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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology
There seems to be fewer policy issues in Washington and around America which cause more arguments than affirmative action. Both sides in this debate are deeply entrenched and show little, if any, signs of movement. Is it a catalyst or an albatross? In this book, the author has gathered articles concerning the historical background of the legislation and its implementation, analyses of its effects and proposals for revision of various provisions of the law. He has tried to concentrate on issues of employment although two articles cover sexual harassment and one deals with American's with disabilities. The heart of the affirmative action policy is, after all, an attempt toward fairness. One of the pillars which supports America's claim toward greatness is the idea that all of its citizens should have a fair chance. Action is surely required to realise this dream, but which action? It is the author's intention that the papers in this volume will present a useful review of this crucial issue.
Situated at the intersection of natural science and philosophy, Our Genes explores historical practices, investigates current trends, and imagines future work in genetic research to answer persistent, political questions about human diversity. Readers are guided through fascinating thought experiments, complex measures and metrics, fundamental evolutionary patterns, and in-depth treatment of exciting case studies. The work culminates in a philosophical rationale, based on scientific evidence, for a moderate position about the explanatory power of genes that is often left unarticulated. Simply put, human evolutionary genomics - our genes - can tell us much about who we are as individuals and as collectives. However, while they convey scientific certainty in the popular imagination, genes cannot answer some of our most important questions. Alternating between an up-close and a zoomed-out focus on genes and genomes, individuals and collectives, species and populations, Our Genes argues that the answers we seek point to rich, necessary work ahead.
This collection of essays by leading scholars in Mexican ethnohistory, edited by Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, examines the life experiences of Indian women in preconquest colonial Mexico. In this volume: "Introduction," Susan Schroeder; "Mexica Women on the Home Front," Louise M. Burkhart; "Aztec Wives," Arthur J. O. Anderson; "Indian-Spanish Marriages in the First Century of the Colony," Pedro Carrasco; "Gender and Social Identity," Rebecca Horn; "From Parallel and Equivalent to Separate but Unequal: Tenochca Mexica Women, 1500-1700," Susan Kellogg; "Activist or Adulteress/ The Life and Struggle of Dona Josefa Mara of Tepoztlan," Robert Haskett; "Matters of Life at Death," Stephanie Wood; "Mixteca Cacicas," Ronald Spores; "Women and Crime in Colonial Oaxaca," Lisa Mary Sousa; "Women, Rebellion, and the Moral Economy of Maya Peasants in Colonial Mexico," Kevin Gosner; "Work, Marriage, and Status: Maya Women of Colonial Yucatan," Marta Espejo-Ponce Hunt and Matthew Restall; "Double Jeopardy," Susan M. Deeds; "Women's Voices from the Frontier," Leslie S. Offutt; "Rethinking Malinche," Frances Karttunen; "Concluding Remarks," Stephanie Wood and Robert Haskett. Susan Schroeder is Professor of History at Loyola University, Chicago. Stephanie Wood is Research Associate at the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon. She is coeditor of Indian Women of Early Mexico, also published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Robert Haskett is Professor of History at the University of Oregon."
Collaboration between ethnographers and subjects has long been a product of the close, intimate relationships that define ethnographic research. But increasingly collaboration is no longer viewed as merely a consequence of fieldwork; instead collaboration now preconditions and shapes research design as well as its dissemination. As a result, ethnographic subjects are shifting from being informants to being consultants. The emergence of collaborative ethnography highlights this relationship between consultant and ethnographer, moving it to center stage as a calculated part not only of fieldwork but also of the writing process itself. "The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography" presents a historical, theoretical, and practice-oriented road map for this shift from incidental collaboration to a more conscious and explicit collaborative strategy. Luke Eric Lassiter charts the history of collaborative ethnography from its earliest implementation to its contemporary emergence in fields such as feminism, humanistic anthropology, and critical ethnography. On this historical and theoretical base, Lassiter outlines concrete steps for achieving a more deliberate and overt collaborative practice throughout the processes of fieldwork and writing. As a participatory action situated in the ethical commitments between ethnographers and consultants and focused on the co-construction of texts, collaborative ethnography, argues Lassiter, is among the most powerful ways to press ethnographic fieldwork and writing into the service of an applied and public scholarship. A comprehensive and highly accessible handbook for ethnographers of all stripes, "The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography" will become a fixture in the development of a critical practice of anthropology, invaluable to undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty alike.
