Whether we realize it or not, we carry in our mouths the legacy of our evolution. Our teeth are like living fossils that can be studied and compared to those of our ancestors to teach us how we became human. In Evolution's Bite, noted paleoanthropologist Peter Ungar brings together for the first time cutting-edge advances in understanding human evolution with new approaches to uncovering dietary clues from fossil teeth. The result is a remarkable investigation into the ways that teeth-their shape, chemistry, and wear-reveal how we came to be. Traveling the four corners of the globe and combining scientific breakthroughs with vivid narrative, Evolution's Bite presents a unique dental perspective on our astonishing human development.

This pathbreaking book is the first to provide a rigorous and comprehensive examination of Internet culture and consumption. A rich ethnography of Internet use, the book offers a sustained account not just of being online, but of the social, political and cultural contexts which account for the contemporary Internet experience. From cybercafes to businesses, from middle class houses to squatters settlements, from the political economy of Internet provision to the development of ecommerce, the authors have gathered a wealth of material based on fieldwork in Trinidad. Looking at the full range of Internet media -- including websites, email and chat -- the book brings out unforeseen consequences and contradictions in areas as varied as personal relations, commerce, nationalism, sex and religion. This is the first book-length treatment of the impact of the Internet on a particular region. By focusing on one place, it demonstrates the potential for a comprehensive approach to new media. It points to the future direction of Internet research, proposing a detailed agenda for comparative ethnographic study of the cultural significance and effects of the Internet in modern society. Clearly written for the non-specialist reader, it offers a detailed account of the complex integration between on-line and off-line worlds. An innovative tie-in with the book's own website provides copious illustrations amounting to over 2,000 web-pages that bring the material right to your computer.

The chimpanzees are the closest living evolutionary relatives to our own species, Homo sapiens. As such, they have long exerted a fascination over those with an interest in human evolution, and human uniqueness. Chrisophe Boesch and Hedwige Boesch-Acherman undertook an incredible observational study of a group of wild chimpanzees in Cote D'Ivoire, spending some fifteen years in the West African forest with them. This fascinating book is the result of these years of painstaking research among the chimps. Chimpanzee behaviour is documented here in all its impressive diversity and variety, and placed within the broader context of research in behavioural ecology. The authors also succeed in shedding light on some of the central questions around the evolutionary relationships between the primates, and in particular the affinity between chimpanzees and humans.

Is TV news racist? If the purpose of local news is to cover individual communities and to present issues of interest and concern to local audiences, why are local newscasts so similar in markets around the country? These are the questions that motivated Heider's research, leading to the development of this book. Recognizing that local news is the outlet through which most people get their news, Heider ventured into the local television newsrooms in two moderate-size, culturally diverse U.S. markets to observe the news process. In this report, he uses his insider's perspective to examine why local television news coverage of people of color does not occur in more meaningful ways.
Heider examines the perceptions of racism and ethnicity, and addresses such dichotomies as "white" news (content determined by white managers) being delivered by non-white news anchors, thus giving the appearance of "non-white" news. He also considers how coverage of minorities influences viewers' perceptions of their minority neighbors. Heider then sets forth a new theoretical concept--incognizant racism--as a way of explaining how news workers consistently ignore news in significant portions of the communities they cover.
This contribution to the minorities and media discussion provides important insights into the newsroom decision-making process and the sociology and structure of newsrooms. It is required reading for all who are involved in news reporting, mass communication, media and minority studies, and cultural issues in today's society.

