Book picks similar to
Why the World Needs Anthropologists by Dan Podjed


anthropology
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Righteous Dopefiend


Philippe Bourgois - 2008
    For over a decade Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg followed a social network of two dozen heroin injectors and crack smokers in the San Francisco drug scene, accompanying them as they scrambled to generate income through burglary, larceny, panhandling, recycling, and day labor. Righteous Dopefiend interweaves stunning black-and-white photography with vivid dialogue, oral biography, detailed field notes, and critical theoretical analysis to viscerally illustrate the life of a drug addict. Its gripping narrative develops a cast of characters around the themes of violence, racism and race relations, sexuality, trauma, embodied suffering, social inequality, and power relations. The result is a dispassionate chronicle of fixes and overdoses; of survival, loss, caring, and hope rooted in the drug abusers’ determination to hang on for one more day, through a "moral economy of sharing" that precariously balances mutual solidarity and interpersonal betrayal.

Social Change in Modern India


M.N. Srinivas - 2000
    While concepts like Sanskritization and Westernization have helped the understanding of complex, often seemingly contradictory trends in society, Prof. Srinivas' essay on the study of one's own society continue to engage scholars, opening the way to an understanding of sociological writing itself as a text. This revised edition of the 1966 original includes these classic essays, as also an appendix where Prof. Srinivas deals with the problem of changing values in Indian society today.

Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology


James P. Spradley - 1977
    The 37 articles cover a broad range of theoretical perspectives and demonstrate basic anthropological concepts. The twelfth edition retains the accessibility of the previous editions and the view that anthropology provides a fascinating perspective on the human experience. Focus on the current concerns in both anthropology and American society shapes the twelfth edition, including globalization, the study of women's lives, race and ethnicity, and the practical applications of anthropology and the ways it leads to everyday careers. The revised table of contents reflects the suggestions of Conformity and Conflict users. Thirty percent of the readings are either revised or entirely new to this edition. Nine new articles appear in this edition of Conformity and Conflict, three of which were expressly commissioned for this edition. Four articles have been updated for this edition. and world systems on human social life, and to human change in increasingly large and complex societies. An entirely NEW section on globalization includes three new articles that introduce readers to key concepts - how popular culture spreads to different societies, the processes by which cultural artifacts, social structures, and how ideas are adopted and changed as they reach new societies.

A Brief History of Neoliberalism


David Harvey - 2005
    Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.

Europe and the People Without History


Eric R. Wolf - 1982
    It asserts that anthropology must pay more attention to history.

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History


Nicholas Wade - 2014
    For this understandable reason, the idea has been banished from polite academic conversation. Arguing that race is more than just a social construct can get a scholar run out of town, or at least off campus, on a rail. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory. Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand years—to be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes. Race is not a bright-line distinction; by definition it means that the more human populations are kept apart, the more they evolve their own distinct traits under the selective pressure known as Darwinian evolution. For many thousands of years, most human populations stayed where they were and grew distinct, not just in outward appearance but in deeper senses as well. Wade, the longtime journalist covering genetic advances for The New York Times, draws widely on the work of scientists who have made crucial breakthroughs in establishing the reality of recent human evolution. The most provocative claims in this book involve the genetic basis of human social habits. What we might call middle-class social traits—thrift, docility, nonviolence—have been slowly but surely inculcated genetically within agrarian societies, Wade argues. These “values” obviously had a strong cultural component, but Wade points to evidence that agrarian societies evolved away from hunter-gatherer societies in some crucial respects. Also controversial are his findings regarding the genetic basis of traits we associate with intelligence, such as literacy and numeracy, in certain ethnic populations, including the Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews. Wade believes deeply in the fundamental equality of all human peoples. He also believes that science is best served by pursuing the truth without fear, and if his mission to arrive at a coherent summa of what the new genetic science does and does not tell us about race and human history leads straight into a minefield, then so be it. This will not be the last word on the subject, but it will begin a powerful and overdue conversation.

