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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology > General
In Tracing Autism, Des Fitzgerald offers an up-close account of the search for a neurological explanation of autism. As autism has gained cultural prominence with more diagnoses and more controversy, its biological causes remain elusive. Through in-depth interviews with neuroscientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, Fitzgerald examines what it means to do scientific research in the ambiguous terrain of autism research, a field marked by shifting horizons of uncertainty and ambivalence. He draws out how autism scientists talk and feel their way through their research, demonstrating its profoundly affective character, and expanding our understanding of what is at stake in the new brain sciences.
Chris Stringer's bestselling The Origin of our Species tackles the big questions in the ongoing debate about the beginnings of human life on earth. Do all humans originate from Africa? How did we spread across the globe? Are we separate from Neanderthals, or do some of us actually have their genes? When did humans become 'modern' - are traits such as art, technology, language, ritual and belief unique to us? Has human evolution stopped, or are we still evolving? Chris Stringer has been involved in much of the crucial research into the origins of humanity, and here he draws on a wealth of evidence - from fossils and archaeology to Charles Darwin's theories and the mysteries of ancient DNA - to reveal the definitive story of where we came from, how we lived, how we got here and who we are. 'A new way of defining us and our place in history' Sunday Times 'When it comes to human evolution Chris Stringer is as close to the horse's mouth as it gets ... The Origin of Our Species should be the one-stop source on the subject. Read it now' BBC Focus 'Britain's foremost expert on human evolution ... you need a primer to make sense of the story so far. Here is that book' Guardian 'Combines anecdote and speculation with crisp explanation of the latest science in the study of the first humans ... an engaging read' New Scientist Chris Stringer is Britain's foremost expert on human origins and works in the Department of Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum. He also currently directs the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project, aimed at reconstructing the first detailed history of how and when Britain was occupied by early humans. His previous books include African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity, The Complete World of Human Evolution and most recently, Homo Britannicus, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book of the Year in 2007.
Biological anthropology is a diverse field, with countless research methods and techniques in different sub-disciplines. This book takes a critical perspective to the current state of the field, exploring theory and practice in paleoanthropology, bioarchaeology, and ecology. Contributors challenge how evidence is discovered, collected and interpreted, and explain that researchers gain insights by de-familiarizing themselves from well-known methods and taking a different perspective - 'making the familiar strange'. The book covers how researchers' biases and assumptions affect the interpretation of topics such as human evolution and population movements; race, health, and disability; bodies and embodiment; and landscapes and ecology. A final chapter includes a critical assessment of new thinking about technology, in addition to the multilayered and complex nature of both research questions and evidence. This is an insightful text for researchers and graduate students in anthropology, biology, ecology, history and philosophy of science.
The intellectual history of race, one of the most pernicious and enduring ideas in American history, has remained segregated into studies of black or white traditions. Bruce Dain breaks this separatist pattern with an integrated account of the emergence of modern racial consciousness in the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War. "A Hideous Monster of the Mind" reveals that ideas on race crossed racial boundaries in a process that produced not only well-known theories of biological racism but also countertheories that were early expressions of cultural relativism, cultural pluralism, and latter-day Afrocentrism. From 1800 to 1830 in particular, race took on a new reality as Americans, black and white, reacted to postrevolutionary disillusionment, the events of the Haitian Revolution, the rise of cotton culture, and the entrenchment of slavery. Dain examines not only major white figures like Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Stanhope Smith, but also the first self-consciously "black" African-American writers. These various thinkers transformed late-eighteenth-century European environmentalist "natural history" into race theories that combined culture and biology and set the terms for later controversies over slavery and abolition. In those debates, the ethnology of Samuel George Morton and Josiah Nott intertwined conceptually with important writing by black authors who have been largely forgotten, like Hosea Easton and James McCune Smith. Scientific racism and the idea of races as cultural constructions were thus interrelated aspects of the same effort to explain human differences. In retrieving neglected African-American thinkers, reestablishing the European intellectual background to American racial theory, and demonstrating the deep confusion "race" caused for thinkers black and white, "A Hideous Monster of the Mind" offers an engaging and enlightening new perspective on modern American racial thought.
