MU Libraries New Books: Anthropology

About the new book list

11/18/2009

The RSS feeds for the new books list is updated every Wednesday and contains a list of books added to the Ellis Library collection for the last six weeks. The titles are grouped by call number classification, and are listed by week and alphabetically by title.

Books for the most recent weeks are currently on the New Books Shelves inside the north entrance of Ellis Library. They can be checked out.

Fundberichte aus Baden-Württemberg. (11/18/2009)

11/18/2009

Call #: GN814.B16 F9

Principles of evolutionary medicine / Peter Gluckman, Alan Beedle, Mark Hanson. (11/11/2009)

11/11/2009

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Review

"Principles of Evolutionary Medicine is the first specifically designed as a textbook appropriate for medical students and medical schools, and it succeeds brilliantly."--Science

Call #: GN296 .G58 2009

The humans who went extinct : why Neanderthals died out and we survived / Clive Finlayson. (11/11/2009)

11/11/2009

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Review

"Finlayson does a superb job of describing the factors behind the expansion of the genus Homo and its diversification into various species, of which only Homo sapiens survives today. He also offers a powerful critique of those who theorize differently about the expansion of our species with very little data. In his hands, the links between climate and evolutionary change are stikingly clear."--Publishers Weekly

Call #: GN285 .F54 2009

Direct action : an ethnography / by David Graeber. (11/4/2009)

11/4/2009

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David Graeber is an anthropologist and activist who teaches at the University of London. Active in numerous direct-action political organizations, he has written for Harper's Magazine and is the author of Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, and Possibilities.

Call #: GN492.2 .G73 2009

Nationalizing the body : the medical market, print, and daktari medicine / Projit Bihari Mukharji. (11/4/2009)

11/4/2009

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Product Description

Nationalizing the Body revisits the history of 'western' medicine in colonial South Asia through the lives, writings and practice of the numerous Bengali daktars who adopted and practised it. Refusing to see 'western' medicine as an alienated appendage of the colonial state, this book explores how 'western' medicine was vernacularised. It argues that a burgeoning medical market and a medical publishing industry together gave daktari medicine a social identity which did not solely derive from its association with the state. Accessing many of the best-known ideas and episodes of colonial South Asian medical history, it seeks to understand how daktari medicine re-positioned the colonized bodies as nationalized bodies.

Call #: GN635.S645 M85 2009

Toward an anthropology of government : democratic transformations and nation building in Wales / William R. Schumann. (10/21/2009)

10/21/2009

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Review

“Schumann has written a timely and important anthropological assessment of power in government and the roles which politicians, civil servants and other political leaders play in social and cultural change in a devolving United Kingdom. This is work at the cutting edge of political anthropology today.”--Thomas M. Wilson, Professor of Anthropology, Binghamton University, SUNY

Call #: GN585.G7 S38 2009

Antiquarians at the megaliths / edited by Magdalena S. Midgley. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

Call #: GN790 .I58 2006a

Cuba in the shadow of change : daily life in the twilight of the revolution / Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

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Review

"This book is a masterpiece. Accurate, lyrical, and empathetic in its illumination of the lives of ordinary Cubans, as they survive and thrive in the bizarre economic and political environment of Cuba during its 'Special Period.'" - Archibald Ritter, Carleton University"

Call #: GN564.C9 W45 2009

Cultural styles of knowledge transmission : essays in honour of Ad Borsboom / Jean Kommers and Eric Venbrux (eds.). (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

Call #: GN451 .C85 2008

Doing sensory ethnography / Sarah Pink. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

Call #: GN345 .P49 2009

Gossip and the everyday production of politics / Niko Besnier. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

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Product Description

Although gossip is disapproved of across the world's societies, it is a prominent feature of sociality, whose role in the construction of society and culture cannot be overestimated. In particular, gossip is central to the enactment of politics: through it people transform difference into inequality and enact or challenge power structures. Based on the author's intimate ethnographic knowledge of Nukulaelae Atoll, Tuvalu, this work uses an analysis of gossip as political action to develop a holistic understanding of a number of disparate themes, including conflict, power, agency, morality, emotion, locality, belief, and gender. It brings together two methodological traditions - the microscopic analysis of unelicited interaction and the macroscopic interpretation of social practice - that are rarely wedded successfully.Drawing on a broad range of theoretical resources, Niko Besnier approaches gossip from several angles. A detailed analysis of how Nukulaelae's people structure their gossip interactions demonstrates that this structure reflects and contributes to the atoll's political ideology, which wavers between a staunch egalitarianism and a need for hierarchy. His discussion then turns to narratives of specific events in which gossip played an important role in either enacting egalitarianism or reinforcing inequality. Embedding gossip in a broad range of communicative practices enables Besnier to develop a nuanced analysis of how gossip operates, demonstrating how it allows some to gain power while others suffer because of it.

