Robert L. Welsch is retired from Franklin Pierce University, where he taught from 2008-2019. Previously, he taught at Dartmouth College, from 1994-2008.
Luis A. Vivanco is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of Vermont.
Agustin Fuentes is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University.

• Contents


• Letter from the Authors


• About the Authors


• Preface


• Acknowledgments


• PART I The Anthropological Perspective


• 1 Anthropology:


• Asking Questions About Humanity


• How Did Anthropology Begin?


• The Disruptions of Industrialization


• The Theory of Evolution


• Colonial Origins of Cultural Anthropology


• Anthropology as a Global Discipline


• What Do the Four Subfields of Anthropology Have in Common?


• Culture


• Cultural Relativism


• Human Diversity


• Change


• Holism


• How Do Anthropologists Know What They Know?


• The Scientific Method in Anthropology


• When Anthropology Is Not a Science: Interpreting Other Cultures


• How Do Anthropologists Put Their Knowledge to Work in the World?


• Applied and Practicing Anthropology


• Putting Anthropology to Work


• What Ethical Obligations Do Anthropologists Have?


• Do No Harm


• Take Responsibility for Your Work


• Share Your Findings


• A WORLD IN MOTION: George A. Dorsey and the Anthropology of Immigration in the Early Twentieth Century


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: E. B. Tylor and the Culture Concept


• DOING FIELDWORK: Conducting Holistic Research with Stanley Ulijaszek


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Anthropologists Are Innovators


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Key Characteristics of Anthropologists in the Workplace


• 2 Culture:


• Giving Meaning to Human Lives


• What Is Culture?


• Elements of Culture


• Defining Culture in This Book


• If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?


• Symbols


• Values


• Norms


• Traditions


• How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?


• Culture and Social Institutions


• American Culture Expressed Through Breakfast Cereals and Sexuality


• Can Anybody Own Culture?


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Cultural Anthropology and Human Possibilities


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Franz Boas and the Relativity of Culture


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Michael Ames and Collaborative Museum Exhibits


• 3 Human Biocultural Evolution:


• Emergence of the Biocultural Animal


• Life Changes. But What Does It Mean to Say It Evolves?


• A Brief Primer on the Rise of Evolutionary Thinking


• Differentiating Evolution From Simple Change


• What It Means to Have Common Ancestry


• Why Evolution Is Important to Anthropology . . . and Anthropology to Evolution


• What Are the Actual Mechanisms Through Which Evolution Occurs?


• The Modern Synthesis


• Basic Sources of Biological Change: Genes, DNA, and Cells


• Genetic Mechanisms of Evolution


• Non-Genetic Mechanisms of Evolution


• How Do Biocultural Patterns Affect Evolution?


• Human Inheritance Involves Multiple Systems


• Evolutionary Processes Are Developmentally Open-Ended


• The Importance of Constructivist Evolutionary Approaches for Biocultural Anthropology


• Are Modern Humans Evolving, and Where Might We Be Headed?


• The Impact of Disease on Evolution


• Cultural Practices, Morphology, and Evolution


• Looking to the Future


• Global Population and Human Density


• Genetic Manipulation


• Climate Change and Adaptive Behavioral Patterns


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Clyde Kluckhohn and the Role of Evolution in Anthropology


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: The Biocultural Awesomeness of Awe


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Clarifying the Biocultural and Evolutionary Dimensions of Obesity


• 4 Cross-Cultural Interactions:


• Understanding Culture and Globalization


• Are Cross-Cultural Interactions All That New?


• Is the Contemporary World Really Getting Smaller?


• Defining Globalization


• The World We Live In


• What Are the Outcomes of Global Integration?


• Colonialism and World Systems Theory


• Cultures of Migration


• Resistance at the Periphery


• Globalizing and Localizing Identities


• Doesn't Everyone Want to Be Developed?


• What Is Development?


• Development Anthropology


• Anthropology of Development


• Change on Their Own Terms


• If the World Is Not Becoming Homogenized, What Is Actually Happening?