"Nicole Constable has produced a splendid sequel to her much-praised "Maid to Order in Hong Kong. Constable's sensitive ethnography and her international scope insures that we see every Filipino and Chinese woman as a thinking, feeling person, and every American man who is her pen pal and sometimes future husband as far more than a mere cartoon character. "Romance on a Global Stage wonderfully complicates the genderings and globalizings of power and emotions."--Cynthia Enloe, author of "Bananas, Beaches and Bases "The rise of feminism in North America has been paralleled by a growth in marriages between Western men and women from the global periphery. Constable's fascinating study explores the multiple desires at work, revealing the anti-feminist reason and feminist surprises in these global romances."--Aihwa Ong, author of "Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America "Constable adds a new map to the cartographies of desire in this nuanced and fresh account of 'mail-order marriage.' Her original work carefully attends to emotion, sex, and political economy, offering a complex account of gender, marriage, and globalization."--Carole S. Vance, author of "Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality "This innovative and compassionate work maps new formations of desire in the context of globalization. Constable breaks through the stereotypes about transnational pen-pal marriages to enable us to see, in an ethnographically detailed way, how agency and desire are shaped by uneven economic development and how cyber-technologies figure in the production of new global imaginaries."--Ann Anagnost, author of "National Past-times: Narrative, Representation, and Power inModern China "Constable is a talented and perceptive anthropologist who has mastered the use of the web both as a research tool and a topic of research. Her sensible and timely examination of transnational marriages of American men with women from the Philippines and China relentlessly debunks commonly-held tales about submissive (or manipulative) Asian women and wealthy (or abusive) American men."--Jean-Paul Dumont, author of "Visayan Vignettes: Ethnographic Traces of a Philippine Island
"Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader" delineates the prevailing concerns and considerations, principles and practices, concepts and categories that fall under the rubric of "multiculturalism". The contributors spell out what they take multiculturalism to be committed to as much as what it is against. The themes analyzed, include the relations between self and other, selves and others; between knowledge, power, pedagogy, and empowerment; between disciplinary definition and canonical confinement; between meaning, ambiguity, and representation; between history and multiple intersecting histories, reason and rationalities; and between culture domination, resistance, and self-assertion.
'The West' has a unique civilization, a powerful 'front' - modernity, liberty, democracy, affluence. This volume offers critical perspectives from both 'inside' and 'outside' the cultural and intellectual frontiers of the Western project.
This book explores the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture as a way of life and the implications of this neolithic transition for the genetic structure of European populations. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
In many Mediterranean countries we observe newcomers to the political arena: new forms of social networking, growing opposition, and protest articulated by local communities or locally active social movements. In this special issue we present fresh research on localized practices of resistance by protest groups, solidarity initiatives, and cultural projects, which have arisen in the wake of the 2008 crisis. Based on ethnological fieldwork, the volume offers insights into the media-based protest against the commodification of the historic Marseille district Panier (Philip Cartelli); urban gardening in Ljubljana as a practice opposing the growing neoliberal market economy (Saa Poljak Istenic); and the movement Genuino Clandestino, a solidarity network of small-scale farmers in Italy (Alexander Koensler). Three case studies deal with social movement in Greece: a solidarity network in Volos, where citizens developed an alternative exchange and trading system (Andreas Streinzer); grassroots mobilizations as resistant practices in the inner urban neighbourhood of Exarchia in Athens (Monia Cappuccini); and finally rural solidarity networks on the Peloponnese peninsula (James Verinis). A comparative discussion of Mediterranean protest movements (Jutta Lauth Bacas and Marion Naser-Lather) identifies underlying common features in these clearly different, yet relatable practices of protest: among others, the major role of face-to-face interaction and mutual trust.
Examining the situations of African Americans in the U.S.A., Lucius Outlaw's essays illustrate over twenty years of work dedicated to articulating a 'critical theory of society' that would account for issues and limiting-factors affecting African-descended peoples in the U.S. Attempting to put politics aside, Outlaw writes from a non-partisan standpoint, in the hopes that the issues he raises in his essays will inspire improvement for the well-bring of African Americans and will also strengthen America's democracy. Outlaw envisions a democratic order that is not built upon racist projections of the past. Instead, he seeks in these essays a transformative social theory that would help create a truly democratic social order.
