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Anthony Giddens (Routledge Revivals)
by Ian CraibThe Giddens phenomenon has been one of the most obvious and talked about features of world sociology since the late 1960’s. This book, first published in 1992, provides a prudent and essential critical introduction to one of the leading sociologists of our time. The book is intended to provide an accessible introduction to Gidden's work and also to situate structuration theory in the context of other approaches. The reissue will be of interest to students of Sociology and those working in the other social sciences.
Anthony Giddens: The Last Modernist
by Stjepan MestrovicAnthony Giddens is arguably the world's leading sociologist. In this controversial contribution to the Giddens debate, Stjepan Mestrovic takes up and criticizes the major themes of his work - particularly the concept of 'high modernity' as opposed to 'postmodernity' and his attempted construction of a 'synthetic' tradition based on human agency and structure. Testing Giddens' theories against what is happening in the real world from genocide in Africa to near secession in Quebec, Mestrovic discerns in the construction of synthetic traditions not the promise of freedom held out by Giddens but rather the ominous potential for new forms of totalitarian control.
Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life
by Gillian TettIn an age when the business world is dominated by technology and data analysis, award-winning financial journalist and anthropology PhD Gillian Tett presents a radically different strategy for success: businesses can revolutionize their understanding of behavior by studying consumers, markets, and organizations through an anthropological lens. Amid severe digital disruption, economic upheaval, and political flux, how can we make sense of the world? Leaders today typically look for answers in economic models, Big Data, or artificial intelligence platforms. Gillian Tett points to anthropology—the study of human culture. Anthropologists train to get inside the minds of other people, helping them not only to understand other cultures but also to appraise their own environment with fresh perspective as an insider-outsider, gaining lateral vision. Today, anthropologists are more likely to study Amazon warehouses than remote Amazon tribes; they have done research into institutions and companies such as General Motors, Nestlé, Intel, and more, shedding light on practical questions such as how internet users really define themselves; why corporate projects fail; why bank traders miscalculate losses; how companies sell products like pet food and pensions; why pandemic policies succeed (or not). Anthropology makes the familiar seem unfamiliar and vice versa, giving us badly needed three-dimensional perspective in a world where many executives are plagued by tunnel vision, especially in fields like finance and technology. Lively, lucid, and practical, Anthro-Vision offers a revolutionary new way for understanding the behavior of organizations, individuals, and markets in today&’s ever-evolving world.
The Anthropocene and its Future: The Challenges of Accelerating Social and Ecological Change
by Karl BruckmeierThis book analyses the complex social and ecological processes of the Great Acceleration, the Great Transformation, and sustainable development that shape the future of the global society in the twenty-first century. The first process takes place for a longer time, the second over the past thirty years, with attempts to build a sustainable economy and society in the global policy of sustainable development. The processes and their interaction will be discussed with knowledge from inter- and transdisciplinary transformation research, social and political ecology, and theories of modern society. The guiding theoretical concepts for the social-ecological transformation will be clarified: the concepts of acceleration, transformation, and sustainable development, and the societal and ecological processes they include. To obtain a more detailed picture of the changes in the global social-ecological system, different parts of the global transformation, the digital transformation, the transformation of food systems, and the transformation of modes of living in the social lifeworld are described to show the complex changes in the epoch of the Anthropocene more concretely. The global change processes in society and nature are caused by human forces but are difficult to control through policy and governance. With the interdisciplinary integration of concepts and knowledge, it becomes possible to provide a more detailed picture, of the difficulties to achieve a sustainable future society.
Anthropocene Psychology: Being Human in a More-than-Human World (Concepts for Critical Psychology)
by Matthew AdamsThis ground-breaking book critically extends the psychological project, seeking to investigate the relations between human and more-than-human worlds against the backdrop of the Anthropocene by emphasising the significance of encounter, interaction and relationships. Interdisciplinary environmental theorist Matthew Adams draws inspiration from a wealth of ideas emerging in human–animal studies, anthrozoology, multi-species ethnography and posthumanism, offering a framing of collective anthropogenic ecological crises to provocatively argue that the Anthropocene is also an invitation – to become conscious of the ways in which human and nonhuman are inextricably connected. Through a series of strange encounters between human and nonhuman worlds, Adams argues for the importance of cultivating attentiveness to the specific and situated ways in which the fates of multiple species are bound together in the Anthropocene. Throughout the book this argument is put into practice, incorporating everything from Pavlov’s dogs, broiler chickens, urban trees, grazing sheep and beached whales, to argue that the Anthropocene can be good to think with, conducive to a seeing ourselves and our place in the world with a renewed sense of connection, responsibility and love. Building on developments in feminist and social theory, anthropology, ecopsychology, environmental psychology, (post)humanities, psychoanalysis and phenomenology, this is fascinating reading for academics and students in the field of critical psychology, environmental psychology, and human–animal studies.
