Literacy continues to be a central issue in anthropology, but methods of perceiving and examining it have changed in recent years. In this 1995 study Niko Besnier analyses the transformation of Nukulaelae from a non-literate into a literate society using a contemporary perspective which emphasizes literacy as a social practice embedded in a socio-cultural context. He shows how a small and isolated Polynesian community, with no access to print technology, can become deeply steeped in literacy in little more than a century, and how literacy can take on radically divergent forms depending on the social and cultural needs and characteristics of the society in which it develops. His case study, which has implications for understanding literacy in other societies, illuminates the relationship between norm and practice, between structure and agency, and between group and individual.

The notion that intelligence is somehow related to race is a notoriously tenacious issue in America. Anthropologist Alexander Alland provides the most comprehensive overview of the recent history of research on race and IQ, offering critiques of the biological determinism of Carlton Coon, Arthur Jensen, Cyril Burt, Robert Ardrey, Konrad Lorenz, William Shockley, Michael Levin, and others. This reasoned, authoritative history also explains the basis of evolutionary genetics for the general reader, concluding that biologically, race cannot explain human variation. Written in a lively, conversational style, Alland imparts real, substantive scientific arguments, cuts through the ideological posturing and jargon that so often characterizes discussions about race, and shows us a more nuanced and scientifically valid way to understand the diversity that is the human condition.

Plasticity refers to the ability of many organisms to change their biology or behavior to respond to changes in the environment. Humans are probably the most plastic of all species, and hence the most variable. This is the first book to examine the history of research in this area and it provides information on state-of-the-art research methods and discoveries. It also maps out some areas of future research in human plasticity and variability. Topics discussed include child growth, starvation, diseases of both young and old, and the effects of migration, modernization and other life-style changes. The book will be especially useful to biological anthropologists, human biologists and medical scientists interested in knowing more about how and why humans vary.

This book is the first full-length study of the history of intellectual and scientific racism in modern South Africa. Ranging broadly across disciplines in the social sciences, sciences and humanities, it charts the rise of scientific racism and biological determinism from the late nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth. Set against the rise of apartheid, the book illuminates the complex relationship between theories of essential racial difference and the development of white supremacist thinking. Saul Dubow draws extensively on comparable studies of intellectual racism in Europe and the United States to demonstrate the selective absorption of widely prevalent conceptions of racial difference in the particular historical context of South Africa. The issues he addresses are of relevance to both Africanist and international students of racism and race relations.

This is the first full-length study of the history of intellectual and scientific racism in modern South Africa. Ranging broadly across disciplines in the social sciences, sciences and humanities, it charts the rise of scientific racism during the late nineteenth century and the subsequent decline of biological determinism from the mid-twentieth century, and considers the complex relationship between theories of essential racial difference and the political rise of segregation and apartheid. Saul Dubow draws extensively on comparable studies of intellectual racism in Europe and the United States to demonstrate the selective absorption of widely prevalent conceptions of racial difference in the particular historical context of South Africa, and the issues he addresses are of relevance to both Africanist and international students of racism and race relations.

Using data collected from all parts of the continent, this book is a study of the health of Australia's original inhabitants over 50,000 years. It represents the first continental survey of its kind and is the first to quantify and describe important aspects of Australian hunter-gatherer health. Major categories of disease described are: stress, osteoarthritis, fractures, congenital deformations, neoplasms and non-specific and treponemal infections. The author also describes some surgical techniques used by Aboriginal people. A broad-ranging book offering fresh insight into the study of Australian prehistory and Aboriginal culture, the book also illuminates the origins and ecology of human disease.

Among the Tuareg people in the Air Mountain region of Niger, women are sometimes possessed by spirits called ‘the People of Solitude’. The evening curing rituals of the possessed, featuring drumming and song, take place before an audience of young men and women, who joke and flirt as the ritual unfolds. In her analysis of this tolerated but unofficial cult, Susan Rasmussen analyses symbolism and aesthetic values, provides case studies of possessed women, and reviews what local people think about the meaning of possession.

Latah, the Malayan hyperstartle pattern, has fascinated Western observers since the late nineteenth century and is widely regarded as a 'culture-bound syndrome'. Dr Winzeler critically reviews the literature on the subject, and presents new ethnographic information based on his own fieldwork in Malaya and Borneo. He considers the biological and psychological hypotheses that have been proposed to account for latah, and explains the ways in which local people understand it. Arguing that latah has specific social functions, he concludes that it is not appropriate to regard it as an 'illness' or 'syndrome'.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Chapter 1.

