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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology
The names given to the variety of man-like fossils known to scientists should reflect no more than scientific views of the nature of human evolution. However, often in the past these names have also reflected confusion regarding the basic principles of scientific nomenclature; and the matter has been further complicated by the many new finds of recent decades. It is the unique purpose of this book to clarify the present state of knowledge regarding the main lines of human evolution by expressing what is known (and what is surmised) about them in appropriate taxonomic language. The papers in this volume were prepared by the world's leading authorities on the subject, and were revised in the light of discussions at a remarkable conference held in Austria in 1962 under the auspices of the Wenner-Gren Foundation. The authors review first the meaning of taxonomic statements as such, and then consider the substance of our present knowledge regarding the number and characteristics of species among living and extinct primates, including man and his ancestors. They also examine the relationship of behavior changes and selection pressures in evolutionary sequences. Ample illustrations, bibliographies and an index enhance the permanent reference value of the book, which will undoubtedly prove to be among the fundamental paleoanthropological works of our time.
Southeast Asia is regarded as one of the birthplaces of modern humans. Recent genetic evidence shows that it was probably the entry point of modern humans from Africa into East Asia and Oceania. With the help of new markers X mostly from the Y-chromosome and mtDNA X several recent efforts have been made to study the populations of Southeast Asia, which have been somewhat neglected in the past.A new picture of the origin and migrations of modern humans in this region is quickly emerging. In this book, the leading researchers in the studies of Southeast Asian, East Asian, and Oceanian populations present the most up-to-date results of their research.
Based on a total of 18 months of fieldwork in Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi province), this is the first book-length ethnographic case study of the revival of a popular religious temple in contemporary rural China. The book reveals that doing popular religion is much more complex than praying to gods and burning incense. It examines the organizational and cultural logics that inform the staging of popular religious activities such as temple festivals. It also shows the politics behind the religious revival: the village-level local activists who seize upon temples and temple associations as a valuable political, economic, and symbolic resource, and the different local state agents who interact with temple associations and temple bosses. The study sheds unique light on shifting state-society relationships in the reform era, and is of interest to scholars and students in Asian Studies, the social sciences, and religious and ritual studies.
Reducing Bodies: Mass Culture and the Female Figure in Postwar America explores the ways in which women in the years following World War II refashioned their bodies-through reducing diets, exercise, and plastic surgery-and asks what insights these changing beauty standards can offer into gender dynamics in postwar America. Drawing on novel and untapped sources, including insurance industry records, this engaging study considers questions of gender, health, and race and provides historical context for the emergence of fat studies and contemporary conversations of the "obesity epidemic."
In anthropology, theoretical approaches attempting to come to terms with experiences of social interaction, often inspired by phenomenology, have come to the fore in opposition to the previously favored emphasis on symbolic and social structures. These essays attempt a new kind of ethnographic description of social life that treats structure and practice as aspects of the same reality. This is achieved through attention to indigenous conceptualizations of the way society itself is generated. With Jonathan Friedman and Fredrik Barth providing overviews, this series of innovative ethnographies highlights ways of forming social relations specific to Oceania as a cultural area, exemplifying a new kind of comparative approach and making a major contribution to general social theory. Ingjerd Hoem is Head of the Institute for Pacific Archaeology and Cultural History at the Kon-Tiki Museum. Sidsel Roalkvam is a Post-doctoral fellow in the Department of General Practice and Community Medicine, University of Oslo."
First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Forensic Anthropology serves as a graduate level text for those studying and teaching forensic anthropology, as well as an excellent reference for forensic anthropologist libraries or for use in casework. Covers taphonomy, recovery and analysis, identification, statistical interpretation, and professional issues. Edited by a world-renowned leading forensic expert, the Advanced Forensic Science Series grew out of the recommendations from the 2009 NAS Report, Strengthening Forensic Science: A Path Forward, and is a long overdue solution for the forensic science community.
