Anthropology Science

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.

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.

In this paradigm-shattering book, biologist Mark W. Moffett draws on findings in psychology, sociology, and anthropology to explain the social adaptations that bind societies. He explores how the tension between identity and anonymity defines how societies develop, function, and fail. Surpassing Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, The Human Swarm reveals how mankind created sprawling civilizations of unrivaled complexity - and what it will take to sustain them.

After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science, and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today.

Une heure de promenade auditive dans les pas des anthropologues, en compagnie de Marie-Armelle Deguy, pour interroger nos sociétés humaines.

Nature, it has been said, invites us to eat by appetite and rewards by flavor. But what exactly are flavors? Why are some so pleasing while others are not? Delicious is a supremely entertaining foray into the heart of such questions. With generous helpings of warmth and wit, Rob Dunn and Monica Sanchez offer bold new perspectives on why food is enjoyable and how the pursuit of delicious flavors has guided the course of human history.

What does it mean to be a body behind a screen, lost in the hustle of an online world? In our age of digital hyper-connection, Athena Dixon invites us to consider this question with depth, heart, and ferocity, investigating the gaps that technology cannot fill and confronting a lifetime of loneliness.

The Territorial Imperative is a work of wit, of literary wealth, of high adventure. The author draws on his inexhaustible knowledge of animal ways and takes his listeners on deep excursions into the ancient animal world, and on deep penetrations of the contemporary human wilderness.

Linguistic structuralism studies the meaning of language based not just on definitions, but also on the relationships of words and sounds to each other. Lévi-Strauss's insight was to see that this concept of structuralism in linguistics could be applied to anthropology as well. He saw that while some cultures are very different from others, they all seem to have certain internal structural relationships in common. By tracing these structures across cultures, he tried to answer nothing less than the eternal question: "What is man?"

What is it that makes you distinct from me? Identity is a term much used but hard to define. For that very reason, it has long been a topic of fascination for philosophers but has been regarded with aversion by neuroscientists - until now. Susan Greenfield takes us on a journey in search of a biological interpretation of this most elusive of concepts, guiding us through the social and psychiatric perspectives and ultimately to the heart of the physical brain.

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.

Finding from my own personal experience how troublesome it is to hunt through piles of dusty old volumes, I have decided to make a small selection of these papers which I consider are not only rare and very interesting, but which also give an insight into the varied activities and achievements of Burton’s crowded life. It will, I think, be realized that such a volume as this will not be superfluous, for, apart from saving people an enormous amount of trouble, it will give them further insight into the life-work of one of the greatest men of the Victorian era.

From prehistoric Mexico to modern Istanbul, Mary Beard looks beyond the familiar canon of Western imagery to explore the history of art, religion, and humanity. Conceived as an accompaniment to How Do We Look and The Eye of Faith, the famed Civilizations shows on PBS, renowned classicist Mary Beard has created this elegant volume on how we have looked at art.

When the Smithsonian’s Hall of Physical Anthropology opened in 1965 it featured 160 Andean skulls affixed to a wall to visualize how the world’s human population had exploded since the birth of Christ. Through a history of Inca mummies, a preHispanic surgery called trepanation, and Andean crania like these, Empires of the Dead explains how “ancient Peruvians” became the single largest population in the Smithsonian and many other museums in Peru, the Americas, and beyond.

Born in 1858, Franz Boas permanently changed the standards and practices of anthropology. A German-born secular Jew, he became known for his distinctive approach to the discipline - non-hierarchical, open to diverse inputs, and unbiased. Throughout his career, Boas used his scholarship to effect social change. His work convinced his colleagues to abandon the theories that had decided one race (Caucasian) and one culture (Western European) were more fully developed and worthier than others.

Published in 1925, The Gift is one of French sociologist Marcel Mauss's few non-collaborative works. In it, he elevates what might appear to be a simple gift from the status of innocent object to something that has the capacity to motivate people and define social relationships. The Gift analyzes cultures across the world and across time, with the way gifts are given and received working as a guide to understanding the rules and traditions of many different societies.

The idea that religion has undergone a radical change since the Christian Reformation—from totalitarian and socially repressive to private and relatively benign—is a familiar part of the story of secularization. It is often invoked to explain and justify the liberal politics and world view of modernity. And it leads to the view that "politicized religions" threaten both reason and liberty. Asad's essays explore and question all these assumptions.

In this illuminating tour of humanity, Joy Hendry and Simon Underdown reveal the origins of our species, and the fabric of human society, through the discipline of anthropology. Via fascinating case studies and discoveries, they unravel our understanding of human behaviours and beliefs, including how witchcraft has been used to justify misfortune, and debunk old-fashioned ideas about 'race' based upon the latest genetic research. They even share what our bathroom tells us about our concept of the body – and ourselves.

Meeting in racial affinity groups is a common practice in anti-racist, social justice, diversity, and similar educational endeavors. These groups provide a structured space in which participants can explore how racism personally impacts them, process specific experiences of racism, receive validation and support from their peers, heal, and strategize next steps for challenging racism. In A Space for Us, Michelle Cassandra Johnson brings her over twenty years of experience leading dismantling-racism work to provide the first affinity-group guide made for BIPOC communities.

Pillole di evoluzione umana. Da prendere una alla volta o anche tutte insieme. Per aiutarci a comprendere meglio noi stessi e il posto dell'uomo nella natura. Da Lucy ai Neanderthal, dall'enigmatico Homo naledia Ötzi: attraverso una serie di istantanee scattate nel panorama della paleoantropologia degli ultimi anni, con la guida di uno scienziato-divulgatore, conosceremo i nostri parenti estinti e i tanti antenati che abbiamo nel tempo profondo. Un puzzle complesso e avvincente le cui tessere sono come pagine strappate di un libro da restaurare, quello della nostra preistoria.