Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives

by Jack David Eller

Cultural Global Forces, Local Lives is an exceptionally clear and readable introduction that helps students understand the application of anthropological concepts to the contemporary world and everyday life. It provides thorough treatment of key subjects such as colonialism and post-colonialism, ethnicity, the environment, cultural change, economic development, and globalization. This fourth edition has a fresh thematic focus on the future, with material relating to planning, decision-making, design and invention, hope, and waiting. More space is devoted to contemporary topics, and there is new coverage of subjects ranging from white nationalism, right-wing populism, and natural disasters to surgical training, hacker conferences, and the gig economy. Each chapter contains a rich variety of case studies that have been updated throughout. The book includes a number of features to support student learning, Additional resources are provided via a comprehensive companion website.

Genres: Anthropology, Science, Nonfiction, Textbooks, School

418 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2009

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Lexie · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Trinity]

Read for Michael Rodgers Anth 201 course. Cultural Anthropology

[Jaime T · Rating 2 out of 5]

ANT100 yeee. Boring but had some interesting parts. Read it and got the job done.