After the pioneers, the second generation of African American anthropologists trained in the late 1950s and 1960s. Expected to study their own or similar cultures, these scholars often focused on the African diaspora but in some cases they also ranged further afield both geographically and intellectually. Yet their work remains largely unknown to colleagues and students. This volume collects intellectual biographies of fifteen accomplished African American anthropologists of the era. The authors explore the scholars' diverse backgrounds and interests and look at their groundbreaking methodologies, ethnographies, and theories. They also place their subjects within their tumultuous times, when antiracism and anticolonialism transformed the field and the emergence of ideas around racial vindication brought forth new worldviews. Scholars profiled: George Clement Bond, Johnnetta B. Cole, James Lowell Gibbs Jr., Vera Mae Green, John Langston Gwaltney, Ira E. Harrison, Delmos Jones, Diane K. Lewis, Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, Oliver Osborne, Anselme Remy, William Alfred Shack, Audrey Smedley, Niara Sudarkasa, and Charles Preston Warren II

Humans have become much taller and heavier, and experience healthier and longer lives than ever before in human history. However it is only recently that historians, economists, human biologists and demographers have linked the changing size, shape and capability of the human body to economic and demographic change. This fascinating and groundbreaking book presents an accessible introduction to the field of anthropometric history, surveying the causes and consequences of changes in health and mortality, diet and the disease environment in Europe and the United States since 1700. It examines how we define and measure health and nutrition as well as key issues such as whether increased longevity contributes to greater productivity or, instead, imposes burdens on society through the higher costs of healthcare and pensions. The result is a major contribution to economic and social history with important implications for today's developing world and the health trends of the future.

The fact that bodies decay after death has concerned humans throughout the ages. Many cultures have attempted to arrest this decay, so that bodies are preserved (or mummified) in a state as near to life as possible, but spontaneously mummified bodies are also found. Mummies are being studied increasingly to answer questions about the health, social standing and beliefs of the population from whence they came, and the lessons that they have for modern populations. Originally published in 2003, this authoritative reference work explores why people mummify bodies and the mechanisms by which they are preserved, details study methods and surveys the myriad examples that can be found worldwide, evaluates the use and abuse of mummified bodies throughout the ages, and how mummified remains can be conserved for the future. Lavishly illustrated, The Scientific Study of Mummies will be of value to all those interested in paleopathology, archaeology and anthropology.

An examination of Italian immigrants and their children in the early twentieth century, A New Language, A New World is the first full-length historical case study of one immigrant group's experience with language in America. Incorporating the interdisciplinary literature on language within a historical framework, Nancy C. Carnevale illustrates the complexity of the topic of language in American immigrant life. By looking at language from the perspectives of both immigrants and the dominant culture as well as their interaction, this book reveals the role of language in the formation of ethnic identity and the often coercive context within which immigrants must negotiate this process.

Presents 16 case studies of ethnic conflict in the post-Soviet world. The book places ethnic conflict in the context of imperial collapse, democratisation and state building.

Masculine domination is so deeply ingrained in our unconscious that we hardly perceive all of its dimensions. It is so much in line with our expectations that we struggle to call it fully into question. Pierre Bourdieu's ethnographic analysis of gender divisions in Kabyle society, as a living reservoir of the Mediterranean cultural tradition, provides a potent instrument for disclosing the symbolic structures of the androcentric unconscious which survives in the men and women of our own societies.

Bourdieu analyses masculine domination as a paradigmatic form of symbolic violence - the kind of gentle, invisible, pervasive violence which is exercised through cognition and misrecognition, knowledge and sentiment, often with the unwitting consent of the dominated. To understand this form of domination we must analyse both its invariant features and the historical work of dehistoricization through which social institutions - family, school, church, state - eternalize the arbitrary at the root of men's power. This analysis leads directly to the political question: can we neutralize the mechanisms through which history is continuously turned into nature, thereby freeing the forces of change and accelerating the incipient transformations of the relations between the sexes?

This new book by Pierre Bourdieu - which has been a bestseller in France - will be essential reading for students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities and for anyone concerned with questions of gender, sexuality and power.

