Book Description

Why, Ann Laura Stoler asks, was the management of sexual arrangements and affective attachments so critical to the making of colonial categories and to what distinguished ruler from ruled? Contending that social classification is not a benign cultural act but a potent political one, Stoler shows that matters of the intimate were absolutely central to imperial politics. It was, after all, in the intimate sphere of home and servants that European children learned what they were required to learn of place and race. Gender-specific sexual sanctions, too, were squarely at the heart of imperial rule, and European supremacy was asserted in terms of national and racial virility. Stoler looks discerningly at the way cultural competencies and sensibilities entered into the construction of race in the colonial context and proposes that "cultural racism" in fact predates its postmodern discovery. Her acute analysis of colonial Indonesian society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries yields insights that translate to a global, comparative perspective. 42 b/w photographs ... Read more

Book Description

Using data from cultures and languages throughout theworld to highlight both similarities and differences in humanlanguages—this book explores the many interconnections among language,culture, and communicative meaning. It examines the multi-facetedmeanings and uses of language and emphasizes the ways that languageencapsulates speakers' meanings and intentions.Includes new section on Narratives (Ch. 4) and Language Ideologies (Ch. 13). Features Interactional, situational, and social functions of languages.> For anyone interested in Language and Culture, Anthropological Linguistics, and Language and Communication. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

An excellent text for Language, Culture & Society courses!
Nancy Bonvillain is one of the top anthropological linguists in America. This is one of the best text books on the subject that's ever been written. It includes clear explanations and excellent cross-cultural examples. It follows the major traditions set by American linguists and anthropologists in the study of language description, language structure, language acquisition, language change, and the ways in which language reflects differences in cultural values, beliefs, and practices cross-culturally. It's a handy book to use in the undergraduate linguistic anthropology course and students enjoy it.

Language, Culture, and Communication
I'm trying to wade through this book for a class. It's like trying to run in shoulder-deep mud. I cannot make out what the author is trying to say. I'm considering dropping the class. ... Read more

Book Description

This book argues that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches, it is a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, and its inextricable interdependence with language. It is also a detailed study of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions that we take to be religious and therefore central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn froma range of disciplines. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Not for sissies.
One of the most remarkable things of this book, is that it was written at all. Roy Rappaport (a former boss and good friend of mine) was dying of lung cancer while he writing this book and I think that is reflected in the tone. Although he had begun writing before his diagnosis I think the subject became more personal because of it. "El jefe" (my name for him) was a very religious man, but he didn't proclaim it loudly; it was shown in small ways.

It is difficult to read, but its subject is difficult. I just wish he were still here so I could say to him "What in the world are you trying to say here. You have no verbs in this paragraph!"

disasterous
Being an Anthropology major and have read many anthropological books. This is by far the worst book I have ever had to read. Rappaport rambles on and on in a meaningless train of thought, then three paragraphs later changes his mind on what he was thinking. After reading this book from front to back cover, I will never pick up a Rappaport book again. I would have learned more by watching Sesame Street than this book

"Will influence scholars for many years to come"
"Roy A. Rappaport was one of the most distinguished anthropologists of his generation. What sets this book apart from other anthropoplogical studies of religion is that it is not only "about" religion, but is also a profoundly religious book. The author makes a strong case for what he sees as religion's significance in human evolution and argues passsionately for the reconciliation of religion and science. He suggests that human survival may depend on developing a postmodern science that is thoroughly grounded in ecology. Examining evidence from fields as diverse as history, cybernetics, communication theory, semiotics, ethnography, ecology, philosphy, and comparative religions, Rappaport comes to the conclusion that riual should be the main focus of religious studies because "ritual is the ground where all religion is made." The book provides the fullest analysis of ritual since Emile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912). It is carefully argued; well reasoned, and precise, and is likely to influence scholars for many years to come. Extensive documentation. Solid bibliography. Highly recommended." Stephen D. Glazier, Professor of Anthropology, University of Nebraska

Major account of ritual nexus between science and religion
This holistic evolutionary account of the ritual foundations of human communication and religion represents a major theoretical formulation by an major anthropologist. ... Read more

Book Description

Donna M. Goldstein challenges much of what we think we know about the "culture of poverty." Drawing on more than a decade of experience in Brazil, Goldstein provides an intimate portrait of everyday life among the women of the favelas, or urban shantytowns. These women have created absurdist and black-humor storytelling practices in the face of trauma and tragedy. Goldstein helps us to understand that such joking and laughter is part of an emotional aesthetic that defines the sense of frustration and anomie endemic to the political and economic desperation of the shantytown. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Laughter and Life in a Favela
Within the first few pages of Laughter Out of Place, I realized that Dr. Goldstein was going to embark on ethnographic analysis in a more personal vein. The introduction reads like a personal reflection of her time spent in "Felicidade Eterna," folding in memories of the people she met into a journal-styled ethnography, of the kind introduced to us by Ruth Behar. I found Donna's approach refreshing: a reader knew where she stood on issues, and there were no concealed objectivities in her observations. Donna's personality comes through in her writing in her style -which does not back away from harsh realities, nor delve into idealized or romanticized metaphors for Brazilian music, sex, or style. I found large scale conclusions were lacking, but her small conclusions peppered within her dialogue were cogent: clearly understood and explained by her observations.

Looking at the book's format in an overall construction, I thought she made an interesting and deliberate choice in segmenting the book around particular phenomena of favela culture. The overarching concept - of laughter in the favelas that seemed to be out of place - ran through the book, but other subjects like the aesthetics of domination, black cinderelllas, short-term childhoods, gangs and violence, and the carnivalization of desire focused the book into themes particularized to the society of the favela. The choice of these themes and I can guess were synthesized from coded observations. The phenomena addressed were concrete and drew Donna's discursive writing style along into interesting, relevant, and "involving" territory. She used theory to bolster her arguments, but didn't saddle the story with overwhelming treatises. The choice of ethnographic writing - employing themes - makes me curious though. Does the use of themes artificially differentiate the life in the favela from our own, or other social conditions where poverty subjugates its population? Are we getting a picture of what life is like there, or rather of what particularizes life in the favela from our existences?

