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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology > General
"Struggling with Development" is a study of the complex relationships among international development, hunger, and gender in the context of political violence in the Philippines. This ethnography demonstrates that gender-specific international development, which has among its main goals the alleviation of hunger in women and children and the raising of women's social position, has instead perpetuated the problems of hunger and gender inequality in societies.This ethnographic study of upland Ifugao social and cultural life in the Philippines portrays how Ifugao women's unequal relationship to men has been perpetuated by international development programs largely because development personnel tend to ignore ongoing processes of social inequality operating within local communities and between nations. International development programs leave local forms of inequality unchanged and sometimes increase social inequality despite their efforts to improve women's and children's social position and nutritional status. Examples and analyses of how local forms of inequality are ignored by international development programs are provided in the text. This book questions the international "women in development" thrust of some feminist and development scholarships and organizations.Lynn Kwiatkowski also demonstrates how health care has been used in a variety of ways by different groups to serve ends other than the reduction of hunger or illness, including religious healing and military and revolutionary healing generated during the internal political conflict in the Philippines. "Struggling with Development" will be useful for advanced courses in medical anthropology and sociology, gender studies, development studies, and Asian studies.
Recent flashpoints in Black-Jewish relations--Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March, the violence in Crown Heights, Leonard Jeffries' polemical speeches, the O.J. Simpson verdict, and the contentious responses to these events--suggest just how wide the gap has become in the fragile coalition that was formed during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Instead of critical dialogue and respectful exchange, we have witnessed battles that too often consist of vulgar name-calling and self-righteous finger-pointing. Absent from these exchanges are two vitally important and potentially healing elements: Comprehension of the actual history between Blacks and Jews, and level-headed discussion of the many issues that currently divide the two groups. In Struggles in the Promised Land, editors Jack Salzman and Cornel West bring together twenty-one illuminating essays that fill precisely this absence. As Salzman makes clear in his introduction, the purpose of this collection is not to offer quick fixes to the present crisis but to provide a clarifying historical framework from which lasting solutions may emerge. Where historical knowledge is lacking, rhetoric comes rushing in, and Salzman asserts that the true history of Black-Jewish relations remains largely untold. To communicate that history, the essays gathered here move from the common demonization of Blacks and Jews in the Middle Ages; to an accurate assessment of Jewish involvement of the slave trade; to the confluence of Black migration from the South and Jewish immigration from Europe into Northern cities between 1880 and 1935; to the meaningful alliance forged during the Civil Rights movement and the conflicts over Black Power and the struggle in the Middle East that effectively ended that alliance. The essays also provide reasoned discussion of such volatile issues as affirmative action, Zionism, Blacks and Jews in the American Left, educational relations between the two groups, and the real and perceived roles Hollywood has play in the current tensions. The book concludes with personal pieces by Patricia Williams, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Michael Walzer, and Cornel West, who argues that the need to promote Black-Jewish alliances is, above all, a "moral endeavor that exemplifies ways in which the most hated group in European history and the most hated group in U.S. history can coalesce in the name of precious democratic ideals." At a time when accusations come more readily than careful consideration, Struggles in the Promised Land offers a much-needed voice of reason and historical understanding. Distinguished by the caliber of its contributors, the inclusiveness of its focus, and the thoughtfulness of its writing, Salzman and West's book lays the groundwork for future discussions and will be essential reading for anyone interested in contmeporary American culture and race relations.
When evolutionary biology stretched out a tentacle called sociobiology and began to probe human behavior back in the 1970s, there was no room for neutrality. Advocates of the new science hailed the dawn of a new era in our understanding of human behavior, while opponents wrung their hands with concern over the new field's potential to transform and even destroy anthropology and other social and behavioral sciences. Twenty years later, little has changed. Anthropology and its sister disciplines are still intact and thriving, though they seldom make use of insights from evolutionary biology. Cultural anthropology in particular has recoiled from the biological threat by moving away from the sciences and toward the humanities. During that same time, a new generation of scholars in biological anthropology, psychology, and other fields has made great progress by using evolutionary theory to understand human behavior, applying it to everything from mating and parenting to the study of mental illness. The success of this research program is threatened, however, by its lack of a serious role for the concept of culture."That Complex Whole: Culture and the Evolution of Human Behavior" is an effort to develop a scientific study of human behavior that is at once evolutionary and cultural. In a lively, readable style, it deals with such serious, scholarly issues as how to best define culture, the question of whether culture is present in other species, human universals and human diversity, the relationship between culture and behavior, and cultural and moral relativism. It covers existing models of the relationship between cultural and biological evolution, including the concept of the meme and the new science of memetics, as well as the author's own work on the role of culture in human communications that draws upon the study of animal signals.
