Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History / Edition 7

by R. Jon McGee Texas State University, Richard L. Warms Texas State University

Overview

Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History, Seventh Edition, presents a selection of critical essays in anthropology from 1860 to the present day. Classic authors such as Marx, Durkheim, Boas, Radcliffe-Brown, Benedict, Rappaport, Geertz, and Turner are joined by contemporary thinkers including Das, Ortner, Kwiatkowski, and Mattingly.   What sets McGee and Warms’s text apart from other collections are its introductions, footnotes, and index. Detailed introductions examine critical developments in theory, introduce key people, and discuss historical and personal influences on theorists. In extensive footnotes, the editors provide commentary that puts the writing in historical and cultural context, defines unusual terms, translates non-English phrases, identifies references to other scholars and their works, and offers paraphrases and summaries of complex passages. The notes identify and provide background information on hundreds of scholars and concepts important in the development of anthropology. This makes the essays more accessible to both students and current day scholars. An extensive index makes this book an invaluable reference tool. NEW TO THIS EDITION
• Zora Neale Hurston: From Of Mules and Men (1935)
• Roy Rappaport: Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations among New Guinea People (1967)
• James P. Spradley: A Bucket Full of Tramps (1970)
• Eric R. Wolf: Facing Power—Old Insights, New Questions (1990)
• Tom Boellstorff: The Emergence of Political Homophobia in Indonesia: Masculinity and National Belonging (2004)
• Lynn Kwiatkowski: Feminist Anthropology: Approaching Domestic Violence in Northern Viet Nam (2016)
• Veena Das: Engaging with the Life of the Other: Love and Everyday Life (2010)
• Cheryl Mattingly: Luck, Friendship, and the Narrative Self (2014)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538126202
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/17/2019
Edition description:	Seventh Edition
Pages:	832
Sales rank:	748,490
Product dimensions:	6.93(w) x 10.08(h) x 1.07(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

R. Jon McGee is professor of anthropology at Texas State University. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Watching Lacandon Maya Lives, Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia (coedited with Richard L. Warms), and Sacred Realms: Readings in the Anthropology of Religion (coedited with Warms and James Garber), now in its second edition. Richard L. Warms is professor of anthropology at Texas State University. In addition to his books with McGee, he has coauthored (with Serena Nanda) the best-selling textbooks Cultural Anthropology, now in its twelfth edition, and Culture Counts, now in its fourth edition.

Table of Contents

Preface Timeline Introduction Part One HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY Nineteenth-Century Evolutionism 1. Herbert Spencer: The Social Organism (1860) 2. Sir Edward Burnett Tylor: The Science of Culture (1871) 3. Lewis Henry Morgan: Ethnical Periods (1877) 4. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook (1846) The Foundations of Sociological Thought 5. Émile Durkheim: What Is a Social Fact? (1895) 6. Marcel Mauss: Excerpts from The Gift (1925) 7. Max Weber: Class, Status, Party (1922) Part Two CULTURE THEORY IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY The Boasians 8. Franz Boas: The Methods of Ethnology (1920) 9. A. L. Kroeber: On the Principle of Order in Civilization as Exemplified by Changes of Fashion (1919) 10. Ruth Benedict: The Science of Custom: The Bearing of Anthropology on Contemporary Thought (1929) 11.Margaret Mead: Introduction to Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) 12. Zora Neale Hurston: From Of Mules and Men (1935) 13. Benjamin L. Whorf: The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language (1941) Functionalism 14. Bronislaw Malinowski: The Essentials of the Kula (1922) 15. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown: On Joking Relationships (1940) Part Three THEORY AT MID-CENTURY The Reemergence of Evolutionary Thought 16. Leslie White: Energy and the Evolution of Culture (1943) 17. Julian Steward: The Patrilineal Band (1955) Neomaterialism 18. Marvin Harris: The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle (1966) 19. Roy Rappaport Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations Among New Guinea People (1967) Structure, Language, and Cognition 20. Claude Lévi-Strauss: Four Winnebago Myths: A Structural Sketch (1960) 21. James P. Spradley: A Bucket Full of Tramps (1970) Part Four LATE-TWENTIETH-CENTURY DEVELOPMENTS Sociobiology and Behavioral Ecology 22. Edward O. Wilson: The Morality of the Gene (1975) 23. Rebecca Bliege Bird, Eric Alden Smith, and Douglas W. Bird: The Hunting Handicap: Costly Signaling in Human Foraging Strategies (2001) Feminist Anthropology 24. Sally Slocum: Woman the Gatherer: Male Bias in Anthropology (1975) 25. Eleanor Leacock: Interpreting the Origins of Gender Inequality: Conceptual and Historical Problems (1983) Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology 26. Mary Douglas: External Boundaries (1966) 27. Victor Turner: Symbols in Ndembu Ritual (1967) 28. Clifford Geertz: Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight (1972) Background to Postmodernism 29. Pierre Bourdieu: Structures, Habitus, Practices (1980) 30. Michel Foucault: The Incitement to Discourse (1976) Postmodernism 31. Renato Rosaldo: Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage (1989) 32. Allan Hanson: The Making of the Maori: Culture Invention and Its Logic (1989) Globalization 33. Eric R. Wolf. Facing Power – Old Insights, New Questions (1990) 34. Arjun Appadurai: Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy (1990) 35. Theodore C. Bestor: Kaiten-zushi and Konbini: Japanese Food Culture in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2006) Part Five TRENDS IN CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGY Gender 36. Lila Abu-Lughod: A Tale of Two Pregnancies (1995) 37. Tom Boellstorff: The Emergence of Political Homophobia in Indonesia: Masculinity and National Belonging. (2004) 38. Lynn Kwiatkowski: Feminist Anthropology: Approaching Domestic Violence in Northern Viet Nam (2016) Agency and Structure 39. Philippe Bourgois: From Jíbaro to Crack Dealer: Confronting the Restructuring of Capitalism in El Barrio (1995) 40. Sherry Ortner: Power and Projects: Reflections on Agency (2006) 41. Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz: Willing to Work: Agency and Vulnerability in an Undocumented Immigrant Network (2010) The Anthropology of the Good 42. Veena Das: Engaging with the Life of the Other: Love and Everyday Life (2010) 43. Cheryl Mattingly: Luck Friendship and the Narrative Self (2014) References Credits Index