Admittedly though the book is seductive in drawing the reader into the discussion. And issues touched upon in the book can be applied to many other geographies. Donna does not try to ingratiate herself in pure relativism, as she says, she is often shocked by the ironic attitudes of the people who seem to accept their fate much more humorously than Donna imagined prior to her experience in Felicidade. She takes issue with some theortists, including Foucault, presenting and then unraveling their theoretical positioning. She also disparages the study of elites, or "cosmopolitan intellectuals, or transnational social movements" as a form of "ethnographic refusal," and a condition "that would fail to provide density to our representations, sanitize politics," or produce "thin version of culture with a set of dissolving actors" (43). Donna does not hold back.

In her review of Donna Goldstein's book, Nancy Shepar-Hughes mentions that Golstein's book will not come without controversy because it may be painted in a "culture-of-poverty" conceptual framework. But I don't see that happening in this case because Goldstein concentrates on the conditions of life and the subsequent actions of people mired in a difficult situation and in the fragile structure of the favela. Donna is also quick to point out that she herself does not understand - at all times - the social structures in place. For example, out of generosity Donna sets aside some money for Soneca to attend a computer institute. The idea does not succeed and Gloria, the main informant of the book, is annoyed by the waste of valuable resources.

Donna also employs modern electronic resources to make her point, and bring the reader directly into current attitudes and stereotyping concerning "Brazilian Mulatas." She enters a search engine with those exact two words and finds dozens of porn sites exemplifying popular viewpoints related to sexuality in Brazil. She points out many of the inconsistentsies and ironic attitudes present in the favelas regarding sexuality and race. Gloria, for instance, views the white coroa taking on a dark skinned lover as evidence for a "reluctance of Afro-Brazilian women to interpret certain kinds of interactions as racist" (124).

While all of the discussion in Laughter Out of Place is interesting, for me the discussions on violence and gangs are/were most relevant in a changing second and third world. One can imagine the "trajectory into criminality by young men as a form of local knowledge (and as a vehicle for advancement)..." (203). Indeed, after the descriptions given of the lifestyle, poverty, abuse, and of course humor that saturate the favela, one can clearly see the seductive link of falling into gang violence and criminality. Donna also clearly demonstrates the functionality of bandit existence, quoting and borrowing from Hobsbawm the reasoning behind the formation of "primitive rebels:" "Social banditry becomes a form of self-help in the context of economic crises and social tension" (209).

In Donna's short but cogent conclusion she does not try to offer monumental solutions to the problems she sees, but nevertheless her astute observations and solutions provided are idealistic and perhaps unrealistic. She points to endemic problems in the favela such as the "differential application of the rule of law," and the need to "reform policing forces" bringing an end to corruption and abuse" (273). She points out that in order for drug traffickers and gangs to be removed from the favela, "'good faith' social services need to be put in place to treat the everyday private injustices that are currently being handled by such organizations" (274). Like so many impoverished societies, an infrastructure or support girdle of municipal services needs to be put in place (or reformed) to aid all segments of the society of Rio. This remains a common need for societies battling poverty. Great ethnography and seductive reading examining a micro-world of global inequality.

Carlos Torres, Ph.D. student

A book for jacks of all trades...
As a graduate student in cultural anthropology, I find Goldstein's book to be an important contribution to modern-day anthropology. As a good example of "on the ground" anthropology, this ethnography's greatest strength lies in the material itself, specifically those social issues that CANNOT and MUST NOT be classified as social phenomena (i.e. racism, class conflict, and structural and everyday forms of violence) attributable of a bygone era. By focusing specifically on the social, familial, and economic relationships of her main informant (Glória), Goldstein illustrates how Glória's experiences-as well as her friends' and family members'-are microcosmic examples of how the lives of Rio's urban poor continue to be characterized by these very real and contemporary issues. Often relegated to favelas in the Rio's Zona Norte, members of Brazil's enormous lower class encounter social and economic hardships that most-if not all-of us will only experience through ethnographic description. In my opinion, "Laughter Out of Place" is one ethnography that successfully and sensitively sheds some light-however depressing-on these realities.

I believe that "Laughter Out of Place" successfully interweaves both theory and ethnographic data in what is a cohesive and coherent final product. In reference to theory, Goldstein's explicit theoretical discussions are not only interesting, but also helpful in trying to wrap your brain around such difficult subjects as rape, police violence, and extreme poverty. For example, she utilizes theories of political economy, cultural capital, and Freyre's "myth of racial democracy" to better understand-and best convey-the complexity of the situations she witnessed in the early 1990s. Additionally, the ethnographic content is well proportioned to the amount of theoretical material included in the book. At times, the 'thickness' of the ethnographic material is overwhelming, but this is necessary when writing of extremely depressing scenarios like those so prevalent in the culture of Rio's favelas.

One of the most endearing and unique aspects of "Laughter Out of Place" is at the heart of the ethnography: the examination of how a particular cultural group comes to use a specific coping mechanism ('black humor') to confront their lived realities and hardships. Goldstein skillfully shows that this adaptation is undoubtedly culturally constructed and culturally specific to life in Rio's favelas, particularly Felicidade Eterna. For as Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois suggest in the Forward, Goldstein clearly reveals "the layers of bravado, anger, defiance, and deep sadness that are built into each complex joke."

Lastly, I should mention that I reflected on my own coping mechanisms while contemplating Goldstein's detailed discussion of laughter 'out of place.' As a result, I ask myself: How do I deal with pain, stress, and death in my own life? How do we in our own subcultures choose to cope collectively with our own economic, social, and political situations? The very fact that I reflect in such a personal-as well as anthropological-way makes me appreciate "Laughter Out of Place" that much more.

Should be required reading for all Anthropology students...
Donna Goldstein, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has written a true anthropological/ethnographic masterpiece. After many years of field work and manuscript writing, Goldstein's book should be added to nationwide anthro department reading lists. Each chapter deals with the core issues that any cultural anthropologist must come to terms with: gender, race, class, and violence. Black humor is also an underlying theme.

