A significant work by one of anthropology's most important scholars, this book provides an introduction to the Chiapas Mayan community of Mexico, better known for their role in the Zapatista Rebellion. June Nash updates the status of this centuries-old confrontation as well as presenting a fascinating examination of how the Chiapas, as a governing entity, are entering into the New World Order.
Using the Chiapas as a case study of the effects and possibilities of globalization Nash views the Zapatista Rebellion as one expression of the Maya's attempts to remain true to their culture in the face of the extraordinary changes taking place in Mexico today. At issue here are the competing influences of Western modernity and the cultural traditions of the Chiapas-ideas about governing, identity, cultural traditions, and communal obligations are all at stake.
Based on over 40 years studying the Chiapas, Nash argues that this famous indigenous tribe has much to tell us about autonomy, nationality and globalization. Within a global economy, the Chiapas challenge for autonomy can be seen as a model for redefining ethnic group relations and the development process within Mexico, the hemisphere and our global society.

Series Information:
Routledge Studies in Science, Technology and Society

Examines the issues facing indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, including their role in the nation's constitutional and legal developments, and makes a number of recommendations which would satisfy their demands without compromising the sovereignty of the state.

Race and Human Diversity is an introduction to the study of human diversity in both its biological and cultural dimensions. Robert L. Anemone examines the biological basis of human difference and how humans have biologically and culturally adapted to life in different environments. The book discusses the history of the race concept, evolutionary theory, human genetics, and the connections between racial classifications and racism. It invites students to question the existence of race as biology, but to recognize race as a social construction with significant implications for the lived experience of individuals and populations. This second edition has been thoroughly revised, with new material on human genetic diversity, developmental plasticity and epigenetics. There is additional coverage of the history of eugenics; race in US history, citizenship and migration; affirmative action; and white privilege and the burden of race. Fully accessible for undergraduate students with no prior knowledge of genetics or statistics, this is a key text for any student taking an introductory class on race or human diversity.

This translation of a major work in Mexican anthropology argues that Mesoamerican civilization is an ongoing and undeniable force in contemporary Mexican life.

For Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, the remaining Indian communities, the "de-Indianized" rural mestizo communities, and vast sectors of the poor urban population constitute the Mexico profundo. Their lives and ways of understanding the world continue to be rooted in Mesoamerican civilization. An ancient agricultural complex provides their food supply, and work is understood as a way of maintaining a harmonious relationship with the natural world. Health is related to human conduct, and community service is often part of each individual's life obligation. Time is circular, and humans fulfill their own cycle in relation to other cycles of the universe.

Since the Conquest, Bonfil argues, the peoples of the Mexico profundo have been dominated by an "imaginary Mexico" imposed by the West. It is imaginary not because it does not exist, but because it denies the cultural reality lived daily by most Mexicans.

Within the Mexico profundo there exists an enormous body of accumulated knowledge, as well as successful patterns for living together and adapting to the natural world. To face the future successfully, argues Bonfil, Mexico must build on these strengths of Mesoamerican civilization, "one of the few original civilizations that humanity has created throughout all its history."

The subject of the present volume, in essence is the hand and hand's extensions. We cannot insist too strongly that in the evolution of life the "decisive moment" arrived when a living being - who became man - adopted the erect attitude, thus freeing his hands, and when the industrious activity was inauguarted which this freedom made possible. In the use of the hand as an instrument, we have the manifestation of an important physical progress and the promise of further progress.

This book is a history of the diseases of humankind and their causes from earliest times to the present day. It is a tour de force drawing upon the author's extensive work on the history of infection, as well upon evidence drawn from archaeology, history and demography.

Both infectious and almost all non-communicable diseases are potentially eradicable. Just how they are and the significance of Professor McKeown's finding for health policies in developing countries, are the concluding themes of this controversial work.

An account of the experiences of men who are repeatedly arrested for public drunkenness. This book challenges the idea that these men are simply rejects from society, who cannot organize their behavior by cultural traditions. Using the recently discovered methods of formal ethnographic analysis, the author presents this urban sub-culture as it relates to law enforcement agencies. Life in one jail is described in detail, showing how it changes the men's personal identities, teaching them the skills of this sub-culture and motivating them to adopt a nomadic way of life where drinking is a great social value. Originally published by Little, Brown and Company in 1970.

