An accessible introductory texbook which covers not only the classical topics of cultural anthropology - economics, politics, kinship, religion, language, gender - but also seriously engages with contemporary cultural processes and problems like nationalism, ethnic conflict, consumption, development, popular culture, cultural tourism and cultural movements like globalization and fundamentalism.
Prof. David Eller is a cultural anthropologist who has conducted field research among Aboriginal societies in Australia and now teaches anthropology in Denver, Colorado. His recent college textbook Introducing Anthropology of Religion is being hailed as the most significant introduction to the scientific study of religion in a decade. His previous AAP book Natural Atheism showed him to be as good a philosopher as scientist. Now we see he is equally skilled as a linguist and semanticist and can show that for knowledgeable atheists "atheism" means more than the absence of god-beliefs: it is the absence (indeed the rejection) of belief altogether.
Interesting enough I suppose but a lot of it really wasn’t engaging enough. Anthropology turned into a pretty dull subject for me, my least favourite by far. There was also a lot of unnecessary stuff, reading the super short summaries compared to the long chapter just showed how little actually relevant stuff there was and that was annoying, ended up skimming through the later chapters I had to read for uni. Wasn’t horrible but, wouldn’t exactly recommend. I also have no desire to keep this like I have some of my other textbooks.