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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > General
This book explores the relationship between knowledge and context through a novel analysis of processes of representation. Sandra Jovchelovitch argues that representation, a social psychological construct relating self, other and object-world, is at the basis of all knowledge. Understanding its genesis and actualisation in individual and social life explains what ties knowledge to persons, communities and cultures. It is through representation that we can appreciate the diversity of knowledge, and it is representation that opens the epistemic function of knowing to emotional and social rationalities. Drawing on dialogues between psychology, sociology and anthropology, Jovchelovitch explores the dominant assumptions of western conceptions of knowledge and the quest for a unitary reason free from the 'impurities' of person, community and culture. She recasts questions related to historical comparisons between the knowledge of adults and children, 'civilised' and 'primitive' peoples, scientists and lay communities and examines the ambivalence of classical theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky, Freud, Durkheim and Levy-Bruhl in addressing these issues. Against this background, Jovchelovitch situates and expands Moscovici's theory of social representations, developing a framework to diagnose and understand knowledge systems, how they relate to different communities and what defines dialogical and non-dialogical encounters between knowledges in contemporary public spheres. Diversity in knowledge, she shows, is an asset of all human communities and dialogue between different forms of knowing constitutes the difficult but necessary task that can enlarge the frontiers of all knowledges. Knowledge in context will make essential reading for all those wanting to follow debates on knowledge and representation at the cutting edge of social, cultural and developmental psychology, sociology, anthropology, development and cultural studies.
The origins of anthropology lie in expeditionary journeys. But since the rise of immersive fieldwork, usually by a sole investigator, the older tradition of team-based social research has been largely eclipsed. Expeditionary Anthropology argues that expeditions have much to tell us about anthropologists and the people they studied. The book charts the diversity of anthropological expeditions and analyzes the often passionate arguments they provoked. Drawing on recent developments in gender studies, indigenous studies, and the history of science, the book argues that even today, the 'science of man' is deeply inscribed by its connections with expeditionary travel.
An examination of the cultural values of working class Chicana adolescents with an emphasis on the social, political, and economic factors that shape these cultural values. This book addresses a gap in the literature on youth gangs and youth culture by examining the motivations and issues of gang affiliation, teen pregnancy, and academic failure from the point-of-view of teenage girls. Furthermore, the book emphasizes female participation in gangs as well as the impact that gangs have on non- participating adolescents. The author also discusses how current public policy is based on erroneous assumptions associated with the culture of poverty model. This book attempts to explain what appears to be self-defeating behavior of many Chicana adolescents. It explores the logic underlying their life choices and examines the connection between these choices and larger social processes. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty in ethnic studies, multicultural studies, Hispanic Studies, Sociology, and Women's Studies. In addition social service professionals and related professionals will find it helpful.
This book describes how institutional racism arose in Hawaii, why it arose, what kept it going, and how it can be dismantled. The book is unique in describing the history, statistical patterns, ideological disputation, and political underpinnings of institutional racism in a particular state, indeed one often thought to be relatively free from virulent forms of racism. The book specifically focuses on racial problems in regard to education, employment, health care delivery, and public accomodations. The book concludes that White-constructed institutional racist policies, practices, and procedures persisted even when political power shifted after statehood in 1959 to affluent Japanese-Americans, who used the same forms of institutional racism to hold back Whites and poorer non-White ethnic groups. Although affirmative action is often improperly thought to involve quotas and reverse discrimination, the case of Hawaii shows that institutional racism can be dismantled through affirmative action without lowering standards of education, employment qualifications, and health care, instead, standards actually improved the benefit to all.
The 'Year' That Changed How We View the North This book is about a new theoretical approach that transformed the field of Arctic social studies and about a program called International Polar Year 2007-2008 (IPY) that altered the position of social research within the broader polar science. The concept for IPY was developed in 2003-2005; its vision was for researchers from many nations to work together to gain cro- disciplinary insight into planetary processes, to explore and increase our understanding of the polar regions, the Arctic and Antarctica, and of their roles in the global system. IPY 2007-2008, the fourth program of its kind, followed in the footsteps of its predecessors, the first IPY in 1882-1883, the second IPY in 1932-1933, and the third IPY (later renamed to 'International Geophysical Year' or IGY) in 1957-1958. All earlier IPY/IGY have been primarily geophysical initiatives, with their focus on meteorology, atmospheric and geomagnetic observations, and with additional emphasis on glaciology and sea ice circulation. As such, they excluded socio-economic disciplines and polar indigenous people, often deliberately, except for limited ethnographic and natural history collection work conducted by some expeditions of the first IPY. That once dominant vision biased heavily towards geophysics, oceanography, and ice-sheets, left little if any place for people, that is, the social sciences and the humanities, in what has been commonly viewed as the 'hard-core' polar research.
