Barbara Gornicka presents a sociological investigation - both historical and contemporary - into the problems surrounding naked bodies. She draws on her own participation in a nudist swimming club and goes on to study the often very complex and paradoxical emotions that have been associated with nakedness in the Western world for centuries. The book provides answers not only to why we find exposing our naked bodies shameful, but also why we find it sexual and erotic in the first place. It looks beneath taboos surrounding nakedness today and offers a theoretical explanation for their development over time. On the basis of her historical analysis, the author demonstrates that it was not until the late nineteenth or twentieth century that we began to see nudity as erotic.

In this worldwide survey, Clive Gamble explores the evolution of the human imagination, without which we would not have become a global species. He sets out to determine the cognitive and social basis for our imaginative capacity and traces the evidence back into deep human history. He argues that it was the imaginative ability to 'go beyond' and to create societies where people lived apart yet stayed in touch that made us such effective world settlers. To make his case Gamble brings together information from a wide range of disciplines: psychology, cognitive science, archaeology, palaeoanthropology, archaeogenetics, geography, quaternary science and anthropology. He presents a novel deep history that combines the archaeological evidence for fossil hominins with the selective forces of Pleistocene climate change, engages with the archaeogeneticists' models for population dispersal and displacement, and ends with the Europeans' rediscovery of the deep history settlement of the Earth.

While most of us live our lives according to the working week, we did not evolve to be bound by industrial schedules, nor did the food we eat. Despite this, we eat the products of industrialization and often suffer as a consequence. This book considers aspects of changing human nutrition from evolutionary and social perspectives. It considers what a 'natural' human diet might be, how it has been shaped across evolutionary time and how we have adapted to changing food availability. The transition from hunter-gatherer and the rise of agriculture through to the industrialisation and globalisation of diet are explored. Far from being adapted to a 'Stone Age' diet, humans can consume a vast range of foodstuffs. However, being able to eat anything does not mean that we should eat everything, and therefore engagement with the evolutionary underpinnings of diet and factors influencing it are key to better public health practice.

Founded during the Gold Rush years, the Chinese community of San Francisco became the largest and most vibrant Chinatown in America. For those Chinese traveling between the Old World and the New, San Francisco was a port of entry and departure. Many Chinese settled there, forming one of the oldest continuing ethnic communities in urban America. This is a detailed social and cultural history of the Chinese in San Francisco, relating the development of various social and cultural institutions, ranging from brothels to the powerful "Six Companies." The book recaptures in vivid detail not only the community's collective mentalities but also the lives of ordinary people-laborers, theater-goers, gamblers, and prostitutes. In so doing, the author achieves what has been missing from virtually all the historiographic writing on the Chinese in America-he brings to life individual personalities with their varying human qualities. The book shows the persistence of Chinese social patterns in San Francisco Chinatown, and demonstrates how the community helped shape white America's view of Asians in general and the development of race consciousness and strife. The author challenges several long-accepted views, such as the myth that the Chinese exodus to California in the mid-nineteenth century occurred mainly because of impoverishment in South China and the notion that the overwhelming majority of Chinese women in San Francisco were prostitutes. He also makes insightful comparisons of Chinese Americans with other ethnic groups. The book makes imaginative use of a wide range of materials, private and public, fictional and statistical, in both Chinese and English, produced by both pro- and anti-Chinese sources. Among these are Chinese-language newspapers (including their advertisements), handbills, personal diaries, and other cultural productions. The author offers multidisciplinary analyses of such documents, showing the possibilities of extracting rich historical information from texts created for very different purposes.

In later life the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, the Norwegian explorer and scientist Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) led the team that in 1888 made the first successful crossing of Greenland's interior. Finding themselves cut off from the rest of the world for the winter, Nansen and his men spent several months living among the Greenlandic Inuit. Although 'far too short a time in which to attain a thorough knowledge', it was nevertheless sufficient to form a strong acquaintance and affection. First published in 1893, this English translation of the 1891 Norwegian original offers a valuable insight into much that was, and remains, foreign and peculiar to European experience. The coverage ranges from culinary to linguistic observations, and Nansen is by turns repulsed, fascinated and full of compassion, asking what the future holds for a people 'already stung with the venom of our civilisation'.

