Anthropology Books - Page 13

Foxfire 9 (Foxfire)

Inc. Foxfire Fund

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Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> Mythology -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Outstanding 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 21 people found this review helpful.

The entire Fox Fire colledtion should be required reading for all people of this country. You would get a feel for where we came from and our heritage. The books show a deep respect for each other, God and country. Very good.

Informative and timeless 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

I bought the book because it has one of the best sections on fire pit firing of homemade pottery that I have seen, complete with excellent photos, as well as step by step info and historical info. The section on Quilting - The Joy Of My Life - Auntie Arie Carpenter is extensive and even has templates you can copy and use for making your own quilts. There is also a wonderful section on the country store, which as I read it seemed to be a combination of pay with cash or goods, like eggs, crops etc. Very worth the expense and a book I will treasure.

Editorial Review:

Foxfire highlights the  twentieth year of the Foxfire high school program with a  new volume as fascinating as its predecessors.  Included are general stores, the Jud Nelson wagon, a  praying rock, a Catawban Indian potter, haint  tales, quilting, home cures, and the log cabin  revisited.

Deep Ancestry: Inside The Genographic Project

Spencer Wells

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Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Wells coats his science in political correctness 3 out of 5 stars.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful.

While his books are interesting, one thing that becomes abundantly clear to anyone with a working knowledge of ancestral genetics is that Wells goes out of his way to preach "we are all the same" and "race is meaningless". While both statements have an element of truth to them, they don't tell the whole story. Good scientific writers don't try to push a message. Rather, they lay the facts out and allow the reader to do with it what they will. There are very real, empirical genetic differences between ethnic groups--an indisputable fact embraced by serious medical geneticists. This may make some people uncomfortable and provide ammunition for racial bigotry, but playing a shell game with facts does a disservice to science and humanity.

Editorial Review:

Travel backward through time from today's scattered billions to the handful of early humans who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago and are ancestors to us all.

In Deep Ancestry, scientist and National Geographic explorer Spencer Wells shows how tiny genetic changes add up over time into a fascinating story. Using scores of real-life examples, helpful analogies, and detailed diagrams and illustrations, he explains exactly how each and every individual's DNA contributes another piece to the jigsaw puzzle of human history. The book takes readers inside the Genographic Project—the landmark study now assembling the world's largest collection of DNA samples and employing the latest in testing technology and computer analysis to examine hundreds of thousand of genetic profiles from all over the globe—and invites us all to take part.

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

Pierre Bourdieu

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

No judgement of taste is innocent. In a word, we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu brilliantly illuminates this situation of the middle class in the modern world. France's leading sociologist focusses here on the French bourgeoisie, its tastes and preferences. Distinction is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind.

In the course of everyday life people constantly choose between what they find aesthetically pleasing and what they consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Bourdicu bases his study on surveys that took into account the multitude of social factors that play a part in a Frenchperson's choice of clothing, furniture, leisure activities, dinner menus for guests, and many other matters of taste. What emerges from his analysis is that social snobbery is everywhere in the bourgeois world. The different aesthetic choices people make are all distinctions-that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. Taste is not pure. Bourdieu finds a world of social meaning in the decision to order bouillabaisse, in our contemporary cult of thinness, in the "California sports" such as jogging and cross-country skiing. The social world, he argues, functions simultaneously as a system of power relations and as a symbolic system in which minute distinctions of taste become the basis for social judgement.

The topic of Bourdieu's book is a fascinating one: the strategies of social pretension are always curiously engaging. But the book is more than fascinating. It is a major contribution to current debates on the theory of culture and a challenge to the major theoretical schools in contemporary sociology.

Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues

Paul Farmer

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Subjects -> Medicine -> Internal Medicine -> Infectious Disease -> Epidemiology

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Paul Farmer has battled AIDS in rural Haiti and deadly strains of drug-resistant tuberculosis in the slums of Peru. A physician-anthropologist with more than fifteen years in the field, Farmer writes from the front lines of the war against these modern plagues and shows why, even more than those of history, they target the poor. This "peculiarly modern inequality" that permeates AIDS, TB, malaria, and typhoid in the modern world, and that feeds emerging (or re-emerging) infectious diseases such as Ebola and cholera, is laid bare in Farmer's harrowing stories of sickness and suffering.
Challenging the accepted methodologies of epidemiology and international health, he points out that most current explanatory strategies, from "cost-effectiveness" to patient "noncompliance," inevitably lead to blaming the victims. In reality, larger forces, global as well as local, determine why some people are sick and others are shielded from risk. Yet this moving account is far from a hopeless inventory of insoluble problems. Farmer writes of what can be done in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, by physicians determined to treat those in need. Infections and Inequalities weds meticulous scholarship with a passion for solutions--remedies for the plagues of the poor and the social maladies that have sustained them.

