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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics
This book describes and analyzes migration of individuals from San Cosme Mazatecochco in central Mexico to a new United States community in New Jersey. Based on four decades of anthropological research in Mazatecochco and among migrants in New Jersey Rothstein traces the causes and consequences of migration and who returned home, why, and how return migrants reintegrated back into their homeland.
Modern treatments of Rome have projected in highly emotive terms the perceived problems, or the aspirations, of the present: "race-mixture" has been blamed for the collapse of the Roman empire; more recently, Rome and Roman society have been depicted as "multicultural." Moving beyond these and beyond more traditional, juridical approaches to Roman identity, Emma Dench focuses on ancient modes of thinking about selves and relationships with other peoples, including descent-myths, history, and ethnographies. She explores the relative importance of sometimes closely interconnected categories of blood descent, language, culture and clothes, and territoriality. Rome's creation of a distinctive imperial shape is understood in the context of the broader ancient Mediterranean world within which the Romans self-consciously situated themselves, and whose modes of thought they appropriated and transformed.
Harry Baker and Rosalind Ridley have done an admirable job in assem bling this collection of articles that describe the methodology frequently used to study a group of CNS illnesses often referred to as the "prion diseases." Research on prions and the disorders that they cause has progressed relatively rapidly over the last decade since the discovery of the prion protein (PrP) that allowed the application of modem molecular biological and genetic tools. The power of these techniques is awesome and their use in deciphering the once mysterious prion diseases has brought a wealth of new information. Although prions are unprecedented pathogens, appearing to consist only of PrPSc molecules, the diseases that they cause are no less remarkable. The prion diseases in animals include scrapie of sheep and goats as well as "mad cow" disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). In the United King dom, the epidemic of BSE has heightened public awareness of this previously obscure group of diseases such that any work in the field is likely to stir up interest in the media and become a subject of public debate. It has been diffi cult for British investigators to work on prion diseases without being involved in these controversies. As such, several chapters have been included that deal with political and social issues surrounding prion diseases. The human prion diseases present an equally fascinating saga in which these CNS degenerations present as genetic, sporadic, and infectious illnesses."
Theoretical Approaches in Bioarchaeology emphasizes how several different theoretical perspectives can be used to reconstruct the biocultural experiences of humans in the past. Over the past few decades, bioarchaeology has been transformed through methodological revisions, technological advances, and the inclusion of external theoretical frameworks from the social and natural sciences. These interdisciplinary perspectives became the backbone of bioarchaeology and strengthened the discipline's ability to address questions about past biological and social dynamics. Consequently, how, why, and when to apply external theory to studies of past populations are central and timely questions tied to future developments of the discipline. This book facilitates ongoing dialogues about theoretical applications within the field and interdisciplinary connections between bioarchaeology, biological anthropology, and other disciplines. Each chapter highlights how a theoretical framework originating from a social or natural science connects to past and future bioarchaeological research. For scholars and archaeologists interested in the theoretical applications of bioarchaeology, this book will be an excellent resource.
Ethnographies Revisited provides first-hand accounts of how leading qualitative researchers crafted key theoretical concepts found in their major book-length ethnographies. Great ethnographic research lies not in the rigid execution of prescribed methodological procedures, but on the unrelenting cultivation of theoretical ideas. These contributors focus squarely on this neglected topic, providing reflexive accounts of how research decisions were made in light of emerging theoretical questions. The continuous generation of creative concepts is arguably the most important skill in developing powerful results in field research, since the originality of the ideas produced is how the study is ultimately judged. Yet, this topic is often taken for granted, treated rigidly and artificially, or is entirely absent from existing qualitative research manuals. In contrast, this volume offers candid insights of how leading ethnographers generated their initial questions, chose their research sites, made theoretical and methodological adjustments, and oriented their research to maximize the conceptual payoff, leading to such successful research contributions. This provides a fresh approach to the topic of qualitative research, by linking practical decisions in the field to the dynamic features of theory in the making, told through the first-hand experiences of some of the best ethnographers in our field.
Ethnographies Revisited provides first-hand accounts of how
leading qualitative researchers crafted key theoretical concepts
found in their major book-length ethnographies. Great ethnographic
research lies not in the rigid execution of prescribed
methodological procedures, but on the unrelenting cultivation of
theoretical ideas. These contributors focus squarely on this
neglected topic, providing reflexive accounts of how research
decisions were made in light of emerging theoretical
questions.
The continuous generation of creative concepts is arguably the most important skill in developing powerful results in field research, since the originality of the ideas produced is how the study is ultimately judged. Yet, this topic is often taken for granted, treated rigidly and artificially, or is entirely absent from existing qualitative research manuals. In contrast, this volume offers candid insights of how leading ethnographers generated their initial questions, chose their research sites, made theoretical and methodological adjustments, and oriented their research to maximize the conceptual payoff, leading to such successful research contributions. This provides a fresh approach to the topic of qualitative research, by linking practical decisions in the field to the dynamic features of theory in the making, told through the first-hand experiences of some of the best ethnographers in our field.
