(Part 2) Top products from r/AskAnthropology

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Top comments that mention products on r/AskAnthropology:

u/anthrowill · 1 pointr/AskAnthropology

Yeah, anthropology definitely has it's hands in pretty much all other disciplines in some form of fashion. Mostly because knowledge production is a fundamental aspect of human life, so anthropologists are interested in it in all its forms.

> To be honest, the thing I'm most worried about is that the social justice approach to ethnography is a little left of where I want to be, but I've spoken with a U of M professor, Erik Mueggler, and he showed me the topics that were accepted from PhD candidates recently, and they all seem to have this element to them. Anthropology seems to be undergoing a penance for its ethnocentric theorizing and homogenizing in the past, but I feel that I fall much more in that vein (hopefully without the ethnocentrism).

I wouldn't call it penance, I would say anthropologists today are deeply concerned with how their work impacts the peoples, communities, and places where they conduct research. Yeah, that's partly a reaction to the early days of anthropology's role as colonialism's handmaiden, but it's also the result of theoretical and methodological shifts that occurred beginning in the 1970s. I don't think anthropology's theorizing historically has been overly ethnocentric, quite the contrary really, at least relative to other social science fields. But having some aspect of social justice in a project makes a lot of sense for most anthropological projects. After all, you have to live there for a year, you get to know people, you come to understand their struggles, and they become your friends. So you want to help them, and that often entails using whatever kinds of power and privilege you have to help improve their lives.

Some projects are more infused with social justice than others. It does not need to be a major component of your research, but you will certainly be asked at some point what positive effects your work has on the people you work with and how you will minimize the possibility that you're exploiting them. For example, I'm a medical anthropologist and most of my research questions are about medicine, knowledge production, and gender/sexuality. I don't have social justice all loaded up in my questions, but I do care about treating patients with respect and doing whatever I can to help them since they give their time to and share their lives with me.

> my main question is can you point me to a good undergrad style overview of current theory a la Max Weber's Basic Sociological Terms?

I highly recommend Richard Perry's "Five Key Concepts in Anthropological Thinking." You can get used copies on Amazon for around 1/3 the price of a new copy (https://www.amazon.com/Five-Key-Concepts-Anthropological-Thinking/dp/0130971405).

You might also check out Lavenda & Schultz "Core Concepts in Cultural Anthropology," which I think is in its 6th edition now. It's a concise and accessible introduction to the field of cultural anthro, including some basic discussion about methods. You might also check out Ottenheimer's "The Anthropology of Language" for a background on linguistic anthro, which seems like something you might be interested in.

u/MrPrimeMover · 5 pointsr/AskAnthropology

The best books in my experience have been overviews of Aegean prehistory. There's an incredible amount of scholarship, so it's really just about finding a good overview and drilling down on specific topics/sites that interest you.

For advanced undergrads/early grads the standards are typically the Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age, the Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean, and Aegean Art and Architecture.

All of these can get a bit technical, especially with regards to chronology and such. Of those three Aegean Art and Architecture is probably the most readable. There are older monographs devoted to Crete specifically, but they tend to be older (like 1960's) and quite out of date.

Are you interested in a particular phase, site, or facet of the civilization? Because that would help narrow it down. Keep in mind that there are huge gaps in our understanding of the Minoans and their culture. You aren't going to find many specifics about their culture unless you go down the road of very shaky scholarship.

If your interested in the late Bronze Age collapse (which came some time after the peak of the Minoan civilization), check out the book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. It's new and I haven't read it myself, but it's by Eric Cline, who wrote the Oxford Handbook, so it's bound to be well researched. Might be a nice overview of part of the Bronze Age in a more digestible format.

Anyway let me know a bit more about your interests and maybe I can help a bit more. I can also dig out my old syllabi for more suggestions.

u/Champtain · 29 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Nobody else has said much, so I'll help with what I can. For awhile this was one of my favorite mythemes and although I can't recall any specific info/theories about the significance of eating in the underworld, I may be able to at least point you in the right direction.

There is a chapter in Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces dedicated to these myths (there are dozens spread across the world), so you might want to check there first. I remember he detailed a number of these stories and recounted key similarities and differences, I just can't recall if he gave any specific info about the significance of food or drink.

I also recommend checking up the Mesopotamian myths of Inanna/Ishtar. Her stories feature all the templates for an underworld descent you mention here and it is possibly the oldest recorded work of literature (iirc some of the tablets that the story is recorded on are literally oldest narrative texts we've recovered). Her story is only slightly different in that she is a goddess and therefore the underworld she is visiting is her sister's realm. It's a great read and in particular I can recommend Diane Wolkstein's excellent translation/adaptation. This volume not only tells the story, but also provides a few great essays that might contain the answer you're looking for.

u/Trystiane · 2 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Here is a book that is free on Kindle (App for phone or computer also be free if you don't have a kindle).

Here is a book that is just what you said you are looking for.

This book is a little more sociological but cheaper than the one above

I love this website on Gender and Sexuality

Here are a couple of lists of good books around trans issues for kids/teens:

https://www.roomofonesown.com/trans-teens

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-21-best-transgender-b_b_9702762

https://www.bookish.com/articles/21-must-read-books-for-transgender-awareness-month/

u/Nadarama · 2 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Looks interesting; but not really pre-Columbian. I mean, many Native American tales must have pre-Columbian origins - and trickster tales have a distinctively humorous bent - but I don't think we have any that were written down before Columbus.

Still, lotsa funny stuff in 'em. The best collection I know:
http://www.amazon.com/American-Indian-Trickster-Tales-Legends/dp/0140277714

u/han_dies_01 · 1 pointr/AskAnthropology

The basics are pretty easy, and can usually be found at a standard Ace, or even easier, just on Amazon.