Drawing together a century of widely scattered scientific and technical reports, as well as 25 years of first-hand experience in the field, Scott Anfinson provides the first comprehensive overview of the people who inhabited the Prairie Lake Region of the northwestern Plains before the arrival of European explorers. Focusing on southwestern Minnesota, north-central Iowa, and south-eastern South Dakota, the author describes the dramatic environmental changes that occurred during the precontact millennia, and the impact on the human, animal, and plant cultures of the region once treated as the insignificant edge of the Great Plains and Eastern Woodlands. His synthesis reveals how the successions of peoples in this transition region selectively accepted -- and denied -- influences from the better-known cultures around them. Archaeologists and historians of Native Americans, as well as amateur and armchair archaeologists, will welcome this valuable addition to the region's geological, natural and cultural history.
Throughout the twentieth century, Spanish people have deployed
conflicting sexual moralities in their struggle for political
supremacy within the state. The Spanish Gypsies or Gitanos, who
live at the very bottom of the Spanish socio-economic scale, have
appropriated this concern with gender morality and, in the process,
have reinvented themselves as the only honourable Spaniards.
Although the Gitano gender ideology has a distinctively Spanish
flavour, it revolves around a conceptualization of the female body
that is radically different from that of other Spaniards.
This valuable study of 20th-century reservation life, first published in 1939, portrays 150 families on the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota in a period of loss of traditional ways. Sister M. Inez Hilger used a straightforward approach in her research and elicited a wealth of information. By concentrating on both the traditional Chippewa (Ojibway) ways as well as on the adaptations the families had made, Hilger was able to present a Chippewa world in transition. She placed her broad cultural analysis in the context of reservation housing. The many quotes from the people she interviewed bring a lively, personal expression to the story. This reprint edition contains a new introduction by Brenda J. Child, assistant professor of American studies at the University of Minnesota, and Kimberly M. Blaeser, professor of comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
A major critique of the globalization of the culture principle in
anthropology. This study contends that the subjective anthropology
promoted through postmodernism represents an extreme development of
long established, highly patronizing and misleading evaluations in
the anthropologist's creative role in the construction of theory.
Arguing that theory building is dependent on the actual study of
peoples - a study which is empirically based and historically
sensitive - the book advocates the "fieldwork mode of production
and reproduction." The simplest model for the construction of
empirically-grounded theory involves three interacting sets of
factors: the subjective ethnographer and their deployment of
current theoretical assumptions; the multi-layered ethnographic
"facts" disclosed by fieldwork; and the geopolitical and historical
contexts in which fieldwork is conducted.
Asian Indians figure prominently among the educated, middle class
subset of contemporary immigrants. They move quickly into
residences, jobs, and lifestyles that provide little opportunity
with fellow migrants, yet they continue to see themselves as a
distinctive community within contemporary American society. In Life
Lines Bacon chronicles the creation of a community--Indian-born
parents and their children living in the Chicago metropolitan
area--bound by neither geographic proximity, nor institutional
ties, and explores the processes through which ethnic identity is
transmitted to the next generation.
In Pacific societies, local knowledge, which has been accumulated over thousands of years and is irreplaceable, is rapidly disappearing. With the extinction of languages, the ability to observe and interpret the world from varying perspectives is also being lost. At the same time, an enormous body of knowledge about nature, plants and animals is vanishing. However, in parallel with this, the people of the Pacific are confronted with new modes of knowledge and newly introduced technologies through imported educational systems, missions of various denominations, and the media. They do not passively assimilate this knowledge but adopt, adapt, and apply it in a syncretistic way.These changes will have permanent effects on the individual lives of people in the region and their knowledge about themselves and their surrounding 'world'. This stimulating book tracks the course of these developments and offers revealing insights into the complexity of Pacific peoples' responses to the process of globalization.