Studies of the customs and beliefs of barbarian peoples who migrated westwards and settled in Western Europe from the close of the Roman empire to the ninth century. The decline of the Roman Empire was compounded by the spread westwards of tribes from Eastern Europe, settling areas from which the indigenous populations had been cleared by the spread of the power of Rome; those populations themselves, notably the Celts, were pushed to the fringes of the former empire. These migrations of barbarian peoples between the fourth and ninth centuries left no historical record in the accepted sense, but it is the recovery of the customs and beliefs of these populations that forms the common purpose of the studies in this book, for during these centuries the traits and attitudes developed which are at the root of present-day Europe: feudalism, the statuslevel achieved by the merchant class, the beginnings of an ideology that led to the separation of church and state, the demise of slavery as an inefficient mode of production, the origin of national identities. The late GIORGIO AUSENDA taught at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Social Stress, San Marino. Contributors: GIORGIO AUSENDA, JULIAN D. RICHARDS, JOHN HINES, DAVID TURTON, ROSS BALZARETTI, DENNIS H. GREEN, SVEN SCHUETTE, DAVID N. DUMVILLE, MORTEM AXBOE, IAN N. WOOD

Critical Ethnography in Educational Research provides both a technical, theoretical guide to advanced ethnography - focusing on such concepts as primary data collection and system relationships - and a very practical guide for researchers interested in conducting actual studies.
Carspecken's work illustrates new developments in critical social theory and applies them to ethnographic analysis in a way which is accessible to all.

First published in 1999, this book gives an inventory of factors contributing to ethnic prejudice in seven countries and the role of formal education among them on the basis of national surveys. It appears that education is crucial in all the countries surveyed and contributes to more tolerant views of ethnic and national minorities in Western European countries, Poland and the United States. The positive effects of education, however, do not always counter the negative effects of personality characteristics and conservative values on ethnic prejudice. Moreover, the negative effects of less formal education may be reinforced by perceived economical competition of ethnic minorities and thereby further bolster prejudiced views of the less educated. This indicates that formal education alone is not sufficient to change prejudiced views. Other forms of socialization transmitting values leading to open-mindedness and the ability to secure one's economic position have to support the positive effects of formal education as well.

Recruited to be a lecturer on a group tour of Indonesia, Edward M. Bruner decided to make the tourists aware of tourism itself. He photographed tourists photographing Indonesians, asking the group how they felt having their pictures taken without their permission. After a dance performance, Bruner explained to the group that the exhibition was not traditional, but instead had been set up specifically for tourists. His efforts to induce reflexivity led to conflict with the tour company, which wanted the displays to be viewed as replicas of culture and to remain unexamined. Although Bruner was eventually fired, the experience became part of a sustained exploration of tourist performances, narratives, and practices.
Synthesizing more than twenty years of research in cultural tourism, "Culture on Tour" analyzes a remarkable variety of tourist productions, ranging from safari excursions in Kenya and dance dramas in Bali to an Abraham Lincoln heritage site in Illinois. Bruner examines each site in all its particularity, taking account of global and local factors, as well as the multiple perspectives of the various actors--the tourists, the producers, the locals, and even the anthropologist himself. The collection will be essential to those in the field as well as to readers interested in globalization and travel.

Shelter Blues Sanity and Selfhood Among the Homeless Robert R. Desjarlais Winner of the 1999 Victor Turner Prize of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology "Beautifully crafted, powerfully illustrated with conversation, theoretically important, and almost unique as an ethnography."--Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University Desjarlais shows us not anonymous faces of the homeless but real people. While it is estimated that 25 percent or more of America's homeless are mentally ill, their lives are largely unknown to us. What must life be like for those who, in addition to living on the street, hear voices, suffer paranoid delusions, or have trouble thinking clearly or talking to others. "Shelter Blues" is an innovative portrait of people residing in Boston's Station Street Shelter. It examines the everyday lives of more than 40 homeless men and women, both white and African-American, ranging in age from early 20s to mid-60s. Based on a sixteen-month study, it draws readers into the personal worlds of these individuals and, by addressing the intimacies of homelessness, illness, and abjection, picks up where most scholarship and journalism stops. Robert Desjarlais works against the grain of media representations of homelessness by showing us not anonymous stereotypes but individuals. He draws on conversations as well as observations, talking with and listening to shelter residents to understand how they relate to their environment, to one another, and to those entrusted with their care. His book considers their lives in terms of a complex range of forces and helps us comprehend the linkages between culture, illness, personhood, and political agency on the margins of contemporary American society. "Shelter Blues" is unlike anything else ever written about homelessness. It challenges social scientists and mental health professionals to rethink their approaches to human subjectivity and helps us all to better understand one of the most pressing problems of our time. Robert Desjarlais teaches anthropology at Sarah Lawrence College and is the author of "Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas," also published by Penn. Contemporary Ethnography 1997 320 pages 6 x 9 7 illus ISBN 978-0-8122-1622-6 Paper $27.50s 18.00 World Rights Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology Short copy: "Beautifully crafted, powerfully illustrated with conversation, theoretically important, and almost unique as an ethnography."--Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University