Metric tape, 5m.

Folding ruler, 2m.

Trowel. Most archaeologists in the US tend to use Marshalltown 45-5 pointer trowels. Some like the margin trowels as well.

Line level.

I'll add more later...

edit:

Honestly, those are the only things you really need. You could also throw in things like a file for your trowel or to touch up a shovel if needed, but usually that's not really necessary. You could buy a Munsell book, but they're quite expensive and someone running a project will have one available.

u/superadvancepet · 9 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Charles Seife wrote a book about this from a mathematical perspective (which is great, IMO).

He talks about a few cultures, and says that the Greeks, and thus much of the western world, were a bit twitchy about the concept of zero as a standalone number because it represented a void, which conflicted with the prevailing systems of philosophy. A lot of their math was based on geometry, like the Egyptians before them, and zero didn't exist in geometry. How can you think about a non-space?

There are interesting side effects of this - notably our calendar, which goes from 1 BC (-1) to 1 CE, with no zero, meaning it's very easy to mess up the arithmetic of time around then.

u/RtSPaTY · 11 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Go nuts. It's really a great book.

Definitely not marriage unless you expand the definition to mean "any long-term romantic pairing of any configuration in numbers and gender." Not trade or war either as many economies / geographies can support neither. Xenophobia, maybe. I'd have to re-read the book.

Music, as mentioned below, is one. Also Humor. Sibling and parental incest avoidance is one as well. There are a lot more but they're not coming to the front of my head right now.

u/tak-in-the-box · 48 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Because they maintained some form of independence and were capable of defending their lands pretty well (the Pyreness create a nice natural barrier). The Celts and Iberians didn't affect Basque life much. The Romans, who did eventually conquer the Basques, didn't develop/Romanize it too well, being more interested on the Mediterranean coast. After the fall of the Romans and the rise of the Franks and Visigoths, the state of Vasconia (Gascony) was more or less consolidated (602), alternating between absolute independence or a client state of the Franks.

With the eventual absorption of Gascony into French politics (~1053), we then see the rise of the Kingdom of Pamplona/Navarre (824), which existed as an independent entity until 1512, when it was absorbed into the greater Spanish crown. It's important to note that Basque regions that were annexed usually asked that their new lords allow them to govern themselves according to their own laws and traditions. These vows, taken by the lord, were done in public/holy places, leaving the Basques to enjoy a greater amount of autonomy.

Shown so far is a history of independence and self-rule from pre-history to the early 16th century. Unfortunately, I don't have much on the history between then and the rise of nationalism. However, if France wasn't able to consolidate French entirely until the late 19th century, and we are to believe that only ~50% of people in France could speak any French in 1789 and only 25% spoke it as their native language in 1871, this raises issues with the idea of a centralized state capable of enforcing its language, specially on semi-autonomous region or ethnic minorities in the peripheries.

This brings us into the modern era. The Basques sided with the losers during the Spanish Civil War. Under Francisco Franco, who took power, speaking Basque was banned in Spain, and the region saw greater immigration from the poorer parts of the country, both of which severely damaged the amount of Basque being spoken.

EDIT: Seeing as this was well received, I'd like to introduce you all to Sancho the Great. He was the Basque king of Pamplona from 1004 to 1035, and before his death untied all of Christian northern Spain, from Galicia, through Leon and Castile, to Navarre and Aragon. His descendants would continue to rule those kingdoms after him. He also greatly improved the roads from Leon to Gascony, leading to increased trade coming in from mainland Europe and the greater popularization of the holy site at Santiago.

So, say what you want of the Basques as a minority group, but I have to side with Mark Kurlansky's biased views of the Basques in that Spanish customs and Iberian Catholicism would not exist as they are without the Basques, among other things.

u/martong93 · 2 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Well I wish you put more effort in your reasoning than "I think it does". Egalitarian cultures can really usually only be found in small short-term sustenance societies. The fact that there is a concept of property and strategies of long-term sustenance (people grow food in farms, not look for it in the rainforest) means that there is inherently people who own more or less than the other people, which means that the society is stratified. All developed nations are stratified.

You could maybe say that American values are more egalitarian than that of other developed nations, but you'd be comparing apples to oranges if you just say that America is egalitarian.

Not exactly directly related to your question, but it would help you understand what it means to be egalitarian, there's an ethnographic book that examines two African peoples, one is a hunter-gatherer egalitarian people, the other agrarian and stratified.

http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Here-Story-Ethnographic-Globalization/dp/0199764239

u/EventListener · 3 pointsr/AskAnthropology

These two ethnographies are easy/pleasant reads, frequently used in undergraduate courses:

u/semichaels · 5 pointsr/AskAnthropology

Haven’t read it in awhile but Tell My Horse was one of my favorites back in undergrad.

https://www.amazon.com/Tell-My-Horse-Voodoo-Jamaica/dp/0061695130

u/SleeperWithDogs · 1 pointr/AskAnthropology

At least the aspect of total work hours has been debunked. Richard B. Lee eventually concluded that the !Kung work approx. 40 hours a week in a later publication (well, it's a book really).

http://www.amazon.com/Dobe-Kung-Studies-Cultural-Anthropology/dp/0030638038

Edit: though I don't know how relevant are the Kung since Sahlins was more focused on the Australian aborigines,

u/JoeBakerBFC · 3 pointsr/AskAnthropology

This is kind of half correct. Or half wrong depending on how you look at it. The Classic example is Napoleon Chagnon's description of the Yanomamo

Hunter Gatherer societies generally do have considerably more leisure and social/gender equality. It is important to understand while there is significantly more gender equality, that doesn't mean that there are not strict gender roles. The !Kung Live together peacefully, and equally without formal hierarchy. Violence is generally hit or miss.