Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction

Peter Just · John Monaghan

Jun 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Eric Jason Martin

About this audiobook

"If you want to know what anthropology is, look at what anthropologists do," write the authors of Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction. This engaging overview of the field combines an accessible account of some of the discipline's guiding principles and methodology with abundant examples and illustrations of anthropologists at work. Peter Just and John Monaghan begin by discussing anthropology's most important contributions to modern thought: its investigation of culture as a distinctively human characteristic, its doctrine of cultural relativism, and its methodology of fieldwork and ethnography. Drawing on examples from their own fieldwork in Indonesia and Mesoamerica, they examine specific ways in which social and cultural anthropology have advanced our understanding of human society and culture. Including an assessment of anthropology's present position, and a look forward to its likely future, Social and Cultural Anthropology will make fascinating listening for anyone curious about this social science.

About the author

Peter Just was educated at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania, and has taught at Williams College since 1988. He has conducted field research among the Dou Donggo and Javanese in Indonesia and lobster fishermen in Maine, USA.

John Monaghan is professor in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has carried out fieldwork among the Maya of Guatemala, the Mixtec of Mexico, and the Kalanguya of the Philippines.