ABSTRACT

Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives is an exceptionally clear and readable introduction that helps students understand the application of anthropological concepts to the contemporary world and everyday life. It provides thorough treatment of key subjects such as colonialism and post-colonialism, ethnicity, the environment, cultural change, economic development, and globalization.

This fourth edition has a fresh thematic focus on the future, with material relating to planning, decision-making, design and invention, hope, and waiting. More space is devoted to contemporary topics, and there is new coverage of subjects ranging from white nationalism, right-wing populism, and natural disasters to surgical training, hacker conferences, and the gig economy. Each chapter contains a rich variety of case studies that have been updated throughout.

The book includes a number of features to support student learning, including:

  • A wealth of color images
  • Definitions of key terms and further reading suggestions in the margins
  • Questions for discussion/review and boxed summaries at the end of every chapter
  • An extensive glossary, bibliography, and index.

Additional resources are provided via a comprehensive companion website.

chapter 1|19 pages

Understanding anthropology

chapter 2|23 pages

Understanding and studying culture

chapter 3|20 pages

The origins of cultural anthropology

chapter 4|21 pages

Language and social relations

chapter 5|19 pages

Cultural construction of persons

Personality and gender

chapter 6|20 pages

Individuals and identities

Race and ethnicity

chapter 7|22 pages

Health, illness, body, and culture

chapter |2 pages

Seeing culture as a whole #1

African American women facing a future with HIV/AIDS

chapter 8|25 pages

Economics

Humans, nature, and society

chapter 9|23 pages

Kinship and non-kin groups

Being, becoming, and social organization

chapter 10|23 pages

Politics

Social order and social control

chapter 11|25 pages

Religion

Relating to the non-human world

chapter |2 pages

Seeing culture as a whole #2

Magic, matrilineality, and (re)production in the Trobriand Islands

chapter 12|19 pages

Cultural dynamics

Tradition and change

chapter 13|21 pages

Colonialism and the origin of globalization

chapter 15|21 pages

Economics in a globalized world

Development, modernization, and neoliberalism

chapter |2 pages

Seeing culture as a whole #3

Waiting for a future delayed – passing time in India and beyond