Cultural Anthropology: A Problem-Based Approach

This widely adopted text provides a fresh look at cultural anthropology and challenges students to engage in active and collaborative learning and critical thinking, as well as to recognize their own cultures as a basis for understanding the cultures of others. The book is organized around problems rather than topics, creating a natural and integrated discussion of such traditional concerns as kinship, caste, gender roles, and religion within the context of meaningful questions, including How can people begin to understand beliefs and behaviors that are different from their own. How do societies give meaning to and justify collective violence? Why are some societies more industrially advanced that others? What can anthropology tell us about attempts to link intelligence and class?

The need to understand the relation between social inequality and globalization has never been greater. This new edition of the ground breaking Canadian Cultural Anthropology text makes abundantly clear the connections between the global and the local. Much attention is given to how globalization is a force of change worldwide and how localization of global forces can be seen in various domains of change. Each chapter contains material discussing, for example, transnationalism, migration, cyberspace communities, and cultural pluralism.

 

Whether you are interested in environmental studies, peace studies, international business, or health studies, knowing about the world’s cultures is a crucial foundation for shaping a vision of what is both possible and appropriate in terms of goals and actions. New to this edition, "Lessons Applied" boxes provide in-depth examples of how research in cultural anthropology can be applied to real-world problems. They highlight different anthropological roles in applied work, such as in conducting social impact assessments, in advocacy anthropology working with indigenous peoples, or as a cultural broker.

 

Cultural Anthropology, Third Canadian Edition, reflects the work of contemporary anthropologists, including Canadian scholars. It presents interesting and informative material about “exotic” and distant cultures as well as paying substantial attention to contemporary “Western” cultures, including Canada. Readers coming from diverse cultural perspectives will be able to “make the strange familiar and the familiar strange”.