'When, why, and how did language evolve?' 'Why do only humans have language?' This book looks at these and other questions about the origins and evolution of language. It does so via a rich diversity of perspectives, including social, cultural, archaeological, palaeoanthropological, musicological, anatomical, neurobiological, primatological, and linguistic. Among the subjects it considers are: how far sociality is a prerequisite for language; the evolutionary links between language and music; the relation between natural selection and niche construction; the origins of the lexicon; the role of social play in language development; the use of signs by great apes; the evolution of syntax; the evolutionary biology of language; the insights offered by Chomsky's biolinguistic approach to mind and language; the emergence of recursive language; the selectional advantages of the human vocal tract; and why women speak better than men.
The authors, drawn from all over the world, are prominent linguists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, archaeologists, primatologists, social anthropologists, and specialists in artificial intelligence. As well as explaining what is understood about the evolution of language, they look squarely at the formidable obstacles to knowing more - the absence of direct evidence, for example; the problems of using indirect evidence; the lack of a common conception of language; confusion about the operation of natural selection and other processes of change; the scope for misunderstanding in a multi-disciplinary field, and many more. Despite these difficulties, the authors in their stylish and readable contributions to this book are able to show just how much has been achieved in this most fruitful and fascinating area of research in the social, natural, and cognitive sciences.

This significant contribution to Cherokee studies examines the tribe's life during the eighteenth century, up to the Removal. By revealing town loyalties and regional alliances, Tyler Boulware uncovers a persistent identification hierarchy among the colonial Cherokee.
Boulware aims to fill the gap in Cherokee historical studies by addressing two significant aspects of Cherokee identity: town and region. Though other factors mattered, these were arguably the most recognizable markers by which Cherokee peoples structured group identity and influenced their interactions with outside groups during the colonial era.
This volume focuses on the understudied importance of social and political ties that gradually connected villages and regions and slowly weakened the localism that dominated in earlier decades. It highlights the importance of borderland interactions to Cherokee political behavior and provides a nuanced investigation of the issue of Native American identity, bringing geographic relevance and distinctions to the topic.

Western aid is in decline. Non-traditional development actors from the developing countries and elsewhere are in the ascendant. A new set of global economic and political processes are shaping the twenty-first century. This book engages with nearly two decades of continuity and change in the development industry. In particular, it argues that while the world of international development has expanded since the 1990s, it has become more rigidly technocratic. The authors insist on a focus upon the core anthropological issues surrounding poverty and inequality, and thus sharply criticise what are perceived as problems in the field. Anthropology and Development is a completely rewritten edition of the best-selling and critically acclaimed Anthropology, Development and the Post-Modern Challenge (1996). It serves as both an innovative reformulation of the field, as well as a textbook for many undergraduate and graduate courses at leading international universities.

Patrick Barr-Melej here illuminates modern Chilean history with an unprecedented chronicle and reassessment of the sixties and seventies. During a period of tremendous political and social strife that saw the election of a Marxist president followed by the terror of a military coup in 1973, a youth-driven, transnationally connected counterculture smashed onto the scene. Contributing to a surging historiography of the era's Latin American counterculture, Barr-Melej draws on media and firsthand interviews in documenting the intertwining of youth and counterculture with discourses rooted in class and party politics. Focusing on ""hippismo"" and an esoteric movement called Poder Joven, Barr-Melej challenges a number of prevailing assumptions about culture, politics, and the Left under Salvador Allende's ""Chilean Road to Socialism."" While countercultural attitudes toward recreational drug use, gender roles and sexuality, rock music, and consumerism influenced many youths on the Left, the preponderance of leftist leaders shared a more conservative cultural sensibility. This exposed, Barr-Melej argues, a degree of intergenerational dissonance within leftist ranks. And while the allure of new and heterodox cultural values and practices among young people grew, an array of constituencies from the Left to the Right berated counterculture in national media, speeches, schools, and other settings. This public discourse of contempt ultimately contributed to the fierce repression of nonconformist youth culture following the coup.

