Anthropological Abstracts (AA) is a reference journal published once a year in print, but also under www.anthropology-online.de and announces - in English language - most publications in the field of cultural/social anthropology published in the German language area (Austria, Germany, Switzerland). Since many of these publications have been written in German, and most German publications are not included in the major English language abstracting services, Anthropological Abstracts offers a convenient source of information for anthropologists and social scientists in general who do not read German, to become aware of anthropological research and publications in German-speaking countries. Included are journal articles, monographs, anthologies, exhibition catalogs, yearbooks, etc. Most abstracts are authored by the editor, others are specified accordingly. This journal is edited by Ulrich Oberdiek since 1993 (formerly: Abstracts in German Anthropology; since 2002: Anthropological Abstracts).

In this compact volume two of anthropology’s most influential theorists, Paul Rabinow and George E. Marcus, engage in a series of conversations about the past, present, and future of anthropological knowledge, pedagogy, and practice. James D. Faubion joins in several exchanges to facilitate and elaborate the dialogue, and Tobias Rees moderates the discussions and contributes an introduction and an afterword to the volume. Most of the conversations are focused on contemporary challenges to how anthropology understands its subject and how ethnographic research projects are designed and carried out. Rabinow and Marcus reflect on what remains distinctly anthropological about the study of contemporary events and processes, and they contemplate productive new directions for the field. The two converge in Marcus’s emphasis on the need to redesign pedagogical practices for training anthropological researchers and in Rabinow’s proposal of collaborative initiatives in which ethnographic research designs could be analyzed, experimented with, and transformed. Both Rabinow and Marcus participated in the milestone collection Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Published in 1986, Writing Culture catalyzed a reassessment of how ethnographers encountered, studied, and wrote about their subjects. In the opening conversations of Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary, Rabinow and Marcus take stock of anthropology’s recent past by discussing the intellectual scene in which Writing Culture intervened, the book’s contributions, and its conceptual limitations. Considering how the field has developed since the publication of that volume, they address topics including ethnography’s self-reflexive turn, scholars’ increased focus on questions of identity, the Public Culture project, science and technology studies, and the changing interests and goals of students. Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary allows readers to eavesdrop on lively conversations between anthropologists who have helped to shape their field’s recent past and are deeply invested in its future.

Why should anthropologists draw? The answer proposed in this groundbreaking volume is that drawing uniquely brings together ways of making, observing and describing. In twelve chapters, a team of authors from the UK, Europe, North America and Australia explore the potential of a graphic anthropology to change the way we think about creativity and perception, to grasp the dynamics of improvisatory practice, and to refocus the study of material culture from ready-made objects onto the flows of materials involved in the generation of things. Drawing on expertise in fields ranging from craftwork, martial arts, and dance to observational cinema and experimental film, they ask what it means to follow materials, to learn movements and to draw lines. Along the way, they contribute to key debates on what happens in making, the relation between design and performance, how people acquire bodily skills, the place of movement in human self-awareness, the relation between walking and imagination, and the perception of time. This book will appeal not just to social, cultural and visual anthropologists but to archaeologists and students of material culture, as well as to scholars across the arts, humanities and social sciences with interests in perception, creativity and material culture.

This book demonstrates the promise of Christology for developing Scottish theologian T. F. Torrance’s theological anthropology. T. F. Torrance’s Christological Anthropology: Discerning Humanity in Christ engages with several key themes in Torrance’s theological anthropology and considers how each one of these topics—anthropological method, the metaphysics of human nature, the imago Dei, personhood, vocation, human destiny—can be further developed in light of Christ. Christopher Woznicki argues that Christology not only holds promise for the task of developing Torrance’s insights on humanity but also for developing a constructive account of humanity. The volume is valuable reading for scholars of T. F. Torrance’s theology and for those who are interested in the role of Christology in theological anthropology.

The study of salt from an anthropological perspective provides a holistic view of its role in the evolution of human communities. Studies from around the world, ranging from prehistory to modern times, are here organized into 6 sections: theory, archaeology, history, ethnography/ ethnoarchaeology/ethnohistory, linguistics, and literature.

This book provides a comprehensive review of hunter-gatherer studies, undertaking detailed regional and thematic case-studies that span the archaeology, history and anthropology of hunter gatherers, concluding with an in-depth review of the main opportunities, research questions, and moral obligations that lie ahead.

Quarterly. References to journal articles, miscellaneous papers, and books, arranged under sections on archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, and physical anthropology. Cross references. Cross index.

Anthropology is a disciplined inquiry into the conditions and potentials of human life. Generations of theorists, however, have expunged life from their accounts, treating it as the mere output of patterns, codes, structures or systems variously defined as genetic or cultural, natural or social. Building on his classic work The Perception of the Environment, Tim Ingold sets out to restore life to where it should belong, at the heart of anthropological concern. Being Alive ranges over such themes as the vitality of materials, what it means to make things, the perception and formation of the ground, the mingling of earth and sky in the weather-world, the experiences of light, sound and feeling, the role of storytelling in the integration of knowledge, and the potential of drawing to unite observation and description. Our humanity, Ingold argues, does not come ready-made but is continually fashioned in our movements along ways of life. Starting from the idea of life as a process of wayfaring, Ingold presents a radically new understanding of movement, knowledge and description as dimensions not just of being in the world, but of being alive to what is going on there.