North American Indian anthropology : essays on society and culture

These essays explore the blending of structural and historical approaches to American Indian anthropology that characterises the persepective developed by the late Fred Eggan and his students at the University of Chicago. Included are studies of kinship and social organisation, politics, religion, law, ethnicity and art. Many of the essays reflect Eggan's method of controlled comparison, a tool for reconstructing social and cultural change over time. Together these essays make substantial descriptive contributions to American Indian anthropology, presenting contemporary interpretations of diverse groups from the Hudsons Bay Inuit in the north to the Highland Maya of Chiapas in the south. The collection can serve as an introduction to Native American social and cultural anthropology for readers interested in the dynamics of Indian social life.

• Introduction - Fred Eggan and the Study of American Indian Society, Raymond J. De Mallie
• Biology, Social Relationship and the Culture in the Kin Terminology of an Inuit (Eskimo) Community, Joseph Maxwell
• Historical Changes in the Chipewyan Kinship System, James G.E. Smith
• Kinship, Social Class and Religion of North-west Peoples, June M. Collins
• Central Algonkian Moieties, Charles Callender
• Kinship and Biology in Sioux Culture, Raymond J. De Mallie
• Northern Cheyenne Kinship Reconsidered, Anne S. Straus
• The Social Organisations of the South-east, Greg Urban
• Fur Trade as Centrifuge - Familial Dispersal and Offspring Identity in Two Company Contexts, Jennifer S.H. Brown
• The Civilisation Strategy - Gros Ventre and Northern Arapahoe Compared, Loretta Fowler
• The Roots of Factionalism Among the Lower Brule Sioux, Ernest L. Schusky
• The Dynamics of Pueblo Cultural Survival, Alfonso Ortiz
• "Reading Back" to Find Community - Lumbee Ethnohistory, Karen I. Blu
• Hopi Shamanism - a Reappraisal, Jerrold E. Levy
• Indian Law and Puebloan Tribal Law, Bruce B. MacLachlin
• Patterns of Leadership in Western Pueblo Society, Triloki N. Pandey
• Cultural Motifs in Navajo Weaving, Gary Witherspoon
• On the Application of the Phylogenetic Model to the Maya, Evon Z. Vogt.

These essays explore the blending of structural and historical approaches to American Indian anthropology that characterises the perspective of the late Fred Eggan and his students. They include studies of kinship and social organisation, politics, religion, law, ethnicity and art.