Book of Peoples of the World: A Guide to Cultures (National Geographic)

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Editorial Review:

As cultures and languages disappear from the Earth at a shocking rate, it becomes all the more urgent for us to know and value the world’s many ethnic identities. National Geographic’s Book of Peoples of the World propels that important quest with concern, authority, and respect. Created by a team of experts, this hands-on resource offers thorough coverage of more than 200 ethnic groups—some as obscure as the Kallawaya of the Peruvian Andes, numbering fewer than 1,000; others as widespread as the Bengalis of India, 172 million strong. We’re swept along on a global tour of beliefs, traditions, and challenges, observing the remarkable diversity of human ways as well as the shared experiences. Spectacular photographs reveal how people define themselves and their worlds. Specially commissioned maps show how human beings have developed culture in response to environment. Thought-provoking text examines not only the societies and the regions that produced them, but also the notion of ethnicity itself—its immense impact on history, the effects of immigration on cultural identity, and the threats facing many groups today. Threading through the story are the extraordinary findings of the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project—a research initiative to catalog DNA from people around the world, decoding the great map of human migration embedded in our own genetic makeup.

At once a comprehensive reference, an appreciation of diversity, and a thoughtful look at our instinct to belong, this uplifting book explores what it means to be human and alive.

The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies

Marcel Mauss

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Social Science Man 4 out of 5 stars.
19 of 20 people found this review helpful.

In his The Gift, Marcel Mauss attempts to explain and understand gifts in primitive societies. Mauss first decides to show that the motives behind giving gifts are more complicated than commonly believed to be. In modern day society, gifts are often thought of as something given out of good will and without the expectance of something in return. Mauss shows us that in many tribal and native cultures, this is not necessarily true. In discussing the Maori, he says, "They had a kind of exchange system, or rather one of giving presents that must ultimately either be reciprocated or given back" (10). The principle of gift giving is governed by the concept of mana, which is the authority, honor, and prestige derived from the wealth and glory of being a superior gift giver. One must give gifts in order to maintain and increase mana and reciprocates them in order to prevent oneself from losing it. The obligations to give and receive are both very important. To reject a gift leads to two problems. Initially, Mauss states that to do so "is to reject the bond of alliance and commonality" (13). To reject such an important bond in a society that so heavily values communal identity is "tantamount to declaring war" (13). The second problem is that of losing mana and being viewed as afraid to accept gifts because one is unable to reciprocate them. The concept of gift giving as one that has the motives of power and authority involved displaces the common belief of gift giving. Durkheim's influence on Mauss is apparent in Mauss' discussion of the contract and sacred qualities. The sacred quality of exchange and contracts also has a relationship to appeasing the gods according to Mauss, or so it is viewed in primitive societies (and according to Durkheim the remnants of such beliefs continue in today's society). Mauss says that the ideal of the gift as distributive justice arises from the belief that the gods punish those with great wealth who are not generous. Therefore, if a gift are given out of generosity and to promote justice, does that mean that those with less wealth have not only less honor and authority, but also a lower level of justness because they are unable to give great gifts?
Gift giving appears to be a "total" social phenomenon or service because of how it works on not only economic levels, but also social levels. The motives for gift giving are not as magnanimous as one may believe because as Mauss says concerning exchange-gifts, "They are kept for the sheer pleasure of possessing them" (23). He seeks to understand the blind accumulation of wealth and says that it is motivated by "competition, rivalry, ostentatiousness, the seeking after the grandiose" (28). To him, these are somewhat negative motives, although he does not explicitly say so. Mauss shows how gift giving evolves with the Native Americans where the concept of honor is more exaggerated and the idea of "credit" and a time limit on the reciprocation of gifts is highlighted. A gift is essentially given with the motive that not only does one gain honor, respect, and authority from it, but that one will also receive something in return. Now if this something received in return is usually paid "with interest" so to speak as it is expected to be of greater value than the original gift. If Mauss is indeed correct, then why is there not a greater disparity of wealth in these primitive societies? If one is wealthy, then one could seek to continuously extend one's own authority and wealth at the same time by giving all the time, since accepting the gift is virtually required, a wealthy person could do so and gain interest on all the gifts given.

