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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology
This is the first account of the Lapita peoples, the common
ancestor of the Polynesians, Micronesians, and
Austronesian-speaking Melanesians who over the last 4000 years
colonized the islands of the Pacific, including New Zealand and
territories as far afield as Fiji and Hawaii. Its purpose is to
provide answers to some of the most puzzling archaeological and
anthropological questions: who were the Lapita peoples? what was
their history? how were they able to travel such great distances?
and why did they do so? Recent discoveries (several by the author
of this book) have begun at last to yield a coherent picture of
these elusive peoples. Professor Kirch takes the reader back many thousands of years to
the earliest evidence of the Lapita peoples. He describes the
research itself and conveys the excitement of the first discoveries
of Lapita settlements, tools and pottery. He then traces the
remarkable cultural development and spread of the Lapita peoples
across the unoccupied islands of Eastern Melanesia, Micronesia and
Western Polynesia. He shows how they became the progenitors of the
Polynesian and Austronesian-speaking Melanesian peoples. The author describes Lapita sites, communities and landscapes,
the development of their decorated ceramics, and their shell-tool
industry. He reveals the means by which they accomplished such
prodigious voyages and explains why they undertook them. He
illustrates his account with specially drawn maps and with a wide
range of photographs, many published for the first time.
This book presents a synthesis of the modern approaches to the
study of ontogeny and the interpretation of the fossil evidence for
human origins. Recent years have seen significant developments in
the understanding of the regulation of embryonic pattern formation
and skeletal adaptation, and in techniques for the visualizations
and analysis of ontogenetic transformations, offering the prospect
of understanding the mechanisms underpinning phylogenetic
transformation in the skeleton. Advances in developmental biology,
molecular genetics, biomechanics, microscopy, imaging and
morphometrics are brought to bear on the subject.
This is an analysis of the nature and impact of the Indian presence in Britain, and British reactions to it. From the late 19th to the early 20th century, the number of Indians arriving in Britain, to gain qualifications and learn about British society, began to grow. The greater visibility of Indians at the Inns of Court and universities fuelled British fears, arising out of popular culture and the political situation in India, about the damaging effects of students' residence in Britain. The British authorities took measures to restrict the size of the Indian student population and control political activities, placing themselves in direct conflict with the students. Indians resented this encroachment of the state into their lives, which were already beset by problems of racial discrimination, isolation, and, in some cases, deprivation. Many students turned to politics, and this study shows how indigenous elites from dependent colonies, in this case India, were able to appropriate ideas and institutions, to challenge, subvert - and sometimes prove their affinity with - British metropolitan society.
This is an analysis of the nature and impact of the Indian presence in Britain, and British reactions to it. From the late 19th to the early 20th century, the number of Indians arriving in Britain, to gain qualifications and learn about British society, began to grow. The greater visibility of Indians at the Inns of Court and universities fuelled British fears, arising out of popular culture and the political situation in India, about the damaging effects of students' residence in Britain. The British authorities took measures to restrict the size of the Indian student population and control political activities, placing themselves in direct conflict with the students. Indians resented this encroachment of the state into their lives, which were already beset by problems of racial discrimination, isolation, and, in some cases, deprivation. Many students turned to politics, and this study shows how indigenous elites from dependent colonies, in this case India, were able to appropriate ideas and institutions, to challenge, subvert - and sometimes prove their affinity with - British metropolitan society.
White Identities provides a comprehensive overview of this debate, drawing together the various strands of recent research into an accessible but challenging introduction. The author argues that 'White Studies', as it is presently conceived, is an American project, reflecting American interpretations of race and history. However the book shows that the impact of white identities is international in scope and significance. Thus, only a thorough historical and international perspective on whiteness can provide a proper introduction to the subject, an introduction that has relevance to students worldwide.
Building upon a theoretical framework of democratic exclusion as a tool of public policy, Rebecca Kook uses sources as diverse as postage stamps and public festivals to unravel the 'logic' of democratic identity. She makes the provocative argument that membership in democracies is inherently exclusionary, and that national exclusion is a tacit requirement for successfully democratic regimes. Moving from a discussion of the political and legal construction of national identity to the particular experiences of the African American minority in the United States and the Palestinian minority in Israel, Kook raises serious questions about the potential for real democracy in societies plagued by complex racial and ethnic divides and social, economic, and political inequality.
