Anthropology : what does it mean to be human?
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Bibliographic Information
Anthropology : what does it mean to be human?
Oxford University Press, c2012
2nd ed
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 478-488) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human? takes a question-oriented approach that helps students understand current anthropological issues, consider them critically, and apply them to their own lives. A unique alternative to more traditional, encyclopedic introductory texts, Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human? takes a question-oriented approach that illuminates major concepts for students. Structuring each chapter around an important question, the authors explore what it means to be human, incorporating answers from all four major subfields of anthropology-cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology-and offering a more balanced perspective than other texts. They address central issues of the discipline, highlighting the controversies and commitments that are shaping contemporary anthropology.
Ancillaries: -Companion Website featuring: -Student Resources, including a study skills guide, flashcards, self-quizzes, chapter outlines, and helpful links; and -Instructor Resources, including PowerPoint presentations for lectures, filmographies, activities, strategies for class discussions, and guest editorials; and (3) a chapter on human evolution -Computerized Test Bank and Instructor's Manual on CD -Cartridges for Course Management Systems
Table of Contents
- Brief Contents
- List of Boxes
- Preface
- Chapter 1: What Is Anthropology?
- Module 1: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
- Chapter 2: Why Is Evolution Important to Anthropologists?
- Chapter 3: What Can Evolutionary Theory Tell Us about Human Variation?
- Module 2: Dating Methods in Paleoanthropology and Archaeology
- Chapter 4: What Can the Study of Primates Tell Us about Human Beings?
- Chapter 5: What Can the Fossil Record Tell Us about Human Origins?
- Chapter 6: How Do We Know about the Human Past?
- Chapter 7: Why Did Humans Settle Down, Build Cities, and Establish States?
- Chapter 8: Why Is the Concept of Culture Important?
- Module 3: On Ethnographic Methods
- Chapter 9: Why Is Understanding Human Language Important?
- Module 4: Components of Language
- Chapter 10: How Do We Make Meaning?
- Chapter 11: Why Do Anthropologists Study Economic Relations?
- Chapter 12: How Do Anthropologists Study Political Relations?
- Chapter 13: Where Do Our Relatives Come From, and Why Do They Matter?
- Chapter 14: What Can Anthropology Tell Us about Social Inequality?
- Chapter 15: What Can Anthropology Tell Us about Globalization?
- Bibliography
- Credits
- Glossary and Index
- Detailed Contents
- List of Boxes
- Preface
- Chapter 1 What Is Anthropology?
- What is Anthropology?
- What is the Concept of Culture?
- What Makes Anthropology a Cross-Disciplinary Discipline?
- Biological Anthropology
- In Their Own Words: Anthropology as a Vocation Listening to Voices
- Cultural Anthropology
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Archaeology
- Applied Anthropology
- Medical Anthropology
- The Uses of Anthropology
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Module 1: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
- Scientific and Nonscientific Explanations
- Some Key Scientific Concepts
- Module Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Chapter 2: Why Is Evolution Important to Anthropologists?
- What is Evolutionary Theory?
- What Material Evidence is There for Evolution?
- Pre-Darwinian Views of The Natural World
- Essentialism
- The Great Chain of Being
- Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism
- Transformational Evolution
- What is Natural Selection?
- Population Thinking
- Natural Selection in Action
- Unlocking the Secrets of Heredity
- Mendel's Experiments
- The Emergence of Genetics
- What Are the Basics of Contemporary Genetics?
- Genes and Traits
- Mutation
- DNA and the Genome
- Anthropology in Everyday Life: Forensic Anthropology and Human Rights
- Genotype, Phenotype, and the Norm of Reaction
- In Their Own Words: How Living Organisms Construct Their Environments
- What does Evolution Mean?
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Chapter 3: What Can Evolutionary Theory Tell Us about Human Variation?
- What is Microevolution?
- The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis and Its Legacy
- The Molecularization of Race?
- The Four Evolutionary Processes
- Microevolution and Patterns of Human Variation
- Adaptation and Human Variation
- Phenotype, Environment and Culture
- In Their Own Words: DNA Tests Find Branches but Few Roots
- What is Macroevolution?
- Can We Predict the Future of Human Evolution?
