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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > General
This study explores Hollywood's invention of Britain through the adaptation of its literature. Utilizing Derrida's Margins of Philosophy , texts by Gilles Deleuze and his work with Felix Guattari, this text identifies the future of British and Anglophone literary and cultural studies as a group of citations appropriated for American ends.
Biologists and anthropologists in Japan have played a crucial role in the development of primatology as a scientific discipline. Publication of Primate Origins of Human Cognition and Behavior under the editorship of Tetsuro Matsuzawa reaffirms the pervasive and creative role played by the intellectual descendants of Kinji Imanishi and Junichiro Itani in the fields of behavioral ecology, psychology, and cognitive science. Matsuzawa and his colleagues-humans and other primate partners- explore a broad range of issues including the phylogeny of perception and cognition; the origin of human speech; learning and memory; recognition of self, others, and species; society and social interaction; and culture. With data from field and laboratory studies of more than 90 primate species and of more than 50 years of long-term research, the intellectual breadth represented in this volume makes it a major contribution to comparative cognitive science and to current views on the origin of the mind and behavior of humans.
Historical studies of white racial thought focus exclusively on white ideas about the "Negroes". Bay's study is the first to examine the reverse -- black ideas about whites, and, consequently, black understandings of race and racial categories. Bay examines African-American ideas about white racial character and destiny in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In examining black racial thought, this work also explores the extent to which black Americans accepted or rejected 19th century notions about innate racial characteristics.
One of the major themes of human population genetics is assaying genetic variation in human populations. The ultimate goal of this objective is to understand the extent of genetic diversity and the use of this knowledge to reconstruct our evolutionary history. The discipline had undergone a revolutionary transition with the advent of molecular techniques in the 1980s. With this shift, statistical methods have also been developed to perceive the biological and molecular basis of human genetic variation. Using the new perspectives gained during the above transition, this volume describes the applications of molecular markers spanning the autosomal, Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial genome in the analysis of human diversity in contemporary populations. This is the first reference book of its kind to bring together data from these diverse sets of markers for understanding evolutionary histories and relationships of modern humans in a single volume.
"Ambiguous Memory" examines the role of memory in the building of a new national identity in reunified Germany. The author maintains that the contentious debates surrounding contemporary monumnets to the Nazi past testify to the ambiguity of German memory and the continued link of Nazism with contemporary German national identity. The book discusses how certain monuments, and the ways Germans have viewed them, contribute to the different ways Germans have dealt with the past, and how they continue to deal with it as one country. Kattago concludes that West Germans have internalized their Nazi past as a normative orientation for the democratic culture of West Germany, while East Germans have universalized Nazism and the Holocaust, transforming it into an abstraction in which the Jewish question is down played. In order to form a new collective memory, the author argues that unified Germany must contend with these conflicting views of the past, incorporating certain aspects of both views. Providing a topography of East, West, and unified German memory during the 1980s and the 1990s, this work contributes to a better understanding of contemporary national identity and society. The author shows how public debate over such issues at Ronald Reagan's visit to Bitburg, the renarration of Buchenwald as Nazi and Soviet internment camp, the Goldhagen controversy, and the Holocaust Memorial debate in Berlin contribute to the complexities surrounding the way Germans see themselves, their relationship to the past, and their future identity as a nation. In a careful analysis, the author shows how the past was used and abused by both the East and the West in the 1980s, and how these approaches merged in the 1990s. This interesting new work takes a sociological approach to the role of memory in forging a new, integrative national identity.
This book concerns the Beijing Hutong and changing perceptions of space, of social relations and of self, as processes of urban redevelopment remove Hutong dwellers from their traditional homes to new high-rise apartments. It addresses questions of how space is humanly built and transformed, classified and differentiated, and most importantly how space is perceived and experienced. This study elaborates and expands Lefebvre's "trialectic" of space on a theoretical level. The ethnography presented is a conversation with Tim Ingold's argument about "empty space". This research employs the ethnographic technique of participant-observation to secure a finely textured, detailed and micro-social account of local experience. Then, these micro-social insights are contextualized within macro-social structures of Chinese modernism by speaking to geographical concerns, orientalism and history.
This book examines how Western behavioral science--which has generally focused on negative aspects of human nature--holds up to cross-cultural scrutiny, in particular the Tibetan Buddhist celebration of the human potential for altruism, empathy, and compassion. Resulting from a meeting between the Dalai Lama, leading Western scholars, and a group of Tibetan monks, this volume includes excerpts from these extraordinary dialogues as well as engaging essays exploring points of difference and overlap between the two perspectives.
This book is about what science frequently dodges or even denies:
subjective life as experienced by animals as well as humans. Mixing
what is known from science with some novel ideas, science writer
William Libaw provides a provocative and stimulating thesis on the
origins and evolution of consciousness.
