehistory to the present. Malafouris's Material Engagement Theory definitively adds materiality -- the world of things, artifacts, and material signs -- into the cognitive equation. His account not only questions conventional intuitions about the boundaries and location of the human mind but also suggests that we rethink classical archaeological assumptions about human cognitive evolution.

When People Come First: Critical Studies in Global Health


João Biehl - 2013
    It brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to address the medical, social, political, and economic dimensions of the global health enterprise through vivid case studies and bold conceptual work. The book demonstrates the crucial role of ethnography as an empirical lantern in global health, arguing for a more comprehensive, people-centered approach.Topics include the limits of technological quick fixes in disease control, the moral economy of global health science, the unexpected effects of massive treatment rollouts in resource-poor contexts, and how right-to-health activism coalesces with the increased influence of the pharmaceutical industry on health care. The contributors explore the altered landscapes left behind after programs scale up, break down, or move on. We learn that disease is really never just one thing, technology delivery does not equate with care, and biology and technology interact in ways we cannot always predict. The most effective solutions may well be found in people themselves, who consistently exceed the projections of experts and the medical-scientific, political, and humanitarian frameworks in which they are cast. When People Come First sets a new research agenda in global health and social theory and challenges us to rethink the relationships between care, rights, health, and economic futures.

Adult Bullying-A Nasty Piece of Work: Translating a Decade of Research on Non-Sexual Harassment, Psychological Terror, Mobbing, and Emotional Abuse on the Job


Pamela Lutgen-sandvik - 2013
    Learn about bullying in the US--how often it happens, how people recover from abuse, how they fight back, and how organizations can build more respectful climates. Use this book as a resource when filing complaints, speaking to HR, or reporting to upper-managers.

Shaping Humanity: How Science, Art, and Imagination Help Us Understand Our Origins


John Gurche - 2013
      Inspired by a lifelong fascination with all things prehistoric, and gifted with a unique artistic vision, Gurche has studied fossil remains, comparative ape and human anatomy, and forensic reconstruction for over three decades. His artworks appear in world-class museums and publications ranging from National Geographic to the journal Science, and he is widely known for his contributions to Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park and a number of acclaimed television specials. For the Smithsonian Institution’s groundbreaking David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, opened in 2010, Gurche created fifteen sculptures representing six million years of human history. In Shaping Humanity he relates how he worked with a team of scientists to depict human evolution in sculpture for the new hall. He reveals the debates and brainstorming that surround these often controversial depictions, and along the way he enriches our awareness of the various paths of human evolution and humanity’s stunning uniqueness in the history of life on Earth.

Interpretive Autoethnography


Norman K. Denzin - 2013
    Denzin in Interpretive Autoethnography, Second Edition . "I want to turn the traditional life story, biographical project into an interpretive autoethnographic project, into a critical, performative practice, a practice that begins with the biography of the writer and moves outward to culture, discourse, history, and ideology." Drawing on C. Wright Mills, Sartre, and Derrida, Denzin lays out the key assumptions, terms, and parameters of autoethnography, provides a guide to using and studying personal experience, and considers the dilemmas and political implications of textualizing a life. He weaves his narrative through family stories, and concludes with thoughts concerning a performance-centered pedagogy and the directions, concerns, and challenges for autoethnography.

Unlocking the Past: How Archaeologists Are Rewriting Human History with Ancient DNA


Martin Jones - 2013
    For the first time, the building blocks of ancient life—DNA, proteins, and fats that have long been trapped in fossils and earth and rock—have become widely accessible to science. Working at the cutting edge of genetic and other molecular technologies, researchers have been probing the remains of these ancient biomolecules in human skeletons, sediments and fossilized plants, dinosaur bones, and insects trapped in amber. Their amazing discoveries have influenced the archaeological debate at almost every level and continue to reshape our understanding of the past.Devising a molecular clock from a certain area of DNA, scientists were able to determine that all humans descend from one common female ancestor, dubbed "Mitochondrial Eve," who lived around 150,000 years ago. From molecules recovered from grinding stones and potsherds, they reconstructed ancient diets and posited when such practices as dairying and boiling water for cooking began. They have reconstituted the beer left in the burial chamber of pharaohs and know what the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter found in the Alps in the early nineties, ate before his last journey. Conveying both the excitement of innovative research and the sometimes bruising rough-and-tumble of scientific debate, Jones has written a work of profound importance. Unlocking the Past is science at its most engaging.

Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality Among China's New Rich


John Osburg - 2013
    Over the course of more than three years, anthropologist John Osburg accompanied, and in some instances assisted, wealthy Chinese businessmen as they courted clients, partners, and government officials.Drawing on his immersive experiences, Osburg invites readers to join him as he journeys through the new, highly gendered entertainment sites for Chinese businessmen, including karaoke clubs, saunas, and massage parlors—places specifically designed to cater to the desires and enjoyment of elite men. Within these spaces, a masculinization of business is taking place. Osburg details the complex code of behavior that governs businessmen as they go about banqueting, drinking, gambling, bribing, exchanging gifts, and obtaining sexual services.These intricate social networks play a key role in generating business, performing social status, and reconfiguring gender roles. But many entrepreneurs feel trapped by their obligations and moral compromises in this evolving environment. Ultimately, Osburg examines their deep ambivalence about China's future and their own complicity in the major issues of post-Mao Chinese society—corruption, inequality, materialism, and loss of trust.

Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination


Ann Laura Stoler - 2013
    Ann Laura Stoler's introduction is a manifesto, a compelling call for postcolonial studies to expand its analytical scope to address the toxic but less perceptible corrosions and violent accruals of colonial aftermaths, as well as their durable traces on the material environment and people's bodies and minds. In their provocative, tightly focused responses to Stoler, the contributors explore subjects as seemingly diverse as villages submerged during the building of a massive dam in southern India, Palestinian children taught to envision and document ancestral homes razed by the Israeli military, and survival on the toxic edges of oil refineries and amid the remains of apartheid in Durban, South Africa. They consider the significance of Cold War imagery of a United States decimated by nuclear blast, perceptions of a swath of Argentina's Gran Chaco as a barbarous void, and the enduring resonance, in contemporary sexual violence, of atrocities in King Leopold's Congo. Reflecting on the physical destruction of Sri Lanka, on Detroit as a colonial metropole in relation to sites of ruination in the Amazon, and on interactions near a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Brazilian state of Bahia, the contributors attend to present-day harms in the occluded, unexpected sites and situations where earlier imperial formations persist.Contributors. Ariella Azoulay, John F. Collins, Sharad Chari, E. Valentine Daniel, Gastón Gordillo, Greg Grandin, Nancy Rose Hunt, Joseph Masco, Vyjayanthi Venuturupalli Rao, Ann Laura Stoler

Handbook of Autoethnography


Stacy Holman Jones - 2013
    Chapters address the theory, history, and ethics of autoethnographic practice, representational and writing issues, the personal and relational concerns of the autoethnographer, and the link between researcher and social justice. A set of 13 exemplars show the use of these principles in action. Autoethnography is one of the most popularly practiced forms of qualitative research over the past 20 years, and this volume captures all its essential elements for graduate students and practicing researchers.

Australians All


Nadia Wheatley - 2013
    The historical narrative is interspersed with over seventy mini-biographies and childhood accounts, including some well-known Australians such as William Barak, Ethel Turner, Eddie Mabo, and Mark Oliphant as well as many lesser-known Australians. Meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated with a combination of facsimile images including photographs, paintings, and cartoons, as well as new illustrations by Ken Searle, this groundbreaking work will be treasured by young Australians and their families.

The Sufi Enneagram: The Secrets of the Symbol Unveiled (Institute of Traditional Psychology)


Laleh Bakhtiar - 2013
    

Writing and Civilization: From Ancient Worlds to Modernity


Marc Zender - 2013
    It has become so central to the way we communicate and live, however, that it often seems as if writing has always existed.But the question remains: Who invented writing, and why?In these 24 fascinating lectures, you'll trace the remarkable saga of the invention and evolution of "visible speech," from its earliest origins to its future in the digital age. Your guide is an accomplished professor and epigrapher who whisks you around the globe to explore how an array of sophisticated writing systems developed, then were adopted and adapted by surrounding cultures.Along the way, you'll visit the great early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Japan, and the Americas, and you'll see how deciphering ancient scripts is a little like cracking secret codes - only far more difficult.You'll be spellbound as you hear accounts of the breathtaking moments when the decipherment of ancient scripts broke centuries of silence. And you'll marvel at fascinating objects once shrouded in mystery, including the iconic Rosetta stone.Writing and Civilization offers the chance to not only discover the history of ancient writing systems, but also the rare opportunity to actually hear those scripts read aloud and to learn the meaning of their messages hidden in plain sight.Please note a guidebook is included with the audiobook.

Would You Stay? (TED Books)


Michael Forster Rothbart - 2013
    Yet in the regions with worst contamination, the vast majority of people stayed, despite the potential danger. Their lives are still littered with unanswered questions about safety, security, and their future. But they refuse to go. Chernobyl is home.A generation later, after the 2011 tsunami triggered disaster in a power plant that’s still leaking nuclear waste, the people of Fukushima, Japan, are confronting the same impossible questions. In Would You Stay?, photojournalist Michael Forster Rothbart tries to understand why people refuse to leave Chernobyl and Fukushima despite the risks. With Forster Rothbart’s personal narrative as guide, this stunning and provocative book blends photos, interviews, maps, and audio recordings to help us weigh the true value of home. In the end, Forster Rothbart and the reader both confront the ultimate question: Would you stay?

Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia


Manduhai Buyandelger - 2013
    Economic shock therapy—an immediate liberalization of trade and privatization of publicly owned assets—quickly led to impoverishment, especially in rural parts of the country, where Tragic Spirits takes place. Following the travels of the nomadic Buryats, Manduhai Buyandelger tells a story not only of economic devastation but also a remarkable Buryat response to it—the revival of shamanic practices after decades of socialist suppression. Attributing their current misfortunes to returning ancestral spirits who are vengeful over being abandoned under socialism, the Buryats are now at once trying to appease their ancestors and recover the history of their people through shamanic practice. Thoroughly documenting this process, Buyandelger situates it as part of a global phenomenon, comparing the rise of shamanism in liberalized Mongolia to its similar rise in Africa and Indonesia. In doing so, she offers a sophisticated analysis of the way economics, politics, gender, and other factors influence the spirit world and the crucial workings of cultural memory.

That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia


Arica L. Coleman - 2013
    Arica L. Coleman tells the story of Virginia's racial purity campaign from the perspective of those who were disavowed or expelled from tribal communities due to their affiliation with people of African descent or because their physical attributes linked them to those of African ancestry. Coleman also explores the social consequences of the racial purity ethos for tribal communities that have refused to define Indian identity based on a denial of blackness. This rich interdisciplinary history, which includes contemporary case studies, addresses a neglected aspect of America's long struggle with race and identity.

The Cooking of History: How Not to Study Afro-Cuban Religion


Stephan Palmié - 2013
    In The Cooking of History he provides a comprehensive analysis of these assumptions, in the process offering an incisive critique both of the anthropology of religion and of scholarship on the cultural history of the Afro-Atlantic World. Understood largely through its rituals and ceremonies, Santería and related religions have been a challenge for anthropologists to link to a hypothetical African past. But, Palmié argues, precisely by relying on the notion of an aboriginal African past, and by claiming to authenticate these religions via their findings, anthropologists—some of whom have converted to these religions—have exerted considerable influence upon contemporary practices. Critiquing widespread and damaging simplifications that posit religious practices as stable and self-contained, Palmié calls for a drastic new approach that properly situates cultural origins within the complex social environments and scholarly fields in which they are investigated.

MacKenzie's Last Fight with the Cheyennes (Expanded, Annotated)


John G. Bourke - 2013
    Bourke wrote about one of the most important battles of the Great Sioux War, of which he was a participant. John Bourke’s contribution to the history of the so-called Indian Wars cannot be overestimated. It is not as a soldier that he is best remembered, but as an anthropologist, ethnologist, folklorist, scientist, and writer—amazing for a man who was in uniform from the ages of 16 to 50. Here he detailed Ranald MacKenzie's final fight with the Cheyenne under Dull Knife in the bitter cold of winter, 1876. These were some of the same warriors who had months earlier sent General George Armstrong Custer and five companies of 7th Cavalry troopers to an early grave at the Little Bighorn. Written as only Bourke could have done, this short account is a forgotten American classic. For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

Cultural Struggles: Performance, Ethnography, Praxis


Dwight Conquergood - 2013
    Conquergood’s research laid the groundwork for others to engage issues of ethics in ethnographic research, performance as a meaningful paradigm for ethnography, and case studies that demonstrated the dissolution of theory/practice binaries. Cultural Struggles is the first gathering of Conquergood’s work in a single volume, tracing the evolution of one scholar’s thinking across a career of scholarship, teaching, and activism, and also the first collection of its kind to bring together theory, method, and complete case studies.The collection begins with an illuminating introduction by E. Patrick Johnson and ends with commentary by other scholars (Micaela di Leonardo, Judith Hamera, Shannon Jackson, D. Soyini Madison, Lisa Merrill, Della Pollock, and Joseph Roach), engaging aspects of Conquergood’s work and providing insight into how that work has withstood the test of time, as scholars still draw on his research to inform their current interests and methods.

Split-Second Lifetime


Denise Kahn - 2013
    to Paris, Jebby meets Dodi on a flight. Jebby is an ethnomusicologist, and Dodi is an international photographer. They are immediately attracted to each other, but from the very first moment Dodi triggers what seems like past life memories for Jebby of a poignant and passionate time they shared together. As Jebby tries to figure out if she is “losing it” or if past lives really do exist, they embark on a path of adventure and romance where lifetimes and cultures interweave in modern day Paris, Uzbekistan, and in the old Southwest. Jebby and Dodi live their unusually diverse and rich adventure and romance, surrounded by an international cast and superb musicians. At the same time Jebby discovers where the Hopi originated from, that death is not a finality, love transcends lifetimes, and music is eternal.

The Ancient Central Andes


Jeffrey Quilter - 2013
    The book contextualizes past and modern scholarship and provides a balanced view of current research. Two opening chapters present the intellectual, political, and practical background and history of research in the Central Andes and the spatial, temporal, and formal dimensions of the study of its past. Chapters then proceed in chronological order from remote antiquity to the Spanish Conquest.A number of important themes run through the book, including: the tension between those scholars who wish to study Peruvian antiquity on a comparative basis and those who take historicist approaches; the concept of Lo Andino, commonly used by many specialists that assumes long-term, unchanging patterns of culture some of which are claimed to persist to the present; and culture change related to severe environmental events. Consensus opinions on interpretations are highlighted as are disputes among scholars regarding interpretations of the past.The Ancient Central Andes provides an up-to-date, objective survey of the archaeology of the Central Andes that is much needed. Students and interested readers will benefit greatly from this introduction to a key period in South America's past.

