What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man's Blues


Clifford Thompson - 2019
    Thompson was raised to believe in treating every person of every color as an individual, and he decided as a young man that America, despite its history of racial oppression, was his home as much as anyone else's. As a middle-aged, happily married father of biracial children, Thompson finds himself questioning his most deeply held convictions when the race-baiting Donald Trump ascends to the presidency--elected by whites, whom Thompson had refused to judge as a group, and who make up the majority in this country Thompson had called his own.In the grip of contradictory emotions, Thompson turns for guidance to the wisdom of writers he admires while knowing that the answers to his questions about America ultimately lie in America itself. Through interviews with a small but varied group of Americans he hears sharply divergent opinions about what is happening in the country while trying to find his own answers--conclusions based not on conventional wisdom or on what he would like to believe, but on what he sees.

Sex Matters: The Sexuality and Society Reader


Mindy Stombler - 2003
    This anthology of almost 70 readings--from contemporary scholarly literature, trade books, popular media, as well as contributed articles-- examines the many ways in which human sexuality is socially constructed and regulated behavior, and how it is studied by social scientists.

How We Eat: Appetite, Culture, and the Psychology of Food


Leon H. Rappoport - 2003
    Tracing our culinary customs from the Stone Age to the stovetop range, he illuminates our complex and often contradictory eating habits, and suggests that perhaps we are what we eat.

From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology


Max Weber - 1946
    An introduction to the work of the greatest German sociologist and a key figure in the development of present-day sociological thought.

Becoming Un-Orthodox: Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews


Lynn Davidman - 2014
    For many, it involves dramatic changes of everyday routines and personal habits.Davidman bases her analysis on in-depth conversations with forty ex-Hasidic individuals. From these conversations emerge accounts of the great fear, angst, and sense of danger that come of leaving a highly bounded enclave community. Many of those interviewed spoke of feeling marginal in their owncommunities; of strain in their homes due to death, divorce, or their parents' profound religious differences; experienced sexual, physical, or verbal abuse; or expressed an acute awareness of gender inequality, the dissimilar lives of their secular relatives, and forbidden television shows, movies, websites, and books.Becoming Un-Orthodox draws much-needed attention to the vital role of the body and bodily behavior in religious practices. It is through physical rituals and routines that the members of a religion, particularly a highly conservative one, constantly create, perform, and reinforce the culture of thereligion. Because of the many observances and daily rituals required by their faith, Hasidic defectors are an exemplary case study for exploring the centrality of the body in shaping, maintaining, and shedding religions.This book provides both a moving narrative of the struggles of Hasidic defectors and a compelling call for greater collective understanding of the complex significance of the body in society.

A Child's World: Infancy Through Adolescence


Diane E. Papalia - 1992
    In the warmly-written and engaging style that has become their hallmark, Diane Papalia and Ruth Feldman continue to provide a chronological view of child development; the new edition expands the coverage of cultural and historical influences on development, highlights the latest research in cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary theory, and features a new and improved Visual Assets Database for instructors.

It Will All Make Sense When You're Dead: Messages From Our Loved Ones in the Spirit World


Priscilla A. Keresey - 2011
    After a brief tale of her own introduction to the paranormal, the author shares funny, poignant, and insightful words straight from the spirit people themselves. Together, the living and the dead seek forgiveness, solve family mysteries, find closure, settle scores, and come together for birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations. Quoting directly from her readings and séances, Priscilla reports the spirit perspective on mental illness, suicide, religion, and even the afterlife itself. For those readers interested in developing their own spirit communication skills, the last section of the book offers meditations and exercises used by the author herself, both personally and with her students. "It Will All Make Sense When You’re Dead" is chock-full of simple and entertaining wisdom, showing us how to live for today, with light hearts and kindness.

Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist


Hortense Powdermaker - 1966
    An occasionally humorous and insightful look into what makes socities both similar and unique.

Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi's Red Light District


Mayank Soofi - 2012
    300 raise their children, cook for their lovers, visit temples, shrines and mosques, complain about pimps and brothel owners, listen to film songs, and solicit and entertain customers. By following the daily lives of the denizens of one kotha, Mayank Austen Soofi paints an intimate portrait of women for whom sex is work—a way to make a living.With precise details and haunting photographs, Soofi delicately and carefully etches the everyday world of those who inhabit the peripheries of society.

Cultural Anthropology (MyAnthroLab Series)


Barbara D. Miller
    Faculty and students praise the book's proven ability to generate class discussion, increase faculty-student engagement, and enhance student learning. Through clear writing, a balanced theoretical approach, and engaging examples, Miller stresses the importance of social inequality, cultural change, and applied aspects of anthropology throughout the book. Each chapter highlights an example of applied anthropology and connects with students by providing practical tips about how they can use anthropology in their everyday lives and careers. The last two chapters address how migration is changing world cultures and the importance of local cultural values and needs in shaping international development policies.

Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers?: The Dark Emu Debate


Peter Sutton - 2021
    It argued that classical Aboriginal society was more sophisticated than Australians had been led to believe because it resembled more closely the farming communities of Europe.In Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe ask why Australians have been so receptive to the notion that farming represents an advance from hunting and gathering. Drawing on the knowledge of Aboriginal elders, previously not included within this discussion, and decades of anthropological scholarship, Sutton and Walshe provide extensive evidence to support their argument that classical Aboriginal society was a hunter-gatherer society and as sophisticated as the traditional European farming methods.Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? asks Australians to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal society and culture.

The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm


Kenneth W. Gronbach - 2008
    But the hard truth is that the changes we see in marketing and business are based on one undeniable factor--the size of the generations we are selling to. As each generation ages, what they buy and how much they buy will change. Each product and service has a "best customer" that sustains a business. As these customers grow up, the smartest marketers will stay ahead of them--and their money. In The Age Curve, marketing guru Kenneth Gronbach shows executives and entrepreneurs how to anticipate this wave of predictable demand and ride it to success.Gronbach reveals how our largest generations, the Baby Boomers and Generation Y, are redefining how we market and how businesses can anticipate their needs more effectively. Complete with entertaining examples of companies like Apple who have perfected their strategies for building a loyal customer base, as well as those who haven't (Levi Strauss and Honda Motorcycle), this book will show readers:- how to determine their best customers - how successful companies are earning the loyalty of Generation Y and cultivating allegiance to their products for years to come - why Generation X is a much less valuable market than any of us have been led to believe - and much moreBoth shocking and compelling, The Age Curve will change the way companies look at their customers and how they market to them.

The Hungry Gene: The Inside Story of the Obesity Industry


Ellen Ruppel Shell - 2002
    Shell traces the epidemic's inception in the Ice Age, its rise during the Industrial Revolution, and its growth through the early days of medicine and into modernity. She takes readers to the front lines of the struggle to come to grips with this baffling plague — from a children's food marketing convention, to the cutthroat race to find the obese gene, to a far-flung tropical island, where a horrifying outbreak of obesity has helped unravel the disorder's genetic and evolutionary roots. Offering an unflinching insider's look into the radical and controversial surgical and pharmacological approaches used to combat what drug makers have dubbed the trillion-dollar disease, Shell takes aim at the collusion of industry and government that lies behind the crises and shows conclusively that obesity is not a matter of gluttony or weak will, but of an increasingly greedy culture preying on vulnerable human biology. Gripping and provocative, The Hungry Gene is the unsettling saga of how the world got fat — and what we can do about it.

Chuck Klosterman on Media and Culture: A Collection of Previously Published Essays


Chuck Klosterman - 2010
    From Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Chuck Klosterman IV; and Eating the Dinosaur, these essays are now available in this ebook collection for fans of Klosterman’s writing on media and culture.

G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire


Katherine Frank - 2002
    She finds that the clubs provide an intermediate space—not work, not home—where men can enjoyably experience their bodies and selves through conversation, fantasy, and ritualized voyeurism. At the same time, she shows how the dynamics of male pleasure and privilege in strip clubs are intertwined with ideas about what it means to be a man in contemporary America.Frank’s ethnography draws on her work as an exotic dancer in five clubs, as well as on her interviews with over thirty regular customers—middle-class men in their late-twenties to mid-fifties. Reflecting on the customers’ dual desires for intimacy and visibility, she explores their paradoxical longings for "authentic" interactions with the dancers, the ways these aspirations are expressed within the highly controlled and regulated strip clubs, and how they relate to beliefs and fantasies about social class and gender. She considers how regular visits to strip clubs are not necessarily antithetical to marriage or long-term heterosexual relationships, but are based on particular beliefs about marriage and monogamy that make these clubs desirable venues. Looking at the relative "classiness" of the clubs where she worked—ranging from the city’s most prestigious clubs to some of its dive bars—she reveals how the clubs are differentiated by reputations, dress codes, cover charges, locations, and clientele, and describes how these distinctions become meaningful and erotic for the customers. Interspersed throughout the book are three fictional interludes that provide an intimate look at Frank’s experiences as a stripper—from the outfits to the gestures, conversations, management, coworkers, and, of course, the customers.Focusing on the experiences of the male clients, rather than those of the female sex workers, G-Strings and Sympathy provides a nuanced, lively, and tantalizing account of the stigmatized world of strip clubs.