"This collection of ten essays is the latest major work to call for renewed attention to the topic of kinship], especially with respect to contemporary questions of how cultures relate to nature... It] is a welcome addition to the ongoing revival of kinship, and will stimulate further debate among its many participants." Ethnobiology Letters The genealogical model has a long-standing history in Western thought. The contributors to this volume consider the ways in which assumptions about the genealogical model-in particular, ideas concerning sequence, essence, and transmission-structure other modes of practice and knowledge-making in domains well beyond what is normally labeled "kinship." The detailed ethnographic work and analysis included in this text explores how these assumptions have been built into our understandings of race, personhood, ethnicity, property relations, and the relationship between human beings and non-human species. The authors explore the influences of the genealogical model of kinship in wider social theory and examine anthropology's ability to provide a unique framework capable of bridging the "social" and "natural" sciences. In doing so, this volume brings fresh new perspectives to bear on contemporary theories concerning biotechnology and its effect upon social life. Sandra Bamford is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on Papua New Guinea and the West, with an emphasis on kinship, gender, landscape, environmentalism, globalization, and biotechnology. In addition to having authored several journal articles and book chapters, her most recent publications include: "Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Reflections on Life and Biotechnology" (University of California Press, 2006) and "Embodying Modernity and Postmodernity: Ritual, Praxis and Social Change in Melanesia" (Carolina Academic Press, 2007). James Leach is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. Published works include "Creative Land: Place and Procreation on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea" (2003), "Reite Plants: An Ethnobotanical Study in Tok Pisin and English" (2010, with Porer Nombo), and "Recognising and Translating Knowledge, " 2012 "Anthropological Forum" Special Issue, ed with R. Davis).
Based on a 500,000 word corpus of early sources collected from ex-slave narratives, ex-slave recordings, and interviews with hoodoo priests, this book reconstructs the English spoken by African Americans between 1830 and 1920. By means of detailed quantitative analyses, three linguistic features (negation patterns, copula usage, and relative marker choice) are interpreted along the lines of temporal change, regional diversity, and variation across gender. Additionally, some 300 non-standard letters written by African Americans in the 19th century are compared to the main corpus in order to identify differences between speech and writing.
Sexual Naturalization offers compelling new insights into the racialized constitution of American nationality. In the first major interdisciplinary study of Asian-white miscegenation from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, Koshy traces the shifting gender and racial hierarchies produced by antimiscegenation laws, and their role in shaping cultural norms. Not only did these laws foster the reproduction of the United States as a white nation, they were paralleled by extraterritorial privileges that facilitated the sexual access of white American men to Asian women overseas. Miscegenation laws thus turned sex acts into race acts and engendered new meanings for both. Koshy argues that the cultural work performed by narratives of white-Asian miscegenation dramatically transformed the landscape of desire in the United States, inventing new objects and relations of desire that established a powerful hold over U.S. culture, a capture of imaginative space that was out of all proportion to the actual numbers of Asian residents.
This collection focuses fresh attention on the relationships between "homeland" and "diaspora" communities in today's world. Based on in-depth anthropological studies by leading scholars in the field, the book highlights the changing character of homeland-diaspora ties. Homelands and Diasporas offers new understandings of the issues that these communities face and explores the roots of their fascinating, yet sometimes paradoxical, interactions. The book provides a keen look at how "homeland" and "diaspora" appear in the lives of both Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians and also explores how these issues influence Pakistanis who make their home in England, Armenians in Cyprus and England, Cambodians in France, and African-Americans in Israel. The critical views advanced in this collection should lead to a reorientation in diaspora studies and to a better understanding of the often contradictory changes in the relationships between people whose lives are led both "at home and away."
