Alan Barnard Bücher

Die Dinos beherrschten vor über 70 Millionen Jahren die Erde. Die Autorin verfolgt ihren Weg bis zu dem Zeitpunkt, an dem sie schließlich ausstarben

This is the only encyclopedia of social and cultural anthropology to cover fully the many important areas of overlap between anthropology and related disciplines. This work also covers key terms, ideas and people, thus eliminating the need to refer to other books for specific definitions or biographies.Special features * over 230 substantial entries on every major idea, individual and sub-discipline of social and cultural anthropology* over 100 international contributors* a glossary of more than 600 key terms and ideas.

For ninety per cent of our history, humans have lived as 'hunters and gatherers', and for most of this time as talking individuals. No direct evidence for the origin and evolution of language exists; we do not even know if early humans had language, either spoken or signed. Taking an anthropological perspective, Alan Barnard acknowledges this difficulty and argues that we can nevertheless infer a great deal about our linguistic past from what is around us in the present. Hunter-gatherers still inhabit much of the world, and in sufficient number to enable us to study the ways in which they speak, the many languages they use, and what they use them for. Barnard investigates the lives of hunter-gatherers by understanding them in their own terms, to create a book which will be welcomed by all those interested in the evolution of language.

Anthropology is a discipline very conscious of its history. Alan Barnard has written a clear, detailed overview of anthropological theory that brings out the historical contexts of the great debates, tracing the genealogies of theories and schools of thought. His book covers the precursors of anthropology; evolutionism in all its guises; diffusionism and culture area theories, functionalism and structural-functionalism; action-centered theories; processual and Marxist perspectives; the many faces of relativism, structuralism and poststructuralism; and recent interpretive and postmodernist viewpoints. This is a balanced and judicious survey, which also considers the problems involved in assessing anthropological theories.