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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology > General
Volume 1, The Aborigines of Sakhalin, contains translations into English of the Polish, Russian and Japanese material on, for example, the history, folklore, economic life, shamanism, sexual life, medical anthropology, and the bear festival which has been published between 1898 and 1936, mainly in local journals which are hardly accessible today. English, French and German articles appear in the original language
Ole Bruun focuses on a community of nomadic livestock herders in present-day Mongolia. He depicts their transition from a contained, Soviet-era collective to modern times and addresses the most essential conditions for their continued survival and prosperity in the age of the market: the adaptability of their own culture and working strategies, government policy, and international attention. By studying the nomadic practice of animal husbandry in the context of family farms, Bruun points out the similarity to the peasant economy defined by the Russian agricultural economist Alexander Chayanov nearly a century ago. In both economies, the labor-consumer balance and life-cycle variations commonly set the term for economic strategies, yet the pastoral economy involves a highly specialized form of agriculture in which the scale of exchange determines wealth and lifestyle. In a vast territory such as Mongolia, infrastructure, social benefits, and other means of state support are crucial to prevent herders from sliding into a subsistence orientation, eventually leading to poverty.
Graeme Snooks has set himself the ambitious and original task of
exploring the driving force of global change over the past 2
million years. The book outlines and explains the biological
development of life, going on to develop a fully dynamic model, not
just of genetic change, but of the broader process of life on
earth. Snooks also provides a critical review of current
interpretations about the course of history and the forces driving
it. Finally, he develops an entirely new interpretation of the
dynamics of human society, arguing that the rise and fall of
societies is an outcome of the development and exhaustion of these
strategies.
In this book Graeme Snooks has set himself the highly ambitious task of exploring the driving force of global change over the past 2 million years. The author also employs his dynamic strategy model to discuss future outcomes for human society, controversially arguing that far from leading to ecological destruction, growth-inducing technological change is both necessary and liberating. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that dynamism, not stasis, is the essential condition of human society, as it is of life.
Are humans unique? This simple question, at the very heart of the hybrid field of biological anthropology, poses one of the false of dichotomies--with a stereotypical humanist answering in the affirmative and a stereotypical scientist answering in the negative. The "study "of human biology is different from the study of the biology of other species. In the simplest terms, people's lives and welfare may depend upon it, in a sense that they may not depend on the study of other scientific subjects. Where science is used to validate ideas--four out of five scientists preferring a brand of cigarettes or toothpaste--there is a tendency to accept the judgment as authoritative without asking the kinds of questions we might ask of other citizens' pronouncements. In "Human Biodiversity, "Marks has attempted to distill from a centuries-long debate what has been learned and remains to be learned about the biological differences within and among human groups. His is the first such attempt by an anthropologist in years, for genetics has undermined the fundamental assumptions of racial taxonomy. The history of those assumptions from Linnaeus to the recent past--the history of other, more useful assumptions that derive from Buffon and have reemerged to account for genetic variation--are the poles of Marks's exploration.
With the steady increase in the number of Asian immigrants, our interest in Asian-American communities has intensified in recent years. While much has been written on the experiences of established immigrant communities such as the Chinese and the Japanese, little is yet known about the Korean Americans, one of today's fastest growing Asian-American minorities. This volume provides an overview of the history of Korean immigration to this country--from the first immigrants who arrived in Hawaii at the beginning of the century to the most recent waves of the 1980s and 1990s--and a detailed analysis of the main problems Korean Americans face in adjusting to life in their adopted country. The author collected most of his data through a questionnaire survey and case-study interviews, which provide lively, first-person accounts of the immigrant experience, focusing in particular on problems such as the language barrier, social isolation, family tension, and the challenge of earning a livelihood.
The social sciences offer many insights into the causes of the intense ethnic conflicts that characterize the close of the twentieth century, but they also create obstacles to understanding these baffling problems, contends H. D. Forbes in this important book. Forbes takes a critical look at the "contact hypothesis" -- the assumption commonly held by social scientists that increased contact between different ethnic groups gives each group more accurate information about the other and thus reduces friction. By distinguishing aggregate from individual relations, Forbes suggests a way out of the perplexities induced by current social science literature on prejudice and discrimination. Drawing on studies of the contact hypothesis in sociology and social psychology and on the literature on nationalism and ethnic conflict, this book provides the most thorough review of contact theory available. Scientific research suggests that increased contact between culturally distinct groups in some cases gives rise to more intense conflict. Yet individuals who get to know each other better generally like each other better. Can these apparently conflicting generalizations both be true? asks Forbes. They are, he argues, and he takes contemporary social science to task for failing to show how and why this is possible. The author clarifies the weaknesses of contact theory, develops an alternative "linguistic model" of ethnic conflict, and concludes with penetrating reflections on the politics and methodology of the social sciences today. "This is a splendid critique of contact theory. Forbes has produced a truly major work in the epistemology of social science". -- Donald L. Horowitz, Duke University
As Senegal prepares to celebrate fifty years of independence from
French colonial rule, academic and policy circles are engaged in a
vigorous debate about its experience in nation building. An
important aspect of this debate is the impact of globalization on
Senegal, particularly the massive labor migration that began
directly after independence. From Tokyo to Melbourne, from Turin to
Buenos Aires, from to Paris to New York, 300,000 Senegalese
immigrants are simultaneously negotiating their integration into
their host society and seriously impacting the development of their
homeland.