"Provides important insight into the manner in which federal support of faith-based poverty relief initiatives affect religious identity in the Golden Triangle Region of rural Mississippi."--"Journal of Church and State"

"The book provides a thorough historical overview of the events that led up to the Bush administration's decision to promote faith-based social welfare. This thoughtful book is a useful addition to the growing literature on the subject and should be widely consulted."--"Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare"

"Well-written and clearly organized."--"Journal of Social Services"

"In depth profiles...with obvious strengths."--"Contemporary Sociology"

"The findings raise serious concerns related to discriminatory practices around who will get served, and the qualification of those providing the services. . . . Highly recommended."
--"CHOICE"

"The comparative case method stretched across a complex analytical framework sketches the terrain in broad, suggestive, analytical strokes. We benefit from the timeliness of Bartkowski and Regis's study."
--"American Journal of Sociology"

"Nothing short of exceptional..."Charitable Choices" is a very readable book that makes an evident contribution to contemporary discourse about welfare reform and its possibilities and pitfalls."
--"Social Forces"

aThese stories reveal not only the profound commitment that clergy can have for their flock but how existing social structures can render the poor invisible. Charitable Choices is more useful as a description of an under-recognized aspect of American religious life than as an analysis of government welfarepolicy.a
"Religious Studies Review"

Congregations and faith-based organizations have become key participants in America's welfare revolution. Recent legislation has expanded the social welfare role of religious communities, thus revealing a pervasive lack of faith in purely economic responses to poverty.

Charitable Choices is an ethnographic study of faith-based poverty relief in 30 congregations in the rural south. Drawing on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in Mississippi faith communities, it examines how religious conviction and racial dynamics shape congregational benevolence. Mississippi has long had the nation's highest poverty rate and was the first state to implement a faith-based welfare reform initiative. The book provides a grounded and even-handed treatment of congregational poverty relief rather than abstract theory on faith-based initiatives.

The volume examines how congregations are coping with national developments in social welfare policy and reveals the strategies that religious communities utilize to fight poverty in their local communities. By giving particular attention to the influence of theological convictions and organizational dynamics on religious service provision, it identifies both the prospects and pitfalls likely to result from the expansion of charitable choice.

Robert Trivers is one of the leading figures pioneering the field of sociobiology. For Natural Selection and Social Theory, he has selected eleven of his most influential papers, including several classic papers from the early 1970s on the evolution of reciprocal altruism, parent-offspring conflicts and asymmetry in sexual selection, which helped to establish the centrality of sociobiology, as well as some of his later work on deceit in signalling, sex antagonistic genese, and imprinting. Trivers introduces each paper, setting them in their contemporary context, and critically evaluating them in the light of subsequent work and further developments. The result is a unique portrait of the intellectual development of sociobiology, with valuable insights of interest to evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology.

Ethnobotany, the study of the classification, use and management of plants by people, draws on a range of disciplines, including natural and social sciences, to show how conservation of plants and of local knowledge about them can be achieved. Ethnobotany is critical to the growing importance of developing new crops and products such as drugs from traditional plants. This book is the basic introduction to the field, showing how botany, anthropology, ecology, economics and linguistics are all employed in the techniques and methods involved. It explains data collection and hypothesis testing and provides practical ideas on fieldwork ethics and the application of results to conservation and community development. Case studies illustrate the explanations, demonstrating the importance of collaboration in achieving results. Published with WWF, UNESCO and Royal Botanic Gardens Kew

Reflexive Ethnography is a unique guide to ethnographic research for students of anthropology and related disciplines. It provides practical and comprehensive guidance to ethnographic research methods, but also encourages students to develop a critical understanding of the philosophical basis of ethnographic authority. Davies examines why reflexivity, at both personal and broader cultural levels, should be integrated into ethnographic research and discusses how this can be accomplished for a variety of research methods. This revised and updated second edition includes: a new chapter on internet-based research and 'interethnography' chapters on selection of topics and methods, data collection and analysis, and ethics and politics of research practical advice on writing up ethnographic study new and updated research examples. Postmodernist relativism can lead to an over-emphasis on reflexivity that denies the possibility of social research. Reflexive Ethnography utilises postmodernist insights - incorporation of different standpoints, exposure of the intellectual tyranny of meta-narratives - but proposes that reflexive ethnographic research be undertaken from a realist perspective. Reflexive Ethnography will help students to use and understand ethnographic research practices that fully incorporate reflexivity without abandoning claims to develop valid knowledge of social reality.

