Taking sides Clashing views in cultural anthropology /

This [text] is a debate-style reader designed to introduce students to controversies in cultural anthropology. The readings, which represent the arguments of leading anthropologists and educators, reflect a variety of viewpoints, and have been selected for their liveliness and substance, their relev...

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Other Authors: Welsch, Robert Louis, 1950-, Endicott, Kirk M.
Format: Book
Language: English
Published: Dubuque, Iowa : McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Learning Series, [2006]
Physical Description: xxv, 390 pages ; 24 cm.
Edition: 2nd ed.
Subjects:
Table of Contents:
  • Issue 1. Should anthropology stop trying to model itself on the natural sciences? / Yes: Clifford Geertz; No: Robert Carneiro
  • Issue 2. Was Margaret Mead's fieldwork on Samoan adolescents fundamentally flawed? / Yes: Derek Freeman; No: Lowell D. Holmes and Ellen Rhoads Holmes
  • Issue 3. Should anthropologists abandon the concept of culture? / Yes: Lila Abu-Lughod; No: Christoph Brumann
  • Issue 4. Do native peoples today invent their traditions? / Yes: Roger M. Keesing; No: Haunani-Kay Trask
  • Issue 5. Is Ebonics (Black English) a distinct language from standard English? / Yes: Ernie Smith; No: John H. McWhorter
  • Issue 6. Are San hunter-gatherers basically pastoralists who have lost their herds? / Yes: James R. Denbow and Edwin N. Wilmsen; No: Richard B. Lee
  • Issues 7. Does the natural-supernatural distinction exist in all cultures? / Yes: Roger Ivar Lohmann; No: Frederick P. Lampe
  • Issue 8. Is it natural for adopted children to want to find out about their birth parents? / Yes: Betty Jean Lifton; No: John Terrell and Judith Modell
  • Issue 9. Do sexually egalitarian societies exist? / Yes: Maria Lepowsky; No: Steven Goldberg
  • Issue 10. Has the Islamic Revolution in Iran subjugated women? / Yes: Parvin Paidar; No: Erika Friedl
  • Issue 11. Are Yanomami violence and warfare natural human efforts to maximize reproductive fitness? / Yes: Napoleon A. Chagnon; No: R. Brian Fergsuon
  • Issue 12. Is ethnic conflict inevitable? / Yes: Sudhir Kakar; No: Anthony Oberschall
  • Issue 13. Is Islam a single universal tradition? / Yes: Francis Robinson; No: Veena Das
  • Issue 14. Do some illnesses exist only among members of a particular culture? / Yes: Sangun Suwanlert; No: Robert A. Hahn
  • Issue 15. Do museums misrepresent ethnic communities around the world? / Yes: James Clifford; No: Dennis Dutton
  • Issue 16. Did Napoleon Chagnon and other researchers adversely affect the Yanomami Indians of Venezuela? / Yes: Terence Turner; No: Edward H. Hagen, Michael E. Price, and John Tooby
  • Issue 17. Should anthropologists and linguists be concerned about losing endangered languages? / Yes: Ken Hale; No: Peter Ladefoged
  • Issue 18. Should anthropologists work to eliminate the practice of female circumcision? / Yes: Merrilee H. Salmon; No: Elliott P. Skinner.