A Secular Age


Charles Taylor - 2007
    This book takes up the question of what these changes mean—of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance


Rosie Molinary - 2010
    Drawing on self-awareness, creativity, and mind-body connections, Molinary incorporates practical techniques into a 365-day action plan that empowers women to regain a healthy self-image, shore up self-confidence, reframe and break undermining habits of self-criticism, and champion their own emotional and physical well-being. Through accessible, doable daily actions, women and girls learn to manifest a healthy outlook on life ? teaching them to live large, and starting them on the path to learning to love themselves and others. Molinary steers clear of the florid affirmations and daily meditations often utilized by books geared toward personal growth, instead delivering a hip, modern guide of inspirational thought that keeps pace with the times. A practical, candid, and accessible handbook, "Beautiful You" strikes a chord with every woman who has ever faltered in her self-confidence or lost her personal brilliance ? and it makes sure she never lets it happen again."

The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations


Christopher Lasch - 1978
    Lasch’s identification of narcissism as not only an individual ailment but also a burgeoning social epidemic was groundbreaking. His diagnosis of American culture is even more relevant today, predicting the limitless expansion of the anxious and grasping narcissistic self into every part of American life.The Culture of Narcissism offers an astute and urgent analysis of what we need to know in these troubled times.

The Shape of Content


Ben Shahn - 1957
    He talks of the creation of the work of art, the importance of the community, the problem of communication, and the critical theories governing the artist and his audience.

Future Shock


Alvin Toffler - 1970
    Examines the effects of rapid industrial and technological changes upon the individual, the family, and society.

Gray's Anatomy for Students [with Student Consult Online Access]


Richard L. Drake - 2004
    A team of authors with a wealth of diverse teaching and clinical experience have carefully crafted the book to efficiently cover the information taught in contemporary anatomy courses. A user-friendly format, a regional organization, and outstanding artwork make mastering anatomy remarkably easy. Unique coverage of surface anatomy, correlative diagnostic images, and clinical case studies demonstrate practical applications of anatomical concepts. STUDENT CONSULT offers convenient and versatile online access to the book's content plus interactive exercises and more. And, an international advisory board, comprised of more than 100 anatomy instructors, ensures that the material is accurate, up to date, and easy to use.The smart way to study!Elsevier titles STUDENT CONSULT will help you master difficult concepts and study more efficiently in print and online! Perform rapid searches. Integrate bonus content from other disciplines. Download text to your handheld device. And a lot more. Each STUDENT CONSULT title comes with full text online, a unique image library, case studies, USMLE style questions, and online note-taking to enhance your learning experience.

Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture


Johan Huizinga - 1938
    Like civilization, play requires structure and participants willing to create within limits. Starting with Plato, Huizinga traces the contribution of Homo Ludens, or "Man the player" through Medieval Times, the Renaissance, and into our modern civilization. Huizinga defines play against a rich theoretical background, using cross-cultural examples from the humanities, business, and politics. Homo Ludens defines play for generations to come."A happier age than ours once made bold to call our species by the name of Homo Sapiens. In the course of time we have come to realize that we are not so reasonable after all as the Eighteenth Century with its worship of reason and naive optimism, though us; "hence moder fashion inclines to designate our species asHomo Faber Man the Maker. But though faber may not be quite so dubious as sapiens it is, as a name specific of the human being, even less appropriate, seeing that many animals too are makers. There is a third function, howver, applicable to both human and animal life, and just as important as reasoning and making--namely, playing. it seems to me that next to Homo Faber, and perhaps on the same level as Homo Sapiens, Homo Ludens, Man the Player, deserves a place in our nomenclature. "--from the Foreward, by Johan Huizinga

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations


Clay Shirky - 2008
    'Here Comes Everybody' is an examination of how the spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form and exist within groups, with profound long-term economic and social effects, for good and for ill.

The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge


Jean-François Lyotard - 1979
    Many definitions of postmodernism focus on its nature as the aftermath of the modern industrial age when technology developed. This book extends that analysis to postmodernism by looking at the status of science, technology, and the arts, the significance of technocracy, and the way the flow of information is controlled in the Western world.