Lavishly illustrated with historical photographs, maps, and architectural drawings, "To Build in a New Land" includes chapters on Ukrainian pioneer landscapes in western Canada, Cajun farmsteads in Louisiana, Czech settlements in South Dakota, Danish homes in Iowa and Minnesota, vernacular architecture of the German-Russian Mennonites of southeastern Manitoba, Afro-American housing in the southeastern United States, and the regional variations of Irish, English, and Scottish construction in Ontario.

What hopes are there for racial integration? What expectations may we reasonably have of ethnic minority groups? What hopes can ethnic minority groups nurture in their relations with society at large? In addressing these and many other questions, the author examines the theoretical perspectives, both sociological and psychological, of ethnic minority identity and reviews the empirical work done on ethnicity. She considers what constitutes an ethnic group, goes on to investigate the sociology of ethnicity from assimilationism to cultural pluralism, and discusses the psychological theories of ethnic minority identity. She then examines research issues in ethnicity, covering areas such as styles of cultural adaptation, strategies of self-categorization, and levels of self-esteem among members of ethnic minority groups. In conclusion, she examines the implications of these findings in relation to the integration of ethnic minority groups in Britain.

Dr Schildkrout probes questions of ethnicity, religion, cultural change and the African national identity in this study of the immigrant community of Kumasi, Ghana's second largest city. She compares first- and second-generation immigrants - those born in their rural homelands, and those born in Ghana - in terms of their orientation to politics, to kinship, and to community participation. The author explores the meaning of ethnic identity for rural- and urban-born immigrants, and establishes certain generalizations about ethnicity based on these comparisons. The book discusses the issues of migration, particularly interregional migration; the position of the 'stranger'; questions of cultural change in modern Africa; the 'generational gap' in the African context; the questions of citizenship and national identity in Africa today, and the emergence of new identities, regional, national and religious. This book has importance not only as a local case study that gives a full description of West African urban life, but also as a theoretical reconsideration of ethnicity that has application outside the African context.

In this study, Peter Fry describes and analyses spirit-mediumship amongst a community of Zezuru people living near Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). He examines the belief system which underpins spirit-mediumship and the basis of the mediums' authority. He pays special attention to the way in which religious beliefs are used politically in specific social situations ranging from village disputes to issues of national importance. Instead of portraying the spirits and their mediums as a fixed and stable hierarchy, Peter Fry stresses the dynamics of a religious system which changes over time in relation to changing external factors and to the ability of individual competing mediums to build up followings by responding to and moulding consensus. The book makes comparisons between the religious systems of the Zezuru and the Valley Korekore, both subgroups of Shona-speaking peoples, and concludes by discussing the role of Zezuru mediums in the context of the confrontation between black and white nationalisms. The spirit-mediums, opposed structurally to the white mission churches, are seen as vehicles of black cultural nationalism in the area.

The Majangir live on the thickly forested slopes of the south-western edge of the Ethiopian plateau, between the Anuak of the plains and the Galla of the highlands. Their way of life is markedly different from that of their neighbours, and is well adapted to their habitat. They are agriculturalists and the structure of their society is loose and simple. They have no political leaders, the only individuals of any authority being ritual leaders whose influence is restricted. Domestic groups tend to farm plots adjacent to those of friends or kin, but the settlements remain small and constantly change in composition (as well as in location). In addition to farming, in which the men and women share the work, the men make occasional hunting and fishing trips, as well as spending quite a considerable amount of time tending and making bee hives. Dr Stauder examines the various social and spatial groupings of Majang society and demonstrates the intimate ecological relationship between these groupings and the system of slash and burn cultivation practised by the Majangir.