Detours of Decolonization examines three seemingly disparate and high profile events in postcolonial India that captured nation and transnational/diasporic interest since the 1990s: the emergence of the Indian homosexual, the new trans/national heterosexual woman, lesbian suicides, marriage and kinship contracts in small towns around India and the simultaneous evolution of the modern homophobia and lesbian NGOs. These events demonstrate the material, political, and cultural contexts within which postcolonial subjects negotiate their lived experiences within moments of decolonization and recolonization.
The International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry holds a major conference every four years. This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the fourth such event, held at the World Congress on Youth, Leisure and Physical Activity in Brussels. It represents state-of-the-art research in the field of physical development and physical performance with contributions from the UK, Europe, South America, USA and Canada. The papers are divided into four sections covering body composition and growth; physical activity, health and fitness; performance and anthropometry; and growth and performance.
This volume brings together scholars working the relatively new terrain of ethnographic policy studies to debate and provisionally chart the methodological and theoretical parameters of such a project. The opening section on "theory" will survey the conceptual antecedents of qualitative policy studies, citing the relevant literature and laying out an agenda for research. The section on "methods" will consist of accounts of innovative field experiences and analytic approaches that can illuminate the new field. The final section on "experiences" will extend the reflections in the methods section with concrete case studies.
W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the leading activist men of letters in 20th-century America. Du Bois organized, protested, laid out programs, petitioned, and raised questions of long-term strategy and short-term tactics. He wrote detailed scholarly investigations, Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction among them, as well as popular current articles. He was a commanding speaker and a prodigious correspondent. And yet, it was not until the 1980s that his complete writings became available. "The World of W.E.B. Du BoiS" was created to provide a short journey through his views on virtually all aspects of 20th-century life. More than 1,000 quotations from his published writings and correspondence are provided. These are grouped into 19 topical and one miscellaneous chapter. Each quote begins with a heading designed to summarize the main sense of the quotation. A subject index provides additional access to the ideas of this complex figure. Essential reading for all involved in American race relations and intellectual history and American and Black Studies.
This Second Edition summarizes the state of the art of gender issues in fieldwork both in anthropology and sociology. Warren shows how the researcher's gender affects both the fieldwork relationships and the production of ethnography. The authors focus is more empirical than theoretical; using literature on gender and ethnography, together with their own experiences as women ethnographers, they focus on ways in which researchers represent these experiences through narrative.
The keystone of U.S. security in East Asia, Okinawa is a troubled symbol of resistance and identity. Ambivalence about the nature of Okinawan identity lies behind relations between Japan, the United States, and Okinawa today. Fully one-fifth of Okinawa's land is occupied by a foreign military power (the United States), and Okinawans carry a disproportionate responsibility for Japanese and U.S. security in the region. It thus figures prominently in the re-examination of key questions such as the nature of Japan, including the debate over Japanese 'purity' and the nature of Japanese colonialism. Yet underneath the rhetoric of the 'Okinawa problem' lies a core question: who are Okinawans? In contrast to approaches that homogenize Okinawan cultural discourse, this perceptive historical ethnography draws attention to the range of cultural and social practices that exist within contemporary Okinawa. Matthew Allen's narrative problematizes both the location of identity and the processes involved in negotiating identities within Okinawa. Using the community on Kumejima as a focus, the author describes how people create and modify multitextured and overlapping identities over the course of their lives. Allen explores memory, locality and history; mental health and shamanism; and regionalism and tourism in his richly nuanced study. His chapter on the Battle of Okinawa, which opens the book, is a riveting, fresh analysis of the battle in history and memory. His analysis of yuta (shamans) opens new terrain in rethinking the relationship between the traditional and the modern. Based on fieldwork, interviews, and historical research, Allen argues that identity in Okinawa is multivocal, ambivalent, and still very much 'under construction.' With its interdisciplinary focus, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians alike will find this book an important source for understanding broad questions of identity formation in the contexts of national, ethnic, cultural, historical and economic experience.
