Cultural

Approaches to Social Archaeology: Colin Renfrew; Hardcover 1984

Artistry of the Everyday: Lisa Bernasek; Photographs by Hillel S. Burger; Imazighen! Beauty and Artisanship in Berber Life presents the Peabody Museum's collection of arts from the Berber-speaking regions of North Africa. The book gives an overview of Berber history and culture, focusing on the rich aesthetic traditions of Amazigh (Berber) craftsmen and women. The book also tells the stories of the collectors--both world-traveling Bostonians and Harvard-trained anthropologists--who brought these objects to Cambridge in the early twentieth century.; Paperback 2008

Beamtimes and Lifetimes: Sharon Traweek; The unique breed of particle physicists constitutes a community of sophisticated mythmakers--explicators of the nature of matter who forever alter our views of space and time. But who are these people? What is their world really like? Sharon Traweek, a bold and original observer of culture, opens the door to this unusual domain and offers us a glimpse into the inner sanctum.; Hardcover 1988 / Paperback 1992

Boiling Energy: Richard Katz; This account of the ancient healing dances practiced by the Kung people of southern Africa's Kalahari Desert includes vivid eyewitness descriptions of night-long healing dances and interviews with Kung healers.; Hardcover 1982 / Paperback 1984

The Channeling Zone: Michael F. Brown; Brown explores the scope and substance of the practice called channeling as a window on the persistent New Age movement. He offers a lively firsthand assessment of the hopes, fears, and obsessions of the thousands of Americans who have abandoned mainstream religions in search of direct and improvisational contact with spiritual beings.; Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 1999

The Chosen Primate: Adam Kuper; Adam Kuper reframes debates about human origin and reconsiders the fundamental questions of anthropology. Balancing biological and cultural perspectives, Kuper reviews our various beliefs, the history of human culture, genes and intelligence, the nature of the gender differences, and the foundations of human politics.; Paperback 1996 / Hardcover

Comparative Anthropology of Ancient Greece: Marcel Detienne; Comparative Anthropology of Ancient Greece looks at the anthropology of the Greeks and other cultures across space and time, and in the process discovers aspects of the art of comparability. Marcel Detienne tries to see how cultural systems react not just to a touchstone category, but also to the questions and concepts that arise from the reaction.; Paperback

Concepts of Person: Ákos Östör, Editor; Lina Fruzzetti, Editor; Steve Barnett, Editor; Hardcover 1982

The Confucian Transformation of Korea: Martina Deuchler; This important new study explores the impact of Neo-Confucianism on Korean society and politics between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries.; Hardcover / Paperback

Conquest and Agrarian Change: Robert Keith; The colonial society and economy of Latin America were based on local communities of three principal types: Spanish towns, Indian villages, and landed estates or haciendas. Of these, it was the latter that provided the economic foundations for the aristocratic social system. This book tells how and why the Spaniards who settled the Peruvian coastal valleys originally came to establish their estates.; Hardcover 1971

Culture: Adam Kuper; Culture clarifies a crucial chapter in recent intellectual history. Adam Kuper makes the case against cultural determinism and argues that political and economic forces, social institutions, and biological processes must take their place in any complete explanation of why people think and behave as they do.; Hardcover 1999 / Paperback 2000

Culture and the State in Late Choson Korea: JaHyun Kim Haboush, Editor; Martina Deuchler, Editor; Investigating the late sixteenth through the nineteenth century, this work looks at the shifting boundaries between the Choson state and the adherents of Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, and popular religions. The contributors argue that the power of each group and the space it occupied were determined by a dynamic interaction of ideology, governmental policies, and the group's self-perceptions. Collectively, the volume counters the static view of the Korean Confucian state and elucidates its relationship to the wider Confucian community and religious groups.; Hardcover 1999 / Paperback 2002

The Culture of Love: Stephen Kern; The Culture of Love interprets the sweeping change in loving that spanned a period when scientific discoveries reduced the terrors and dangers of sex, when new laws gave married women control over their earnings and their bodies, when bold novelists and artists shook off the prudishness and hypocrisy that so paralyzed the Victorians. Kern argues that, in contrast to modern sex, Victorian sex was anatomically constricted, spatially confined, morally suspect, deadly serious, and abruptly over.; Paperback 1998 / Hardcover

