Investigating Culture

The third edition of Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology, the highly praised innovative approach to introducing aspects of cultural anthropology to students, features a series of revisions, updates, and new material.

• Offers a refreshing alternative to introductory anthropology texts by challenging students to think in new ways and apply cultural learnings to their own lives

• Chapters explore key anthropological concepts of human culture including: language, the body, food, and time, and provide an array of cultural examples in which to examine them

• Incorporates new material reflecting the authors' research in Malawi, New England, and Spain

• Takes account of the latest information on such topical concerns as nuclear waste, sports injuries, the World Trade Center memorial, the food pyramid, fashion trends, and electronic media

• Includes student exercises, selected reading and additional suggested readings

Auteur

Carol Delaney is Associate Professor Emerita of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University. She is author of The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society (1991), Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth (1998), and Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem (2011). Deborah Kaspin is an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Rhode Island College and has also taught at Yale University, the University of Virginia, and Wheaton College. She is editor of Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (2002) with Paul Landau.

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PRAISE FOR THE SECOND EDITION

"Using an innovative and novel framework, Delaney's Investigating Culture moves students through a series of anthropological concepts and demonstrates the ways in which universal human concepts time, space, family, status, and gender are reformulated across the breadth of human cultural diversity. This book draws from classical and contemporary ethnographic texts providing students a week-by-week journey through the study of human culture. Pedagogically brilliant, easy to teach, and well structured, this work provides students with engaging assignments, topics for discussion, and advanced questions for those interested in more advanced research. I use it every year..."

Michael Wilcox, Stanford University

In this fully updated and revised third edition of Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology, Delaney and Kaspin build on the foundations of their popular and student-friendly textbook, exploring key anthropological concepts of human culture including: language, the body, food, and time, alongside a wealth of new research material, case studies, and examples. The new edition includes an increased emphasis on the intersections of culture and power (especially with regards to race, class, and governance) along with all-new material on Kaspin's research in Malawi and New England, and on Delaney's recent pilgrimage along El Camino de Santiago in north-western Spain.

Chapters incorporate the latest information relating to such topical concerns as nuclear waste, sports injuries, the World Trade Center memorial, the food pyramid, fashion trends, electronic media, and many more.

As in previous editions, Investigating Culture continues to challenge students to think in new ways and apply their insights to their own lives. With carefully chosen readings, exercises, and more, Delaney and Kaspin's essential student textbook retains its reputation as an innovative and invaluable introduction to the field of anthropology that shows students how to gain an understanding of other cultures as well as their own.

Résumé
The third edition of Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology, the highly praised innovative approach to introducing aspects of cultural anthropology to students, features a series of revisions, updates, and new material.

• Offers a refreshing alternative to introductory anthropology texts by challenging students to think in new ways and apply cultural learnings to their own lives
• Chapters explore key anthropological concepts of human culture including: language, the body, food, and time, and provide an array of cultural examples in which to examine them
• Incorporates new material reflecting the authors' research in Malawi, New England, and Spain
• Takes account of the latest information on such topical concerns as nuclear waste, sports injuries, the World Trade Center memorial, the food pyramid, fashion trends, and electronic media
• Includes student exercises, selected reading and additional suggested readings

Contenu

Acknowledgments xi

1 Disorientation and Orientation 1

Introduction; how culture provides orientation in the world; what is culture and how do anthropologists investigate it? Learning to think anthropologically.

Exercises 24

Reading: Laura Bohannan, Shakespeare in the Bush 27

2 Spatial Locations 33

How do we situate or locate ourselves in space? Are notions of space universal or are they shaped by culture? This chapter explores these questions from macro to micro contexts, including discussion of maps, nations, segregation, public spaces, invisible spaces, and that space that is no place: cyberspace.

Exercises 65

Reading: Sue Bridwell Beckham, The American Front Porch: Women's Liminal Space 67

3 All We Have Is Time 79

Time is another major way we orient ourselves. What does it mean to be on time, out of time, or in time? This chapter discusses different cultural notions of time, the development of measuring time and clocks, the construction of the Western calendar and its rootedness in a sacred worldview, and birthdays and other markers of time.

Exercises 109

Reading: Ellen Goodman, Time Is for Savoring 111

4 Language: We Are What We Speak 113

Is language quintessentially human or do some other animals possess it? Communication versus language. Writing. The symbolic function and metaphor: Different languages, different worlds? The social function: What information do you obtain from a person's speech? How are race, class, and gender inflected in language?

Exercises 145

Reading: Ursula LeGuin, She Unnames Them 148

Reading: Alan Dundes, Seeing Is Believing 149

5 Relatives and Relations 155

Notions of kinship and kinship theory: To whom are we related and how? Is there any truth to the idea that blood is thicker than water? What constitutes a family? This chapter also discusses different meanings of friendship, romantic relationships, and parentchild relationships.

Exercises 185

Reading: A. M. Hocart, Kinship Systems 188

6 Our Bodies, Our Selves 193

Are we our bodies or do we have bodies? Different concepts of the body, the gendered body, the physical body, the social body. Techniques and modifications of the body. Tattoos. Body parts and organ transplants. Traffic in body parts. Body image, advertisements, and eating disorders. Bodies before and after death.

Exercises 227

Reading: Horace Miner, Body Ritual among the Nacirema 230

Reading: Deborah Kaspin, Women Who Breed Like Rabbits and Other Mythical Beasts: The Cultural Context of Family Planning in Malawi 233

7 Food for Thought 239

What constitutes food? What makes a meal? What does it mean to say that food is love? Relation of food to the environment. Fast food, slow food, genetically modified food (Frankenfood). Food and sex. Food and civility.

Food and religion. Cooking.

Exercises 277

Reading: Jill Dubisch, You Are What You Eat: Religious Aspects of the Health Food Movement 279

8 Clothing Matters 289

Clothing does more than cover the body; it is also a cultural index of age, gender, occupation, and class. Is it then true that clothes make the man? Haute couture, sweat shops, clothing, and the economy.

Exercises 330

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