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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology > General
Building upon a theoretical framework of democratic exclusion as a tool of public policy, Rebecca Kook uses sources as diverse as postage stamps and public festivals to unravel the 'logic' of democratic identity. She makes the provocative argument that membership in democracies is inherently exclusionary, and that national exclusion is a tacit requirement for successfully democratic regimes. Moving from a discussion of the political and legal construction of national identity to the particular experiences of the African American minority in the United States and the Palestinian minority in Israel, Kook raises serious questions about the potential for real democracy in societies plagued by complex racial and ethnic divides and social, economic, and political inequality.
The result of 25 years of research with different tribal groups in the Arabian peninsula, this study focuses on ethnographic description of Arab tribal societies in five regions of the peninsula, with comparative material from others. Having become aware of the depth in time of Arab tribal structures, the authors have developed a view of Arabic tribal discourse where "tribe" is seen as essentially an identity that confers access to a social structure and its processes. This insight enables the authors to clarify tribal processes of land use and resource management which are normally "invisible," as they leave few written records and the archaeological remains are notoriously difficult to date. The contextual nature of description by local users leads to a reevaluation of social categories, and to an awareness of relationships between bedouin and peasant, tribesman and townsman. A detailed appreciation of the different agricultural, pastoral and fishing practices of the region is presented, together with the underpinning of indigenous theories of land use and resource management. This detailed monograph incorporates many theoretical aspects, including concepts of indigenous theories
Developed as a question-and-answer field research report into the status of Buraku people in Japan today, this text also looks at the wider issues of prejudice as found within Japanese society, from old people to women, ethnicity and nationality.
"Though America had been rightfully portrayed as born of democratic principles, to no less an extent was it born of undemocratic ones. America is thus a living contradiction of many dimensions -- historical, sociological, and psychological -- that have manifested themselves at every level of society -- individual, communal, and natural". So writes Philip Perlmutter, whose Legacy of Hate explores this "living contradiction" by tracing the development of American minority group relations, beginning with the arrival of white Europeans and moving through the eighteenth and industrially expanding nineteenth centuries; the explosion of immigration and its attendant problems in the twentieth century; and a final chapter exploring how prejudice (racial, religious, and ethnic) has been institutionalized in the educational systems and laws. Throughout this provocative book, Perlmutter focuses on where and why various groups encountered prejudice and discrimination and how their experiences have shaped the society we live in and how we think about one another.
When the golfer Tiger Woods proclaimed himself a "Caublinasian," affirming his mixed Caucasian, Black, Native American and Asian ancestry, a storm of controversy was created in a world still perceived in terms of "black" and "white." This book is about ordinary lives facing similar dilemmas of racial identity, of belonging and not belonging. It tells the stories of six women of mixed African/ African Caribbean and white European heritage to show how the often painful experience of being a stranger in two cultures can be named and celebrated. Jayne Ifekwunigwe explores the cultural and historical roots of the popular discourses of race. She analyzes the problem of theorizing mixed racial and/or cultural identity in a global context, always relating it to the real-life experiences of these women.
Whether initiating girls or healing cattle, bringing rain or protesting taxation, many in Africa share a vision of a world where the cultural, symbolic and cosmic categories of "male" and "female" serve, through ritual, to both re-image and transform the world. This book introduces recent gender theory to the analysis of African ethnography, exp loring the ways in which ideational gender categories permeate African systems of thought and ritual practices.;Thus, the book provides a framework with which to evaluate previous ethnographic material on Africa. In addition, it presents a broad range of new case studies - of hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists and pastoralists - revealing the varied and complex ways in which African ideas and ideals of what it means to be "male" and "female" broadly inform and give meaning to a wide range of transformative rituals.
This text challenges the national frames of reference of the debates which surround questions of ethnicity, race and cultural difference by investigating contemporary theories, policies and practices of cultural pluralism across eight countries with historical links in British colonialism: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Ireland and Britain. Written as history, theory, autobiography and political polemic, the book combines general theoretical discussions of the principles of cultural pluralism, nationalism, and minority identities with informative studies of specific local histories and political conflicts. Seeking to identify common problems and precepts in the postcolonial era, the contributors discuss such issues as political versus cultural constructions of nationhood in the USA and Australia; communalism and colonialism in India; Irish sectarianism and identity politics; ethnic nationalism in post-apartheid South Africa; British multiculturalism as a "heritage" industry; multicultural law and education in Canada and New Zealand; and refugees, migrancy and identity in a global cultural economy.