• Cultural Convergence Theories


• Hybridization


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Eric Wolf, Culture, and the World System


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Coldplay and the Global Citizen Festival


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Instant Ramen Noodles Take Over the World


• DOING FIELDWORK: Tracking Emergent Forms of Citizenship with Aihwa Ong


• PART II Becoming Human


• METHODS MEMO: How Do Anthropologists Study Human and Primate Biological Processes?


• 5 Living Primates:


• Comparing Monkeys, Apes, and Humans


• What Does It Mean to Be a Primate, and Why Does It Matter to Anthropology?


• What It Means to Be a Primate


• The Distinctions Between Strepsirrhini and Haplorrhini


• Primatology as Anthropology


• What Are the Basic Patterns of Primate Behavioral Diversity, and Under What Conditions Did They Develop?


• Common Behavior Patterns Among Primates


• The Emergence of Primate Behavioral Diversity


• How Do Behavior Patterns Among Monkeys and Apes Compare with Humans?


• The Lives of Macaques


• The Lives of Chimpanzees and Bonobos


• So How Do They Compare With Us?


• What Does Studying Monkeys and Apes Really Illustrate About Human Distinctiveness?


• Primate Social Organization and Human Behavior


• We Have Culture. Do They Too?


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: So You Want to Work With Primates?


• DOING FIELDWORK: The Ethics of Working with Great Apes


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Sherwood Washburn and the New (Integrative) Physical Anthropology


• METHODS MEMO: How Do Anthropologists Study Ancient Primates and Human Origins?


• 6 Ancestral Humans:


• Understanding the Human Family Tree


• Who Are Our Earliest Possible Ancestors?


• Our Earliest Ancestors Were Hominins


• The Fossil Record of Hominins in


• The Three Hominin Genera


• Who Is Our Most Direct Ancestor?


• What Did Walking on Two Legs and Having Big Brains Mean for the Early Hominins?


• The Benefits of Upright Movement


• The Effects of Big Brains on Early Hominin Behavior


• Who Were the First Humans, and Where Did They Live?


• Introducing Homo erectus


• The Emergence of Archaic Humans


• Who Were the Neanderthals and Denisovans?


• Contemporary Humans Hit the Scene


• How Do We Know If the First Humans Were Cultural Beings, and What Role Did Culture Play in Their Evolution?


• The Emerging Cultural Capacity of H. erectus


• Culture Among Archaic Humans


• Social Cooperation and Symbolic Expression


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: How to Think Like a Paleoanthropologist


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Were We "Born to Run"?


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Helpless Babies, and the Evolution of Human Cooperation


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Rethinking the Peopling of the Americas


• 7 Human Biodiversity Today:


• Understanding Our Differences and Similarities


• In What Ways Do Contemporary Humans Vary Biologically?


• Genetic Variation Within and Between Human Populations


• Genetic Variation Is Tied to Gene Flow


• Physiological Diversity and Blood Types


• Disease Environments and Human Immunity


• Why Do Human Bodies Look So Different Across the Planet?


• Is Skin Really Colored?


• Variations in Body Shape, Stature, and Size


• Are Differences of Race Also Differences of Biology?


• The Biological Meanings (and Meaninglessness) of "Human Races"


• But Isn't There Scientific Evidence for the Existence of Races?


• What Biocultural Consequences Do Social Phenomena Like Discrimination, Rapid Change, Nurturing, and So Forth Have on Human Bodies?


• Eugenics: A Weak Theory of Genetic Inheritance


• The Embodied Consequences of Being a Racialized Minority


• How Do Humans Thrive?


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Ashley Montagu and "Man's Most Dangerous Myth"


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Jada Benn Torres and Reparational Genetics in the Caribbean


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: It Does, in Fact, "Take a Village:" A Biocultural Perspective


• 8 The Body:


• Biocultural Perspectives on Health and Illness


• How Do Biological and Cultural Factors Shape Our Bodily Experiences?


• Uniting Mind and Matter: A Biocultural Perspective


• Culture and Mental Illness


• What Do We Mean by Health and Illness?


• The Individual Subjectivity of Illness


• The "Sick Role": The Social Expectations of Illness


• How and Why Do Doctors and Other Health Practitioners Gain Social Authority?