Written by four authors, Philip Silverman (PhD, Cornell University), Laura Hecht (PhD, Indiana University), J. Daniel McMillin (PhD, Southern Illinois University), and Shienpei Chang (MA, California State University Bakersfield), this unique book examines how social networks contribute to a sense of well-being and a positive self-identity among older Americans and Taiwanese. Although social network analysis has grown increasingly important in the last several decades, few comparisons are available with Chinese and American samples; this is the first research project that compares a Western and an Asian culture using social network types. This research is also the first ever to use social network types to test hypotheses about values, reciprocity, social capital, and the health status of older adults. The data, gathered through systematic sampling in northeastern Oregon and central Taiwan, are first analyzed for the content of exchanges with network members. Then, the structure of the social network is determined by cluster analysis from which four network types are derived. This innovative, two-part procedure reveals a deeper understanding of the role social networks play in the quality of life among elderly in these two cultures. By comparing two very different cultures, the research reveals important details about the relative impact of broader social changes and social networks on the well-being of older adults. The two societies represent contrasting cultural sensibilities regarding the position and treatment of the aged. Yet, social changes in both countries have had a similar impact on older adults in some respects, but not in others. The data allow a determination of whether theinherent dissimilarities between a Western and an Asian culture, or the differences in the structure of each network type, can best account for the variation in exchange modalities and outcomes related to well-being and self-identity. A final chapter highlights possible future research in light of the theoretical and methodological implications of the findings. This book is a valuable resource for those in cultural anthropology, comparative sociology, gerontology, and Asian studies.

The anthropologist Margaret Mead garnered fame and generated controversy in a full life that spanned most of the 20th century. She was a maverick with a strong and sometimes difficult personality, and this biography follows her from childhood years in Pennsylvania, to college days with her pals nicknamed the Ash Can Cats, to tutelage under the preeminent anthropologist, Franz Boas, at Columbia, and her fieldwork in the South Pacific, starting in Samoa when she was 22 years of age. Private and public are interwoven, with coverage of her marriages, close friendships, writings, and career progression. Mead has special appeal to teens because of her work with and theories on this age group.

Readers will be inspired by Mead's individualism and career in anthropology in its golden age. They will also appreciate the insights into her writings, including her autobiography. Mead's viewpoints on myriad topics are presented, with a final note on her impact and an imagining of what she would say about the world today. A chronology and glossary supplement the text.

The Irish have a long and proud history in America, and New Jersey is no exception. Beginning with the first Irish immigrants who settled in every corner of the state, this vital ethnic community has left an indelible mark on all facets of life in the Garden State. New Jersey's Irish natives expressed their own discontent over British oppression by battling alongside colonists in the American Revolution. Brave Fenians fought to preserve their new home in the Civil War. New Jersey's Irish also have become professional athletes, United States Representatives, religious leaders, spies and business trailblazers. Author and Irish heritage researcher Tom Fox relays these and other stories that demonstrate the importance of Ireland to the development of New Jersey and the United States.

Issues of race and ethnicity in Europe have been brought to the fore by the recent electoral successes of extreme right-wing parties, while immigration and refugee policies are exposing deep uncertainties across the political spectrum. The politicization of 'race', ethnicity and immigration is a key feature of contemporary European society. In this important new volume, leading specialists explore the political mediation of racism across western Europe, examining its causes, character and consequences. Racism, Ethnicity and Politics in Contemporary Europe includes an overview of contemporary racism, investigations into its socio-economic and ideological roots, analyses of its role in party politics and studies of multilateral and non-governmental initiatives designed to promote anti-racism. The contributors provide case studies of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. They consider both the experience of racism in specific countries and common issues thrown up by the resurgence of racism at a time of profound socio-economic restructuring and political uncertainty. The rich insights offered by this book will be of interest to students and scholars active in many disciplines ranging from politics and sociology to discourse analysis and social psychology.

Using a theoretical approach and a critical summary, combining the perspectives in the postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis and narratology with the tools of hermeneutics and deconstruction, this book argues that Jean Rhys's work can be subsumed under a poetics of cultural identity and hybridity. It also demonstrates the validity of the concept of hybridization as the expression of identity formation; the cultural boundaries variability; the opposition self-otherness, authenticity-fiction, trans-textuality; and the relevance of an integrated approach to multiple cultural identities as an encountering and negotiation space between writer, reader and work. The complexity of ontological and epistemological representation involves an interdisciplinary approach that blends a literary interpretive approach to social, anthropological, cultural and historical perspectives. The book concludes that in the author's fictional universe, cultural identity is represented as a general human experience that transcends the specific conditionalities of geographical contexts, history and culture. The construction of identity by Jean Rhys is represented by the dichotomy of marginal identity and the identification with a human ideal designed either by the hegemonic discourse or metropolitan culture or by the dominant ideology. The identification with a pattern of cultural authenticity, of racial, ethnic, or national purism is presented as a purely destructive cultural projection, leading to the creation of a static universe in opposition to the diversity of human feelings and aspirations. Jean Rhys's fictional discourse lies between "the anxiety of authorship" and "the anxiety of influence" and shows the postcolonial era of uprooting and migration in which the national ownership diluted the image of a "home" ambiguous located at the boundary between a myth of origins and a myth of becoming. The relationship between the individual and socio-cultural space is thus shaped in a dual hybrid position.

