Key Debates in Anthropology

Key Debates in Anthropology
Author: Tim Ingold
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2003-12-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134748833

Every year, leading social anthropologists meet to debate a motion at the heart of current theoretical developments in their subject and this book includes the first six of these debates, spanning the period from 1988 to 1993. Each debate has four principal speakers: one to propose the motion, another to oppose it, and two seconders. The first debate addresses the disciplinary character of social anthropology: can it be regarded as a science, and if so, is it able to establish general propositions about human culture and social life? The second examines the concept of society, and in the third debate the spotlight is turned on the role of culture in people's perception of their environments. The fourth debate focuses on the place of language in the formation of culture. The fifth takes up the question of how we view the past in relation to the present. Finally, in the sixth debate, the concern is with the cross-cultural applicability of the concept of aesthetics. With its unique debate format, Key Debates in Anthropology addresses issues that are currently at the top of the theoretical agenda, which register the pulse of contemporary thinking in social anthropology. It will be of value to students who are not only introduced to the different sides of every argument, but are challenged to join in and to develop informed positions of their own.

Key Debates in Anthropology

Key Debates in Anthropology
Author: Tim Ingold
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2003-12-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1134748825

Every year, leading social anthropologists meet to debate a motion at the heart of current theoretical developments in their subject and this book includes the first six of these debates, spanning the period from 1988 to 1993. Each debate has four principal speakers: one to propose the motion, another to oppose it, and two seconders. The first debate addresses the disciplinary character of social anthropology: can it be regarded as a science, and if so, is it able to establish general propositions about human culture and social life? The second examines the concept of society, and in the third debate the spotlight is turned on the role of culture in people's perception of their environments. The fourth debate focuses on the place of language in the formation of culture. The fifth takes up the question of how we view the past in relation to the present. Finally, in the sixth debate, the concern is with the cross-cultural applicability of the concept of aesthetics. With its unique debate format, Key Debates in Anthropology addresses issues that are currently at the top of the theoretical agenda, which register the pulse of contemporary thinking in social anthropology. It will be of value to students who are not only introduced to the different sides of every argument, but are challenged to join in and to develop informed positions of their own.

The Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers

The Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers
Author: Vicki Cummings
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2013-04-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1780932022

A basic introduction to key debates in the study of hunter-gatherers, specifically from an anthropological perspective, but designed for an archaeological readership.

Five Key Concepts in Anthropological Thinking

Five Key Concepts in Anthropological Thinking
Author: Richard John Perry
Publisher: Pearson
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003
Genre: Anthropology
ISBN: 9780130971401

For undergraduate upper-level courses in Anthropological Theory. This highly readable treatment of anthropological theory discusses ideas in a conversational style accessible to undergraduates without oversimplifying the issues. It is unique in focusing on five key concepts--evolution, culture, structure, function, and relativism--placing these core ideas in the forefront to address the contributions of major theorists. It presents competing theoretical positions, engaging students in central debates in anthropology through time and exploring the implications of alternative perspectives.

How to Think Like an Anthropologist

How to Think Like an Anthropologist
Author: Matthew Engelke
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2019-06-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0691193134

"What is anthropology? What can it tell us about the world? Why, in short, does it matter? For well over a century, cultural anthropologists have circled the globe, from Papua New Guinea to suburban England and from China to California, uncovering surprising facts and insights about how humans organize their lives and articulate their values. In the process, anthropology has done more than any other discipline to reveal what culture means--and why it matters. By weaving together examples and theories from around the world, Matthew Engelke provides a lively, accessible, and at times irreverent introduction to anthropology, covering a wide range of classic and contemporary approaches, subjects, and practitioners. Presenting a set of memorable cases, he encourages readers to think deeply about some of the key concepts with which anthropology tries to make sense of the world--from culture and nature to authority and blood. Along the way, he shows why anthropology matters: not only because it helps us understand other cultures and points of view but also because, in the process, it reveals something about ourselves and our own cultures, too." --Cover.

Comparison in Anthropology

Comparison in Anthropology
Author: Matei Candea
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2019
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1108474608

Presents a systematic rethinking of the power and limits of comparison in anthropology.

Social and Cultural Anthropology for the 21st Century

Social and Cultural Anthropology for the 21st Century
Author: Marzia Balzani
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2021-11-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317571789

Social and Cultural Anthropology for the 21st Century: Connected Worlds is a lively, accessible, and wide-ranging introduction to socio-cultural anthropology for undergraduate students. It draws on a wealth of ethnographic examples to showcase how anthropological fieldwork and analysis can help us understand the contemporary world in all its diversity and complexity. The book is addressed to a twenty-first-century readership of students who are encountering social and cultural anthropology for the first time. It provides an overview of the key debates and methods that have historically defined the discipline and of the approaches and questions that shape it today. In addition to classic research areas such as kinship, exchange, and religion, topics that are pressing concerns for our times are covered, such as climate change, economic crisis, social media, refugees, sexuality, and race. Foregrounding ethnographic stories from all over the world to illustrate global connections and their effects on local lives, the book combines a focus on history with urgent present-day social issues. It will equip students with the analytical tools that they need to negotiate a world characterized by unprecedented cross-cultural contact, ever-changing communicative technologies and new forms of uncertainty. The book is an essential resource for introductory courses in social and cultural anthropology and as a refresher for more advanced students.

Critical Anthropology

Critical Anthropology
Author: Stephen Nugent
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2016-06-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1315431289

Editor Stephen Nugent brings together some of critical anthropology’s most influential writings by major scholars, pairing key articles with lively rebuttals and new introductions that detail the continuing influence of these key debates on anthropology over four decades.

Critical Junctions

Critical Junctions
Author: Don Kalb
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781845450298

"A book about theory and method in the humanities and social sciences. It reacts to what has become known as the "cultural turn," a shift toward semiotics, discourse, and representations and away from other sorts of determinations that started in the early 1980s and that has dominated social thinking for a long string of years. The book is based in a reconsideration of the meeting of two disciplines that helped to launch the cultural turn: anthropology and history. Specifically, it criticizes the ideas of hermeneutics and "thick description" (Clifford Geertz) that have come to play a key role in the encounter of anthropology and history and then in the cultural turn. It led to the renewed cherishing of what Gupta and Ferguson have called paradigms of "peoples and places," saturated pictures of universes, both small and large, of meaning ina more of less frozen standstill-an intellectual precursor to the cultural xenophobia of our times. Against this, the present book embraces praxis and "critical junctions": the connections in space (in and out of a relations of power and dependency, and what Eric Wolf has called the "interstitial relations" between apparently separate institutional domains. In this way the book adds to the current revival of institutionally based "global ethnography," which studies "up and outward" (the journal of Ethnography is a good example)."--Preface

Collaborators Collaborating

Collaborators Collaborating
Author: Monica Konrad
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2012-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0857454811

As bio-capital in the form of medical knowledge, skills and investments moves with greater frequency from its origin in First World industrialized settings to resource-poor communities with weak or little infrastructure, countries with emerging economies are starting to expand new indigenous science bases of their own. The case studies here, from the UK, West Africa, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Latin America and elsewhere, explore the forms of collaborative knowledge relations in play and the effects of ethics review and legal systems on local communities, and also demonstrate how anthropologically-informed insights may hope to influence key policy debates. Questions of governance in science and technology, as well as ethical issues related to bio-innovation, are increasingly being featured as topics of complex resourcing and international debate, and this volume is a much-needed resource for interdisciplinary practitioners and specialists in medical anthropology, social theory, corporate ethics, science and technology studies.