Based on Cohen's fieldwork in the 1960s among the Hausa migrants, a people of the Yoruba area (then the western region of the Federation of Nigeria), Custom and Politics in Urban Africa looks at how ethnic groups use elements of tradition in jostling for power and privilege in new urban situations. This is a landmark work in urban anthropology and provides a comparative framework for studying political processes in African societies.

This is a new and refreshing introduction to the human species that places modern humans squarely in evolutionary perspective and treats evolution itself as a continuing genetic process in which every one of us is involved. Over seventy scholars worldwide have collaborated on the Encyclopedia, which is divided into ten main sections. Following a keynote introduction asking simply "What makes us human?", the coverage ranges widely: from genetics, primatology and fossil origins to human biology and ecology, brain function and behavior, and demography and disease. Emphasis is placed throughout on the biological diversity of modern people and the increasing convergence of the fossil and genetic evidence for human evolution that has emerged in recent years. Because of the need to look at humankind in the context of our closest relatives, the Encyclopedia also pays particular attention to the evolution and ecology of the living primates--lemurs, lorises, monkeys and apes. It deals with the evolution and ecology of human society, as reconstructed from archaeological remains, and from studies of indigenous peoples and living primates today. It considers the biology of uniquely human abilities such as language and upright walking, and it reviews the biological future of humankind in the face of challenges greater than those ever before experienced. Boxes highlighting key issues and techniques are provided throughout the text, and there are numerous maps, photographs, diagrams, and ready-reference tables--all the reader needs in a single volume to acquire a comprehensive knowledge of how humankind has developed and how scientists set about investigating the origin of our species.

"An important contribution to discussions of identity construction in a globalized world and will be enjoyed and debated by students of ethnic studies."
--"Library Journal"

"I believe Hintzen's work reflects valuable insights."
--"International Migration Review"

As new immigrant communities continue to flourish in U.S. cities, their members continually face challenges of assimilatation in the organization of their ethnic identities. West Indians provide a vibrant example.

In West Indian in the West, Percy Hintzen draws on extensive ethnographic work with the West Indian community in the San Francisco Bay area to illuminate the ways in which social context affects ethnic identity formation. The memories, symbols, and images with which West Indians identify in order to differentiate themselves from the culture which surrounds them are distinct depending on what part of the U.S. they live in. West Indian identity comes to take on different meanings within different locations in the United States.

In the San Francisco Bay area, West Indians negotiate their identity within a system of race relations that is shaped by the social and political power of African Americans. By asserting their racial identity as black, West Indians make legal and official claims to resources reserved exclusively for African Americans. At the same time, the West Indian community insulates itself from the problems of the black/white dichotomy in the U.S. by setting itself apart.

Hintzen examines how West Indians publicly assert their identity by making use of the stereotypic understandings of West Indians which exist in the larger culture. He shows how ethnic communities negotiate spaces forthemselves within the broader contexts in which they live.

Diana E. Forsythe was a leading anthropologist of science, technology, and work, and especially of the field of artificial intelligence. This volume collects her best-known essays, along with other major works that remained unpublished upon her death in 1997.
The essays proceed as a series of developing variations on the key questions that still confront science and technology studies today. What assumptions do expert systems designers make about users, and about knowledge more broadly, when they build software? How should humans interact with computers, and how do they, really? Why do computing firms hire anthropologists to study human-computer interaction, and what do anthropologists find once they are hired? And how and why are traditional power asymmetries between men and women produced and maintained in engineering firms and laboratories?
The book is not only a significant anthropological study of artificial intelligence and informatics, but is also an exemplar of how reflexive ethnography should be done. Among several pioneering strands of thought, it investigates the roles of gender and power in computer engineering, looking at the cultural mechanisms that support the persistent male domination of engineering, and analyzing the laboratory as a fictive kin group that reproduces gender asymmetries.

