Cultural Anthropology : Global Forces, Local Lives

by Eller; Jack David

• ISBN13: 9780415485395
• ISBN10: 0415485398
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-06
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives is an accessible, ethnographically rich, cultural anthropology textbook which gives a coherent and refreshingly new vision of the discipline and its subject matter-human diversity. The fifteen chapters and three extended case studies present all of the necessary areas of cultural anthropology, organizing them in conceptually and thematically meaningful and original ways.

Author Biography

Jack David Eller is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Community College of Denver. He is the author of Introducing Anthropology of Religion (Routledge 2007).

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. xi
List of boxes	p. xiv
Introduction	p. xvi
Understanding Anthropology	p. 1
The Science(s) of Anthropology	p. 2
Traditional Anthropology and Beyond	p. 7
The "Anthropological Perspective"	p. 12
The Relevance of Anthropology	p. 19
Summary	p. 22
Understanding and Studying Culture	p. 24
Defining Culture	p. 25
The Biocultural Basis of Human Behavior	p. 35
Studying Culture: Method in Cultural Anthropology	p. 41
Summary	p. 49
The Origins of Cultural Anthropology	p. 50
What Makes Cultural Anthropology Possible - and Necessary	p. 51
Encountering the Other	p. 55
Rethinking Society: Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Social Theory	p. 59
Toward an Ethnological Science in the Nineteenth Century	p. 61
The Twentieth Century and the Founding of Modern Anthropology	p. 62
The Anthropological Crisis of the Mid-Twentieth Century and Beyond	p. 67
Summary	p. 71
Language and Social Relations	p. 73
Human Language as a Communication System	p. 75
The Structure of Language	p. 77
Making Society Through Language: Language and the Construction of Social Reality	p. 84
Language Acquisition and the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis	p. 92
Summary	p. 96
Learning to be an Individual: Personality and Gender	p. 98
Cultures and Persons, or Cultural Persons	p. 99
Gender and Person, or Gendered Persons	p. 108
Summary	p. 119
Individuals and Identities: Race and Ethnicity	p. 121
The Anthropology of Race	p. 122
The Modern Anthropological Critique of Race	p. 128
The Anthropology of Ethnicity	p. 132
Racial and Ethnic Groups and Relations in Cross-Cultural Perspective	p. 137
Summary	p. 147
Seeing Culture as a Whole #1: The Relativism of Motherhood, Personhood, Race, and Health in a Brazilian Community	p. 148
Economics: Humans, Nature, and Social Organization	p. 150
Economics as the Base or Core of Culture	p. 151
The Anthropology of Economics	p. 153
Summary	p. 177
Kinship and Non-Kin Organization: Creating Social Groups	p. 179
Corporate Groups: The Fundamental Structure of Human Societies	p. 180
Kinship-Based Corporate Groups	p. 181
Non-Kinship-Based Corporate Groups	p. 198
Summary	p. 205
Politics: Social Order and Social Control	p. 207
Social Control: The Functions of Politics	p. 208
Power	p. 212
The Anthropology of Political Systems	p. 216
Maintaining Internal Order and "Social Harmony"	p. 229
An Anthropology of War	p. 232
Summary	p. 234
Religion: Interacting with the Non-Human World	p. 236
The Problem of Studying Religion Anthropologically	p. 237
The Elements of Religion: Superhuman Entities and Human Specialists	p. 242
The Elements of Religion: Symbol, Ritual, and Language	p. 255
Summary	p. 262
Seeing Culture as a Whole #2: The Integration of Culture in Warlpiri Society	p. 264
Cultural Dynamics: Continuity and Change	p. 267
The Tradition of Tradition	p. 268
Cultural Dynamics: The Processes of Cultural Change	p. 272
Summary	p. 288
Colonialism and the Origin of Globalization	p. 290
The Culture of Colonialism	p. 292
The Legacy of Colonialism	p. 303
Summary	p. 312
The Struggle for Political Identity: Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Conflict	p. 314
Politics, Identity, and Post-Colonialism	p. 316
Fluid, Fragmented, and Fractious Cultures in the Modern World	p. 326
From Culture to Competition to Conflict	p. 330
Summary	p. 336
The Struggle for Economic Independence: Development, Modernization, and Globalization	p. 338
Why Economic Dependence?	p. 339
The Path to Underdevelopment	p. 341
Development: Solution and Problem	p. 349
Models of Development	p. 356
The Benefits - and Costs - of Development	p. 358
Summary	p. 361
The Struggle for Cultural Survival, Revival, and Revitalization	p. 363
Voices from Another World	p. 365
From Culture to Cultural Movement	p. 369
The Future of Culture, and the Culture of the Future	p. 377
Summary	p. 387
Seeing Culture as a whole #3: Exile, Refuge, and Culture	p. 389
Glossary	p. 391
Bibliography	p. 411
Index	p. 423
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