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Module 2: Dating Methods in Paleoanthropology and Archaeology
- Relative Dating Methods
- Numerical Dating Methods
- Modeling Prehistoric Climates
- Module Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Chapter 4: What Can the Study of Primates Tell Us about Human Beings?
- What Are Primates?
- Approaches to Primate Taxonomy
- The Living Primates
- Strepsirhines
- Haplorhines
- In Their Own Words: The Future of Primate Diversity
- Flexibility as the Hallmark of Primate Adaptations
- In Their Own Words: Chimpanzee Tourism
- Past Evolutionary Trends in Primates
- Primate Evolution: The First 60 Million Years
- Primates of the Paleocene
- Primates of the Eocene
- Primates of the Oligocene
- Primates of the Miocene
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Chapter 5: What Can the Fossil Record Tell Us about Human Origins?
- Hominin Evolution
- Who Were the First Hominins? (6-3 mya)
- The Origin of Bipedalism
- Changes in Hominin Dentition
- In Their Own Words: Finding Fossils
- Who Were the Later Australopith? (3-1.5 mya)
- How Many Species of Australopith Were There?
- How Can Anthropologists Explain the Human Transition?
- What Do We Know About Early Homo? (2.4-1.5 mya)
- Expansion of the Australopith Brain
- How Many Species of Early Homo Were There?
- Earliest Evidence of Culture: Stone Tools of the Oldowan Tradition
- Who Was Homo Erectus? (1.8-1.7 mya to 0.5-0.4 mya)
- Morphological Traits of H. erectus
- The Culture of H. erectus
- H. erectus the Hunter
- The Evolutionary Fate of H. Erectus
- How Did Homo Sapiens Evolve?
- Fossil Evidence for the Transition to Modern H. sapiens
- Where Did Modern H. sapiens Come From?
- Who Were The Neandertals? (130,000 to 35,000 years ago)
- Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age Culture
- Did Neandertals Hunt?
- In Their Own Words: Bad Hair Days in the Paleolithic Modern (Re)Constructions of the Cave Man
- What Do We Know About Anatomically Modern Humans? (200,000 years ago to present)
- What Can Genetics Tell Us About Modern Human Origins?
- The Upper Paleolithic/Late Stone Age (40,000? to 12,000 years ago)
- What Happened To The Neandertals?
- Upper Paleolithic/Late Stone Age Cultures
- In Their Own Words: Women's Art in the Upper Paleolithic
- Spread of Modern H. Sapiens in Late Pleistocene Times
- Eastern Asia and Siberia
- The Americas
- Australasia
- Two Million Years of Human Evolution
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Chapter 6: How Do We Know About the Human Past?
- Archaeology
- Surveys
- Archaeological Excavation
- Interpreting the Past
- Subsistence Strategies
- Bands, Tribes, Chiefdoms, and States
- Whose Past Is It?
- Plundering the Past
- Contemporary Trends in Archaeology
- Gender Archaeology
- Collaborative Approaches to Studying the Past
- Cosmopolitan Archaeologies
- Anthropology in Everyday Life: Archaeology as a Tool of Civic Engagement
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Chapter 7: Why Did Humans Settle Down, Build Cities, and Establish States?
- Human Imagination and the Material World
- Is Plant Cultivation a Form of Niche Construction?
- Animal Domestication
- Was There Only One Motor of Domestication?
- How Did Domestication, Cultivation, and Sedentism Begin in Southwest Asia?
- Natufian Social Organization
- Natufian Subsistence
- Domestication Elsewhere in the World
- What Were the Consequences of Domestication and Sedentism?
- In Their Own Words: The Food Revolution
- What is Social Complexity?
- How Can Anthropologists Explain the Rise of Complex Societies?
- What is the Archaeological Evidence For Social Complexity?
- Why Did Stratification Begin?
- How Can Anthropologists Explain the Rise of Complex Societies?
- Andean Civilization
- In Their Own Words: The Ecological Consequences of Social Complexity
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Chapter 8: Why Is The Concept of Culture Important?
- How Do Anthropologists Define Culture?
- In Their Own Words: The Paradox of Ethnocentrism
- In Their Own Words: Culture and Freedom
- Culture, History and Human Agency
- In Their Own Words: Human-Rights Law and the Demonization of Culture
- Why Do Cultural Differences Matter?
- What is Ethnocentrism?