The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918: Stephen Kern; Stephen Kern writes about the sweeping changes in technology and culture between 1880 and World War I that created new modes of understanding and experiencing time and space. To mark the book's twentieth anniversary, Kern provides an illuminating new preface about the breakthrough in interpretive approach that has made this a seminal work in interdisciplinary studies.; Paperback 2003

The Daykeeper: Benjamin N. Colby; Lore M. Colby; The Daykeeper presents a unique view, of the life of a modern Mayan holy man--his religious beliefs and practices, his stories and folktales, his philosophy of living, his struggle for daily bread and peace of mind. The Colbys show that there are intelligible cultural principles that organize the daykeeper's methods of divination and guide his interpretation of dreams and his cures for the sick.; Hardcover 1981

Deaf in America: Carol A. Padden; Tom L. Humphries; Written by authors who are themselves Deaf, this unique book illuminates the life and culture of Deaf people from the inside, through their everyday talk, their shared myths, their art and performances, and the lessons they teach one another. Padden and Humphries employ the capitalized "Deaf" to refer to deaf people who share a natural language--American Sign Language (ASL)--and a complex culture, historically created and actively transmitted across generations.; Hardcover 1988 / Paperback 1990

Development Encounters: Pauline E. Peters, Editor; Margarita Benavides; Anne Ferguson; Theodore Macdonald; Isaac Mazonde; Ajay Mehta; Paul Nkwi; Jesse Ribot; James Trostle; The field of development is subject to shifts in paradigms, and it is important to examine systematically how these are realized in actual practice. Two currently favored approaches are participation and indigenous knowledge. In these collected papers, development researchers and practitioners share their ideas and experience on the different forms taken by participation and knowledge, not limited to "indigenous" knowledge, in the practice of development.; Paperback 2001 / Hardcover 2001

Dialectical Societies: David Maybury-Lewis, Editor; The Gê-speaking tribes of Central Brazil have always been an anomaly in the annals of anthropology; their exceedingly simple technology contrasts sharply with their highly complex sociological and ideological traditions. This book, the outgrowth of extended anthropological research organized by Maybury-Lewis, at long last demystifies Gê social structure while modifying and reinterpreting some of the traditional ideas held about kinship, affiliation, and descent.; Hardcover 1979

Divided Island: William A. Christian, Jr; Hardcover 1969

A Divided World: Roberto DaMatta; Hardcover 1982

The Dynamic Dance: Barbara J. King; Using dynamic systems theory, an approach employed to study human communication, King is able to demonstrate the genuine complexity of apes' social communication, and the extent to which their interactions generate meaning. As King describes, apes create meaning primarily through their body movements--and go well beyond conveying messages about food, mating, or predators.; Hardcover 2004

Early American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases: Bartlett Jere Whiting; Hardcover 1978

Early Chinese Civilization: K. C. Chang; Chang approaches the civilization of ancient China from the point of view of an anthropologist as well as from an archaeological perspective. This volume of nine studies deals with the Shang (1766-1122 BCE) and Chou (1122-221) civilizations and the prehistoric cultures from which they sprang.; Hardcover 1976

East is a Big Bird: Gladwin; Hardcover 1970 / Paperback

Embroidered with Gold, Strung with Pearls: Aida Vidan; Bosnian traditional ballads have intrigued many by their beauty and eloquence, from Goethe's poetic interest in them in the eighteenth century to the work of twentieth-century scholars such as Milman Parry and Albert Lord. These songs are now available to the English reader in a bilingual edition offering a selection of never before translated or published materials from Harvard University's Parry Collection. The forty oral ballads, many appearing in multiple versions, were performed by Bosnian women and gathered in the Gacko region of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1930s. Using Parry and Lord as a starting point, Vidan supplements their theories with broader ethnological, cultural, and historical data.; Paperback 2003