Orphans on Granite Tides


Adam S. Cantwell - 2013
    CantwellThe German watches the door. White faces rush by like bubbles.The Russian emerges with the parcel under his arm. Raindrops darken the brown paper.Inside the parcel, a silk-lined box; inside that, the ragged, stained pages of the Miwok’s manuscript. The cryptic memoir recounts the life and dreams of an obscure mystic—a childhood on the wild coast of America, at the edge of the earth; servitude on the Continent; flights to worlds within the world… It illuminates everything and nothing, it prefigures and obscures the new world forming beneath the fissured crust of 1939.The German and the Russian have been sent after the manuscript and will judge whether it is authentic, or a late forgery, a hateful slander, or an epochal testament of planetary history. They will chase the dead savage’s words through Paris, to the edge of the precipice, and beyond.The Miwok’s words would help them, would warn them, if the gulf separating them all could be bridged…

Mythbusting the Cult of Confucius: What the Chinese Really Are, How to Understand Them and Why We Need to


Wayne Deeker - 2013
    This book is the first to part those myths and demystify the realities of Chinese ways. Western people need to know because Chinese traits and values, combined with China's modern power, now literally affect all. This book examines the ancient origins of Chinese thinking in Confucianism and consequences for the modern world: it is especially relevant to business and government relations with China, also to educational and immigration issues. Yet it contains far more than warnings alone. Above all, it shows ways western people might learn from Chinese people, and to compassionately help them break free of their past.

At the Heart of the State: The Moral World of Institutions


Didier Fassin - 2013
    Against this common sense idea, At the Heart of the State argues that it is also a concrete and situated reality, embodied in the work of its agents and inscribed in the issues of its time. The result of a five-year investigation conducted by ten scholars, this book describes and analyses the police, the court system, the prison apparatus, the social services, and mental health facilities in France. Combining genealogy and ethnography, its authors show that these state institutions do not simply implement laws, rules and procedures: they mobilise values and affects, judgements and emotions. In other words, they reflect the morality of the state. Of immense interest to both social scientists and political theorists, this work will make an important contribution to the ever expanding literature on the contemporary state.

Drawing with Great Needles: Ancient Tattoo Traditions of North America


Aaron Deter-Wolf - 2013
    The act of tattooing served as a rite of passage and supplication, while the composition and use of ancestral tattoo bundles was intimately related to group identity. The resulting symbols and imagery inscribed on the body held important social, civil, military, and ritual connotations within Native American society. Yet despite the cultural importance that tattooing held for prehistoric and early historic Native Americans, modern scholars have only recently begun to consider the implications of ancient Native American tattooing and assign tattooed symbols the same significance as imagery inscribed on pottery, shell, copper, and stone.Drawing with Great Needles is the first book-length scholarly examination into the antiquity, meaning, and significance of Native American tattooing in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains. The contributors use a variety of approaches, including ethnohistorical and ethnographic accounts, ancient art, evidence of tattooing in the archaeological record, historic portraiture, tattoo tools and toolkits, gender roles, and the meanings that specific tattoos held for Dhegiha Sioux and other Native speakers, to examine Native American tattoo traditions. Their findings add an important new dimension to our understanding of ancient and early historic Native American society in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains.

Enshrining The Nation: Monuments To Forgetting And The Invention Of Historical Memory


Jaymee T. Siao - 2013
    Critiquing the use and abuse of monuments, this study investigates the ways monuments serve to provide an incisive criticism of social reality, and yet also produce, rewrite, and politicize historical practices of remembrance. No longer functioning as keepers of memory to be consumed/used by the public, monuments have come to stand stolidly as parodies of a people's past and present. Analyzed as texts, both cultural and literacy, monuments are able to offer a view of history as literally weaved into the urban fabric and which allows for social, historical, and cultural critique. It is the tension between remembering and forgetting that is explored in this book.

Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century


James Clifford - 2013
    Engaging with indigenous histories of survival and transformation, James Clifford opens fundamental questions about where we are going, separately and together, in a globalizing, but not homogenizing, world.It was once widely assumed that native, or tribal, societies were destined to disappear. Sooner or later, irresistible economic and political forces would complete the work of destruction set in motion by culture contact and colonialism. But many aboriginal groups persist, a reality that complicates familiar narratives of modernization and progress. History, Clifford invites us to observe, is a multidirectional process, and the word "indigenous," long associated with primitivism and localism, is taking on new, unexpected meanings.In these probing and evocative essays, native people in California, Alaska, and Oceania are understood to be participants in a still-unfolding process of transformation. This involves ambivalent struggle, acting within and against dominant forms of cultural identity and economic power. Returns to ancestral land, performances of heritage, and maintenance of diasporic ties are strategies for moving forward, ways to articulate what can paradoxically be called "traditional futures." With inventiveness and pragmatism, often against the odds, indigenous people today are forging original pathways in a tangled, open-ended modernity. The third in a series that includes The Predicament of Culture (1988) and Routes (1997), this volume continues Clifford's signature exploration of late-twentieth-century intercultural representations, travels, and now returns.

