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An Introduction to Theory in Anthropology
In this innovative introduction, Robert Layton reviews the ideas that have inspired anthropologists in their studies of societies around the world. An Introduction to Theory in Anthropology provides a clear and concise analysis of the theories, and traces the way in which they have been translated into anthropological debates. The opening chapter sets out the classical theoretical issues formulated by Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx and Durkheim. Successive chapters discuss Functionalism, Structuralism, Interactionist theories, and Marxist anthropology, while the final chapters address the competing paradigms of Socioecology and Postmodernism. Using detailed case studies, Professor Layton illustrates the way in which various theoretical perspectives have shaped competing, or complementary, accounts of specific human societies.
Order and Anarchy
Through the study of civil society, the evolution of social relations, and the breakdown of social order, Order and Anarchy re-examines the role of violence in human social evolution. Drawing on anthropology, political science, and evolutionary theory, it offers a novel approach to understanding stability and instability in human society. Robert Layton provides a radical critique of current concepts of civil society, arguing that rational action is characteristic of all human societies and not unique to post-Enlightenment Europe. Case studies range from ephemeral African gold rush communities and the night club scene in Britain to stable hunter-gatherer and peasant cultures. The dynamics of recent civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, Chad, Somalia and Indonesia are compared to war in small-scale tribal societies, arguing that recent claims for the evolutionary value of violence have misunderstood the complexity of human strategies and the social environments in which they are played out.
Who Needs the Past ?
None
Anthropology and History in Franche-Comté
This is a study of continuity and change in rural France based on fieldwork carried out over a period of 25 years, and on historical documents spanning more than 300 years. Producer co-operatives have existed in Franche-Comté since the thirteenth century. Communities there, unlike modern English villages, are highly corporate. Robert Layton explores the relationships between inheritance rules, management of common land, household labour, and inter- household relations, as well as the impact on villages of national politics and economy. Comparison with other regions of Western Europe allows a reinterpretation of the eighteenth-century enclosures in England. Layton presents a dialogue between ethnography and social theory, and argues for a revision of the theories of Marx, Giddens, and Bourdieu so as to better explain the mechanisms of continuity, change, and adaptation in social life.
A Future for Archaeology
Over the last thirty years issues of culture, identity and meaning have moved out of the academic sphere to become central to politics and society at all levels from the local to the global. Archaeology has been at the forefront of these moves towards a greater engagement with the non-academic world, often in an extremely practical and direct way, for example in the disputes about the repatriation of human burials. Such disputes have been central to the recognition that previously marginalized groups have rights in their own past that are important for their future. The essays in this book look back at some of the most important events where a role for an archaeology concerned with the past in the present first emerged and look forward to the practical and theoretical issues now central to a socially engaged discipline and shaping its future. This book is published in honor of Professor Peter Ucko, who has played an unparalleled role in promoting awareness of the core issues in this volume among archaeologists.
The Anthropology of Displaced Communities
This collection highlights the work of the Royal Anthropological Institute's Urgent Anthropology Fellowships fund, which supports research into communities whose culture and social life are under immediate threat. Created by George Appell in response to the distress he experienced working with a traumatized community of swidden cultivators in Borneo, who were struggling to survive after relocation in what Appell describes as a 'cultural concentration camp', the fund was established to identify ways of supporting and strengthening such communities through ethnographic work. Since 1995, Urgent Anthropology Fellows have worked with many displaced communities, whether found in refugee camps, res...
The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape
The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape contributes to the development of theory in archaeology and anthropology, provides new and varied case studies of landscape and environment from five continents, and raises important policy issues concerning development and the management of heritage.
Time and Change
This volume explores long-term behavioral patterns and processes of change in hunter-gatherer societies from the Lower Palaeolithic to the present. In doing so, this volume questions the disciplinary distinctions between fine and coarse-grain understandings of hunter-gatherer societies in anthropology and archaeology and challenges the perception that these distinctions are inherent to the two disciplines. The volume brings together studies that specifically address long-term behavioral patterns in hunter-gatherer societies past and present. Some of the contributors also combine historical/archival data and archaeological evidence with anthropological work on contemporary hunter-gatherers. A...