As a student of anthropology, this book changed my perspective regarding my area of study. After reading many of the required ethnographies and anthropological works for my major, Laughter out of Place was like a breath of fresh air. Goldstein's style is truly beautiful and poignant. Her storytelling style and descriptions of poverty, racism, rape, and violence cut to the core. Furthermore, the explanations of various cultural and social theories are not dry-- they flow with the rest of the book (thus making it accessible to those who are not students of anthropology).

Goldstein also does a fine job of demonstrating to the reader that although her book reflects upon her experiences in Brazil, it also stands as a symbol for any people in any country who suffer from having been "colonized".

I highly recommend this book to anyone. However, I would especially emphasize its importance for students of anthropology. This is definitely the book that will remind you of why we study anthropology: to come to an understanding of other cultures and why injustices exist in this world.

must-read for Brazilian on-lookers
Laughter out of Place is crucial reading for those interested in exploring the hardships of Brazil and the spunk that keeps a population of oppressed and impoverished people dancing, singing, and always eager to laugh. Goldstein takes the reader through the gutters and alleys of a Rio shantytown, sharing years of experience as both a fieldworker, and a personal friend to many of the book's feisty characters. Laughter portrays the unbearableness of shantytown life and how it is expressed through laughter, ridicule, and trickery that seem inappropriate to outsiders.

From my own experience of living and working in a Brazilian shantytown, I can with say confidence that Laughter out of Place is an authentic and well-researched exploration of shantytown survival tactics in Brazil. For any person interested in learning about the Brazil that lies outside of Carnival and beautiful beaches, this book is your transport.

Annie Eastman
director of (a room of an hour) an excerpt of Brazil
floorsleepers'productions@hotmail.com ... Read more

Book Description

How did the industrialized nations of North America and Europe come to be seen as the appropriate models for post-World War II societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America? How did the postwar discourse on development actually create the so-called Third World? And what will happen when development ideology collapses? To answer these questions, Arturo Escobar shows how development policies became mechanisms of control that were just as pervasive and effective as their colonial counterparts. The development apparatus generated categories powerful enough to shape the thinking even of its occasional critics while poverty and hunger became widespread. "Development" was not even partially "deconstructed" until the 1980s, when new tools for analyzing the representation of social reality were applied to specific "Third World" cases. Here Escobar deploys these new techniques in a provocative analysis of development discourse and practice in general, concluding with a discussion of alternative visions for a postdevelopment era.

Escobar emphasizes the role of economists in development discourse--his case study of Colombia demonstrates that the economization of food resulted in ambitious plans, and more hunger. To depict the production of knowledge and power in other development fields, the author shows how peasants, women, and nature became objects of knowledge and targets of power under the "gaze of experts." ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Anger does not equal analysis
This is a tract, not a thoughtful piece of scholarship. It is in the Latin American school of angry social science, but is little informed by fact. Much of what it says is correct, but is also well known. But the analysis is weak, based on incorrect or outdated data, and simply a regurgitation of stereotypes instead of a deductive grounded analysis based upon good ethnographic work. It is therefore often simply wrong. But anger sells books.....

Reunderstanding development
Arturo Escobar critics the whole concept of development in theory and practice from an extremely unusual and original perspective. He steps back and views development as something exotic and almost non-sense. Inspired on the work of Foucault, the author examines the evolution of the discourse about development as a form of how the West keeps exerting power and influence on the Third World. The ethnocentric views of development and interventions that come with them - propagated by Western governments, multinational companies, development institutions and academia - puts Third World cultures and traditional populations as something that should be significantly changed to achieve the so-dreamed "development." Although the results of these western-driven interventions over decades have usually been catastrophic for Third World's populations and cultures, Western "experts" keep coming to the Third World and elaborating new forms of discourses on development, now addressing objects like sustainable development, women and development and poverty erradication - all ethnocentric and based on western values. This book should be read by anyone who wants to reunderstand development in the Third World (and reflect if it is needed at all!). ... Read more

Book Description

This twenty-seventh edition of Annual Editions: Anthroplogy is a compilation of public press sources which examines anthropological perspectives; culture and communication; organization of society and culture; families; gender and status; religion and ritual; and sociocultural change. Including selections from Colin Turnbull, Laura Bohannan, Napoleon Chagnon, Richard Borshay Lee, Deborah Tannen and Douglas Raybeck, this reader includes both classic and contemporary anthropological studies. This title is also supported by the student Web site, Duskin online at http://www.dushkin.com/online ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (2)

A rare focus on the social and economic context
This is the only book-length exploration of the social and economic context of the the HIV/AIDS epidemics. What comes through is that the authors are not journalists who dashed off a book on AIDS, but longtime researchers, with world-ranging experience.

WHile well documented, it is readable. The next college level course I teach on contemporary issues will surely include this as required reading. My students will thank me for it.

The best comprehensive treatment of HIV/AIDS
Tony Barnett and Alan Whieside have done a fantastic job of placing the issue of HIV/AIDS within a comprehensive context. It is easy to read, well researched, thoughtful in it's analysis, and comprehensive - that is, it places the pandemic amidst the global forces that are affecting it and which must be understood if we're to successfully turn the tide. I am recommending it to many of my colleagues! It is the best book I have read to-date on the most challenging crisis facing the human family. ... Read more

Book Description

Many of our questions about religion, says renowned anthropologist Pascal Boyer, are no longer mysteries. We are beginning to know how to answer questions such as "Why do people have religion?" Using findings from anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary biology, Religion Explained shows how this aspect of human consciousness is increasingly admissible to coherent, naturalistic explanation. This brilliant and controversial book gives readers the first scientific explanation for what religious feeling is really about, what it consists of, and where it comes from. ... Read more

Reviews (20)

Very effective use of evolutionary tools to study belief
Whether you agree with author's ideas or not, this is an excellent and perhaps even brilliant book. It very well developed and explained, thought-provoking, and remarkably persuasive, especially considering how counter-intuitive some of the concepts are. Boyer makes a clear presentation of the most common and intuitive explanations for religious concepts and practices, and then offers his alternative for each point, with empirical support where available.

