Anthropology - Asking Questions About Human Origins, Diversity, and Culture

List of contents

• Contents


• Letter from the Authors


• About the Authors


• Preface


• Acknowledgments


• PART I The Anthropological Perspective


• 1 Anthropology:


• Asking Questions About Humanity


• How Did Anthropology Begin?


• The Disruptions of Industrialization


• The Theory of Evolution


• Colonial Origins of Cultural Anthropology


• Anthropology as a Global Discipline


• What Do the Four Subfields of Anthropology Have in Common?


• Culture


• Cultural Relativism


• Human Diversity


• Change


• Holism


• How Do Anthropologists Know What They Know?


• The Scientific Method in Anthropology


• When Anthropology Is Not a Science: Interpreting Other Cultures


• How Do Anthropologists Put Their Knowledge to Work in the World?


• Applied and Practicing Anthropology


• Putting Anthropology to Work


• What Ethical Obligations Do Anthropologists Have?


• Do No Harm


• Take Responsibility for Your Work


• Share Your Findings


• A WORLD IN MOTION: George A. Dorsey and the Anthropology of Immigration in the Early Twentieth Century


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: E. B. Tylor and the Culture Concept


• DOING FIELDWORK: Conducting Holistic Research with Stanley Ulijaszek


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Anthropologists Are Innovators


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Key Characteristics of Anthropologists in the Workplace


• 2 Culture:


• Giving Meaning to Human Lives


• What Is Culture?


• Elements of Culture


• Defining Culture in This Book


• If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?


• Symbols


• Values


• Norms


• Traditions


• How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?


• Culture and Social Institutions


• American Culture Expressed Through Breakfast Cereals and Sexuality


• Can Anybody Own Culture?


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Cultural Anthropology and Human Possibilities


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Franz Boas and the Relativity of Culture


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Michael Ames and Collaborative Museum Exhibits


• 3 Human Biocultural Evolution:


• Emergence of the Biocultural Animal


• Life Changes. But What Does It Mean to Say It Evolves?


• A Brief Primer on the Rise of Evolutionary Thinking


• Differentiating Evolution From Simple Change


• What It Means to Have Common Ancestry


• Why Evolution Is Important to Anthropology . . . and Anthropology to Evolution


• What Are the Actual Mechanisms Through Which Evolution Occurs?


• The Modern Synthesis


• Basic Sources of Biological Change: Genes, DNA, and Cells


• Genetic Mechanisms of Evolution


• Non-Genetic Mechanisms of Evolution


• How Do Biocultural Patterns Affect Evolution?


• Human Inheritance Involves Multiple Systems


• Evolutionary Processes Are Developmentally Open-Ended


• The Importance of Constructivist Evolutionary Approaches for Biocultural Anthropology


• Are Modern Humans Evolving, and Where Might We Be Headed?


• The Impact of Disease on Evolution


• Cultural Practices, Morphology, and Evolution


• Looking to the Future


• Global Population and Human Density


• Genetic Manipulation


• Climate Change and Adaptive Behavioral Patterns


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Clyde Kluckhohn and the Role of Evolution in Anthropology


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: The Biocultural Awesomeness of Awe


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Clarifying the Biocultural and Evolutionary Dimensions of Obesity


• 4 Cross-Cultural Interactions:


• Understanding Culture and Globalization


• Are Cross-Cultural Interactions All That New?


• Is the Contemporary World Really Getting Smaller?


• Defining Globalization


• The World We Live In


• What Are the Outcomes of Global Integration?


• Colonialism and World Systems Theory


• Cultures of Migration


• Resistance at the Periphery


• Globalizing and Localizing Identities


• Doesn't Everyone Want to Be Developed?


• What Is Development?


• Development Anthropology


• Anthropology of Development


• Change on Their Own Terms


• If the World Is Not Becoming Homogenized, What Is Actually Happening?


• Cultural Convergence Theories


• Hybridization


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Eric Wolf, Culture, and the World System


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Coldplay and the Global Citizen Festival


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Instant Ramen Noodles Take Over the World


• DOING FIELDWORK: Tracking Emergent Forms of Citizenship with Aihwa Ong


• PART II Becoming Human


• METHODS MEMO: How Do Anthropologists Study Human and Primate Biological Processes?