Provides a critical and comprehensive overview of theorising and debate about the role of race and ethnicity in contemporary societies. This book intends to explore the evolution of race and ethnicity as subjects of both scholarly and political debate. It is of interest to students and scholars of race and ethnicity alike.
According to opinion polls, Germans are less favorably disposed towards the Sinti and Roma than towards any other ethnic group, despite the fact that few Germans have any personal knowledge of them or even realize that the Sinti and Roma in Germany include both Germans and non-Germans. The image of the Sinti and Roma prevalent in German society and literature is one similarly founded on misconceptions and stereotypes. This volume deals in depth with the life of the Sinti and Roma in Germany and their representation in German literature, giving the background to the maltreatment, underlining the fact that the persecution of Gypsies during the Nazi period, which until the 1980s has been totally marginalized by historians, did not cease in 1945. The continuity of anti-Gypsyism is traced to the present day, and the efforts, achievements and aspirations of the Sinti and Roma civil rights movement are highlighted.
To be human is to be curious. And one of the things we are most
curious about is how we came to be who we are--how we evolved over
millions of years to become creatures capable of inquiring into our
own evolution.
What is it to be human? What are our specifically human attributes, our capacities and liabilities? Such questions gave birth to anthropology as an Enlightenment science. This book argues that it is again appropriate to bring "the human" to the fore, to reclaim the singularity of the word as central to the anthropological endeavor, not on the basis of the substance of a human nature - "To be human is to act like this and react like this, to feel this and want this" - but in terms of species-wide capacities: capabilities for action and imagination, liabilities for suffering and cruelty. The contributors approach "the human" with an awareness of these complexities and particularities, rendering this volume unique in its ability to build on anthropology's ethnographic expertise.
Histories of American Physical Anthropology in the Twentieth Century chronicles the history of physical anthropology or, as it is now known, biological anthropology from its professional origins in the late 1800 up to its modern transformation in the late 1900s. In this edited volume, 13 contributors trace the development of people, ideas, traditions, and organizations that contributed to the advancement of this branch of anthropology that focuses today on human variation and human evolution. Designed for upper level undergraduate students, graduate students, and professional biological anthropologists, this book provides a brief and accessible history of the biobehavioral side of anthropology in America."
For peoples whose legal agreements, treaties, and other accords and conventions with the United States have been violated, multiculturalism as a pedagogical tool often becomes suspect of reinforcing the continued reification and abstraction of their cultures and nations with little if any real meaning for educational and social transformation. The continued oppression and repression of the exercise of self-determination for African Americans; the persistence of policies aimed at the destruction of indigenous populations and land; the insidious continuation of classical colonialism in the case of Puerto Rico are all vivid reminders to these peoples of the racist, classist, sexist, and homophobic patriarchy that characterizes their status. In order to restore people's rights to fully determine their own histories, Jackson and Solis point out that it is imperative to destroy the material foundations that breed and recycle the ideology, discourse, and cultural practices of domination. It is not enough to celebrate diversity and difference; there must be grand-scale social, political, economic, and educational transformation.
The events of recent years have demonstrated beyond doubt not only that ethnic pluralism presents major problems for the management of political systems, but that it is also a major cause of their failure and disintegration. This timely and topical book discusses the general issue of ethnic pluralism and considers a range of types of multi-ethnic society within a common analytical framework. It then examines the responses of governments to the problems of ethnic diversity and assesses the effects of ethnic conflict on the development and viability of states.
From Sioux Falls to Khartoum, from Kyoto to Darwin; from the panchayat forests to the Giant's Causeway; in taxis and at bus stops, in kitchens and sleigh beds, haystacks and airports-people are kissing one another. The sublime kiss. The ambiguous kiss. The broken kiss. The kiss that changes a life. Far from the scripted passion of Hollywood, this uniquely human gesture carries within it the possibility for infinite shades of meaning and it does not stop for anything-not war, revolution or natural disaster. In The Kiss, authors like Nick Flynn, Kristen Radtke and Pico Iyer explore our quest to bridge the gulf between ourselves and others through this fleeting physical connection, and to uncover the depths contained in words like tenderness, passion and love.
Ethnic conflicts have shaped the 20th century in significant ways. While the legacy of the last century is primarily one of many unresolved conflicts, the author contends that Western Europe has a track record in containing and settling ethnic conflicts which provides valuable lessons for conflict management elsewhere. Focusing on ethno-territorial crossborder conflicts in Alsace, the Saarland, South Tyrol, and Northern Ireland, Andorra and the New Hebrides, the author develops a four-dimensional analytical framework that synthesizes the distinct factors that influence the complex relationship between host-state, kin-state, actors in the disputed territory, and in the international context. |
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