Boyer's book is one of the best examples of making good use of evolutionary thinking from the young science of evolutionary psychology and the proto-science of memetics to bring new insights to anthropological data. His concepts become not just a way of explaining away "weird beliefs" but explanations for broad patterns in human belief in general. Boyer applies a coherent evolutionary epistemology to human belief and especially to the concepts and practices we consider religion.

The result is fascinating speculation with a new perspective and a good foundation. Since this is the kind of book that tries to explain why we believe what we believe, people starting with a different set of metaphysical assumptions will find it difficult to appreciate. Just as skeptics are fun to read until they attack our own beliefs, people of one religion will probably find Boyer's explanations fit well to other religions, but not their own. Such is life I suppose. To what extent can the same kind of explanations apply to scientific theories? Boyer addresses this by emphasizing that scientific ideas are very counter-intuitive and result from a lot of hard work to formulate and communicate them in specific ways, making them distinguishable from other kinds of concepts that arise more naturally.

Boyer argues that the domain we think of as religion is largely artifical. He believes that the experience of the numinous or special contact of certain individuals with supernatural agents cannot explain the widespread transmission of "religion" in culture. However, neither is the transmission of culture or the appearance of beliefs in different cultures arbitrary. Some concepts are passed on or reappear and others don't, and certain patterns emerge in every culture. The concepts that take on special importance to human life, as diverse as they seem, actually share certain qualities in all cultures.

Looking carefully at the cognitive processes that produce concepts and make them likely to be remembered and passed on, religious ideas and practices, Boyer insists, must be a result of the same cognitive processes that are used in other contexts, rather than special ones for perceiving supernatural agents in a transcendental domain.

There is an important nuance here. Some authors have argued from an evolutionary perspective that we have concepts for supernatural agents and perform behaviors relevant to those agents because of adaptive pressures specifically to perceive and act on "religious" forces of some sort.
Boyer turns this argument on its head and says that the kind of inference systems we evolved make certain concepts more salient than others, and make certain concepts more likely to be remembered and passed on, not necessarily because those concepts represent veridical things we adapted to, but because of the way our inference systems work. The common patterns in concepts reflect a common set of biases we all share because we share the same inference systems.

For example, Boyer says that we believe in spirits because they activate our inference systems for human agency and social exchange, and then are remembered and passed on because they make personally compelling explanations for what we observe. We tend pick up the particular concepts from our parents and local culture which fit our general explanatory needs. But what makes some concepts spread so much better than others? That's the question that meme theorists try to address, and one of Boyer's clever ideas is tying it back to evolutionary psychology.

Boyer's idea tying this all together is "aggregate relevance," which says that concepts which activate more of our shared universal biological inference systems and activate more of our emotional response patterns will have a bias in being remembered and passed on, and will also be more likely to be
"rediscovered" from at different times and places. So our evolved psychological adaptations in effect bias the transmission of memes.

Some interesting points:

(1) Boyer makes use of recent concepts from cognitive linguistics, such as the work of George Lakoff, to show how we categorize things in ways shaped by evolution.

(2) People have intuitions in certain general domains not primarily because they generalize from experience because of psychological adaptations (and therefore internal templates) for categorizing different things and drawing inferences from them. The templates produce intuitions about things. Violations of our templates are remembered better.

(3) The inferences we can draw about intentional agents are particularly rich, and apply to a wide variety of situations important to our daily life, so it is very natural for concepts about supernatural agents to fill our need to explain daily events, thoughts, and feelings, and especially misfortune.

(4) When we combine our moral intuitions with our rich inferences about agents allows agent to be thought of as *relevant* to morality, even though we don't seem to actually need the concept of a supernatural agent or exemplar to think and act morally.

(5) The relationship between coalition building, forming dominance hierarchies, and categorizing people is discussed. Inferences that we normally apply to species (such as essential hereditary qualities) are sometimes applied to groups of human beings instead, especially using easy-to-detect and hard-to-fake signs.

(6) Boyer sees fundamentalism as a result of our coalitional instincts, a reaction to defection from a coalition, and to the secular message that defection from the constraints of cultural rules can be accomplished at low cost.

(7) Boyer sees ritual as a way of exhibiting and testing social cooperation while providing a salient explanation for changes we observe in our own behavior.

(8) Boyer distinguishes the doctrinal version of concepts produced by guilds of literate specialists from the personal or local versions of the same concepts used by people everyday in their thinking.

A Groundbreaking Work in Behavioral Science.
In Religion Explained, Boyer attempts what no one else (to my knowledged) has: to present a comprehensive scientific explanation for religion. To undertake such a daunting task, Boyer employees numerous behavioral science disciplines, including evolutionary psychology, experimental social psychology, anthropology, sociology, and archeology just to mention a few. Early on, he debunks common and prevalent explanations for religion (many of which I subscribed to before reading this book) as facile and scientifically invalid.

Using Evolutionary Psychology as a foundation, Boyer describes how specific brain structures evolved to perform specific inferences related to basic survival (especially relevant are predatory and contagion inference) and the numerous inter-related systems used for conspecific interaction and cooperation. [It is especially important to understand that most inferences operate apart from conscious perception.] After comprehensive discussion of the multitudinous, interactive inference systems, Boyer describes how they collectively work to form religion. He explains that most varieties religious concepts (gods, spirits and other supernatural agents and their abilities; morality; death issues, etc.) and public behavior (rituals and prayer, religious-associated violence) can be explained in terms of these inference systems.

While he presents an effective argument for most aspects of religion, Boyer admits that a convincing scientific explanation for some forms of ritualistic behavior is elusive. He offers detailed speculation regarding the etiology of rituals, but admits the research at this time is inconclusive and mostly speculative. He compares rituals to similar non-religious activity, such as the compulsions associated with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but this is only a plausible partial explanation because religious rituals exhibit distinct differences. OCD compulsions are undesired and cause psychological distress in the participant, while participation in rituals is usually voluntary and isn't inherently distressing to the participants (though sometimes it can be). Also, rituals normally occur in a culturally-related social context while compulsions are a repetitive form of individual behavior.

