The chimpanzee of all other living species is our closest relation, with whom we last shared a common ancestor about five million years ago. These African apes make and use a rich and varied kit of tools, and of the primates they are the only consistent and habitual tool-users and tool-makers. Chimpanzees meet the criteria of a culture as originally defined for human beings by socio-cultural anthropologists. They show sex differences in using tools to obtain and to process a variety of plant and animal foods. The technological gap between chimpanzees and human societies that live by foraging (hunter-gatherers) is surprisingly narrow at least for food-getting. Different communities of wild chimpanzees have different tool-kits and not all of this regional and local variation can be explained by the demands of the physical and biotic environments in which they live. Some differences are likely to be customs based on socially derived and symbolically encoded traditions. This book describes and analyzes the tool-use of humankind's nearest living relation. It focuses on field studies of these apes across Africa, comparing their customs to see if they can justifiably be termed cultural. It makes direct comparisons with the material culture of human foraging peoples. The book evaluates the chimpanzee as an evolutionary model, showing that chimpanzee behavior helps us to infer the origins of technology in human prehistory.

Racism, Culture, Markets explores the connections between cultural representations of `race' and their historical, institutional and global forms of expression and impact. John Gabriel examines the current fixation with market place philosophies in terms of the crisis in anti-racist politics and concern over questions of cultural identity. He explores issues such as the continuing relevance of terms like `black' as a basis for self definition; the need to think about identities in more fluid and complex ways, and the need to develop a much more explicit discussion of the construction of whiteness and white identities. Racism, Culture, Markets brings together a range of historical and contemporary case studies including the Rushdie affair; the Gulf War; debates around fostering, adoption and domestic violence; separate schooling; the service economy and its employment practices; tourism in the Third World; the Bhopal chemical disaster and racism in the new Europe. His case studies also consider the role played by contemporary media and popular culture in these debates, including film, television, music and the press.

Lavishly illustrated with historical photographs, maps, and architectural drawings, "To Build in a New Land" includes chapters on Ukrainian pioneer landscapes in western Canada, Cajun farmsteads in Louisiana, Czech settlements in South Dakota, Danish homes in Iowa and Minnesota, vernacular architecture of the German-Russian Mennonites of southeastern Manitoba, Afro-American housing in the southeastern United States, and the regional variations of Irish, English, and Scottish construction in Ontario.

Laura Hostetler here shows how Qing China (1636-1911) used cartography and ethnography to pursue its imperial ambitions. She argues that far from being on the periphery of developments in the early modern period, Qing China both participated in and helped shape the new emphasis on empirical scientific knowledge that was simultaneously transforming Europe - and its colonial empires - at the time. Although mapping in China is almost as old as Chinese civilization itself, the Qing insistence on accurate scale maps of their territory was a new response to the difficulties of administering a vast and growing empire. Likewise, direct observation became increasingly important to Qing ethnographic writings, such as the illustrated manuscripts known as "Miao albums" (from which twenty color paintings are reproduced in this book). These were intended to educate Qing officials about various non-Han peoples so they could govern these groups more effectively. Hostetler's groundbreaking study provides a wealth of insights to anyone interested in the significance of cartography, the growth of empire, or this exciting period of Chinese history.

Political anthropology has long been among the most vibrant subdisciplines within anthropology, and work done in this area has been instrumental in exploring some of the most significant issues of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including (post)colonialism, development and underdevelopment, identity politics, nationalism/transnationalism, and political violence. In"The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique "readers will find a remarkable collection of classic and contemporary articles on the subject.

Following on from her landmark book on politics and anthropology, in this volume Joan Vincent provides a sweeping historical and theoretical introduction to the field. Selected readings from figures such as E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Edmund Leach, Victor Turner, Eric Wolf, Benedict Anderson, Talal Asad, Michael Taussig, Jean and John Comaroff, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak are enriched by Vincent's headnotes and suggestions for further reading. "The Anthropology of Politics "will prove an indispensable resource for students, scholars, and instructors alike.

What hopes are there for racial integration? What expectations may we reasonably have of ethnic minority groups? What hopes can ethnic minority groups nurture in their relations with society at large? In addressing these and many other questions, the author examines the theoretical perspectives, both sociological and psychological, of ethnic minority identity and reviews the empirical work done on ethnicity. She considers what constitutes an ethnic group, goes on to investigate the sociology of ethnicity from assimilationism to cultural pluralism, and discusses the psychological theories of ethnic minority identity. She then examines research issues in ethnicity, covering areas such as styles of cultural adaptation, strategies of self-categorization, and levels of self-esteem among members of ethnic minority groups. In conclusion, she examines the implications of these findings in relation to the integration of ethnic minority groups in Britain.

