Social Anthropology

One cannot turn on the news today without a report on an extreme-weather event or the latest update on Antarctica. But while our politicians argue, the truth is that climate change is already here. Nobody knows this better than Indigenous peoples, who, having developed an intimate relationship with ecosystems over generations, have observed these changes for decades. For them, climate change is not an abstract concept or policy issue, but the reality of daily life.

国家、貨幣、企業……虚構が他人との協力を可能にし、文明をもたらした！

When you think of evolution, the picture that most likely comes to mind is a straight-forward progression, the iconic illustration of a primate morphing into a proud, upright human being. But in reality, random events have played huge roles in determining the evolutionary histories of everything from lions to lobsters to humans. However, random genetic novelties are most likely to become fixed in small populations. It is mathematically unlikely that this will happen in large ones.

The Bengalis are the third largest ethno-linguistic group in the world, after the Han Chinese and the Arabs. A quarter of a billion strong and growing, the community has produced three Nobel laureates, world-class scientists, legendary political leaders, iconic movie stars and directors and an unending stream of writers, philosophers, painters, poets and musicians of the first rank. But, bald facts aside, just who are the Bengalis? What is the community all about? In order to find the answers, the author delves deep into the culture, literature, history and social mores of the Bengalis.

Throughout the centuries, the Amazon has yielded many of its secrets, but it still holds a few great mysteries. In 1996 experts got their first glimpse of one: a lone Indian, a tribe of one, hidden in the forests of Southwestern Brazil. Previously uncontacted tribes are extremely rare, but a one-man tribe was unprecedented. And like all of the isolated tribes in the Amazonian frontier, he was in danger.

Part memoir, part popular science, and part social commentary, Bottled Up probes breastfeeding politics through the lens of Barston’s own experiences as well as those of the women she has met through her popular blog, The Fearless Formula Feeder. Incorporating expert opinions, medical literature, and popular media into a pithy, often wry narrative, Barston offers a corrective to our infatuation with the breast. Impassioned, well-reasoned, and thoroughly researched, Bottled Up asks us to think with more nuance and compassion about whether breastfeeding should remain the holy grail of good parenthood.

How did humans, a species of self-centered apes, come to care about others? Since Darwin, scientists have tried to answer this question using evolutionary theory. In The Kindness of Strangers, psychologist Michael E. McCullough shows why they have failed and offers a new explanation instead. From the moment nomadic humans first settled down until the aftermath of the Second World War, our species has confronted repeated crises that we could only survive by changing our behavior.

For most of human history, we were rural folk. Our daily lives were bound up with working the land, living within the rhythm of the seasons. And yet rural life is oddly invisible our historical records. The daily routine of the peasant, the farmer or the craftsperson could never compete with the glamour of city life, war and royal drama. Lives went unrecorded, stories untold. There is, though, one way in which we can learn about our rural past. The things we have left behind provide a connection that no document can match; physical artefacts are touchstones that breathe life into its history.

To paraphrase the great sci-fi writer Stephen King: Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your heart, kill your darlings. Translation: stay on point and mercilessly avoid side stories and anecdotes. With much respect for Mr. King, The History of Man Series is precisely that, a great deal about all those little darlings, a style of writing termed “jumping off.”

A compelling account of the four-thousand-year history of a people that spans the globe and transcends the ages. From the ancient and simple faith of a small tribe to a global religion with adherents in every nation, the path of the Jews is traced through countless expulsions and migrations, the great tragedy of the Holocaust, and the joy of founding a homeland in Israel. Putting the struggle of a persecuted people into perspective, Max Dimont asks whether the tragic sufferings of the Jews have actually been the key to their survival, as other nations and races vanished into obscurity.

Con la misma prosa inteligente, fresca y provocadora, Harari vuelve a librerías con un nuevo título, 21 lecciones para elsiglo XXI, en el que examina algunas de las cuestiones más urgentes de nuestro presente. El hilo dorado que recorre este estimulante nuevo libro es el desafío de mantener nuestro enfoque colectivo e individual frente al constante y desorientador cambio que estamos viviendo.

