San Antonio College Library

"Each essay in this book starts with a question posed by individual ethnographic experience and then goes on to frame this question in a broader, comparative context. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Questions of Anthropology presents an introduction to the purpose and value of Anthropology today."--Jacket.

In Killer Apes, Naked Apes, and Just Plain Nasty People, anthropologist Richard J. Perry delivers a scathing critique of determinism. Exploring the historical context and enduring popularity of the movement over the past century and a half, he debunks the facile and the reductionist thinking of so many popularizers of biological determinism while considering why biological explanations have resonated in ways that serve to justify deeply conservative...

A contemporary Marxian philosopher discusses the nature of man himself as the crucial element which must be changed if socialism is to succeed in a modern industrial society.

Who has the authority to define a culture-especially if people from that culture are denied the opportunity to engage in the scholarly discourse of defining themselves? Is there a politics of knowledge? This program examines these questions through a look at the career of pioneering anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits. A son of Jewish immigrants, Herskovits played a decisive role in shaping modern African-American identities. He established the...