Conrad Kottak's Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity (12th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), having gone through 12 editions since its first publication in 1974, deserves its reputation as a widely-used comprehensive introduction for undergraduates to the field of anthropology. As with other recently published textbooks, it is a multifaceted, colorful production that includes an 'ebook' version, a CD-ROM, and supplementary Website material. With this extensive array of material it applies
Becoming an Anthropologist Is it possible to overcome the ignorance of bigotry and prejudice by practicing anthropology in one’s daily life? Is it possible to engage in the study of cultural anthropology and still maintain individual core beliefs? These are the questions that will be addressed in the next few pages. Growing up in a home where formal education was considered of little value, and people of other races and ethnicities were considered as less than or undesirable, I came to adulthood
“Anthropology is the study of various aspects of humans within past and present societies, which helps us understand ‘Human’ better. And you will have classes on different topics and fieldwork to learn about Anthropology.” the professor introduced the concept of Anthropology in my first class in my college life, which indicated the importance of combining course learning with the practice of field work. This first impression of Anthropology has greatly influenced my studies in the next three years
In my essay, I would like to discuss cannibalism as a phenomenon in the context of socio-cultural anthropology. By exploring some of the cannibal practices prevailing in the tribal societies even until today, I will try to put up a question if this practice is still vivid and functional way how to deal the social order. 1. Úvod Cannibalism, known also as anthropophagy, is one of the slowly vanishing phenomena of the modern world. Even if it is necessarily considered taboo from the western perspective
The origin of Afro Brazilian religions is traced back to the Atlantic slave trade that took place in the 16th century . Portuguese people captured individuals from Bantu tribes and the other West African communities. The slave trade involved the transfer of these people to Brazil, where they were sold as slaves. The interaction of slaves from different cultural and religious backgrounds led to the development of the Afro Brazilian religions that consequently spread all over Brazil. The religions
FUNCTIONALISM IN SOCIOLOGY In sociology and social anthropology the term "functional analysis" is used not only in the mathematical sense, where a function expresses a correspondence between two variables such that the second, or dependent, variable is said to be a function of the first, or the independent variable. Sociologists, of course, like all scientists, are interested in establishing such dependencies. The term "functional analysis" in their work also has a special connotation similar to
Would you rather want the murderer of your loved one to have a capital punishment or do you want them to spend their entire life in a prison cell? That question raises a lot of controversy to the public because of the capital punishment. To prevent criminals from killing they are given a capital punishment who has committed horrendous crimes to satisfy oneself, but many people think that criminals shouldn't be given death penalty because it decreases the value of life. In the article “Death and
Collaborative Work, and Multi-sited Ethnography: A reflection on anthropological research in museums I had the opportunity to conduct a collaborative research project designed formulate a better understanding of diverse research methods within Anthropology. My group was made up of four members. We agreed from day one that we would focus our research around museums. We all had our own research we wanted to conduct within museums. We had come up with the question which would overarch all our research
racism for their poverty. But she's right in step with the more radical of her academic colleagues, even if her ingrained cultural nationalism prevents her from joining them in dismissing race as an arbitrary social construct with no basis in anthropology. Race, according to current academic thinking, is a smokescreen that has drawn discussion away from the more crucial issue of class. If this sounds suspiciously like Marxism, it is Marxism gone post-modern: a tool for the analysis of literary
objection of the American anthropology research teams, these studies were mainly represented by Sigmund Freud and the American psychiatrist Harry S. Sullivan. The word identity stems from the Latin root idem, the same, and has been used in English since the sixteenth century. It has been associated with John Locke’s time when he was associated with the mind-body problem in the philosophy field. The first use of the term ‘personal identity’ comes from John Locke’s essay concerning Human understanding