Although the French language and the traditional rural way of life are disappearing among Louisiana Cajuns, identification with Cajun ethnicity is flourishing. Henry and Bankston draw on historical documents, ethnographic observations and interviews, and statistical sources to investigate and explain this phenomenon. They argue that while Cajun ethnicity developed from and consisted of the French-speaking, rural poor of the region, it has been transformed, during the 20th century, into a regional class with common interests and outlooks. A substantial minority of Cajuns have risen out of the blue collar niche and into the middle class, creating more complicated problems of adjustment, role redefinition, and the changing nature of relationships with friends and family who remain part of the working class. The authors detail and describe the way the working class Cajun majority and the white collar Cajun minority draw on images and ideas from a reconstructed past to make sense of their present conditions and changes in their community. This comprehensive structural analysis of Cajun ethnicity suggests a new emphasis on structural conditions in understanding ethnic phenomena and introduces the concept of an economy of ethnicity.

In analyzing and exploring the creation and maintenance of Cajun ethnicity, Henry and Bankston also point toward a general theory of contemporary ethnic groups. Why, for instance, have more and more people claimed to be of Native American ancestry? How did the population of people calling themselves Irish soar over the course of a very brief period of time? Arguing that as the cultural basis of difference subsides, ethnic claims increase, and that such claims are based on a number of factors including socioeconomic and regional concerns, the authors contend that the same factors at play in the maintenance of the Cajun ethnicity are also at play in other ethnic communities and subcultures within the United States. They conclude that in claiming an ethnic identity, group members rework ideas of history and ancestry in order to apply these ideas to modern life.

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.

Part of a series that offers mainly linguistic and anthropological research and teaching/learning material on a region of great cultural and strategic interest and importance in the post-Soviet era.

Ever since Darwin and "The Descent of Man," the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in "Catching Fire," renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking. In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution. When our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity began. Once our hominid ancestors began cooking their food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain grew. Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be sued instead to hunt and to tend camp. Cooking became the basis for pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led to a sexual division of labor. Tracing the contemporary implications of our ancestors' diets, "Catching Fire" sheds new light on how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. A pathbreaking new theory of human evolution, "Catching Fire" will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone interested in our ancient origins--or in our modern eating habits.

Examines the ideas and organization of new Islamic, Hindu and other movements. Considers the creation of new traditions and ethnicities in these movements as well as the key themes of liberation central to many of them, such as purity and pollution. Bhatt also looks at the relationship between right wing and progressive social movements.

This volume examines the Kurdish question in Turkey, tracing its developments from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the present day. The study considers: secession; federal schemes; various forms of autonomy; the provision of special rights; and further democratization.

This volume examines the Kurdish question in Turkey, tracing its developments from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the present day. The authors develop their argument by defining and making use of terms such as nation, ethnic group, civic nationalism, ethnic nationalism, minority rights and self-determination. Many commentators agree that ethnic conflict should be resolved by a political rather than a military solution; but what would a political solution to the Kurdish question in Turkey actually entail?

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.
This dynamic strategy model is employed to discuss likely future outcomes for society. Controversially, Snooks argues that far from leading to ecological destruction, growth--including technological change--is both natural and necessary. "The Dynamic Society" demonstrates that dynamism, not stasis, is the essential condition of human society, as it is of life.

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.

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

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 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. 

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.
In this lively and readable introduction, renowned anthropologist Ian Tattersall thoroughly examines both the fossil and archeological records to trace human evolution from the earliest beginnings of our zoological family Hominidae, through the emergence of Homo sapiens, to the Agricultural Revolution. He begins with an accessible overview of evolutionary theory and then explores the major turning points in human evolution: the emergence of the genus Homo, the advantages of bipedalism--the trait that most strongly distinguishes humans from other primates--the birth of the big brain and symbolic thinking, Paleolithic and Neolithic tool-making, and finally the enormously consequential shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and elsewhere. Focusing particularly on the pattern of events and innovations in human biological and cultural evolution, Tattersall offers illuminating commentary on a wide range of topics, from early intimations of symbolism in Africa to our earliest known artistic expressions--the exquisite Cro-Magnon cave paintings and 30,000 year--old flutes made from vulture bones-to ancient burial rites, the beginnings of language, the likely causes of Neanderthal extinction, the relationship between agriculture and Christianity, and the still unsolved mysteries of human consciousness.
Complemented by a wealth of illustrations and written with the grace and accessibility for which Tattersall is widelyadmired, The World from Beginnings to 4000 BCE invites us to take a closer look at the strange and distant beings who, over the course of millions of years, would become us.

Through a close examination of four Melanesian religious traditions, Whitehouse identifies a set of recurrent interconnections between styles of religious transmission, systems of memory, and patterns of political association. He argues that these interconnections may shed light on a variety of general problems in history, archaeology, and social theory.

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.