The only element of Religion Explained that was a little disappointing to me was the cursory discussion of secularism. Boyer explains that religion (in one form or another) is conducive to normal human brain functions. This of course evokes discussion of why some people are completely irreligious. Boyer only touches on this issue briefly and in a manner which seems a little obtuse to me (he states the issue isn't completely explanable in the context of his argument).

Religion Explained is a fascinating scientific treatise on a unique and undeniably significant form of human behavior. This is a fairly complex work (a behavioral science background is certainly helpful), but only to the extent necessary to form a coherent, comprehensive argument. Boyer has shown undeniably that the etiology of religion is far more multi-faceted than most people infer (both scientists and non-scientists). While his argument will certainly be refined as the various conceptual elements evolve and more research emerges, this new, scientifically vital approach ro religion will likely prove to be a monumental achievement.

an incredible piece of work
Of the thousands of books I've read in my lifetime, I put this one in the top three. This book further confirms my belief that if you really want to understand humanity, evolution is the key theory. This particular book, which covers human evolutionary psychology as it relates to religious belief is well written, well organized, and well argued. The author asks (and usually answers) the right questions. Finally, this is one of those books (for me anyway) that caused me to look at the subject of religious belief in an entirely new way. I have a much better understanding of why people believe and why I don't.

Thoughtfully Provocative
I've heard most psychological theories about religion at least once-until I read this book! I found this book very challenging and will need to read it over a few times to make sense of it and to realign my thoughts.

In its essence, this book gleans insights from cognitive and social psychology (via the field of evolutionary psychology) to explain why the brain latches onto religious concepts with such zeal. I found one of the more insightful points near the end of the book; there the author indicates that religion is less a 'thing' than a complex of inferences, representations, and biases. This rings true to me. Whatever discipline you study, it is natural to reify that field into a standard set of ideas and explanations. In fact, though, we must be careful to appreciate all these ideas as so much structural framework that may or may not do a good job of representing a more complex reality. In the end, no academic discipline should be monolithic in its approach.

It is always exciting to have a new field or novel set of empirical techniques seed a barren old field, for fresh ideas are bound to sprout. It seems that the emerging science of evolutionary psychology, though it faces many challenges of its own, may lead us to better understand why people the world over cling to counterintuitive (or as the author coins, counterontological) ideas about reality.

This book may or may not convince you of its thesis but it will certainly cause you to revisit your old ideas with a new perspective.

Small praise for a great, great work
Pascal Boyer has done incredible work in this book. ... Read more

Book Description

This mainstream, comprehensive cultural anthropology text takes an applied perspective to the study of society's behavior. This application of anthropological knowledge, theory, and methods to the solution of specific societal problems is integrated throughout the text in such a manner that it shows the student what can be done with anthropology today. Applied anthropology, for most of the last decade, has been a major focus for the introductory cultural course. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Thoughtful and well-designed anthology.
The book is great in providing several opinions on a particular unit studied.This way students (who are most often the readers of this book) get more than just a biased opinion.The context sections that follow the main text provide readers with additional information on the subject as well as the ideas for writing compositions.Furthermore, the book incorporates very well many diverse subjects including psychology, history of the Western Frontier,sex and gender, as well as several others.It contains many contemporary authors and provides the students with examples of different writing styles.In other words it's a great book for an English class or even for future reference and ideas. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Read this before "Science in Action"
Latour's book "Science in Action" is more trendy... but I suggest you read this earlier book instead. It's clear and makes its points in a compelling fashion.

A classic in the philosophy of science
It seems to me that the previous reviewer is either a wooly-head theoretician or that the previous reviewer hasn't actually done any research in a laboratory. Because in this book, there are many sparkling insights into the way that science is practised.

It takes a while for Latour to get going as he is quite verbose in the early section, where he discusses his "anthropological" approach to science studies. However, after that, he makes a couple of points that as far as I know, he was the first philosopher of science to make.

First, Latour demonstrates the intimate relationship between the publication of scientific papers, scientific prestige, laboratory finances and actual experiments. He makes the seemingly obvious, though not so when the book came out, that the possibility of experiments in a lab requires the influx of an amazing out of money. The acquisition of this research money takes up a large proportion of the time of the head honcho scientist in a laboratory .

Second, Latour shows that entities in science are always defined by a network of properties that are experimentally determined. Scientific entities are hardly ever seen as objects with a few simple analytical properties. In fact, the more properties the better. And it doesn't matter if the mesh of properties is convoluted and seemingly contradictory. For each property concerned, there must be a vast array of material techniques to measure, control and manipulate that property. A new entity in science is accepted as real only when there are enough inter-locking properties to guarantee its existence. No method, by itself, is ever convincing.

Latour points out that once an object is deemed to be real, scientists often invert the logic and argue that the reason why the combined set of experiments worked in the first place was that the object was in fact real. Whether this inversion of logic stands up to philosophical scrutiny - I do not know - but I have seen many practising scientists make this jump in logic. I've even used it myself. It is here that the "realist" and "anti-realist" debate rages. However, I think Latour reports it just as he sees it.

Third, Latour carries out an analysis of scientific texts, which I have yet to see anywhere else. Scientific statments take on 5 modalities - from speculative hypothesis to proven statements to unspoken assumption. Latour gives a account of how the modalities of each statement are modified by how every other scientist in the field cites the statement in future scientific papers. They can ignore it, attack it as a useless hypothesis, bolster it by citing it as a supporting statement, adulate it by assuming that is a proven statement, and finally they just assume it's true. This scrutiny occurs continuously both inside the lab and in conferences.

However, the difference between this process in the sciences as opposed to the humanities, is that these statements are often associated with machines that act in the material world. Proving a statement means that a material effect is generated.

Using this method, Latour can analyse the fortunes of the scientists in a lab. And analysing the citations of scientific papers results in a reasonably good definition of scientific credibility. As a grad student in a biophysics lab, I've seen this happen - albeit on an intuitive level.

Although Latour has since gone onto to more and more abstract studies, the beauty of Laboratory Life is that it is firmly grounded in the actual practises of an existing laboratory, the Guillemen Lab at the Salks Institute.