This first sustained ethnographic study of organic agriculture outside the United States traces its meanings, practices, and politics in two nations typically considered worlds apart: Latvia and Costa Rica. Situated on the frontiers of the European Union and the United States, these geopolitically and economically in-between places illustrate ways that international treaties have created contradictory pressures for organic farmers. Organic farmers in both countries build multispecies networks of biological and social diversity and create spaces of sovereignty within state and suprastate governance bodies. Organic associations in Central America and Eastern Europe face parallel challenges in balancing multiple identities as social movements, market sectors, and NGOs while finding their place in regions and nations reshaped by world events.

As the image of anthropologists exploring exotic locales and filling in blanks on the map has faded, the idea that cultural anthropology has much to say about the contemporary world has likewise diminished. In an increasingly smaller world, how can anthropology help us to tackle the concerns of a global society? David A. Westbrook argues that the traditional tool of the cultural anthropologist--ethnography--can still function as an intellectually exciting way to understand our interconnected, yet mysterious worlds.
"Navigators of the Contemporary" describes the changing nature of ethnography as anthropologists use it to analyze places closer to home. Westbrook maintains that a conversational style of ethnography can help us look beyond our assumptions and gain new insight into arenas of contemporary life such as corporations, financial institutions, science, the military, and religion. Westbrook's witty, absorbing book is a friendly challenge to anthropologists to shed light on the present and join broader streams of intellectual life. And for those outside the discipline, his inspiring vision of ethnography opens up the prospect of understanding our own world in much greater depth.

Seeking the reasons behind Jewish altruism toward African-Americans, Hasia Diner shows how - in the wake of the Leo Frank trial and lynching in Atlanta - Jews came to see that their relative prosperity was no protection against the same social forces that threatened blacks. It thus became in the Jewish American self-interest to support the black struggle for racial justice and to fight against American prejudice. Jewish leaders and organisations genuinely believed in the cause of black civil rights, Diner suggests, but they also used that cause as a way of advancing their own interests without seeming "pushy" or "too demanding" - launching a vicarious attack on the nation that they felt had not lived up to its own pronouncements of freedom and equality.

Interviews with young Muslims in Chicago explore the complexity of identities formed at the crossroads of Islam and hip hop This groundbreaking study of race, religion and popular culture in the 21st century United States focuses on a new concept, "Muslim Cool." Muslim Cool is a way of being an American Muslim-displayed in ideas, dress, social activism in the 'hood, and in complex relationships to state power. Constructed through hip hop and the performance of Blackness, Muslim Cool is a way of engaging with the Black American experience by both Black and non-Black young Muslims that challenges racist norms in the U.S. as well as dominant ethnic and religious structures within American Muslim communities. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, Su'ad Abdul Khabeer illuminates the ways in which young and multiethnic US Muslims draw on Blackness to construct their identities as Muslims. This is a form of critical Muslim self-making that builds on interconnections and intersections, rather than divisions between "Black" and "Muslim." Thus, by countering the notion that Blackness and the Muslim experience are fundamentally different, Muslim Cool poses a critical challenge to dominant ideas that Muslims are "foreign" to the United States and puts Blackness at the center of the study of American Islam. Yet Muslim Cool also demonstrates that connections to Blackness made through hip hop are critical and contested-critical because they push back against the pervasive phenomenon of anti-Blackness and contested because questions of race, class, gender, and nationality continue to complicate self-making in the United States.

Financial collapses--whether of the junk bond market, the Internet bubble, or the highly leveraged housing market--are often explained as the inevitable result of market cycles: What goes up must come down. In "Liquidated," Karen Ho punctures the aura of the abstract, all-powerful market to show how financial markets, and particularly booms and busts, are constructed. Through an in-depth investigation into the everyday experiences and ideologies of Wall Street investment bankers, Ho describes how a financially dominant but highly unstable market system is understood, justified, and produced through the restructuring of corporations and the larger economy.