Emotions at Work: Aviad E. Raz; Rather than focusing on the psychology of personal emotions at work, this study concentrates on emotions as role requirements, on workplace emotions that combine the private with the public, the personal with the social, and the authentic with the masked. In this cross-cultural study of "emotion management," the author argues that even though the goals of normative control in factories, offices, and shops may be similar across cultures, organizational structure and the surrounding culture affect how that control is discussed and conceived.; Hardcover 2002

Enigma Variations: Richard Price; Sally Price; In a steamy colonial city, an eccentric Frenchman offers for sale an extraordinary collection of primitive art. The two anthropologists called in to appraise the pieces for the national museum quickly find themselves in a world where the boundaries of authenticity and deception blur in the tropical heat.; Paperback 1997 / Hardcover 1998

Entangled Objects: Nicholas Thomas; Paperback 1991 / Hardcover 1991

The Flow of Life: James J. Fox, Editor; Hardcover 1980

France, Fin de Siècle: Eugen Weber; The end of the nineteenth century in France was marked by political scandals, social unrest, dissension, and "decadence," yet also by great social and scientific progress. In this thoroughly engaging history, Weber describes ways of life, not as recorded by general history, but as contemporaries experienced them.; Hardcover 1986 / Paperback

Gates of Eden: Morris Dickstein; Now, on the twentieth anniversary of Gates of Eden's original publication, Dickstein has written a new introduction, reassessing the period's achievements and failures, and providing a fresh perspective on the ways that the sixties continue to influence our politics and culture.; Paperback 1997

George Washington Slept Here: Karal Ann Marling; Hardcover 1988

The Good Parsi: T. M. Luhrmann; During the Raj, one group stands out as having prospered because of British rule: the Parsis. The Zoroastrian people adopted the manners, dress, and aspirations of their British colonizers, and were rewarded with high-level financial, mercantile, and bureaucratic posts. Indian independence, however, ushered in their decline. Tanya Luhrmann's analysis of the Parsis brings startling insights to a wide range of communal and individual identity crises and what could be called "identity politics" of this century.; Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1996

The Great Map of Mankind: P. J. Marshall; Glyn Williams; The period from the late seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century had seen a massive increase in Britain's knowledge of the non-European peoples of the wider world, and this was reflected in the proliferation of travel accounts of every kind. This is a history of British perceptions of the exotic peoples and lands of Asia, North America, West Africa, and the Pacific who became well-known during that great age of exploration.; Hardcover 1982

Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language: Robin Dunbar; What Robin Dunbar suggests--and his research, whether in the realm of primatology or in that of gossip, confirms--is that humans developed language to serve the purpose that grooming served, but far more efficiently. From the nit-picking of chimpanzees to our chats at coffee break, from neuroscience to paleoanthropology, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language offers a provocative view of what makes us human.; Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 1998

Harvest of the Palm: James J. Fox; Hardcover 1977

Hermes' Dilemma and Hamlet's Desire: Vincent Crapanzano; A distinguished anthropologist and a creative force behind postmodern writing in his field, Vincent Crapanzano here focuses his considerable critical powers upon his own culture. In essays that question how the human sciences, particularly anthropology and psychoanalysis, articulate their fields of study, Crapanzano addresses nothing less than the enormous problem of defining the self in both its individual and collective projections.; Paperback 1992 / Hardcover 1992

Housing and Neighborhood Dynamics: William C. Apgar, Jr; John F. Kain; Hardcover 1985

Identity Reflections: Brian R. Dott; Mount Tai in northeastern China has long been a sacred site. Throughout history, it has been a magnet for both women and men from all classes--emperors, aristocrats, officials, literati, and villagers. This book examines the behavior of those who made the pilgrimage to Mount Tai and their interpretations of its sacrality and history, as a means of better understanding their identities and mentalities.; Hardcover 2005

Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds: Dorothy Holland; William Lachicotte; Debra Skinner; Carole Cain; Synthesizing theoretical contributions by Vygotsky, Bakhtin and Bourdieu, Holland and her co-authors examine the processes by which people are constituted as agents as well as subjects of culturally constructed, socially imposed worlds. They develop a theory of self-formation in which identities become the pivot between discipline and agency: turning from experiencing one's scripted social positions to making one's way into cultural worlds as a knowledgeable and committed participant.; Hardcover 1998 / Paperback 2001