Originally published in 1962, the information in this survey was based on a study of the physical characteristics of the inhabitants of Southern Nigeria. The study took place during the course of thirty years spent in West Africa, with the examination of nearly seven thousand people from various areas. After an introductory chapter reviewing earlier classification of the peoples of the region, the statistical chapters define certain sample characteristics and describe methods for their calculation. The relationship between sample and population and the problem of group divergence are then investigated. The final sections constitute the statistical analysis of the complete material assembled in the study. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in statistics and the development of anthropology.

In Iran, folksongs are part of folklore and offer an intimate portrait of a vanishing era. They are also 'the voice' of ordinary people, providing a medium to express emotions, opinions and concerns. This book is based on folksongs collected over a 50-year period among the Boir Ahmad tribal people in the Zagros Mountains of West Iran. Erika Friedl has recorded, transcribed and translated more than 600 lyrics from a Lur community, and her analysis of the folksongs provides an intimate portrait of local people's attitudes, attachments, fears and desires. From songs of love, sex and mourning, to lyrics discussing beauty, infatuation and the community's violent tribal history, Friedl's solid understanding of the cultural background, lifestyle and worldview of these people lets her add ethnographic details that illuminate the deep meaning of the texts. In this way, Friedl goes far beyond a translation of words: she sheds light on a culture where beliefs, critical evaluation of circumstances and philosophical tenets are shown to be integral to each song's message. Based on fieldwork that began in 1965, Erika Friedl's research on the folklore in Boir Ahmad represents the best-documented modern folklore compendium on an Iranian tribe. This new book will be important for future generations of scholars, including ethnographers, Iranists, linguists, ethnomusicologists and those researching Persian literature and cultures of the Middle East.

The first book entirely devoted to the practice and ethics of the emerging methodology of ethnocinema, this volume brings vividly to life not only the Sudanese young women with whom the author has collaborated for two years, but her own struggles as researcher, teacher and intercultural fellow traveller. A superb resource for anyone interested in conducting their own ethnocinema research project, the contents will be welcomed too by classroom teachers who recognise a need for alternative pedagogies within diverse classrooms, and peripatetic researchers and students who search for authentic representations of their own experiences within the academy and education system. With access to online filmed material included, this publication is part handbook and part theoretical treatise framing a new creative ethnographic methodology. One of a rare breed of books covering the visual research techniques that are gaining traction in the academic community, it also introduces ground-breaking intercultural research into Sudanese women who have resettled in the West. Functional as pedagogic material in university and high school classrooms, this package has broad appeal in the academic and educational sectors. "It is innovative, gutsy, practical, useful, critical and follows principles of socially just research." Prof Carolyn Ellis, University of Southern Florida, USA "This is an ambitious and passionate work. The author has taken on the task not only of exploring the difficult experiences of a group of young refugee women but has also reflected bravely on her own personal and professional life."Assoc Prof Greg Noble, University of Western Sydney, Australia "This is an ambitious and passionate work. The author has taken on the task not only of exploring the difficult experiences of a group of young refugee women but has also reflected bravely on her own personal and professional life." Assoc Prof Greg Noble, University of Western Sydney, Australia "This is an ambitious and passionate work. The author has taken on the task not only of exploring the difficult experiences of a group of young refugee women but has also reflected bravely on her own personal and professional life." Assoc Prof Greg Noble, University of Western Sydney, Australia "It is innovative, gutsy, practical, useful, critical and follows principles of socially just research." Prof Carolyn Ellis, University of Southern Florida, USA "This is an ambitious and passionate work. The author has taken on the task not only of exploring the difficult experiences of a group of young refugee women but has also reflected bravely on her own personal and professional life." Assoc Prof Greg Noble, University of Western Sydney, Australia "This is an ambitious and passionate work. The author has taken on the task not only of exploring the difficult experiences of a group of young refugee women but has also reflected bravely on her own personal and professional life." Assoc Prof Greg Noble, University of Western Sydney, Australia "This is an ambitious and passionate work. The author has taken on the task not only of exploring the difficult experiences of a group of young refugee women but has also reflected bravely on her own personal and professional life." Assoc Prof Greg Noble, University of Western Sydney, Australia

