Culture, Humanity, and History: Conversations About Anthropology provides students with an engaging collection of writings and cases studies centered on human diversity and culture across all societies, including the past, present, and future. Students learn how anthropologists and scholars in the humanities and social sciences study humans to better understand who and what we are, and how we should live.
The reader is divided into four sections. In Section I, students learn about the origins of humanity and the concept of culture. Section II features readings that address ideas about humanity, race, ethnicity, and ritual from the perspectives of a biological anthropologist and a scholar of religion. In Section III, the selected articles examine ecological, economic, and medical anthropology, demonstrating human strategies for obtaining, using, and distributing resources. The final section focuses on a novel approach in the field called posthuman anthropology, demonstrating to students how the discipline of anthropology is growing and evolving.
Approachable and thought provoking, Culture, Humanity, and History is an ideal text for foundational courses in anthropology.
Sharyn Jones, a professor of anthropology at Northern Kentucky University, studies human-environmental interactions, tropical island cultures, public archaeology, foodways, identity, and gender. She has conducted research in the Pacific Islands, India, the Caribbean, North America, and Japan. Her current research is focused on understanding long-term traditional ecological interactions in Fiji and elsewhere. She is also working on developing a model for hands-on science education through anthropological field schools. Her newest project is a collaboration with historians that is focused on studying the first co-educational and multiracial school in the U.S.--the Parker or Clermont Academy of New Richmond, Ohio.