Popular book, completely unjustified conclusion
I give this book a high rating because of its influence in the field. It is the first case study of laboratory science ever published, and is often quoted in anthropology, sociology, and philosophy of science. The book's conclusion is social constructivist in nature, to a very extreme degree. Scientific facts are not discovered, they are constructed through social processes. The actual study was done by Latour, a French philosopher, and the method was to assume strangeness. That is, Latour pretended he didn't know anything about what the scientists were doing and tried to make up (construct) an account. The usual problems with relativism plague Latour and Woolgar's brand of social constructivism, most notably issues with reflexivity. If scientific accounts are constructed and do not have to do with the phenomena, why should we think that Laboratory Life tells us anything about the phenomena of laboratory science? Their answer is that we shouldn't. The only question in evaluating texts is, "are you convinced?" If not, fine. Come up with a better (more persuasive) account. People who think that science, philosophy, and academe in general should have something to do with the real world will be horribly frustrated by this conclusion. But everyone should be frustrated by the fact that the conclusion just doesn't follow from the data Latour gathered. It seems to come entirely from prior convictions of the authors. I recommend reading the book, however, because of its popularity and because it is a fantastic exemplar of a bad relativist and constructivist argument. Get the revised edition, which has a postscript and extra references. For a chuckle, look up some of the reviews (cited in the 2nd ed. references) from scientific journals. They are mostly cheerful recognitions of the book's subject matter (laboratory science) without any reference to--or argument with--the strong anti-realist claims. It makes you wonder if these people acctually read the book. ... Read more

Book Description

A classic collection of essays in the history of anthropological thought, the new edition has been conceptually reorganized and also includes selections by modern theorists-among them Marvin Harris, Victor Turner, and Clifford Geertz. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

A conspiracy between universities, publishers and the editor
I wish I could get contracted to slap together a 'greatest hits' of anthropological selections, supply some commentary more appropriate to World Book Encyclodpedia than a college text, and then charge $80 for it. Sign me up! The selections in this book cover most of the seminal thinkers in early anthropology, although as it progresses through time the criteria seems to grow more vague and seemingly random. There are no women covered in this massive tome other than Ruth Benedict and her dubious contribution of 'personality studies'; there is no mention even of Margaret Mead, let alone people like Mary Douglas. Some editorial choices seem to reflect the biases of the editors more than the canon of anthropology. For example, there is somewhere around 100 pages of text from Levi-Strauss, and a mere 10 or so from Clifford Geertz (the first essay in his Interpretation of Cultures). There are other glaring omissions based on strange logic (e.g. the choice to include a selection from Durkheim but NOT Marx or Engels, which is explained - weakly - in the introduction). The selections by Marshall Sahlins and Alfred Kroeber are probably some of the worst examples of their writing they could have found for an anthology, and will most likely turn students *off* from their work than endear them or make them curious for more. Furthermore, the editors simply do not provide the reader with the tools for analysis that are necessary to place these theorists in their proper historical and intellectual contexts. As mentioned above, the extremely brief, synoptic commentaries that serve as introductions to each piece could have been assembled by a high-school student surfing the internet. We are given an entirely-too-straight-forward, normative picture of the various authors' ideas, accomplishments and contributions to the field; we are not given any sense of the contentious nature of some of these ideas, how they were debated, criticized and elaborated upon both in the halls of academia and in the fieldwork process. A person could counter that this is simply not possible in an 'introductory'-type book, but I would refer them to Garbarino's rather thin volume 'Sociocultural theory in anthropology', which does an excellent job of this type of analysis. However, Bohannan and Glazer do include a few essays reprinted from long dead (and occasionally hard to find) journals like "Man" (such as Evans-Pritchard's latter-day rant against the application of pure scientific positivism to human societies). The end result is that, if you are assigned this book for a class (as I was), you really have no choice but to shell out the $75 or $80 because you will be hard pressed to collect all the various readings yourself at the university library. But if choice is actually a factor and you are simply looking for a comprehensive and lucid guide to anthropological theory, I would recommend Edmund Leach's "Social Anthropology" or Marvin Harris' "The Rise of Anthropological Theory". Meanwhile, if you must have a reader of the original, primary sources, this book will suffice, but there really ought to be more substance here -- espeically for the price.

A must for anthropologists
I'm an anthropology major in my senior year. One of my classes was Anthropological Theory. This book was the main reading. It is concise. It offers a multitude of anthropological view points that are the foundations of modern anthropological thought.

If anyone is looking to build a library of good scholarly works, this is a great foundation in that it offers many view points that have helped shape modern schoold of thought in many fields.

Excellent!
This is an EXCELLENT book for those struggling with the history of cultural anthropology. I highly recommend it to any cultural anthropology student who wants an easy to read description of the important figures and movements in CA. It really spells it out.

Seminal Reading for all social scientists
This book is an insightful compilation of all the groundbreaking researchers in Anthropology. By reading this book, one gains a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of anthropological theory and praxis. This book contains valuable biographical information as well as selected works from each of the persons profiled. It is a must read for anyone interested in the world of anthropology.

An excellent review of the anthropological canon
This book is an excellent text on which to base an upper level undergraduate introduction to the history of anthropological theory, although most teachers will want to supplement it with additional readings. The introductory chapter essays provide interesting and helpful biographical data on each author, as well as material historically situating the textual excerpts offered. While the selections are generally well-chosen as to importance, brevity and ease of reading, some do not necessarily represent an author's best or most important work (e.g. the selection offered for A.L. Kroeber). The text covers basic trends in anthropological theory up to about the 1970's, and includes many historically significant authors who might otherwise be "written out" in favor of more recent theoretical stars. While I would not recommend this as the *only* reading for a theory class, it does a great job of introducing students to the history of anthropological theory, while leaving the teacher room to decide how and where to supplement it with additional (or more recent) readings. ... Read more

