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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology
Museums -- along with books, newspapers, and Wild West shows in the 19th century, movies and television in the 20th -- have shaped our perceptions of American Indians. How have museums' representations of Indians influenced society's understanding of them? How are Indians presented in exhibitions and programs today? What new directions will museums take in the 21st century? This book is the result of a symposium organized by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). It brings together six prominent museum professionals -- Native and non-Native -- to examine the ways in which Indians and their cultures have been represented by museums in North America and to present new directions museums are already taking. Traditional museum exhibitions of Native American art and culture often represented only the past, ignoring the living Native voice. Today, museums have begun to incorporate the Native perspective in their displays. Even more dramatic is the increasing number of Indian-run museums, such as the Mille Lacs Indian Museum in Minnesota and the Museum at Warm Springs in Oregon. These essays explore the relationships being forged between museums and Native communities to create new techniques for presenting Native American culture. This publication will stimulate the discussions and analyses that can lead to new partnerships and collaborations.
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.
The relationship between diet and those diseases caused by, or related to, poor nutrition is influenced by anthropological and physiological factors. This volume, first published in 1990 and based on a symposium organised in collaboration with the International Commission on the Anthropology of Food, emphasises the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of diet and disease. Distinguished contributors, from nutritionists to anthropologists, examine the ways in which nutrition may affect sociocultural circumstances and how the causation and distribution of disease is linked to anthropological factors. Amongst the topics addressed are the extent to which human beings can adapt to food shortage, how nutritional factors affect people's capacity to work and develop properly mentally, how nutritional status influences susceptibility to infectious disease, who is most at risk in the community and why, the relationship between environment , economy and malnutrition and how people perceive food in relation to health. This research level text will interest both nutritionists and anthropologists.
This volume is designed to explore evolutionary, cross-cultural, physiological, environmental, and pathological influences on variation in human biological ageing. With use of models traditionally unique to anthropological research, contributors to this edited volume approach human biological ageing as a heterogeneous and variable process. An explicit emphasis on evolutionary biology and human variation results in a renewed perspective on human biological ageing as the end result of a set of co-adapted genetic complexes that were associated with successful growth, development, reproduction, and parenting of offspring during our species' evolutionary history. However, while examining human life span and life history parameters as population level phenomena, the book also emphasizes human phenotypic plasticity as the key to understanding human biological ageing. This broad evolutionary perspective on human biological ageing and life history patterns is unique in biological gerontology, a field generally reductionist in method and theory in keeping with current trends in biomedicine.
The objective of this book is to review the impact of genetic variation on risk of human disease at the different major levels of organization: cells, individuals, families, and populations. The volume begins with a discussion of sources and rates of mutation which ultimately give rise to the vast amount of extant genetic variation. This is followed by presentations of current understanding of how genetic variation is maintained within and among populations. The volume ends with discussions of the implications of such variation for understanding the evolution of our species. This collection gives an unusually broad treatment of the subject, with chapters from some of the leading workers in the field. James Neel's chapter on human consanguinity effects and M. Otake's on the genetic effects of radiation associated with the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs should be singled out for special emphasis. As an up-to-date overview of ongoing research, this work will be of interest to a wide range of workers in the fields of human population genetics, evolution, and epidemiology.
Because of their vital role in the emergence of humanity, tools and their uses have been the focus of considerable worldwide study. This volume brings together international research on the use of tools among primates and both prehistoric and modern humans. The book represents leading work being done by specialists in anatomy, neurobiology, prehistory, ethnology, and primatology. Whether composed of stone, wood, or metal, tools are a prolongation of the arm that acquire precision through direction by the brain. The same movement, for example, may have been practiced by apes and humans, but the resulting action varies according to the extended use of the tool. It is therefore necessary, as the contributors here make clear, to understand the origin of tools, and also to describe the techniques involved in their manipulation, and the possible uses of unknown implements. Comparison of the techniques of chimpanzees with those of prehistoric and modern peoples has made it possible to appreciate the common aspects and to identify the differences. The transmission of ability has also been studied in the various relevant societies: chimpanzees in their natural habitat and in captivity, hunter-gatherers, and workmen in prehistoric and in modern times. In drawing together much valuable research, this work will be an important and timely resource for social and behavioral psychologists, anthropologists, paleontologists, and animal behaviorists.
The Majangir live on the thickly forested slopes of the south-western edge of the Ethiopian plateau, between the Anuak of the plains and the Galla of the highlands. Their way of life is markedly different from that of their neighbours, and is well adapted to their habitat. They are agriculturalists and the structure of their society is loose and simple. They have no political leaders, the only individuals of any authority being ritual leaders whose influence is restricted. Domestic groups tend to farm plots adjacent to those of friends or kin, but the settlements remain small and constantly change in composition (as well as in location). In addition to farming, in which the men and women share the work, the men make occasional hunting and fishing trips, as well as spending quite a considerable amount of time tending and making bee hives. Dr Stauder examines the various social and spatial groupings of Majang society and demonstrates the intimate ecological relationship between these groupings and the system of slash and burn cultivation practised by the Majangir.
