Cultural Anthropology : A Problem-Based Approach

Encourage a critical mindset and active, global citizenship with Robbins/Cummings/Larkin/McGarry’s ' unique Cultural Anthropology: A Problem-Based Approach, 2Ce. Using a hands-on, participatory, active-learning approach that promotes inquiry and discussion, this leading brief text introduces key research problems studied by anthropologists. Within the book's engaging narrative, the authors teach students to analyze their own culture as a basis for understanding the cultures of others. Presentations are organized around penetrating, provocative questions rather than topics, creating a natural, integrated discussion of foundational social issues such as kinship, caste, gender roles, and religion and pressing social issues such as the impact of neoliberalism and globalization. Students explore these subjects within the context of meaningful questions. The text's brief length provides the flexibility to add original research or ethnographies to enrich students' exposure to anthropology.

Richard H. Robbins is a distinguished teaching professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. His teaching interests include courses on global problems, utopian societies, comparative religion, the anthropology of food, and activist anthropology. He has conducted research among indigenous peoples of Canada and fishing communities in northeastern New Brunswick. His recent books Include Debt as Power (with Tim DiMuzio); Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, Sixth Edition; Darwin and the Bible: The Cultural Confrontation (With Mark Cohen); and Globalization and the Environment (with Gary Kroll). Professor Robbins is the recipient of the 2005 American Anthropological Association/McGraw-Hill award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Maggie Cummings has taught cultural anthropology to over 4000 students cumulatively at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, over the past five years.She received her Ph.D. in 2008 from York University, and she specializes in socio-cultural anthropology, gender and sexualities, embodiment, morality, consumption, popular culture, race and modernities, and also Melanesia. Maggie was nominated by the Department of Social Sciences for the UTSC Faculty Teaching Award, 2008–2009.

Karen McGarry completed her Ph.D. at York University in 2004; she is the course director of anthropology at Trent University, and she also teaches at York University. Her areas of research include cultural anthropology of expressive culture, performance, and sport, with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, mass media, visual and performance arts; spectacle and popular culture; globalization and nationalism; and material culture theory and interpretation. Karen has taught cultural anthropology to over 2000 students cumulatively at York and Trent. The author team know their audience―first year students in undergraduate and college programs―and they write for them.