Ho, who worked at an investment bank herself, argues that bankers' approaches to financial markets and corporate America are inseparable from the structures and strategies of their workplaces. Her ethnographic analysis of those workplaces is filled with the voices of stressed first-year associates, overworked and alienated analysts, undergraduates eager to be hired, and seasoned managing directors. Recruited from elite universities as "the best and the brightest," investment bankers are socialized into a world of high risk and high reward. They are paid handsomely, with the understanding that they may be let go at any time. Their workplace culture and networks of privilege create the perception that job insecurity builds character, and employee liquidity results in smart, efficient business. Based on this culture of liquidity and compensation practices tied to profligate deal-making, Wall Street investment bankers reshape corporate America in their own image. Their mission is the creation of shareholder value, but Ho demonstrates that their practices and assumptions often produce crises instead. By connecting the values and actions of investment bankers to the construction of markets and the restructuring of U.S. corporations, "Liquidated" reveals the particular culture of Wall Street often obscured by triumphalist readings of capitalist globalization.

What happens when people in societies stratified by race refuse to accept the privileges inherent in whiteness? What difference does it make when whites act in a manner that contradicts their designated racial identity? "Out of Whiteness" considers these questions and argues passionately for an imaginative and radical politics against all forms of racism.
Vron Ware and Les Back look at key points in recent American and British culture where the "color line" has been blurred. Through probing accounts of writers who have disguised themselves in order to investigate racism, the growth of the White Power music scene on the Internet, the meteoric rise of big band jazz during the Second World War, and the pivotal role of white session players in crafting rhythm and blues classics by black artists, Ware and Back upset the idea of race as a symbol of inherent human attributes. Challenging recent trends in academia, the authors argue against reconstructing whiteness as a distinct cultural identity. Ware and Back give us a timely reckoning of the forces that continue to make people "white," and reveal to us the polyglot potential of identities and cultures.

The Sherpas were dead, two more victims of an attempt to scale Mt. Everest. Members of a French climbing expedition, sensitive perhaps about leaving the bodies where they could not be recovered, rolled them off a steep mountain face. One body, however, crashed to a stop near Sherpas on a separate expedition far below. They stared at the frozen corpse, stunned. They said nothing, but an American climber observing the scene interpreted their thoughts: Nobody would throw the body of a white climber off Mt. Everest.

For more than a century, climbers from around the world have journ-eyed to test themselves on Everest's treacherous slopes, enlisting the expert aid of the Sherpas who live in the area. Drawing on years of field research in the Himalayas, renowned anthropologist Sherry Ortner presents a compelling account of the evolving relationship between the mountaineers and the Sherpas, a relationship of mutual dependence and cultural conflict played out in an environment of mortal risk.

Ortner explores this relationship partly through gripping accounts of expeditions--often in the climbers' own words--ranging from nineteenth-century forays by the British through the historic ascent of Hillary and Tenzing to the disasters described in Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air." She reveals the climbers, or "sahibs," to use the Sherpas' phrase, as countercultural romantics, seeking to transcend the vulgarity and materialism of modernity through the rigor and beauty of mountaineering. She shows how climbers' behavior toward the Sherpas has ranged from kindness to cruelty, from cultural sensitivity to derision. Ortner traces the political and economic factors that led the Sherpas to join expeditions and examines the impact of climbing on their traditional culture, religion, and identity. She examines Sherpas' attitude toward death, the implications of the shared masculinity of Sherpas and sahibs, and the relationship between Sherpas and the increasing number of women climbers. Ortner also tackles debates about whether the Sherpas have been "spoiled" by mountaineering and whether climbing itself has been spoiled by commercialism.

"Engrossing ... [An] expedition through the hidden and sometimes horrifying microbial domain." -Wall Street Journal "Fascinating-and full of the kind of factoids you can't wait to share." -Scientific American Parasites can live only inside another animal and, as Kathleen McAuliffe reveals, these tiny organisms have many evolutionary motives for manipulating the behavior of their hosts. With astonishing precision, parasites can coax rats to approach cats, spiders to transform the patterns of their webs, and fish to draw the attention of birds that then swoop down to feast on them. We humans are hardly immune to their influence. Organisms we pick up from our own pets are strongly suspected of changing our personality traits and contributing to recklessness and impulsivity-even suicide. Germs that cause colds and the flu may alter our behavior even before symptoms become apparent. Parasites influence our species on the cultural level, too. Drawing on a huge body of research, McAuliffe argues that our dread of contamination is an evolved defense against parasites. The horror and revulsion we are programmed to feel when we come in contact with people who appear diseased or dirty helped pave the way for civilization, but may also be the basis for major divisions in societies that persist to this day. This Is Your Brain on Parasites is both a journey into cutting-edge science and a revelatory examination of what it means to be human. "If you've ever doubted the power of microbes to shape society and offer us a grander view of life, read on and find yourself duly impressed." -Heather Havrilesky, Bookforum