Call #: GN671.T88 B47 2009

Prehistory : the making of the human mind / Colin Renfrew. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

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Review

“In this complex, closely argued text . . . field giant Renfrew sets forth quite a task, to sum up the progress of prehistoric archaeology thus far and then explore current challenges.” —Publishers Weekly

“A remarkably useful text in that it will generate lively, thoughtful and passionate discussion and inspire new ways of examining existing evidence.” —New Scientist magazine

“An elegant and absorbing distillation of the wisdom accrued during a life in prehistory.”—Reference and Research Book News

Call #: GN740 .R46 2009

The dispersal of the Neolithic over the Arabian Peninsula / Philipp Drechsler. (10/14/2009)

10/14/2009

Call #: GN776.32.A65 D74 2009

Britain's oldest art : the Ice Age cave art of Creswell Crags / Paul Bahn and Paul Pettitt with contributions by Andrew Chamberlain ... [et al.]. (10/7/2009)

10/7/2009

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Call #: GN772.22.G7 B34 2009

Measured on stone : stone artefact reduction, residential mobility, and aboriginal land use in arid Central Australia / Wallace Boone Law. (10/7/2009)

10/7/2009

Call #: GN434 .L39 2009

Monuments and minds : monument re-use in Scandinavia in the second half of the first millennium AD / Eva S. Thäte. (10/7/2009)

10/7/2009

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Review
"I recommend this Handbook for policy makers and practitioners seeking to promote reconciliation in war-torn societies and between people divided by conflict . . . this publication should be required reading for the blue helmets and international civil servants of the next UN operation and, indeed, for all concerned actors, including local community leaders, in nations beset by conflict." --Sergio Vieira de Mello, High Commissioner for Human Rights
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

"This Handbook [is for] those who struggle for reconciliation in other contexts
around the world . . . the practical tools and lessons from experience presented here will inspire, assist, and support them in their supremely important task." —Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Call #: GN780.22.S34 T48 2007

Toolkit structure and site use : results of a high-power use-wear analysis of lithic assemblages from Solutré (Saône-et-Loire), France / William E. Banks. (10/7/2009)

10/7/2009

Call #: GN434 .B36 2009

Megalithic Jordan : an introduction and field guide / Gajus Scheltema. (9/30/2009)

9/30/2009

Call #: GN855.J67 S34 2008

Ethnographies revisited : constructing theory in the field / edited by Antony J. Puddephatt, William Shaffir and Steven W. Kleinknecht. (9/23/2009)

9/23/2009

Call #: GN345 .E74 2009

Planted flags : trees, land, and law in Israel/Palestine / Irus Braverman. (9/23/2009)

9/23/2009

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Product Description
Planted Flags tells an extraordinary story about the mundane uses of law and landscape in the war between Israelis and Palestinians. The book is structured around the two dominant tree landscapes in Israel/Palestine: pine forests and olive groves. The pine tree, which is usually associated with the Zionist project of afforesting the Promised Land, is contrasted with the olive tree, which Palestinians identify as a symbol of their steadfast connection to the land. What is it that makes these seemingly innocuous, even natural, acts of planting, cultivating, and uprooting trees into acts of war? How is this war reflected, mediated, and, above all, reinforced through the polarization of the natural landscape into two juxtaposed landscapes? And what is the role of law in this story? Planted Flags explores these questions through an ethnographic study. By telling the story of trees through the narratives of military and government officials, architects, lawyers, Palestinian and Israeli farmers, and Jewish settlers, the seemingly static and mute landscape assumes life, expressing the cultural, economic, and legal dynamics that constantly shape and reshape it.

Book Description
Planted Flags explores how the natural landscape is conscripted into the national war between Israelis and Palestinians. By telling the story of trees through the narratives of military and government officials, architects, lawyers, Palestinian and Israeli farmers, and Jewish settlers, the seemingly static and mute landscape assumes life, expressing the cultural, economic, and legal dynamics that constantly shape and reshape it.

About the Author
Irus Braverman is Associate Professor of Law at University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She is the author of House Demolitions in East Jerusalem: "Illegality" and Resistance and has previously been affiliated with the Humanities Center at Harvard University, the Human Rights Program at Harvard University Law School, the Center of Criminology at the University of Toronto, and the Geography Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on the interdisciplinary study of law, geography, and anthropology.

Call #: GN635.I78 B73 2009