Recent years have seen a resurgence of separatist sentiments among national minorities in many industrial societies, including the United Kingdom. In 1997, the Scottish and Welsh both set up their own parliamentary bodies, while the tragic events in Northern Ireland continued to be a reminder of the Irish problem. These phenomena call into question widely accepted social theories which assume that ethnic attachments in a society will wane as industrialization proceeds. This book presents the social basis of ethnic identity, and examines changes in the strength of ethnic solidarity in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition to its value as a case study, the work also has important comparative implications, for it suggests that internal colonialism of the kind experienced in the British Isles has its analogues in the histories of other industrial societies. Hechter examines the unexpected persistence of ethnicity in the politics of industrial societies by focusing on the British Isles. Why do many of the inhabitants of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland continue to maintain an ethnic identity opposed to England? Hechter explains the salience of ethnic identity by analyzing the relationships between England, the national core, and its periphery, the Celtic fringe, in the light of two alternative models of core-periphery relations in the industrial setting. These are a "diffusion" model, which predicts that intergroup contact leads to ethnic homogenization, and an "internal colonial" model, in which such contact heightens distinctive ethnic identification. His findings lend support to the internal colonial model, and show that, although industrialization did contribute to a decline in interregional linguistic differences, it resulted neither in the cultural assimilation of Celtic lands, nor in the development of regional economic equality. The study concludes that ethnic solidarity will inevitably emerge among groups which are relegated to inferior positions in a cultural division of labor. This is an important contribution to the understanding of socioeconomic development and ethnicity.
This book recreates the lost world of the hominid species that lived and flourished for around one million years before, and in some cases after, the evolution of modern humans some 200,000 years ago. It also investigates how, when, where and why the modern human species appeared and in due course became dominant. These are the subjects of as much heated controversy among as they are of considerable interest to anthropologists, biologists, archaeologists and numerous others.Making use of a wide range of evidence the book considers issues in evolutionary archaeology such as how far can the early australopithecines, parathropines, Homo erectus, and the neanderthals be seen as populations on the way to being human, or as distinct, unique species? How far can these species be said to have cultural characteristics and what can be said of their social organization, group structures and adaptive strategies? How do these compare with ape communities then and now, and with those of the earliest modern humans? And do those behavioural comparisons provide a key to hominid evolution? Answering these questions leads the author not only toward a rational account of modern human origins, but toward an explanation of the origins and evolutionary role of cognition, communication and language - of the knowledge that gives our species its name.Written in non-technical language, Humans Before Humanity may be expected to have a significant scientific impact and to be of very wide interest indeed.The paperback edition contains a guide to further reading by chapter, which also outlines current developments in the field.
Notions of ustaarabu, a word expressing "civilization," and questions of identities in Zanzibar have historically been shaped by the development of Islam and association with littoral societies around the Indian Ocean. The 1964 Revolution marked a break in that history and imposed new notions of African civilization and belonging in Zanzibar. The revolutionary state subsequently introduced tourism and the market economy to maintain its hegemony over Zanzibar. In light of these developments, and with locals facing growing socio-economic marginalization and political uncertainty, Tourism and Social Change in Post-Socialist Zanzibar: Struggles for Identity, Movement, and Civilization examines how Zanzibaris are struggling to move through the local landscape in the post-socialist era and articulate their ideas of belonging in Zanzibar. This book further investigates how movements of Zanzibaris within the emerging and contending social discourses are reconstituting meanings for conceptualizing ustaarabu to define their roots in Zanzibar.
In the United Kingdom, as in the United States, race relations are surrounded with taboos defined by the politically correct concepts of what Ray Honeyford calls the race relations lobby. This lobby, championed by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) has a vested interest in depicting the United Kingdom as a society rotten with endemic racism, and its ethnic minorities as victims doomed to failure. An outgrowth of the Race Relations Act of 1976, the Commission was founded in response to worthy concerns about race and patterned after its American prototype, the Congress of Racial Equality. Its constant demands for increased powers have only increased with the coming into power of the New Labour Party. That makes Ray Honeyford's critique all the more urgent. Honeyford exposes the policies and practices of the Commission to public view, encouraging informed debate about its need to exist. The CRE possesses considerable legal powers-powers which seriously undermine the great freedoms of association, contract, and speech as-sociated with the United Kingdom. Without denying the presence of racial prejudice, Honeyford shows that the picture of the United Kingdom as a divisive nation is a serious misrepresentation. Placing the CRE in its historical and political context, Honeyford outlines its powers, and analyzes its formal investigations in the fields of education, employment, and housing. He also examines its publicity machine and its effect on public and educational libraries. He points out the danger of uncritically replicating the American experience. According to Honeyford, Americans have replaced a melting-pot notion of society, with all citizens loyal to a national ideal, with a "tossed-salad" concept which encourages the creation of self-conscious, separate, and aggressive ethnic groups, each claiming special access to the public purse, and having little regard for national cohesion and individual liberties.