Book Description

Ever since the dawn of human history, tribes have had their shamans, who sometimes have been known as medicine men or witch doctors. This beautifully illustrated volume describes shamanism, showing its practices to be the earliest attempts to control the environment with help from spiritual forces. Shamanic ceremonies use drums and rattles to accompany dances, chants and other rituals as a way of summoning healing spirits, performing magic, seeking help, and divining the future. The Book of the Shaman points out striking similarities in shamanism of tribes in far-flung corners of the world, including Africa, India, Siberia, and the Americas. It tells how readers can use simple shamanic ceremonies today, as a way to restore their personal spiritual balance and live in harmony with the rhythms and energies of nature. Among the many features of shamanism described are:
The Three Shamanic Worlds--the Lower, Middle, and Upper Worlds, where the shaman's spirit travels during his trances
The Four Directions of the Medicine Wheel--and the teachings that the wheel inspires
Shamanic Ethics--including the rules of how and when to heal, and the safe use of magic
The Tools of the Shaman--including drums, rattles, ritual clothing, magic dolls, spirit houses, and more
Shamanic Rituals and Meditations--for purposes of healing, tending sacred places, protecting people from harm, bringing good fortune, honoring ancestors, and more.
Here is a fascinating and detailed history and description of shamanism, written by an expert in the field. This beautiful book is enhanced with more than 200 photos and illustrations, all of them in full color. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

The best "introduction to shamanism" book I have read
I have been actively involved in shamanism for the past 10 years and am constantly on the look-out for books that provide enough flavor and texture to give someone unfamiliar with the practice a good overview of the topic.

Of the over 50 books I have reviewed, this is the best.

"The Book of the Shaman" is well organized, colorful, inviting and does a terrific job at touching on the breadth of the shamanic experience. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have.

A Fantastic Introduction into the ways of the Shaman!!!
This book is not only a fascinating read, but is filled with exceptional photos throughout. It takes you on a journey which explains the ancient rituals of various shamans of the world, while explaining the reasons and uses for these rituals. It takes you through the "how to" in step by step detail, along with photos which are a great enhancement to the text. Beautifully written and presented - a real keeper for any Spiritual library. ... Read more

Book Description

The western Amazon is the last frontier, as wild a west as Earth has ever known. For thirty years David G. Campbell has been exploring this lush wilderness, which contains more species than ever existed anywhere at any time in the four-billion-year history of life on our planet.
With great artistic flair, Campbell takes us with him as he travels to the town of Cruzeiro do Sul, 2,800 miles from the mouth of the Amazon. Here he collects three old friends: Arito, a caiman hunter turned paleontologist; Tarzan, a street urchin brought up in a bordello; and Pimentel, a master canoe pilot. They travel together even farther into the rainforest, set up camp, and survey every living woody plant in a land so rich that an area of less than fifty acres contains three times as many tree species as all of North America.
Campbell knows the trees individually, has watched them grow from seedling to death. He also knows the people of the Amazon: the recently arrived colonists with their failing farms; the mixed-blood Caboclos, masters of hunting, fishing, and survival; and the refugee Native Americans. Campbell introduces us to two remarkable women, Dona Cabocla, a widow who raised six children on that lonely frontier, and Dona Ausira, A Nokini Native American who is the last speaker of her tribe's ages-old language. These people live in a land whose original inhabitants were wiped out by centuries of disease, slavery, and genocide, taking their traditions and languages with them -- a land of ghosts. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Extraordinary
If you enjoy armchair traveling, like superb writing and a good story - this is the book.Mr. Campbell's intimacy with this part of the world, it's history and the story of the people who live there, is beautifully told.A pleasure from start to finish.

great book
This is a terrific book. And what a vocabulary! I had to refer to the Oxford English Dictionary at least once on just about every page.

a land of ghosts: the braided lives of people and the...
This book should be listed as a book of poetry.Every word has been perfectly chosen.It reads like honey.Campbell captures what working and doing research in the Amazon is really like.He knows and understands the Amazon better than any person I know. ... Read more

Book Description

This well illustrated, site-by-site survey of prehistory captures the popular interest, excitement, and visual splendor of archaeology as it provides insight into current research, innovative interpretations, and important theoretical themes in the field. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Wonderful book
This is a wonderful book on archaeology from a world wide perspective.Techniques and time periods are well illustrated with examples taken from work done all over the world.Some of the most famous archeological sitesare discussed:Olduvai, Zhoukoudien, Sanidar Cave, Jericho, Cahokia,Teotihuacan, Tikal, Moche, Cuzco, Uruk, Giza, An-Yang, Great Zimbabwe,Knossos, and others possibly more familiar to those with other areas ofarchaeological interest.This would make a lovely addition to the libraryof those who have more specialized interests but who want to know moreabout other areas or who enjoy learning new things about archaeologyitself. It's definitely a book I'll re-read, and I don't generally do that. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Brief and engaging, but ultimately falls short
This book does a great job of giving information about all of the different inputs required for lots of the different things we consume every day. It makes you consider many little things that you previously didn't think about, such as the environmental impacts of transporting goods, and water spent washing your clothes. For this simple reason it might be a good buy.

However, the book fails in its use of statistics, failing to give the reader a real sense of the environmental impact of different goods. This books barrages us with facts and figures about the production of certain goods. However, most of these numbers are given with so little background that it is difficult to determine how consuming each product is. After reading this book, I don't know whether eating a hamburger or drinking coffee really is that bad for the environment, even if I do know all of the materials necessary and pollution emitted from the production of these products.

If you'd like a more practical book that will help you be more responsible with respect to the environment, I recommend "The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices". This book actually gives suggestions for the most important things to consider to live in a manner that will minimize damage to the environment. If you would just like to learn about the different "ingredients" required for certain products, however, this book is good enough.

Should we believe?
Should we believe the statements in this book when Mr. Ryan tells us streets are paved with a twelve-inch layer of asphalt?
It's probably just an innocent mistake, but obvious factual errors make me wonder about the veracity of the rest of the book.

Our Collective Eco-Wake
Let me start by going backwards. In the appendix, the authors testify that this book is about the "greenest" on the market. With soy-based inks and nearly 100 percent of the paper content comprised of post- and pre-consumer waste, the book is a monument to sustainable production. Although they bemoan the "well traveled pulp" cover, no dioxins were co-produced alongside the book. To prove the book really is this cool, they painstaking tracked the web of connections involved in its production as far back as possible.