""Doing Fieldwork" warrants our attention because its message, bolstered by the editor's new introduction, is that the 1930's heralded a paradigm shift in anthropology, and further that this shift in fact addressed the same contenious issues raised in today's so-called crisis of representation." -- Hispanic American Historical Review "A candid, detailed window into the fieldwork and analytical thinking of two of our most influential anthropologists. A gem for students of method and theory in ethnography."-Susan C. M. Scrimshaw, University of Illinois at Chicago
"This lively exchange of letters reveals how, by batting hunches and hypotheses back and forth, often agreeing, sometimes disagreeing, Redfield and Tax developed and sharpened theories (always grounded in ethnographic data) relating to such themes as worldview, race relations, caste vs. class, and acculturation. The book provides fascinating insights into the differences between the fieldwork experience in pre- and post-World War II years. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of social science." -George M. Foster, University of California, Berkeley
Prior to the 1930s the highlands of Guatemala were largely undescribed, except in travelogues. Just two decades later, the highlands had become one of the most anthropologically well-investigated areas of the world. This is largely due to the research that Robert Redfield and Sol Tax carried out between 1934 and 1941. Separately and together, Redfield and Tax anticipated and guided anthropological investigations of people living in peasant and urban communities in other areas of the world. Their work helped to define the major outlines of research in the 1970s, and since then much writing about the region has been formulated in critical response to the Redfield-Tax program.
Not coincidentally, since the mid-1970s anthropology has been caught up in a wave of self-doubt about the status of fieldwork and the authority of ethnographic description. This critical stance has often cast ethnography as a creative, literary enterprise. This volume presents a timely view of the process of ethnography as carried out by two of its early practitioners. Containing a wealth of ethnographic detail, the book reveals how Redfield and Tax developed and tested ethnological hypotheses, and it allows us to follow the development of their major theoretical statements. The result is an exceptionally clear picture of the process of ethnography. Redfield and Tax emerge as rigorous and sensitive observers of social life whose observations bear importantly on contemporary understandings of the ethnology of Guatemala and the enterprise of anthropology. This book will be of interest to students of method and theory in ethnography, Latin Americanists, and other professionals interested in the history of idea.
Robert A. Rubinstein has conducted fieldwork in Yucatan, Mexico, in Belize, in rural Egypt, and in the United States. He is editor, with Mary LeCron Foster, of Peace and War: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (also available from Transaction).

The book that launched environmental history now updated.

Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize

In this landmark work of environmental history, William Cronon offers an original and profound explanation of the effects European colonists' sense of property and their pursuit of capitalism had upon the ecosystems of New England. Reissued here with an updated afterword by the author and a new preface by the distinguished colonialist John Demos, Changes in the Land, provides a brilliant inter-disciplinary interpretation of how land and people influence one another. With its chilling closing line, "The people of plenty were a people of waste," Cronon's enduring and thought-provoking book is ethno-ecological history at its best.

Written by Jorge Gracia, one of the most influential thinkers of Hispanic/Latino descent, this volume provides a superb introduction to the philosophical, social, and political elements of Hispanic/Latino identity.

The book explores central historical and current debates surrounding Hispanic/Latino culture, thought, and identity in the United States, Spain, and Latin American countries. Gracia's interdisciplinary approach is systematic and he uses philosophical analysis along with the history of philosophy to clarify and illustrate his provocative theses.

This engaging and enlightening work is an indispensable tool for anyone interested in Hispanic/Latino studies, social policy, and the history of thought and culture.

Man's Most Dangerous Myth was first published in 1942, when Nazism flourished, when African Americans sat at the back of the bus, and when race was considered the determinant of people's character and intelligence. It presented a revolutionary theory for its time; breaking the link between genetics and culture, it argued that race is largely a social construction and not constitutive of significant biological differences between people. In the ensuing 55 years, as Ashley Montagu's radical hypothesis became accepted knowledge, succeeding editions of his book traced the changes in our conceptions of race and race relations over the 20th century. Now, over 50 years later, Man's Most Dangerous Myth is back in print, fully revised by the original author. Montagu is internationally renowned for his work on race, as well as for such influential books as The Natural Superiority of Women, Touching, and The Elephant Man. This new edition contains Montagu's most complete explication of his theory and a thorough updating of previous editions. The Sixth Edition takes on the issues of the Bell Curve, IQ testing, ethnic cleansing and other current race relations topics, as well as contemporary restatements of topics previously addressed. A bibliography of almost 3,000 published items on race, compiled over a lifetime of work, is of enormous research value. Also available is an abridged student edition containing the essence of Montagu's argument, its policy implications, and his thoughts on contemporary race issues for use in classrooms. Ahead of its time in 1942, Montagu's arguments still contribute essential and salient perspectives as we face the issue of race in the 1990s. Man's Most Dangerous Myth is the seminal work of one of the 20th century's leading intellectuals, essential reading for all scholars and students of race relations.