In its assessment of the current "state of play" of ethnographic practice in social anthropology, this volume explores the challenges that changing social forms and changing understandings of "the field" pose to contemporary ethnographic methods. These challenges include the implications of the remarkable impact social anthropology is having on neighboring disciplines such as history, sociology, cultural studies, human geography and linguistics, as well as the potential 'costs' of this success for the discipline. Contributors also discuss how the ethnographic method is influenced by current institutional contexts and historical "traditions" across a range of settings. Here ethnography is featured less as a methodological "tool-box" or technique but rather as a subject on which to reflect.
This work offers a study of the second largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan: the Hazaras. Largely Shi'ia by religion and Farsi-speaking, they traditionally inhabited Central Afghanistan, although were scattered across the country and into neighbouring countries as a result of the war. The Hazaras have recently become into a more influential position within the country's social fabric because its tribally-based pyramidal structure has been disrupted. As well as studying this group, this book also confronts the subject of an Afghan sense of national identity, a concept crucial to the resolution of Afghanistan's crises.
Racial identity theories have been in the psychological literature
for nearly thirty years. Unlike most references to racial identity,
however, Thompson and Carter demonstrate the value of integrating
"RACE" and "IDENTITY" as systematic components of human
functioning. The editors and their contributors show how the
infusion of racial identity theory with other psychological models
can successfully yield more holistic considerations of client
functioning and well-being. Fully respecting the mutual influence
of personal and environmental factors to explanations of individual
and group functioning, they apply complex theoretical notions to
real-life cases in psychological practice.
Co-written by a professor and 10 students, this book explores their
attempts to come to grips with fundamental issues related to
writing narrative accounts purporting to represent aspects of
people's lives. The fundamental project, around which their
explorations in writing textual accounts turned, derived from the
editor's initial ethnographic question: "Tell me about the
previous] class we did together?" This proved to be a particularly
rich exercise, bringing into the arena all of the problems related
to choice of data, analysis of data, the structure of the account,
the stance of the author, tense, and case, the adequacy of the
account, and more.
Racial identity theories have been in the psychological literature
for nearly thirty years. Unlike most references to racial identity,
however, Thompson and Carter demonstrate the value of integrating
"RACE" and "IDENTITY" as systematic components of human
functioning. The editors and their contributors show how the
infusion of racial identity theory with other psychological models
can successfully yield more holistic considerations of client
functioning and well-being. Fully respecting the mutual influence
of personal and environmental factors to explanations of individual
and group functioning, they apply complex theoretical notions to
real-life cases in psychological practice.
Co-written by a professor and 10 students, this book explores their attempts to come to grips with fundamental issues related to writing narrative accounts purporting to represent aspects of people's lives. The fundamental project, around which their explorations in writing textual accounts turned, derived from the editor's initial ethnographic question: "Tell me about the [previous] class we did together?" This proved to be a particularly rich exercise, bringing into the arena all of the problems related to choice of data, analysis of data, the structure of the account, the stance of the author, tense, and case, the adequacy of the account, and more. As participants shared versions of their accounts and struggled to analyze the wealth of data they had accumulated in the previous classes -- the products of in-class practice of observation and interview -- they became aware of the ephemeral nature of narrative accounts. Reality, as written in textual form, cannot capture the immense depth, breadth, and complexity of an actual lived experience and can only be an incomplete representation that derives from the interpretive imagination of the author. The final chapter results from a number of discussions during which each contributing author briefly revisited the text and -- through dialogue with others and/or the editor -- identified the elements that would provide an overall framework that represents "the big message" of the book. In this way, the contributors attempted to provide a conceptual context that would indicate ways in which their private experiences could be seen to be relevant to the broader public arenas in which education and research is engaged. In its entirety, the book presents an interpretive study of teaching and learning. It provides a multi-voiced account that reveals how problematic, turning-point experiences in a university class are perceived, organized, constructed, and given meaning by a group of interacting individuals.
The rise of new religious movements has raised important questions about our understanding of race, ethnicity and the lives of Black minority communities in the West. This revealing study examines the ideas and organization of new Islamic, Hindu and other movements, such as those revived in fight-wing black nationalism. It considers the creation of new "traditions" and new ethnicities in these movements and explores how ideas of purity, pollution, the body, sexuality, and gender are key themes in their "liberation". This book considers the relationship between right-wing and progressive social movements, and examines the influence on these movements of new globally organized communications technologies. |
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