Illustration: J. Hillis Miller; Hardcover 1992 / Paperback

In Pursuit of Status: Denise Potrzeba Lett; In this ethnography of the everyday life of contemporary Korea, Denise Lett argues that South Korea's contemporary urban middle class not only exhibits upper-class characteristics but also that this reflects a culturally inherited disposition of Koreans to seek high status. Lett shows that Koreans have adapted traditional ways of asserting high status to modern life, and analyzes strategies for claiming high status in terms of occupation, family, lifestyle, education, and marriage.; Hardcover 1998 / Paperback 2002

In a Dark Time: Linda Isako Angst; Since Japanese sovereignty from American occupation in 1972, these islands have become the site of a complex colonial and postcolonial relationship of resistance and dependence between Okinawa, Japan, and the United States. Angst looks behind this historical and geopolitical experience by drawing upon diverse perspectives of Okinawa women from different generational and economic backgrounds.; Hardcover 2008

Inhuman Conditions: Pheng Cheah; Through an examination of debates about cosmopolitanism and human rights, Inhuman Conditions questions key ideas about what it means to be human. Cheah links influential arguments about the new cosmopolitanism to a perceptive examination of the older cosmopolitanism of Kant and Marx, and juxtaposes them with proliferating formations of collective culture to reveal the flaws in claims about the imminent decline of the nation-state and the obsolescence of popular nationalism.; Paperback 2007 / Hardcover 2007

Intimate Politics: Sara L. Friedman; Distinctive female dress styles, gender divisions of labor, and powerful same-sex networks have long distinguished villages in this coastal region of southeastern China from other rural Han communities. Intimate Politics explores these practices that have constituted eastern Hui'an residents, women in particular, as an anomaly among rural Han. This book asks what such practices have come to mean in a post-1949 socialist order that has incorporated forms of marriage, labor, and dress into a developmental scale extending from the primitive to the civilized.; Hardcover 2006

Islamicate Sexualities: Edited by Kathryn Babayan; Edited by Afsaneh Najmabadi; Babayan explores different genealogies of sexuality and questions some of the theoretical emphases and epistemic assumptions affecting current histories of sexuality.; Paperback 2008

Islands of Eight Million Smiles: Hiroshi Aoyagi; Since the late 1960s a ubiquitous feature of popular culture in Japan has been the "idol," an attractive young actor, male or female, packaged and promoted as an adolescent role model and exploited by the entertainment, fashion, cosmetic, and publishing industries to market trendy products. This book offers ethnographic case studies regarding the symbolic qualities of idols and how these qualities relate to the conceptualization of selfhood among adolescents in Japan and elsewhere in East Asia. Ultimately, Aoyagi argues, idol performances substantiate capitalist values in the urban consumer society of contemporary Japan and East Asia.; Hardcover 2005

Living Narrative: Elinor Ochs; Lisa Capps; This pathbreaking book looks at everyday storytelling as a twofold phenomenon--a response to our desire for coherence, but also to our need to probe and acknowledge the enigmatic aspects of experience. Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps develop a way of understanding the seemingly contradictory nature of everyday narrative.; Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2002

London's Newcomers: Ruth Glass; Hardcover 1961

Making Dead Birds: Robert Gardner; This detailed and candid account of the process of making Gardner’s classic Dead Birds is more than the chronicle of a single work.Gardner’s classic Dead Birds is one of the most highly acclaimed and controversial documentary films ever made. It is also a thoughtful examination of what it meant to record the moving and violent rituals of warrior-farmers in the New Guinea highlands and to present to the world a graphic story of their behavior as a window onto our own. This book not only addresses the art and practice of filmmaking, but also explores issues of representation and the discovery of meaning in human lives.; Paperback 2008

Maya Children: Karen L. Kramer; Among the Maya of Xculoc, an isolated farming village in the lowland forests of the Yucatán peninsula, children contribute to household production in considerable ways. Thus this village, the subject of anthropologist Kramer's study, affords a remarkable opportunity for understanding the economics of childhood in a pre-modern agricultural setting.; Hardcover 2005