The Anthropocene Working Group and the Global Debate Around a New Geological Epoch (Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives)
by Martin Bohle Boris Holzer Leslie Sklair Fabienne WillThis book examines the role of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) in public and scholarly discussions of the meaning of the Anthropocene proposal. The status of the Anthropocene, both as a geoscientific concept and as a cultural concept becoming increasingly familiar in the public sphere, has been highly controversial. While geoscientists focus on possible geological markers and periodisation, the social sciences, environmental humanities, and creative arts have taken up the Anthropocene as a cultural concept to make sense of the planetary environmental crisis and contemporary society. This book documents intra-, inter-, and transdisciplinary debates, particularly, although not limited to, how different scholarly disciplines have responded to the Anthropocene proposal. The authors analyse how the AWG has become the focal point of a debate that straddles the boundaries between academic disciplines and public perceptions of science. The AWG thus serves as a case of the globalisation of science in terms of the global interconnectedness of scientific disciplines and the cultural significance of the Anthropocene proposal.
Anthropogenic Tropical Forests: Human–Nature Interfaces on the Plantation Frontier (Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research)
by Noboru Ishikawa Ryoji SodaThe studies in this volume provide an ethnography of a plantation frontier in central Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Drawing on the expertise of both natural scientists and social scientists, the key focus is the process of commodification of nature that has turned the local landscape into anthropogenic tropical forests. Analysing the transformation of the space of mixed landscapes and multiethnic communities—driven by trade in forest products, logging and the cultivation of oil palm—the contributors explore the changing nature of the environment, multispecies interactions, and the metabolism between capitalism and nature. The project involved the collaboration of researchers specialising in anthropology, geography, Southeast Asian history, global history, area studies, political ecology, environmental economics, plant ecology, animal ecology, forest ecology, hydrology, ichthyology, geomorphology and life-cycle assessment.Collectively, the transdisciplinary research addresses a number of vital questions. How are material cycles and food webs altered as a result of large-scale land-use change? How have new commodity chains emerged while older ones have disappeared? What changes are associated with such shifts? What are the relationships among these three elements—commodity chains, material cycles and food webs? Attempts to answer these questions led the team to go beyond the dichotomy of society and nature as well as human and non-human. Rather, the research highlights complex relational entanglements of the two worlds, abruptly and forcibly connected by human-induced changes in an emergent and compelling resource frontier in maritime Southeast Asia.
Anthropological Data in the Digital Age: New Possibilities – New Challenges
by Jerome W. Crowder Mike Fortun Rachel Besara Lindsay PoirierFor more than two decades, anthropologists have wrestled with new digital technologies and their impacts on how their data are collected, managed, and ultimately presented. Anthropological Data in the Digital Age compiles a range of academics in anthropology and the information sciences, archivists, and librarians to offer in-depth discussions of the issues raised by digital scholarship. The volume covers the technical aspects of data management—retrieval, metadata, dissemination, presentation, and preservation—while at once engaging with case studies written by cultural anthropologists and archaeologists returning from the field to grapple with the implications of producing data digitally. Concluding with thoughts on the new considerations and ethics of digital data, Anthropological Data in the Digital Age is a multi-faceted meditation on anthropological practice in a technologically mediated world.
An Anthropological Economy of Debt (Routledge Studies in Anthropology #21)
by Pepita Ould Ahmed Bernard HoursDebt is often thought of as a mere economic variable governed by a simplistic mechanical logic, ignoring its other facets. Whose debt, and debt of what exactly? This volume analyzes debt as a political and social construct, with a multiplicity of purposes and agents. All of these are vectors of meanings that are highly diverse, and of subtle distinctions; they show that debt is a transverse phenomenon, cutting across spaces that are not merely economic but also domestic, social and political. Each contributor takes a fresh view of the subject, dealing with debt at a different time, in a different society, on a different scale of observation. By adopting a determinedly interdisciplinary approach, the authors reveal in the phenomenon of debt a diversity of social and gendered determinants that amount in some cases to domination, allegiance or slavery, and in others to solidarity and emancipation. Debt is at one and the same time shared, imposed, political and gendered.