- Is it Possible to Avoid Ethnocentric Bias?
- What is Cultural Relativism?
- How Can Cultural Relativity Improve Our Understanding of Controversial Cultural Practices?
- Genital Cutting, Gender, and Human Rights
- Genital Cutting as a Valued Ritual
- Culture and Moral Reasoning
- Did Their Culture Make Them Do It?
- Does Culture Explain Everything?
- Culture Change and Cultural Authenticity
- The Promise of the Anthropological Perspective
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Module 3: On Ethnographic Methods
- A Meeting of Cultural Traditions
- Single-Sited Fieldwork
- Multisited Fieldwork
- Collecting and Interpreting Data
- The Dialectic of Fieldwork: Interpretation and Translation
- Interpreting Actions and Ideas
- The Dialectic of Fieldwork: An Example
- The Effects of Fieldwork
- The Production of Anthropological Knowledge
- Anthropological Knowledge as Open-Ended
- Module Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Chapter 9: Why is Understanding Human Language Important?
- How are Language and Culture Related?
- How Do People Talk about Experience?
- In Their Own Words: Cultural Translation
- What Makes Human Language Distinctive?
- What Does it Mean to <"Learn>" A Language?
- How Does Context Affect Language?
- How Does Language Affect How We See The World?
- Pragmatics: How Do We Study Language in Contexts of Use?
- Ethnopragmatics
- What Happens When Languages Come into Contact?
- What is Linguistic Inequality?
- What Are Language Habits of African Americans?
- In Their Own Words: Varieties of African American English
- Language Ideology
- Anthropology in Everyday Life: Language Revitalization
- Language, Culture, and Thought
- Perception
- Illusion
- Cognition
- Language, Thought, and Symbolic Practice
- Languages, Symbolic Practices, Worldviews
- What Are Symbols?
- In Their Own Words: The Madness of Hunger
- Symbolic Practices, Worldviews, Selves
- Anthropology in Everyday Life: Lead Poisoning among Mexican American Children
- In Their Own Words: American Premenstrual Syndrome
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Module 4: Components of Language
- Phonology: Sounds
- Morphology: Word Structure
- Syntax: Sentence Structure
- Semantics: Meaning
- Module Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Chapter 10: How Do We Make Meaning?
- What is Play?
- What do We Think about Play?
- What Are Some Effects of Play?
- What is Art?
- Is There a Definition of Art?
- <"But Is It Art?>"
- <"She's Fake>": Art and Authenticity
- In Their Own Words: Tango
- What is Myth?
- How Does Myth Reflect and Shape Society?
- Do Myths Help Us Think?
- What is Ritual?
- How Can Ritual Be Defined?
- Ritual As Action?
- What Are Rites of Passage?
- How Are Play and Ritual Complementary?
- In Their Own Words: Video in the Villages
- How Are Worldview and Symbolic Practice Related?
- What is Religion?
- How Do People Communicate in Religion?
- How Are Religion and Social Organization Related?
- Worldviews in Operation: Two Case Studies
- Coping with Misfortune: Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande
- Are There Patterns of Witchcraft Accusation?
- Coping with Misfortune: Seeking Higher Consciousness among the Channelers
- In Their Own Words: For All Those Who Were Indian in a Former Life
- Maintaining and Changing a Worldview
- How Do People Cope with Change?
- In Their Own Words: Custom and Confrontation
- How Are Worldviews Used As Instruments of Power?
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Chapter 11 : Why Do Anthropologists Study Economic Relations?
- How Do Anthropologists Study Economic Relations?
- What are the Connections between Culture and Livelihood?
- How Do Anthropologists Study Production, Distribution, and Consumption?
- How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?
- What are Modes of Exchange?
- Does Production Drive Economic Activities?
- Labor
- Modes of Production
- What is the Role of Conflict in Material Life?
- In Their Own Words: <"So Much Work, So Much TragedyELand for What?>"
- Anthropology in Everyday Life: Producing Sorghum and Millet in Honduras and the Sudan
- In Their Own Words: Solidarity Forever
- Why Do People Consume What they Do?
- The Internal Explanation: Malinowski and Basic Human Needs
- The External Explanation: Cultural Ecology
- How is Consumption Culturally Patterned?
- How is Consumption Being Studied Today?