Michael Rockefeller: Kevin Bubriski; Foreword by Robert Gardner; Photographs by Michael Rockefeller; From April to August 1961, recent Harvard graduate Michael Clark Rockefeller served as sound recordist and photographer on a remarkable multidisciplinary expedition to highland New Guinea. In only five months he produced an impressive body of work, including over 4,000 black and white negatives. In this catalogue of over 75 photographs, photographer Bubriski explores Rockefeller's journey into the culture and community of the Dani people, presenting the first substantial publication of his visual legacy.; Paperback 2007

Mindful of Famine: Johannes Wilbert; For the Warao of the Venezuelan Orinoco Delta, survival under the extreme ecological conditions of the deltaic marshland requires exceptional adaptive agility. Johannes Wilbert presents the Warao's response to the climatological challenge of their homeland, deftly weaving the strands of geographic, atmospheric, biological, and cultural lore and learning into a rich tapestry of environmental wisdom.; Paperback 1997 / Hardcover

Modern Peoplehood: John Lie; Far from being transhistorical and transcultural phenomena, race, ethnicity, and nation, Lie argues, are modern notions--modernity here associated with the rise of the modern state, the industrial economy, and Enlightenment ideas. Not only is the state responsible for the development and nurturing of feelings of belonging associated with ethnic, racial, and national identity, it is also responsible for racial and ethnic conflict, even genocide.; Hardcover 2004

Muslim Chinese: Dru Gladney; This second edition of Dru Gladney's critically acclaimed study of the Muslim population in China includes a new preface by the author, as well as a valuable addendum to the bibliography, already hailed as one of the most extensive listing of modern sources on the Sino-Muslims.; Paperback 1996

My France: Eugen Weber; Hardcover 1991 / Paperback 1992

The Navaho: Clyde Kluckhohn; Dorothea Leighton; Revised by Lucy Wales Kluckhohn; Revised by Richard Kluckhohn; The authors review Navaho history from archaeological times to the present, and then present Navaho life today. This book presents not only a study of Navaho life, however: it is an impartial discussion of an interesting experiment in Government administration of a dependent people, a discussion which is significant for contemporary problems of a wider scope; colonial questions; the whole issue of the contact of different races and peoples.; Hardcover 1973 / Paperback 1992

Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: Linda L. Barnes; When did the West discover Chinese healing traditions? Most people might point to the "rediscovery" of Chinese acupuncture in the 1970s. In Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts, Linda Barnes leads us back, instead, to the thirteenth century to uncover the story of the West's earliest known encounters with Chinese understandings of illness and healing. A medical anthropologist with a degree in comparative religion, Barnes illuminates the way constructions of medicine, religion, race, and the body informed Westerners' understanding of the Chinese and their healing traditions.; Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2007

Never in Anger: Jean L. Briggs; Hardcover 1970 / Paperback

Pain and Its Transformations: Sarah Coakley, Editor; Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Editor; Pain remains a deep mystery for sufferers, their physicians, and researchers. As neuroscientific research shows, even the immediate sensation of pain is shaped by psychological state and interpretation. At the same time, many individuals and cultures find meaning, particularly religious meaning, even in chronic and inexplicable pain. This interdisciplinary book includes not only essays but also discussions among a wide range of specialists.; Hardcover 2008

Patterns of Human Variation: Jonathan S. Friedlaender; Hardcover 1975

Peacemaking among Primates: Frans B. M. de Waal; Hardcover 1989 / Paperback 1990

A Pre-Columbian World: Edited by Jeffrey Quilter; Edited by Mary Miller; The articles in this book conceptualize the ancient New World through new and varied approaches, from iconography to the history of anthropology. The many essays in this volume explore extensively the vast vista of the Pre-Columbian world.; Hardcover 2006

The Predicament of Culture: James Clifford; The Predicament of Culture is a critical ethnography of the West in its changing relations with other societies. Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology, travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be contingent fictions, now actively contested in postcolonial contexts. In discussions of ethnography, surrealism, museums, and emergent tribal arts, Clifford probes the late twentieth-century predicament of living simultaneously within, between, and after culture.; Hardcover 1988 / Paperback

