Cultural Anthropology

A Global Perspective

NEW TO THIS EDITION:

•  The new edition is available as a digital option through SAGE Vantage, an intuitive digital platform that offers auto-graded assignments and interactive multimedia tools—including video—all designed to enable students to better prepare for class.
• A fourth core theme of psychological essentialism, the flawed beliefs that members of certain categories or classifications share an underlying invisible essence, is introduced.
• A new chapter on gender and sexuality explores the complexities of topics such as transgender and LGBTQ issues in various societies throughout the world. 
• A new condensed chapter on Globalization, Colonialism, and Postcolonialism provides classical and contemporary research on how people in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia have adapted to global processes initiated by colonialism.
• Updated Anthropologists at Work boxes, profiling prominent anthropologists, go behind the scenes to trace the personal and professional development of some of the field’s leading experts.
• Updated research on human evolution provides the most current paleoanthropological and archaeological research on human evolution.
• A new discussion on the twenty-first century cultural evolution provides new discussions of dual inheritance theory and cultural attractor theory (epidemiological theory).
• New, updated, and expanded discussions include coverage of recent fossil and archaeological evidence, discussions of anthropological research on color perception in various societies, developments of the anthropological research on enculturation and emotions, and more.

KEY FEATURES:

• An organization around four unifying themes structure the material presented in this textbook, helping students grasp the complex field of cultural anthropology:
  1. diversity of human societies
  2. similarities that make all humans fundamentally alike
  3. synthetic-complementary approach
  4. psychological essentialism
• Critical Perspectives boxes are designed to stimulate independent reasoning and judgment by prompting students to take on the role of anthropologists and engage in the critical analysis of specific problems that arise in anthropological research.
• Chapter Outlines at the beginning of each chapter provide students with a comprehensive view of the content ahead.
  
• Learning Objectives prompt students to begin each chapter with an idea of what they should seek to understand as well as summarize at the end of the section.
• Every chapter ends with a Summary and Review of Learning Objectives, helping students review and better retain the main and major concepts.
• A list of Key Terms with page numbers in every chapter helps students focus on the key concepts introduced.