"Critically Modern makes a critical intervention in one of the great debates of the moment. It offers a variety of rich and fascinating empirical analyses of 'modern' phenomena from diverse societies, and contributes a powerful (and largely missing) voice to the growing literature on globalization and modernity outside anthropology." -Charles Piot "In these essays theory and ethnography are presented in ways that make them mutually enriching. The volume should appeal to scholars across the entire range of disciplines that deal with modernity and/or globalization." -Edward LiPuma Are there multiple ways of being "modern" in the world today? How do people in various parts of the world become modern in their own distinct ways? Does the current focus on modernity in the social sciences resurrect a series of dichotomies ("traditional" and "modern," "the West" and "the Rest," "developed" and "undeveloped") that social theorists have sought to move beyond in recent years? Or do inflections of modernity capture key features of ideology and influence in the contemporary world? Combining rich ethnographic analysis with incisive theoretical critiques, this timely volume is certain to make an important mark in anthropology and in all related fields in which modernity is a central problematic. Contributors: Donald L. Donham, Robert J. Foster, Jonathan Friedman, Ivan Karp, John D. Kelly, Bruce M. Knauft, Lisa B. Rofel, Debra A. Spitulnik, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, and Holly Wardlow.

In growing numbers, archeologists are specializing in the analysis of excavated animal bones as clues to the environment and behavior of ancient peoples. This pathbreaking work provides a detailed discussion of the outstanding issues and methods of bone studies that will interest zooarcheologists as well as paleontologists who focus on reconstructing ecologies from bones. Because large samples of bones from archeological sites require tedious and time-consuming analysis, the authors also offer a set of computer programs that will greatly simplify the bone specialist's job.
After setting forth the interpretive framework that governs their use of numbers in faunal analysis, Richard G. Klein and Kathryn Cruz-Uribe survey various measures of taxonomic abundance, review methods for estimating the sex and age composition of a fossil species sample, and then give examples to show how these measures and sex/age profiles can provide useful information about the past. In the second part of their book, the authors present the computer programs used to calculate and analyze each numerical measure or count discussed in the earlier chapters. These elegant and original programs, written in BASIC, can easily be used by anyone with a microcomputer or with access to large mainframe computers.

While most of us live our lives according to the working week, we did not evolve to be bound by industrial schedules, nor did the food we eat. Despite this, we eat the products of industrialization and often suffer as a consequence. This book considers aspects of changing human nutrition from evolutionary and social perspectives. It considers what a 'natural' human diet might be, how it has been shaped across evolutionary time and how we have adapted to changing food availability. The transition from hunter-gatherer and the rise of agriculture through to the industrialisation and globalisation of diet are explored. Far from being adapted to a 'Stone Age' diet, humans can consume a vast range of foodstuffs. However, being able to eat anything does not mean that we should eat everything, and therefore engagement with the evolutionary underpinnings of diet and factors influencing it are key to better public health practice.

From AD 1550 to 1850, the Araucanian polity in southern Chile was a center of political resistance to the intruding Spanish empire. In this book, Tom D. Dillehay examines the resistance strategies of the Araucanians and how they used mound building and other sacred monuments to reorganize their political and culture life in order to unite against the Spanish. Drawing on anthropological research conducted over three decades, Dillehay focuses on the development of leadership, shamanism, ritual, and power relations. His study combines developments in social theory with the archaeological, ethnographic, and historical records. Both theoretically and empirically informed, this book is a fascinating account of the only indigenous ethnic group to successfully resist outsiders for more than three centuries and to flourish under these conditions.

Humans adapt to their environment through a unique amalgamation of culture and biology. Both are intrinsic to our existence and constitute the dual aspect of human nature. This book addresses topics and themes exploring this close inter-relationship by presenting principles and applications of scientific approaches to human remains. Their appreciation within a human ecological context, incorporating conditions of the natural environment as well as cultural, social and political circumstances of the past, provides the framework for the detection and interpretation of our biocultural identity. Written for academic researchers and students alike, Between Biology and Culture assembles chapters that encompass topics from taphonomy to individual life histories, from seasonality to food, from well-being to disease, from genetics to mobility, and from body theory to forensic individualization. In doing so, the contributions probe the potential of skeletal analysis to look beyond the face value of observations and to detect the biological outcomes of cultural strategies encoded in human remains.