Presence in the Flesh: Katharine Young; Disembodiment--rendering the body an object and the self bodyless--is the foundational gesture of medicine. How, then, does medical practice acknowledge the presence of the person in the objectified body? Katharine Young considers in detail the "choreography" such a maneuver requires.; Hardcover 1997

Primeval Kinship: Bernard Chapais; In this account of the dawn of human society, Chapais shows that our knowledge about kinship and society in nonhuman primates supports, and informs, ideas first put forward by the distinguished social anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss. Chapais contends that only a few evolutionary steps were required to bridge the gap between the kinship structures of our closest relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—and the human kinship configuration.; Hardcover 2008

The Question of Animal Culture: Edited by Kevin N. Laland; Edited by Bennett G. Galef; The issue of animal culture is hotly debated. Laland and Galef have gathered key voices in the often rancorous debate to summarize the views along the continuum from “Culture? Of course!” to “Culture? Of course not!” The result is essential reading for anyone interested in the validity of animal culture, and what it might say about our own.; Hardcover 2009

Remembering Awatovi: Hester A. Davis; Remembering Awatovi is the engaging story of a major archaeological expedition on the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona. Centered on the large Pueblo village of Awatovi, with its Spanish mission church and beautiful kiva murals, the excavations are renowned not only for the data they uncovered but also for the interdisciplinary nature of the investigations. In archaeological lore they are also remembered for the diverse, fun-loving, and distinguished cast of characters who participated in or visited the digs.; Hardcover 2008 / Paperback 2008

Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 45, Spring 2004: Edited by Francesco Pellizzi; Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.; Paperback 2005

Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 46, Autumn 2004: Edited by Francesco Pellizzi; Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.; Paperback 2005

Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 47, Spring 2005: Edited by Francesco Pellizzi; Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.; Paperback 2005

Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 48, Autumn 2005: Edited by Francesco Pellizzi; Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.; Paperback 2005

Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 49/50, Spring/Autumn 2006: Edited by Francesco Pellizzi; Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.; Paperback 2006

Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 51, Spring 2007: Edited by Francesco Pellizzi; Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.; Paperback

Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 52, Fall 2007: Edited by Francesco Pellizzi; Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, among others.; Paperback 2008

Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 53/54, Spring and Autumn 2008: Edited by Francesco Pellizzi; Among other articles, this double volume includes: The value of forgery, Jonathan Hay; Affective operations of art and literature, Ernst van Alphen; Betty’s Turn, Stephen Melville.; Paperback 2008

Return to Nisa: Marjorie Shostak; The story of two women--one a hunter-gatherer in Botswana, the other an ailing American anthropologist--this powerful book returns the reader to territory that Marjorie Shostak wrote of so poignantly in the now classic Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman. Here, however, the ground has perceptibly shifted. First published in 1981, Nisa served as a stirring introduction to anthropology's most basic question: Can there be true understanding between people of profoundly different cultures?; Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2002

The Singing Neanderthals: Steven Mithen; In The Singing Neanderthals, Steven Mithen draws together strands from archaeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience and musicology to explain why we are so compelled to make and hear music. Mithen explores music as a fundamental aspect of the human condition, encoded into the human genome during the evolutionary history of our species. The result is a fascinating work--and a succinct riposte to those who have dismissed music as a functionless evolutionary byproduct.; Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2007

Steps of Perfection: Donald S. Sutton; Despite Taiwan's rise as an economic force in the world, modernity has not led to a Weberian process of disenchantment or curbed religiosity. To the contrary, other factors--social, economic, political--have stimulated religion. How and why this has happened are central issues in this book. One part of Taiwan's flourishing religious culture is the elaborate and colorful procession of local gods accompanied by troupes of musicians and dancers. Concentrating on the stylistic variations in performances, the author describes the troupes as organizations shaped by the "market forces" of supply and demand in the culture of religious festivals. By focusing on performances as the nexus of market and art, he shows how bodily performance is the site where religious statements are made and the power of the gods made visible.; Hardcover 2003

