Ethnology Books - Page 2

The forest people (The Natural History Library)

Colin M Turnbull

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Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Forest People -- Colin M. Turnbull's best-selling, classic work -- describes the author's experiences while living with the BaMbuti Pygmies, not as a clinical observer, but as their friend learning their customs and sharing their daily life.

Turnbull conveys the lives and feelings of the BaMbuti whose existence centers on their intense love for their forest world, which, in return for their affection and trust, provides their every need. We witness their hunting parties and nomadic camps; their love affairs and ancient ceremonies -- the molimo, in which they praise the forest as provider, protector, and deity; the elima, in which the young girls come of age; and the nkumbi circumcision rites, in which the villagers of the surrounding non-Pygmy tribes attempt to impose their culture on the Pygmies, whose forest home they dare not enter.

The Forest People eloquently shows us a people who have found in the forest something that makes their life more than just living -- a life that, with all its hardships and problems and tragedies, is a wonderful thing of happiness and joy.

The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art

James Clifford

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Outstanding anthropological essays 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 23 people found this review helpful.

James Clifford's book considers how anthropology can exist in these postmodern times. Considering such phenomena as a museum exhibit which displays "primitive artefacts" next to contemporaneous "modern art pieces," Clifford discusses the way "Western" culture privileges its own culture at the expense of other cultures, clearly showing the ways assumptions of the definition of culture defines this privilege. Clifford's essay on the Mashpees on Cape Cod offers a striking example of directions in which anthropology can move to redesign its own project without privileging itself. A well-written, erudite text. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the workings of contemporary society.

Editorial Review:

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. His critique raises questions of global significance: Who has the authority to speak for any group's identity and authenticity? What are the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and "the other" clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, and modern interethnic relations? 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.

The Riddle of Amish Culture (Center Books in Anabaptist Studies)

Donald B. Kraybill

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Amish life: the same and yet so different 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Not your typical photographic essay. Discusses in depth the complexities of the Amish nation's dynamic interelations with the larger English society. Amish life has, apparently, changed greatly in the last century, whether it be gas stoves, business ventures, fiberglass buggies, or toxic chemicals spewn from modern devices pulled by horses, although such details vary somewhat from church district to church district. There are no easy outs for those born into the faith and no easy ins for those born outside. A more truly revealing book on the Amish would have to be written by someone in the inside, which will not happen. However, Kraybill's work is a sympathetic, comprehensive, and revealing work. An informative read also suggested for public and academic libaries.

Editorial Review:

Since its publication in 1989, The Riddle of Amish Culture has become recognized as a classic work on one of America's most distinctive religious communities. But many changes have occurred within Amish society over the past decade, from westward migrations and a greater familiarity with technology to the dramatic shift away from farming into small business which is transforming Amish culture. For this revised edition, Donald B. Kraybill has taken these recent changes into account, incorporating new demographic research and new interviews he has conducted among the Amish. In addition, he includes a new chapter describing Amish recreation and social gatherings, and he applies the concept of "social capital" to his sensitive and penetrating interpretation of how the Amish have preserved their social networks and the solidarity of their community.

Amish Women: Lives and Stories

Louise Stoltzfus

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Good Book 4 out of 5 stars.
16 of 16 people found this review helpful.

I enjoyed this book. The stories were wonderful, and warmed my heart. It spoke of the good, and a little of the bad in being an Amish women and raising an Amish family. Although, I can only guess that it seemed a fair depiction, I am not Amish, so I cant say for sure. :o)) It seemed to be written on an easy level, so an adult could breeze through this book quickly. I have read better books on Amish Life, but this one is decent. And the stories will leave you with a good feeling.

Editorial Review:

Written by a woman who grew up in an Old Order Amish community and church, Amish Women: Lives and Stories offers a gentle, lyrical inside view of Amish womanhood. How are Amish women unique? How are they typical? How do they find expression in a place that values community togetherness above all else? This generous and heartwarming memoir explores these questions to discover what it means to be a woman and to be Amish. Meet Naomi whose favorite author is C.S. Lewis. Rebecca who is single and has a career. Susie who is an artist. And Esther who has lost two children and spends much of her time reaching out to other members of her community who have suffered loss. Louise Stoltzfus gathered her stories through a series of interviews and conversations with Amish women, many of whom she has known most of her life.

Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation (Vintage Departures)

Michael Zielenziger

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Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Neither a Detailed Case Study, Nor A Convincing General Explanation of Japan's Plight 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Foreign press correspondents who choose to write a book about Japan fall into two categories. Some start with a general idea and try to build a demonstration around that broad intuition - for example, that the economy will set into decline at the very time when it was booming (to borrow from Bill Emmott's The Sun Also Sets), or that Japan is run by an Iron Triangle that is hollow at the center (as Karel van Wolferen demonstrates). Others take a different approach and try to gather as much information as they can about a narrow subject - Tokyo underworld, for instance, or Japanese base-ball, or the plight of princess Masako.

Michael Zielenziger tries to combine the two approaches. He starts with the ordeal of the hikikomori, those youngsters who live in complete social isolation, shutting themselves away from the sun, closing their blinds, and refusing to leave the bedroom in their homes for months or even years at a time. He then broadens his topic to the fate of the whole nation, arguing that Japan has entered into depression mode and now faces gloomy prospects. He provides an interesting comparison with South Korea, where a vibrant civil society found the way to recover from a severe economic crisis.

Hikikomori are a problem that is specific to Japan. Those reclusive young adults, mostly men, suffer from what specialists call a social disorder, not from a mental illness that could be diagnosed and cured accordingly. Indeed, their plight find echoes in Japan's founding myths: according to the fable of Japan's creation, the sun-goddess Amaterasu once hid in a cave and plunged the world into darkness after her unruly brother ravaged the earth and despoiled her gardens and temples. Only through songs and merriment could she be coaxed from her deepest isolation. But modern recluses, often pampered by their over-protective mothers, have little incentive to leave their seclusion and face the society that often rejected them as teenagers.

What is the connexion between the sorry case of these individuals who seek refuge in the isolation of their room and the state of Japan as a nation? First, as a social disease, the hikikomori phenomenon must have social causes. The author hints at a few of them: the traumatism of war and defeat, which may revisit grand-children after having skipped one generation ; the lack of moral purpose and self-direction, when the pursuit of material wealth delivers emptiness rather than inner contentment ; the heavy conformism of a group-centered society that lacks tolerance for deviant characters ; the structure of dependence that, according to psychiatrist Takeo Doi, characterizes Japanese men's relation to their mother, etc.

At a deeper level, the author suggests that the absence of monotheism and the lack of a universal religion in Japanese culture may explain Japan's ethical relativism, the situational nature of its moral values, and the lack of compassion for victims. Elderly ladies have to fight their ways to find a seat in the metro, and homeless people camping rough in Ueno Park are usually fed hot soup by Korean Christians, not by native Japanese. I wish the author had developed this intuition a bit further and explained why, in contrast to Korea, Christianity never took hold in contemporary Japan. One obvious reason, judging by novels from Ayako Miura, Toyoko Yamazaki or Kappa Senoo, is that Christianity was considered as alien and anti-patriotic in Japan, whereas it became closely associated with the movement for independence and then with democratization in South Korea. But to my opinion, there is nothing intrinsic in Japanese culture that defies or rejects Christian beliefs, and Japanese make superb Christians. Anyway, a few pages on this topic would have been welcome.

So is Japan really a hikikomori nation? For Zielenziger, many Japanese behaviors can be attributed to the deepest desires of this island country just to be "left alone". Japan's isolation has not stopped with the end of the sakoku era and the opening of ports to foreign influences and exchange. Japan remains a closed society, admitting little strangers and forcing strong individuals to either conform or flee into exile. At the national level, America's embrace has the effect of barring the country from going out on its own and finding its place under the sun. But the author pushes the analogy too far, and provides a picture of Japan that is far too gloomy and pessimistic. His attempt at providing a detailed case study of a social phenomenon and to link it to a broader explanation at the macro level fails on both counts. In my opinion, Japanese contemporary novels or movies are better at capturing the zeitgeist than this journalistic account, and reading it to the end was by and large a waste of my time.

Editorial Review:

The world's second-wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America as the leading global economic powerhouse. But the country failed to recover from the staggering economic collapse of the early 1990s. Today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends, notably a population of more than one million hikikomori: the young men who shut themselves in their rooms, withdrawing from society. There is also a growing numbers of “parasite singles”: single women who refuse to leave home, marry, or bear children.

In this trenchant investigation, Michael Zielenziger argues that Japan's tradition-steeped society, its aversion to change, and its distrust of individuality are stifling economic revival, political reform, and social evolution. Shutting Out the Sun is a bold explanation of Japan's stagnation and its implications for the rest of the world.

The Brazilians

Joseph A. Page

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Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Informative, but an outsider's partial understanding 3 out of 5 stars.
17 of 17 people found this review helpful.

I've lived in Brazil, and read many books about various aspects of Brazil's people, economy, history, government, military and culture. This book contains a lot of information that I hadn't known, and that I find fascinating. So it's well worth reading.