Fleeing the social and political turmoil spawned by the Mexican Revolution, massive numbers of Mexican immigrants entered the southwestern United States in the early decades of the twentieth century. But instead of finding refuge, many encountered harsh, anti-Mexican attitudes and violence from an Anglo population frightened by the influx of foreigners and angered by anti-American sentiments in Mexico.

This book examines the response of Mexican immigrants to Anglo American prejudice and violence early in the twentieth century. Drawing on archival sources from both sides of the border, Arturo Rosales traces the rise of "Mexico Lindo" nationalism and the efforts of Mexican consuls to help poor Mexican immigrants defend themselves against abuses and flagrant civil rights violations by Anglo citizens, police, and the U.S. judicial system. This research illuminates a dark era in which civilian and police brutality, prejudice in the courtroom, and disproportionate arrest, conviction, and capital punishment rates too often characterized justice for Mexican Americans.

This unique work challenges the assumption that dictionaries act as objective records of our language, and instead argues that the English dictionary is a fundamentally ethnocentric work. Using theoretical, historical and empirical analyses, Phil Benson shows how English dictionaries have filtered knowledge through predominantly Anglo-American perspectives. The book includes a major case study of the most recent edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and its treatment of China.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203205715

This book offers a new and rigorous approach to observational sociology that is grounded in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.

Throughout the authors encourage the reader to explore the social world at first hand, beginning with the immediate family context and then moving out into the public realm and organizational life. Examples of observational analysis are given with reference to topic areas such as family life, education, medicine, crime and deviance, and the reader is shown how to conduct their own inquiries, using methods and materials that are readily and ordinarily available.

Drawing on both original material and published studies, Francis and Hester demonstrate how observational sociology can be carried out with an attention to detail typically overlooked by more traditional ethonographic approaches.

Social Complexity in the Making is a highly accessible ethnography which explains the history and evolution of Ilahita, an Arapesh-speaking village in the interior Sepik region of northeastern New Guinea. This village, unlike others in the region, expanded at an uncharacteristically fast rate more than a century ago and has maintained its large size (more than 1500) and importance until the present day. The fascinating story of how Ilahita became this size and how organizational innovations evolved there to absorb internal pressures for disintegration, bears on a question debated ever since Plato raised it: what does it take for people to live together in harmony?
Anthropologist Donald Tuzin, drawing on more than two years fieldwork in the village, studies the reasons behind this unusual population growth. He discovers the behaviour and policies of the Tambaran, the all-male society which was the back bone of Ilahitan society, and examines the effect of the outside influences such as World War II on the village.
This work is a unique example of an anthropological case study which will be widely used amongst undergraduates and academics. It provides an excellent insight into techniques of ethnography and contributes to a deeper understanding of what makes a society evolve (and/or collapse).

In this timely and well-argued book, author Philip Nicholson offers a provocative explanation of the force and place of race in modern history, showing that race and nation have a linked history. Using the deliberately ironic metaphor of the double helix, the author shows the close historical connection of race and nation as each interrelates with the other in shaping and carrying social and institutional practices over many centuries.

-- Five themes recur throughout the work:
-- modernity is built on the twin pillars of race and nation;
-- national instability, rivalry, and imperial conquest -- outside of dynastic, religious, or feudal disputes -- evoke differential (i.e., racial) human social categories, loyalties, and mythologies;
-- racial vilification emerges out of material and cultural expropriation;
-- racial degradation is typically the inverse projection of dominant national normative values, beliefs, or ideals; and
-- race and nation share in the twists and turns of modern histo and are inseparably linked and interdependent.

