Bodies, Politics and African Healing

Bodies, Politics and African Healing

This subtle and powerful ethnography examines African healing and its relationship to medical science. Stacey A. Langwick investigates the practices of healers in Tanzania who confront the most intractable illnesses in the region, including AIDS and malaria. She reveals how healers generate new therapies and shape the bodies of their patients as they address devils and parasites, anti-witchcraft medicine, and child immunization. Transcending the dualisms between tradition and science, culture and nature, belief and knowledge, Langwick tells a new story about the materiality of healing and postcolonial politics. This important work bridges postcolonial theory, science, public health, and anthropology.

Bodies, Politics and African Healing

The Evolution of Violence

The Evolution of Violence

This volume is an interdisciplinary exploration of our understanding of the causes and consequences of violence. Represented in its chapters are noted scholars from a variety of fields including psychology, anthropology, law, and literature. The contributions reflect a broad scope of inquiry and diverse levels of analysis. With an underlying evolutionary theme each of the contributors invoke their separate areas of expertise, offering empirical and theoretical insights to this complex subject. The multi-faceted aspect of the book is meant to engender new perspectives that will synthesize current knowledge and lead to a more nuanced understanding of an ever timely issue in human behavior. Of additional interest, is a foreword written by world renowned psychologist, Steven Pinker, and an afterword by noted evolutionary scholar, Richard Dawkins.

The Evolution of Violence

Foraging: Behavior and Ecology

Foraging: Behavior and Ecology

Foraging is fundamental to animal survival and reproduction, yet it is much more than a simple matter of finding food; it is a biological imperative. Animals must find and consume resources to succeed, and they make extraordinary efforts to do so. For instance, pythons rarely eat, but when they do, their meals are largeas much as 60 percent larger than their own bodies. The snakes digestive system is normally dormant, but during digestion metabolic rates can increase fortyfold. A python digesting quietly on the forest floor has the metabolic rate of thoroughbred in a dead heat. This and related foraging processes have broad applications in ecology, cognitive science, anthropology, and conservation biologyand they can be further extrapolated in economics, neurobiology, and computer science.

Foraging: Behavior and Ecology

Cultural Anthropology in a Globalizing World

Cultural Anthropology in a Globalizing World

Successfully integrating attention to globalization, gender, class, race and ethnicity, and the environment, this text engages students with compelling ethnographic examples and by demonstrating the relevance of anthropology.

Cultural Anthropology in a Globalizing World

Why Good is Good

Why Good is Good

Where do our moral beliefs come from? Theologians and scientists provide often conflicting answers. Robert Hinde resolves these conflicts to offer a groundbreaking, multidisciplinary response, drawing on psychology, philosophy, evolutionary biology and social anthropology.

Why Good is Good

Medicine and Modernism

Medicine and Modernism

This is the first in-depth study of the English neurologist and polymath Sir Henry Head (1861-1940). Head bridged the gap between science and the arts. He was a published poet who had close links with such figures as Thomas Hardy and Siegfried Sassoon. His research into the nervous system and the relationship between language and the brain broke new ground. L S Jacyna argues that these advances must be contextualised within wider Modernist debates about perception and language. In his time, Head was best known for his research into the human nervous system, but also worked on the localization of the language function within the brain. Head radically revised current ideas about the physiological basis of language. As well as its impact on medicine and biology, this work was seen to have implications for other disciplines including linguistics and social anthropology. This important new study draws upon a wide range of previously unpublished resources.

Medicine and Modernism

Luminescence Dating in Archaeology, Anthropology and Geoarchaeology

Luminescence Dating in Archaeology, Anthropology and Geoarchaeology

The field of Luminescence Dating has reached a level of maturity. Both research and applications from all fields of archaeological science, from archaeological materials to anthropology and geoarchaeology, now routinely employ luminescence dating. The advent of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) techniques and the potential for exploring a spectrum of grain aliquots enhanced the applicability, accuracy and the precision of luminescence dating. The present contribution reviews the physical basis, mechanisms and methodological aspects of luminescence dating; discusses advances in instrumentations and facilities, improvements in analytical procedures, and statistical treatment of data along with some examples of applications across continents, covering all periods (Middle Palaeolithic to Medieval) and both Old and New World archaeology. They also include interdisciplinary applications that contribute to palaeo-landscape reconstruction.

Luminescence Dating in Archaeology, Anthropology and Geoarchaeology

Demenageries

Demenageries

Demenageries, Thinking (of) Animals after Derrida is a collection of essays on animality following Jacques Derridas work. The Western philosophical tradition separated animals from men by excluding the former from everything that was considered proper to man: laughing, suffering, mourning, and above all, thinking. The animal has traditionally been considered the absolute Other of humans. This radical otherness has served as the rationale for the domination, exploitation and slaughter of animals. What Derrida called la pense de lanimal (which means both thinking concerning the animal and animal thinking) may help us understand differently such apparently human features as language, thought and writing. It may also help us think anew about such highly philosophical concerns as differences, otherness, the end(s) of history and the world at large. Thanks to the ethical and epistemological crisis of Western humanism, animality has become an almost fashionable topic. However, Demenageries is the first collection to take Derridas thinking on animal thinking as a starting point, a way of reflecting not only on animals but starting from them, in order to address a variety of issues from a vast range of theoretical perspectives: philosophy, literature, cultural theory, anthropology, ethics, politics, religion, feminism, postcolonialism and, of course, posthumanism.