In "Big Thicket Legacy," Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller present the stories of people living in the Big Thicket of southeast Texas. Many of the storytellers were close to one hundred years old when interviewed, with some being the great-grandchildren of the first settlers. Here are tales about robbing a bee tree, hunting wild boar, plowing all day and dancing all night, wading five miles to church through a cypress brake, and making soap using hickory ashes.
Senses and Sensation: Critical and Primary Sources offers a comprehensive collection of key writings essential to anyone wishing to gain a critical understanding of sensory studies. The four volumes include 101 essays from leading scholars in the humanities, social sciences, arts and design, biology, psychology and the neurosciences.Drawing upon historical and contemporary texts from a wide range of sources, this set is inspired by the sensory turn in the humanities, social sciences and fine arts which has challenged the monopoly that psychology formerly held over the study of senses and sensation. It also builds upon the revolution in psychology and the neurosciences which has led to an increased emphasis on the interaction and integration of the senses, in place of the one-sense-at-a-time approach.Ordered by discipline, the volumes cover geography and anthropology, history and sociology, biology, psychology and neuroscience, and art and design. Each volume is separately introduced and the essays structured into coherent sections on specific themes.
The ethnographic experience is an indelible venture that continuously redefines one's life. Bringing together important cross-currents in the national debate on education, this book introduces the student or practitioner to the challenges, resources, and skills informing ethnographic research today. From the first chapter describing the cultural foundations of ethnographic research, by George Spindler, the book traces both traditional and new approaches to the study of schools and their communities. Emphasis on discourse, critical pedagogy, and ethnicity are among the many aspects of methodology and educational change emphasized by the contributors.
"A remarkable work of scholarship and of fieldwork, "Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town" should be read by every social scientist interested in nationalism, or ethnicity, or community life, or Eastern Europe. It does a terrific job of showing how large-scale social changes and projects of identity play out in a local context. Along the way it raises important questions for both social theory and public affairs. It should shape discussion for years to come."--Craig Calhoun, Social Science Research Council "For over a decade, Rogers Brubaker has been calling into question the entire edifice underpinning the study of ethnicity by challenging the idea that ethnicity is about real groups founded on 'Ethnic identities.' This superb book on Hungarians and Romanians in a Transylvanian town amply demonstrates the fruitfulness of his conception. Not only will this be the definitive statement on contemporary ethno-national relations in this very complex region in Europe: it will become a classic for the analysis of such relations in many other parts of the world."--Katherine Verdery, Graduate Center, City University of New York "Here in this uncommonly sensitive study, Rogers Brubaker employs perspectives and analytical idioms rarely coupled in the study of ethnicity and nationhood as applied to a distinct geographical area. We are taken to Cluj, a city in western Romania scarcely known to the West but one whose profile fairly shimmers on the page with tensions accruing from a combined and culturally rich Hungarian-Romanian past. The author probes the symbolic and ritualistic aspects of daily life in the surrounding area, leading to groundbreaking views onethnicity."--Istvan Deak, Columbia University "This wonderful book will be welcomed by students and scholars of ethnicity, because there are so few, if any, other studies that look closely at how decisions about one's ethnicity and nationality are actually made. The first half provides an excellent review of Cluj's and Transylvania's history, and the detailed examination of life in Cluj that makes up the second half represents a unique contribution to our understanding of how ethnicity really functions in a contested space."--Daniel Chirot, University of Washington, author of "Modern Tyrants" "A fine book that will be widely read and influential. Not only does it serve as an empirical companion piece to the more theoretical essays in Rogers Brubaker's "Ethnicity without Groups," it also breaks new methodological ground while presenting a clear and subtle analysis of complex, little researched, but important social patterns associated with that trademark of modern times, the 'nation' or ethnic group."--Jeremy King, Mount Holyoke College, author of "Budweisers into Czechs and Germans"
On the occasion of the 50th year since the publication of the first issue of Ethnologia Europaea in 1967, this issue is dedicated to reflection on the past half-century. It presents five articles, one from each decade of the journal's publication, on the one hand showcasing classic articles and on the other highlighting the shifts and re-orientations the journal has undergone along the way. These changes are addressed in the comments on each article by a wide range of scholars as well as in the overarching reflections on 50 years of Ethnologia Europaea by two of its former editors, Regina F. Bendix and Orvar Loefgren.