This book examines depression as a widely diagnosed and treated common mental disorder in India and offers a significant ethnographic study of the application of a traditional Indian medical system (Ayurveda) to the very modern problem of depression. Based on over a year of fieldwork, it investigates the Ayurvedic response to the burden of depression in the Indian state of Kerala as one of the key processes of the local appropriation or glocalization of depression. More broadly, Lang considers: What happens with the category of depression when it leaves the West and travels to South Asia? How is depression appropriated in a South Asian society characterized by medical pluralism? She explores on the level of ideas, institutions and materialities how depression interacts with and changes local worlds, clinical practice and knowledge and subjectivities. As depression travels from 'the West' to South India, its ontology, Lang argues, multiplies and thus leads to what she calls 'depression multiple'.
An intimate portrait of London life in the first decade of the 21st century, this study reveals the "lived reality" of metropolitan labor--its satisfactions and frustrations, positives and negatives. Based on interviews with working people, this is a story of unsung heroes and heroines, of bus drivers, shop-keepers, metro workers, computer programmers, artisans, teachers, and entrepreneurs--the everyday people whose labors underwrite Britain's economic powerhouse.
First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Despite their small area, the southern islands of Japan can be
seen as stepping stones towards a more nuanced view of cultural
osmosis between Japan and the outside world. This book presents an
ethnographic portrayal of the people of the Southern Ryukyu Islands
and their world. In particular it explores the mind of the
islanders, their relationship with the natural world, their social
relationships, and the rituals which represent and give expression
to these relationships. Based on extensive original research, including participant observation, the book allows the authentic voices of the Ryukyu Island worlds to speak for themselves as well as setting the work in the wider context of anthropology, Japanese Studies and Pacific Island studies.
Theoretical Approaches in Bioarchaeology emphasizes how several different theoretical perspectives can be used to reconstruct the biocultural experiences of humans in the past. Over the past few decades, bioarchaeology has been transformed through methodological revisions, technological advances, and the inclusion of external theoretical frameworks from the social and natural sciences. These interdisciplinary perspectives became the backbone of bioarchaeology and strengthened the discipline's ability to address questions about past biological and social dynamics. Consequently, how, why, and when to apply external theory to studies of past populations are central and timely questions tied to future developments of the discipline. This book facilitates ongoing dialogues about theoretical applications within the field and interdisciplinary connections between bioarchaeology, biological anthropology, and other disciplines. Each chapter highlights how a theoretical framework originating from a social or natural science connects to past and future bioarchaeological research. For scholars and archaeologists interested in the theoretical applications of bioarchaeology, this book will be an excellent resource.
In an era of globalization, population growth, and displacements, migration is now a fact of life in a constantly shifting economic and political world order. This book contributes to the discourse on the beneficiaries, benefactors, and the casualties of African displacement. While the few existing studies have emphasized economic motivation as the primary factor triggering African migration, this volume treats a range of issues: economic, socio-political, pedagogical, developmental, and cultural. Organized with a multidisciplinary thrust in mind, this book argues that any discussion of African migration, whether internal or external, must be conceived as only one aspect of a more complex, organic, and global patterning of "flux and reflux" necessitated by constantly shifting dynamics of world socio-economic, cultural, and political order.
Globalisation - the global movement, and control, of products, capital, technologies, persons and images - increasingly takes place through the work of organisations, perhaps the most powerful of which are multinational corporations. Based in an ethnographic analysis of cross-cultural social interactions in everyday workplace practices at a subsidiary of an elite, Japanese consumer electronics multinational in France, this book intimately examines, and theorises, contemporary global dynamics. Japanese corporate 'know-how' is described not simply as the combination of technological innovation riding on financial 'clout' but as a reflection of Japanese social relations, powerfully expressed in Japanese organisational dynamics. The book details how Japanese organisational power does and does not adapt in overseas settings: how Japanese managers and engineers negotiate conflicts between their understanding of appropriate practices with those of local, non-Japanese staff - in this case, French managers and engineers - who hold their own distinctive cultural and organisational inclinations in the workplace. The book argues that the insights provided by the intimate study of persons interacting within and across organisations is crucial to a fulsome understanding of globalisation. This is assisted, further, by a grounded examination of how 'networks'- as social constructions - are both expanded and bounded, a move which assists in collapsing the common reliance on micro and macro levels of analysis in considering global phenomena. The book poses important theoretical and methodological challenges for organisational studies as well as for analysis of the forces of globalisation by anthropologists and other social scientists.