• The Disease-Illness Distinction: Professional and Popular Views of Sickness


• The Medicalization of the Non-Medical


• How Does Healing Happen?


• Clinical Therapeutic Processes


• Symbolic Therapeutic Processes


• Social Support


• Persuasion: The Placebo Effect


• How Can Anthropology Help Us Address Global Health Problems?


• Understanding Global Health Problems


• Anthropological Contributions to Tackling the International HIV/AIDS Crisis


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Heidi Larson, Vaccine Anthropologist


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Medical Tourism and Yemen


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Paul Farmer and the Effort to Situate Global Health Problems in an Anthropology of Suffering




• PART III Humans and Their Material Worlds


• METHODS MEMO: What Field Methods Do Archaeologists Use to Study the Human and Environmental Past?




• 9 Materiality:


• Constructing Social Relationships and MeaningsWith Things


• Why Is the Ownership of Prehistoric Artifacts and Objects From Other Cultures Such a Contentious Issue?


• Archaeological Excavation and Questions of Ownership


• The Road to NAGPRA


• Cultural Resource Management


• How Should We Look at Objects Anthropologically?


• The Many Dimensions of Objects


• A Shiny New Bicycle in Multiple Dimensions


• Constructing the Meaning of an Archaeological Artifact


• How and Why Do the Meanings of Things Change Over Time?


• The Social Life of Things


• Three Ways Objects Change Over Time


• How Archaeological Specimens Change Meaning Over Time


• What Role Does Material Culture Play in Constructing the Meaning of a Community's Past?


• Claiming the Past


• The Politics of Archaeology


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Working as an Ethnographic Collections Manager at the Field Museum


• A WORLD IN MOTION: The Movement of Art In and Out of Africa


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Margaret Conkey and the Gender Politics of Understanding Past Lives


• METHODS MEMO: Why Is Carbon-14 So Important to Archaeologists?




• 10 Early Agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution:


• Modifying the Environment to Satisfy Human Demands


• How Important Was Hunting to Prehistoric Peoples?


• Taking Stock of Living Hunter-Gatherers


• "Man the Hunter"


• Recent Attempts to Understand Prehistoric Hunting Strategies


• Back to the Past: Understanding Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers


• Why Did People Start Domesticating Plants and Animals?


• Why Do Archaeologists Call It the Neolithic Revolution?


• The Neolithic Revolution: The Beginnings of Food Production


• The Hilly Flanks Hypothesis


• The Pressure of Population Growth


• Changing Weather and Climates


• The Role of Social Processes


• How Did Early Humans Raise Their Own Food?


• Domesticating Plants


• Domesticating Animals


• Tending Tree Crops: Recent Findings on Arboriculture


• What Impact Did Raising Plants and Animals Have on Other Aspects of Life?


• Transhumance: Moving Herds with the Seasons


• Sedentism and Growing Populations


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: What Are the Responsibilities and Job Description of an Archaeologist?


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: V. Gordon Childe on the Neolithic Revolution


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Michael Heckenberger on the Amazon as a Culturally Managed Landscape


• METHODS MEMO: How Do Archaeologists Analyze the Objects They Find?




• 11 The Rise and Decline of Cities and States:


• Understanding Social Complexity in Prehistory


• What Does Social Complexity Mean to Archaeologists?


• Population Growth and Settlement Practices


• Trade and Contact With Peoples of Different Cultures


• Specialization and Production Models


• Does Complexity Always Imply Social Inequality?


• How Can Archaeologists Identify Social Complexity From Archaeological Sites and Artifacts?


• Identifying Social Complexity From Sites and Artifacts in Western Mexico


• Population Growth and Settlement Patterns


• Soils and Land Use


• Monuments and Buildings


• Mortuary Patterns and Skeletal Remains


• Ceramic, Stone, and Metal Objects


• How Do Archaeologists Explain Why Cities and States Fall Apart?