Human Rights and the Third World: Issues and Discourses deals with the controversial questions on the universalistic notions of human rights. It finds Third World perspectives on human rights and seeks to open up a discursive space in the human rights discourse to address unresolved questions, citing issues and problems from different countries in the Third World: 1. Whether alternative perspectives should be taken as the standard for human rights in the Third World countries? 2. Should there be a universalistic notion of rights for Homo sapiens or are we talking about two diametrically opposite trends and standards of human rights for the same species? 3. How far these Third World perspectives of human rights can ensure the protection of the minorities and the vulnerable sections of population, particularly the women and children within the Third World? 4. Can these alternative perspectives help in fighting the Third World problems like poverty, hunger, corruption, despotism, social exclusion like the caste system in India, communalism, and the like? 5. Can there be reconciliation between the Third World perspectives and the Western perspective of human rights?
Authenticity is taken-for-granted as an absolute value in
contemporary life. In "Culture and Authenticity," Charles Lindholm
calls upon anthropological case studies from different cultures,
historical material, and comparative philosophy, to explore how
notions of authenticity develop, what forms it takes, and how it
changes over time.
Feminist anthropology emerged in the 1970s as a much-needed corrective to the discipline's androcentric biases. Far from being a marginalized subfield, it has been at the forefront of developments that have revolutionized not only anthropology, but also a host of other disciplines. This landmark collection of essays provides a contemporary overview of feminist anthropology's historical and theoretical origins, the transformations it has undergone, and the vital contributions it continues to make to cutting-edge scholarship. Mapping Feminist Anthropology in the Twenty-First Century brings together a variety of contributors, giving a voice to both younger researchers and pioneering scholars who offer insider perspectives on the field's foundational moments. Some chapters reveal how the rise of feminist anthropology shaped - and was shaped by - the emergence of fields like women's studies, black and Latina studies, and LGBTQ studies. Others consider how feminist anthropologists are helping to frame the direction of developing disciplines like masculinity studies, affect theory, and science and technology studies. Spanning the globe - from India to Canada, from Vietnam to Peru - Mapping Feminist Anthropology in the Twenty-First Century reveals the important role that feminist anthropologists have played in worldwide campaigns against human rights abuses, domestic violence, and environmental degradation. It also celebrates the work they have done closer to home, helping to explode the developed world's preconceptions about sex, gender, and sexuality.
Winner, 2017 Margaret Mead Award presented by the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology Honorable Mention, 2015 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize presented by the Society for Medical Anthropology Analyzes the ways in which nurses work to collect and preserve evidence while addressing the needs of sexual assault victims as patients Every year in the US, thousands of women and hundreds of men participate in sexual assault forensic examinations. Drawing on four years of participatory research in a Baltimore emergency room, Sameena Mulla reveals the realities of sexual assault response in the forensic age. Taking an approach developed at the intersection of medical and legal anthropology, she analyzes the ways in which nurses work to collect and preserve evidence while addressing the needs of sexual assault victims as patients. Mulla argues that blending the work of care and forensic investigation into a single intervention shapes how victims of violence understand their own suffering, recovery, and access to justice-in short, what it means to be a "victim". As nurses race the clock to preserve biological evidence, institutional practices, technologies, and even state requirements for documentation undermine the way in which they are able to offer psychological and physical care. Yet most of the evidence they collect never reaches the courtroom and does little to increase the number of guilty verdicts. Mulla illustrates the violence of care with painstaking detail, illuminating why victims continue to experience what many call "secondary rape" during forensic intervention, even as forensic nursing is increasingly professionalized. Revictimization can occur even at the hands of conscientious nurses, simply because they are governed by institutional requirements that shape their practices. The Violence of Care challenges the uncritical adoption of forensic practice in sexual assault intervention and post-rape care, showing how forensic intervention profoundly impacts the experiences of violence, justice, healing and recovery for victims of rape and sexual assault.