Contributions to this special issue take a back-door approach to the study of cultural practices by exploring various modes and forms of silence and silencing in daily life. Joining Gregory Bateson and scholars inspired by his concept of noncommunication, the articles examine situations and circumstances where communication is avoided, or deemed undesirable, because it would somehow alter the nature of the idea, relationship or situation in question. Authors also draw attention to the unspoken and the unspeakable as they emerge in ethnographic fieldwork and the research process, discussing the challenges of doing fieldwork on silence and pushing the boundaries of silence as an analytical category. Silence emerges from this special issue as a productive and performative force constitutive of agency, power and the margins of society and language. Case studies from Estonia, Finland and the north-western and north-eastern part of European Russia trace the roles silence plays in "doing old age" (Karoliina Ojanen), "doing family" (Pihla Maria Siim), and sustaining co-existence in societies divided by ethnic lines (Elo-Hanna Seljamaa). By exploring the symbolic meanings of silence among Evangelicals, two articles (Tuija Hovi and Piret Koosa) add to the growing body of scholarship that questions the fundamental role of language in Evangelical Christianity and seeks to broaden perspectives on understanding conversion. This volume also includes one open issue contribution by Anne Eriksen, who on the basis of British and Nordic examples explores the entangled genealogies of the notions of history and tradition as the twin products of a uniquely modern temporality.
This book explores the transition from oral to written history now taking place in tribal Jordan, a transition that reveals the many ways in which modernity, literate historicity, and national identity are developing in the contemporary Middle East. As traditional Bedouin storytellers and literate historians lead him through a world of hidden documents, contested photographs, and meticulously reconstructed pedigrees, Andrew Shryock describes how he becomes enmeshed in historical debates, ranging from the local to the national level. The world the Bedouin inhabit is rich in oral tradition and historical argument, in subtle reflections on the nature of truth and its relationship to poetics, textuality, and power. Skillfully blending anthropology and history, Shryock discusses the substance of tribal history through the eyes of its creators - those who sustain an older tradition of authoritative oral history and those who have experimented with the first written accounts. His focus throughout is on the development of a 'genealogical nationalism' as well as on the tensions that arise between tribe and state. Rich in both personal revelation and cultural implications, this book poses a provocative challenge to traditional assumptions about the way history is written.
The interface of sexual behavior and evolutionary psychology is a rapidly growing domain, rich in psychological theories and data as well as controversies and applications. With nearly eighty chapters by leading researchers from around the world, and combining theoretical and empirical perspectives, The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology is the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference work in the field. Providing a broad yet in-depth overview of the various evolutionary principles that influence all types of sexual behaviors, the handbook takes an inclusive approach that draws on a number of disciplines and covers nonhuman and human psychology. It is an essential resource for both established researchers and students in psychology, biology, anthropology, medicine, and criminology, among other fields. Volume 1: Foundations of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology addresses foundational theories and methodological approaches.
In this gripping ethnography, Jeffrey J. Sallaz goes behind the scenes of the global casino industry to investigate the radically different worlds of work and leisure he found in identically designed casinos in the United States and South Africa. Seamlessly weaving political and economic history with his own personal experience, Sallaz provides a riveting account of two years spent working among both countries' casino dealers, pit bosses, and politicians. While the popular imagination sees the Nevada casino as a hedonistic world of consumption, "The Labor of Luck" shows that the "Vegas experience" is made possible only through a variety of systems regulating labor, capital, and consumers, and that because of these complex dynamics, the Vegas casino cannot be seamlessly picked up and replicated elsewhere. Sallaz's fresh and path-breaking approach reveals how neo-liberal versus post-colonial forms of governance produce divergent worlds at the tables, and how politics, profits, and pleasure have come together to shape everyday life in the new economy.
Healthcare issues have assumed significant socio-economic and political significance in contemporary India. Both the central and the state governments have responded to criticisms of health care inaccessibility by including it as a part of its developmental policies in the last two decades. Given this context, the contributors to this volume explore how the health care system is structured in India; the role of the state, market, private, and corporate sector in health care; the distribution of basic health care facilities by the state across caste, class, gender, and spatial locations; the implications of increasing clinical trials and use of pharmaceuticals in terms of cost, exclusion, and ethicality; how globalization created opportunities or built hurdles for democratizing health care facilities; and the critical role of communities in the new health care system. This edited volume thus provides a holistic narrative that explains the politics of health care access in terms of distribution, utilization, and outcomes as well as the context in which health inequalities are reproduced which is critical not only to our scholarly understanding of health care but to informing the development of health care policy in India at a critical juncture.