Molecular mechanisms in visual transduction is presently one of the most intensely studied areas in the field of signal transduction research in biological cells. Because the sense of vision plays a primary role in animal biology, and thus has been subject to long evolutionary development, the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying vision have a high degree of sensitivity and versatility. The aims of visual transduction research are first
to determine which molecules participate, and then to understand how they act in concert to produce the exquisite electrical responses of the photoreceptor cells.
Since the 1940s 1] we have known that rod vision begins with the capture of a quantum of energy, a photon, by a visual pigment molecule, rhodopsin. As the function of photon absorption is to convert the visual pigment molecule into a G-protein activating state, the structural details of the visual pigments must be
explained from the perspective of their role in activating their specific G-proteins. Thus, Chapters 1-3 of this Handbook extensively cover the physico-chemical molecular characteristics of the vertebrate rhodopsins. Following photoconversion and G-protein activation, the phototransduction cascade leads to modifications of the population of closed and open ion channels in the photoreceptor plasma membrane, and thereby to the electrical response. The nature of the channels of vertebrate photoreceptors is examined in Chapter 4, and Chapter 5 integrates the present body of knowledge of the activation steps in the cascade into a quantitative framework. Once the phototransduction cascade is activated, it must be subsequently silenced. The various molecular mechanisms participating in inactivation are
treated in Chapters 1-4 and especially Chapter 5. Molecular biology is now an indispensable tool in signal transduction studies. Numerous vertebrate (Chapter 6) and invertebrate (Chapter 7) visual pigments have been characterized and cloned. The genetics and evolutionary aspects of this great subfamily of G-protein activating receptors are intriguing as they present a natural probe for the intimate relationship between structure and function of the visual pigments. Understanding the spectral characteristics from the molecular composition can be expected to

This book suggests that concepts of race have all but lost their relevance as sociologically significant descriptions. This book surveys ways in which social scientists have attempted to come to terms with this situation, before developing an alternative approach based on recent work by realist authors. This approach offers a radical revision of orthodox debates about race concepts, about the possibility of a social science and about the nature of empirical research. This is illustrated through two policy examples: an account of post war migration to the UK, and debates about trans-racial adoption in the UK and the USA.

The "British in Spain" achieved notoriety during the 1980s. As a group they were stereotyped as being made up of exiled criminals, drunken hooligans and inward looking pensioners - unwelcome colonisers reconstructing their own insular "little England". Presenting a more complex picture, this book-length ethnography of the British expatriate community draws on history, social geography, tourism studies, and theories of ethnicity and community to frame detailed interviews with British migrants themselves. What emerges is an account of who migrates, their reasons for migration and the day to day realities of expatriate life. Whilst Britons migrating to Spain have not integrated into their host communities, neither have they colonised swathes of the Spanish coast. The author presents instead a marginal group occupying a liminal space between two countries and two cultures. It should appeal to social anthropologists and sociologists as well as to the general reader.

This ethnographic study explores the status of African Americans during the Reconstruction era, examining the particularities of such topics as race relations, social systems, legal systems, and economic and political status. Rather than dealing with the status of African Americans as an isolated human rights issue, Gao examines the African American role in American society in the context of American society, particularly paying attention to the intellectual roots of the belief system of white and black Americans during the Reconstruction.

Kinship and Continuity is a vivid ethnographic account of the development of the Pakistani presence in Oxford, from after World War II to the present day. Alison Shaw addresses the dynamics of migration, patterns of residence and kinship, ideas about health and illness, and notions of political and religious authority, and discusses the transformations and continuities of the lives of British Pakistanis against the backdrop of rural Pakistan and local socio-economic changes. This is a fully updated, revised edition of the book first published in 1988.

Near Human takes us into the borders of human and animal life. In the animal facility, fragile piglets substitute for humans who cannot be experimented on. In the neonatal intensive care unit, extremely premature infants prompt questions about whether they are too fragile to save or, if they survive, whether they will face a life of severe disability. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork carried out on farms, in animal-based experimental science labs, and in hospitals, Mette N. Svendsen shows that practices of substitution redirect the question of "what it means" to be human to "what it takes" to be human. The near humanness of preterm infants and research piglets becomes an avenue to unravel how neonatal life is imagined, how societal belonging is evaluated, and how the Danish welfare state is forged. This courageous multi-sited and multi-species approach cracks open the complex ethical field of valuating life and making different kinds of pigs and different kinds of humans belong in Denmark.  

The presence and impact of Hispanics/Latinos in the United States cannot be ignored. Already the largest minority group, by 2050 their numbers will exceed all the other minority groups in the United States combined.
This volume, called by one US reviewer `the best set of essays that I have ever read on Latino identity and group rights', addresses the issues concerned through a varied and interdisciplinary approach. With first-rate scholarship from a group of internationally renowned, established contributors, this collection of cutting-edge material makes a significant contribution to Latin American studies as well as Philosophy and Ethnic studies.

The presence and impact of Hispanics/Latinos in the United States cannot be ignored. Already the largest minority group, by 2050 their numbers will exceed all the other minority groups in the United States combined.
This volume, called by one US reviewer `the best set of essays that I have ever read on Latino identity and group rights', addresses the issues concerned through a varied and interdisciplinary approach. With first-rate scholarship from a group of internationally renowned, established contributors, this collection of cutting-edge material makes a significant contribution to Latin American studies as well as Philosophy and Ethnic studies.