Social Science Anthropology

The human mind needs monsters. In every culture and in every epoch in human history, from ancient Egypt to modern Hollywood, imaginary beings have haunted dreams and fantasies, provoking in young and old shivers of delight, thrills of terror, and endless fascination. In Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors, anthropologist David D. Gilmore explores what human traits monsters represent and why they are so ubiquitous in people's imaginations and share so many features across different cultures.

In the past 50 years, Asian Americans have helped change the face of America and are now the fastest growing group in the United States. The Making of Asian America tells the little-known history of Asian Americans and their role in American life, from the arrival of the first Asians in the Americas to the present-day.

The Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining planetary crisis of our times. Running Out offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion and the deeper layers through which it gains meaning and force.

Drawing from decades of experience in the craft of language, both Dimópulos and Coetzee face the reality that when it comes to self-expression, some things will always get lost in translation. Speaking in Tongues finally emerges as an engaging and accessible work of philosophy, shining a light on some of the most important linguistic and philological issues of our time.

We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in mud huts rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than play football - or did we? Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Although it may seem as though we have barely had time to shed our hunter-gatherer legacy, biologist Marlene Zuk reveals that the story is not so simple. Popular theories about how our ancestors lived - and why we should emulate them - are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence. Armed with a razor-sharp wit and brilliant, eye-opening research, Zuk takes us to the cutting edge of biology to show that evolution can work much faster than was previously realized.

A work of immersive journalism steeped in a distinctively American social history and sparked by a personal quest, The Unsettlers traces the search for the simple life through the stories of new pioneers and what inspired each of them to look for - or create - a better existence. Captivating and clear-eyed, it dares us to imagine what a sustainable, ethical, authentic future might actually look like.

A "piercing, unsentimental" (New Yorker) history that boldly challenges the idea of a rural American crisis.

Short on time? Or maybe you’ve already read the book, but need a refresh on the most important takeaways. In a quick, easy read, you can take the main principles from Outliers: The Story of Success. Outliers asserts that a person’s background and environment are every bit as important as intelligence and drive in achieving success. Critics have complained that Gladwell’s explanations for success are simply interesting, but too simplistic. However, the book has sold millions of copies and remains popular.

In an era of unprecedented access to knowledge, why does ignorance thrive? Why do conspiracy theories, science denial, and anti-expert sentiment dominate public discourse? And how did we reach a point where misinformation spreads faster than facts, and critical thinking is treated as an elitist threat? From the war on expertise and the rise of conspiracy thinking to the manipulation of public opinion through propaganda and technology, this book reveals the deep-rooted causes of our current crisis.

The last in the Lost Rites trilogy “The Ancestral Landscape” explores the space between us, both within and around us, in terms of what is longing to be given our collective attention for truth, reconciliation and healing.

Trailblazing anthropologist Oliver Sweet has spent decades using cultural insights to help businesses, governments, and NGOs achieve their goals. Now, in The Rules That Make Us, Sweet shows us how to strengthen our own cultural intelligence. Drawing on research conducted in thirty-five countries, he maps culture’s hidden rules: how it governs our behavior and creates our assumptions, how it’s shaped by technology, and even how it can help us predict the future.

Homo Exul indaga en la pregunta de por qué, en un momento preciso de la historia, los homínidos dejaron de cooperar y comenzaron a mostrar conductas violentas. Defiende, además, que la mayoría de dolencias y enfermedades crónicas que hoy nos afectan (desde la obesidad hasta el alzhéimer) son consecuencia de ese mismo proceso evolutivo que, por fuerza, conllevó importantes cambios sociales y alimenticios en adultos, niños y lactantes. Lanza, además, una importante pregunta: ¿estamos a tiempo de revertir estas marcas evolutivas y convertirnos de nuevo en una sociedad cooperativa?

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.

私たちは「背の高い自信過剰な男性」をトップに据えがち？政治家が堕落し、職場にサイコパスがはびこる理由を、進化論や人類学、心理学によって読み解き、権力を腐敗させない方策を示す。

Ich war zunächst nicht großartig überrascht, als wir nach langer Zeit im Herbst 2021 bei einem gemeinsamen Kaltge­tränk auf die zahlreichen aktuellen Ereignisse zu sprechen kamen, die vor Monaten noch fleißig als Ver­schwörungstheorie diffamiert wurden. Eine Diskussion über Verschwörungstheorien ‒ oder besser gesagt: über alternative Ermittlungsansätze ‒ kann an­strengend sein. So muss man sich als offener Mensch permanent gegen Totschlagargumente zur Wehr set­zen. Und dann natürlich in einer Gegenargumentation sämtliche Fakten parat haben. Und zwar stichhaltig.

During the early twentieth century, the American government’s standing expectation was that Native Americans should be adopting Western customs. In the face of that prospect, anthropologist and musicologist Frances Densmore sought to preserve Native American culture—particularly as it was expressed through music. In her extensive writings on Native American lifestyles, music, and history, Densmore opened a window onto American experiences that had been obscured by stereotypes, and encouraged a better appreciation of the varied traditions of tribes nationwide.

5, 15, 50, 150...この数字からは誰も逃れられない！「友だちの数」「生産性の高いチームのメンバー数」「縦割り化する会社の社員数」カギを握るのは、進化がもたらした「社会脳」だ！

Where do human societies come from? The drive to answer this question took on a new urgency in the nineteenth century, when a generation of archaeologists began to look beyond the bible for the origins of different cultures and civilizations. Zelia Nuttall threw herself into the study of Aztec customs and cosmology, eager to use the tools of the emerging science of anthropology to prove that modern Mexico was built over the ruins of ancient civilizations.

The Bengalis are the third largest ethno-linguistic group in the world, after the Han Chinese and the Arabs. A quarter of a billion strong and growing, the community has produced three Nobel laureates, world-class scientists, legendary political leaders, iconic movie stars and directors and an unending stream of writers, philosophers, painters, poets and musicians of the first rank. But, bald facts aside, just who are the Bengalis? What is the community all about? In order to find the answers, the author delves deep into the culture, literature, history and social mores of the Bengalis.

The Mind of the Market will change the way we think about the economics of everyday life. Drawing on research from neuroeconomics, Michael Shermer explores what brain scans reveal about bargaining, snap purchases, and how trust is established in business. Utilizing experiments in behavioral economics, Shermer shows why people hang on to losing stocks and failing companies, why business negotiations often disintegrate into emotional tit-for-tat disputes, and why money does not make us happy.