Up until the 1970s, a large proportion of Aboriginal people in Australia had some experience in institutions as part of government assimilation and protection policies. By focusing on three communities in South Australia, this book attempts to understand the consequences of this institutionalisation for Aborigines and Australian society in general. Peggy Brock uses the word 'ghetto' to evoke the nature of the missions in which, for generations, many Aboriginal people settled, as ghettos both oppress and nurture those who live within them. Within the missions, Aborigines were able to establish strong communities and construct a modern identity. The three communities considered in the book - Poonindie, Koonibba and Nepabunna - existed during distinct but overlapping periods and had varying responses to colonialism and mission life. In many cases, Aboriginal people associated themselves with the missions because they met urgent needs for survival: protection from a hostile world, access to rations, education and training in European skills. In fact for many, the missions became home. For others however, the emotional turmoil caused by the pressure to embrace Christianity on the one hand and the desire to maintain traditional ways on the other became unbearable.

Picturing the Primitive explores the relationship between early German cinema and anthropology's fascination with "primitive" cultures. At the core of this study is a mythic first contact between the camera and the non-Western body. The term that binds the two is the 'Primitive', referring both to cultures ostensibly existing outside of modern time and also to a way of seeing the world via the lens. Oksiloff examines how the movie camera, with its capacity to record reality in a supposedly direct fashion, is legitimated by the primitive body in the first decades of the 20th century.

First published in 1977, Portraits of White Racism advanced a distinctively sociological theory of racism. Based on five case histories, it critically assessed the prevailing social-psychological paradigm that equated racism with prejudice and provided an alternative interpretation. Racism, the book argued, could be understood as a culturally sanctioned strategy for defending social advantage based on race; it was not simply the product of psychological abnormalities. In this revised edition the theoretical perspective is updated, taking into account recent theorising in the sociology of racism.

Franz Boas, the major founding figure of anthropology as a discipline in America, came to the United States from Germany in 1886. This volume in the acclaimed History of Anthropology series is the first to explore fully the extent and significance of Boas' roots in the German intellectual tradition and late-19th century German anthropology. Boas' own early essay ""The Study of Geography"", reprinted in this volume, suggests his profound debt to the Herderian tradition of ""Volksgeist"" and ""Nationalcharakter"" - an intellectual lineage Matti Bunzl traces from Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt through Ritter, Ratzel, Waitz and Bastian to Boas. Benoit Massin painstakingly reconstructs another powerful influence on Boas, that of Rudolf Virchow, the leading physical anthropologist in Germany in the days before the discipline took its extreme racialist turn in that country. Drawing on letters from Boas' adolescence and early manhood, Julia Liss shows how the intellectual and cultural forces that formed his mature anthropological viewpoint figured clearly in his own ""Bildung"". Shifting the focus from Germany to the United States, essays by Ira Jacknis, Judith Berman and Thomas Buckley treat certain problematic aspects of the ""Volksgeist"" tradition, viewed as an attempt to constitute for each Native American group a permanent archive of cultural material free of contamination by European categories. Suzanne Marchand's essay on the political implications of German Near Eastern archaeology provides a distant counterpoint to the colonial situation of Boasian ethnography in America. Recovering the important but little understood Germanic influences on Boasian ethnography, this volume offers a new perspective on the historical development of American anthropology.

Two-Faced Racism examines and explains the racial attitudes and behaviours exhibited by whites in private settings. While there are many books that deal with public attitudes, behaviours, and incidences concerning race and racism (frontstage), there are few studies on the attitudes whites display among friends, family, and other whites in private settings (backstage). The core of this book draws upon 626 journals of racial events kept by white college students at twenty-eight colleges in the United States. The book seeks to comprehend how whites think in racial terms by analyzing their reported racial events.

Many of the elements ascribed to traditional Aboriginal beliefs and practices are the result of contact with external peoples - Melanesians and Indonesians, as well as Europeans. This controversial and provocative 1993 book is a detailed and continent-wide study of the impact of outsiders on Australian Aboriginal world-views. The author separates out a common core of religious beliefs which reflect the precontact spirituality of Australian Aborigines. This book investigates Aboriginal myth, ritual, cosmology and philosophy, and also examines social organisation, subsistence patterns and cultural change. It will be of great interest to readers in anthropology, religious studies, comparative philosophy and Aboriginal studies.

Stock market euphoria and blind faith in the post cold war economy have driven the topic of poverty from popular and scholarly discussion in the United States. At the same time the gap between the rich and poor has never been wider. The New Poverty Studies critically examines the new war against the poor that has accompanied the rise of the New Economy in the past two decades, and details the myriad ways poor people have struggled against it.