Schema of a Soul


Kimberlye Berg - 2013
    Rather than minimizing pain in a dismissive effort to get over it and move on, could there be so much more meaning to be discovered regarding the relational reality of God if we were to delve deeper into the devastating places as He invites us? The beautiful truth is: there is a love stronger than death, boundless enough to break through our fearful, tightly held assumptions and illusions regarding pain and grief and relationships and life and death and God, and that changes everything.

Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion


James Maffie - 2013
     Aztec Philosophy focuses on the ways Aztec metaphysics—the Aztecs’ understanding of the nature, structure and constitution of reality—underpinned Aztec thinking about wisdom, ethics, politics,\ and aesthetics, and served as a backdrop for Aztec religious practices as well as everyday activities such as weaving, farming, and warfare. Aztec metaphysicians conceived reality and cosmos as a grand, ongoing process of weaving—theirs was a world in motion. Drawing upon linguistic, ethnohistorical, archaeological, historical, and contemporary ethnographic evidence, Maffie argues that Aztec metaphysics maintained a processive, transformational, and non-hierarchical view of reality, time, and existence along with a pantheistic theology. Aztec Philosophy will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists, philosophers, religionists, folklorists, and Latin Americanists as well as students of indigenous philosophy, religion, and art of the Americas.

Underminers: A Guide to Subverting the Machine


Keith Farnish - 2013
    A user's guide for dismantling modern civilization.

The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy


David Graeber - 2013
    He then jets forward to the nineteenth century, where systems we can easily recognize as modern bureaucracies come into being. In some areas of life—like with the modern postal systems of Germany and France—these bureaucracies have brought tremendous efficiencies to modern life. But Graeber argues that there is a much darker side to modern bureaucracy that is rarely ever discussed. Indeed, in our own “utopia of rules,” freedom and technological innovation are often the casualties of systems that we only faintly understand.Provocative and timely, the book is a powerful look and history of bureaucracy over the ages and its power in shaping the world of ideas.

The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom


James Laidlaw - 2013
    This book argues that it represents not just a new subfield within anthropology but a conceptual renewal of the discipline as a whole, enabling it to take account of a major dimension of human conduct which social theory has so far failed adequately to address. An ideal introduction for students and researchers in anthropology and related human sciences. - Shows how ethical concepts such as virtue, character, freedom and responsibility may be incorporated into anthropological analysis - Surveys the history of anthropology's engagement with morality - Examines the relevance for anthropology of two major philosophical approaches to moral life.

My Father's Wars: Migration, Memory, and the Violence of a Century


Alisse Waterston - 2013
    Book by Waterston, Alisse

Indian Resilience and Rebuilding: Indigenous Nations in the Modern American West


Donald L. Fixico - 2013
    It examines the progress that Indians have accomplished in rebuilding their nations in the twentieth century, revealing how Native communities adapted to the cultural and economic pressures in modern America. Donald Fixico examines issues like land allotment, the Indian New Deal, termination and relocation, Red Power and self-determination, casino gaming, and repatriation. He applies ethnohistorical analysis and political economic theory to provide a multilayered approach that ultimately shows how Native people reinvented themselves in order to rebuild their nations.  Fixico identifies the tools to this empowerment, including education, navigation within cultural systems, modern Indian leadership, and indigenized political economy. He explains how these tools helped Indian communities to rebuild their nations. Fixico constructs an Indigenous paradigm of Native ethos and reality that drives modern Indian political economies heading into the twenty-first century.This illuminating and comprehensive analysis of Native nation’s resilience in the twentieth century demonstrates how Native Americans reinvented themselves, rebuilt their nations, and ultimately became major forces in the United States. Indian Resilience and Rebuilding, redefines how modern American history can and should be told.

Cedar Songs


Keewaydinoquay Peschel - 2013
    Keewaydinoquay Peschel was able to escape this fate. This book offers a rare glimpse into what one little girl did with this incredible gift she had been given. She was a child of mixed cultures and religions with an insatiable curiosity about how and why things work. This often got her into trouble, but also provided some of her best stories. Keewaydinoquay grew up to become a world-renowned herbalist, teacher, medicine helper, writer, and storyteller. She spent her life helping all other beings, not just human beings. All these stories, as told in her own words, are from Keewaydinoquay for all of us. She lived these lessons and now shares them in hopes that we humans are ready to take seriously the responsibilities that are incurred by the honor of having our place among the families of creation."

Primate Ethnographies


Karen B. Strier - 2013
    Essays cover such primates as lemurs, New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, and apes. Readers experience the excitement of discovery and the challenges of primate field research. Primate Ethnographies can be used as a textbook or a companion reader.

