The use and abuse of biology, an anthropological critique of sociobiology - published: 29/09/2010
Book review - 1 pages - Sociology & social sciences
According to M. Sahlins, vulgar sociobiology is "the explication of human social behavior as the expression of the needs and drives of the human organism". This thesis implies that social organization is exclusively determined by biology. However, among other arguments, the author argues that one...
Anthropological debates on definition and origin - published: 29/09/2010
Book review - 1 pages - Sociology & social sciences
This article is based on Tylor's work on animism and Durkheim's work The Elementary Forms of the religious Life. One of the main problems of an anthropological study of religions is to find the objectivity that every science requires. For example do we need to be believers or atheists to...
"Paradise", Toni Morrisson (1999) - Ruby, an evil paradise: construction of community identity
Book review - 2 pages - Sociology & social sciences
No white masters, no black oppressed slaves but a freed black people community. In Toni Morrison's Paradise, Blacks create a small town called Ruby far from white people and their fake society. Several miles away is a convent in which five women live. Ruby was to be a paradise but twenty...
The concept of social class according to Alfred Marshall
Book review - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The term "class? is considered a sociological concept. We must remember that our contemporary ideas of sociology and economics were not those of Marshall or any other social scientist who took part in the constitution of the different disciplines about a hundred years ago. Anyone who has...
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
Book review - 2 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Putnam is observing the decline of organization membership since the 1970s, with a sharp fall in the 1990s. Old volunteers are dying, and kids are not joining. He proves the decline of participation and trust in the American society by using polls. He concludes that social capital increased...
Presentation of The end of the body, Emily Martin - published: 18/12/2009
Book review - 1 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Why is the question of the body so important and relevant today? This is because the body is a key feature in Western societies, as historical factors have led to the merging of a salient body; among them: the European state formation (with the creation of protected citizenship),...
The measure of America: how a rebel anthropologist waged war on racism, Claudia Roth Pierpont - published: 06/10/2009
Book review - 3 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Based on Boas's life and achievements, Claudia Roth Pierpont's article ?How a rebel anthropologist waged war on racism' deals with the origins of anthropology in the United States, laying emphasis on the importance of Boas, the "rebel anthropologist?, in the transformation of the...
Terror in the Mind of God: A book review
Book review - 3 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The world has become a more dangerous place to live in the past fifteen years or so. According to Mark Juergensmeyer's book, Terror in the Mind of God; the Global Rise of Religious Violence, this can be attributed to religious terrorists, or activists depending on one's perspective, reacting...
Turner, "Liminality and Communitas" & Metcalf, P., and R. Huntington, Death Rituals and Life Values: Rites of Passage Reconsidered
Book review - 1 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Peter Metcalf, Richard Huntington's and Victor Turner's works are all studies of rituals and more precisely of rites of passage. As far as Peter Metcalf and Huntington's works are concerned, the study focuses on the rites linked to death for the Malagasy inhabitants; that is to say it...
Anthropology of religion : cargo cults
Book review - 2 pages - Sociology & social sciences
This essay is based on Peter M.Worsley's work "Cargo Cults? and Andrew Lattas's "one Telephones, Cameras and Technology in West New Britain Cargo Cults?. Peter M. Worsley and Andrew Lattas both study a specific religious phenomenon which is cargo cults in Melanesia and in New Britain....
Anthropological debates on definition and origin
Book review - 1 pages - Sociology & social sciences
This article is based on Tylor's work on animism and Durkheim's work The Elementary Forms of the religious Life. One of the main problems of an anthropological study of religions is to find the objectivity that every science requires. For example do we need to be believers or atheists to...
Ashley B, Hollows J, Jones S. and B. Taylor : The food, the body and label (p.41-57), extract of Cultural Studies and Food
Book review - 2 pages - Sociology & social sciences
This chapter is taken from Food and Cultural Studies. The aim to give an introduction to "Cultural Studies" through the examination of food and culture. What, how, when, where we eat indicate who we are and where we come from, are the questions which are linked with an identification process...
The power of hidden differences, Edward T. Hall
Book review - 1 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Edward T. Hall (born May 16, 1914) is an anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1942. He has taught at the University of Denver, Bennington College, the Harvard Business School, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and North-western...
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by E. Durkheim
Book review - 5 pages - Sociology & social sciences
The subject of this essay is Emile Durkheim's book ?The Elementary Forms of the religious life'. Hence we will explain why and how E. Durkheim tries to find such elementary forms of religious life. We will first underline that this aim is not limited to Emile Durkheim's theory, as we...
Women, Prison and Crime
Book review - 7 pages - Sociology & social sciences
This book examines female institutions and the treatment of women inmates in the past and today. It focuses on why women are incarcerated, the different programs in prison available to them, crimes women commit, incarceration and crime rates compared to men, prison socialization, and how female...
Limited Options for Working Class Citizens Prompts Joining of the Military
Book review - 3 pages - Sociology & social sciences
“Military Mirrors Working-Class America” (2003) discusses the social makeup of the military servicemen enlisted in America. The authors, David M. Halbfinger and Steven A. Holmes (2003) point out that the majority of the American military is made up of low-to-middle class citizens. The...
Saqiyuk - Stories from the lives of three Inuit Women by Nancy Wachowich
Book review - 4 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Saqiyuq is a collection of stories from the lives of three Inuit women: Apphia, Rhoda and Sandra. It consists of biographies and accounts from these three generations. This book enables the reader to see the great evolution of the Inuit lifestyle during the twentieth century. The author, Nancy...
Walter Ong, orality and literacy
Book review - 3 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Walter Wong's Orality and Literacy provides the reader, who by definition is a member of the literate world, with insights into the rich oral cultures that spawned the chirographic (writing) and the typographic (print) cultures that followed. In a world steeped in literacy for many centuries,...
Book review: "Les Ethnies ont une histoire"
Book review - 7 pages - Sociology & social sciences
Les Ethnies ont une histoire, is a book which was written after a conference internationally organized in 1986 by the African research center. During this meeting, there were many African researchers along with the Europeans who assisted them. The main topic at the conference was "the historical...
"The innocent anthropologist" Notes from a mud hut - a book of Nigel Barley By Penguin Travel Library (1983), Penguin Books
Book review - 15 pages - Sociology & social sciences
A respectable anthropologist, British Museum's curator, Nigel Barley is yet distinguishable by two aspects from his eminent colleagues. First he chose for his thesis to study "Old English material in published and manuscript form" (11), involving the disapproval of many ‘purists' of the...