Editorial Reviews

First published in 1996, this seventh edition of the Anthropological Theory reader, compiled by anthropologists McGee and Warms (both, Texas State Univ.), contains 43 articles published between 1860 and 2016, and is divided into five roughly chronological parts that chart this expanding field's diverse interests. The collection is distinguished by two valuable features. First, the editors include an introductory essay for each section, with contemporary biographical references, to contextualize the authors within the field as a whole and in a social sense more broadly as well. Secondly, and most importantly, in addition to including their essays' original endnotes, the contributing authors also provide a running commentary on each piece in the form of updated footnotes to explain difficult, abstract concepts and to emphasize those points they feel make the piece in question important to the development of theory. Designed as a reader for introductory classes in anthropology, this collection will find a ready audience in colleges and universities offering programs in this field. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through graduate students.

Choice Reviews

First published in 1996, this seventh edition of the Anthropological Theory reader, compiled by anthropologists McGee and Warms (both, Texas State Univ.), contains 43 articles published between 1860 and 2016, and is divided into five roughly chronological parts that chart this expanding field's diverse interests. The collection is distinguished by two valuable features. First, the editors include an introductory essay for each section, with contemporary biographical references, to contextualize the authors within the field as a whole and in a social sense more broadly as well. Secondly, and most importantly, in addition to including their essays' original endnotes, the contributing authors also provide a running commentary on each piece in the form of updated footnotes to explain difficult, abstract concepts and to emphasize those points they feel make the piece in question important to the development of theory. Designed as a reader for introductory classes in anthropology, this collection will find a ready audience in colleges and universities offering programs in this field. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through graduate students.

CHOICE

An undergraduate textbook chronologically surveying the history of anthropological theory through readings ranging from 19th century evolutionism to postmodernism in the 1990s. Each reading is accompanied by commentary providing a background to the article's main concepts and its relationship to the social and historical context in which it was written. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"Anthropological Theory is the gold standard for history of theory anthologies. And now with new material to bring it up to date, this classical reader is more valuable than ever."

Alex Golub

"A new edition of Anthropological Theory is always a welcome event for those teaching the history of the discipline. The eighth edition retains its useful selection of canonical essays with important additions on decolonization and whiteness. Its strength remains its insightful commentary with details about terminology, authors, and theoretical controversies."

Nancy Lutkehaus

"With the inclusion of sections on phenomenology, decolonization, and whiteness alongside illuminating introductory essays and footnotes, this latest edition of Anthropological Theory is equal parts a digestible teaching/learning tool and a humble, yet cogent, plea for the utility of theories that are attuned to the experiences and perspectives of others." 

Nick Barron

"McGee and Warms’ eighth edition is a necessity for anyone teaching or learning about anthropology’s invention, exploration, and manipulation of culture as an analytic concept in the study of human behavior. The selections and annotations insightfully trace the development of anthropological theory from the mid-19th century to the present day; from seeing the non-European world as populated by savages and barbarians to decolonizing that world."

Jonathan Marks

Anthropological Theory is an impressively comprehensive introduction to the history of anthropological theory from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. The texts are carefully selected to give a balanced view of the development of the discipline over a century and a half. McGee’s and Warms' decision to present complete texts rather than extracts allows the reader to enter more fully into the authors’ ways of thinking, while the section introductions and the footnotes carefully and sensitively contextualize and explain the readings. This text unquestionably remains the standard in the field.

Robert Launay

"This new edition of Anthropological Theory presents a diverse set of original works tracing key developments in anthropological analysis. But what makes it truly remarkable are the detailed, insightful commentaries McGee and Warms provide alongside each text. Their brilliant intellectual exegeses take Anthropological Theory to a new level, making it invaluable for audiences across disciplines, and from undergraduates to research scholars. Rare is the book on the history of anthropology one cannot put down, but this is it."

Tom Boellstorff

"McGee and Warms continue their admirable practice of presenting original essays that illustrate and illuminate significant theoretical moments and movements in the history of anthropology. As in the past, the editors’ knowledgeable introductions to each section and, above all, their extensive annotations of each essay, make this volume an unrivaled source."

Herbert S. Lewis

This is an excellent introduction: one that gives essential historical depth to crucial theoretical debates.

David Shankland

First published in 1996, this seventh edition of the Anthropological Theory reader, compiled by anthropologists McGee and Warms (both, Texas State Univ.), contains 43 articles published between 1860 and 2016, and is divided into five roughly chronological parts that chart this expanding field's diverse interests. The collection is distinguished by two valuable features. First, the editors include an introductory essay for each section, with contemporary biographical references, to contextualize the authors within the field as a whole and in a social sense more broadly as well. Secondly, and most importantly, in addition to including their essays' original endnotes, the contributing authors also provide a running commentary on each piece in the form of updated footnotes to explain difficult, abstract concepts and to emphasize those points they feel make the piece in question important to the development of theory. Designed as a reader for introductory classes in anthropology, this collection will find a ready audience in colleges and universities offering programs in this field. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through graduate students.

Choice