The Lyre of Orpheus: Popular Music, the Sacred, and the Profane


Christopher Partridge - 2013
    It is uniquely able to move us, to guide the imagination, to evoke memories, and to create spaces within which meaning is made. Popular music occupies a place of particular social and cultural significance. Christopher Partridge explores this significance, analyzing its complex relationships with the values and norms, texts and discourses, rituals and symbols, and codes and narratives of modern Western cultures. He shows how popular music's power to move, to agitate, to control listeners, to shape their identities, and to structure their everyday lives is central to constructions of the sacred and the profane. In particular, he argues that popular music can be important 'edgework,' challenging dominant constructions of the sacred in modern societies. Drawing on a wide range of musicians and musical genres, as well as a number of theoretical approaches from critical musicology, cultural theory, sociology, theology, and the study of religion, The Lyre of Orpheus reveals the significance and the progressive potential of popular music.

Ordinary Ethics in China. Edited by Charles Stafford


Charles Stafford - 2013
    

The Children's Table: Childhood Studies and the Humanities


Anna Mae Duane - 2013
    The Children's Table brings together scholars from architecture, philosophy, law, and literary and cultural criticism to provide an overview of the innovative work being done in childhood studies—a transcript of what is being said at the children's table. Together, these scholars argue for rethinking the academic seating arrangement in a way that acknowledges the centrality of childhood to the work of the humanities.The figure we now recognize as a child was created in tandem with forms of modernity that the Enlightenment generated and that the humanities are now working to rethink. Thus the growth of childhood studies allows for new approaches to some of the most important and provocative issues in humanities scholarship: the viability of the social contract, the definition of agency, the performance of identity, and the construction of gender, sexuality, and race. Because defining childhood is a means of defining and distributing power and obligation, studying childhood requires a radically altered approach to what constitutes knowledge about the human subject.The diverse essays in The Children's Table share a unifying premise: to include the child in any field of study realigns the shape of that field, changing the terms of inquiry and forcing a different set of questions. Taken as a whole, the essays argue that, at this key moment in the state of the humanities, rethinking the child is both necessary and revolutionary.Contributors: Annette Ruth Appell, Sophie Bell, Robin Bernstein, Sarah Chinn, Lesley Ginsberg, Lucia Hodgson, Susan Honeyman, Roy Kozlovsky, James Marten, Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Carol Singley, Lynne Vallone, John Wall.

The Long Evolution of Brains and Minds


Gerhard Roth - 2013
    It investigates to which extent the two are correlated. One central topic is the alleged uniqueness of the human brain and human intelligence and mind. It is discussed which neural features make certain animals and humans intelligent and creative: Is it absolute or relative brain size or the size of intelligence centers inside the brains, the number of nerve cells inside the brain in total or in such intelligence centers decisive for the degree of intelligence, of mind and eventually consciousness? And which are the driving forces behind these processes? Finally, it is asked what all this means for the classical problem of mind-brain relationship and for a naturalistic theory of mind."

Ego Trip: Rediscovering Grace in a Culture of Self-Esteem


Glynn Harrison - 2013
    Today, it’s not the sin of pride we worry about, but the sin of not liking ourselves enough.In Ego Trip, psychiatrist Glynn Harrison takes aim at what has become one of Western society’s most entrenched ideologies. He charts the rise of this ubiquitous value, arguing that the “science” underlying it is flawed, that there is little evidence efforts to promote self-esteem work, and that, in its popular form of “boosterism,” self-esteem promotion comes with hazardous and unwanted side effects.Is there a more biblically and psychologically secure approach to big questions of significance and worth? Dr. Harrison asks.You will be intrigued, challenged, and quite possibly freed by his conclusion: compared with the failed ideology of self-esteem, the gospel offers the foundation for personal significance and meaning.

Evolutionary Psychology 101


Glenn Geher - 2013
    This book, filled with a broad array of fascinating topics, is bound to further whet the appetite of a growing number of students who have been inspired by this provocative, yet eminently testable approach to human behavior. Gordon G. Gallup Jr., PhD University at Albany A frolicking, down-to-earth, and informative introduction to the ever evolving and controversial field of evolutionary psychology. Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD Author, Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined Glenn Geher has created a text that is both comprehensive in coverage and scope and very accessible. It should be a welcome addition to the field that serves to further individuals' understanding of Evolutionary Psychology. T. Joel Wade, PhD Professor and Chair of Psychology, Bucknell University This is a concise and student-friendly survey of the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology (EP) and the controversies that surround it. Evolutionary psychology is an approach to studying human behavior that is rooted in modern evolutionary theory. Firmly grounded in the theoretical and research literature of EP, the book addresses the core theories, approaches, applications, and current findings that comprise this discipline. It is unique in its interdisciplinary focus, which encompasses EP's impact on both psychological and non-psychological disciplines.Written by an eminent evolutionary psychologist who is President of the Northeastern Evolutionary Psychology Society, the text examines psychological processes that lead to human survival and those that may lead to reproductive benefits√>=sometimes even at a cost to survival. It cites a rich body of literature that provides insights into the role of sexual selection in shaping the human mind. The text presents current research on such important domains of EP as childhood, courtship, intrasexual competition, sex, pair-bonding, parenting, familial relations, non-familial relations, aggression, and altruism. Considering the potential of EP to mitigate some of our greatest social problems, the text examines the ways in which EP can be applied to society and religion. It also offers a thoughtful, balanced approach to such controversies in EP as the issues of genetic determinism, racism, and sexism.Key Features: Provides a broad survey one of the most recent, widely researched, and controversial fields to emerge in psychology over the past 20 yearsWritten by an eminent evolutionary psychologist who is President of the Northeastern Evolutionary Psychology SocietyPresents EP concepts in an accessible, student-friendly wayOffers a unique interdisciplinary focus that addresses the impact of EP on both psychological and non-psychological disciplinesEmphasizes controversies within the field of evolutionary psychology and includes critiques of EP from people outside this discipline

