Anthropology - Valparaiso

This authoritative guide offers readers a comprehensive look into the world of anthropology and its related sciences. The book covers the essential areas of the field, including its history. The major branches of the field are also discussed, including cultural and social anthropology as well as archaeology. It also explores the study of the discipline around the world through urban, medical, and applied anthropology. This is a perfect resource for anyone interested in world cultures and the history of different peoples.

A thought-provoking examination of death, dying, and the afterlife Prominent scholars present their most recent work about mortuary rituals, grief and mourning, genocide, cyclical processes of life and death, biomedical developments, and the materiality of human corpses in this unique and illuminating book. Interrogating our most common practices surrounding death, the authors ask such questions as: How does the state wrest away control over the dead from bereaved relatives? Why do many mourners refuse to cut their emotional ties to the dead and nurture lasting bonds? Is death a final condition or can human remains acquire agency? The book is a refreshing reassessment of these issues and practices, a source of theoretical inspiration in the study of death. With contributions written by an international team of experts in their fields, A Companion to the Anthropology of Death is presented in six parts and covers such subjects as: Governing the Dead in Guatemala; After Death Communications (ADCs) in North America; Cryonic Suspension in the Secular A≥ Blood and Organ Donation in China; The Fragility of Biomedici≠ and more. A Companion to the Anthropology of Death is a comprehensive and accessible volume and an ideal resource for senior undergraduate and graduate students in courses such as Anthropology of Death, Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Violence, Anthropology of the Body, and Political Anthropology. Written by leading international scholars in their fields A comprehensive survey of the most recent empirical research in the anthropology of death A fundamental critique of the early 20th century founding fathers of the anthropology of death Cross-cultural texts from tribal and industrial societies The collection is of interest to anyone concerned with the consequences of the state and massive violence on life and death

This book engages young scholars, teachers and students in a critical dialogue with past and present directions in cultural-historical studies. More particularly, it prepares prospective anthropologists, as well as readers interested in human cultures for understanding basic theoretical and methodological ethnographic principles and pursuing further what has been known as cultural anthropological perspectives. The book discusses key, field-based studies in the discipline and places them in dialogue with related studies in social history, linguistics, philosophy, literature, and photography, among others.

Offers a refreshing alternative to introductory anthropology texts by challenging students to think in new ways and apply cultural learnings to their own lives. The chapters explore key anthropological concepts of human culture including: language, the body, food, and time, and provide an array of cultural examples in which to examine them.

We're losing our culture... our heritage... our traditions... everything is being swept away. Such sentiments get echoed around the world, from aging Trump supporters in West Virginia to young villagers in West Africa. But what is triggering this sense of cultural loss, and to what ends does this rhetoric get deployed? To answer these questions, anthropologist David Berliner travels around the world, from Guinea-Conakry, where globalization affects the traditional patriarchal structure of cultural transmission, to Laos, where foreign UNESCO experts have become self-appointed saviors of the nation's cultural heritage. He also embarks on a voyage of critical self-exploration, reflecting on how anthropologists handle their own sense of cultural alienation while becoming deeply embedded in other cultures. This leads into a larger examination of how and why we experience exonostalgia, a longing for vanished cultural heydays we never directly experienced. Losing Culture provides a nuanced analysis of these phenomena, addressing why intergenerational cultural transmission is vital to humans, yet also considering how efforts to preserve disappearing cultures are sometimes misguided or even reactionary. Blending anthropological theory with vivid case studies, this book teaches us how to appreciate the multitudes of different ways we might understand loss, memory, transmission, and heritage.

In this fully updated second edition, Thomas Hylland Eriksen brings together examples from current events as well as within anthropological research in order to explain how to see the world from below and from within. The book emphasizes the importance of adopting an insider's perspective. The first section of the book presents the history of anthropology, and the second discusses core issues in greater detail, covering economics, morals, human nature, ecology, cultural relativism, and much more.