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Culture as Given, Culture as Choice

Second Edition

 

Dirk van der Elst

 

This creatively written introductory text is full of insights about how humanity’s defining adaptation has evolved and functions. What makes van der Elst’s approach uniquely engaging is his focus on the implications of technology, the ways humans organize themselves, and value assumptions for individuals’ life chances and choices. He confronts students with the need to question their enculturated biases, instills appreciation of the origins of culture in biology and language, and explains such topics as the varieties of family and marriage types, and the rise of inequality. Extending the thrust of the popular first edition, this totally revised second edition greatly expands the discussion of language, contains a new chapter that demystifies kinship nomenclatures, presents lively vignettes that reinforce the book’s valuable insights, and includes thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter.

Asking and Listening

 

$23.95 list, 308 pages

10-digit ISBN: 1-57766-269-5

13-digit ISBN: 978-1-57766-269-3

© 2003

Instructor's Manual available

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“I am really excited about the van der Elst text. He has renewed my faith that an introductory cultural anthropology course is an intellectual mind-blower and a MUST to fully complete an undergraduate liberal arts education. His personal teaching style comes through his writing and enriches the subject matter unlike the usual dry theory, history of the field, and compendium of cultural facts found in most introductory textbooks. Whether the student agrees with him or not, they know where he came from and where he stands, and so they are stimulated to respond. I am convinced that writing in the first person engages students in a relationship to the subject matter through relating to the writer. This text does not talk about cultural anthropology as concerning “those people over there” with a few ethnographic examples borrowed from sociology or urban anthropology thrown in to demonstrate relevance. Van der Elst really brings the contributions of the field home to North American students. Most of all, I am looking forward to every class I teach because the students are talking to me instead of acting like wallpaper.” — Christina Milner-Rose, Santa Rosa Junior College
 

Table of Contents

 

1. Beginning with Sex: Why Males Exist and How Women Are Unique
2. The Other Double Helix: From Reflex to Culture
3. How Your Culture Works on You: Perception and Behavior as Cultural Artifacts
4.  In the Beginning Was the Word: Language
5. The Marrying Kind: Kinship I—Affiliation

6. Bloodline Logics: Kinship II—Reckoning
7. The Shaft, and How You Got It: Inequality
8. If It Works, It’s Obsolete: Technology and Culture Change
9. The Unquenchable Thirst: Knowing
10. A Reason to Live Worth Dying For: Believing
11. Futures and Alternatives: Cultural Trends
12. Prepping for the Third Millennium: Improving Your Odds