For Native peoples of California, the abalone found along the state's coast have remarkably complex significance as food, spirit, narrative symbol, tradable commodity, and material with which to make adornment and sacred regalia. The large mollusks also represent contemporary struggles surrounding cultural identity and political sovereignty. "Abalone Tales," a collaborative ethnography, presents different perspectives on the multifaceted material and symbolic relationships between abalone and the Ohlone, Pomo, Karuk, Hupa, and Wiyot peoples of California. The research agenda, analyses, and writing strategies were determined through collaborative relationships between the anthropologist Les W. Field and Native individuals and communities. Several of these individuals contributed written texts or oral stories for inclusion in the book. Tales about abalone and their historical and contemporary meanings are related by Field and his coauthors, who include the chair and other members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe; a Point Arena Pomo elder; the chair of the Wiyot tribe and her sister; several Hupa Indians; and a Karuk scholar, artist, and performer. Reflecting the divergent perspectives of various Native groups and people, the stories and analyses belie any presumption of a single, unified indigenous understanding of abalone. At the same time, they shed light on abalone's role in cultural revitalization, struggles over territory, tribal appeals for federal recognition, and connections among California's Native groups. While California's abalone are in danger of extinction, their symbolic power appears to surpass even the environmental crises affecting the state's vulnerable coastline.
As our closest primate relatives, chimpanzees offer tantalizing clues about the behavior of early human ancestors. This book provides a rich and detailed portrait of chimpanzee social life in the wild, synthesizing hundreds of thousands of hours of research at seven long-term field sites. Why are the social lives of males and females so different? Why do groups of males sometimes seek out and kill neighboring individuals? Do chimpanzees cooperate when they hunt monkeys? Is their vocal behaviour like human speech? Are there different chimpanzee 'cultures'? Addressing these questions and more, Adam Arcadi presents a fascinating introduction to the chimpanzee social universe and the challenges we face in trying to save this species from extinction. With extensive notes organized by field site and an appendix describing field methods, this book is indispensable for students, researchers, and anyone else interested in the remarkable and complex world of these intelligent apes.
Comparison with stationary and very fast rates of population growth shows modern population grwoth to have long-run positive effects on the standards of living. This is Julian Simon's contention, and he provides support for its validity in both more and less-developed countries. He notes that since each person constitutes a burden in the short run, whether population growth is judged good or bad depends on the importance the short run is accorded relative to the long run. The author first analyzes empirical data, formulating his conclusions using simulation models. He then reviews our knowledge of the effect of economic level upon population growth. A final section of his book considers the framework of welfare economics and values within which population policy decisions are now made. He finds that the implications of policy decisions can prove inconsistent with the values that prompt their recommendation. Julian L. Simon is Professor of Economics and Business Administration at the University of Illinois. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
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.
Whoever heard of a party at which the hosts lavishly give away presents, refusing to accept any gifts in return, keeping little for themselves? This is the custom of the Northern Athapaskan potlatch, a tradition that has long fascinated Americans. In Rifles, Blankets, and Beads, William E. Simeone explores the potlatch and its role in balancing competition and cooperation among the Tanacross people, a Northern Athapaskan culture. According to Simeone, the potlatch tradition helps the Tanacross people uphold standards of acceptable behavior through curbing competitiveness and stressing the ideals of cooperation. Simeone also examines Northern Athapaskan leadership practices, the introduction of trade goods into Athapaskan culture, and the complexities of cultural identity for the Tanacross.
This volume gathers articles of crucial concern to Black Americans. These issues include education, research funding at historically black colleges and universities, voting rights, unemployment, income support policies, health care reform and racism. These contributions, taken together, form a crucible for thought.
In this long-awaited ethnography, Chuan-kang Shih details the
traditional social and cultural conditions of the Moso, a
matrilineal group living on the border of Yunnan and Sichuan
Provinces in southwest China. Among the Moso, a majority of the
adult population practice a visiting system called "tisese" instead
of marriage as the normal sexual and reproductive institution.
Until recently, "tisese" was noncontractual, nonobligatory, and
nonexclusive. Partners lived and worked in separate households. The
only prerequisite for a "tisese" relationship was a mutual
agreement between the man and the woman to allow sexual access to
each other. In a comprehensive account, "Quest for Harmony"
explores this unique practice specifically, and offers thorough
documentation, fine-grained analysis, and an engaging discussion of
the people, history, and structure of Moso society. Drawing on the
author's extensive fieldwork, conducted from 1987 to 2006, this is
the first ethnography of the Moso written in English.