Anthropological Explorations in Queer Theory (Queer Interventions)
by Mark GrahamAnthropological Explorations in Queer Theory offers a wide ranging fusion of queer theory with anthropological theory, shifting away from the discussion of gender categories and identities that have often constituted a central concern of queer theory and instead exploring the queer elements of contexts in which they are not normally apparent. Engaging with a number of apparently 'non-sexual' topics, including embodiment and fieldwork, regimes of value, gifts and commodities, diversity discourses, biological essentialisms, intersectionality, the philosophy of Bergson and Deleuze, and the representation of heterosexuality in popular culture, this book moves to discuss central concerns of contemporary anthropology, drawing on both the latest anthropological research as well as classic theories. In broadening the field of queer anthropology and opening queer theory to a number of new themes, both empirical and theoretical, Anthropological Explorations in Queer Theory will appeal not only to anthropologists and queer theorists, but also to geographers and sociologists concerned with questions of ontology, materiality and gender and sexuality.
An Anthropological Journey into Well-Being: Insights from Bolivia (SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research)
by Melania CalestaniThis volume is a unique contribution to the exploration of a new perspective in the study of well-being, which tries to overcome the quantification bias by creating an account of 'the good life' in a specific place. Rather than numbers, this research focuses on local narratives, emphasising the urgent need to include a wider range of methodological approaches when engaging with well-being. The volume demonstrates through the Bolivian case study the value of qualitative research for well-being studies. It shows the potential to integrate predominant quantitative data with qualitative outcomes, such as those emerging through ethnography. It is aimed at academics, researchers and students in well-being/quality of life studies, as well as audiences in the non-profit, governmental and policy in the non-profit, governmental and policy sectors. The book provides new perspectives in achieving better indicators of well-being and quality-of-life.
Anthropological Lives: An Introduction to the Profession of Anthropology
by Virginia R Dominguez Brigittine M. FrenchAnthropological Lives introduces readers to what it is like to be a professional anthropologist. It focuses on the work anthropologists do, the passions they have, the way that being an anthropologist affects the kind of life they lead. The book draws heavily on the experiences of twenty anthropologists interviewed by Virginia R. Dominguez and Brigittine M. French, as well as on the experiences of the two coauthors. Many different kinds of anthropologists are represented, and the book makes a point of discussing their commonalities as well as their differences. Some of the anthropologists included work in the academy, some work outside the academy, and some work in institutions like museums. Included are cultural anthropologists, linguistic anthropologists, medical anthropologists, biological anthropologists, practicing anthropologists, and anthropological archaeologists. A fascinating look behind the curtain, the stories in Anthropological Lives will inform anyone who has ever wondered what you do with a degree in anthropology. Anthropologists profiled: Leslie Aiello, Lee Baker, João Biehl, Tom Boellstorff, Jacqueline Comito, Shannon Dawdy, Virginia R. Dominguez, T.J. Ferguson, Brigittine French, Agustín Fuentes, Amy Goldenberg, Mary Gray, Sarah Green, Monica Heller, Douglas Hertzler, Ed Liebow, Mariano Perelman, Jeremy Sabloff, Carolyn Sargent, Marilyn Strathern, Nandini Sundar, Alaka Wali.
Anthropological Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans, and Laborers (Palgrave Studies on the Anthropology of Childhood and Youth)
by David F. LancyThe study of childhood in academia has been dominated by a mono-cultural or WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) perspective. Within the field of anthropology, however, a contrasting and more varied view is emerging. While the phenomenon of children as workers is ephemeral in WEIRD society and in the literature on child development, there is ample cross-cultural and historical evidence of children making vital contributions to the family economy. Children's "labor" is of great interest to researchers, but widely treated as extra-cultural--an aberration that must be controlled. Work as a central component in children's lives, development, and identity goes unappreciated. Anthropological Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans, and Laborers aims to rectify that omission by surveying and synthesizing a robust corpus of material, with particular emphasis on two prominent themes: the processes involved in learning to work and the interaction between ontogeny and children's roles as workers.
Anthropological Perspectives on Environmental Communication (Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability)
by Annelie Sjölander-Lindqvist Ivan Murin Michael E. DoveIn the continuous search for sustainability, the exchange of diverse perspectives, assumptions, and values is indispensable to environmental protection. Through anthropological and ethnographic analyses, this collection addresses how interests, values, and ideologies affect dialogue and sustainability work. Drawing on studies from three continents – Europe, North America, and South America – the paradoxes and the plurality of meanings associated with the creation of sustainable futures are explored. The book focuses on how communication practices collide with organizational frameworks, customary practices, livelihoods, and landscape. In so doing, the authors explore the meanings of environmental communication, pushing beyond environmental advocacy rhetoric to emphasize stronger anthropological engagement within communities to achieve more impactful environmental communication practice. Empirically the book’s chapters explore a diverse set of issues, ranging from coastal management in the European north to Native American place naming in Alaska. They further share findings from studies of contaminated land remediation in Sweden, conflicts over water resources in Chile, management of heritage and national parks in Northern Arizona, and cultural transmission in Slovakia.This is an open access book.