But it's a foreigner's view; Page has visited many times, knows many Brazilians, and is married to a Brazilian. Even so, I found many of his comments and views unrecognizable to me; perhaps one must live in the country and work there, in the local economy, paid in Brazilian currency and working with ordinary Brazilians, to absorb various subtleties of life in Brazil and of interaction among ordinary Brazilians, that Page omits, or may even be unaware of. For example, his account of economic activity in Brazil makes it clear that connections are vital for business success and that many of the most successful firms in Brazil are family firms. But what he doesn't say, surprisingly in view of the fact that he's a professor of law in the US, is that Brazilian commercial law is so different from commercial law in the US that it is very hard, and takes a very long time, to get a commercial dispute settled through the Brazilian legal system. So, as a practical fact, any sensible business owner in Brazil depends on family connections and close friends to straighten out and resolve problems involving contracts.

Page also plays down the size and vitality of Brazil's middle class. This seems to be because of his own political views, but it seriously misrepresents the way Brazil actually functions. A good example of the true Brazil of today is the aircraft company EMBRAER, which I recently saw referred to as "the Boeing of regional jets"; indeed, right now in the US I keep seeing EMBRAER turboprops and EMBRAER regional jets in use all over the US by a lot of airlines. EMBRAER started out as a Brazilian government initiative, but became truly successful after it was privatized. I knew a number of the engineers and technicians who helped to found EMBRAER and make it successful, and they were neither members of the elite nor from impoverished backgrounds. A very few came from rich families and a very few came from impoverished backgrounds, but the large majority were from families of professionals or families that owned small businesses. What they had in common was extremely high intelligence, a good education, and determination to make EMBRAER succeed in the commercial market, which it has. Most of them got their primary, secondary and university education in the public educational system, which is much better, at least in the Southeast, than Page gives it credit for. People I have since encountered, from similar backgrounds, are at the heart of the steady effort in Brazil to master nuclear technology.

US government treatment of Brazil and the government of Brazil has often been shabby, to put it kindly. Everyone I knew in Brazil welcomed Americans, including me, provided we identified with Brazilian views on international relations, rather than with US government views. I don't know how many times, but it was many, while I lived there, that the local CIA station chief visited me so that I could tell him what lay behind some grievance that had Brazilians badmouthing the US government; he lived in an American compound, drove an American automobile, and was regarded with deep suspicion by almost all the ordinary Brazilians he met.

As for the destruction of rainforest and the awful treatment of the few remaining clans of wild native Americans, it is no worse, and in most ways less destructive, than the way in which the European settlers of North America treated indigenous people and despoiled the environment. Many Brazilians, possibly most of them, resent being lectured by people from the US and Europe about how Brazilians should conduct themselves in the Amazon basin, in the Pantanal, in the remaining fragments of the original coastal forest, in the extensive grasslands of Goias and in the part of the Northeast that is subject to frequent drought. Almost all the Brazilians I knew when I lived there were as aware as people in the US and Europe of the ecological and social problems involved in opening up the backlands. But what would you have had them do? Turn 3/4 of Brazil into a wilderness preserve? impossible. I think Brazil has done quite well to preserve its ecology and the culture of its remaining native Americans as well as it has, and, what's more, Brazilians are still learning in these topics, just as we are, and the record is improving steadily.

In summary, Prof. Page's portrayal of Brazil is analogous to what I would expect to find in a book by Jacques Chirac purporting to explain the United States to French readers; there are a lot of good facts here, but a conceptual disconnect.

Editorial Review:

A unique study of the Brazilian national character explores the many paradoxes of Brazilian society, contrasting the natives' kindness with the violence of their cities, the large-scale poverty and the luxury of the rich, and other disparities.

Applying Cultural Anthropology: An Introductory Reader

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent materials, great selection 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 11 people found this review helpful.

First off, I'd like to agree with the first reviewer. This is an excellent compilation that stands by itself (although, for an intro class, it definitely requires a "discipline-oriented" text book like Kottak as a guiding force). I would recommend this book highly to my fellow anthros and to general readers alike. What follows is a brief summary of some of my favorite articles in the collection. The selections are all short and well-written, they make interesting and useful points and convey the complexity and utility of anthropology very, very well.

I've been waiting a long time to see Peggy McIntosh's wonderful essay on "White Privilege" in print somewhere. I had the distinct pleasure of hearing her give an oral version of the same talk a number of years ago and am very very pleased to see it published here for the benefit of students. The book is worth the price for that article alone.