Brilliantly articulating the potent intersections of semiotic and linguistic anthropology, Signs and Society demonstrates how a keen appreciation of signs helps us better understand human agency, meaning, and creativity. Inspired by the foundational contributions of C. S. Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure, and drawing upon key insights from neighboring scholarly fields, noted anthropologist Richard J. Parmentier develops an array of innovative conceptual tools for ethnographic, historical, and literary research. His concepts of "transactional value," "metapragmatic interpretant," and "circle of semiosis," for example, illuminate the foundations and effects of such diverse cultural forms and practices as economic exchanges on the Pacific island of Palau, Pindar's Victory Odes in ancient Greece, and material representations of transcendence in ancient Egypt and medieval Christianity. Other studies complicate the separation of emic and etic analytical models for such cultural domains as religion, economic value, and semiotic ideology. Provocative and absorbing, these fifteen pioneering essays blaze a trail into anthropology's future while remaining firmly rooted in its celebrated past.
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, multi-sited 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.
In this thoroughly revised fourth edition, with ten new chapters, the editors provide thought-provoking discussions on the importance of ethnicity in different cultural and social contexts. The authors focus especially on changing ethnic and national identities, on migration and ethnic minorities, on ethnic ascription versus self-definitions, and on shifting ethnic identities and political control. The international group of scholars examines ethnic identities, conflicts and accommodations around the globe, in Africa (including Zaire and South Africa), Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, the United States, Thailand, and the former Yugoslavia. It will serve as an excellent text for courses in race & ethnic relations, and anthropology and ethnic studies.
Today's world is one marked by the signs of digital capitalism and global capitalist expansion, and China is increasingly being integrated into this global system of production and consumption. As a result, China's immediate material impact is now felt almost everywhere in the world; however, the significance and process of this integration is far from understood. This study shows how the a priori categories of statistical reasoning came to be re-born and re-lived in the People's Republic - as essential conditions for the possibility of a new mode of knowledge and governance. From the ruins of the Maoist revolution China has risen through a mode of quantitative self-objectification. As the author argues, an epistemological rift has separated the Maoist years from the present age of the People's Republic, which appears on the global stage as a mirage. This study is an ethnographic investigation of concepts - of the conceptual forces that have produced and been produced by - two forms of knowledge, life, and governance. As the author shows, the world of China, contrary to the common view, is not the Chinese world; it is a symptomatic moment of our world at the present time.
First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Based on eighteen months of field research conducted in exile carpet factories, settlement camps, monasteries, and schools in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, as well as in Dharamsala, India and Lhasa, Tibet, this book offers an important contribution to the debate on the impact of international assistance on migrant communities. The author explores the ways in which Tibetan exiles in Nepal negotiate their norms and values as they interact with the many international organizations that assist them, and comes to the conclusion that, as beneficial as aid agency assistance often is, it also complicates the Tibetans' efforts to define themselves as a community.
More than a quarter of a century has passed since the first Southeast Asian refugees arrived in this country, but because of their age and formidable language barriers, many elders have difficulty making their voices heard. Language barriers, family privacy, and social isolation have made it almost impossible for their experiences to be shared outside the family and community. Elder Voices helps to understand the family life of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, and Hmong refugees from the perspective of the oldest generation. Their stories are composed of complex family narratives that help us understand the ways in which migration and resettlement processes are experienced. The forty life histories of Southeast Asian elders gathered for this study collectively reveal personal perspectives on new immigrant family adaptation to American life at the end of the twentieth century. This volume is a great resource for anyone interested in Southeast Asian families in America.