Contemporary anthropology is done in a world where social and digital media are playing an increasingly significant role, where anthropological and arts practices are often intertwined in museum and public intervention contexts, and where anthropologists are encouraged to engage with mass media. Because anthropologists are often expected and inspired to ensure their work engages with public issues, these opportunities to disseminate work in new ways and to new publics simultaneously create challenges as anthropologists move their practice into unfamiliar collaborative domains and expose their research to new forms of scrutiny. In this volume, contributors question whether a fresh public anthropology is emerging through these new practices.
Entries in this dictionary focus on the people, organizations, events, and ideas that have been significant in the slightly more than two centuries of political communication in this country. The intent is to highlight those events and ideas that still have significance today--thus from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the threshold of the 21st century. The history of political communication and how that history has repeated itself is examined in this volume. Entries arranged from A to Z, deal with freedom of the press and the major threats to freedom of the press; successful and unsuccessful political campaigns, and the changes that have occurred in political communication as well as the tradition that has emerged in the slightly more than two centuries we have been engaged in it. By offering the reader insight into the evolution of political communication as an academic field, this reference will be useful to students and scholars in the disciplines of political science, political communication, mass communication, U.S. history, and related fields, as well as academic and selected public libraries.
An examination of Latin America's rocky development as a cultural, rather than colonial byproduct. In a new introduction Harrison explores the political and economic shifts that have occurred over the past 15 years.
Combining rich personal accounts from twelve veteran anthropologists with reflexive analyses of the state of anthropology today, this book is a treatise on theory and method offering fresh insights into the production of anthropological knowledge, from the creation of key concepts to major paradigm shifts. Particular focus is given to how 'peripheral perspectives' can help re-shape the discipline and the ways that anthropologists think about contemporary culture and society. From urban Maori communities in Aotearoa/New Zealand to the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, from Arnhem Land in Australia to the villages of Yorkshire, these accounts take us to the heart of the anthropological endeavour, decentring mainstream perspectives, and revealing the intimate relationships and processes that create anthropological knowledge.
For displaced persons, memory and identity is performed, (re)constructed and (re)negotiated daily. Forced displacement radically reshapes identity, with results ranging from successful hybridization to feelings of permanent misplacement. This compelling and intimate description of places of pain and (be)longing that were lost during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as of survivors' places of resettlement in Australia, Europe and North America, serves as a powerful illustration of the complex interplay between place, memory and identity. It is even more the case when those places have been vandalized, divided up, brutalized and scarred. However, as the author shows, these places of humiliation and suffering are also places of desire, with displaced survivors emulating their former homes in the far corners of the globe where they have resettled.
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.
The primordial bonds of early societies-common ancestry or tribal bonds and territorial or neighborhood bonds-are at the root of early political organization. States based on common tribal or ethnic identity have tended to develop into highly nationalistic states. The civic state, based upon territory, appeared in embryonic form in Athens. It was Rome, however, that made the complete transition, creating a civic state based on an association of free citizens, irrespective of ethnicity. The tribal state in its extreme, often totalitarian, form has led to genocide, holocausts, and ethnic cleansing. The civic or territorial state has developed into modern pluralistic, multiethnic, democratic states with equal rights for diverse groups. This was accomplished by a historical process of separation of ethnicity from citizenship. As Feliks Gross shows, there are many types of civic and tribal states: they do not fit into a single model, but they can be grouped into related families. This important survey of political and social development will be of great interest to students and scholars of political sociology, ethnic studies, and political history.
By opening the ever-escalating debate regarding Latin America's 'underdeveloped' status and cloaking the seriousness of the situation with wit and humor, the Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot reached number one status on the nonfiction bestseller lists in many countries in Latin America. It reveals the connection between economic success and cultural values--attitudes toward work, education, health care and community--and the consequence of the Latin American people retaining or evolving these values.
The charismatic movement has a high profile in contemporary Christianity. The book's contributors include insiders and outsiders, charismatics and sociologists; with Britain as their focus, they trace the movement's international connections, historical development and variety. The book provides a wealth of information and analysis which will interest both those within the movement and students of religion wanting to know more about it.