However, this is not the only gem in this collection. Phillipe Bourgois' work on crack dealers is introduced here as is Gerald Murray's work on wood farming as a means to encourage re-forestation programs in Haiti. There are also classics such as Richard Lee's story of the !Kung San insulting of his gift of a Christmas ox ("Eating Christmas in the Kalahari") and Laura Bohannon's failure to get Tiv elders to see Hamlet as a story about incest, revenge and justice. Jared Diamond's revisionist view of the advent of agriculture is also here (perhaps an antidote for his more recent "Guns, Germs and Steel" though undoutedly similar in style).

Other personal favorites of mine include Eugene Cooper's discussion of Chinese table manners (also a must for people who want to teach a course on the anthropology of food), Richard Reed's examination of the tension between environmentalists and indigenous communities in Paraguay, Joan Cassels' excellent analysis of surgery as a male-gendered medical speciality and Paul Farmer's and Arthur Kleinman's thoughtful peice on suffering and AIDS in Haiti.

Incidentally, I would thoroughly recommend anything by Paul Farmer to readers interested in social medicine. His scholarship and humanity are both quite phenomenal and totally justify the attention he has recieved due to the MacArthur fellowship.

I only have a couple of quibbles with this book and even these are not so much criticisms as comments for the unwary: Jennifer Laab's peice on corporate anthropologists seems to have been written for a corporate audience as a selling point for anthropology. As such it plays up the notion of anthropologists as service providers for corporate interests in a way which is a little frown-inducing for an academician such as myself. Not because I don't approve of anthropology in the private sector, but because the peice itself seems to argue that anthropology is merely a set of techniques that can be workshopped (like team-building exercises)to busy executives for the greater good of the company. Again, this is a VERY worthwhile point to debate, but not one that easily stands without comment. Secondly, the article by Wade Davis (he of "Serpent and the Rainbow" fame), while again discussion-worthy, seems a little superficial, dated in language and probably replaceable (Robert Voeks'recently-published "Sacred Leaves of Candomble" is one alternative that springs to mind). Lastly, I would like to plead for the inclusion of a selection on tatooing or bodily adornment of some sort in any future editions. This is a topic of enduring interest among students and would definitely be an asset to such a nicely-balanced and valuable collection.

Editorial Review:

This supplementary reader is composed of both classic and contemporary articles that demonstrate the significant contributions that cultural anthropologists make; the emphasis is on the applicability of cultural anthropology to understanding and improving the present day human condition.

The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)

Annette B. Weiner

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A Whole New World 4 out of 5 stars.
18 of 24 people found this review helpful.

Annette Weiner has really captured the essence of the people of the Trobriand Islands in this ethnography. She was following in the footsteps of Malinowski a well known person in her field. She was not afraid to question his findings or contradict his beliefs. In the course of this ethnography, readers will come to know the culture of the Trobriand Islands. You will understand the importance of yams in their every day life. The rituals that you know see has odd will be proven to be spiritual and have more purpose that you could have ever imagined. You will learn in detail what the death of a Trobriander means to the entire community. Reading this book will leave you in awe of these people. You will learn of a culutre that is of matrilineal descent and what that means to them. This novel will open your eyes to a whole new world. A world of traditions and spiritual beliefs. The people of the Trobriand Islands will amaze you and you will walk away from this book with more knowledge and more respect for this people than you could have ever imagined.

Editorial Review:

This re-examination of the Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea, the people described in Malinowski’s classic ethnographic work of the early 20th century, provides a balanced view of the society from a male and female perspective, including coverage of new discoveries about the importance of woman’s work and wealth in the society.

Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography : A School of American Research, Advanced Seminar

James Clifford

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In these new essays, a group of experienced ethnographers, a literary critic, and a historian of anthropology, all known for advanced analytic work on ethnographic writing, place ethnography at the center of a new intersection of social history, interpretive anthropology, travel writing, discourse theory, and textual criticism.
The authors analyze classic examples of cultural description, from Goethe and Catlin to Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, and Le Roy Ladurie, showing the persistence of allegorial patterns and rhetorical tropes. They assess recent experimental trends and explore the functions of orality, ethnicity, and power in ethnographic composition.
Writing Culture argues that ethnography is in the midst of a political and epistemological crisis: Western writers no longer portray non-Western peoples with unchallenged authority; the process of cultural representation is now inescapably contingent, historical, and contestable. The essays in this volume help us imagine a fully dialectical ethnography acting powerfully in the postmodern world system. They challenge all writers in the humanities and social sciences to rethink the poetics and politics of cultural invention.

The Tiwi of North Australia (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)

Charles William Merton Hart, Arnold R. Pilling, Jane C. Goodale

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