View the Table of Contents. "The excellent vignettes throughout the book further show, in striking detail, how immigrants from Fuzhou use the language and ideas of their faith traditions to make sense of their journeys and their daily lives in the United States. This book is a welcome addition to recent research about religion and the post-1965 immigrants."--"Contemporary Sociology" ""God in Chinatown" is useful for historians as well as those interested in the sociology of religion, the Chinese Diaspora, or New York City."--"Religious Studies Review" ""God in Chinatown" is an important study for historians and
social scientists. Guest has...expanded the horizons of students of
ethnic history." "In this volume Guest has succeeded in showing the importance of religion to the self-definition of immigrants from Fuzhou in their new home in New York's Chinatown and other cities across the United States. As a student of theology, he understands the importance of religion to human survival and flourishing in the face of tremendous obstacles, especially for the immigrants of Fuzhou in urban America."--"China Review international" "There is no question that this book makes an important
contribution to the emerging field of religion and immigration as
well as to research on contemporary Asian religions. The
information and perspective Guest provides not only substantially
enhance our knowledge of these topics but help us view them in a
new light." "Guest does an excellent job of helping the reader understand the place of these religious institutions both within Chinatown andthe religious landscape in China. The book is so stimulating that it leads the reader to formulate more questions."--"Sociology of Religion" "Students and scholars in the fields of church history, religion
in the US, the history of religions, comparative religions, and
Asian studies will find that this intriguing book suggests a
variety of directions for further exploration." "A well-researched, well-written, and timely ethnographic study of the importance of religious groups in the lives of Fuzhounese immigrants to the United States. It should be of great interest to scholars of contemporary Chinese religion, and to sociologists and anthropologists interested in religion and transnationalism. A readable and affordable monograph."--"Journal of Chinese Religions" ""God in Chinatown" is a pioneering ethnographic study....A must
read for those interested in ethnic communities, immigration, and
religion. It is a welcome addition to the growing number of studies
that are recognizing the important connections between religion and
immigration in the incorporation of immigrants and the
reconstructions of what is America itself." "As a first ethnographic study to systematically examine the
role of religious organizations and immigrant adaptations among the
Fuzhounese, the book is a welcome edition to the existing
literature of the sociology of religion. Guest devotes much of the
book to describing the religious life that the Fuzhounese left
behind in Fujian and the new one that they have rebuilt in New
York. he shows clearly and unequivocally that ethnic religious
institutions play a central and intrumental role inassisting
disadvantaged immigrants to survive adverse circumstances. He also
makes a nuanced point about the interconnectedness between ethnic
religious institutions and ethnic economies in Chinatown and
between Chinatown and its transnational networks." "The exceptionally rich ethnography is very interesting to
read." "In this volume Guest has succeeded in showing the importance of
religion in the self-definition of Fuzhounese immigrants in their
new home in New York Chinatown and in the network of cities across
the United States." "This book fascinates by making what is familiar much more
complicated and interesting. Recommended." God in Chinatown is a path breaking study of the largest contemporary wave of new immigrants to Chinatown. Since the 1980s, tens of thousands of mostly rural Chinese have migrated from Fuzhou, on China's southeastern coast, to New York's Chinatown. Like the Cantonese who comprised the previous wave of migrants, the Fuzhou have brought with them their religious beliefs, practices, and local deities. In recent years these immigrants have established numerous specifically Fuzhounese religious communities, ranging from Buddhist, Daoist, and Chinese popular religion to Protestant and Catholic Christianity. This ethnographic study examines the central role of these religious communities in the immigrant incorporation process in Chinatown's highly stratified ethnic enclave, as well as the transnational networks established between religious communities in New York and China. The author's knowledge of Chinese coupledwith his extensive fieldwork in both China and New York enable him to illuminate how these networks transmit religious and social dynamics to the United States, as well as how these new American institutions influence religious and social relations in the religious revival sweeping southeastern China. God in Chinatown is the first study to bring to light religion's significant role in the Fuzhounese immigrants' dramatic transformation of the face of New York's Chinatown.