Increasingly, economists have acknowledged that a major limitation to economic theory has been its failure to incorporate human values and beliefs as motivational factors. Conversely, the economic underpinnings of ritual practice are under-theorized and therefore not accessible to economists working on synthetic theories of human choice. This book addresses the problem by bringing together anthropologists with diverse backgrounds in the study of religion and economy to forge an analytical vocabulary that constitutes the building blocks of a theory of ritual economy-the process of provisioning and consuming that materializes and substantiates worldview for managing meanings and shaping interpretations. The chapters in Part I explore how values and beliefs structure the dual processes of provisioning and consuming. Contributions to Part II consider how ritual and economic processes interlink to materialize and substantiate worldview. Chapters in Part III examine how people and institutions craft and assert worldview through ritual and economic action to manage meaning and shape interpretation. In Part IV, Jeremy Sabloff outlines the road ahead for developing the theory of ritual economy. By focusing on the intersection of cosmology and material transfers, the contributors push economic theory towards a more socially informed perspective.
This collection of essays breaks new ground in the comparative study of ethnic and racial minorities by showing that there is a common ground shared by those in advanced industrial democracies that differentiates them from Third World and communist countries. The study offers a unique synthesis of diverse views by those who have focused on long-established or ethnoregional minorities and those who have studied recent immigrant populations. The analysis of ethnic tolerance, political factors, and conflict resolution considers why ethnic and racial conflict and disadvantage endure, pointing to ways that societies are organized economically and politically and linked into the international political economy. Students and experts in comparative and minority politics, ethnic and Black studies, and sociology will benefit from the observations and conclusions about the operations of economic and political markets and how they heighten ethnic and racial inequality. The general introduction and conclusion offer theoretical overviews and point to social science paradigms concerning the role of ethnic and racial minorities in the advanced industrial democracies. Noted contributors examine immigration policy and ethnic tolerance; minorities, politics, and the state; political consciousness, organization and participation; and conflict resolution and public policy. A lengthy reference list is given. This volume will be of great interest to interdisciplinary audiences in political science, sociology/social problems, and ethnic and black studies.
Since Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms began in the early 1980s, the People's Republic of China has rejoined global politics as a world power. The country is likely to become more open and its internal politics will no doubt affect the rest of the world. With more than 1.2 billion people divided into hundreds of ethnic groups, all dominated by the Han people, China's politics and its foreign policy are bound to be affected by ethnicity and ethnic rivalry. This book is designed to give librarians, students, scholars, and educated readers a ready reference for background information of interpreting ethnic events in China. Generally defining ethnicity in terms of language, this book provides individual essays on hundreds of Chinese ethnic groups, including ethnic groups living in the Republic of China on Taiwan. The book also includes a chronology, bibliography, and a breakdown of the People's Republic of China's ethnic political subdivisions.
In the aftermath of 9/11 Islamic seminaries or madrasas received much media attention in India, mostly owing to the alleged link between madrasa education and forms of violence. Yet, while ample information on madrasas for boys is available, similar institutions of Islamic learning for girls have for the greater part escaped public attention so far. This study investigates how madrasas for girls emerged in India, how they differ from madrasas for boys, and how female students come to interpret Islam through the teachings they receive in these schools. Observations suggest that, next to the official curriculum, the 'informal' curriculum plays an equally important role. It serves the madrasa's broader aim of bringing about a complete reform of the students' morality and to determine their actions accordingly.
