The second edition of this popular text has been updated throughout and includes four new chapters on language revitalization, social media and social revolutions, human migration, and the role of NGOs in international development practice.
The third edition of this bestselling book introduces readers to anthropology, and the world around it, by connecting important concepts to current global issues. A question-based approach encourages readers to understand specific issues in a broader cross-cultural context while building an appreciation for anthropology’s role in developing global citizenship. This edition has been updated and revised throughout, including discussion of technology, design anthropology, and the effects of social media on cultural change. As well, two new chapters, one on global responsibility for refugees, and the other on human trafficking as a form of modern-day slavery, make the text particularly relevant.
Humanity is at a crossroads. We face mounting inequality, escalating political violence, warring fundamentalisms and an environmental crisis of planetary proportions. How can we fashion a world that has room for everyone, for generations to come? What are the possibilities, in such a world, of collective human life? These are urgent questions, and no discipline is better placed to address them than anthropology. It does so by bringing to bear the wisdom and experience of people everywhere, whatever their backgrounds and walks of life. In this passionately argued book, Tim Ingold relates how a field of study once committed to ideals of progress collapsed amidst the ruins of war and colonialism, only to be reborn as a discipline of hope, destined to take centre stage in debating the most pressing intellectual, ethical and political issues of our time. He shows why anthropology matters to us all. Introducing Polity’s Why It Matters series: In these short and lively books, world-leading thinkers make the case for the importance of their subjects and aim to inspire a new generation of students.
"Anthropology Matters places the study of anthropology concretely in the world that surrounds it. It takes a question-based approach to introducing important anthropological concepts by embedding those concepts in contemporary global issues that will interest students. The third edition of this popular text has been updated throughout and includes two new chapters: globalization and transnational mobility, and the responsibility of the global community to refugees. The book has also been revised and updated throughout to reflect current events and popular topics, including the impact of social media on social, political, and religious systems, interviews with women who veil, and discussion of design anthropology."--
Anthropology Matters places the study of anthropology concretely in the world by which it is surrounded. It takes a question-based approach to introducing important anthropological concepts by embedding those concepts in contemporary global issues that will interest students. The second edition of this popular text has been updated throughout and includes four new chapters on language revitalization, social media and social revolutions, human migration, and the role of NGOs in international development practice. Students can now engage with the most up-to-date issues while learning to think anthropologically.
An in-depth look at Black food and the challenges it faces today For Black Americans, the food system is broken. When it comes to nutrition, Black consumers experience an unjust and inequitable distribution of resources. Black Food Matters examines these issues through in-depth essays that analyze how Blackness is contested through food, differing ideas of what makes our sustenance “healthy,” and Black individuals’ own beliefs about what their cuisine should be. Primarily written by nonwhite scholars, and framed through a focus on Black agency instead of deprivation, the essays here showcase Black communities fighting for the survival of their food culture. The book takes readers into the real world of Black sustenance, examining animal husbandry practices in South Carolina, the work done by the Black Panthers to ensure food equality, and Black women who are pioneering urban agriculture. These essays also explore individual and community values, the influence of history, and the ongoing struggle to meet needs and affirm Black life. A comprehensive look at Black food culture and the various forms of violence that threaten the future of this cuisine, Black Food Matters centers Blackness in a field that has too often framed Black issues through a white-centric lens, offering new ways to think about access, privilege, equity, and justice. Contributors: Adam Bledsoe, U of Minnesota; Billy Hall; Analena Hope Hassberg, California State Polytechnic U, Pomona; Yuson Jung, Wayne State U; Kimberly Kasper, Rhodes College; Tyler McCreary, Florida State U; Andrew Newman, Wayne State U; Gillian Richards-Greaves, Coastal Carolina U; Monica M. White, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Brian Williams, Mississippi State U; Judith Williams, Florida International U; Psyche Williams-Forson, U of Maryland, College Park; Willie J. Wright, Rutgers U.
Many of us are alarmed by the accelerating rates of extinction of plants and animals. But how many of us know that human cultures are going extinct at an even more shocking rate? While biologists estimate that 18 percent of mammals and 11 percent of birds are threatened, and botanists anticipate the loss of 8 percent of flora, anthropologists predict that fully 50 percent of the 7,000 languages spoken around the world today will disappear within our lifetimes. And languages are merely the canaries in the coal mine: what of the knowledge, stories, songs, and ways of seeing encoded in these voices? In The Wayfinders, Wade Davis offers a gripping and enlightening account of this urgent crisis. He leads us on a fascinating tour through a handful of indigenous cultures, describing the worldviews they represent and reminding us of the encroaching danger to humankind's survival should they vanish.
Body Matters approaches the material world directly; it seeks to remind people that they are the matter of their bodies. This volume offers an assortment of contributions from anthropology, archaeology and medieval studies, with case studies from northern Europe, the Near East, East Africa and Amazonia, which variously draw attention to the multiple shifting materials that comprise, impact upon and co-create human bodies. This lively collection foregrounds myriad material influences interacting with and shaping the human body; the chapters come together to illustrate the fundamental fleshy, bony, suppurating, leaky and oozing physicality of being human. Ultimately, by reminding readers of their indisputable materiality, Body Matters seeks to draw people and the rest of the material world together to illustrate that bodies not only seep into (and are part of) the landscape, but equally that people and the material world are inextricably co-constitutive.
"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.
Despite the pervasiveness of barter across societies, this mode of transaction has largely escaped the anthropologist’s gaze. Drawing on data from fairs in the Argentinean Andes, this book addresses a local modality of barter known as cambio. Bringing out its embeddedness within religious celebrations, it argues that cambio is practiced as a sacrifice to catholic figures and local ancestors, thereby challenging a widespread view of barter as a non-monetary form of commodity exchange. This ethnography of Andean barter considers processes of value creation, both economic and subjective, to further our understanding of how social groups create themselves through economic exchanges.