The essays collected here explore how global, national, and local structures of power produce poverty and affect the material well-being, social relations and politicization of the poor. In updating the 1960s encounter between ethnography and U.S. poverty, The New Poverty Studies highlights the ways poverty is constructed across multiple scales and multiple axes of difference.

Questioning the common wisdom that poverty persists because of the pathology, social isolation and welfare state "dependency" of the poor, the contributors to The New Poverty Studies point instead to economic restructuring and neoliberal policy "reforms" which have caused increased social inequality and economic polarization in the U.S.

Contributors include: Georges Fouron, Donna Goldstein, Judith Goode, Susan B. Hyatt, Catherine Kingfisher, Peter Kwong, Vin Lyon-Callo, Jeff Maskovsky, Sandi Morgen, Leith Mullings, Frances Fox Piven, Matthew Rubin, Nina Glick Schiller, Carol Stack, Jill Weigt, Eve Weinbaum, Brett Williams, and Patricia Zavella.

"These contributions provide a dynamic understanding of poverty and immiseration"
"--North American Dialogue, Vol. 4, No. 1, Nov. 2001"

"I would recommend this book to anyone contemplating the study of religion using interviews and/or participant observations."--"Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion"

"This is a rich collection in every sense of the word. It is rich in ideas, in examples, and in approaches. . . . Beautifully written and impeccably edited."
--"Journal of Contemporary Religion"

"This is a timely book on the actual "doing" of ethnography, and how doing ethnography of religion demands specific attentiveness, not least to the transformations undergone by the observer herself."
--"Journal of Religion"

"This is an excellent and courageous book. It makes an important contribution to the social sciences and the sociology of religion in particular. It will help shape the way we do and think about field research and should be read by students and scholars alike."
-- "Sociology of Religion Book Reviews"

"The essays in this volume persuasively argue for the value of ethnographic research, which complements and enriches statistical analysis done by more traditional quantitative social scientists."
--"Contemporary Sociology"

Over the last decade the sociology of religion and religious studies have experienced a surge of ethnographic research. Scholars now use ethnography, as anthropologists have long done, as a valued source of knowledge from which they draw their pictures of the religious world.

Yet, many researchers of religion have yet to grapple with the issues that are changing anthropologists' use of the method. Personal Knowledge and Beyond seeks to foster a cross-disciplinary rethinking of ethnography's possibilities and limits for the study of religions. It providesan overview of recent debates while also pushing them in new directions. In addition, it offers critiques of some of anthropology's reigning conceptualizations.

The volume brings together many of the best-known ethnographic researchers of religion, including Karen McCarthy Brown, Lynn Davidman, Armin Geertz, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Mary Jo Neitz, and Thomas Tweed. Together, they share substantively from their fieldwork and consider the consequences for the study of religion of rejecting old ethnographic myths, as well as the risks of replacing them with new ones. The volume will be of interest to students as well as to experienced scholars in the field.

What is a human? Are humans those with human DNA, those in possession of traits like rationality, or those made in the image of God? The debate over what makes human beings unique has raged for centuries. Many think that if society accepts the wrong definition of what it is to be human, people will look at their neighbor as more of an animal, object, or machine-making maltreatment more likely. In the longest running claim, for over 150 years critics have claimed that taking a Darwinist definition results in people treating each other more like animals. Despite their seriousness, these claims have never been empirically investigated. In this groundbreaking book John H. Evans shows that the definitions promoted by biologists and philosophers actually are associated with less support for human rights. Members of the public who agree with these definitions are less willing to sacrifice to stop genocides and are more supportive of buying organs from poor people, of experimenting on prisoners against their will, and of torturing people to potentially save lives. It appears that the critics are right. However, Evans finds that few Americans agree with these academic definitions. Looking at how most of the public defines humanity, we see a much more nuanced picture. In a fascinating account, he shows that the dominant definitions are unlikely to lead to human rights abuses. He concludes that the critics are right about the definitions of a human promoted by academic biologists and philosophers, and are therefore justified in their vigilance. However, because at present few Americans agree with these definitions, the academic definitions would have to spread much more extensively before impacting how the general public acts. Evans' book is a major corrective to the more than century-long debate about the impact of definitions of a human.