In Pacific societies, local knowledge, which has been accumulated
over thousands of years and is irreplaceable, is rapidly
disappearing. With the extinction of languages, the ability to
observe and interpret the world from varying perspectives is also
being lost. At the same time, an enormous body of knowledge about
nature, plants and animals is vanishing.
In the revised and updated second edition of this comprehensive book, the first anthology to integrate social-psychological literature on prejudice with sociological and historical investigations, contributors introduce readers to the key debates and principal writings on racial and ethnic conflict, representing conservative, liberal, and radical positions. Presented in debate format, each section offers a provocative discussion of contemporary problems and issues, allowing students to take part in the controversies from an informed perspective. The editors' introductions provide current data and describe cutting-edge arguments that are reshaping the study of race and ethnicity today. The second edition boasts new readings which serve to further enhance the dialogue on America's continuing struggle with racial issues. Contributors tackle a wide array of issues which plague the country today--from discrimination and immigration to education and politics--and ask how we can affect change as we move into the twenty-first century.
"Interzones" is an innovative account of how the color line was drawn--and how it was crossed--in twentieth-century American cities. Kevin Mumford chronicles the role of vice districts in New York and Chicago as crucibles for the shaping of racial categories and racial inequalities. Focusing on Chicago's South Side and Levee districts, and Greenwich Village and Harlem in New York at the height of the Progressive era, Mumford traces the connections between the Great Migration, the commercialization of leisure, and the politics of reform and urban renewal. "Interzones" is the first book to examine in depth the combined effects on American culture of two major transformations: the migration north of southern blacks and the emergence of a new public consumer culture. Mumford writes an important chapter in Progressive-era history from the perspectives of its most marginalized and dispossessed citizens. Recreating the mixed-race underworlds of brothels and dance halls, and charting the history of a black-white sexual subculture, Mumford shows how fluid race relations were in these "interzones." From Jack Johnson and the "white slavery" scare of the 1910's to the growth of a vital gay subculture and the phenomenon of white slumming, he explores in provocative detail the connections between political reforms and public culture, racial prejudice and sexual taboo, the hardening of the color line and the geography of modern inner cities. The complicated links between race and sex, and reform and reaction, are vividly displayed in Mumford's look at a singular moment in the settling of American culture and society.
"Interzones" is an innovative account of how the color line was drawn--and how it was crossed--in twentieth-century American cities. Kevin Mumford chronicles the role of vice districts in New York and Chicago as crucibles for the shaping of racial categories and racial inequalities. Focusing on Chicago's South Side and Levee districts, and Greenwich Village and Harlem in New York at the height of the Progressive era, Mumford traces the connections between the Great Migration, the commercialization of leisure, and the politics of reform and urban renewal. "Interzones" is the first book to examine in depth the combined effects on American culture of two major transformations: the migration north of southern blacks and the emergence of a new public consumer culture. Mumford writes an important chapter in Progressive-era history from the perspectives of its most marginalized and dispossessed citizens. Recreating the mixed-race underworlds of brothels and dance halls, and charting the history of a black-white sexual subculture, Mumford shows how fluid race relations were in these "interzones." From Jack Johnson and the "white slavery" scare of the 1910's to the growth of a vital gay subculture and the phenomenon of white slumming, he explores in provocative detail the connections between political reforms and public culture, racial prejudice and sexual taboo, the hardening of the color line and the geography of modern inner cities. The complicated links between race and sex, and reform and reaction, are vividly displayed in Mumford's look at a singular moment in the settling of American culture and society.
This study of the 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dance movements among North American Indians offers an innovative theory about why these movements arose when they did. Emphasizing the demographic situation of American Indians prior to the movements, Professor Thornton argues that the Ghost Dances were deliberate efforts to accomplish a demographic revitalization of American Indians following their virtual collapse. By joining the movements, he contends, tribes sought to assure survival by increasing their numbers through returning the dead to life. Thornton supports this thesis empirically by closely examining the historical context of the two movements and by assessing tribal participation in them, revealing particularly how population size and decline influenced participation among and within American Indian tribes. He also considers American Indian population change after the Ghost Dance periods and shows that participation in the movements actually did lead the way to a demographic recovery for certain tribes. This occurred, Thornton argues, not, of course, by returning dead American Indians to life, but by creating enhanced tribal solidarity.