The growth of ???new genetics??? has dramatically increased our understanding of health, diseases and the body. Anthropologists argue that these scientific advances have had far-reaching social and cultural implications, radically changing our self-understanding and perception of what it means to be human; that we have become ???biomedicalized???, fragmented and commodified - redefining our notions of citizenship, social relations, family and identity. This book shows how anthropology can contribute to and challenge the ways we have come to understand genetic issues. Exploring a range of issues and case studies in genetic research, it provides an ethnographic ???reality-check???, arguing that we must look beyond the ???gene-centrism??? of genetic codes, family trees and insular populations, to explore their wider cultural, ethical and philosophical implications. Including coverage of the controversial and widely discussed Icelandic Health Sector Database, this accessible survey will be welcomed by graduate students and researchers in social anthropology, human genetics and biotechnology.

This methods book will guide the reader through the process of conducting and producing an autoethnographic study through the understanding of self, other, and culture. Readers will be encouraged to follow hands-on, though not prescriptive, steps in data collection, analysis, and interpretation with self-reflective prewriting exercises and self-narrative writing exercises to produce their own autoethnographic work. Chang offers a variety of techniques for gathering data on the self-from diaries to culture grams to interviews with others-and shows how to transform this information into a study that looks for the connection with others present in a diverse world. She shows how the autoethnographic process promotes self-reflection, understanding of multicultural others, qualitative inquiry, and narrative writing. Samples of published autoethnographies provide exemplars for the novice researcher to follow.

In his provocative ethnohistory, Christopher Miller offers an innovative reinterpretation of relations between Native Americans and Christian settlers on the Columbia Plateau. Miller draws on a wealth of ethnographic resources to show how culturally-derived perceptions and systems of rationality played more of a determining role in the interactions between these two groups than did material forces. Initially, Plateau Indians and the American missionaries who came to convert them perceived each other as crucial to the fulfillment of their own millennial destiny. When these views were contravened, relations quickly and fatally soured. In explaining this devolution, Prophetic Worlds provides a novel and insightful rendering of the cultural understandings that underwrote the mid-nineteenth-century transformation of life on the Plateau.

Political anthropology has long been among the most vibrant subdisciplines within anthropology, and work done in this area has been instrumental in exploring some of the most significant issues of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including (post)colonialism, development and underdevelopment, identity politics, nationalism/transnationalism, and political violence. In"The Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory, and Critique "readers will find a remarkable collection of classic and contemporary articles on the subject.

Following on from her landmark book on politics and anthropology, in this volume Joan Vincent provides a sweeping historical and theoretical introduction to the field. Selected readings from figures such as E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Edmund Leach, Victor Turner, Eric Wolf, Benedict Anderson, Talal Asad, Michael Taussig, Jean and John Comaroff, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak are enriched by Vincent's headnotes and suggestions for further reading. "The Anthropology of Politics "will prove an indispensable resource for students, scholars, and instructors alike.

In The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram, medical anthropologist Janelle S. Taylor analyzes the full sociocultural context of ultrasound technology and imagery. Drawing upon ethnographic research both within and beyond the medical setting, Taylor shows how ultrasound has entered into public consumer culture in the United States. The book documents and critically analyzes societal uses for ultrasound such as nondiagnostic ""keepsake"" ultrasound businesses that foster a new consumer market for these blurry, monochromatic images of eagerly awaited babies, and anti-abortion clinics that use ultrasound in an attempt to make women bond with the fetuses they carry, inciting a pro-life state of mind. This book offers much-needed critical awareness of the less easily recognized ways in which ultrasound technology is profoundly social and political in the United States today.