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In 1952, Professor Allan Holmberg arranged for Cornell University to lease the Hacienda Vicos, an agricultural estate in the central Peruvian highlands on which some 1800 Quechua-speaking highland peasants resided. Between 1952 and 1957 Holmberg, with colleagues and students, initiated a set of social, economic, and agrarian changes, and nurtured mechanisms for community-based management of the estate by the resident peasants. By the end of a second lease in 1962, sufficient political pressure had been brought to bear on a reluctant national government to force the sale of Vicos to its people. Holmberg's twin goals for the Vicos Project were to bring about community possession of their land ...
Essays on the use of alcoholic beverages within diverse societies and cultures
Is war necessary? In Peace and War prominent anthropologists and other social scientists explore the cultural and social factors leading to war. They analyze the covert causes of war from a cross-cultural perspective: ideologies that dispose people to war; underlying patterns of social relationships that help institutionalize war; and the cultural systems of military establishments. Overt causes of war—environmental factors like the control of scarce resources, advantageous territories, and technologies, or promoting the welfare of people “like” oneself—are also considered. The authors examine anthropologists’ role in policy formation—how their theories on the nature of culture and society help those who deal with global problems on a day-to-day basis. They argue that both covert and overt mechanisms are pushing the world closer to a devastating war and offer strategies to weaken the effects of these mechanisms. This anthropological and historical analysis of the causes of war is a valuable resource for those studying war and those trying to understand the place of social science in framing pacific options.
Starting from a base of anthropological fieldwork in particular societies and communities (in sub-Saharan East Africa, Mexico, Ecuador, Honduras, Malawi, and the Sudan), the authors utilize case studies to examine the meaning of their findings for the understanding needed for specific policy interventions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Abstract: Levels of economic development vary widely within countries in the Americas. This paper argues that part of this variation has its roots in the colonial era. Colonizers engaged in different economic activities in different regions of a country, depending on local conditions. Some activities were "bad" in the sense that they depended heavily on the exploitation of labor and created extractive institutions, while "good" activities created inclusive institutions. The authors show that areas with bad colonial activities have lower gross domestic product per capita today than areas with good colonial activities. Areas with high pre-colonial population density also do worse today. In particular, the positive effect of "good" activities goes away in areas with high pre-colonial population density. The analysis attributes this to the "ugly" fact that colonizers used the pre-colonial population as an exploitable resource. The intermediating factor between history and current development appears to be institutional differences across regions and not income inequality or the current ethnic composition of the population.
This introductory text introduces basic concepts in cultural anthropology by comparing cultures of increasing scale and focusing on specific universal issues throughout human history. Cultural materials are presented in integrated ethnographic case studies organized by cultural and geographic areas to show how ideological, social organization, and material features fit together in specific sociocultural systems. Bodley explicitly seeks a balance between ecological-materialist and cultural-ideological explanations of sociocultural systems, while stressing the importance of individual power-seeking and human agency. Part One examines domestic-scale, autonomous tribal cultures. Part Two presents politically organized, class-based civilizations and ancient empires in the imperial world. Part Three surveys global, industrial, market-based civilizations in the contemporary commercial world. Cultural Anthropology uniquely challenges students to consider the big questions about the nature of cultural systems.
Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes examines Indian agriculture in South America. The focus is on field types and field technologies, including agricultural landforms such as terraces, canals, and drained fields, which have persisted for hundreds of years. What emerges is a picture of mostly successful indigenous farming practices in difficult environments--rain forests, savannahs, swamps, rugged mountains, and deserts.