The late Edward Said remains one of the most influential critics and public intellectuals of our time, with lasting contributions to many disciplines. Much of his reputation derives from the phenomenal multidisciplinary influence of his 1978 book Orientalism. Said's seminal polemic analyzes novels, travelogues, and academic texts to argue that a dominant discourse of West over East has warped virtually all past European and American representation of the Near East. But despite the book's wide acclaim, no systematic critical survey of the rhetoric in Said's representation of Orientalism and the resulting impact on intellectual culture has appeared until today. Drawing on the extensive discussion of Said's work in more than 600 bibliographic entries, Daniel Martin Varisco has written an ambitious intellectual history of the debates that Said's work has sparked in several disciplines, highlighting in particular its reception among Arab and European scholars. While pointing out Said's tendency to essentialize and privilege certain texts at the expense of those that do not comfortably it his theoretical framework, Varisco analyzes the extensive commentary the book has engendered in Oriental studies, literary and cultural studies, feminist scholarship, history, political science, and anthropology. He employs "critical satire" to parody the exaggerated and pedantic aspects of post-colonial discourse, including Said's profound underappreciation of the role of irony and reform in many of the texts he cites. The end result is a companion volume to Orientalism and the vast research it inspired. Rather than contribute to dueling essentialisms, Varisco provides a path to move beyond the binary of East versus West and the polemics of blame. Reading Orientalism is the most comprehensive survey of Said's writing and thinking to date. It will be of strong interest to scholars of Middle East studies, anthropology, history, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, and literary studies.
This book examines the concept of adaptation in four major fields in the human sciences. Genetic aspects are first considered through an examination of the human genes which have so far been identified as conferring survival value in particular environmental circumstances. The drift versus selection argument is also fully reviewed. The second contribution concerns the physiological changes which occur when individuals move from one environment to another. In the past, most attention has been given to the mechanisms of these changes, but here the focus is on the effects. The third contribution is directed at the analysis of behaviour - especially social behaviour. The application of kin selection and reciprocal attraction theories to humans is explored and the value of these approaches explained, whether the behaviour has a genetic basis or not. The final essay deals with the relevance of the adaptation concept to the social sciences and especially to social anthropology. It demonstrates that an ecological approach to understanding the nature and structure of human societies demands attention to adaptation.Reprinted in paperback for the first time and with a new foreword, this book, which serves as an excellent teaching text, clearly shows how attempts at integration in each of these various fields can benefit the study of human evolution, social structure and organization from all perspectives.
An original anthology of essays illuminating the role of nativism in America's history Nativism-an intense opposition to immigrants and other non- native members of society-has been deeply imbedded in the American character from the earliest days of the nation. Correspondingly, nativism, overtly or covertly, has always permeated our national discourse. Dating from the Alien and Sedition controversy of 1798 to California's recent Proposition 187, nativism has long been a driving force in policy making, a particular irony in a country founded and populated by immigrants. This anthology of original essays is informed at its core by George Santayana's famous edict that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Examining the current surge in nativism in light of past waves of anti- immigrant sentiment, the volume takes an unflinchingly critical look at the realities and rhetoric of the new nativism. How can the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during World War II illuminate our understanding of the English Only movement today? How has the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty evolved since its dedication and what can it tell us about the American disposition to immigration? What is the new nativism? What are the semantic and rhetorical similarities, if any, between the most shrill nativist voices of the present, such as Pat Buchanan's or Peter Brimelow's in his widely publicized book Alien Nation, and National Socialist propaganda in 1930s Germany? Juan Perea has here assembled a truly interdisciplinary group of contributors to emphasize the changing relationship between citizens and immigrants, and the effects of economics, history, and demographics on that relationship. Immigrants Out! provides a needed antidote to the often poisonous attacks on America's most vulnerable.
In this book, based on intensive fieldwork in a major French provincial city (Lyon), Grillo shows how an anthropological perspective enhances our understanding of institutional processes and ideological forces in industrial society, presenting a detailed account of relations between the indigenous French population and immigrant workers and their families of non-French origin. The framework of the book is provided by two linked themes. First, the study shows how the situation of immigrants is represented ideologically by various elements of French society, as well as by the immigrants themselves, in different ways as 'problematic'. Dr Grillo examines this ideological dimension initially by contrasting the discourses of the political Right and Left concerning a range of immigrant 'problems', for example in the fields of housing, family life, school, language use and work. He then shows that not only are there significant ideological differences within both Right and Left, but also similarities between them which stem from certain basic cultural preoccupations of French thought.
