In Watching Lacandon Maya Lives, the author follows three generations of one Lacandon Maya family. Readers track the subjects' lives as they shift through events such as marriage, parenthood, and religious conversion, all set against a backdrop of increased tourism, road construction, and the murders of two people in the community. This book encompasses both ethnography and a critique of ethnographic writing. At one level, the book is about social, agricultural, technological, and religious changes that have occurred in a Lacandon Maya community in Mexico. At a second level, the book is a critique of those who invented a Utopian picture of a "traditional" Lacandon past that never really existed. For cultural anthropologists, or anyone interested in learning more about this Mayan culture.

In Watching Lacandon Maya Lives, the author follows three generations of one Lacandon Maya family. Readers track the subjects' lives as they shift through events such as marriage, parenthood, and religious conversion, all set against a backdrop of increased tourism, road construction, and the murders of two people in the community. This book encompasses both ethnography and a critique of ethnographic writing. At one level, the book is about social, agricultural, technological, and religious changes that have occurred in a Lacandon Maya community in Mexico. At a second level, the book is a critique of those who invented a Utopian picture of a "traditional" Lacandon past that never really existed. For cultural anthropologists, or anyone interested in learning more about this Mayan culture.

Presenting a selection of critical essays in anthropology from 1860 to the current day, this sixth edition of Anthropological Theory includes classic authors such as Tylor, Marx, Boas, Malinowski, Foucault, Turner, and Geertz as well as contemporary thinkers such as Appadurai, Abu-Lughod, and Bourgois. Most essays are reprinted without abridgement. Those that are shortened include notes explaining how much and what was removed. What sets McGee and Warms' text apart from other readers are its introductions, footnotes, and index. Detailed introductions examine critical developments in theory, introduce key people and discuss historical and personal influences on theorists. In extensive footnotes the editors provide commentary that puts the writing in historical and cultural context, defines unusual terms, translates non-English phrases, identifies references to other scholars and their works, and offers paraphrases and summaries of complex passages. The notes identify and provide background information on hundreds of scholars and concepts important in the development of anthropology. This makes the essays more accessible to both students and current day scholars. An extensive index makes this book an invaluable reference tool.

Presenting a selection of critical essays in anthropology from 1860 to the current day, this sixth edition of Anthropological Theory includes classic authors such as Tylor, Marx, Boas, Malinowski, Foucault, Turner, and Geertz as well as contemporary thinkers such as Appadurai, Abu-Lughod, and Bourgois. Most essays are reprinted without abridgement. Those that are shortened include notes explaining how much and what was removed. What sets McGee and Warms' text apart from other readers are its introductions, footnotes, and index. Detailed introductions examine critical developments in theory, introduce key people and discuss historical and personal influences on theorists. In extensive footnotes the editors provide commentary that puts the writing in historical and cultural context, defines unusual terms, translates non-English phrases, identifies references to other scholars and their works, and offers paraphrases and summaries of complex passages. The notes identify and provide background information on hundreds of scholars and concepts important in the development of anthropology. This makes the essays more accessible to both students and current day scholars. An extensive index makes this book an invaluable reference tool.