Based on original research, Japan's Minorities provides a clear historical introduction to the formation of individual minorities, followed by an analysis of the contemporary situation. This second edition identifies and explores the six principal minority groups in Japan: the Ainu, the Burakumin, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Nikkeijin and the Okinawans. Examining the ways in which the Japanese have manipulated historical events, such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the contributors reveal the presence of an underlying concept of 'Japaneseness' that excludes members of these minorities. The book addresses key themes including: the role of this ideology of 'race' in the construction of the Japanese identity historical memory and its suppression contemporary labour migration to Japan the three-hundred year existence of Chinese communities in Japan mixed-race children in Japan the feminization of contemporary migration to Japan. Still the only scholarly examination of issues of race, ethnicity and marginality in Japan from both a historical and comparative perspective, this new edition will be essential reading for scholars and students of Japanese studies, ethnic and racial studies, culture and society, anthropology and politics.
Offers an original and fertile way to integrate spiritual and scientific views of human evolution. It offers a new and refreshing alternative to the way we think about our origins: random mutation (mechanistic neo-Darwinism), Genesis (God did it all personally), and Intelligent Design (God personally does what we can't otherwise account for). The result is an invigorating perspective on how our best qualities -- our capacity for love, our appreciation of beauty, our altruistic capability, our creativity and intelligence -- have come into being and evolved. How we think about our origin matters: if we think we are machines living among other machines, we will act accordingly. By showing evolution as a creative and intelligent process with its own inherent logic, THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN NATURE resolves the dilemma of how to have, at the same time, both truth and ethics. Instead of starting in an imagined remote and 'uncertain past' and moving to the present, this book starts at the certain and 'immediate present' and works back. That consciousness, creativity, and intelligence exist is certain. The question is: how can these have evolved? Dr Albert Low has made a study of human nature throughout his life. To write this book he draws on his prolonged meditations on creativity and the human condition, his years of providing psychological and spiritual counseling, and a wide-ranging knowledge of Western psychology, philosophy, and science.
The dominance of "illness narratives" in narrative healing studies has tended to mean that the focus centers around the healing of the individual. Meza proposes that this emphasis is misplaced and the true focus of cultural healing should lie in managing the disruption of disease and death (cultural or biological) to the individual's relationship with society. By explicating narrative theory through the lens of cognitive anthropology, Meza reframes the epistemology of narrative and healing, moving it from relativism to a philosophical perspective of pragmatic realism. Using a novel combination of narrative theory and cognitive anthropology to represent the ethnographic data, Meza's ethnography is a valuable contribution in a field where ethnographic records related to medical clinical encounters are scarce. The book will be of interest to scholars of medical anthropology and those interested in narrative history and narrative medicine.
The major significance of the German naturalist-physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) as a topic of historical study is the fact that he was one of the first anthropologists to investigate humankind as part of natural history. Moreover, Blumenbach was, and continues to be, a central figure in debates about race and racism. How exactly did Blumenbach define race and races? What were his scientific criteria? And which cultural values did he bring to bear on his scheme? Little historical work has been done on Blumenbach's fundamental, influential race work. From his own time till today, several different pronouncements have been made by either followers or opponents, some accusing Blumenbach of being the fountainhead of scientific racism. By contrast, across early nineteenth-century Europe, not least in France, Blumenbach was lionized as an anti-racist whose work supported the unity of humankind and the abolition of slavery. This collection of essays considers how, with Blumenbach and those around him, the study of natural history and, by extension, that of science came to dominate the Western discourse of race.
This book offers an accessible and up-to-date reference on primate zoonoses. Recent years have witnessed a rise in human diseases zoonotically transferred from animals, with wild primates implicated in the spread of numerous newly emerging infections. The authors go beyond simply providing an inventory of diseases, helping readers to understand how and why they are transmitted. Important consideration is given to the contemporary cultural and ecological factors involved.
This book provides an ethno-historical study of the trade system in Ladakh (India), a busy entrepot for Silk Route trade between Central and South Asia. Previously a part of global networks, Ladakh became an isolated border area as national boundaries were defined and enforced in the mid-20th century. As trade with Central Asia ended, social life in Ladakh was irrevocably altered. The author's research combines anthropological, historical, and archaeological methods of investigation, using data from primary documents, ethnographic interviews and participation-observation fieldwork. The result is a cultural history of South and Central Asia, detailing the social lives of historical Ladakhi traders and identifying their community as a cosmopolitan social group. The relationship between the historical narratives and the modern ethnographic context illustrates how social issues in modern communities are related to those of the past. It is demonstrated that this relationship depends on both memories, narratives about the past constructed within present social contexts, and legacies, ways in which the past continues to shape present social interactions. This book will be of particular interest to anthropologists, historians and specialists in South and Central Asian studies, as well as those interested in historical archaeology, science, sociology, political science and economics.
