The focus of Richard Zgusta's The Peoples of Northeast Asia through Time is the formation of indigenous and cultural groups of coastal northeast Asia, including the Ainu, the "Paleoasiatic" peoples, and the Asiatic Eskimo. Most chapters begin with a summary of each culture at the beginning of the colonial era, which is followed by an interdisciplinary reconstruction of prehistoric cultures that have direct ancestor-descendant relationships with the modern ones. An additional chapter presents a comparative discussion of the ethnographic data, including subsistence patterns, material culture, social organization, and religious beliefs, from a diachronic viewpoint. Each chapter includes maps and extensive references.

The kidney is innervated with efferent sympathetic nerve fibers reaching the renal vasculature, the tubules, the juxtaglomerular granular cells, and the renal pelvic wall. The renal sensory nerves are mainly found in the renal pelvic wall. Increases in efferent renal sympathetic nerve activity reduce renal blood flow and urinary sodium excretion by activation of 1-adrenoceptors and increase renin secretion rate by activation of 1-adrenoceptors. In response to normal physiological stimulation, changes in efferent renal sympathetic nerve activity contribute importantly to homeostatic regulation of sodium and water balance. The renal mechanosensory nerves are activated by stretch of the renal pelvic tissue produced by increases in renal pelvic tissue of a magnitude that may occur during increased urine flow rate. Under normal conditions, the renal mechanosensory nerves activated by stretch of the sensory nerves elicits an inhibitory renorenal reflex response consisting of decreases in efferent renal sympathetic nerve activity leading to natriuresis. Increasing efferent sympathetic nerve activity increases afferent renal nerve activity which, in turn, decreases efferent renal sympathetic nerve activity by activation of the renorenal reflexes. Thus, activation of the afferent renal nerves buffers changes in efferent renal sympathetic nerve activity in the overall goal of maintaining sodium balance. In pathological conditions of sodium retention, impairment of the inhibitory renorenal reflexes contributes to an inappropriately increased efferent renal sympathetic nerve activity in the presence of sodium retention. In states of renal disease or injury, there is a shift from inhibitory to excitatory reflexes originating in the kidney. Studies in essential hypertensive patients have shown that renal denervation results in long-term reduction in arterial pressure, suggesting an important role for the efferent and afferent renal nerves in hypertension.

What is multiculturalism? The word is used everywhere, often without being clearly defined. The first collection of this scope, Mapping Multiculturalism offers cogent critiques of the term and its uses by leading scholars in sociology, history, literary criticism, popular culture studies, ethnic studies, and critical legal studies. The contributors look at current uses of the rubric "multicultural" and offer groundbreaking analyses of complex relationships between popular culture, political events, and intellectual trends. Featuring essays by authors, activists, artists, and theoreticians, Mapping Multiculturalism represents the entire range of multicultural studies today through essays that demarcate the cutting edge of contemporary cultural politics. Contributors: Norma Alarcon, U of California, Berkeley; Richard P. Appelbaum, U of California, Santa Barbara; Edna Bonacich, U of California, Riverside; Wendy Brown, U of California, Santa Cruz; Darryl B. Dickson-Carr, Florida State U; Antonia I. Castaneda, U of Texas, Austin; Angie Chabram-Dernersesian, U of California, Davis; Jon Cruz, U of California, Santa Barbara; Angela Y. Davis, U of California, Santa Cruz; Steve Fagin, U of California, San Diego; Rosa Linda Fregoso, U of California, Davis; Neil Gotanda, Western State U; M. Annette Jaimes Guerrero, San Francisco State U; Ramon Gutierrez, U of California, San Diego; Cynthia Hamilton, U of Rhode Island; George Lipsitz, University of California, San Diego; Lisa Lowe, U of California, San Diego; Wahneema Lubiano, Princeton U; Michael Omi, U of California, Berkeley; Lourdes Portillo; Cedric Jo Robinson, U of California, Santa Barbara; Tricia Rose, New York U; Gregg Scott; Paul Smith, George Mason U; Renee Tajima; Patricia Zavella, U of California, Santa Cruz. Avery F. Gordon teaches sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Christopher Newfield teaches English, also at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Environment in Anthropology presents ecology and current environmental studies from an anthropological point of view. From the classics to the most current scholarship, this text connects the theory and practice in environment and anthropology, providing readers with a strong intellectual foundation as well as offering practical tools for solving environmental problems. Haenn, Wilk, and Harnish pose the most urgent questions of environmental protection: How are environmental problems mediated by cultural values? What are the environmental effects of urbanization? When do environmentalists' goals and actions conflict with those of indigenous peoples? How can we assess the impact of "environmentally correct" businesses? They also cover the fundamental topics of population growth, large scale development, biodiversity conservation, sustainable environmental management, indigenous groups, consumption, and globalization. This revised edition addresses new topics such as water, toxic waste, neoliberalism, environmental history, environmental activism, and REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), and it situates anthropology in the multi-disciplinary field of environmental research. It also offers readers a guide for developing their own plan for environmental action. This volume offers an introduction to the breadth of ecological and environmental anthropology as well as to its historical trends and current developments. Balancing landmark essays with cutting-edge scholarship, bridging theory and practice, and offering suggestions for further reading and new directions for research, The Environment in Anthropology continues to provide the ideal introduction to a burgeoning field.

