Essays from a Native American grandfather to help navigate life's difficult experiences. Offered in the oral traditions of the Nez Perce, Native American writer W. S. Penn records the conversations he held with his granddaughter, lovingly referred to as ""Bean,"" as he guided her toward adulthood while confronting society's interest in possessions, fairness, and status. Drawing on his own family history and Native mythology, Penn charts a way through life where each endeavor is a journey-an opportunity to love, to learn, or to interact-rather than the means to a prize at the end. Divided into five parts, Penn addresses topics such as the power of words, race and identity, school, and how to be. In the essay "In the Nick of Names," Penn takes an amused look at the words we use for people and how their power, real or imagined, can alter our perception of an entire group. To Have and On Hold is an essay about wanting to assimilate into a group but at the risk of losing a good bit of yourself. "A Harvest Moon" is a humorous anecdote about a Native grandfather visiting his granddaughter's classroom and the absurdities of being a professional Indian. "Not Nobody" uses "Be All that You Can Be Week" at Bean's school to reveal the lessons and advantages of being a "nobody." In "From Paper to Person," Penn imagines the joy that may come to Bean when she spends time with her Paper People-three-foot-tall drawings, mounted on stiff cardboard-and as she grows into a young woman like her mom, able to say she is a person who is happy with what she has and not sorry for what she doesn't. Comical and engaging, the essays in Raising Bean will appeal to readers of all backgrounds and interests, especially those with a curiosity in language, perception, humor, and the ways in which Native people guide their families and friends with stories.

Through a professional story-teller's sometimes humorous commentary on culture and literature from The Odyssey on, Storytelling in the Digital Age suggests that literature is not an artifact to be studied but a living process. Often irreverent, crossing literary and scholarly lines, W.S. Penn aims to discover what literature does for an imaginatively engaged reader. Aimed to amuse, provoke, and propose ideas, this book makes bold new statements about what it means to be human through an interrogation of a variety of stories told and re-told over thousands of years.

This book challenges orthodox public perspectives on reproduction. It relies on participant observation, field censuses, interviews, and use of official demographic, epidemiological, and health statistics.

This book originated in a conference on Culture and Reproduction held at the University of California. It discusses conceptual changes in demographic theory, focuses on micro-level issues, and explores linkages between micro-level processes and the macro-level constraints that shape those processes.

What makes a 17-year-old girl decide to wrap a bomb around her body, walk into a supermarket, and detonate it, killing herself and an 18-year old girl shopping there? In this provocative and important book, renowned anthropologist W. Penn Handwerker shows that individual choices, from the fatal to the mundane, are fundamentally questions of culture--what it is, where it comes from, and the complex ways it changes and evolves. In accessible and engaging prose, he walks readers through the process of how the human imagination produces new things, shaped by culture and experience but also constantly evolving in unpredictable ways. He shows how understanding cultural dynamics, which explain one girl's decision to murder and another girl's decision to shop, will help us address critical policy questions, from reducing the likelihood of terrorist attacks to responding to global epidemics and addressing climate change.

This book challenges orthodox public perspectives on reproduction. It relies on participant observation, field censuses, interviews, and use of official demographic, epidemiological, and health statistics.

World population growth, especially its fertility component, poses a major dilemma for policymakers throughout the world. However, theoretical developments in demography have not yet provided a solid foundation for understanding contemporary population processes. From an anthropological perspective, the current micro-level models do not properly recognize the cultural and biological constraints within which people make reproductive decisions. On the macro level, demographic transition continues to be linked to processes of "modernization." Arguing that it is necessary to readdress micro-level issues in light of the cultural-historical variability of particular places and times and to explore linkages between macro- and micro-level phenomena through which population processes work themselves out, the contributors point the way to new theoretical formulations of the concept of culture, the nature of macro/micro linkages, and methods of placing demographic theory within the more encompassing framework of evolutionary theory.

The story of human evolution, or Our Story, is about the development and refinement of cultures. Individuals cannot do things on their own, this book argues; their choices are driven by heuristics, biases, illogical preferences, and irrational assumptions about the nature of reality. So how did humanity survive? By forming more and more successful cultures, which are teams of people who share a specific vision of the world. Because cultures-as-teams are more effective if there is a strong correspondence among the members, they select individuals who clarify the team's vision and force compliance to that vision. Thus, cultures-as-teams are powerful agents for change in the world. They offer the individual the opportunity to accomplish unimaginable goals, but they can also destroy him or her in the process.

Through a professional story-teller's sometimes humorous commentary on culture and literature from The Odyssey on , the book suggests that literature is not an artifact to be studied but a living process. Often irreverent, crossing literary and scholarly lines, Penn aims to discover what literature does for an imaginatively engaged reader.

The story of human evolution, or Our Story, is about the development and refinement of cultures. Individuals cannot do things on their own, this book argues; their choices are driven by heuristics, biases, illogical preferences, and irrational assumptions about the nature of reality. So how did humanity survive? By forming more and more successful cultures, which are teams of people who share a specific vision of the world. Because cultures-as-teams are more effective if there is a strong correspondence among the members, they select individuals who clarify the team's vision and force compliance to that vision. Thus, cultures-as-teams are powerful agents for change in the world. They offer the individual the opportunity to accomplish unimaginable goals, but they can also destroy him or her in the process.

Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text.

Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text.

Due to the very old age and scarcity of this book, many of the pages may be hard to read due to the blurring of the original text.

This study examines the socioeconomic and environmental implications of the new camu camu industry in Peru. Camu camu (Myrciaria dubia) is a small tree native to wetlands of the Amazon basin. It is especially abundant in Peruvian Amazonia. The high vitamin-C content of the fruit has generated interest in exporting camu camu products from Amazonia to more-developed countries. The government of Peru has been actively promoting this new extractive industry, as well as the planting of camu camu in rural areas. Non-governmental development organizations and private industry are now actively involved with camu camu projects and enterprises. In Peru, enthusiasm for this native species is high, because camu camu is expected to provide a much-needed and sustainable economic boost for the region. However, many questions about the environmental implications and socioeconomic impacts of the camu camu export industry need to be answered in order to understand its ecological and economic viability, and its effects on business and in rural communities. Findings indicate that camu camu has provided significantly more income to rural residents than is provided by the traditional boom and bust economies of Amazonia. Households who adopted camu camu as a new crop in their floodplain agroforestry systems farmed significantly more floodplain land than non-adopters, and were especially adept at experimenting with new innovations. Lack of agricultural credit is a major constraint to adopting camu camu as a new crop in Peru. Geographic isolation and the location of processing facilities in relation to fruit harvests present major obstacles to the economic viability of the new industry. Camu camu was found to be cultivated with a higher diversity of annual crops than is typical in floodplain fields of the region. Extraction of camu camu fruits from the wild does not appear to have a negative environmental impact, at least in the initial years of the industry. This non-timber forest product in the process of domestication can support a viable industry in the Peruvian Amazon, if agricultural extension methods and marketing channels are improved.

The narrator-protagonist of this magical novel about urban mixed-blood Indian life is Albert (Alley) Hummingbird, a self-conscious, shy college student who masks his feelings with humor and who longs to reconcile the two cultures that have formed him. Alley is not supposed to live at birth, but his grandfather, a Nez Perce, rescues him from Death (who reappears throughout the novel as a petty, mean, pathetic, and ultimately funny character). The grandfather's teachings to Alley, which come from the afterlife region known as the "absence of angels," connect Alley to his Indian heritage when he needs it. Otherwise his life is fragmented: a father who rejected his heritage, a mother who is slightly mad, and a friend, Sara, with whom Alley is in love.