Flight, Flight, Mimic is the first systematic study of deceptive mimicry in the context of wars. Deceptive mimicry—the manipulation of individual or group identity—includes passing off as a different individual, as a member of a group to which one does not belong, or, for a group, to "sign" its action as another group.

In this powerful classic, the eminent Swiss philosopher Max Picard argues that though the “flight from God” is not a phenomenon unique to this age, man has nevertheless put himself and society in an extremely dangerous situation with the progressive secularization of Western culture. In the age of faith, Picard says, a man had to make a conscious decision to separate himself from the world of faith. Today, the world, not just the individual, is in flight, and men must extricate themselves from modernity and make a deliberate decision to find and affirm faith.

In Tracing Autism, Des Fitzgerald offers an up-close account of the search for a neurological explanation of autism. As autism has gained cultural prominence with more diagnoses and more controversy, its biological causes remain elusive. Through in-depth interviews with neuroscientists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, Fitzgerald examines what it means to do scientific research in the ambiguous terrain of autism research, a field marked by shifting horizons of uncertainty and ambivalence.

Эта книга — правдивый захватывающий рассказ о том, что представляла собой советская элита брежневской эпохи. Ее жизнь показана изнутри с предельной откровенностью человека независимого в суждениях и поступках. Щемящие воспоминания о детстве на Урале сменяются впечатлениями о Москве 1960-х, учебе в престижном институте. Сочными мазками автор рисует выдающихся деятелей эпохи, с которыми ей доводилось встречаться и общаться: Георгия Жукова и Михаила Шолохова, Екатерину Фурцеву и Павла Луспекаева, Юрия Гагарина и, конечно, самого Леонида Брежнева.

Who lived in Texas over a thousand years ago? In Porch Talk, John Erickson and his archaeologist friend Doug Boyd investigate this question while explaining the art and science of archaeology for middle listeners. On the Perryton ranch, John and his friends unearthed a ghost town that dated back to around 1300 CE. For more than twenty years, they worked together on this and other prehistoric sites, sharing a fascination for the ancient people who occupied the area. How did these people work, play, and survive?

Nützliche Mitbewohnerinnen, Ekelobjekte oder verblüffende Wesen? An Spinnen scheiden sich die Geister. Von manchen bewundert für ihre kunstvollen Netze und das Archaische ihrer Erscheinung, von anderen gefürchtet. Aber warum ist das so? Dieses Buch dringt tief in das Beziehungsgeflecht von Spinnen und Menschen vor. Es zeigt den Einfluss der Spinnen auf unsere Sprache, Wissen, Träume und Geschichte. Warum verglich man Napoleon mit einer Spinne? Wie prägte die christliche Symbolik die Abneigung gegenüber Spinnen? Und wieso wurden gleich drei Weltraummissionen von Spinnen begleitet?

Документально-приключенческий роман о радикальных политических экспериментах пиратов на Мадагаскаре XVII–XVIII веков. Цель романа "Пиратское Просвещение" — вернуть фокус антропологии и этнографии в их первоначальное русло, а именно — наблюдение за тем, как развивается культура и общество. Дэвид Гребер критикует европоцентричный подход, по которому "дикие народы" могут стать цивилизованными лишь под пристальным европейским надзором. На самом деле истоки либеральных и демократических идей лежат далеко за пределами "западной цивилизации".

El redescubrimiento de la primera novela de Juan Luis Arsuaga Un relato de la prehistoria. 2.ª edición. Hace muchos miles de años, en un mundo que poco tiene que ver con el actual pero que también era el nuestro, un muchacho sin nombre al que llaman Piojo, y que solo conoce la crueldad del hombre que lo ha cuidado desde que se quedó huérfano, emprende su lucha por la existencia. De manera fortuita, se cruzará en su camino con los Hombres Águila, entre los que encontrará a su primer amigo, el orgulloso Viento del Norte, y a su amor verdadero, la inolvidable Gata.

Violation of biological command has been the failure of social man. Vertebrates though we may be, we have ignored the law of equal opportunity since civilization's earliest hours. Sexually reproducing beings though we are, we pretend today that the law of inequality does not exist. And enlightened though we may be, while we pursue the unattainable we make impossible the realizable.