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Modes of Comparison
"In Modes of Comparison: Theory and Practice, the contributors highlight how theoretical problems have brought forth new ideas on comparison and how comparison has become pivotal in the human sciences. Each of the essays questions a number of critical and contemporary issues in history, sociology, and anthropology as they relate to various ideas of comparison."--BOOK JACKET.
Indigenous Peoples and Religious Change
Ten historians and anthropologists analyse religious change as it was experienced by Indigenous Peoples in and around the Pacific and southern Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Fifty Key Anthropologists
Fifty Key Anthropologists surveys the life and work of some of the most influential figures in anthropology. The entries, written by an international range of expert contributors, represent the diversity of thought within the subject, incorporating both classic theorists and more recent anthropological thinkers. Names discussed include: Clifford Geertz Bronislaw Malinowski Zora Neale Hurston Sherry B. Ortner Claude Lévi-Strauss Rodney Needham Mary Douglas Marcel Mauss This accessible A-Z guide contains helpful cross-referencing, a timeline of key dates and schools of thought, and suggestions for further reading. It will be of interest to students of anthropology and related subjects wanting a succinct overview of the ideas and impact of key anthropologists who have helped to shape the discipline.
Personality and the Cultural Construction of Society
Pyschological anthropology is a vital area of contemporary social science, and one of the field's most important and innovative thinkers is Melford E. Spiro. This volume brings together sixteen essays that review Spiro's theoretical insights and extend them into new areas. The essays center on several general problems: In what ways is it meaningful to speak of a social act as having "functions"? What elements and processes of human personality are universal, and why? What is the relationship between religion and personality? Why? What are the pyschological underpinnings of social manipulation?
Conversion to Christianity
One of the most striking developments in the history of modern civilizations has been the conversion of tribal peoples to more expansively organized "world" religions. There is little scholarly consensus as to why these religions have endured and why conversion to them has been so widespread. These essays explore the phenomenon of Christian conversion from this world-building perspective. Combining rich case studies with original theoretical insights, this work challenges sociologists, anthropologists and historians of religion to reassess the varieties of religious experience and the convergent processes involved in religious change.
Bodies of Inscription
An ethnography of the tattoo community, tracing the practice's transformation from a mostly male, working-class phenomenon to one adapted and propagated by a more middle-class movement in the period from the 1970s to the present.
Beyond Primitivism
At a time when local traditions across the world are forcibly colliding with global culture, Beyond Primitivism explores the future of indigenous religions as they encounter modernity and globalisation.
Kinship, Ecology and History
The analysis of kinship plays a major role in social anthropology. However, the intellectual triumph of structuralism has transformed this analysis into an ivory tower and the methodological hegemony of functionalism inhibits any historical authority. Kinship, Ecology and History informs the reader of these old, yet long-lasting issues. By presenting new, original perspectives, this book reinvents the manner in which we can study kinship. It also examines ecology and history as a conjectural reflection, which make up the foundations on which human kinship can be reflected upon. Whether human kinship is understood in the form of systematics models or as articulated practices, it has to be conceived as a strategic means for modes of action and of transformation of life in society. The three case studies presented in this book give body to new issues. They deconstruct the existing models in order to re-establish kinship as a condition and consequence of social evolution.
Continent of Hunter-Gatherers
This book challenges traditional perceptions of Australian Aboriginal prehistory: that the environment is the major determinant of hunter-gatherers; that Aborigines were egalitarian and culturally homogeneous and therefore experienced few economic and demographic changes. Harry Lourandos argues that the social and economic processes of hunter-gatherers were complex and that the prehistoric period was dynamic and revolutionary. Lourandos presents prehistoric data, reviews archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence, and analyses environmental, demographic and socially-oriented perspectives - drawing from them an original hypothesis. He addresses initial colonisation, the role of Tasmanian Aborigines, the role of fire, faunal extinctions, the intensification debate, horticultural origins, plant exploitation, and the significance of Australian prehistory in the study of other prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies.
