Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2015 - Social & Behavioral Sciences — Anthropology

In this tour de force of scholarly contributions addressing the burgeoning field(s) at the intersection of anthropology and business, editors Denny and Sunderland provide lively, insightful, and well-crafted introductions to the book as a whole and to each of the five essay sections.  The 43 individual remarkably focused, well-written, and current essays, all of which contain bibliographic references and are authored by anthropologically engaged researchers involved with business, cover a myriad of topics, including theory, methodology, fieldwork, disciplinary boundaries, product design, market research, the quantitative/qualitative divide, and more.  The contributions also strive to be international in scope, ranging from North America to Europe and East Asia.  While at least one essay in the handbook gives voice to the perennial issue of the ethics surrounding anthropology in businessi.e., lack of control over data generated, abetting big business and its destructive influences, and even false representationthe collection as a whole is unapologetic about the value and utility of anthropologys engagement in business research.  There is a helpful index followed by a contributor list at the end of the volume.  This handbook is essential for graduate programs in anthropology, business, and design and highly recommended for university libraries.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

This second edition of Lancys The Anthropology of Childhood(1st ed., 2008)is an excellent addition to any library.  It is written squarely in the anthropological tradition of comparison: between contemporary societies, between social and biological explanations, between the past and the present.  As such, it effectively challenges all of these boundaries while still providing a model for comparison between neontocracies and gerontocracies.  Although anchored in evolutionary approaches, the book does not stint on the ethnographic resources.  In fact, its strength is its encyclopedic attention to the work of scholars (not just anthropologists) on childhood.  This work will be useful for any of the disciplines concerned with studies of the young.  Lancy (emer., anthropology, Utah State Univ.) includes attention to child labor, adoption and fosterage, schooling, play, gamesmanship, cognition and thought, apprenticeship, and street kids, and his coverage stretches from infancy to adolescence.  Lancy intended this as a reference volume, and it is.  The second edition has allowed him to flesh out topics and resources to make this a readable, comprehensive, and critical reference that will stand for some time.  Graduates and undergraduates, faculty and researchers alike.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.

In describing what can typically be considered a tedious and rather monotonous aspect of the archaeological process, Agbe-Daviess cataloging and classification analysis of Colonial tobacco pipes is quite fascinating and groundbreaking.  From excavation to the lab, the author's theory of race, history, and ethnography of the people who used the pipes is compelling and thoughtful.  Agbe-Davies (Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) combines her own personal thoughts and experiences within the narrative to give readers a glimpse of the actual process of cataloging and classification as well as the formal analysis, making her book almost ethnographic in nature.  For those with experience working in the lab, her insights are quite funny and easily identifiable.  The author sets a new and impressive standard for classification and cataloging analysis that goes beyond mere data entry and storing of artifacts for later use.  Chapter 5 is a brilliant example of her sound and thoroughly reviewed historical and socioeconomic analysis theories.  This work is a terrific companion to Georgia L. Foxs The Archaeology of Smoking and Tobacco (CH, Jun'15, 52-5418), as it goes into more detail about the implications of race based on the analysis of clay tobacco pipes.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

The prehistory of warfare has long dominated anthropology and the social sciences, and recent studies thereby mirror the conflict-ridden times of today.  Although prevailing conflict theories rely disproportionately on cross-cultural ethnographies of sedentary 20th-century agricultural populations and complex chiefdoms, social complexity clearly predominates as a relative measure for gauging the so-called long and short chronologies of war.  In a formidable departure from the status quo, Allen and Jones are to be applauded for assembling these 2013 conference papers featuring cutting-edge scholarship by an impressive cadre of interdisciplinary scholars.  The volume's significance cannot be overstated, particularly given that contemporary culture wars (centered on the pacification of the human past) have had an inordinate impact on the study of indigenous conflict and its consequences.  The 19 chapters and 26 contributors in this veritable tour de force carry the day by way of their integration of state-of-the-art approaches for assessing ethnicity, sexual selection, carrying capacity, climate, demography, and the archaeological and forensic evidence required to effectively evaluate and/or validate evidence for the long chronology of warfare in hunter-gatherer populations.Summing Up: Essential. All academic levels/libraries.