• 5 Living Primates:


• Comparing Monkeys, Apes, and Humans


• What Does It Mean to Be a Primate, and Why Does It Matter to Anthropology?


• What It Means to Be a Primate


• The Distinctions Between Strepsirrhini and Haplorrhini


• Primatology as Anthropology


• What Are the Basic Patterns of Primate Behavioral Diversity, and Under What Conditions Did They Develop?


• Common Behavior Patterns Among Primates


• The Emergence of Primate Behavioral Diversity


• How Do Behavior Patterns Among Monkeys and Apes Compare with Humans?


• The Lives of Macaques


• The Lives of Chimpanzees and Bonobos


• So How Do They Compare With Us?


• What Does Studying Monkeys and Apes Really Illustrate About Human Distinctiveness?


• Primate Social Organization and Human Behavior


• We Have Culture. Do They Too?


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: So You Want to Work With Primates?


• DOING FIELDWORK: The Ethics of Working with Great Apes


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Sherwood Washburn and the New (Integrative) Physical Anthropology


• METHODS MEMO: How Do Anthropologists Study Ancient Primates and Human Origins?


• 6 Ancestral Humans:


• Understanding the Human Family Tree


• Who Are Our Earliest Possible Ancestors?


• Our Earliest Ancestors Were Hominins


• The Fossil Record of Hominins in


• The Three Hominin Genera


• Who Is Our Most Direct Ancestor?


• What Did Walking on Two Legs and Having Big Brains Mean for the Early Hominins?


• The Benefits of Upright Movement


• The Effects of Big Brains on Early Hominin Behavior


• Who Were the First Humans, and Where Did They Live?


• Introducing Homo erectus


• The Emergence of Archaic Humans


• Who Were the Neanderthals and Denisovans?


• Contemporary Humans Hit the Scene


• How Do We Know If the First Humans Were Cultural Beings, and What Role Did Culture Play in Their Evolution?


• The Emerging Cultural Capacity of H. erectus


• Culture Among Archaic Humans


• Social Cooperation and Symbolic Expression


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: How to Think Like a Paleoanthropologist


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Were We "Born to Run"?


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Helpless Babies, and the Evolution of Human Cooperation


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Rethinking the Peopling of the Americas


• 7 Human Biodiversity Today:


• Understanding Our Differences and Similarities


• In What Ways Do Contemporary Humans Vary Biologically?


• Genetic Variation Within and Between Human Populations


• Genetic Variation Is Tied to Gene Flow


• Physiological Diversity and Blood Types


• Disease Environments and Human Immunity


• Why Do Human Bodies Look So Different Across the Planet?


• Is Skin Really Colored?


• Variations in Body Shape, Stature, and Size


• Are Differences of Race Also Differences of Biology?


• The Biological Meanings (and Meaninglessness) of "Human Races"


• But Isn't There Scientific Evidence for the Existence of Races?


• What Biocultural Consequences Do Social Phenomena Like Discrimination, Rapid Change, Nurturing, and So Forth Have on Human Bodies?


• Eugenics: A Weak Theory of Genetic Inheritance


• The Embodied Consequences of Being a Racialized Minority


• How Do Humans Thrive?


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Ashley Montagu and "Man's Most Dangerous Myth"


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Jada Benn Torres and Reparational Genetics in the Caribbean


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: It Does, in Fact, "Take a Village:" A Biocultural Perspective


• 8 The Body:


• Biocultural Perspectives on Health and Illness


• How Do Biological and Cultural Factors Shape Our Bodily Experiences?


• Uniting Mind and Matter: A Biocultural Perspective


• Culture and Mental Illness


• What Do We Mean by Health and Illness?


• The Individual Subjectivity of Illness


• The "Sick Role": The Social Expectations of Illness


• How and Why Do Doctors and Other Health Practitioners Gain Social Authority?