The result of 25 years of research with different tribal groups in the Arabian peninsula, this study focuses on ethnographic description of Arab tribal societies in five regions of the peninsula, with comparative material from others. Having become aware of the depth in time of Arab tribal structures, the authors have developed a view of Arabic tribal discourse where "tribe" is seen as essentially an identity that confers access to a social structure and its processes. This insight enables the authors to clarify tribal processes of land use and resource management which are normally "invisible," as they leave few written records and the archaeological remains are notoriously difficult to date. The contextual nature of description by local users leads to a reevaluation of social categories, and to an awareness of relationships between bedouin and peasant, tribesman and townsman. A detailed appreciation of the different agricultural, pastoral and fishing practices of the region is presented, together with the underpinning of indigenous theories of land use and resource management. This detailed monograph incorporates many theoretical aspects, including concepts of indigenous theories
Developed as a question-and-answer field research report into the status of Buraku people in Japan today, this text also looks at the wider issues of prejudice as found within Japanese society, from old people to women, ethnicity and nationality.
"Though America had been rightfully portrayed as born of democratic principles, to no less an extent was it born of undemocratic ones. America is thus a living contradiction of many dimensions -- historical, sociological, and psychological -- that have manifested themselves at every level of society -- individual, communal, and natural". So writes Philip Perlmutter, whose Legacy of Hate explores this "living contradiction" by tracing the development of American minority group relations, beginning with the arrival of white Europeans and moving through the eighteenth and industrially expanding nineteenth centuries; the explosion of immigration and its attendant problems in the twentieth century; and a final chapter exploring how prejudice (racial, religious, and ethnic) has been institutionalized in the educational systems and laws. Throughout this provocative book, Perlmutter focuses on where and why various groups encountered prejudice and discrimination and how their experiences have shaped the society we live in and how we think about one another.
When the golfer Tiger Woods proclaimed himself a "Caublinasian," affirming his mixed Caucasian, Black, Native American and Asian ancestry, a storm of controversy was created in a world still perceived in terms of "black" and "white." This book is about ordinary lives facing similar dilemmas of racial identity, of belonging and not belonging. It tells the stories of six women of mixed African/ African Caribbean and white European heritage to show how the often painful experience of being a stranger in two cultures can be named and celebrated. Jayne Ifekwunigwe explores the cultural and historical roots of the popular discourses of race. She analyzes the problem of theorizing mixed racial and/or cultural identity in a global context, always relating it to the real-life experiences of these women.
Whether initiating girls or healing cattle, bringing rain or protesting taxation, many in Africa share a vision of a world where the cultural, symbolic and cosmic categories of "male" and "female" serve, through ritual, to both re-image and transform the world. This book introduces recent gender theory to the analysis of African ethnography, exp loring the ways in which ideational gender categories permeate African systems of thought and ritual practices.;Thus, the book provides a framework with which to evaluate previous ethnographic material on Africa. In addition, it presents a broad range of new case studies - of hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists and pastoralists - revealing the varied and complex ways in which African ideas and ideals of what it means to be "male" and "female" broadly inform and give meaning to a wide range of transformative rituals.
This text challenges the national frames of reference of the debates which surround questions of ethnicity, race and cultural difference by investigating contemporary theories, policies and practices of cultural pluralism across eight countries with historical links in British colonialism: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Ireland and Britain. Written as history, theory, autobiography and political polemic, the book combines general theoretical discussions of the principles of cultural pluralism, nationalism, and minority identities with informative studies of specific local histories and political conflicts. Seeking to identify common problems and precepts in the postcolonial era, the contributors discuss such issues as political versus cultural constructions of nationhood in the USA and Australia; communalism and colonialism in India; Irish sectarianism and identity politics; ethnic nationalism in post-apartheid South Africa; British multiculturalism as a "heritage" industry; multicultural law and education in Canada and New Zealand; and refugees, migrancy and identity in a global cultural economy.
Recent years have seen a resurgence of separatist sentiments among national minorities in many industrial societies, including the United Kingdom. In 1997, the Scottish and Welsh both set up their own parliamentary bodies, while the tragic events in Northern Ireland continued to be a reminder of the Irish problem. These phenomena call into question widely accepted social theories which assume that ethnic attachments in a society will wane as industrialization proceeds. This book presents the social basis of ethnic identity, and examines changes in the strength of ethnic solidarity in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition to its value as a case study, the work also has important comparative implications, for it suggests that internal colonialism of the kind experienced in the British Isles has its analogues in the histories of other industrial societies. Hechter examines the unexpected persistence of ethnicity in the politics of industrial societies by focusing on the British Isles. Why do many of the inhabitants of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland continue to maintain an ethnic identity opposed to England? Hechter explains the salience of ethnic identity by analyzing the relationships between England, the national core, and its periphery, the Celtic fringe, in the light of two alternative models of core-periphery relations in the industrial setting. These are a "diffusion" model, which predicts that intergroup contact leads to ethnic homogenization, and an "internal colonial" model, in which such contact heightens distinctive ethnic identification. His findings lend support to the internal colonial model, and show that, although industrialization did contribute to a decline in interregional linguistic differences, it resulted neither in the cultural assimilation of Celtic lands, nor in the development of regional economic equality. The study concludes that ethnic solidarity will inevitably emerge among groups which are relegated to inferior positions in a cultural division of labor. This is an important contribution to the understanding of socioeconomic development and ethnicity.
We live in a world surrounded by remarkable cultural achievements of human kind. Almost every day we hear of new innovations in technology, in medicine and in the arts which remind us that humans are capable of remarkable creativity. But what is human creativity? The modern world provides a tiny fraction of cultural diversity and the evidence for human creativity, far more can be seen by looking back into prehistory. The book examines how our understanding of human creativity can be extended by exploring this phenomenon during human evolution and prehistory. The book offers unique perspectives on the nature of human creativity from archaeologists who are concerned with long term patterns of cultural change and have access to quite different types of human behaviour than that which exists today. It asks whether humans are the only creative species, or whether our extinct relatives such as Homo habilis and the Neanderthals also displayed creative thinking. It explores what we can learn about the nature of human creativity from cultural developments during prehistory, such as changes in the manner in which the dead were buried, monuments constructed, and the natural world exploited. In doing so, new light is thrown on these cultural developments and the behaviour of our prehistoric ancestors. By examining the nature of creativity during human evolution and prehistory these archaeologists, supported by contributions from psychology, computer science and social anthropology, show that human creativity is a far more diverse and complex phenomena than simply flashes of genius by isolated individuals. Indeed they show that unless perspectives from prehistory are taken into account, our understanding of human creativity will be limited and incomplete.
This book recreates the lost world of the hominid species that lived and flourished for around one million years before, and in some cases after, the evolution of modern humans some 200,000 years ago. It also investigates how, when, where and why the modern human species appeared and in due course became dominant. These are the subjects of as much heated controversy among as they are of considerable interest to anthropologists, biologists, archaeologists and numerous others.Making use of a wide range of evidence the book considers issues in evolutionary archaeology such as how far can the early australopithecines, parathropines, Homo erectus, and the neanderthals be seen as populations on the way to being human, or as distinct, unique species? How far can these species be said to have cultural characteristics and what can be said of their social organization, group structures and adaptive strategies? How do these compare with ape communities then and now, and with those of the earliest modern humans? And do those behavioural comparisons provide a key to hominid evolution? Answering these questions leads the author not only toward a rational account of modern human origins, but toward an explanation of the origins and evolutionary role of cognition, communication and language - of the knowledge that gives our species its name.Written in non-technical language, Humans Before Humanity may be expected to have a significant scientific impact and to be of very wide interest indeed.The paperback edition contains a guide to further reading by chapter, which also outlines current developments in the field.
Notions of ustaarabu, a word expressing "civilization," and questions of identities in Zanzibar have historically been shaped by the development of Islam and association with littoral societies around the Indian Ocean. The 1964 Revolution marked a break in that history and imposed new notions of African civilization and belonging in Zanzibar. The revolutionary state subsequently introduced tourism and the market economy to maintain its hegemony over Zanzibar. In light of these developments, and with locals facing growing socio-economic marginalization and political uncertainty, Tourism and Social Change in Post-Socialist Zanzibar: Struggles for Identity, Movement, and Civilization examines how Zanzibaris are struggling to move through the local landscape in the post-socialist era and articulate their ideas of belonging in Zanzibar. This book further investigates how movements of Zanzibaris within the emerging and contending social discourses are reconstituting meanings for conceptualizing ustaarabu to define their roots in Zanzibar. |
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