Cultural Anthropology: Contemporary, Public, and Critical Readings helps students think anthropologically by introducing core concepts through engaging case studies. The majority of selections are contemporary pieces from public, critical, and applied anthropology. These timely readings will generate discussion among students regarding the value of an anthropological perspective in the modern world. While the selections represent a range of geographic and cultural areas, the book includes a high number of U.S.-based fieldwork examples so that students are inspired to think anthropologically "in their own backyards." Several case studies offer examples of anthropology in action, and special features throughout the text profile anthropological application through news stories ("In the News") and interviews ("Anthropology in Practice").

Keri Vacanti Brondo is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of International Studies at the University of Memphis. She is the author of Land Grab: Green Neoliberalism, Gender, and Garifuna Resistance in Honduras (2013).

To the Student
To the Instructor

Practicing Anthropology Today: Being Critically Applied and Publically Engaged

Part 1: Thinking Anthropologically
Introduction: Thinking Anthropologically
1.1 A Dispute in Donggo: Fieldwork and Ethnography by John Monaghan and Peter Just
1.2 Tricking and Tripping: Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDs by Claire E. Sterk
1.3 Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban
1.4 Maxwell's Demons: Disenchantment in the Field by Janet McIntosh
1.5 Is Native Anthropology Really Possible? by Takeyuki Tsuda
Ahnthropology in Practice: Presidential Profiles: Ashfra Ghani and Jim Yong Kim

Part 2: Communicating Culture: Language and Expressive Culture
Introduction: Communicating Culture: Language and Expressive Culture
2.1 Shakespeare in the Bush by Laura Bohannan
2.2 What Are You Laughing At? Assessing the "Racial" in U.S. Public Discourse by John Hartigan
2.3 Sex, Lies, and Conversation: Why is it so Hard for Men and Women to Talk to Each Other? by Deborah Tannen
2.4 Speaking Like a Minority: "FOB" Styles, Gender, and Racial Meanings Among Desi Teens in Silicon Valley by Shalini Shankar
2.5 Anything Can Happen on YouTube (or can it?): Endangered Language and New Media by Jillian Cavanaugh
Anthropology in Practice: Dr. Bernard Perley

Part 3: Belief Systems
Introduction: Belief Systems
3.1 Baseball Magic by George Glemch
3.2 "No Peace in the House": Witchcraft Accusations as an "Old Woman's Problem" in Ghana by Alexandra Crampton
3.3 The Politics of Righteousness: Race and Gender in Apostolic Pentecostalism by Judith Casselberry
3.4 Choosing Both Faith and Fun: Youth Negotiations of Moral Norms in South Beirut by Lara Deeb and Mona Harb
Anthropology in Practice: Dr. Tanya Luhrmann

Part 4: Marriage, Family, Gender, and Sexuality
Introduction: Marriage, Family, Gender, and Sexuality
4.1 When Brothers Take a Wife by Melvyn C. Goldstein
4.2 Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes
4.3 Hijra and Sadhin: Neither Man nor Woman in India by Serena Nanda
4.4 Virginity Testing as a Local Public Health Initiative: A 'Preventative Ritual' More Than a 'Diagnostic Measure' by Annette Wickström
In the News: Same Sex Marriage
Anthropology in Practice: Megan E. Springate

Part 5: Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Inequality
Introduction: Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Inequality
5.1 Can White Men Jump? Ethnicity, Genes, Culture, and Success by David Shenk
5.2 Maintaining Whiteness: The Fear of Others and Niceness by Setha Low
5.3 Intimate Apartheid and Drug Consumption among Racialized Bodies by Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg
5.4 Birthdays, Basketball, and Breaking Bread: Negotiating with Class in Contemporary Black America by John L. Jackson Jr.
In the News: Race, Racism, Police Brutality and Social Injustice
Anthropology in Practice: Dr. Raymond Codrington

Part 6: Medical Anthropology
Introduction: Medical Anthropology
6.1 An Anthropology of Structural Violence by Paul Farmer
6.2 Bad Biocitizens? Latinos and the US "Obesity Epidemic" by Susan Greenlaugh and Megan Carney
6.3 Democracy as Social Action: Home Birth, Midwives, and the Push for State Licensure by Tara Hefferan
6.4 The Politics of Reproduction: The Troubling Case of Nadya Suleman and Assisted Reproductive Technology by Dana-Ain Davis
In the News: The 2014 Ebola Response and Anthropology
Anthropology in Practice: Dr. Robert Hahn
Anthropology in Practice: Dr. Ippolytos Kalofonos

