Behavioral Anthropology is a unique introductory text that combines an intellectual biography with an overview of the methodological principles of cross-cultural research. Each chapter deals with a specific methodological issue: research design; the role of theory; strategies for measuring behavior; psychological or situational variables; samples and surveys simple and complex methods of data analysis and interpretation. For those interested in the behavioral approach, this book will be a valuable reference and teaching tool.
This is a unique collection of essays illustrating the author's distinctive approach to cross-cultural research, and a valuable companion volume to Graves's Behavioral Anthropology. Graves and his co-authors offer fifteen research essays as supplemental readings in research methodology, to convey the challenge and excitement of conducting systematic behavioral science research cross-culturally. For those concerned with a behavioral, scientific approach to anthropology, this book will be a valuable reference and teaching tool.
Classification, as an object of recent anthropological scrutiny came to prominence during the 1960s, exemplified in the British (constructionist) tradition by the writings of Mary Douglas, and in the American ethno-semantics (cognitive) tradition by the likes of Harold Conklin and Brent Berlin. At the time, these approaches seemed by turns to contradict each other, or even to exist in parallel universes. However, over the last 30 years we have witnessed both a renewed interest in classification studies as well as a cross-fertilization of these once antagonistic approaches. These essays by one of leading scholars in this field bring together a body of influential and inter-linked work which attempts to bridge the divide between cultural and cognitive studies of classification, and which develops a more embedded and processual approach. In particular, the essays focus on people's categorization of natural kinds as a means through which to obtain an understanding of how classifying behavior in general works, engaging with the ideas of both anthropologists and psychologists. The theoretical background is set out in an entirely new and substantial introduction, which also provides a comprehensive and systematic review of developments in cognitive and social anthropology since 1960 as these have impacted on classification studies. In short, it constitutes a useful and approachable introduction to its subject.