A volume in Education Policy in Practice: Critical Cultural Studies Series Editors Bradley A. U. Levinson, and Margaret Sutton, Indiana University This book on bilingual education policy represents a multidimensional and longitudinal study of "policy processes" as they play out on the ground (a single school in Los Angeles), and over time (both within the same school, and also within the state of Georgia). In order to reconstruct this complex policy process, Anderson impressively marshals a great variety of forms of "discourse." Most of this discourse, of course, comes from overheard discussions and spontaneous interviews conducted at a particular school-the voices of teachers and administrators. Such discourse forms the heart of her ethnographic findings. Yet Anderson also brings an ethnographer's eye to national and regional debates as they are conducted and represented in different forms of media, especially newspapers and magazines. She then uses the key theoretical concept of "articulation" to conceptually link these media representations with local school discourse. The result is an illuminating account of how everyday debates at a particular school and media debates occurring more broadly mutually inform one another. Reviews: Anderson's timely, methodologically sophisticated, and compelling account surrounding the politics of bilingual education moves beyond instrumental notions of policy to advance the idea that mandates are themselves resources that may be vigorously contested as contending parties vie for inclusion in the schooling process. Her work artfully demonstrates how improving schooling for all children is inseparable from a larger, much-needed discussion of what we as a polity believe about whether and how we are interconnected, together with who should and does have a voice in the policy making and implementation process. -Angela Valenzuela, Professor, University of Texas at Austin, author of Subtractive Schooling and Leaving Children Behind Anderson shows the gap between clear-cut assumptions and ideologies informing education policy and legislation on language and immigration, and the complications that arise for teachers when they actually implement language legislation in the classroom. She also illustrates assumptions about language and being American, as these are both debated and shared by each "side" of the language and immigration debates in California and Georgia. Her chapter on California's Proposition 227 is a particular eye-opener, demonstrating in detail the embedding of local identities and oppositions in these debates. Above all, she makes quite clear the complex, often contradictory, web of relations among politics, language, race, and cultural citizenship. --Bonnie Urciuoli, Professor, Hamilton College, author of Exposing Prejudice

This book explores the relationship between the food culture of Israel and the creation of its national identity. It is an effort to research what the mundane, everyday behaviours such as cooking and feeding ourselves and others, can tell us about the places we were born and the cultural practices of a nation. With the aim of developing a better understanding of the many facets of Israeli nationalism, this ethnographic work interrogates how ordinary Israelis, in particular women, use food in their everyday life to construct, perform and resist national narratives. It explores how Israeli national identity is experienced through its food culture, and how social and political transformations are reflected in the consumption patterns of Israeli society. The book highlights understudied themes in anthropology, food studies and gender studies, and focuses on three key themes: food and national identity construction, the role of women as feeders of the nation, and everyday nationhood. It is a relevant work for researchers and students interested in the study of food, gender, nationalism and the Middle East; as well as for food writers and bloggers alike.

In this compelling study, Maria Theresia Starzmann and John Roby bring together an international cast of experts who move beyond the traditional framework of the ""constructed past"" to look at not only how the past is remembered but also who remembers it. They convincingly argue that memory is a complex process, shaped by remembering and forgetting, inscription and erasure, presence and absence. Collective memory influences which stories are told over others, ultimately shaping narratives about identity, family, and culture. This interdisciplinary volume-melding anthropology, archaeology, sociology, history, philosophy, literature, and archival studies-explores such diverse arenas as archaeological objects, human remains, colonial landscapes, public protests, national memorials, art installations, testimonies, and even digital space as places of memory. Examining important sites of memory, including the Victory Memorial to Soviet Army, Blair Mountain, Spanish penitentiaries, African shrines, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the contributors highlight the myriad ways communities reinforce or reinterpret their pasts.

Michael Staack's multi-year ethnography is the first and only comprehensive social-scientific analysis of the combat sport 'Mixed Martial Arts'. Based on systematic training observations, the author meticulously analyses how Mixed Martial Arts practitioners conjointly create and immerse themselves into their own world of ultimate bodily combat. With his examination of concentrative technique demonstrations, cooperative technique train-ings, and chaotic sparring practices, Staack not only provides a sociological illumination of Mixed Martial Arts culture's defining theme - the quest of 'Fighting As Real As It Gets'. Rather further-more, he provides a compelling cultural-sociological case study on practical social constructions of 'authenticity'.

The acclaimed and award-winning book about what a rare mushroom can teach us about sustaining life on a fragile planet.

Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made?

A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, The Mushroom at the End of the World follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction.

By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.

