"Suppose," Clifford Geertz suggests, "having entangled yourself every now and again over four decades or so in the goings-on in two provincial towns, one a Southeast Asian bend in the road, one a North African outpost and passage point, you wished to say something about how those goings-on had changed." A narrative presents itself, a tour of indices and trends, perhaps a memoir? None, however, will suffice, because in forty years more has changed than those two towns--the anthropologist, for instance, anthropology itself, even the intellectual and moral world in which the discipline exists. And so, in looking back on four decades of anthropology in the field, Geertz has created a work that is characteristically unclassifiable, a personal history that is also a retrospective reflection on developments in the human sciences amid political, social, and cultural changes in the world. An elegant summation of one of the most remarkable careers in anthropology, it is at the same time an eloquent statement of the purposes and possibilities of anthropology's interpretive powers. To view his two towns in time, Pare in Indonesia and Sefrou in Morocco, Geertz adopts various perspectives on anthropological research and analysis during the post-colonial period, the Cold War, and the emergence of the new states of Asia and Africa. Throughout, he clarifies his own position on a broad series of issues at once empirical, methodological, theoretical, and personal. The result is a truly original book, one that displays a particular way of practicing the human sciences and thus a particular--and particularly efficacious--view of what these sciences are, have been, and should become. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Frontis.+ xiv + 216 pp. with 32 illus & 3 maps, 8vo.

The distinguished scientist, naturalist, and essayist recounts the key events and discoveries of his life, from his early, formative years, through his creative years as thinker and writer, to the anxious hours of approaching death (view table of contents)

Product Description: Based on papers delivered at the 1976 meeting of the American Ethnological Society, American Indian Intellectuals of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries offers biographical sketches of major American Indian scholars and historians between 1828 and 1975...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Book by Smith, Harry

The American anthropologist recalls the people and events of her childhood and early career, revealing the major influences on her private and public life. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This volume celebrates the life and work of Robin Fox and the idea of a biosocial science. From his early studies of kinship, primates, the brain, evolution, the incest taboo, and aggression, to his later work on literature, politics, civilization, law, the Bible, Shakespeare, and the history of ideas, Robin Fox inspired many with an evolutionary vision of humanity that goes beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries and embraces the “universal history of mankind...read more

Product Description: Book by Darnell, Regna

Product Description: Carlos Castaneda was a brilliant scholar but legitimacy bored him. At UCLA he got a Ph.D. in anthropology by turning the latest social science theories into conversations with a mushroom-smoking hermit and feeding them back to his professors as ancient Indian wisdom.

Product Description: Writing in luminous prose, Liza Dalby, acclaimed author of Geisha and The Tale of Murasaki, brings us this elegant and unique year’s journal― a brilliant mosaic that is at once a candid memoir, a gardener’s diary, and an enlightening excursion through cultures east and west...read more

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Edward Sapir (1884–1939), this volume brings together a number of papers by distinguished North American scholars appraising the life and work of the world-renowned anthropologist and linguist. It includes an introduction by the editor, a full bibliography of Sapir's scientific writings, a detailed index of names, and many photographs and fac similes. Among the contributors are: Ruth Benedict, Leonard Bloomfield, Franz Boas, Joseph Greenberg, Mary Haas, Zellig Harris, A.L. Kroeber, Robert H. Lowie, David Mandelbaum, Morris Swadesh, and C.F. Voegelin.

Product Description: Edward Sapir (1884–1939) was one of the foremost linguists and anthropologists of his time. He is most widely known for his contributions to the study of North American Indian languages. A founder of ethnology, which considers the relationship of culture to language, he was also principal developer of the American (descriptive) school of structural linguistics...read more

In the rural Midwest during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, two fourteen-year-old boys join an archaeological dig and unearth the story of the Great Plains peoples, from the Ice Age hunters through the final days of the Indian Wars.

Product Description: Linguist-ethnographer John Peabody Harrington was an eccentric genius of American anthropology. It was in a summer class in 1915 that Carobeth Laird first met him, handsome and sun-tanned from the field. Her story of their seven-year marriage, written when she was in her seventies and published when she was eighty years old, is a compelling tale that has sold over 250,000 copies...read more

Presents a biography of the naturalist and writer, describing how his work stems from his loveless childhood with a mentally ill mother and traveling salesman father and his determination to succeed. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Considered the father of modern American anthropology, Franz Boas introduced the relativistic, culture-centered methods and principles of inquiry that continue to dominate the field. This study analyzes the development of his thought and his contributions to racial and ethnic theory in the context of his own ethnicity and personal experience with persecution...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: This definitive, detail-packed biography is the first of Frederick Starr (1856-1933), a founding father of American anthropology at the University of Chicago. It presents a major reevaluation of Starr’s place as the missionizer of anthropology, illuminates the consequences of the professionalization of anthropology, and yields a greater understanding of the United States as it moved into a position of global power...read more

Product Description: The Indian Man examines the life of James Mooney (1861–1921), the son of poor Irish immigrants who became a champion of Native peoples and one of the most influential anthropology fieldworkers of all time. As a staff member of the Smithsonian Institution for over three decades, Mooney conducted fieldwork and gathered invaluable information on rapidly changing Native American cultures across the continent...read more