Made in Africa: Hominin Explorations and the Australian Skeletal Evidence describes and documents the largest collection of modern human remains in the world from its time period. These Australian fossils, which represent modern humans at the end of their great 20,000 km journey from Africa, may be reburied in the next two years at the request of the Aboriginal community. Part one of the book provides an overview of modern humans, their ancestors, and their journeys, explores the construct of human evolution over the last two and half million years, and defines the background to the first hominins and later modern humans to leave Africa, cross the world and meet other archaic peoples who had also travelled and undergone similar evolutionary pathways. Part two focuses on Australia and the evidence for its earliest people. The Willandra Lakes fossils represent the earliest arrivals and are the largest and most diverse late Pleistocene collection from this part of the world. Although twenty to twenty-five thousand years younger than the oldest archaeological site in Australia, they exemplify the migrating end-point of the human story that reflect a diversity and culture not recorded elsewhere in the world. Part three records the Willandra Lake Collection itself from a photographic and descriptive perspective. Evolutionary biologists and geneticists will find this book to be a valuable documentation of the 20,000 km hominid migration from Africa to the most distant parts of the world, and of the challenges and findings of the Willandra Lake Collection.
This volume starts out with two contrasting studies of monuments. How does the seemingly stability of stone and bronze hide a constantly changing cultural use? Anne Eriksen looks at the history of ruins in Norway. The murmur of ruins turns out to be a speech of modernity, a way of emotionalising place and history. Viktoriya Hryaban discusses the fate of socialist monuments in Ukraine and shows how the attempts to create alternative post-socialist memorials reproduce a traditional Soviet cultural grammar. Lace is a dominating decorative element in many Turkish Dutch homes. It has become a sign of "Turkishness" but as Hilje van der Horst points out, peoples relations to this mundane domestic element mirror some important conflicts and ideas about modernity and ethnicity. From the cultural media of monuments and lace, the discussion moves on to two more classic mass media and their role in identity politics. Stijn Reijnders explores a popular Dutch game show that has managed to survive for decades, becoming something of a national institution for some, an example of an outmoded genre for others. How does the involvement mirror ideas of an imagined national community? Finally, Silke Meyer looks at an 18th century national stereotype of The German quack in English popular debate and mass media. How did this caricature of Germanness become an alter ego of the English?
A rapidly growing number of double homes connect different parts of Europe in new ways. The second home can be a cottage in the woods, an apartment in the Costa del Sol or a restored farm house in Tuscany. However, other forms of double homes must be added to these landscapes of leisure. There are long distance commuters who spend most of their week in an overnight flat, in a caravan on a dreary parking lot or at a construction site. Economic migrants dream of a house 'back home' for vacations or retirement. Dual homes come in all shapes and sizes -- from the caravans of touring circus artists to people turning sailboats into a different kind of domestic space. This special issue of "Ethnologic Europaea" captures some dimensions of lives that are anchored in two different homes. How are such lives organised in time and space in terms of identification, belonging and emotion? How do they, in very concrete terms, render material transnational lives? The next issue of the journal (2008:1) will take such a comparative perspective into another direction as the authors will consider different kinds of research strategies to achieve European comparisons and to gain new cultural perspectives on European societies and everyday life.
Stephen Steinberg offers a bold challenge to prevailing thought on
race and ethnicity in American society. In a penetrating critique
of the famed race relations paradigm, he asks why a paradigm
invented four decades "before" the Civil Rights Revolution still
dominates both academic and popular discourses four decades "after"
that revolution.
This is the first book to focus on the role of Southern Asia and Australia in our understanding of modern human origins and the expansion of Homo sapiens between East Africa and Australia before 30,000 years ago. With contributions from leading experts that take into account the latest archaeological evidence from India and Southeast Asia, this volume critically reviews current models of the timing and character of the spread of modern humans out of Africa. It also demonstrates that the evidence from Australasia should receive much wider and more serious consideration in its own right if we want to understand how our species achieved its global distribution. Critically examining the 'Out of Africa' model, this book emphasises the context and variability of the global evidence in the search for human origins.
In 1964, a group of 20 Aboriginal women and children in the Western Desert made their first contact with European Australianspatrol officers from the Woomera Rocket Range, clearing an area into which rockets were to be fired. They had been pursued by the patrol officers for several weeks, running from this frightening new force in the desert. Yuwali Nixon, 17 at the time, remembers every detail of the dramafirst seeing these 'devils' and their 'rocks that moved' and escaping the strange intruders. Her sharp recollections are complemented in a three-part diary of the chase by the colorful official reports of the patrol. These reflect similar arguments within government about the treatment of desert inhabitants and public skepticism about the government's intent. Line drawn maps and black & white illustrations complement the text. Yuwali's story also resonates in today's debate about the future of many Indigenous desert communities. Cleared Out combines three oral histories, detailed a
'Ethnologia Europaea' has set itself the task of breaking down not only the barriers which divide research into Europe from general ethnology, but also the barriers between the various national schools within the continent. With this manifesto 'Ethnologia Europaea' was started in 1969. Since then, it has acquired a central position in the international co-operation between ethnologists in the various European countries, in the East as well as in the West. It is, however, a journal of topical interest, not only for ethnologists, but also for anthropologists, social historians and others studying the social and cultural forms of everyday life in recent and historical European societies.
