Reading Cultural Anthropology: An Ethnographic Introduction

Edited by Pamela Stern

Oxford University Press, 2015

This is a collection of 22 recent anthropology articles abridged and annotated to make them accessible to first and second year undergraduates to be used in first or second year Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology courses. The emphasis is on contemporary sociocultural anthropology as practiced in Canada today. Half of the entries present a Canadian people or situation. The remaining articles present peoples and events outside of Canada, with most authored by a Canadian anthropologist. The selections have been chosen to reflect the geographic, thematic, theoretical and ethnographic diversity common to the pedagogy of introductory sociocultural anthropology courses in Canada today. The selections were chosen to reflect the diversity of current Canadian anthropological research as well as to show how sociocultural anthropologists use anthropological theories and methods to address contemporary questions. Topics include fieldwork, language, immigration, embodiment, resource extraction, protest, environmental justice, globalization, labour segmentation, family formation, tourism, gender, autoethnography, national identity, time discipline, and social control. Each of the articles is presented with an introduction, a bulleted list of key points, suggested readings, and critical thinking questions.