The artificial shaping of the skull vault of infants expresses fundamental aspects of crafted beauty, of identity, status and gender in a way no other body practice does. Combining different sources of information, this volume contributes new interpretations on Mesoamerican head shaping traditions. Here, the head with its outer insignia was commonly used as a metaphor for designating the "self" and personhood and, as part of the body, served as a model for the indigenous universe. Analogously, the outer "looks" of the head and its anatomical constituents epitomized deeply embedded worldviews and longstanding traditions. It is in this sense that this book explores both the quotidian roles and long-standing ideological connotations of cultural head modifications in Mesoamerica and beyond, setting new standards in the discussion of the scope, caveats, and future directions involved in this study. The systematic examination of Mesoamerican skeletal series fosters an explained review of indigenous cultural history through the lens of emblematic head models with their nuanced undercurrents of religious identity and ethnicity, social organization and dynamic cultural shift. The embodied expressions of change are explored in different geocultural settings and epochs, being most visible in the centuries surrounding the Maya collapse and following the cultural clash implied by the European conquest. These glimpses on the Mesoamerican past through head practices are novel, as is the general treatment of methodology and theoretical frames. Although it is anchored in physical anthropology and archaeology (specifically bioarchaeology), this volume also integrates knowledge derived from anatomy and human physiology, historical and iconographic sources, linguistics (polisemia) and ethnography. The scope of this work is rounded up by the transcription and interpretation of the many colonial eye witness accounts on indigenous head treatments in Mesoamerica and beyond.
The authors of the essays presented in this collection use selected animal and human models to inquire into the dynamics of hierarchical behavior. The collection begins with a review of the biological parameters of human behavior and suggests that a biological basis can be found in association with general strategies for organizing human behavior. Barchas has organized the essays proceeding from an evolutionary contextual frame through contributions that illuminate the regulation of hierarchical structures, to the final essays that implicate the brain's attentional system as a chief mediator between an individual's position in the group structure and behavior. This provocative volume presents strategies for thinking about some of the issues that necessarily arise when the impact of social behavior, physiology, and evolution on hierarchical behavior is considered.
Knowledge And Global Power is a ground-breaking international study which examines how knowledge is produced, distributed and validated globally. The former imperial nations – the rich countries of Europe and North America – still have a hegemonic position in the global knowledge economy. Fran Collyer, Raewyn Connell, Joćo Maia and Robert Morrell, using interviews, databases and fieldwork, show how intellectual workers respond in three Southern tier countries, Brazil, South Africa and Australia. The study focuses on new, socially and politically important research fields: HIV/AIDS, climate change and gender studies. The research demonstrates emphatically that ‘place matters’, shaping research, scholarship and knowledge itself. But it also shows that knowledge workers in the global South have room to move, setting agendas and forming local knowledge.
Katharine Adeney demonstrates that institutional design, rather than the role of religion, is the most important explanatory variable in understanding the different types and intensities of conflict in India and Pakistan. Deploying an innovative methodological approach, Adeney focuses on the rationale behind the creation and different designs of federal and consociational structures in the two countries. Deftly interweaving historical narrative with an analysis of the salient cleavages in both countries, Adeney examines the politics of institutional design and ethnic conflict regulation, as well as the extent to which previous constitutional choices explain current conflicts.
Edwin Ardener - a new expanded edition of the collected works of one of the most important social anthroplogists in Britian of his time. Ardener worked on social, economic, demographic and political problems, and was particularly influential in his sustained effort to bring together social anthropology and linguistics in a highly original attempt to reconcile scientific and humanistic approaches to the study of society. This volume offers a theoretically and conceptually coherent body of work by this innovative and profound thinker, which will continue to excite and stimulate new generations of students and researchers as it has in the past.
Geir Henning Presterudstuen provides an ethnographic account of howmen in the multicultural urban centres of Fiji perceive, construct andperform masculinities in the context of rapid social change. Theoreticallyinformed by critical feminist theories, postcolonialism, R.W. Connell's workon masculinities and a Bourdieuan conceptualization of the body, thisbook explores how notions of masculinity, manhood and the male bodyare shaped by the conflicting social forces of Fijian tradition, modernity,commercialization and urbanization.The book provides a timely intervention, from the grassroots level in theglobal south, into an ongoing discourse about men and masculinities thathas long been dominated by voices from Europe and the US. Combiningclassic ethnography with innovative social analysis, Presterudstuen'sbook is suitable for students and academics with an interest in genderand social change, and for scholars across a variety of disciplinesincluding anthropology, gender studies, sociology, pacific studies andinternational development.
Mitochondrial DNA is one of the most closely explored genetic systems, because it can tell us so much about the human past. This book takes a unique perspective, presenting the disparate strands that must be tied together to exploit this system. From molecular biology to anthropology, statistics to ancient DNA, this first volume of three presents a comprehensive global picture and a critical appraisal of human mitochondrial DNA variation. |
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