Anthropology

by Ember, Carol R.; Ember, Melvin R.; Peregrine, Peter N.

• ISBN13: 9780132277532
• ISBN10: 0132277530
• Edition: 12th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-01-01
• Publisher: Prentice Hall

Summary

This comprehensive and scientific introduction to the four fields of&anthropology&helps students understand&humans in all their variety, &and&why they got to be that way.& This new edition&highlights&migration and&immigration in the context of&globalization.

Table of Contents

Introduction

What Is Anthropology?

How We Discover the Past

Human Evolution: Biological and Cultural

Genetics and Evolution

The Living Primates

Primate Evolution: From Early Primates to Hominoids

The First Hominids

The Origins of Culture and the Emergence of Homo

Modern Humans

The Emergence of Homo Sapiens

The Upper Paleolithic World

Origins of Food Production and Settled Life

Origins of Cities and States

Human Variation and Adaptation

Cultural Variation

The Concept of Culture

Theoretical Approaches in Cultural Anthropology

Explanation and Evidence

Communication and Language

Getting Food

Economic Systems

Social Stratification: Class, Ethnicity, and Racism

Sex, Gender, and Culture

Marriage and the Family

Marital Residence and Kinship

Associations and Interest Groups

Political Life: Social Order and Disorder

Psychology and Culture

Religion and Magic

The Arts

Culture Change and Globalization

Using Anthropology

Applied and Practicing Anthropology

Medical Anthropology

Global Social Problem

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

PREFACE The human species may be the most widespread species in the world today. Humans have been moving tremendous distances ever since Homo erectus moved out of Africa. To highlight this fact, this uniqueness of humans, we have prepared a new box feature for this edition which we call "Migrants and Immigrants." Almost half the chapters now contain a box about some aspect of the movement of people, ranging from prehistory to recent times. Examples are research on when hominids first migrated out of Africa, possible routes humans may have taken in their migration to the Americas, the spread of foods in recent times, arranging marriages in the diaspora, and the problem of refugees. We have decided to reintroduce a separate chapter on theoretical approaches in cultural anthropology, which reviewers suggested. The separate chapter on "Explanation and Evidence" now has new material on ethics in fieldwork and an expanded discussion of cross-cultural research. Ethical issues are also given more attention in various other chapters. In updating the book, we try to go beyond descriptions, as always. We are interested not only in what humans are and were like; we are also interested in why they got to be that way, in all their variety. When there are alternative explanations, we try to communicate the necessity to evaluate them logically as well as on the basis of the available evidence. Throughout the book, we try to communicate that no idea, including ideas put forward in textbooks, should be accepted even tentatively without supporting tests that could have gone the other way.