Perspectives: An Open Invitation To Cultural Anthropology

Author(s): Nina Brown, Laura Tubelle de González, Thomas McIlwraith

Publisher: American Anthropological Association, Year: 2017

ISBN: 978-1-931303-55-2

"We are delighted to bring to you this novel textbook, a collection of chapters on the essential topics in cultural anthropology. Different from other introductory textbooks, this book is an edited volume with each chapter written by a different author. Each author has written from their experiences working as an anthropologist and that personal touch makes for an accessible introduction to cultural anthropology." - SACC

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race: American Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology in the Twentieth Century

Author(s): John P Jackson, David J. Depew (eds.)

Series: History and Philosophy of Biology

Publisher: Routledge, Year: 2017

ISBN: 1351810774, 9781351810777

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race examines the development and defence of an argument that arose at the boundary between anthropology and evolutionary biology in twentieth-century America. In its fully articulated form, this argument simultaneously discredited scientific racism and defended free human agency in Darwinian terms.

The volume is timely because it gives readers a key to assessing contemporary debates about the biology of race. By working across disciplinary lines, the book’s focal figures--the anthropologist Franz Boas, the cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and the physical anthropologist Sherwood Washburn--found increasingly persuasive ways of cutting between genetic determinist and social constructionist views of race by grounding Boas’s racially egalitarian, culturally relativistic, and democratically pluralistic ethic in a distinctive version of the genetic theory of natural selection. Collaborators in making and defending this argument included Ashley Montagu, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Lewontin.

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and academics interested in subjects including Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Sociology of Race, History of Biology and Anthropology, and Rhetoric of Science.

Somali, Muslim, British: Striving in Securitized Britain

Author(s): Giulia Liberatore

Series: London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology

Publisher: Bloomsbury, Year: 2017

ISBN: 1350027731, 9781350027732

Somalis are one of the most chastised Muslim communities in Europe. Depicted in the news as victims of female genital mutilation, perpetrators of gang violence, or more recently, as radical Islamists, Somalis have been cast as a threat to social cohesion, national identity, and security in Britain and beyond. 

Somali, Muslim, British shifts attention away from these public representations to provide a detailed ethnographic study of Somali Muslim women's engagements with religion, political discourses, and public culture in the United Kingdom. 

The book chronicles the aspirations of different generations of Somali women as they respond to publicly charged questions of what it means to be Muslim, Somali, and British. By challenging and reconfiguring the dominant political frameworks in which they are immersed, these women imagine new ways of being in securitized Britain. Giulia Liberatore provides a nuanced account of Islamic piety, arguing that it needs to be understood as one among many forms of striving that individuals pursue throughout their lives.

Bringing new perspectives to debates about Islam and multiculturalism in Europe, this book makes an important contribution to the anthropology of religion, subjectivity, and gender.

The Concept of Action

Author(s): Nick J. Enfield, Jack Sidnell

Series: New Departures in Anthropology

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Year: 2017

ISBN: 9781108514507

When people do things with words, how do we know what they are doing? Many scholars have assumed a category of things called actions: 'requests', 'proposals', 'complaints', 'excuses'. The idea is both convenient and intuitive, but as this book argues, it is a spurious concept of action. In interaction, a person's primary task is to decide how to respond, not to label what someone just did. The labeling of actions is a meta-level process, appropriate only when we wish to draw attention to others' behaviors in order to quiz, sanction, praise, blame, or otherwise hold them to account. This book develops a new account of action grounded in certain fundamental ideas about the nature of human sociality: that social conduct is naturally interpreted as purposeful; that human behavior is shaped under a tyranny of social accountability; and that language is our central resource for social action and reaction.

Exploring Medical Anthropology

Author(s): Donald Joralemon

Publisher: Routledge, Year: 2017

ISBN: 1315470594, 9781315470597

Now in its fourth edition, Exploring Medical Anthropology provides a concise and engaging introduction to medical anthropology. It presents competing theoretical perspectives in a balanced fashion, highlighting points of conflict and convergence. Concrete examples and the author’s personal research experiences are utilized to explain some of the discipline’s most important insights, such as that biology and culture matter equally in the human experience of disease and that medical anthropology can help to alleviate human suffering.

The text has been thoroughly updated for the fourth edition, including fresh case studies and a new chapter on drugs. It contains a range of pedagogical features to support teaching and learning, including images, text boxes, a glossary, and suggested further reading.

What is Anthropology?

Author(s): Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Series: Anthropology, Culture and Society Series

Publisher: Pluto Press, Year: 2017

ISBN: 0745399657, 9780745399652

When it was first published, What Is Anthropology? immediately ignited the discipline, proving how anthropology can be a revolutionary way of thinking about the modern human world. In this fully updated second edition, Thomas Hylland Eriksen brings together examples from current events as well as within anthropological research in order to explain how to see the world from below and from within--emphasizing the importance of adopting an insider's perspective. 

The first section of the book presents the history of anthropology, and the second discusses core issues in greater detail, covering economics, morals, human nature, ecology, cultural relativism, and much more. Throughout, he reveals how seemingly enormous cultural differences actually conceal the deep unity of humanity. Perfect not only for students, but also for those who have never encountered anthropology before, What is Anthropology? presents the discipline in an exciting and innovative way.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo. He is the author of several books including Ethnicity and Nationalism, A History of Anthropology, Small Places, Large Issues, Tyranny of the Moment, and Globalisation, all published by Pluto Press.