• The Disease-Illness Distinction: Professional and Popular Views of Sickness


• The Medicalization of the Non-Medical


• How Does Healing Happen?


• Clinical Therapeutic Processes


• Symbolic Therapeutic Processes


• Social Support


• Persuasion: The Placebo Effect


• How Can Anthropology Help Us Address Global Health Problems?


• Understanding Global Health Problems


• Anthropological Contributions to Tackling the International HIV/AIDS Crisis


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Heidi Larson, Vaccine Anthropologist


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Medical Tourism and Yemen


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Paul Farmer and the Effort to Situate Global Health Problems in an Anthropology of Suffering




• PART III Humans and Their Material Worlds


• METHODS MEMO: What Field Methods Do Archaeologists Use to Study the Human and Environmental Past?




• 9 Materiality:


• Constructing Social Relationships and MeaningsWith Things


• Why Is the Ownership of Prehistoric Artifacts and Objects From Other Cultures Such a Contentious Issue?


• Archaeological Excavation and Questions of Ownership


• The Road to NAGPRA


• Cultural Resource Management


• How Should We Look at Objects Anthropologically?


• The Many Dimensions of Objects


• A Shiny New Bicycle in Multiple Dimensions


• Constructing the Meaning of an Archaeological Artifact


• How and Why Do the Meanings of Things Change Over Time?


• The Social Life of Things


• Three Ways Objects Change Over Time


• How Archaeological Specimens Change Meaning Over Time


• What Role Does Material Culture Play in Constructing the Meaning of a Community's Past?


• Claiming the Past


• The Politics of Archaeology


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Working as an Ethnographic Collections Manager at the Field Museum


• A WORLD IN MOTION: The Movement of Art In and Out of Africa


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Margaret Conkey and the Gender Politics of Understanding Past Lives


• METHODS MEMO: Why Is Carbon-14 So Important to Archaeologists?




• 10 Early Agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution:


• Modifying the Environment to Satisfy Human Demands


• How Important Was Hunting to Prehistoric Peoples?


• Taking Stock of Living Hunter-Gatherers


• "Man the Hunter"


• Recent Attempts to Understand Prehistoric Hunting Strategies


• Back to the Past: Understanding Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers


• Why Did People Start Domesticating Plants and Animals?


• Why Do Archaeologists Call It the Neolithic Revolution?


• The Neolithic Revolution: The Beginnings of Food Production


• The Hilly Flanks Hypothesis


• The Pressure of Population Growth


• Changing Weather and Climates


• The Role of Social Processes


• How Did Early Humans Raise Their Own Food?


• Domesticating Plants


• Domesticating Animals


• Tending Tree Crops: Recent Findings on Arboriculture


• What Impact Did Raising Plants and Animals Have on Other Aspects of Life?


• Transhumance: Moving Herds with the Seasons


• Sedentism and Growing Populations


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: What Are the Responsibilities and Job Description of an Archaeologist?


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: V. Gordon Childe on the Neolithic Revolution


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Michael Heckenberger on the Amazon as a Culturally Managed Landscape


• METHODS MEMO: How Do Archaeologists Analyze the Objects They Find?




• 11 The Rise and Decline of Cities and States:


• Understanding Social Complexity in Prehistory


• What Does Social Complexity Mean to Archaeologists?


• Population Growth and Settlement Practices


• Trade and Contact With Peoples of Different Cultures


• Specialization and Production Models


• Does Complexity Always Imply Social Inequality?


• How Can Archaeologists Identify Social Complexity From Archaeological Sites and Artifacts?


• Identifying Social Complexity From Sites and Artifacts in Western Mexico


• Population Growth and Settlement Patterns


• Soils and Land Use


• Monuments and Buildings


• Mortuary Patterns and Skeletal Remains


• Ceramic, Stone, and Metal Objects


• How Do Archaeologists Explain Why Cities and States Fall Apart?


• Rethinking Abandonment in the US Southwest


• The Transformation (Not Collapse) of the Classic Maya


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Archaeological Field Schools for Undergraduates


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Robert Carneiro on the Role of Warfare in the Rise of Complex Societies


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Exploring Early Contacts Between China and the East Coast of Africa


• DOING FIELDWORK: Researching Primordial Sea Monsters and Sharks in the Maya Jungle with Sarah Newman




• PART IV Human Social Relations and Their Meanings


• METHODS MEMO: How Do Anthropologists Study the Relationship Between Language and Culture?




• 12 Linguistic Anthropology:


• Relating Language and Culture


• Where Does Language Come From?


• Evolutionary Perspectives on Language


• Historical Linguistics: Studying Language Origins and Change


• What Does Language Actually Do and How Does it Work?


• Descriptive Linguistics


• Phonology: Sounds of Language


• Morphology: Grammatical Categories


• Sociolinguistics


• Does Language Shape How We Experience the World?


• The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis


• Hopi Notions of Time


• Ethnoscience and Color Terms


• Is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Correct?


• If Language Is Always Changing, Why Does It Seem So Stable?


• Linguistic Change, Stability, and National Policy


• Language Stability Parallels Cultural Stability


• How Does Language Relate to Social Power and Inequality?


• Language Ideology


• Gendered Language Styles


• Language and the Legacy of Colonialism


• Language Ideologies and Contemporary Racial Justice


• Language Ideology and New Media Technologies


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: The End of Gendered Pronouns in American English?


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Edward Sapir on How Language Shapes Culture


• A WORLD IN MOTION: The Emergence of a New Language in the Northern Territory of Australia


• DOING FIELDWORK: Anthropologist Bernard Perley Explores Language Endangerment


• METHODS MEMO: How Do Anthropologists Use Ethnographic Methods to Study Culture and Social Relations?




• 13 Economics:


• Working, Sharing, and Buying


• Is Money Really the Measure of All Things?


• Culture, Economics, and Value


• The Neoclassical Perspective


• The Substantivist-Formalist Debate


• The Marxist Perspective


• The Cultural Economics Perspective


• How Does Culture Shape the Value and Meaning of Money?


• The Types and Cultural Dimensions of Money


• Money, Debt, and the Distribution of Power


• Why Does Gift Exchange Play Such an Important Role in All Societies?


• Gift Exchange and Economy: Two Classic Approaches


• Gift Exchange in Market-Based Economies


• What Is the Point of Owning Things?


• Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Property


• Appropriation and Consumption


• Does Capitalism Have Distinct Cultures?


• Culture and Social Relations on Wall Street


• Entrepreneurial Capitalism Among Malays


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: The Economics of Anthropology


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: David Graeber and the Problem of Debt and Obligation in Organizing Human Societies


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Jim Yong Kim's Holistic, On-the-Ground Approach to Fighting Poverty




• 14 Sustainability:


• Environment and Foodways


• Do All People See Nature in the Same Way?


• The Human-Nature Divide?


• The Cultural Landscape


• How Do People Secure an Adequate, Meaningful, and Environmentally Sustainable Food Supply?


• Modes of Subsistence


• Food, Culture, and Meaning


• How Does Non-Western Knowledge of Nature and Agriculture Relate to Science?


• Ethnoscience


• Traditional Ecological Knowledge


• How Are Industrial Agriculture, Economic Globalization, and Climate Change Linked to Increasing Environmental and Health Problems?


• Population and Environment


• Ecological Footprint


• Industrial Foods, Sedentary Lives, and the Nutrition Transition


• Climate Change and Culture


• Are Industrialized Western Societies the Only Ones to Conserve Nature?


• Anthropogenic Landscapes


• The Culture of Modern Nature Conservation


• Environmentalism's Alternative Paradigms


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Roy Rappaport's Insider and Outsider Models


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Urban Black Food Justice with Ashante Reese


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Migrant Caravans, Global Warming, and Ecological Refugees


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Careers in Sustainability




• 15 Power:


• Politics and Social Control


• Does Every Society Have a Government?


• The Idea of "Politics" and the Problem of Order


• Structural-Functionalist Models of Political Stability


• Neo-Evolutionary Models of Political Organization: Bands, Tribes, Chiefdoms, and States


• Challenges to Traditional Political Anthropology


• What Is Political Power?


• Defining Political Power


• Political Power Is Action Oriented


• Political Power Is Structural


• Political Power Is Gendered


• Political Power in Non-State Societies


• The Political Power of the Contemporary Nation-State


• How Is Social Inequality Constructed and Upheld?


• Race, Biology, and the "Natural" Order of Things


• The Cultural Construction of Race


• Saying Race Is Culturally Constructed Is Not Enough


• Why Do Some Societies Seem More Violent Than Others?


• What Is Violence?


• Violence and Culture


• Explaining the Rise of Violence in Our Contemporary World


• How Do People Avoid Aggression, Brutality, and War?


• What Disputes Are "About"


• How People Manage Disputes


• Is Restoring Harmony Always the Best Way?


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: An Anthropological Politician?


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Maxwell Owusu and Democracy in Ghana


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Hortense Powdermaker on Prejudice




• 16 Kinship and Gender:


• Sex, Power, and Control of Men and Women


• What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?


• Families, Ideal and Real


• Nuclear and Extended Families


• Kinship Terminologies


• Cultural Patterns in Childrearing


• How Families Control Power and Wealth


• Why Do People Get Married?


• Why People Get Married


• Forms of Marriage


• Sex, Love, and the Power of Families Over Young Couples


• How and Why Do Males and Females Differ?


• Toward a Biocultural Perspective on Male and Female Differences


• Beyond the Male-Female Dichotomy


• Explaining Gender/Sex Inequality


• What Does It Mean to Be Neither Male Nor Female?


• Navajo Nadleehe


• Indian Hijras


• Is Human Sexuality Just a Matter of Being Straight or Queer?


• Cultural Perspectives on Same-Sex Sexuality


• Controlling Sexuality


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Family-Centered Social Work and Anthropology


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Margaret Mead and the Sex/Gender Distinction


• DOING FIELDWORK: Don Kulick and "Coming Out" in the Field




• 17 Religion:


• Ritual and Belief


• How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?


• Understanding Religion version 1.0: Edward B. Tylor and Belief in Spirits


• Understanding Religion version 2.0: Anthony F. C. Wallace on Supernatural Beings, Powers, and Forces


• Understanding Religion version 3.0: Religion as a System of Symbols


• Understanding Religion version 4.0: Religion as a System of Social Action


• What Forms Does Religion Take?


• Clan Spirits and Clan Identities in New Guinea


• Totemism in North America


• Shamanism and Ecstatic Religious Experiences


• Ritual Symbols That Reinforce a Hierarchical Social Order


• Polytheism and Monotheism in Ancient Societies


• World Religions and Universal Understandings of the World The Localization of World Religions


• How Does Atheism Fit in the Discussion?


• How Do Rituals Work?


• Magical Thought in Non-Western Cultures


• Sympathetic Magic: The Law of Similarity and the Law of Contagion


• Magic in Western Societies


• Rites of Passage and the Ritual Process


• How Is Religion Linked to Political and Social Action?


• The Rise of Fundamentalism


• Understanding Fundamentalism


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Clifford Geertz's Notion of Religion as a Cultural System


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Is Anthropology Compatible With Religious Faith?


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Contemporary Pilgrimage and the Camino de Santiago




• Epilogue:


• Anthropology and the Future of Human Diversity


• Glossary


• References


• Credits


• Index

About the author

Robert L. Welsch is retired from Franklin Pierce University, where he taught from 2008-2019. Previously, he taught at Dartmouth College, from 1994-2008.

Luis A. Vivanco is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of Vermont.

Agustin Fuentes is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University.

Product details

• Authors: Agustin Fuentes, Fuentes Agustin, Luis A. Vivanco, Vivanco Luis A., Robert L. Welsch, Robert L. Vivanco Welsch, Welsch Robert L.
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 11.04.2024
• EAN: 9780197666968
• ISBN: 978-0-19-766696-8
• No. of pages: 592
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; EDUCATION / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General, Anthropology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / General, Sociology & anthropology