- In Their Own Words: Fake Masks and Faux Modernity
- In Their Own Words: Questioning Collapse
- The Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Chapter 12: How Do Anthropologists Study Political Relations?
- How Are Culture and Politics Related?
- How Do Anthropologists Study Politics?
- Coercion
- Anthropology in Everyday Life: Doing Business in Japan
- In Their Own Words: Reforming the Crow Constitution
- How Are Politics, Gender, and Kinship Related?
- Hidden Transcripts and the Power of Reflection
- How Are Immigration and Politics Related in the New Europe?
- In Their Own Words: Protesters Gird for Long Fight over Opening Peru's Amazon
- Anthropology in Everyday Life: Human Terrain Teams and Anthropological Ethics
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Chapter 13: Where Do Our Relatives Come From and Why Do They Matter?
- What is Kinship?
- Sex, Gender, and Kinship
- What is the Role of Descent in Kinship?
- What Role do Lineages Play in Descent?
- Lineage Membership
- Patrilineages
- What are Matrilineages?
- In Their Own Words: Outside Work, Women, and Bridewealth
- What are Kinship Terminologies?
- What Criteria Are Used For Making Kinship Distinctions?
- What is Adoption?
- Adoption in Highland Ecuador
- European American Kinship and New Reproductive Technologies
- How Does Organ Transplantation Create New Relatives?
- Marriage
- Toward a Definition of Marriage
- Woman Marriage and Ghost Marriage among the Nuer
- Why is Marriage a Social Process?
- Patterns of Residence after Marriage
- Single and Plural Spouses
- In Their Own Words: Two Cheers for Gay Marriage
- How is Marriage an Economic Exchange?
- In Their Own Words: Dowry Too High. Lose Bride and Go to Jail
- What is a Family?
- What is the Nuclear Family?
- What is the Polygynous Family?
- Extended and Joint Families
- In Their Own Words: Law, Custom, and Crimes Against Women
- How are Families Transformed Over Time?
- Divorce and Remarriage
- How Does International Migration Affect the Family?
- Families by Choice
- Friendship
- Anthropology in Everyday Life: Caring for Infibulated Women Giving Birth in Norway
- In Their Own Words: Why Migrant Women Feed Their Husbands Tamales
- How Are Sexual Practices Organized?
- Ranges of Heterosexual Practices
- Other Sexual Practices
- Sexuality and Power
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Chapter 14: What Can Anthropology Tell Us About Social Inequality?
- Inequality and Structural Violence in Haiti
- Gender
- Class
- Caste
- Caste in India
- In Their Own Words: As Economic Turmoil Mounts, So Do Attacks on Hungary's Gypsies
- Race
- Colorism in Nicaragua
- In Their Own Words: On the Butt Size of Barbie and Shani Dolls and Race in the United States
- In Their Own Words: The Politics of Ethnicity
- Ethnicity
- Nation and Nationalism
- Australian Nationalism
- Naturalizing Discourses
- The Paradox of Essentialized Identities
- Nation Building in the Postcolonial World: The Example of Fiji
- Nationalism and its Dangers
- Anthropology in Everyday Life: Anthropology and Democracy
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Chapter 15: What Can Anthropology Tell Us about Globalization?
- What Happened to the Global Economy after the Cold War?
- Cultural Processes in a Global World
- In Their Own Words: Slumdog Tourism
- In Their Own Words: Cofan: Story of the Forest People and the Outsiders
- Globalization and the Nation-State
- Are Global Flows Undermining Nation-States?
- Migration, Transborder Identities, and Long-Distance Nationalism
- How Can Citizenship be Flexible?
- Are Human Rights Universal?
- Human-Rights Discourse as the Global Language of Social Justice
- Rights versus Culture?
- Rights to Culture?
- Are Rights Part of Culture?
- How Can Culture Help in Thinking about Rights?
- Cultural Imperialism or Cultural Hybridity?
- What is Cultural Imperialism?
- Cultural Hybridity
- Can We Be At Home in a Global World?
- What is Friction?
- In Their Own Words: How Sushi Went Global
- In Their Own Words: The Anthropological Voice
- Why Study Anthropology?
- Chapter Summary
- For Review and Discussion
- Key Terms
- Suggested Readings
- Bibliography
- Credits
- Glossary and Index
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