Social Science Anthropology

Best-selling author, cultural commentator, and popular theologian Christopher West is one of the world's most recognized teachers of John Paul II's Theology of the Body. He specializes in making this teaching accessible to all Christians, with particular attention to evangelicals. As West explains, from beginning to end the Bible tells a story of marriage. It begins with the marriage of man and woman in an earthly paradise and ends with the marriage of Christ and the church in an eternal paradise.

Anthropology is the organized study of what makes humans human. It takes an objective step back to ask questions like: Given our common characteristics, why aren't all of us exactly the same? And how can knowing the reasons behind our differences - as well as our similarities - teach us useful lessons for the future? The updated edition of Anthropology for Dummies gives you a panoramic view of the fascinating fieldwork and theory that seeks to answer these questions - and helps you view the human world through impartial, anthropological eyes.

Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life - and death - in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence.

From a skeleton, a skull, or a mere fragment of burnt thighbone, prominent forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples can deduce the age, gender, and ethnicity of a murder victim, the manner in which the person was dispatched, and, ultimately, the identity of the killer. In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Dr. Maples revisits his strangest, most interesting, and most horrific investigations, from the baffling cases of conquistador Francisco Pizarro and Vietnam MIAs to the mysterious deaths of President Zachary Taylor and the family of Czar Nicholas II.

Cette "Brève histoire de l'humanité" déroule notre histoire globale, des premiers hominidés à aujourd'hui et interroge l'avenir qui nous attend. Comment l'"Homo Sapiens" a-t-il réussi à dominer la Terre ? Quelle singularité nous a permis de s'unir pour créer villes et empires, l'idée de religion, les concepts politiques de nation ou plus récemment des droits de l'homme ? Pourquoi cette dépendance et cette croyance que notre bonheur dépend de l'argent et de la possibilité de consommer ?

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.

In the past the elders had encyclopaedic memories. They could name all the animals and plants across the landscape and the stars in the sky, too. Yet most of us struggle to memorise more than a short poem. Using traditional Aboriginal Australian songlines as the key, Lynne Kelly has identified the powerful memory technique used by indigenous people around the world.

The Little Ice Age tells the story of the turbulent, unpredictable, and often very cold years of modern European history, how climate altered historical events, and what they mean in the context of today’s global warming.

In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted.

"Sapiens" retraçait l'histoire de l'humanité. "Homo deus" interroge son avenir. Que deviendront nos démocraties quand Google et Facebook connaîtront nos goûts et nos préférences politiques mieux que nous-mêmes ? Qu'adviendra-t-il de l'État providence lorsque nous, les humains, serons évincés du marché de l'emploi par des ordinateurs plus performants ? Quelle utilisation certaines religions feront-elles de la manipulation génétique ?

How does trauma affect a child's mind—and how can that mind recover? In the classic The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Dr. Perry explains what happens to the brains of children exposed to extreme stress and shares their lessons of courage, humanity, and hope. Only when we understand the science of the mind and the power of love and nurturing can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child.

Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences but also from our cultures. Wisdom Sits in Places, the first sustained study of places and place explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of people, the Western Apache in Arizona. For more than 30 years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names.

Anthropologists have invariably engaged in their discipline as a form of redemption, whether to escape from social restriction, nourish their souls, reform their home polities, or vindicate "the natives". Redeeming Anthropology explores how in pursuit of a secular science sired by the Enlightenment, adherents to a "faith in mankind" have vacillated between rejecting and embracing theology, albeit in concealed and contradictory ways.

Edward O. Wilson is one of the world’s preeminent biologists, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the author of more than 25 books. The defining work in a remarkable career, The Social Conquest of Earth boldly addresses age-old questions (Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going?) while delving into the biological sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts.

An incisive, groundbreaking book that examines how a biological concept of race is a myth that promotes inequality in a supposedly "post-racial" era. Though the Human Genome Project proved that human beings are not naturally divided by race, the emerging fields of personalized medicine, reproductive technologies, genetic genealogy, and DNA databanks are attempting to resuscitate race as a biological category written in our genes.

The rise of human civilization and all of recorded history occurred in this warm period, known as the Holocene. Until very recently, we had no detailed record of climate changes during the Holocene. Now we do. In this engrossing and captivating look at the human effects of climate variability, Brian Fagan shows how climate functioned as what the historian Paul Kennedy described as one of the “deeper transformations” of history—a more important historical factor than we understand.

"What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another, this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance.

In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people'" (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent meaningful cross-racial dialogue.

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.

One of the most famous and influential books of its (or any) time, The Origin of Species is, surprisingly, little read. True enough, most people know what it says, or think they do, at any rate. The first comprehensive statement of the theory of natural selection, it does, indeed, provide the basic argument and demonstration of what we think of as Darwinism.