Over the past four decades, the forces of economic restructuring, globalization, and suburbanization, coupled with changes in social policies have dimmed hopes for revitalizing minority neighborhoods in the U.S. Community economic development offers a possible way to improve economic and employment opportunities in minority communities. In this authoritative collection of original essays, contributors evaluate current programs and their prospects for future success.Using case studies that consider communities of African-Americans, Latinos, Asian immigrants, and Native Americans, the book is organized around four broad topics. The Context explores the larger demographic, economic, social, and physical forces at work in the marginalization of minority communities. Labor Market Development discusses the factors that shape supply and demand and examines policies and strategies for workforce development. Business Development focuses on opportunities and obstacles for minority-owned businesses. Complementary Strategies probes the connections between varied economic development strategies, including the necessity of affordable housing and social services.Taken together, these essays offer a comprehensive primer for students as well as an informative overview for professionals.

In the early 1990s renowned anthropologist Sarat Chandra Roy published his enthnographies on Oraons, one of the numerous tribes in Chotanagpur region. Since then there has been no major work on this tribe, one of the largest in the areas. The present work begins by using the symbol as a key ingredient in classifying and analysing criteria used in the cognition of the Oraons. It goes into the detail of symbol formation to show how they are used in everyday contexts. Symbols include aspects of rituals, festivals and knowledge about other spheres of Oraon life. Since the raw material of anthropological studies comes ultimately from the individual, it is the latter who is the focus of this study. "The idea of time, space and boundaries help the Oraons to practice a large variety of medical practices for their curative and other health requirements. Further, the identity of the Oraons as one having a religion is also ambivalent, caused by inclusion-exclusion realities of various kinds operating on them. This makes them include converts to Christianity for certain reasons and also to resent and reject them for others. These ideas further enable them to politically create a pan-community identity as Jharkhandis, creating a demand for a space to be created called Jharkhand, having its own individual culture separate from other states around them. This imagined homeland became a reality recently with the creation of Jharkhand. This work attempts a major stocktaking of the Oraons nearly a hundred year after Roy's classic works appeared.

The study of self-consciousness helps humans understand themselves and restores their identities. But self-consciousness has been a mystery since the beginning of history, and this mystery cannot be resolved by conventional natural science. In Self-Consciousness, author Masakazu Shoji takes the mystery out of self-consciousness by proposing the idea that the human brain and body are a biological machine. A former VLSI microprocessor designer and semiconductor physicist, Shoji was guided by the ideas of ancient sages to create a conceptual design of a human machine brain model. He explains how it works, how it senses itself and the outside world, and how the machine creates the sense of existence of the subject SELF to itself, just as a living human brain does. A follow-up to Shoji's previous book, Neuron Circuits, Electronic Circuits, and Self-Consciousness, this new volume examines self-consciousness from three unconventional viewpoints to present a complex theory of the mind and how self-consciousness develops.

Human Growth and Development, Third Edition provides a comprehensive volume covering the biology of human growth and the genetic, endocrine, environmental, nutritional, and socio-economic factors that contribute towards its full expression. Human Growth and Development continues to be a valuable resource for researchers, professors and graduate students across the interdisciplinary area of human development. For the new edition, updates are made to all fourteen of the "core chapters" of the book which form the essential reading for a comprehensive understanding of human growth and development. Additionally, new special topics are covered including the interpretation of recently found sub-adult fossils that expand our understanding of the evolution of human growth and a discussion of the early pattern of growth and development as the developmental origins of risk for non-communicable diseases of adulthood. Human Growth and Development, Third Edition includes contributions from the well-known experts in the field and is the most reputable, comprehensive resource available.

In Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Indonesia Lee Wilson offers an innovative study of nationalism and the Indonesian state through the ethnography of the martial art of Pencak Silat. Wilson shows how technologies of physical and spiritual warfare such as Pencak Silat have long played a prominent role in Indonesian political society. He demonstrates the importance of these technologies to the display and performance of power, and highlights the limitations of theories of secular modernity for understanding political forms in contemporary Indonesia. He offers a compelling argument for a revisionist account of models of power in Indonesia in which authority is understood as precarious and multiple, and the body is politically charged because of its potential for transformation.

In a world now filled with more people who are overweight than underweight, public health and medical perspectives paint obesity as a catastrophic epidemic that threatens to overwhelm health systems and undermine life expectancies globally. In many societies, being obese also creates profound personal suffering because it is so culturally stigmatized. Yet despite loud messages about the health and social costs of being obese, weight gain is a seemingly universal aspect of the modern human condition. Grounded in a holistic anthropological approach and using a range of ethnographic and ecological case studies, Obesity shows that the human tendency to become and stay fat makes perfect sense in terms of evolved human inclinations and the physical and social realities of modern life. Drawing on her own fieldwork in the rural United States, Mexico, and the Pacific Islands over the last two decades, Alexandra A. Brewis addresses such critical questions as why obesity is defined as a problem and why some groups are so much more at risk than others. She suggests innovative ways that anthropology and other social sciences can use community-based research to address the serious public health and social justice concerns provoked by the global spread of obesity.