First published in English 1960.
The Neanderthal is among the most mysterious relatives of Homo sapiens: Was he a dull, club-swinging muscleman, or a being with developed social behaviour and the ability to speak, to plan precisely, and even to develop views on the afterlife? For many, the Neanderthals are an example of primitive humans, but new discoveries suggest that this image needs to be revised. Half a million years ago in Ice Age Europe, there emerged people who managed to cope well with the difficult climate Neanderthal Man. They formed an organized society, hunted Mammoths, and could make fire. They were able to pass on knowledge; they cared for the old and the handicapped, burying their dead, and placing gifts on their graves. Yet, they became extinct, despite their cultural abilities. This richly illustrated book, written for general audiences, provides a competent look at the history, living conditions, and culture of the Neanderthal.
The Neanderthal is among the most mysterious relatives of Homo sapiens: Was he a dull, club-swinging muscleman, or a being with developed social behaviour and the ability to speak, to plan precisely, and even to develop views on the afterlife? For many, the Neanderthals are an example of primitive humans, but new discoveries suggest that this image needs to be revised. Half a million years ago in Ice Age Europe, there emerged people who managed to cope well with the difficult climate a " Neanderthal Man. They formed an organized society, hunted Mammoths, and could make fire. They were able to pass on knowledge; they cared for the old and the handicapped, burying their dead, and placing gifts on their graves. Yet, they became extinct, despite their cultural abilities. This richly illustrated book, written for general audiences, provides a competent look at the history, living conditions, and culture of the Neanderthal.
For at least a decade, the function of the ethnographer's work as simple cultural description has been challenged. In response, ethnographic texts have been deconstructed for their origins, their biases, and their literary devices--all of which have resulted in heightened methodological self-consciousness and a concern for reflexivity. This volume explores many of the dimensions of the representational challenges facing contemporary ethnography. The distinguished contributors--Van Maanen, Manning, Wolcott, Agar, Fine, Richardson, and others--cover topics such as fieldnotes; the role of description, narrative, humor, and acknowledgments; the relationship between ethnography and other forms of writing; and alternative means of presenting ethnographic work. Anyone interested in qualitative methods, particularly ethnography, and those who are involved in the examination of the inner workings of ethnographic writing will consider this a valuable work.
Despite its importance to how humans inhabit their environments, walking has rarely received the attention of ethnographers. Ways of Walking combines discussions of embodiment, place and materiality to address this significant and largely ignored 'technique of the body'. This book presents studies of walking in a range of regional and cultural contexts, exploring the diversity of walking behaviours and the variety of meanings these can embody. As an original collection of ethnographic work that is both coherent in design and imaginative in scope, this primarily anthropological book includes contributions from geographers, sociologists and specialists in education and architecture, offering insights into human movement, landscape and social life. With its interdisciplinary nature and truly international appeal, Ways of Walking will be of interest to scholars across a range of social sciences, as well as to policy makers on both local and national levels.
In paleoanthropology the group of hominids known as the "robust" australopithecines has emerged as one of the most interesting. Through them we have the opportunity to examine the origin, natural history, and ultimate extinction of not just a single species, but of an entire branch in the hominid fossil record. It is generally agreed that the human lineage can be traced back to this group of comparatively small-brained, large-toothed creatures. This volume focuses on the evolutionary history of these early hominids with state-of-the-art contributions by leading international authorities in the field. Although a case can be made for a "robust" lineage, the functional and taxonomic implications of the morphological features are subject to vigorous disagreement. An area of lively debate is the possible causal relationship between the presence of early Homo and the origin, evolution, and virtual extinction of "robust" australopithecines. This volume summarizes what has been learned about the evolutionary history of the "robust" australopithecines in the 50 years since Robert Broom first encountered the visage of a new kind of ape-man from Kromdraai. New discoveries from Kromdraai to Lomekwi have served to keep us aware that the paleontological record for hominid evolution is hardly exhausted. Because of such finds no single volume can hope to stand as a summary on the "robust" australopithecines for very long, but this classic volume comes close to achieving this goal. The book sheds new light upon some old questions and also acts to provide new questions. The answers to those questions bring us closer to a fuller understanding and appreciation of the origins, evolution, and ultimate demise of the "robust" australopithecines. Since the "robust" australopithecines most likely stand as our closest relatives, a better understanding of their origin, history, and demise serves to provide heightened appreciation of the course of human evolution itself. This definitive volume addresses the questions and problems surrounding this important lineage. "Frederick E. Grine" is professor and chairperson in the department of anthropology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has published many scientific articles in books and international journals, and he is co-editor of "Primate Phylogeny and Scanning Microscopy of Vertebrate Mineralized Tissues" and author of "Regional Human Anatomy." |
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