Demenageries

Sustainable Food Production Includes Human and Environmental Health

Sustainable Food Production Includes Human and Environmental Health

Agroecology not only encompasses aspects of ecology, but the ecology of sustainable food production systems, and related societal and cultural values. To provide effective communication regarding status and advances in this field, connections must be established with many disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, environmental sciences, ethics, agriculture, economics, ecology, rural development, sustainability, policy and education, or integrations of these general themes so as to provide integrated points of view that will help lead to a sustainable construction of values. Such designs are inherently complex and dynamic, and go beyond the individual farm to include landscapes, communities, and biogeographic regions by emphasizing their unique agricultural and ecological values, and their biological, societal, and cultural components and processes.

Sustainable Food Production Includes Human and Environmental Health

The Teachings of Don Juan

The Teachings of Don Juan

Thirty years ago the University of California Press published an unusual manuscript by an anthropology student named Carlos Castaneda. The Teachings of Don Juan initiated a generation of seekers dissatisfied with the limitations of the Western worldview. Castaneda’s now classic book remains controversial for the alternative way of seeing that it presents and the revolution in cognition it demands.

The Teachings of Don Juan

The Whorf Theory Complex

The Whorf Theory Complex

At last — a comprehensive account of the ideas of Benjamin Lee Whorf which not only explains the nature and logic of the linguistic relativity principle but also situates it within a larger ‘theory complex’ delineated in fascinating detail. Whorf’s almost unknown unpublished writings (as well as his published papers) are drawn on to show how twelve elements of theory interweave in a sophisticated account of relations between language, mind, and experience. The role of language in cognition is revealed as a central concern, some of his insights having interesting affinity with modern connectionism. Whorf’s gestaltic ‘isolates’ of experience and meaning, crucial to understanding his reasoning about linguistic relativity, are explained. A little known report written for the Yale anthropology department is used extensively and published for the first time as an appendix. With the Whorf centenary in 1997, this book provides a timely challenge to those who take pleasure in debunking his ideas without bothering to explore their subtlety or even reading them in their original form.

The Whorf Theory Complex

Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

Everywhere anarchism is on the upswing as a political philosophyeverywhere, that is, except the academy. Anarchists repeatedly appeal to anthropologists for ideas about how society might be reorganized on a more egalitarian, less alienating basis. Anthropologists, terrified of being accused of romanticism, respond with silence . . . . But what if they didn’t?

Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

The Leader

The Leader

Behind every leader is an instructive life story. It often promotes a public image that inspires others to live by it. And, sometimes, even to live or to die for it. As leadership qualities and image issues gain significance in the public discourse, the psychological study of leadership is a critical factor in any discussion. With its trenchant insights into leaders past and present, The Leader: Psychological Essays, Second Edition, updates a pioneering text in this field and provides a solid basis for ongoing dialogue on this important subject. Within the context of the ever-evolving disciplines of psychoanalysis and psychodynamics, this thought-provoking volume examines the lives of several prominent leaders from ancient Greece through the start of the 21st century. The authors explore how these leaders imposed their individual missions and mystiques on others, thereby fulfilling and, sometimes, creating distinct needs in their followers. The volume brings into vivid focus issues with the potential for devastating consequences on the global stage. Coverage includes: Biblical times, ancient Greeks and the seeds of leadership.Lincoln during the 1850s, leading a dividing nation.Thomas A. Kohut on Kaiser Wilhelm II and the German national character.George W. Bush, atonement/redemption narratives and the American Dream.Bin Laden, man and myth.A study of paranoid leadership and its implications for future politics and policy. This must-have Second Edition is indispensable reading for researchers, professors, and graduate students across many disciplines, including political psychology, psychoanalysis, history and political science, psychiatry, anthropology, and personality and social psychology. It is important reading for anyone with an interest in the life stories of leaders past and present and how they affect our world even long after they are gone.

The Leader

States of Consciousness

States of Consciousness

In this accessible overview of current knowledge, an expert team of editors and authors describe experimental approaches to consciousness. These approaches are shedding light on some of the hitherto unknown aspects of the distinct states of human consciousness, including the waking state, different states of sleep and dreaming, meditation and more. The book presents the latest research studies by the contributing authors, whose specialities span neuroscience, neurology, biomedical engineering, clinical psychology and psychophysiology, psychosocial medicine and anthropology. Overall this anthology provides the reader with a clear picture of how different states of consciousness can be defined, experimentally measured and analysed. A future byproduct of this knowledge may be anticipated in the development of systematic corrective treatments for many disorders and pathological problems of consciousness.

States of Consciousness

Delta Theory and Psychosocial Systems

Delta Theory and Psychosocial Systems

Delta Theory establishes the foundation for a true scientific applied psychology, a theory of how human influence induces change in others. Delta Theory is unified and universal, applying to all cultures, historical periods, and goals for change. It integrates concepts and research from psychology, sociology, anthropology, evolution theory, philosophy, psychoneurology, cognitive science, and cultural-historical-activity theory. Yet Delta Theory is clear, economical, and elegant, with a full exposition of tactics for its practices. Rich examples are drawn from professional practices, but also from the creation and operations of criminals, healing ceremonies of indigenous peoples, and cross-species comparisons. This book ultimately seeks to describe how influence works, how it could be improved, and how it can be resisted.

Delta Theory and Psychosocial Systems