Beginning in the early 1980s Aboriginal Australians found in music, radio, and filmic media a means to make themselves heard across the country and to insert themselves into the center of Australian political life. In The Voice and Its Doubles Daniel Fisher analyzes the great success of this endeavor, asking what is at stake in the sounds of such media for Aboriginal Australians. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in northern Australia, Fisher describes the close proximity of musical media, shifting forms of governmental intervention, and those public expressions of intimacy and kinship that suffuse Aboriginal Australian social life. Today's Aboriginal media include genres of country music and hip-hop; radio requests and broadcast speech; visual graphs of a digital audio timeline; as well as the statistical media of audience research and the discursive and numerical figures of state audits and cultural policy formation. In each of these diverse instances the mediatized voice has become a site for overlapping and at times discordant forms of political, expressive, and institutional creativity.
Beginning in the early 1980s Aboriginal Australians found in music, radio, and filmic media a means to make themselves heard across the country and to insert themselves into the center of Australian political life. In The Voice and Its Doubles Daniel Fisher analyzes the great success of this endeavor, asking what is at stake in the sounds of such media for Aboriginal Australians. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in northern Australia, Fisher describes the close proximity of musical media, shifting forms of governmental intervention, and those public expressions of intimacy and kinship that suffuse Aboriginal Australian social life. Today's Aboriginal media include genres of country music and hip-hop; radio requests and broadcast speech; visual graphs of a digital audio timeline; as well as the statistical media of audience research and the discursive and numerical figures of state audits and cultural policy formation. In each of these diverse instances the mediatized voice has become a site for overlapping and at times discordant forms of political, expressive, and institutional creativity.
Through readings of literature, canonical history texts, studies of museum displays and media analysis, this work explores the historical formation of myths of Canadian national identity and then how these myths were challenged (and affirmed during the 1990 standoff at Oka. It draws upon history, literary criticism, anthropology, studies in nationalism and ethnicity and post-colonial theory.
View the Table of Contents. Read the Chapter 1. "Provides important insight into the manner in which federal support of faith-based poverty relief initiatives affect religious identity in the Golden Triangle Region of rural Mississippi."--"Journal of Church and State" "The book provides a thorough historical overview of the events that led up to the Bush administration's decision to promote faith-based social welfare. This thoughtful book is a useful addition to the growing literature on the subject and should be widely consulted."--"Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare" "Well-written and clearly organized."--"Journal of Social Services" "In depth profiles...with obvious strengths."--"Contemporary Sociology" "The findings raise serious concerns related to discriminatory
practices around who will get served, and the qualification of
those providing the services. . . . Highly recommended." "The comparative case method stretched across a complex
analytical framework sketches the terrain in broad, suggestive,
analytical strokes. We benefit from the timeliness of Bartkowski
and Regis's study." "Nothing short of exceptional..."Charitable Choices" is a very
readable book that makes an evident contribution to contemporary
discourse about welfare reform and its possibilities and
pitfalls." aThese stories reveal not only the profound commitment that
clergy can have for their flock but how existing social structures
can render the poor invisible. Charitable Choices is more useful as
a description of an under-recognized aspect of American religious
life than as an analysis of government welfarepolicy.a Congregations and faith-based organizations have become key participants in America's welfare revolution. Recent legislation has expanded the social welfare role of religious communities, thus revealing a pervasive lack of faith in purely economic responses to poverty. Charitable Choices is an ethnographic study of faith-based poverty relief in 30 congregations in the rural south. Drawing on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in Mississippi faith communities, it examines how religious conviction and racial dynamics shape congregational benevolence. Mississippi has long had the nation's highest poverty rate and was the first state to implement a faith-based welfare reform initiative. The book provides a grounded and even-handed treatment of congregational poverty relief rather than abstract theory on faith-based initiatives. The volume examines how congregations are coping with national developments in social welfare policy and reveals the strategies that religious communities utilize to fight poverty in their local communities. By giving particular attention to the influence of theological convictions and organizational dynamics on religious service provision, it identifies both the prospects and pitfalls likely to result from the expansion of charitable choice.
Examines the issues facing indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, including their role in the nation's constitutional and legal developments, and makes a number of recommendations which would satisfy their demands without compromising the sovereignty of the state. |
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