• Rethinking Abandonment in the US Southwest


• The Transformation (Not Collapse) of the Classic Maya


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Archaeological Field Schools for Undergraduates


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Robert Carneiro on the Role of Warfare in the Rise of Complex Societies


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Exploring Early Contacts Between China and the East Coast of Africa


• DOING FIELDWORK: Researching Primordial Sea Monsters and Sharks in the Maya Jungle with Sarah Newman




• PART IV Human Social Relations and Their Meanings


• METHODS MEMO: How Do Anthropologists Study the Relationship Between Language and Culture?




• 12 Linguistic Anthropology:


• Relating Language and Culture


• Where Does Language Come From?


• Evolutionary Perspectives on Language


• Historical Linguistics: Studying Language Origins and Change


• What Does Language Actually Do and How Does it Work?


• Descriptive Linguistics


• Phonology: Sounds of Language


• Morphology: Grammatical Categories


• Sociolinguistics


• Does Language Shape How We Experience the World?


• The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis


• Hopi Notions of Time


• Ethnoscience and Color Terms


• Is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Correct?


• If Language Is Always Changing, Why Does It Seem So Stable?


• Linguistic Change, Stability, and National Policy


• Language Stability Parallels Cultural Stability


• How Does Language Relate to Social Power and Inequality?


• Language Ideology


• Gendered Language Styles


• Language and the Legacy of Colonialism


• Language Ideologies and Contemporary Racial Justice


• Language Ideology and New Media Technologies


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: The End of Gendered Pronouns in American English?


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Edward Sapir on How Language Shapes Culture


• A WORLD IN MOTION: The Emergence of a New Language in the Northern Territory of Australia


• DOING FIELDWORK: Anthropologist Bernard Perley Explores Language Endangerment


• METHODS MEMO: How Do Anthropologists Use Ethnographic Methods to Study Culture and Social Relations?




• 13 Economics:


• Working, Sharing, and Buying


• Is Money Really the Measure of All Things?


• Culture, Economics, and Value


• The Neoclassical Perspective


• The Substantivist-Formalist Debate


• The Marxist Perspective


• The Cultural Economics Perspective


• How Does Culture Shape the Value and Meaning of Money?


• The Types and Cultural Dimensions of Money


• Money, Debt, and the Distribution of Power


• Why Does Gift Exchange Play Such an Important Role in All Societies?


• Gift Exchange and Economy: Two Classic Approaches


• Gift Exchange in Market-Based Economies


• What Is the Point of Owning Things?


• Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Property


• Appropriation and Consumption


• Does Capitalism Have Distinct Cultures?


• Culture and Social Relations on Wall Street


• Entrepreneurial Capitalism Among Malays


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: The Economics of Anthropology


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: David Graeber and the Problem of Debt and Obligation in Organizing Human Societies


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Jim Yong Kim's Holistic, On-the-Ground Approach to Fighting Poverty




• 14 Sustainability:


• Environment and Foodways


• Do All People See Nature in the Same Way?


• The Human-Nature Divide?


• The Cultural Landscape


• How Do People Secure an Adequate, Meaningful, and Environmentally Sustainable Food Supply?


• Modes of Subsistence


• Food, Culture, and Meaning


• How Does Non-Western Knowledge of Nature and Agriculture Relate to Science?


• Ethnoscience


• Traditional Ecological Knowledge


• How Are Industrial Agriculture, Economic Globalization, and Climate Change Linked to Increasing Environmental and Health Problems?


• Population and Environment


• Ecological Footprint


• Industrial Foods, Sedentary Lives, and the Nutrition Transition


• Climate Change and Culture


• Are Industrialized Western Societies the Only Ones to Conserve Nature?


• Anthropogenic Landscapes


• The Culture of Modern Nature Conservation


• Environmentalism's Alternative Paradigms


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Roy Rappaport's Insider and Outsider Models


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Urban Black Food Justice with Ashante Reese


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Migrant Caravans, Global Warming, and Ecological Refugees


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Careers in Sustainability




• 15 Power:


• Politics and Social Control


• Does Every Society Have a Government?


