VARIETIES OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

by Nancy J. Erickson Lamar, Bartholomew Dean

This collection of articles provides an introduction to the astonishing variety of ways in which people and social groups organize their lives, conceptualize their cultural worlds, and participate in daily living. By assessing the tremendous diversity of cultural experience found across the globe, the readings in this text serve to demonstrate the vital role an anthropological sensibility plays in promoting tolerance and human well being. Well over a century of academic anthropology has demonstrated that cultural patterns shape perceptions of subjective events, while the collective sum of individual human experience is itself constitutive of the very stuff of cultural life. Anthropology helps us to enlarge the currently held and always too constricting view of humanity.

260 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006