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.
The symposium "Sleepers, Moles, and Martyrs: Secret Identifications, Societal Integration, and the Differing Meanings of Freedom" held in Reinhausen, 2002, formed the basis of this publication. Occasioned by the social, political and mass media discourses after the bombings of New York's World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, an interdisciplinary group of scholars came together to explore the connotations and implications of the term "sleeper". The biographies of terrorist perpetrators are but one of many permutations of sleeper-like phenomena in late modern polities. Clandestine operatives of the state are sleepers, and both willing and unwilling victims of terrorism are discursively transformed from sleepers into martyrs. Starting with analyses of the discourses about sleepers in Part I-their historical antecedents, narrative employment, and semantic differentiation-Part II turns to the hidden or unspoken of aspects of the state, the challenge of fundamentalist terrorism to the modern political project and the tensions between neighbourly discourse, public display and the state. Part III juxtaposes changing depictions of Shiite martyrdom with the violence done to the term "martyr" within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Part IV, cultural secrets encoded in memorials and public silences in academic discourse are addressed. The different cases assembled offer comparative materials and perspectives from the USA, France, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Spain, Iran, Israel, Istria and Sweden.
Estimation of the Time Since Death is a current comprehensive work on the methods and research advances into the time since death and human decomposition. This work provides practitioners a starting point for research and practice to assist with the identification and analysis of human remains. It contains a collection of the latest scientific research, various estimation methods, and includes case studies, to highlight methodological application to real cases. This reference first provides an introduction, including the early postmortem period, biochemical methods, and the value of entomology in estimating the time since death, along with other factors affecting the decomposition process. Further coverage explores importance of microbial communities in estimating time since death. Separate chapters on aquatic environments, carbon 14 dating and amino acid racemization, and total body scoring will round out the reference. The final chapter ties together the various themes in the context of the longest running human decomposition facility in the world and outlines future research directions.
In the 1990s, societies across the world were confronted with a sudden mass inflow of Chinese migrants. This publication investigates the global nature of Chinese migration by focusing on one of the fastest growing groups of new Chinese international migrants: those from Fujian province in southern China. It specifically focuses on Fujianese migration to Europe, where a broad range of immigration regimes has provided various incentives and disincentives that have influenced Fujianese migratory patterns across the continent. Applying intensive, multisited fieldwork research in the UK, Hungary, Italy, as well as sending areas in Fujian, the book investigates the origins and mechanics of recent Chinese migration by focusing on the work and life of Fujianese migrants in the United Kingdom, Hungary and Italy, and exploring the many transnational spaces that connect Fujianese across Europe, the United States and China.
Hailed as a breakthrough in the understanding of human evolution, "The History and Geography of Human Genes" offers the first full-scale reconstruction of where human populations originated and the paths by which they spread throughout the world. By mapping the worldwide geographic distribution of genes for over 110 traits in over 1800 primarily aboriginal populations, the authors charted migrations and devised a clock by which to date evolutionary history. This monumental work is now available in a more affordable paperback edition without the myriad illustrations and maps, but containing the full text and partial appendices of the authors' pathbreaking endeavor.
Many ancient diseases with a long history of afflicting mankind such as Tuberculosis and Malaria are now re-emerging. Greenblatt brings together palaeopathologists, anthropologists, molecular biologists and modern infectious disease specialists to examine this phenomenon. New techniques allow us to detect ancient pathogen DNA and other biomarkers, in effect the chemical 'signatures' of pathogens. These tools could help us develop strategies to combat modern emerging diseases.
This book focuses on ancient diseases in order to bridge the gap that has for so long separated today's infectious disease specialists and the paleopathologists who describe pathology in skeletal and mummified remains. Linking these two research communities, and incorporating the views of anthropologists, medical ecologists and molecular/evolutionary biologists, will hopefully promote a better understanding of this complex but vitally important field. A more thorough knowledge of the impact of evolutionary biology on the host-parasite relationship may even enable us to coexist with these pathogenic micro-organisms.
The book is intended to stimulate debate and co-operation between infectious disease specialists, medical researchers, archaeologists, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists.
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