• The Idea of "Politics" and the Problem of Order


• Structural-Functionalist Models of Political Stability


• Neo-Evolutionary Models of Political Organization: Bands, Tribes, Chiefdoms, and States


• Challenges to Traditional Political Anthropology


• What Is Political Power?


• Defining Political Power


• Political Power Is Action Oriented


• Political Power Is Structural


• Political Power Is Gendered


• Political Power in Non-State Societies


• The Political Power of the Contemporary Nation-State


• How Is Social Inequality Constructed and Upheld?


• Race, Biology, and the "Natural" Order of Things


• The Cultural Construction of Race


• Saying Race Is Culturally Constructed Is Not Enough


• Why Do Some Societies Seem More Violent Than Others?


• What Is Violence?


• Violence and Culture


• Explaining the Rise of Violence in Our Contemporary World


• How Do People Avoid Aggression, Brutality, and War?


• What Disputes Are "About"


• How People Manage Disputes


• Is Restoring Harmony Always the Best Way?


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: An Anthropological Politician?


• ANTHROPOLOGIST AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Maxwell Owusu and Democracy in Ghana


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Hortense Powdermaker on Prejudice




• 16 Kinship and Gender:


• Sex, Power, and Control of Men and Women


• What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?


• Families, Ideal and Real


• Nuclear and Extended Families


• Kinship Terminologies


• Cultural Patterns in Childrearing


• How Families Control Power and Wealth


• Why Do People Get Married?


• Why People Get Married


• Forms of Marriage


• Sex, Love, and the Power of Families Over Young Couples


• How and Why Do Males and Females Differ?


• Toward a Biocultural Perspective on Male and Female Differences


• Beyond the Male-Female Dichotomy


• Explaining Gender/Sex Inequality


• What Does It Mean to Be Neither Male Nor Female?


• Navajo Nadleehe


• Indian Hijras


• Is Human Sexuality Just a Matter of Being Straight or Queer?


• Cultural Perspectives on Same-Sex Sexuality


• Controlling Sexuality


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Family-Centered Social Work and Anthropology


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Margaret Mead and the Sex/Gender Distinction


• DOING FIELDWORK: Don Kulick and "Coming Out" in the Field




• 17 Religion:


• Ritual and Belief


• How Should We Understand Religion and Religious Beliefs?


• Understanding Religion version 1.0: Edward B. Tylor and Belief in Spirits


• Understanding Religion version 2.0: Anthony F. C. Wallace on Supernatural Beings, Powers, and Forces


• Understanding Religion version 3.0: Religion as a System of Symbols


• Understanding Religion version 4.0: Religion as a System of Social Action


• What Forms Does Religion Take?


• Clan Spirits and Clan Identities in New Guinea


• Totemism in North America


• Shamanism and Ecstatic Religious Experiences


• Ritual Symbols That Reinforce a Hierarchical Social Order


• Polytheism and Monotheism in Ancient Societies


• World Religions and Universal Understandings of the World The Localization of World Religions


• How Does Atheism Fit in the Discussion?


• How Do Rituals Work?


• Magical Thought in Non-Western Cultures


• Sympathetic Magic: The Law of Similarity and the Law of Contagion


• Magic in Western Societies


• Rites of Passage and the Ritual Process


• How Is Religion Linked to Political and Social Action?


• The Rise of Fundamentalism


• Understanding Fundamentalism


• CLASSIC CONTRIBUTIONS: Clifford Geertz's Notion of Religion as a Cultural System


• THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE: Is Anthropology Compatible With Religious Faith?


• A WORLD IN MOTION: Contemporary Pilgrimage and the Camino de Santiago




• Epilogue:


• Anthropology and the Future of Human Diversity


• Glossary


• References


• Credits


• Index

This general anthropology text takes a holistic approach that emphasizes critical thinking, active learning, and applying anthropology to solve contemporary human problems. Building on the classical foundations of the discipline, Anthropology: Asking Questions About Human Origins, Diversity, and Culture, Third Edition, shows students how anthropology is connected to such current topics as food, health and medicine, and the environment. Full of relevant examples and current topics--with a focus on contemporary problems and questions--the book demonstrates the diversity and dynamism of anthropology today.