After discussing every facet of the book, from guts and cover to printing, the only thing they were unable to determine was where half the cover's paper was produced. In all, this post-production analysis was stunning. The delicate web of causes and effects that entered into the books production should serve as a model to all those who would conceive the production of any product. Ideally, we should strive for this kind holistic understanding of production, consumption, and disposal before products every leave the design table.

The actual content of the book is just as salient. What happens when millions of ordinary people like you and me go about our ordinary business, using lots of stuff? What ecological "wakes" do they leave behind, rippling outward across the world? This is the premise of the book, which is rather unassuming and commonsensical. The answers, however, are anything but mundane and commonsensical. The true stories of how things are made might leave you feeling overwhelmed or depressed. You might think twice about throwing that lump of sugar into your coffee -- and not only because it could add a few extra pounds and put you at greater risk of heart disease. You do so also in efforts to help restore the habitat of the Florida Everglades.

Did the profound disconnect sink in yet? Not to worry, another 9 generic commodities with their own unique global "ripples" await you after picking up this book. They include you morning coffee, the newspaper, your T-shirts, shoes, that computer, the bike (and the car), those French fries, the hamburger that preceded them, and also the cola which will wash it all down. Although the imaginary North American whose daily consumptive routine this book tracks might not be you, do not then assume that these issues do not therefore concern you. The fact is, the consolidated effects of this consumption are harming much more than the Florida Everglades. They could potentially end all human reproduction. Perhaps you should read that last sentence again.

We need to educate ourselves about this net ecological "wake" before the rooster tail of acid rain, rainforest destruction, ozone depletion, water depletion, air pollution, forest annihilation, energy exhaustion, pesticide inundation, sweatshop labor promotion, species extinction, waste production, monoculturalization, spiritual declination, heavy metal pollution creation, VOC smog accretion, and desertification leave us all wet and shivering in the cold.

"Well, what am I supposed to do bury my car?" you wonder. The book also offers hope. Consumption, whether we like it or not, is in end inescapable. Thus by understanding our impacts, seeking alternative solutions, educating the friends and the general public, and at the same time altering some our most unhealthy consumer habits, we can help move things in the right direction. If you are looking for more in-depth suggestions along these lines, check out "The Better World Handbook" (2001). It is my personal eco-bible. You can also get further eco-tips from the Northwest Environmental Watch website.

~A Top 10 glObal Eye-Opener~

Easy read, deep impressions
I didn't know this book would be such a nice read...
After receiving it, I read it all in one sitting. The book chronicles a day in the life of a typical person (an American). Although it is about an American, I believe there is not much difference between any ordinary person in any developed country on earth. The impacts of this person's consumption of products, her actions are all examined from an environment viewpoint. Some people may think that the book is too amateur but that's precisely why it's such a good read. It's easy to understand but leaves a lasting impression on you. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in knowing more about how our everyday actions affect the world we live in.

Outstanding illustration of how consumerism harms the earth
I've never found another book like this one. It makes it extremely easy to understand, breathtakingly clear, how our choices to consume various products cause a chain of events which harm the environment. Do you know what was done to a river in Canada to produce the six-pack of aluminum cans you just bought? What part of the earth did your coffee come from, and what scary things were done to produce it? The authors never hector or nag, they just describe the origin of things you probably use every day, and let you contemplate them for yourself. The book is a quick and easy read, suitable for adults and teens alike. If I were a high school teacher or college instructor, this book would be mandatory reading for my classes. ... Read more

Book Description

This book offers a comprehensive and balanced presentation on views of human culture, evolution, and prehistory. The text presents the principles and processes of anthropology, both physical (biological) and cultural, including ethnology, linguistics, and prehistoric archaeology in an integrated, holistic manner. A new framework emphasizing connections (between the subfields of anthropology) and the challenge of global interconnections serves to unify the material. Biocultural connections are also emphasized as the authors integrate contemporary research and ideas from several schools of thought, using a lively writing style to engage students and keep them interested in "real world" anthropology.The first section of the text covers selected aspects of physical anthropology and prehistoric archaeology as they relate to the origin of humanity, the origin of culture, and the development of human biological and cultural diversity. The second section covers the central concepts of cultural anthropology and linguistics, and challenges students to think about the diversity of the human condition and the changes ensuing from a globally connected world. Students are challenged to think about the world around them from the perspective of anthropology, and they are treated to a fascinating examination of the field of cultural anthropology, its findings, and its relevance to the modern world. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Great Intro text.
This is a solid introductory text which competently handles and encyclopedic load of research in a way as to invites the novice to want to learn about human biology, history, culture within the unique naturalistic holism of academic anthropology.
Excerpt: Most anthropology instructors have two goals for their introductory classes: (1) to provide an overview of principles and processes of anthropology and (2) to plant a seed of awareness about human cultural and biological diversity in their students that will continue to grow and to challenge ethnocentrism long past the end of the semester. All eleven editions of Anthropology have tried to support and further these goals.
The majority of our students come to class intrigued with anthropology but with little more than a vague sense of what it is all about. The first and most obvious aim of the text, therefore, is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the discipline-its fundamental principles and key concepts. Drawing from the research and ideas of a number of schools of anthropological thought, this book exposes students to a mix of theoretical perspectives-in human evolution and human ecology, as well as theories about culture such as functionalism, structuralism, cultural materialism, and world systems theory. Such inclusiveness reflects our conviction that different approaches all reveal important insights about human behavior, biology, and beliefs. To employ the tools of a single approach at the expense of all others is to cut oneself off from significant insights.

Insightful and not at all preaching.
I couldn't disagree more with the previous reviewer and felt the need to add my review to explain the absurdity of theirs. This book is very insighful, interesting, and makes perfect sense. Quite a bit of the writers opinions are included, but that is the case with most books on the social sciences. It is almost an unavoidable reality that the author will flavor the text with their own personal experience. The previous reviewer (a mathematician) seems more intent on discrediting Anthropology as a science than presenting the real facts. If one is truly interested in gleaning a generalized view of all the anthropological disciplines from one text, this book comes highly recommended.

If I wanted to be preached at, I'd read a religious text
Being a mathematician taking an anthropology course is strange i