Voice Male: The Untold Story of the Pro-Feminist Men's Movement


Rob A. Okun - 2013
    Through thematically arranged essays by leading experts, Voice Male illustrates how a growing movement of men is redefining masculinity. In this collection, Rob Okun directs a chorus of pro-feminist voices, introducing readers to men examining contemporary manhood from a variety of perspectives: from overcoming violence, fatherhood, and navigating life as a man of color, a gay man, or a boy on the journey to manhood. It also provides a critical forum for both male survivors and GBTQ men to speak out. This inspired book is evidence of a new direction for men, brightly illuminating what’s around the bend on the path to gender justice.

Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania's Secret Police


Katherine Verdery - 2013
    Its paid employees were known to few and their actual numbers remain uncertain. Its informers and collaborators operated clandestinely under pseudonyms and met their officers in secret locations. Its files were inaccessible, even to most party members. The people the secret police recruited or interrogated were threatened so effectively that some never told even their spouses, and many have held their tongues to this day, long after the regimes fell.With the end of communism, many of the newly established governments--among them Romania's--opened their secret police archives. From those files, as well as her personal memories, the author has carried out historical ethnography of the Romanian Securitate. Secrets and Truths is not only of historical interest but has implications for understanding the rapidly developing "security state" of the neoliberal present.

Becoming Human: How Evolution Made Us


Greg Downey - 2013
    The focus is not just on our prehistory. Becoming Human highlights how evolution affects the way we are today, and helps us to anticipate what might happen to us in the future. Easy-to-read but challenging, this book is an ideal introduction to our species' origin.

Light Bulb Baking: A History of the Easy-Bake Oven


Todd Coopee - 2013
    The book explores the innovation, history, economics, commerce, advertising, and marketing behind the toy's 50 year history.

The Bangladesh Reader: History, Culture, Politics


Meghna Guhathakurta - 2013
    It has more inhabitants than either Russia or Japan, and its national language, Bengali, ranks sixth in the world in terms of native speakers. Founded in 1971, Bangladesh is a relatively young nation, but the Bengal Delta region has been a major part of international life for more than 2,000 years, whether as an important location for trade or through its influence on Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim life. Yet the country rarely figures in global affairs or media, except in stories about floods, poverty, or political turmoil. The Bangladesh Reader does what those portrayals do not: It illuminates the rich historical, cultural, and political permutations that have created contemporary Bangladesh, and it conveys a sense of the aspirations and daily lives of Bangladeshis. Intended for travelers, students, and scholars, the Reader encompasses first-person accounts, short stories, historical documents, speeches, treaties, essays, poems, songs, photographs, cartoons, paintings, posters, advertisements, maps, and a recipe. Classic selections familiar to many Bangladeshis—and essential reading for those who want to know the country—are juxtaposed with less-known pieces. The selections are translated from a dozen languages; many have not been available in English until now. Featuring eighty-three images, including seventeen in color, The Bangladesh Reader is an unprecedented, comprehensive introduction to the South Asian country's turbulent past and dynamic present.

Feminist Activist Ethnography: Counterpoints to Neoliberalism in North America


Christa Craven - 2013
    Together, we suggest avenues for incorporating methodological innovations, collaborative analysis, and collective activism in our scholarly projects. What are the possibilities (and challenges) that exist for feminist ethnography 25 years after initial debates emerged in this field about reflexivity, objectivity, reductive individualism, and the social relevance of activist scholarship? How can feminist ethnography intensify efforts towards social justice in the current political and economic climate? This collection continues a crucial dialog about feminist activist ethnography in the 21st century--at the intersection of engaged feminist research and activism in the service of the organizations, people, communities, and feminist issues we study.

This Is Our Life: Haida Material Heritage and Changing Museum Practice


Cara Krmpotich - 2013
    Featuring contributions from all the participants and a rich selection of illustrations, This Is Our Life details the remarkable story of the Haida Project – from the planning to the encounter and through the years that followed. A fascinating look at the meaning behind objects, the value of repatriation, and the impact of historical trajectories like colonialism, this is also a story of the understanding that grew between the Haida people and museum staff.