Primate and Human Evolution provides a synthesis of the evolution and adaptive significance of human anatomical, physiological and behavioral traits. Using paleontology and modern human variation and biology, it compares hominid traits to those of other catarrhine primates both living and extinct, presenting a new hominization model that does not depend solely on global climate change, but on predictable trends observed in catarrhines. Dealing with the origins of hominid tool use and tool manufacture, it compares tool behavior in other animals and incorporates information from the earliest archaeological record. Examining the use of non-human primates and other mammals in modeling the origins of early human social behavior, Susan Cachel argues that human intelligence does not arise from complex social interactions, but from attentiveness to the natural world. This book will be a rich source of inspiration for all those interested in the evolution of all primates, including ourselves.

Introducing this collection of personal narratives, renowned author Sucheng Chan presents a history of Vietnam that enables readers to understand the larger historical, social, and political contexts within which the refugee exodus occurred between 1975 and 1997. The heart of the book consists of vivid personal testimonies written by members of the 1.5 generation of Vietnamese Americans when they were students at various campuses of the University of California. Six of the stories recall the April 1975 evacuation on U.S. military aircraft and naval vessels; nine tell tragic but ultimately triumphant tales of the boat people who fled by sea and were confined in refugee camps in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Hong Kong while awaiting resettlement abroad. As testaments to the strength of human beings who persevere against severe odds in horrifying circumstances, the stories are gripping and inspiring.

Seit Beginn menschlicher Kultur waren Heilkundige bemuht, Kranken auch mit geeigneten Worten zu helfen. Archaische und mittelalterliche Heilspruchtexte, bisher als magische oder per Wortakt performierende Instrumente gedeutet, werden vom Autor erstmals nach neurobiologisch moeglichen Funktionsablaufen unter die Lupe genommen. Textinhalte und Wortfiguren werden nach Kriterien emotionaler Verarbeitung per frontaler Regulierung, als Reaktion auf kognitive Inkongruenzen, als Imagination von Regression und als extro- und introversive Katharsis beschrieben. Dabei zeigt sich, dass fliessende reziproke Vermittlungen von Kultur zu Natur moeglich waren: Wort und Ritus konnten zur Aktivierung innerer Bilder und damit neuronaler Aktivitaten bis zu immunologischen Veranderungen beitragen.

The distinction between humans and the natural world is an artefact and more a matter of linguistic communication than a conceptual separation. This Element proposes ecosemiotics as an epistemological tool to better understand the relationship between human and natural processes. Ecosemiotics with its affinity to the humanities, is presented here as the best disciplinary approach for interpreting complex environmental conditions for a broad audience, across a multitude of temporal and spatial scales. It is proposed as an intellectual bridge between divergent sciences to incorporate within a unique framework different paradigms. The ecosemiotic paradigm helps to explain how organisms interact with their external environments using mechanisms common to all living beings that capture external information and matter for internal usage. This paradigm can be applied in all the circumstances where a living being (man, animal, plant, fungi, etc.) performs processes to stay alive.

This book persuasively argues the case that ethnography must be viewed as a full theoretical system, rather than just as a research method. Blommaert traces the influence of his reading of classic works about ethnography on his thinking, and discusses a range of authors who have influenced the development of a theoretical system of ethnography, or whose work might be productively used to develop it further. Authors examined include Hymes, Scollon, Kress, Bourdieu, Bakhtin and Lefebvre. This book will be required reading for students and scholars involved in ethnographic research, or those interested in the theory of ethnography.

Diese neue Auflage beschaftigt sich u. a. mit der Histomorphometrie, Dentalmorphologie, stabilen Isotopenmethoden und alter DNA. Die Inhalte wurden aktualisiert und stammen von Fachexperten. Neue Kapitel behandeln die Paleopathologie. Erlautert werden weiterhin diese Themen: bioarchaologische Ethik, Taphonomie und Formen archaologischer Sammlungen, biomechanische Analysen archaologischer menschlicher Skelette u.v.a.m. - Vollstandig aktualisiert und uberarbeitet, neue Kapitel und neue Autoren. - Einzelne Kapitel stammen von Fachexperten in dem jeweiligen Forschungsgebiet. - Bietet Wissenswertes zu Zusammenhangen, Methoden, Anwendungen, vielversprechenden Ansatzen und Fallstricken. - Prasentiert unzahlige Fallstudien.