Anthropological Perspectives on Student Futures: Youth and the Politics of Possibility (Anthropological Studies of Education)
by Amy Stambach and Kathleen D. HallThis book examines diverse ways in which young people from around the world envision and prepare for their future education, careers, and families. The book features cutting-edge anthropological essays including ethnographic accounts of schooling in India, South Africa, the US, Bhutan, Tanzania, and Nigeria. Each chapter focuses on today’s generation of students and on students' use of education to create new possibilities for themselves. This volume will be of particular interest to practicing teachers and anthropologists and to readers who seek an ethnographic understanding of the world as seen through the eyes of students.
Anthropological Perspectives on the Religious Uses of Mobile Apps
by Jacqueline H. FewkesThis edited volume deploys digital ethnography in varied contexts to explore the cultural roles of mobile apps that focus on religious practice and communities, as well as those used for religious purposes (whether or not they were originally developed for that purpose). Combining analyses of local contexts with insights and methods from the global subfield of digital anthropology, the contributors here recognize the complex ways that in-app and on-ground worlds interact in a wide range of communities and traditions. While some of the case studies emphasize the cultural significance of use in local contexts and relationships to pre-existing knowledge networks and/or non-digital relationships of power, others explore the globalizing and democratizing influences of mobile apps as communication technologies. From Catholic confession apps to Jewish Kaddish assistance apps and Muslim halal food apps, readers will see how religious-themed mobile apps create complex sites for potential new forms of religious expression, worship, discussion, and practices.
Anthropological Resources: A Guide to Archival, Library, and Museum Collections (Sociology/Psychology/Reference #Vol. 884)
by Lee S. Dutton Michele Calhoun Francis X. Grollig S. J. Thomas L. Mann Hans E. Panofsky Margo L. Smith Sol Tax Christopher WintersFirst published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
An Anthropological Study of Spirits
by Christine S. VanPool Todd L. VanPoolThis book discusses the cultural importance of spirits, what spirits want, and how humans interact with them, using examples from around the world and through time. Examples range from the vengeful spirits of the Zulu that cast lightning bolts from clear skies to punish wrongdoers, to the benevolent Puebloan Kachina that encourage prosperity, safety, and rain in the arid American Southwest. The case studies illustrate how humans seek to cooperate (or counteract) spirits to heal the physical and spiritual ailments of their people, to divine the truth, or to gain resources. Building from their cross-cultural analyses, the authors further discuss how our physiology and psychology impact our interaction with the spirits. Readers will come away with an appreciation of the beauty and power of the spirits that continue to shape the lives of people around the world.
Anthropological Thought: From Evolutionism to Postmodernism and Beyond
by Vijoy S. SahayThe volume explores how anthropological ideas emerged. First, in the writings of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers; after that, by the Renaissance scholars during the 18th century in Europe; and finally, during the mid-19th century, especially after Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution. It covers the contributions of all the evolutionists of the 19th century. It explores the evolution of anthropological schools, from 'Evolutionism' to 'Diffusionism' and beyond. It also discusses diverse perspectives, such as 'Historical and Dialectical Materialism,' 'Functionalism,' 'Structural-Functionalism,' 'Cultural Ecology,' and 'Cognitive Anthropology. Concepts like Ethnocentrism and culture provide a rich tapestry of anthropological thought. It discusses the lives and contributions of renowned anthropologists, from E.B. Tylor to Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. This book is a valuable resource for students, researchers, and instructors in social sciences, offering a nuanced understanding of anthropology, sociology, and psychology.
An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts
by David ZeitlynPresenting sixty theoretical ideas, David Zeitlyn asks ‘How to write about anthropological theory without making a specific theoretical argument.’ “David Zeitlyn has written a wryly engaging, short book on, essentially, why we should not become theoretical partisans—that, indeed, being a serious theorist means accepting precisely that principle.”—Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University To answer, he offers a series of mini essays about an eclectic collection of theoretical concepts that he has found helpful over the years. The book celebrates the muddled inconsistencies in the ways that humans live their messy lives. There are, however, still patterns discernible: the actors can understand what is going on, they see an event unfolding in ways that are familiar, as belonging to a certain type and therefore, Zeitlyn suggests, so can researchers. From the introduction: This book promotes an eclectic, multi-faceted anthropology in which multiple approaches are applied in pursuit of the limited insights which each can afford…. I do not endorse any one of these idea as supplying an exclusive path to enlightenment: I absolutely do not advocate any single position. As a devout nonconformist, I hope that the following sections provide material, ammunition and succour to those undertaking nuanced anthropological analysis (and their kin in related disciplines)…. Mixing up or combining different ideas and approaches can produce results that, in their breadth and richness, are productive for anthropology and other social sciences, reflecting the endless complexities of real life. …This is my response to the death of grand theory. I see our task as learning how to deal with that bereavement and how to resist the siren lures of those promising synoptic overviews. This book is relevant to anthropology, communication studies, cultural studies and sociology.