How do chimpanzees say, 'I want to have sex with you?' By clipping a leaf or knocking on a tree trunk? How do they eat live aggressive ants? By using a short stick with one hand or long stick with both? Ivorian and Tanzanian chimpanzees answer these questions differently, as would humans from France and China if asked how they eat rice. Christophe Boesch takes readers into the lives of chimpanzees from different African regions, highlighting the debate about culture. His ethnography reveals how simple techniques have evolved into complex ones, how teaching styles differ, how material culture widens access to new food sources and how youngsters learn culture. This journey reveals many parallels between humans and chimpanzees and points to striking differences. Written in a vivid and accessible style, Wild Cultures places the reader in social and ecological contexts that shed light on our twin cultures.

The Asia-Pacific region has seen great social, environmental and economic change across the past century, leading to dramatic changes in the health profiles of all populations represented in South East and East Asia, Pacific Islands and the islands of Melanesia. This volume considers evidence concerning prehistoric migration, and colonial, regional and global processes in the production of health change in the Asia-Pacific region. Notably, it examines ways in which a health pattern dominated by under-nutrition and infection has been displaced in many ways, and is being displaced elsewhere by over-nutrition and the degenerative diseases associated with it. This book presents a cohesive view of the ways in which exchange relationships, economic modernization, migration and transnational linkages interact with changing rural subsistence ecologies to influence health patterns in this region.

A comprehensive study of the microevolution of Caribbean populations of African descent, this 2006 book reviews the conditions endured by the slaves during their passage and in the plantations and how these conditions may have affected their own health and that of their descendants. Providing an evolutionary framework for understanding the epidemiology of common modern-day diseases such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes, it also looks at infectious diseases and their effect on the genetic make-up of Afro-Caribbean populations. Also covered are population genetics studies that have been used to understand the microevolutionary pathways for various populations, and demographic characteristics including the relationships between migration, family type and fertility. Ending with a case study of the Afro-Caribbean population of Limon, Costa Rica, this book is an essential resource for researchers working in biological anthropology, demography, and epidemiology, and for those interested in the African diaspora in the New World.

Social scientists have used the term "Creolization" to evoke cultural fusion and the emergence of new cultures across the globe. However, the term has been under-theorized and tends to be used as a simple synonym for "mixture" or "hybridity." In this volume, by contrast, renowned scholars give the term historical and theoretical specificity by examining the very different domains and circumstances in which the process takes place. Elucidating the concept in this way not only uncovers a remarkable history, it also re-opens the term for new theoretical use. It illuminates an ill-understood idea, explores how the term has operated and signified in different disciplines, times, and places, and indicates new areas of study for a dynamic and fascinating process.

Bringing together a variety of accomplished dental researchers, this book covers a range of topics germane to the study of human and other primate teeth. The chapters encompass work on individuals to samples, ranging from prehistoric to modern times. The focus throughout the book is the methodology required for the study of modern dental anthropology, comprising the scientific methods in use today - ranging from simple observation to advanced computer-based analyses - which can be utilized by the reader in their own dental research. Originating from the 20th anniversary meeting of the Dental Anthropology Association, this is a valuable reference source for graduate students, academic researchers and professionals in the social and life sciences, as well as clinicians.

This is the first historical study of indigenous Australian masculinity. Using the reactions of eighteenth-century western explorers to Aboriginal men, Konishi argues that these encounters were not as negative as has been thought.

In this absorbing history, Henry Warner Bowden chronicles the encounters between native Americans and the evangelizing whites from the period of exploration and colonization to the present. He writes with a balanced perspective that pleads no special case for native separatism or Christian uniqueness. Ultimately, he broadens our understanding of both intercultural exchanges and the continuing strength of American Indian spirituality, expressed today in Christian forms as well as in revitalized folkways.
Bowden makes a radical departure from the traditional approach. Drawing on the theories and findings of anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, he presents Indian-missionary relations as a series of cultural encounters, the outcomes of which were determined by the content of native beliefs, the structure of native religious institutions, and external factors such as epidemic diseases and military conflicts, as well as by the missionaries' own resources and abilities. The result is a provocative, insightful historical essay that liberates a complex subject from the narrow perimeters of past discussions and accords it an appropriate richness and complexity. . . . For anyone with an interest in Indian-missionary relations, from the most casual to the most specialized, this book is the place to begin.--Neal Salisbury, Theology Today
If one wishes to read a concise, thought-provoking ethnohistory of Indian missions, 1540-1980, this is it. Henry Warner Bowden's history, perhaps for the first time, places the sweep of Christian evangelism fully in the context of vigorous, believable, native religions.--Robert H. Keller, Jr., American Historical Review