The growth of ???new genetics??? has dramatically increased our understanding of health, diseases and the body. Anthropologists argue that these scientific advances have had far-reaching social and cultural implications, radically changing our self-understanding and perception of what it means to be human; that we have become ???biomedicalized???, fragmented and commodified - redefining our notions of citizenship, social relations, family and identity. This book shows how anthropology can contribute to and challenge the ways we have come to understand genetic issues. Exploring a range of issues and case studies in genetic research, it provides an ethnographic ???reality-check???, arguing that we must look beyond the ???gene-centrism??? of genetic codes, family trees and insular populations, to explore their wider cultural, ethical and philosophical implications. Including coverage of the controversial and widely discussed Icelandic Health Sector Database, this accessible survey will be welcomed by graduate students and researchers in social anthropology, human genetics and biotechnology.
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.
"Political clientelism" is a term used to characterize the
contemporary relationships between political elites and the poor in
Latin America in which goods and services are traded for political
favors. Javier Auyero critically deploys the notion in "Poor
People's Politics" to analyze the political practices of the
Peronist Party among shantytown dwellers in contemporary Argentina.
Working with human remains raises a whole host of ethical issues, from how the remains are used to how and where they are stored. Over recent years, attitudes towards repatriation and reburial have changed considerably and there are now laws in many countries to facilitate or compel the return of remains to claimant communities. Such changes have also brought about new ways of working with and caring for human remains, while enabling their ongoing use in research projects. This has often meant a reevaluation of working practices for both the curation of remains and in providing access to them. This volume will look at the issues and difficulties inherent in holding human remains with global origins, and how diverse institutions and countries have tackled these issues. Essential reading for advanced students in biological anthropology, museum studies, archaeology and anthropology, as well as museum curators, researchers and other professionals.
In September 1781, the captain of the British slave ship Zong ordered 133 slaves thrown overboard, enabling the ship's owners to file an insurance claim for their lost "cargo." Accounts of this horrific event quickly became a staple of abolitionist discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Ian Baucom revisits, in unprecedented detail, the Zong atrocity, the ensuing court cases, reactions to the event and trials, and the business and social dealings of the Liverpool merchants who owned the ship. Drawing on the work of an astonishing array of literary and social theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Giovanni Arrighi, Jacques Derrida, and many others, he argues that the tragedy is central not only to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the political and cultural archives of the black Atlantic but also to the history of modern capital and ethics. To apprehend the Zong tragedy, Baucom suggests, is not to come to terms with an isolated atrocity but to encounter a logic of violence key to the unfolding history of Atlantic modernity. Baucom contends that the massacre and the trials that followed it bring to light an Atlantic cycle of capital accumulation based on speculative finance, an economic cycle that has not yet run its course. The extraordinarily abstract nature of today's finance capital is the late-eighteenth-century system intensified. Yet, as Baucom highlights, since the late 1700s, this rapacious speculative culture has had detractors. He traces the emergence and development of a counter-discourse he calls melancholy realism through abolitionist and human-rights texts, British romantic poetry, Scottish moral philosophy, and the work of late-twentieth-century literary theorists. In revealing how the Zong tragedy resonates within contemporary financial systems and human-rights discourses, Baucom puts forth a deeply compelling, utterly original theory of history: one that insists that an eighteenth-century atrocity is not past but present within the future we now inhabit.
How is the slave trade remembered in West Africa? In a work that
challenges recurring claims that Africans felt (and still feel) no
sense of moral responsibility concerning the sale of slaves,
Rosalind Shaw traces memories of the slave trade in Temne-speaking
communities in Sierra Leone. While the slave-trading past is rarely
remembered in explicit verbal accounts, it is often made vividly
present in such forms as rogue spirits, ritual specialists'
visions, and the imagery of divination techniques.
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.
In the last twenty years, immigration has become one of the most contested issues in Western Europe. The arrival of Africans, Asians, Eastern Europeans and others in Italy has reversed earlier trends of emigration. Debate, political activity and violence have raised questions of rejection and integration, of anti-racism and the new racism. Studies of these issues commonly focus on political activity and the plight of minorities, but this book breaks new ground in its emphasis on the everyday reactions of Italians to immigration and related issues. Drawing on research carried out in Palermo, Jeffrey Cole considers the role of class, culture, local history and political economy in the ambivalent responses of Sicilians to immigrants. He places Italian attitudes in a European context, and investigates why anti-immigrant politics are concentrated in the wealthy Italian North.