Anthropologies of Class
by James G. Carrier Don KalbRising social, political and economic inequality in many countries, and rising protest against it, has seen the restoration of the concept of 'class' to a prominent place in contemporary anthropological debates. A timely intervention in these discussions, this book explores the concept of class and its importance for understanding the key sources of that inequality and of people's attempts to deal with it. Highly topical, it situates class within the context of the current economic crisis, integrating elements from today into the discussion of an earlier agenda. Using cases from North and South America, Western Europe and South Asia, it shows the - sometimes surprising - forms that class can take, as well as the various effects it has on people's lives and societies.
Anthropologies of Unemployment: New Perspectives on Work and Its Absence
by Jong Bum Kwon Carrie M. LaneAnthropologies of Unemployment offers accessible, theoretically innovative, and ethnographically rich examinations of unemployment in rural and urban regions across North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The diversity of case studies demonstrates that unemployment is a pressing global phenomenon that sheds light on the uneven consequences of free-market ideologies and policies. Economic, social, and cultural marginalization is common in the lives of the unemployed, but their experience and interpretation are shaped by local and national cultural particularities. In exploring those differences, the contributors to this volume employ recent theoretical innovations and engage with some of the more salient topics in contemporary anthropology, such as globalization, migration, youth cultures, bureaucracy, class, gender, and race.Taken together, the chapters reveal that there is something new about unemployment today. It is not a temporary occurrence, but a chronic condition. In adjusting to persistent, longstanding unemployment, people and groups create new understandings of unemployment as well as of work and employment; they improvise new forms of sociality, morality, and personhood. Ethnographic studies such as those found in Anthropologies of Unemployment are crucial if we are to understand the broader forms, meanings, and significance of pervasive economic insecurity and discover the emergence of new social and cultural possibilities.Contributors Josh Fisher, High Point UniversityDavid Karjanen, University of MinnesotaAnn E. Kingsolver, University of KentuckyJong Bum Kwon, Webster UniversityCarrie M. Lane, California State University, FullertonCaitrin Lynch, Olin College Daniel Mains, University of Oklahoma John P. Murphy, Gettysburg CollegeMariano D. Perelman, University of Buenos AiresFrances Abrahamer Rothstein, Montclair State UniversityClaudia Strauss, Pitzer College
Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886-1965
by John S. GilkesonThis book examines the intersection of cultural anthropology and American cultural nationalism from 1886, when Franz Boas left Germany for the United States, until 1965, when the National Endowment for the Humanities was established. Five chapters trace the development within academic anthropology of the concepts of culture, social class, national character, value, and civilization, and their dissemination to non-anthropologists. As Americans came to think of culture anthropologically, as a "complex whole" far broader and more inclusive than Matthew Arnold's "the best which has been thought and said," so, too, did they come to see American communities as stratified into social classes distinguished by their subcultures; to attribute the making of the American character to socialization rather than birth; to locate the distinctiveness of American culture in its unconscious canons of choice; and to view American culture and civilization in a global perspective.
Anthropology: The Human Challenge
by William A. Haviland Harald E. L. Prins Dana Walrath Bunny McbrideThis book offers a comprehensive and balanced presentation on views of human culture, evolution, and prehistory. The text presents the principles and processes of anthropology, both physical (biological) and cultural, including ethnology, linguistics, and prehistoric archaeology in an integrated, holistic manner. The book's framework emphasizing the challenge of human survival, the connections between biology and culture, and the impact of globalization on peoples and cultures around the world, serves to unify the material. The authors integrate contemporary research and ideas from several schools of thought, and use a lively writing style to engage readers and keep them interested in "real world" anthropology.
Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human?
by Robert H. Lavenda Emily A. SchultzA unique alternative to more traditional, encyclopedic introductory texts, Anthropology: What Does It Mean to Be Human?, Third Edition, takes a question-oriented approach that incorporates cutting-edge theory and new ways of looking at important contemporary issues such as power, human rights, and inequality. With a total of sixteen chapters, this engaging, full-color text is an ideal one-semester overview that delves deep into anthropology without overwhelming students.