A cultural history of the face in Western art, ranging from portraiture in painting and photography to film, theater, and mass media This fascinating book presents the first cultural history and anthropology of the face across centuries, continents, and media. Ranging from funerary masks and masks in drama to the figural work of contemporary artists including Cindy Sherman and Nam June Paik, renowned art historian Hans Belting emphasizes that while the face plays a critical role in human communication, it defies attempts at visual representation. Belting divides his book into three parts: faces as masks of the self, portraiture as a constantly evolving mask in Western culture, and the fate of the face in the age of mass media. Referencing a vast array of sources, Belting's insights draw on art history, philosophy, theories of visual culture, and cognitive science. He demonstrates that Western efforts to portray the face have repeatedly failed, even with the developments of new media such as photography and film, which promise ever-greater degrees of verisimilitude. In spite of sitting at the heart of human expression, the face resists possession, and creative endeavors to capture it inevitably result in masks--hollow signifiers of the humanity they're meant to embody. From creations by Van Eyck and August Sander to works by Francis Bacon, Ingmar Bergman, and Chuck Close, Face and Mask takes a remarkable look at how, through the centuries, the physical visage has inspired and evaded artistic interpretation.

The Cambridge anthropological expedition of 1898 9 to the Torres Strait and New Guinea, led by the zoologist and anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon (1855 1940), marked an epoch in field methodology. This edition, published in 1924, examines some of the major physical differences between human beings that Haddon used to distinguish race, looking at skin colour, hair, stature, nose, face, and head form, and is thorough and wide-ranging in offering examples from throughout the world. He also suggests some reasons for the geographical distribution of the races. This was a new approach, though Haddon's findings are necessarily condensed here, providing a valuable work of reference rather than a full study. Forming the basis for a larger work, this book is is an important example of early scientific anthropology, while Haddon's curatorial work in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge made this a primary centre for anthropological study and research.

"Living Color" is the first book to investigate the social history of skin color from prehistory to the present, showing how our body's most visible feature influences our social interactions in profound and complex ways. Nina Jablonski begins this fascinating and wide-ranging work with an explanation of the biology and evolution of skin pigmentation, tracing how skin color changed as humans moved around the globe, exploring the relationship between melanin and sunlight, and examining the consequences of mismatches between our skin color and our environment due to rapid migrations, vacations, and other life-style choices.
Aided by plentiful illustrations, this book also explains why skin color has become a biological trait with great social meaning--a product of evolution perceived differently by different cultures. It considers how we form impressions of others, how we create and use stereotypes, and how prejudices about dark skin developed and have played out through history--including as justification for the transatlantic slave trade. Offering examples of how attitudes toward skin color differ in the United States, Brazil, India, and South Africa, Jablonski suggests that a knowledge of the evolution and social importance of skin color can help eliminate color-based discrimination and racism.

This work by Sir James Frazer (1854-1941) is widely considered to be one of the most important early texts in the fields of psychology and anthropology. At the same time, by applying modern methods of comparative ethnography to the classical world, and revealing the superstition and irrationality beneath the surface of the classical culture which had for so long been a model for Western civilisation, it was extremely controversial. Frazer was greatly influenced by E. B. Tylor's Primitive Culture (also reissued in this series), and by the work of the biblical scholar William Robertson Smith, to whom the first edition is dedicated. The twelve-volume third edition, reissued here, was greatly revised and enlarged, and published between 1911 and 1915; the two-volume first edition (1890) is also available in this series. Volume 1 (1911) explores the belief that kings could harness Nature.

This work by Sir James Frazer (1854-1941) is widely considered to be one of the most important early texts in the fields of psychology and anthropology. At the same time, by applying modern methods of comparative ethnography to the classical world, and revealing the superstition and irrationality beneath the surface of the classical culture which had for so long been a model for Western civilisation, it was extremely controversial. Frazer was greatly influenced by E. B. Tylor's Primitive Culture (also reissued in this series), and by the work of the biblical scholar William Robertson Smith, to whom the first edition is dedicated. The twelve-volume third edition, reissued here, was greatly revised and enlarged, and published between 1911 and 1915; the two-volume first edition (1890) is also available in this series. Volume 4 (1911), 'The Dying God', discusses the tradition by which the priest/king must be killed by his successor.