Overall, it's interesting and provocative. It is helpful to have read Durkheim's Professional Ethics and Civic Morals (then you realize that Mauss is just following in Durkheim's footsteps). What kind of society do they propose? It's not too clear. I'm still trying to figure that one out, but nonetheless, it's a provocative book, as is Durkheim's.

Editorial Review:

Since its first publication in English in 1954, The Gift, Marcel Mauss's groundbreaking study of the relation between forms of exchange and social structure, has been acclaimed as a classic among anthropology texts.

Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things

Laurence Gonzales

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The author of the life-changing bestseller Deep Survival once again brings us revelations about ourselves from the cutting edge of science.

Laurence Gonzales shows how modern society has made us lazy and susceptible to previously unknown threats. "Curiosity, awareness, attention," he writes. "Those are the tools of our everyday survival...we all must be scientists at heart or be victims of forces that we don't understand."

Gonzales turns his talent for gripping narrative, knowledge of the way our minds and bodies work, and bottomless curiosity about the world to the topic of how we can best use the lessons of our evolutionary history to overcome the hazards of everyday life. He finds that natural laws profoundly affect our actions, and he reveals the hidden causes and costs of our behavior, whether as individuals or as a species whose decisions may be leading to darker times. Whether you are climbing a mountain or the corporate ladder, Everyday Survival will change the way you view your choices in our complex, dangerous, and quickly changing world.

Why Is Sex Fun? (Science Masters)

Jared M. Diamond

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Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

To us humans the sex lives of many animals seem weird. In fact, by comparison with all the other animals, we are the ones with the weird sex lives. How did that come to be?Just count our bizarre ways. We are the only social species to insist on carrying out sex privately. Stranger yet, we have sex at any time, even when the female can’t be fertilized (for example, because she is already pregnant, post-menopausal, or between fertile cycles). A human female doesn’t know her precise time of fertility and certainly doesn’t advertise it to human males by the striking color changes, smells, and sounds used by other female mammals.Why do we differ so radically in these and other important aspects of our sexuality from our closest ancestor, the apes? Why does the human female, virtually alone among mammals go through menopause? Why does the human male stand out as one of the few mammals to stay (often or usually) with the female he impregnates, to help raise the children that he sired? Why is the human penis so unnecessarily large?There is no one better qualified than Jared Diamond—renowned expert in the fields of physiology and evolutionary biology and award-winning author—to explain the evolutionary forces that operated on our ancestors to make us sexually different. With wit and a wealth of fascinating examples, he explains how our sexuality has been as crucial as our large brains and upright posture in our rise to human status.

Trickster Makes This World: How Disruptive Imagination Creates Culture

Lewis Hyde

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Editorial Review:

"Art is a lie that tells the truth." - Pablo Picasso. Picasso disrupted the world around him, and in doing so he reshaped it. That is the Trickster spirit. Playful, mischievous, subversive, and amoral. Tricksters are a great bother to have around, but paradoxically they are also indispensable heroes of culture, because our world - with its complexity and ambiguity, its beauty and its dirt - was trickster's creation, and the work is not yet finished. Authoritative in its scholarship, supple and dynamic in its style, "Trickster Makes This World" encourages you to think and see afresh.

How the Other Half Lives

Jacob Riis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

NOT the right edition - get the DOVER 1 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Riis was before all else a photojournalist, and this his major body of work. As such, the fact that there even exist editions which do not contain quality reproductions of the photos astounds me. This edition only contains a few, and they are small, pixelated, two-tone reproductions. The Dover edition is the one to get.

Wrong edition. 1 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

We all know the story, which can be found in any edition of this book-- and yes, they will all have typos, as the book was never originally put through a rigorous editing process. That's part of it's 'charm.'

The problem, though, is this specific edition--many images are left out, and the images really make the book; after all, Jacob Riis was one of the first muckraking photojournalists... wouldn't you want to see those pictures? They add incredible depth to the story. Luckily I had to read this for a class, and didn't mind it, but... for someone reading it for personal purposes, spend the few extra dollars for an edition with photographs. It is SO worth it.

Editorial Review:

This famous journalistic record of the filth and degradation of New York's slums at the turn of the century is a classic in social thought and a monument of early American photography. Captured on film by photographer, journalist, and reformer Jacob Riis, more than 100 grim scenes reveal man's struggle to survive.