Skin colour is perhaps the most decisive and abused physical characteristic of humankind. This book presents a multidisciplinary overview of how and why human populations vary so markedly in their skin colour. The biological aspects of the pigment cell and its production of melanin are reviewed. The functions of melanin in the skin, brain, eye and ear are considered, and the common clinical abnormalities of pigmentation, such as albinism, are described and illustrated. Detailed reflectance data from worldwide surveys of skin colour are also presented. The historical and contemporary background of the phenomenon is explored in relation to the so-called 'colour problem' in society. Finally, the possible evolutionary forces which shape human pigmentation are assessed. This fascinating account will be of interest to graduate students and researchers of biological anthropology, anatomy, physiology and dermatology, as well as medical practitioners.
As our closest evolutionary relatives, nonhuman primates are integral elements in our mythologies, diets and scientific paradigms, yet most species now face an uncertain future through exploitation for the pet and bushmeat trades as well as progressive habitat loss. New information about disease transmission, dietary and economic linkage, and the continuing international focus on conservation and primate research have created a surge of interest in primates, and focus on the diverse interaction of human and nonhuman primates has become an important component in primatological and ethnographic studies. By examining the diverse and fascinating range of relationships between humans and other primates, and how this plays a critical role in conservation practice and programs, Primates Face to Face disseminates the information gained from the anthropological study of nonhuman primates to the wider academic and non-academic world.
The unique contribution made by biological anthropology to human welfare lies in the fundamental understanding it can provide of the dynamic interrelationships between physical and social factors. By understanding these patterns, we can interpret the significance of variation in such measures of human well-being in terms of the incidence of disease and mortality rates. Topics covered in this book include reproductive ecology and fertility, nutritional status in relation to health, and the effects of pollution on individual growth. In later chapters, the concepts of physiological adaptation and Darwinian fitness and their relation to individual physical fitness are explored.
Many aspects of human activity involve energy transfer of some type. Human Energetics in Biological Anthropology examines some of the ways in which measurements of energy intake, expenditure and balance have been used to study human populations by biological anthropologists and human biologists. The book provides an integration of human adaptation and adaptability approaches, placing these issues in an ecological context by considering traditional subsistence economies in the developing world. This is the first volume to present such an integrated approach, and will be useful in the teaching of biological anthropology, human population biology, nutritional anthropology, and third world nutrition at senior undergraduate and graduate student level.
Plasticity refers to the ability of many organisms to change their biology or behavior to respond to changes in the environment. Humans are probably the most plastic of all species, and hence the most variable. This is the first book to examine the history of research in this area and it provides information on state-of-the-art research methods and discoveries. It also maps out some areas of future research in human plasticity and variability. Topics discussed include child growth, starvation, diseases of both young and old, and the effects of migration, modernization and other life-style changes. The book will be especially useful to biological anthropologists, human biologists and medical scientists interested in knowing more about how and why humans vary.
Many researchers and professionals need to be able to measure, assess and interpret human growth between birth and adulthood. However, much of the methodology is scattered in diverse literature. Human Growth: Assessment and Interpretation provides a complete reference to the field for all those who measure and assess child growth. It emphasises the interpretation of growth data taking into account the adjusted effects of influences such as genes, hormones and substance abuse during pregnancy, gives descriptions of normal and abnormal growth patterns, and of variant growth patterns such as failure-to-thrive and catch-up growth. Including methods to measure size and maturity, the judgement and interpretation of recorded data, evaluations of influences on growth and the significance of abnormal growth, it will be an essential source of information for pediatricians, human biologists, health workers, nutritionists, epidemiologists and others who are responsible for the health and welfare of children.
The recent revolution in molecular genetics, which has already made such a significant impact in the biomedical sciences, is now becoming established in biological anthropology. New techniques have enabled anthropologists to study biological variation at the molecular level, and a wealth of exciting information on human and non-human primate populations is now becoming available for the first time. This volume presents a selection of pioneering research studies in which molecular techniques have been used to address key questions, for example about the human genetic system, the geographical movements of human populations in the past, and primate evolution. Providing not only a timely overview of current research, this book also presents an insight into the potential significance of molecular biology in the decades to come, that will be of interest to all biological anthropologists as well as molecular biologists, human geneticists, palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists.
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.
Der Sammelband, der Siebenburgen und Hermannstadt aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven erfasst, eroeffnet die Publikationsreihe des Zentrums fur linguistische, literarische und kulturelle Forschung (ZLLKF) an der Lucian-Blaga-Universitat. Thematisch greift der Band einige Traditionslinien der Hermannstadter Germanistik auf, die insbesondere der Erforschung der deutschsprachigen Literatur und Kultur in dieser Region gewidmet sind: Autobiografisches und Fiktionales in der Erzahlkunst rumaniendeutscher Autoren (Joachim Wittstock, Oskar Pastior, Paul Schuster, Iris Wolff), deren Rezeption, die Rolle der Lokalpresse in der Kulturvermittlung, der Einfluss der deutschen Kultur auf das Wirken namhafter Persoenlichkeiten und die Anfange des rumanischen Schulwesens in der Umgebung von Hermannstadt. |
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