Part 7: Taste, Food, and Foodways
Introduction: Taste, Food, and Foodways
7.1 Eating Christmas in the Kalahari by Richard Borshay Lee
7.2 "Real Belizean Food": Building Local Identity in the Transnational Caribbean by Richard Wilk
7.3 Making the Market: Specialty Coffee, Generational Pitches and Papua New Guinea by Paige West
7.4 Migrant Farmworkers and the Pain of Picking by Seth Holmes
7.5 American Meat by Donald D. Stull
In the News: Foraged Food
Anthropology in Practice: Dr. Micah Trapp

Part 8: Environmental Anthropology
Introduction: Environmental Anthropology
8.1 Seeing Conservation through a Global Lens by Jim Igoe
8.2 Negotiating Land and Authority in Central Mozambique by Michael Walker
8.3 "If We Didn't Have Water": Black Women's Struggle for Urban Land Rights in Brazil by Keisha-Khan Perry
8.4 Gone the Bull of Winter? Contemplating Climate Change's Cultural Implications in Northeastern Siberia, Russia by Susan A. Crate
8.5 On the Mundane Significance of Bike Lanes and the Pursuit of Anthropology in the Here and Now by Luis Vivanco
In the News: BP Oil Disaster
Anthropology in Practice: Dr. Shirley Fiske
Anthropology in Practice: Fabiana Li

Part 9: Globalization, Development, and Culture
Introduction: Globalization, Development, and Culture
9.1 The Price of Progress by John H. Bodley
9.2 Being Indigenous in the 21st Century by Wilma Mankiller
9.3 The Making of Disaster by Vincanne Adams
9.4 Whose Development?: Service-Learning Abroad and Discourses on "Doing Good" by Natalie Bourdon
9.5 Housing Interests: Developing Community in a Globalizing City by Jacqueline Copeland-Carson
9.6 Re-working the Institution of waqf (Islamic trust) for the Financial Sustainability of Information Technology Schemes in Morocco by Hsain Ilahiane
Anthropology in Practice: Barbara Rose Johnston

Part 10: Violence, Conflict, and Mobility in the 21st Century
Introduction: Violence, Conflict, and Mobility in the 21st Century
10.1 Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving: Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others by Lila Abu-Lughod
10.2 Dispelling the Myths: Unaccompanied, Undocumented Minor and US Immigration Custody by Susan Terrio
10.3 The Non-National in Jordan: Statelessness as Structural Violence among Gaza Refugees in Jordan by Michael Perez
10.4 Living and Working in a War Zone: An Applied Anthropologist in Afghanistan by Patricia Omidian
In the News: Human Terrain
Anthropology in Practice: Laura McNamara
In the News: Organ Watch

Part 11: Media and Visual Anthropology
Introduction: Media and Visual Anthropology
11.1 Everyday Second Life by Tom Boellstorff
11.2 #Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States by Yarimar Bonilla and Johnathan Rosa
11.3 Policing Childhood through The Learning Channels' Toddlers in Tiaras by Andrea Freidus
11.4 Bootlegged: Unauthorized Circulation and the Dilemmas of Collaboration in the Digital Age by Noelle Stout
In the News: Defacing Native Rock Art: Not "Cool"
Anthropology in Practice: Neera Singh
Anthropology in Practice: Karen Nakamura

Part 12: Careers in Engaged and Applied Anthropology
Introduction: Careers in Engaged and Applied Anthropology
12.1 So, You Want to be an Anthropologist? by Carole Ellick and Joe Watkins
12.2 Moving Past Public Anthropology and Doing Collaborative Research by Luke Lassiter
12.3 Expert Witness: Notes Toward Revisiting the Politics of Listening by Asale Angel-Ajani
12.4 The Future of Practice: Anthropology and the Grand Challenge by Riall Nolan
In the News: Corporate Anthropology
Anthropology in Practice: Melissa Cefkin