In departing from the traditional stance taken by anthropologists,
who study 'others' ethnographically, this timely book explores
forms of self-inscription on the part of both the ethnographer and
those 'others' who are studied. Informed by developments in
postmodernism, postcolonialism, and feminism, this is an original
contribution to the growing dialogue across disciplinary
boundaries. The chapters build upon recent reconsiderations of the
uses and meaning of personal narrative to examine the ways in which
selves and social forms are culturally constituted through
biographical genres. Ethnic autobiography, self-reflexivity in
ethnography, and native ethnography raise provocative questions
about a range of issues for the contemporary scholar: authenticity
of voice; ethnographic authority; and the degree to which
autoethnography constitutes resistance to hegemonic bodies of
discourse. Examined here in a variety of cultural and political
contexts, writing about the self offers challenging insights into
the construction and transformation of identities and cultural
meanings.
In departing from the traditional stance taken by anthropologists, who study 'others' ethnographically, this timely book explores forms of self-inscription on the part of both the ethnographer and those 'others' who are studied. Informed by developments in postmodernism, postcolonialism, and feminism, this is an original contribution to the growing dialogue across disciplinary boundaries. The chapters build upon recent reconsiderations of the uses and meaning of personal narrative to examine the ways in which selves and social forms are culturally constituted through biographical genres. Ethnic autobiography, self-reflexivity in ethnography, and native ethnography raise provocative questions about a range of issues for the contemporary scholar: authenticity of voice; ethnographic authority; and the degree to which autoethnography constitutes resistance to hegemonic bodies of discourse. Examined here in a variety of cultural and political contexts, writing about the self offers challenging insights into the construction and transformation of identities and cultural meanings.
This volume contains 71 revised refereed papers, including seven invited surveys, presented during the Third European Conference on Artificial Life, ECAL '95, held in Granada, Spain in June 1995. Originally AL was concerned with applying biologically inspired solutions to technology and with examining computational expertise in order to reproduce and understand life processes. Despite its short history, AL now is becoming a mature scientific field. The volume reports the state of the art in this exciting area of research; there are sections on foundations and epistemology, origins of life and evolution, adaptive and cognitive systems, artificial worlds, robotics and emulation of animal behavior, societies and collective behavior, biocomputing, and applications and common tools.
This fascinating ethnography provides unique insights into the history, politics, ideology, and daily life of North Koreans living in Japan. Because Sonia Ryang was raised in this community, she was able to gain unprecedented access and to bring her personal knowledge to bear on this closed society. In addition to providing a valuable view of the experience of ethnic minorities in what is believed to be an implacably homogeneous culture, Ryang offers a rare and precious glimpse into North Korean culture and the transmission of tradition and ideology within it.Through Chongryun, its own umbrella organization, this community directs its commercial, political, social, and educational affairs, including running its own schools and teaching children about North Korea as their fatherland and Kim Il Sung and his son as their leaders. Despite the oppression and ethnic discrimination directed toward the North Korean community, Ryang depicts Koreans not as a persecuted population, but as ordinary residents whose lives are full of complexities. Although they are highly insulated within their community's boundaries, many--especially of the younger generation--are integrated into Japanese society. They are serious about commitments to North Korea yet dedicated to their lives in Japan. Examining these and other complexities, Ryang explores how, over three generations, individuals and the community reconcile such conflicts and cope with changing attitudes and approaches toward Japanese society and Korean culture.
Why does one society survive while others perish? When two cultures come into contact, how do exploitation, violence, and terror arise? Interested in the survival of various cultures in the face of encroaching white civilization, Peter Elsass has studied five separate groups in Venezuela and Colombia and documented their successes and failures as they struggle to remain independent. This book has broad implications for anyone working with minority populations.
In recent years the popular media have described Vietnamese Americans as the quintessential American immigrant success story, attributing their accomplishments to the values they learn in the traditional, stable, hierarchical confines of their family. Questioning the accuracy of such family portrayals, Nazli Kibria draws on in-depth interviews and participant observation with Vietnamese immigrants in Philadelphia to show how they construct their family lives in response to the social and economic challenges posed by migration and resettlement. To a surprising extent, the "traditional" family unit rarely exists, and its hierarchical organization has been greatly altered. |
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