The Anthropology of Contemporary American Culture PDF Download

Author: Conrad Phillip Kottak
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anthropology
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description

Author: Conrad Phillip Kottak
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mass media
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description

Author: Conrad Phillip Kottak
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472080243
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Applies anthropological techniques to the study of contemporary American behavior

Author: Paul Rabinow
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082239006X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
In this compact volume two of anthropology’s most influential theorists, Paul Rabinow and George E. Marcus, engage in a series of conversations about the past, present, and future of anthropological knowledge, pedagogy, and practice. James D. Faubion joins in several exchanges to facilitate and elaborate the dialogue, and Tobias Rees moderates the discussions and contributes an introduction and an afterword to the volume. Most of the conversations are focused on contemporary challenges to how anthropology understands its subject and how ethnographic research projects are designed and carried out. Rabinow and Marcus reflect on what remains distinctly anthropological about the study of contemporary events and processes, and they contemplate productive new directions for the field. The two converge in Marcus’s emphasis on the need to redesign pedagogical practices for training anthropological researchers and in Rabinow’s proposal of collaborative initiatives in which ethnographic research designs could be analyzed, experimented with, and transformed. Both Rabinow and Marcus participated in the milestone collection Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Published in 1986, Writing Culture catalyzed a reassessment of how ethnographers encountered, studied, and wrote about their subjects. In the opening conversations of Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary, Rabinow and Marcus take stock of anthropology’s recent past by discussing the intellectual scene in which Writing Culture intervened, the book’s contributions, and its conceptual limitations. Considering how the field has developed since the publication of that volume, they address topics including ethnography’s self-reflexive turn, scholars’ increased focus on questions of identity, the Public Culture project, science and technology studies, and the changing interests and goals of students. Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary allows readers to eavesdrop on lively conversations between anthropologists who have helped to shape their field’s recent past and are deeply invested in its future.

Author: Dan Rose
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512809624
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Dan Rose has explored the American status system for decades. His ethnographic research into black South Philadelphia, the business community of Hazleton Pennsylvania, and the large horse farms of Chester County Pennsylvania is drawn together here to examine the cultural forms that shape American life at every level. In Patterns of American Culture, Rose draws on the fact and metaphor of colonization to demonstrate that the central motive in the contemporary United States has been and continues to be the corporate form. He begins by considering our origins as a collection of colonies, each of which was constructed as a private corporation whose purpose was to make money for its investors by providing new goods and different markets for England. Rose contends that the structure underlying American life are still corporate and that their purpose is to create new resources, new products, new landscapes, new ideas, and new markets. Today, most Americans have multiple corporate memberships—in city and state governments, in the businesses that employ them, in professional organizations or unions, and in various civic and political associations. Further, through written rules and unwritten customs, these corporations determine who we are and what we can do. Patterns of American Culture is a scholarly and poetic pursuit of the concealed energies within this vast incorporation and an analysis of how it shapes society and the lives of individuals. Rose draws from poems by Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams and brings ideas from such sources as performance art and cultural theory to critique this pervasive institutional order. The book closes with a fable of life in a fictitious capitalist society that both comments on ethnographic practice and reveals the disturbing estrangement inherent in any study of this type of culture. This narrative ethnography will interest scholars and students of American studies, anthropology, English, folklore, and sociology, and members of the design professions, such as architecture, landscape, and urban design.

Author: Virginia R. Dominguez
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785333615
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
There is surprisingly little fieldwork done on the United States by anthropologists from abroad. America Observed fills that gap by bringing into greater focus empirical as well as theoretical implications of this phenomenon. Edited by Virginia Dominguez and Jasmin Habib, the essays collected here offer a critique of such an absence, exploring its likely reasons while also illustrating the advantages of studying fieldwork-based anthropological projects conducted by colleagues from outside the U.S. This volume contains an introduction written by the editors and fieldwork-based essays written by Helena Wulff, Jasmin Habib, Limor Darash, Ulf Hannerz, and Moshe Shokeid, and reflections on the broad issue written by Geoffrey White, Keiko Ikeda, and Jane Desmond. Suitable for introductory and mid-level anthropology courses, America Observed will also be useful for American Studies courses both in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Author: Ellen Lewin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150172004X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Within a society that long considered "lesbian motherhood" a contradiction in terms, what were the experiences of lesbian mothers at the end of the twentieth century? In this illuminating book, lesbian mothers tell their stories of how they became mothers; how they see their relationships with their children, relatives, lovers, and friends and with their children’s fathers and sperm donors; how they manage child-care arrangements and financial difficulties; and how they deal with threats to custody. Ellen Lewin’s unprecedented research on lesbian mothers in the San Francisco area captured a vivid portrait of the moment before gay and lesbian parenting moved into the mainstream of U.S. culture. Drawing on interviews with 135 women, Lewin provided her readers with a new understanding of the attitudes of individual women, the choices they made, and the texture of their daily lives.

Author: Jack David Eller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000468550
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
The Anthropology of Donald Trump is an edited volume of original anthropological essays, composed by some of the leading fgures in the discipline. It applies their concepts, perspectives, and methods to a sustained and diverse understanding of Trump’s supporters, policies, and performance in office.The volume includes ethnographic case studies of "Trump country," examines Trump’s actions in office, and moves beyond Trump as an individual political fgure to consider larger structural and institutional issues. Providing a unique and valuable perspective on the Trump phenomenon, it will be of interest to anthropologists and other social scientists concerned with contemporary American society and politics as well as suitable reading for courses on political anthropology and US culture.

Author: Robert Gregg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134719299
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 881

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Book Description
As a meeting point for world cultures, the USA is characterized by its breadth and diversity. Acknowledging that diversity is the fundamental feature of American culture, this volume is organized around a keen awareness of race, gender, class and space and with over 1,200 alphabetically-arranged entries - spanning 'the American century' from the end of World War II to the present day - the Encyclopedia provides a one-stop source for insightful and stimulating coverage of all aspects of that culture. Entries range from short definitions to longer overview essays and with full cross-referencing, extensive indexing, and a thematic contents list, this volume provides an essential cultural context for both teachers and students of American studies, as well as providing fascinating insights into American culture for the general reader. The suggestions for further reading, which follows most entries, are also invaluable guides to more specialized sources.

Author: Constance Perin
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299115845
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Belonging in America gives voice to unspoken conventions and silent understandings and asks why our culture draws the lines it does--between home and work, family and friends, humans and animals. Throughout her fascinating book, Constance Perin shows us the systems of meaning through which contemporary American create social order and define their relationships.