The Anthropology Of Numbers

Author : Thomas Crump
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521438070
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Anthropology of Numbers written by Thomas Crump and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-10-15 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numbers are an important feature of almost all known cultures. In this detailed anthropological study, Thomas Crump examines how people from a wide range of diverse cultures, and from different historical backgrounds, use and understand numbers. By looking at the logical, psychological and linguistic implications, he analyses how numbers operate within different contexts. The author goes on to consider the relationship of numbers to specific themes, such as ethnoscience, politics, measurement, time, money, music, games and architecture. The Anthropology of Numbers is an original contribution to scholarship, written in a clear and accessible style. It will be of interest to anthropologists who study cognition, symbolism, primitive thought and classification, and to those in adjacent disciplines of psychology, cognitive science and mathematical social science.

Author : Gary Urton
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292786840
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Social Life of Numbers written by Gary Urton and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-05 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unraveling all the mysteries of the khipu--the knotted string device used by the Inka to record both statistical data and narrative accounts of myths, histories, and genealogies--will require an understanding of how number values and relations may have been used to encode information on social, familial, and political relationships and structures. This is the problem Gary Urton tackles in his pathfinding study of the origin, meaning, and significance of numbers and the philosophical principles underlying the practice of arithmetic among Quechua-speaking peoples of the Andes. Based on fieldwork in communities around Sucre, in south-central Bolivia, Urton argues that the origin and meaning of numbers were and are conceived of by Quechua-speaking peoples in ways similar to their ideas about, and formulations of, gender, age, and social relations. He also demonstrates that their practice of arithmetic is based on a well-articulated body of philosophical principles and values that reflects a continuous attempt to maintain balance, harmony, and equilibrium in the material, social, and moral spheres of community life.

Author : Caleb Everett
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674504437
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Numbers and the Making of Us written by Caleb Everett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-13 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating book.” —James Ryerson, New York Times Book Review A Smithsonian Best Science Book of the Year Winner of the PROSE Award for Best Book in Language & Linguistics Carved into our past and woven into our present, numbers shape our perceptions of the world far more than we think. In this sweeping account of how the invention of numbers sparked a revolution in human thought and culture, Caleb Everett draws on new discoveries in psychology, anthropology, and linguistics to reveal the many things made possible by numbers, from the concept of time to writing, agriculture, and commerce. Numbers are a tool, like the wheel, developed and refined over millennia. They allow us to grasp quantities precisely, but recent research confirms that they are not innate—and without numbers, we could not fully grasp quantities greater than three. Everett considers the number systems that have developed in different societies as he shares insights from his fascinating work with indigenous Amazonians. “This is bold, heady stuff... The breadth of research Everett covers is impressive, and allows him to develop a narrative that is both global and compelling... Numbers is eye-opening, even eye-popping.” —New Scientist “A powerful and convincing case for Everett’s main thesis: that numbers are neither natural nor innate to humans.” —Wall Street Journal

Author : Pierre Bourdieu
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521291644
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.4X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Outline of a Theory of Practice written by Pierre Bourdieu and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1977-06-02 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through Pierre Bourdieu's work in Kabylia (Algeria), he develops a theory on symbolic power.

Author : Bruce M. Knauft
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521429313
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book South Coast New Guinea Cultures written by Bruce M. Knauft and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-03-25 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The communities of south coast New Guinea were the subject of classic ethnographies, and fresh studies in recent decades have put these rich and complex cultures at the centre of anthropological debates. Flamboyant sexual practices, such as ritual homosexuality, have attracted particular interest. In the first general book on the region, Dr Knauft reaches striking new comparative conclusions through a careful ethnographic analysis of sexuality, the status of women, ritual and cosmology, political economy, and violence among the region's seven major language-culture areas. The findings suggest new Melanesian regional contrasts and provide for a general critique of the way regional comparisons are constructed in anthropology. Theories of practice and political economy as well as post-modern insights are drawn upon to provide a generative theory of indigenous social and symbolic development.

Author : Les Field
Publisher : Berg
ISBN 13 : 1845206010
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Anthropology Put to Work written by Les Field and published by Berg. This book was released on 2007-06-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While some anthropologists have called for a new 'public' or 'engaged' anthropology, profound changes have already occurred, leading to new kinds of work for many anthropologists. The papers in this volume show that anthropology is put to work in diverse ways today.

Author : Angela Cheater
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134650477
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Anthropology of Power written by Angela Cheater and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-12-16 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An edited collection which examines the theoretical issues surrounding power, and particularly empowerment, which uses ethnographic analysis as its basis. It takes material from the Middle East, Canada, Columbia, Australasia and various parts of Europe and Africa. It looks particularly at the extent to which traditionally disempowered groups gain influence in postcolonial or multicultural settings, and at how power relates to economic development, gender and environmentalism.

Author : Dan Rabinowitz
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521564953
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Overlooking Nazareth written by Dan Rabinowitz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-16 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sophisticated and engaging ethnographic account of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the first since the 1970s, Overlooking Nazareth examines specific situations of friction, conflict and co-operation in Natzerat Illit. This Israeli new town is built on formerly Palestinian land, just outside the biblical town of Nazareth, and has a population of 25,000 Jewish Israelis and 3,500 Palestinians. Dr Rabinowitz has written widely on the current political situation in Israel and has conducted extensive fieldwork in Galilee, and he describes his study as a guided walk along a border, a sketch of interfaces 'where the complex, often paradoxical aspects of the border situation are negotiated and acted out most vividly'. He highlights the extent to which anti-Palestinian sentiments for which the town is known actually reflect widespread views of most Israelis. This is a major contribution to our understanding of the confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians. It offers powerful critique of reflexive anthropology and offers fresh insights into notions of ethnicity and identity, nationalism and liberalism.

Author : Roy A. Rappaport
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521296908
Total Pages : 566 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity written by Roy A. Rappaport and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-25 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roy Rappaport argues that religion is central to the continuing evolution of life, although it has been been displaced from its original position of intellectual authority by the rise of modern science. His book, which could be construed as in some degree religious as well as about religion, insists that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches to the study of humankind, he mounts a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, seeing it as co-extensive with the invention of language and hence of culture as we know it. At the same time he assembles the fullest study yet of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and has been central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from anthropology, history, philosophy, comparative religion, and elsewhere.

Author : Theodore Schwartz
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521426091
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.9X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book New Directions in Psychological Anthropology written by Theodore Schwartz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of psychological anthropology has changed a great deal since the 1940s and 1950s, when it was often known as 'Culture and Personality Studies'. Rooted in psychoanalytic psychology, its early practitioners sought to extend that psychology through the study of cross-cultural variation in personality and child-rearing practices. Psychological anthropology has since developed in a number of new directions. Tensions between individual experience and collective meanings remain as central to the field as they were fifty years ago, but, alongside fresh versions of the psychoanalytic approach, other approaches to the study of cognition, emotion, the body, and the very nature of subjectivity have been introduced. And in the place of an earlier tendency to treat a 'culture' as an undifferentiated whole, psychological anthropology now recognizes the complex internal structure of cultures. The contributors to this state-of-the-art collection are all leading figures in contemporary psychological anthropology, and they write abour recent developments in the field. Sections of the book discuss cognition, developmental psychology, biology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, areas that have always been integral to psychological anthropology but which are now being transformed by new perspectives on the body, meaning, agency and communicative practice.