Social Science Anthropology

Durante séculos, nossos ancestrais foram considerados primitivos e infantis, sendo divididos em duas categorias: iguais, livres e inocentes ou guerreiros e brutais. Com base no pensamento de Jean-Jacques Rousseau e de Thomas Hobbes, a ideia que perdurou ao longo dos anos foi a de que só poderíamos alcançar a civilização sacrificando essas liberdades ou domesticando nossos instintos mais básicos. O antropólogo David Graeber e o arqueólogo David Wengrow demonstram como essas teorias que emergiram no século XVIII foram uma reação à crítica feita por povos indígenas à sociedade europeia.

“The true and fascinating story of Easter Island and its amazing statues” — Ken Follett “Revelatory…fascinating… wholly convincing” — Daily Mail (UK) “Striking . . . a stunning unraveling of many layers of hidden history.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) A vital and...

The Birth and Death of Meaning uses the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and psychiatry to explain what makes people act the way they do.

Best-selling author Brian Fagan brings early humans out of the deep freeze with his trademark mix of erudition, cutting-edge science, and vivid storytelling. Cro-Magnon reveals human society in its infancy, facing enormous environmental challenges - including a rival species of humans, the Neanderthals. For ten millennia, Cro-Magnons lived side by side with Neanderthals, an encounter that Fagan fills with drama.

Eliot Stein has traveled the globe in search of remarkable people who are preserving some of our most extraordinary cultural rites. In Custodians of Wonder, Stein introduces listeners to a man saving the secret ingredient in Japan's 700-year-old original soy sauce recipe. In Italy, he learns how to make the world's rarest pasta from one of the only women alive who knows how to make it. And in India, he discovers a family rumored to make a mysterious metal mirror believed to reveal your truest self.

Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences but also from our cultures. Wisdom Sits in Places, the first sustained study of places and place explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of people, the Western Apache in Arizona. For more than 30 years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names.

Hercules, Zeus, Thor, Gilgamesh - these are the figures that leap to mind when we think of myth. But to David Leeming, myths are more than stories of deities and fantastic beings from non-Christian cultures. Myth is at once the most particular and the most universal feature of civilization, representing common concerns that each society voices in its own idiom.

Inequality, social immobility, and political polarization are only a few crucial phenomena driven by the inevitability of social structures. Social structures determine who has power and influence, account for why people fail to assimilate basic facts, and enlarge our understanding of patterns of contagion - from the spread of disease to financial crises. Despite their primary role in shaping our lives, human networks are often overlooked when we try to account for our most important political and economic practices.

One of the twentieth century's most influential books, this classic work of anthropology offers a groundbreaking exploration of what culture is With The Interpretation of Cultures, the distinguished anthropologist Clifford Geertz developed the concept of thick description, and in so doing, he...

At the dawn of the 21st century, British society is still shaped by a private education system devised to gentrify the Victorian middle classes and produce gentlemen to run the Empire. Yet it is not on the political agenda. It is rarely the subject of public debate, and we remain blind to its psychological implications. Can we afford to go on ignoring this issue? Will we continue to sacrifice the welfare of our children to satisfy our antiquated social aspirations?

In 1963 Colin Fletcher became the first man to walk the length of Grand canyon, below the Rim. It began with a dream, when he and a friend detoured from a cross-country trip to take a hurried look at the great natural wonder. Standing on the Rim, surrounded by the profound and almost mystical silence, Fletcher knew that something had happened to the way he looked at things. He also knew that the Canyon, with its depths and distances, cliffs, buttes, and hanging terraces, beckoned to him, calling him on a journey that would challenge both his body and his mind.

From a skeleton, a skull, or a mere fragment of burnt thighbone, prominent forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples can deduce the age, gender, and ethnicity of a murder victim, the manner in which the person was dispatched, and, ultimately, the identity of the killer. In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Dr. Maples revisits his strangest, most interesting, and most horrific investigations, from the baffling cases of conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Vietnam MIAs to the mysterious deaths of President Zachary Taylor and the family of Czar Nicholas II.

Jean Piaget, Lev S. Vigotski e Henri Wallon são os três maiores teóricos estudados no universo da educação e da psicologia. Nesta obra, consagrada por crítica e público, Yves de La Taille, Marta Kohl de Oliveira e Heloysa Dantas traduzem para o ouvinte o pensamento vivo desses autores.

“Strikingly dramatic, yet simple and unrestrained . . . an unusual and intensely interesting book richly packed with strange information.” —New York Times Book Review Based on Zora Neale Hurston’s personal experiences in Haiti and Jamaica, where she participated as an initiate rather...

En el tercer libro sobre su iniciación como "hombre de conocimiento", Carlos Castaneda desanda camino hasta los primeros tratos con su maestro, el brujo yaqui don Juan, y añade al recuento de prodigios las arduas labores de disciplina física y mental que desde un principio lo preparaban para un acto decisivo de poder. La historia se cierra con el relato del viaje al que alude el título, intimación de la soledad y la áspera belleza de tal vida.

"In formula: la geopolitica umana studia l’interazione tra collettività collocate nello spazio geografico calandosi nello sguardo altrui. Oggetto della sua analisi sono le aggregazioni umane, in ogni realizzazione storica. Tribù, póleis, comuni. Fino all’epoca corrente, dominata dagli Stati-nazione, dagli imperi. Mai i singoli individui. Tantomeno i leader. Ritenuti irrilevanti, mero prodotto della realtà che pensano di determinare. Nella migliore accezione, soggetti che incarnano lo spirito del tempo. "

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby has altered how we understand the Shamanic cultures and traditions that have undergone a worldwide revival in recent years. Now, in one of his most extraordinary journeys, Narby travels the globe - from the Amazon Basin to the Far East - to probe what traditional healers and pioneering researchers understand about the intelligence present in all forms of life. Intelligence in Nature presents overwhelming illustrative evidence that independent intelligence is not unique to humanity alone.

Las lecciones de brujería que aborda Carlos Castaneda conllevan sus postulados a la conclusión de que los misterios del conocimiento secreto se disipan en el acto mismo de cobrar concreción definitiva. Puede advertirse el paralelismo entre la iniciación guerrera que el autor ha cursado y la disciplina del Zen, en estos tres capítulos: "Un testigo de actos de poder", "El tonal y el nagual" y "La explicación de los brujos".

Une heure de promenade auditive dans les pas des anthropologues, en compagnie de Marie-Armelle Deguy, pour interroger nos sociétés humaines.

As news reports of the horrific December 2004 tsunami in Asia reached the rest of the world, commentators were quick to seize upon the disaster as proof of either God’s power or God’s nonexistence, asking over and over, How could a good and loving God - if such exists - allow such suffering? In The Doors of the Sea, David Bentley Hart speaks at once to those skeptical of Christian faith and to those who use their Christian faith to rationalize senseless human suffering.