The richness of Africa's heritage at times stands in stark contrast to the economic, health, political and societal challenges faced. Development is essential but in what forms? For whom? Following whose agendas? At what costs? This book explores how heritage can promote, secure, or undermine sustainable development with special focus on sub-Saharan Africa, and in turn, how this affects conceptions of heritage. The chapters in this volume identify shared challenges, good practices and failures, and use specific case studies to provide detailed insights into varied forms of heritage and heritage defining processes on the continent. By critically analysing the often romanticised discourses of 'heritage', 'community engagement', and 'sustainable development' the volume suggests ways of harnessing aspects of heritage to tackle some of the socio-economic and political pressures facing heritage practices on the continent, including the legacies of colonialism.

What exactly is the tenuous connection between an individual and culture? When does a cultural tradition cease to offer security to its members and instead becomes so confining that one must protest or rebel to survive as an individual? These issues, which had often undercut the author's well-intentioned research plans, compelled her to pay attention to the subjective aspect of research as much as the objective ones. This was the beginning of an inner exploration which led her to become a Jungian psychotherapist and a different kind of observer of human nature and culture.

Frontiers of Citizenship is an engagingly-written, innovative history of Brazil's black and indigenous people that redefines our understanding of slavery, citizenship, and the origins of Brazil's 'racial democracy'. Through groundbreaking archival research that brings the stories of slaves, Indians, and settlers to life, Yuko Miki challenges the widespread idea that Brazilian Indians 'disappeared' during the colonial era, paving the way for the birth of Latin America's largest black nation. Focusing on the postcolonial settlement of the Atlantic frontier and Rio de Janeiro, Miki argues that the exclusion and inequality of indigenous and African-descended people became embedded in the very construction of Brazil's remarkably inclusive nationhood. She demonstrates that to understand the full scope of central themes in Latin American history - race and national identity, unequal citizenship, popular politics, and slavery and abolition - one must engage the histories of both the African diaspora and the indigenous Americas.

Biblical theology is confronted with tensions between love and justice. There are sometimes attempts to avoid these tensions by dissolving one side of the opposing concept. One such attempt is to identify love and mercy as the essence of Christian theology, overcoming law and reciprocal justice. However, such a dissolution is irresponsible not only ethically, but also theologically-as the discussion in a number of the studies collected in the present volume will demonstrate.

Koreans have been immigrating to the United States via Hawaii for over a hundred years, although the greatest influx to the mainland began after 1965, making Koreans one of the most recent ethnic groups in the United States. The intimate socio-political links between the United States and the Korean peninsula after World War II also contributes to the ideas and ideals of what it means to be Korean in the United States. As with many people with immigrant background, young people of Korean descent residing in the United States try to understand their ethnic identities through their families, peers, and communities, and many of these journeys involve participating in cultural activities that include traditional dance, song, and other such performance activities. This study is the culmination of a four-year ethnographic research project on the cultural practices of a group of Koreans in the United States pursuing the traditional Korean cultural art form of pungmul in exploring their ethnic identities. Through the accesses and opportunities afforded to the members of Mae-ari Korean Cultural Troupe by the national and transnational networks with other people of Korean descent, these young people begin to understand themselves as "Korean" while teaching and learning traditional Korean cultural practices in performances, workshops, and everyday interactions with each other. Most studies about Asian Americans focus on the immigration challenges, or the conflicts and differences between generations. While these are important issues that affect the lives of Asian Americans, it is also valuable to focus on how new cultural identities are formed in the attempt to hold on to the traditions of theimmigrant homeland . This research pays close attention to how young people understand their identities through cultural practices, regardless of generational differences. The focus is on collective meaning-making about ethnic identity across immigration statuses and generations. In investigating their ways of being, author Sonya Gwak pays close attention to the semiotic processes within the group that aid in creating and cultivating notions of ethnic identity, especially in the ways in which the notion of culture becomes indelibly linked with "things" within and across the sites. Dr. Gwak also explores the pedagogical processes within the group regarding how cultures are objectified and transformed into tools of teaching and learning. Finally, the study also reveals how people understand their ethnic identities through direct and active engagement with, experience of, and expression of "cultural objects." By looking at the multiple forms of expressing ethnic identity, this study shows how the young people in Mae-ari locate themselves within the time and space of Korean history, Korean American history, activism, performing arts, and tradition. This study argues that ethnic identity formation is a process that is rooted in cultural practices contextualized in social, political, and cultural histories. This book advances the field of ethnic and immigrant studies by offering a new framework for understanding the multiple ways in which young people make sense of their identities. Be(com)ing Korean in the United States is an important book for all collections in Asian American studies, as well as ethnic and immigrant studies.