Social Anthropology

Anthropology is the organized study of what makes humans human. It takes an objective step back to ask questions like: Given our common characteristics, why aren't all of us exactly the same? And how can knowing the reasons behind our differences - as well as our similarities - teach us useful lessons for the future? The updated edition of Anthropology for Dummies gives you a panoramic view of the fascinating fieldwork and theory that seeks to answer these questions - and helps you view the human world through impartial, anthropological eyes. 

The Little Ice Age tells the story of the turbulent, unpredictable, and often very cold years of modern European history, how climate altered historical events, and what they mean in the context of today’s global warming.

"If you want to know what anthropology is, look at what anthropologists do," write the authors of Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction. This engaging overview of the field combines an accessible account of some of the discipline's guiding principles and methodology with abundant examples and illustrations of anthropologists at work.

A Degree in a Book: Anthropology dives deep into the study of human culture and societies. Discover the impact of language on understanding how different societies approach family and kinship and how different cultures are studied, as well as how anthropology is used in our everyday lives—applied anthropology. Including theories from Herodotus to Malinowski and Durkeim to de Waal, this accessible guide covers all the major strands of anthropology that are studied today.

Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

Scientists' understanding of life is progressing more rapidly than at any point in human history, from the extraordinary decoding of DNA to the controversial emergence of biotechnology. Featuring pioneering biologists, geneticists, physicists, and science writers, Life explains just how far we've come - and takes a brilliantly educated guess at where we're heading.

Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past.

Over more than 25 years of teaching and research, Christine Desdemaines-Hugon has become an unrivaled expert in the cave art and artists of the Dordogne region. In Stepping-Stones she combines her expertise in both art and archaeology to convey an intimate understanding of the "cave experience." Her keen insights communicate not only the incomparable artistic value of these works but also the near-spiritual impact of viewing them for oneself.

Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the West and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the repercussions of European colonialism in Africa remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.

Originally drawn to Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus for his knowledge of mind-altering plants, best-selling author Carlos Castaneda soon immersed himself in the sorcerer's magical world entirely. Ten years after his first encounter with the shaman, Castaneda examines his field notes and comes to understand what don Juan knew all along - that these plants are merely a means to understanding the alternative realities that one cannot fully embrace on one's own.  

Many bemoan the decay of culture. But we all have a responsibility to care for culture, to nurture it in ways that help people thrive. In Culture Care artist Makoto Fujimura issues a call to cultural stewardship, in which we become generative and feed our culture's soul with beauty, creativity, and generosity. We serve others as cultural custodians of the future. This is a book for artists, but artists come in many forms.

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals?

Although eugenics is now widely discredited, some groups and individuals claim a new scientific basis for old racist assumptions. Pondering the continuing influence of racist research and thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, Robert Wald Sussman explains why - when it comes to race - too many people still mistake bigotry for science.

Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences but also from our cultures. Wisdom Sits in Places, the first sustained study of places and place explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of people, the Western Apache in Arizona. For more than 30 years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names.

Overlooking the Border continues the dialogue surrounding the social history of Jerusalem. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the book juxtaposes Israeli and Palestinian personal narratives about the past with contemporary museum exhibits, street plaques, tourism, and real estate projects that are reshaping the city since the decline of the peace process and the second intifada. As sites of memory, Jerusalem's homes, streets, and natural areas form the setting for emotionally charged narratives about belonging and rights to place.

Internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille reveals for the first time the techniques he has used to improve profitability and practices for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world.

Geneticists like David Reich have made astounding advances in the field of genomics, which is proving to be as important as archaeology, linguistics, and written records as a means to understand our ancestry. In Who We Are and How We Got Here, Reich allows listeners to discover how the human genome provides not only all the information a human embryo needs to develop but also the hidden story of our species.

Why We Hate tackles a pressing issue of both longstanding interest and fresh relevance: why a social species like Homo sapiens should nevertheless be so hateful to itself. We go to war and are prejudiced against our fellow human beings. We discriminate on the basis of nationality, class, race, sexual orientation, religion, and gender. Why are humans at once so social and so hateful to each other? In this book, Michael Ruse looks at scientific understandings of human hatred, particularly Darwinian evolutionary theory.

In a culture in which science is believed to hold the answers to every question, spiritual realities like the soul are often ignored or ridiculed. We are told that neuroscience holds the key to explaining every aspect of human behavior. Yet Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland argues that scripture, sound philosophical reasoning, and everyday experience all point to the reality of an immaterial soul.

Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life - and death - in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence.