What is Anthropology? Why should you study it? What will you learn? And what can you do with it? What Anthropologists Do answers all these questions. And more.Anthropology is an astonishingly d
What is Anthropology? Why should you study it? What will you learn? And what can you do with it? What Anthropologists Do answers all these questions. And more. Anthropology is an astonishingly diverse
Suddenly culture seems to explain everything, from civil wars to financial crises and divorce rates. But when we speak of culture, what, precisely, do we mean?Adam Kuper pursues the concept of culture
This unusual and ambitious book will be welcomed by all who wish to understand exactly what anthropology is and what anthropologists do. It summarizes, compares, and contrasts the ideas of ten promine
This book offers students an invaluable look at what cultural anthropologists do when they are in the field. Through fascinating and often entertaining,accounts of their lives and work in varied cultu
"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 comb
How do anthropologists write their texts? What is the nature of creativity in the discipline of anthropology? This book follows anthropologists into spaces where words, ideas and arguments take shape
In this landmark study, now celebrating thirty years in print, Paul Rabinow takes as his focus the fieldwork that anthropologists do. How valid is the process? To what extent do the cultural data beco
'Culture' and 'meaning' are central to anthropology, but anthropologists do not agree on what they are. Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn propose a new theory of cultural meaning, one that gives priority to the way people's experiences are internalized. Drawing on 'connectionist' or 'neural network' models as well as other psychological theories, they argue that cultural meanings are not fixed or limited to static groups, but neither are they constantly revised and contested. Their approach is illustrated by original research on understandings of marriage and ideas of success in the United States.
In a time of intellectual uncertainty, the question of how we know what we do about human lives becomes ever more pressing. The essays collated in this volume argue that anthropology can be used to ac
In this volume, sixteen distinguished scholars address the impact of digital technologies on how anthropologists do fieldwork and on what they study. With nearly three billion Internet users and more
This book offers students an invaluable look at what cultural anthropologists do when they are in the field. Through fascinating and often entertaining,accounts of their lives and work in varied cultu
How do we understand what others are trying to say? The answer cannot be found in language alone. Words are linked to hand gestures and other visible phenomena to create unified 'composite utterances'. In this book N. J. Enfield presents original case studies of speech-with-gesture based on fieldwork carried out with speakers of Lao (a language of Southeast Asia). He examines pointing gestures (including lip and finger-pointing) and illustrative gestures (examples include depicting fish traps and tracing kinship relations). His detailed analyses focus on the 'semiotic unification' problem, that is, how to make a single interpretation when multiple signs occur together. Enfield's arguments have implications for all branches of science with a stake in meaning and its place in human social life. The book will appeal to all researchers interested in the study of meaning, including linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists.
In this book, Robert Wardy, a philosopher and classicist, turns his attention to the relation between language and thought. He explores this huge topic in an analysis of linguistic relativism, with specific reference to a reading of the ming li t'an ('The Investigation of the Theory of Names'), a seventeenth-century Chinese translation of Aristotle's Categories. Throughout his investigation, Wardy addresses important questions. Do the basis structures of language shape the major thought-patterns of its native speakers? Could philosophy be guided and constrained by the language in which it is done? What factors, from grammar and logic to cultural and religious expectations, influence translation? And does Aristotle survive rendition into Chinese intact? His answers will fascinate philosphers, Sinologists, classicists, linguists and anthropologists, and will make a major contribution to the existing literature.
In Cognition and Tool Use, anthropologists Janet and Charles Keller provide an account of human accomplishment based on ethnographic study. Blacksmithing, the transformation of glowing iron into artistic and utilitarian products, is the activity they chose to develop a study of situated learning. This domain, permeated by visual imagery and physical virtuosity rather than verbal logic, appears antithetical to the usual realms of cognitive study. For this reason, it provides a new entrée to human thought and an empirical test for an anthropology of knowledge. How does a mind in practice approach a stable, 'sedimented' body of knowledge and create something truly original? What does human tool use say about human thought? What does someone need to know to successfully produce a material artifact and how do they learn it? In addressing these questions, the authors offer an interdisciplinary perspective on the principled creativity of human behaviour.
A full understanding of human action requires an understanding of what motivates people to do what they do. For too many years studies of motivation and of culture have drawn from different theoretical paradigms. Typically, human motivation has been modelled on animal behaviour, while culture has been described as pure knowledge or symbol. The result has been insufficient appreciation of the role of culture in human motivation and a truncated view of culture as disembodied knowledge. In this volume, anthropologists have attempted a different approach, seeking to integrate knowledge, desire, and action in a single explanatory framework. This research builds upon recent work in cognitive anthropology on cultural models, that is, shared cognitive schemas through which human realities are constructed and interpreted, while also drawing upon insights from developmental psychology, psychoanalytic theory, and social theory. Most of the research described here was conducted in the United State
A full understanding of human action requires an understanding of what motivates people to do what they do. For too many years studies of motivation and of culture have drawn from different theoretical paradigms. Typically, human motivation has been modelled on animal behaviour, while culture has been described as pure knowledge or symbol. The result has been insufficient appreciation of the role of culture in human motivation and a truncated view of culture as disembodied knowledge. In this volume, anthropologists have attempted a different approach, seeking to integrate knowledge, desire, and action in a single explanatory framework. This research builds upon recent work in cognitive anthropology on cultural models, that is, shared cognitive schemas through which human realities are constructed and interpreted, while also drawing upon insights from developmental psychology, psychoanalytic theory, and social theory. Most of the research described here was conducted in the United State
