In the spirit of Horace Miner, this thought-provoking yet accessible collection of articles (primarily written by American anthropologists on American mainstream culture) casts mainstream USA in the role of the "Other".     It address traditional ethnographic categories covered by anthropologists—myth and ritual, economy and power, language and ideology-with theoretically meaty articles, geared toward an undergraduate audience.    The authors, whether or not their subject matter is ephemeral, arrive at enduring conclusions so that the anthology has staying power; even though there are those who would state that the U.S. is too diverse to have any one culture.  (It acknowledges diversity; while stressing how something that can reasonably be called “U.S. culture” emerges from and shapes the cultures of our component populations.)   In addition, the collection is headed by a classic short piece, modeled after Horace Miner’s “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema.” 

Product Description: Coming of Age in Chicago explores a watershed moment in American anthropology, when an unprecedented number of historians and anthropologists of all subfields gathered on the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition fairgrounds, drawn together by the fair’s focus on indigenous peoples...read more

Product Description: Relying upon close readings of virtually all of his published and unpublished writings as well as extensive interviews with former colleagues and students,Robert Redfield and the Development of American Anthropology traces the development of Robert Redfield's ideas regarding social change and the role of social science in American society...read more

Product Description: Fieldwork has long been seen as central to anthropology as a critical source of ethnographic data and analytic insight. In the late 1970s, earlier assumptions about fieldwork method and epistemological grounding were challenged in so-called reflexive ethnographies...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Traces the history and roots of the 500-year-old Kennewick Man (view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: This pathbreaking collection of intellectual biographies is the first to probe the careers of thirteen early African-American anthropologists, detailing both their achievements and their struggle with the latent and sometimes blatant racism of the times...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Explores ways in which anthropologists shaped racial politics in the United States, examining interactions between African-American intellectuals and such white anthropologists as Franz Boas, Frederic Ward Putnam, and Daniel G. Brinton. (view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: Book by Darnell, Regna