The Taming of the Samurai: Eiko Ikegami; Modern Japan offers us a view of a highly developed society with its own internal logic. Eiko Ikegami makes this logic accessible to us through a sweeping investigation into the roots of Japanese organizational structures.; Paperback 1997 / Hardcover 1998

The Theory of the Avant-Garde: Renato Poggioli; Convinced that all aspects of modern culture have been affected by avant-garde art, Poggioli explores the relationship between the avant-garde and civilization. Historical parallels and modern examples from all the arts are used to show how the avant-garde is both symptom and cause of many major extra-aesthetic trends of our time, and that the contemporary avant-garde is the sole and authentic one.; Hardcover 1965 / Paperback

Thinking Through Cultures: Richard A. Shweder; What Shweder calls for is an exploration of the human mind, and of one's own mind, by thinking through the ideas and practices of other peoples and their cultures. He examines evidence of cross-cultural similarities and differences in mind, self, emotion, and morality with special reference to the cultural psychology of a traditional Hindu temple town in India, where he has done considerable work in comparative anthropology.; Paperback 1991 / Hardcover 1991

Twin Tollans: Edited by Cynthia Kristan-Graham; Edited by Jeff Kowalski; This volume had its beginnings in the colloquium, "Rethinking Chichen Itza, Tula and Tollan," that was held at Dumbarton Oaks. The selected essays revisit long-standing questions regarding the nature of the relationship between Chichen Itza and Tula. These essays place the cities in the context of the emerging social, political, and economic relationships that took shape during the transition from the Epiclassic period in Central Mexico, the Terminal Classic period in the Maya region, and the succeeding Early Postclassic period.; Hardcover 2007

Variations in the Expressions of Inka Power: Edited by Richard L. Burger; Edited by Craig Morris; Edited by Ramiro Matos; Until recently, little archaeological investigation has been dedicated to the Inka, the last great culture to flourish in Andean South America before the sixteenth-century arrival of the Spaniards. Using a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, scholars from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities provide a new understanding of Inka culture and history.; Hardcover 2008

A View to a Death in the Morning: Matt Cartmill; A View to a Death in the Morning shows us how hunting has figured in the Western imagination from the myth of Artemisto the tale of Bambi. This richly illustrated book will captivate readers on every side of the dilemma, from the most avid hunters to their most vehement opponents to those who simply wonder about the importance of hunting in human nature.; Paperback 1996 / Hardcover

Village in the Vaucluse, Third Edition: Laurence William Wylie; Laurence Wylie's remarkably warm and human account of life in the rural French village he calls Peyrane vividly depicts the villagers themselves within the framework of a systematic description of their culture. Since 1950, when Wylie began his study of Peyrane, to which he has returned on many occasions since, France has become a primarily industrial nation--and French village life has changed in many ways. The third edition of this book includes a fascinating new chapter based on Wylie's observations of Peyrane since 1970, with discussions of the Peyranais' gradual assimilation into the outside world they once staunchly resisted, the flux of the village population, and the general transformation in the character of French rural communities.; Paperback

Who Owns Native Culture?: Michael F. Brown; Who Owns Native Culture? documents the efforts of indigenous peoples to redefine heritage as a proprietary resource. By focusing on the complexity of actual cases, Brown casts light on indigenous claims in diverse fields--religion, art, sacred places, and botanical knowledge. He proposes alternative strategies for defending the heritage of vulnerable native communities without blocking the open communication essential to the life of pluralist democracies.; Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2004

Why Do Men Barbecue?: Richard A. Shweder; Drawing on ethnographic studies of the distinctive modes of psychological functioning in communities around the world, Richard Shweder explores ethnic and cultural differences in ideals of gender, in the life of the emotions, in conceptions of mature adulthood and the stages of life, and in moral judgments about right and wrong. Shweder, a cultural pluralist, dares readers to broaden their own conceptions of what is good, true, beautiful, and efficient and to take a closer look at specific cultural practices--parent/child cosleeping, arranged marriage, male and female genital modifications--that we may initially find alien or disturbing.; Paperback 2003 / Hardcover 2003

Harvard University Press

SUBJECT INDEX:

SOCIAL SCIENCE:

Anthropology:

Cultural