Volume three concerns political action on the margins of conventional political participation in a democracy: extremist, protest, and social movements. This theme covers a huge spectrum, ranging from pro-democracy movements in authoritarian regimes to anti-democratic extremist. The volume is organised in four sections: first, a theoretical paper linking the social movements literature to the literature on democratization; second, a series of comparative studies; third, essays on the United States and western Europe; and finally, a set of studies of successful or failed democratic transition in Yugoslavia, South Africa and the Philippines. The first section presents an ambitious synthesis of social movement theories with the 'political interactionist' theories of democratization associated with Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, Adam Przeworski and others. The second section contains comparative studies, examining whether recent right-wing extremist voting in western Europe represents a real shift to the right. Two dimensions of nationalism in eastern Europe are examined and another chapter looks at two contextual factors affecting political protest in western democracies: mobilization by collective organizations and national political and socioeconomic conditions. Finally Karl-Dieter Opp examines the prospective role of political protest in the European unification process. Four papers pursue the analysis of contemporary far right in France, Germany and Austria. What are the characteristics of French National Front voters? Focus is also placed on right-wing violence in unified Germany and racism and anti-semitism in Austria. Two potential threats to democracy are studied: Basque terrorism and nazism in interwar Germany. Finally in this, there is an examination of the rise to power of the Nazy Party in Germany.
This collection of Native American histories written by anthropologists, native peoples, ethnobotanists, and art historians covers the time period from the late prehistoric to the present. Wampanoag, Pequot, Mohegan, Narragansett, Schaghticoke, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy peoples are chronicled by recognized scholars who have chosen to focus on pertinent issues related to each tribe, such as European contact and trade, native foods, charismatic leaders, native politics and survival strategies, communities, and arts and symbolism. Introduced and edited by Laurie Weinstein, the author of the renowned 1989 volume on the Wampanoag, this work fills a large gap in the literature by and about native Northeastern peoples of America.
In recent years ever-increasing concerns about ethical dimensions of fieldwork practice have forced anthropologists and other social scientists to radically reconsider the nature, process, and outcomes of fieldwork: what should we be doing, how, for whom, and to what end? In this volume, practitioners from across anthropological disciplines-social and biological anthropology and primatology-come together to question and compare the ethical regulation of fieldwork, what is common to their practices, and what is distinctive to each discipline. Contributors probe a rich variety of contemporary questions: the new, unique problems raised by conducting fieldwork online and via email; the potential dangers of primatological fieldwork for locals, primates, the environment, and the fieldworkers themselves; the problems of studying the military; and the role of ethical clearance for anthropologists involved in international health programs. The distinctive aim of this book is to develop of a transdisciplinary anthropology at the methodological, not theoretical, level.
Routledge is delighted to be re-issuing 79 volumes originally published between 1931 and 1988 in association with the International African Institute. Unavailable outside a few key libraries, many of these republished volumes were at the cutting edge of a fieldwork and ethnographic revolution in African anthropology in the decades after 1930. It involved the production of a wide body of fieldwork-based ethnographic documentation about the cultures of the different societies in Africa. Secondly, it saw a methodological turn to intense, localized investigations of cultural tradition and social change in a rapidly modernizing context. These investigations involved a more sustained and systematic, more professional and 'scientific' form of immersion and participant observation, than anything that had gone before. The sites of engagement were urban as well as rural; the pioneering researchers were female as well as male. No longer was the journal essay the repository of the latest research in the discipline, but rich ethnographies running into hundreds of pages. The volumes are supplemented with maps, which will be available to view on https://www.routledge.com/ or available as pdfs from the publishers.
South Africa's peaceful transition to democracy has gained it world recognition. This book gives a frank report on contemporary South African society and the challenges which the new nation faces. Sixteen social scientists, experts in fields as wide-ranging as economics, politics, and development planning, have compiled a social report on South Africa two years into democracy. The volume covers critical concerns which impact on the well-being of the average South African. The dozen chapters in the book present facts and figures as well as in-depth commentary on social issues which South Africa must address. The authors discuss the legacies of the past, including poverty and social inequality; problems of transition ranging from trauma to crime; and the hopes for the future which lie in economic growth and development, a deeper understanding of democracy, and a healthy dose of optimism. The book draws on information from a wide variety of sources including government statistics, independent social surveys, community research, and opinion polls. This rich data weaves a tapestry of the quality of life in South Africa for Africa watchers and the general public.
This investigation of time and space is motivated by gaps in our current understanding: by the lack of definitions, by our failure to appreciate the nature of these entities, by our inability to pin down their properties. The author's approach is based on two key ideas: The first idea is to seek the geo-historical origins of time and space concepts. A thorough investigation of a diversified archaeological corpus, allows him to draft coherent definitions; it furthermore gives clues as to whether time and space were discovered or invented. The second idea is to define the units before trying to define space and time. The results presented here are unexpected: Time and space were not discovered in nature, but they were invented; time is not a phenomenon and space has no materiality; they are only concepts. This runs contrary to the opinion of most scientific and the philosophical authorities, although one would seek in vain for a theoretical validation of the conventional position. This book will provide much food for thought for philosophers and scientists, as well as interested general readers. |
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