When French sociologist Loic Wacquant signed up at a boxing gym in a black neighborhood of Chicago's South Side, he had never contemplated getting close to a ring, let alone climbing into it. Yet for three years he immersed himself among local fighters, amateur and professional. He learned the Sweet science of bruising, participating in all phases of the pugilist's strenuous preparation, from shadow-boxing drills to sparring to fighting in the Golden Gloves tournament. In this experimental ethnography of incandescent intensity, the scholar-turned-boxer dissects the making of prizefighters and supplies a model for a "carnal sociology" capable of capturing "the taste and ache of action." Body & Soul marries the analytic rigor of the sociologist with the stylistic grace of the novelist to offer a compelling portrait of a bodily craft and of life and labor in the black American ghetto at century's end, but also a revealing tale of self transformation and social transcendence. And, by fleshing out Pierre Bourdieu's signal concept of habitus, it deepens our theoretical grasp of human practice.
During the past quarter century, free-market capitalism was recognized not merely as a successful system of wealth creation, but as the key determinant of the health of political and cultural democracy. Now, renowned British journalist and historian Godfrey Hodgson takes aim at this popular view in a book that promises to become one of the most important political histories of our time. "More Equal Than Others" looks back on twenty-five years of what Hodgson calls "the conservative ascendancy" in America, demonstrating how it has come to dominate American politics. Hodgson disputes the notion that the rise of conservatism has spread affluence and equality to the American people. Quite the contrary, he writes, the most distinctive feature of American society in the closing years of the twentieth century was its great and growing inequality. He argues that the combination of conservative ideology and corporate power and dominance by mass media obsessed with lifestyle and celebrity have caused America to abandon much of what was best in its past. In fact, he writes, income and wealth inequality have become so extreme that America now resembles the class-stratified societies of early twentieth-century Europe. "More Equal Than Others" addresses a broad range of issues, with chapters on politics, the new economy, immigration, technology, women, race, and foreign policy, among others. A fitting sequel to the author's critically acclaimed "America In Our Time," "More Equal Than Others" is not only an outstanding synthesis of history, but a trenchant commentary on the state of the American Dream.
In this new work, Linda Espana-Maram analyzes the politics of popular culture in the lives of Filipino laborers in Los Angeles's Little Manila, from the 1920s to the 1940s. The Filipinos' participation in leisure activities, including the thrills of Chinatown's gambling dens, boxing matches, and the sensual pleasures of dancing with white women in taxi dance halls sent legislators, reformers, and police forces scurrying to contain public displays of Filipino virility. But as Espana-Maram argues, Filipino workers, by flaunting "improper" behavior, established niches of autonomy where they could defy racist attitudes and shape an immigrant identity based on youth, ethnicity, and notions of heterosexual masculinity within the confines of a working class. Espa?a-Maram takes this history one step further by examining the relationships among Filipinos and other Angelenos of color, including the Chinese, Mexican Americans, and African Americans. Drawing on oral histories and previously untapped archival records, Espa?a-Maram provides an innovative and engaging perspective on Filipino immigrant experiences.
While there have been controversial attempts to link conclusions from sociobiological studies of animal populations to humans, few behavioral scientists or anthropologists have made serious progress. In this work, Austin Hughes presents a unique and well-defined theoretical approach to human social behavior that is rooted in evolutionary biology and sociobiology, and which is additionally viewed as a direct continuation of the structural-functional tradition in anthropological research. Using mathematical and statistical techniques, Hughes applies the principles of kin selection theory--which states that natural selection can favor social acts that increase the fitness of both individuals and their relatives--to anthropological data. Among the topics covered are the subdivision of kin groups, selection of leaders in traditional societies, patronage systems, and the correspondence between social and biological kinship. The author concludes that patterns of concentration of relatedness are more important than average relatedness for predicting social behavior. He also shows that social interactions can often be predicted on the basis of common genetic interest in dependent offspring. The result is a major contribution to the field of behavioral biology. |
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