Social Anthropology

Las lecciones de brujería que aborda Carlos Castaneda conllevan sus postulados a la conclusión de que los misterios del conocimiento secreto se disipan en el acto mismo de cobrar concreción definitiva. Puede advertirse el paralelismo entre la iniciación guerrera que el autor ha cursado y la disciplina del Zen, en estos tres capítulos: "Un testigo de actos de poder", "El tonal y el nagual" y "La explicación de los brujos".

Just in the last three years a flood of new scientific findings, driven by revelations discovered in the human genome, has provided compelling new answers to many long-standing mysteries about our most ancient ancestors, the people who first evolved in Africa and then went on to colonize the whole world. Nicholas Wade weaves this host of news-making findings together for the first time into an intriguing new history of the human story before the dawn of civilization.

Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche once called “the rainbow colors” around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Edward O. Wilson bridges science and philosophy to create a 21st century treatise on human existence. Once criticized for his over-reliance on genetics, Wilson unfurls here his most expansive and advanced theories on human behavior, recognizing that, even though the human and spider evolved similarly, the poet’s sonnet is wholly different than the spider’s web.

James Scott taught us what's wrong with seeing like a state. Now, in his most accessible and personal book to date, the acclaimed social scientist makes the case for seeing like an anarchist. Inspired by the core anarchist faith in the possibilities of voluntary cooperation without hierarchy, Two Cheers for Anarchism is an engaging, high-spirited, and often very funny defense of an anarchist way of seeing - one that provides a unique and powerful perspective on everything from everyday social and political interactions to mass protests and revolutions.

The association between our ancestors and fire, somewhere around six to four million years ago, had a tremendous impact on human evolution, transforming our earliest human ancestor, a being communicating without speech but with insight, reason, manual dexterity, highly developed social organization, and the capability of experimenting with this new technology. As it first associated with and then began to tame fire, this extraordinary being began to distance itself from its primate relatives.

As news reports of the horrific December 2004 tsunami in Asia reached the rest of the world, commentators were quick to seize upon the disaster as proof of either God’s power or God’s nonexistence, asking over and over, How could a good and loving God - if such exists - allow such suffering? In The Doors of the Sea, David Bentley Hart speaks at once to those skeptical of Christian faith and to those who use their Christian faith to rationalize senseless human suffering.

This provocative and panoramic book shows listeners what they can learn from their ancestors, and how the unwavering ability of prehistoric people to survive and thrive can continue into the present.

This volume will revise the way we look at the modern populations of Latin America and North America by providing a totally new view of the history of Native-American and African-American peoples throughout the hemisphere. Africans and Native Americans explores key issues relating to the evolution of racial terminology and European colonialists' perceptions of color, analyzing the development of color classification systems and the specific evolution of key terms such as black, mulatto, and mestizo, which no longer carry their original meanings.

In What God Has to Say about Our Bodies, Sam Allberry explains that all of us are fearfully and wonderfully made, and should regard our physicality as a gift. He offers biblical guidance for living, including understanding gender, sexuality, and identity; dealing with aging, illness, and death; and considering the physical future hope that we have in Christ.

Hercules, Zeus, Thor, Gilgamesh - these are the figures that leap to mind when we think of myth. But to David Leeming, myths are more than stories of deities and fantastic beings from non-Christian cultures. Myth is at once the most particular and the most universal feature of civilization, representing common concerns that each society voices in its own idiom.

Imagine you were transported back in time to Medieval England and had to start a new life there. Without mobile phones, iPads, internet, and social media networks, when transport means walking or, if you're fortunate, horseback, how will you know where you are or what to do? Where will you live? What is there to eat? What shall you wear? All these questions and many more are answered in this new guidebook for time-travelers. This lively and engaging book will help the listener deal with the new experiences they may encounter and the problems that might occur.

В своей первой книге, ставшей всемирной сенсацией "Sapiens. Краткая история человечества", Юваль Харари рассказал, как Человек Разумный пришел к господству над нашей планетой. "Homo Deus" является своего рода продолжением темы — это попытка заглянуть в будущее. Что будут делать миллиарды людей, вытесненных компьютерами с рынка труда и образовавших новый, бесполезный класс? Как воспримут религии генную инженерию? Каковы будут последствия перехода полномочий и компетенций от живых людей к сетевым алгоритмам? Что должен предпринять человек, чтобы защитить планету от своей же разрушительной силы?

Sex, Time, and Power offers a tantalizing answer to an age-old question: Why did big-brained Homo sapiens suddenly emerge some 150,000 years ago? The key, according to Shlain, is female sexuality. Drawing on an awesome breadth of research, he shows how, long ago, the narrowness of the newly bipedal human female's pelvis and the increasing size of infants' heads precipitated a crisis for the species. Natural selection allowed for reconfiguration of hormonal cycles, entraining women with the periodicity of the moon - and imbuing women with the concept of time.

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.

Uncover the secrets of the Swedish philosophy of life called Lagom - meaning 'just enough'. At its core is the idea that we can strike a healthy balance with the world around us without having to make extreme changes and without denying ourselves anything. This delightful audiobook, written by Niki Brantmark, founder and curator of the award winning interior design blog My Scandinavian Home, gives a taste of the philosophy behind Lagom and shows how to include some of the principles in our daily lives.

Many bemoan the decay of culture. But we all have a responsibility to care for culture, to nurture it in ways that help people thrive. In Culture Care artist Makoto Fujimura issues a call to cultural stewardship, in which we become generative and feed our culture's soul with beauty, creativity, and generosity. We serve others as cultural custodians of the future. This is a book for artists, but artists come in many forms.

In this extraordinary work of narrative nonfiction, eight years in the making, sociologists Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans uncover a hidden social world. They follow four individuals in Los Angeles, tracing the twisting, poignant paths that put each at risk of going unclaimed, and introducing us to the scene investigators, notification officers, and crematorium workers who care for them when no one else will.

Asylum Denied is the gripping story of political refugee David Ngaruri Kenney's harrowing odyssey through the world of immigration processing in the United States. Kenney, while living in his native Kenya, led a boycott to protest his government's treatment of his fellow farmers. He was subsequently arrested and taken into the forest to be executed. This audiobook, told by Kenney and his lawyer Philip G. Schrag from Kenney's own perspective, tells of his near-murder, imprisonment, and torture in Kenya.

At the dawn of the 21st century, British society is still shaped by a private education system devised to gentrify the Victorian middle classes and produce gentlemen to run the Empire. Yet it is not on the political agenda. It is rarely the subject of public debate, and we remain blind to its psychological implications. Can we afford to go on ignoring this issue? Will we continue to sacrifice the welfare of our children to satisfy our antiquated social aspirations?

Considéré comme l'héritier de Levi Strauss, Philippe Descola est l'un des grands anthropologues français du XXe siècle. Ses premiers travaux ont été menés en Équateur, auprès d'une tribu amazonienne, les Jivaros Achuar. Ce terrain l'amène à s'interroger sur l'opposition traditionnellement établie entre nature et culture.