Black behind the Ears is an innovative historical and ethnographic examination of Dominican identity formation in the Dominican Republic and the United States. For much of the Dominican Republic's history, the national body has been defined as "not black," even as black ancestry has been grudgingly acknowledged. Rejecting simplistic explanations, Ginetta E. B. Candelario suggests that it is not a desire for whiteness that guides Dominican identity discourses and displays. Instead, it is an ideal norm of what it means to be both indigenous to the Republic (indios) and "Hispanic." Both indigeneity and Hispanicity have operated as vehicles for asserting Dominican sovereignty in the context of the historically triangulated dynamics of Spanish colonialism, Haitian unification efforts, and U.S. imperialism. Candelario shows how the legacy of that history is manifest in contemporary Dominican identity discourses and displays, whether in the national historiography, the national museum's exhibits, or ideas about women's beauty. Dominican beauty culture is crucial to efforts to identify as "indios" because, as an easily altered bodily feature, hair texture trumps skin color, facial features, and ancestry in defining Dominicans as indios.Candelario draws on her participant observation in a Dominican beauty shop in Washington Heights, a New York City neighborhood with the oldest and largest Dominican community outside the Republic, and on interviews with Dominicans in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Santo Domingo. She also analyzes museum archives and displays in the Museo del Hombre Dominicano and the Smithsonian Institution as well as nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European and American travel narratives.

"Anthropologists and students of anthropology may read this book because it is a superior ethnography, detailed and enriched by theoretical insights. But at the heart of this book is a moral take, a simple but powerful story about an indigenous people who were wronged, who resisted for more than 100 years, and who may yet prevail. This message, ultimately, lends the book its true meaning and value."--William Rodman, "Anthropologica"
"A major contribution to the ethnography and history of Malaita and Melanesia, and to the growing literature on cultural resistance. But above all, his humane and painful analysis of the meeting of peoples living in different worlds and constructing their agendas and moralities on incommensurate--and apparently equally arbitrary--principles, represents a major contribution and challenge to anthropological thought, addressing the basic issue of what it is to be human."--Fredrik Barth

The aim of this Element is to provide a novel framework for gaining a critical grasp on the present situation concerning animals. It offers reflections on resisting the established order as well as suggestions on what forms alternative, pro-animal ways of life might take. The central argument of the book is that the search for an anthropological difference - that is, for a marker of human uniqueness determined by way of a sharp human/animal distinction - should be set aside. In place of this traditional way of differentiating human beings from animals, the author sketches an alternative way of thinking and living in relation to animals based on indistinction, a concept that points toward the unexpected and profound ways in which human beings share in animal life, death, and potentiality. The implications of this approach are then examined in view of practical and theoretical discussions in the environmental humanities and related fields.

On the edge of the Arctic Ocean, above the Arctic Circle, the prehistoric settlements at Point Hope, Alaska, represent a truly remarkable accomplishment in human biological and cultural adaptations. Presenting a set of anthropological analyses on the human skeletal remains and cultural material from the Ipiutak and Tigara archaeological sites, The Foragers of Point Hope sheds new light on the excavations from 1939-41, which provided one of the largest sets of combined biological and cultural materials of northern latitude peoples in the world. A range of material items indicated successful human foraging strategies in this harsh Arctic environment. They also yielded enigmatic artifacts indicative of complex human cultural life filled with dense ritual and artistic expression. These remnants of past human activity contribute to a crucial understanding of past foraging lifeways and offer important insights into the human condition at the extreme edges of the globe.

The Hadza, an ethnic group indigenous to northern Tanzania, are one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer populations. Archaeology shows 130,000 years of hunting and gathering in their land but Hadza are rapidly losing areas vital to their way of life. This book offers a unique opportunity to capture a disappearing lifestyle. Blurton Jones interweaves data from ecology, demography and evolutionary ecology to present a comprehensive analysis of the Hadza foragers. Discussion centres on expansion of the adaptationist perspective beyond topics customarily studied in human behavioural ecology, to interpret a wider range of anthropological concepts. Analysing behavioural aspects, with a specific focus on relationships and their wider impact on the population, this book reports the demographic consequences of different patterns of marriage and the availability of helpers such as husbands, children, and grandmothers. Essential for researchers and graduate students alike, this book will challenge preconceptions of human sociobiology.