Ethnography After Antiquity: Foreign Lands and Peoples in Byzantine Literature


Anthony Kaldellis - 2013
    Yet the Byzantines, geographically located at the heart of the upheavals that led from the ancient to the modern world, had abundant and sophisticated knowledge of the cultures with which they struggled and bargained. Ethnography After Antiquity examines both the instances and omissions of Byzantine ethnography, exploring the political and religious motivations for writing (or not writing) about other peoples.Through the ethnographies embedded in classical histories, military manuals, Constantine VII's De administrando imperio, and religious literature, Anthony Kaldellis shows Byzantine authors using accounts of foreign cultures as vehicles to critique their own state or to demonstrate Romano-Christian superiority over Islam. He comes to the startling conclusion that the Byzantines did not view cultural differences through a purely theological prism: their Roman identity, rather than their orthodoxy, was the vital distinction from cultures they considered heretic and barbarian. Filling in the previously unexplained gap between antiquity and the resurgence of ethnography in the late Byzantine period, Ethnography After Antiquity offers new perspective on how Byzantium positioned itself with and against the dramatically shifting world.

Politics in Color and Concrete: Socialist Materialities and the Middle Class in Hungary


Krisztina Fehervary - 2013
    Politics in Color and Concrete revisits this history by exploring domestic space in Hungary from the 1950s through the 1990s and reconstructs the multi-textured and politicized aesthetics of daily life through the objects, spaces, and colors that made up this lived environment. Krisztina Fehervary shows that contemporary standards of living and ideas about normalcy have roots in late socialist consumer culture and are not merely products of postsocialist transitions or neoliberalism. This engaging study decenters conventional perspectives on consumer capitalism, home ownership, and citizenship in the new Europe.

Thinking Globally: A Global Studies Reader


Mark Juergensmeyer - 2013
    Each of the twenty compact chapters in Thinking Globally features Juergensmeyer's own lucid introduction to the key topics and offers brief excerpts from major writers in those areas. The chapters explore the history of globalization in each region of the world, from Africa and the Middle East to Asia, Europe, and the Americas, and cover key issues in today's global era, such as:- Challenges of the global economy - Fading of the nation-state - Emerging nationalisms and transnational ideologies - Hidden economies of sex trafficking and the illegal drug trade - New communications media - Environmental crises - Human rights abusesThinking Globally is the perfect introduction to global studies for students, and an exceptional resource for anyone interested in learning more about this new area of study.

Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict


Ara Norenzayan - 2013
    And in some parts of the world, societies with atheist majorities--some of the most cooperative and prosperous in the world--have climbed religion's ladder, and then kicked it away.Big Gods answers fundamental questions about the origins and spread of world religions and helps us understand the rise of cooperative societies without belief in gods.

Evolution and Human Sexual Behavior


Peter B. Gray - 2013
    Yet to a chimpanzee, the sexual practices and customs we take for granted would appear odd indeed. He or she might wonder why we bother with inconveniences like clothes, why we prefer to make love on a bed, and why we fuss so needlessly over privacy. "Evolution and Human Sexual Behavior" invites us into the thought-experiment of imagining human sex from the vantage point of our primate cousins, in order to underscore the role of evolution in shaping all that happens, biologically and behaviorally, when romantic passions are aroused.Peter Gray and Justin Garcia provide an interdisciplinary synthesis that draws on the latest discoveries in evolutionary theory, genetics, neuroscience, comparative primate research, and cross-cultural sexuality studies. They are our guides through an exploration of the patterns and variations that exist in human sexuality, in chapters covering topics ranging from the evolution of sex differences and reproductive physiology to the origins of sexual play, monogamous unions, and the facts and fictions surrounding orgasm.Intended for generally curious readers of all stripes, this up-to-date, one-volume survey of the evolutionary science of human sexual behavior explains why sexuality has remained a core fascination of human beings throughout time and across cultures.

Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi'ite South Beirut


Lara Deeb - 2013
    What effects have these establishments had on the moral norms, spatial practices, and urban experiences of this Lebanese community? From the diverse voices of young Shi'i Muslims searching for places to hang out, to the Hezbollah officials who want this media-savvy generation to be more politically involved, to the religious leaders worried that Lebanese youth are losing their moral compasses, "Leisurely Islam" provides a sophisticated and original look at leisure in the Lebanese capital.What makes a cafe morally appropriate? How do people negotiate morality in relation to different places? And under what circumstances might a pious Muslim go to a cafe that serves alcohol? Lara Deeb and Mona Harb highlight tensions and complexities exacerbated by the presence of multiple religious authorities, a fraught sectarian political context, class mobility, and a generation that takes religion for granted but wants to have fun. The authors elucidate the political, economic, religious, and social changes that have taken place since 2000, and examine leisure's influence on Lebanese sociopolitical and urban situations.Asserting that morality and geography cannot be fully understood in isolation from one another, "Leisurely Islam" offers a colorful new understanding of the most powerful community in Lebanon today."

Traditional Healers of Central Australia: Ngangkari


NPY Women's Council Aboriginal Corporation - 2013
    For thousands of years the ngangkari have nurtured the physical, emotional and social well-being of their people. To increase understanding and encourage collaboration with mainstream health services and the wider community, the ngangkari have forged a rare partnership with health professionals and practitioners of Western medicine. Experience the world of the ngangkari as they share their wisdom, natural healing techniques and cultural history through life stories, spectacular photography and artwork.