Free Anthropology Books
Anthony Small
LinkedIn and 3rd parties use essential and non-essential cookies to provide, secure, analyze and improve our Services, and to show you relevant ads (including professional and job ads) on and off LinkedIn. Learn more in our Cookie Policy.
I work as a corporate anthropologist, doing culture assessments, digging up the stories of organizations and guiding (culture) change processes. Quite often people ask me how I ended up in that field, and whether I got any advice in terms of courses/ training or books.
Recently @Veronica Reyero Meal shared a picture of a pile of 'books-to-read'. This gave me the idea to share a list of books that helped me develop as a corporate anthropologist and inspire me. Most of them I've read, however some are on a pile next to my bed :-)
I'm very aware that this list is by no means complete nor exhaustive. So feel invited to share other titles, so I'll be able to update this post regularly with books I missed so far or relevant new titles.
I have an incredible amount of respect for Professor Tanya Smith. She does research that is very like my own. She has done some incredible work, for instance, taking Neanderthal teeth into a synchrotron and zapping them with a hugely powerful laser beam to see inside and reconstruct the daily growth patterns of another human species that lived tens of thousands of years ago. Her research is super exciting and on the biting edge of what dental anthropology can do.
Some discoveries are made in the traditional way. Naledi is a rather fabulous story. Some cavers went down very deep into the Rising Star cave system in South Africa. They were in contact with an anthropology professor who had asked them to look out for anything interesting. After one of the men went through an 11-inch gap, dislocating both of his shoulders, they discovered some hominid fossils. There was a campaign with live video, and some very brave anthropologists entering this cave system, and they came out with an incredible treasure trove of an entirely new species that we had no idea existed, Homo Naledi.
Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]
Brenna Hassett is a biological anthropologist and archaeologist whose career, first at the Natural History Museum, London and now at University College London, has taken her around the globe, researching the past using the clues left behind in human remains. Her most recent book is Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood (Bloomsbury, 2022).
David Zahl articulates our approach in life as a difference in anthropology, what he calls low anthropology and high anthropology in his recent publication, Low Anthropology: the Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others published by Brazos Press. Low anthropology you might think of as a chastened view of humanity, i.e., realism. A realism of humans takes seriously the nature of sin, fallibility, and weaknesses even after conversion. In traditional categories, humans are creatures (even if special creatures in the image of God) and they are not God or gods, despite what the Greeks and Romans thought. Neither can we become gods no matter how hard we try. We have weaknesses and in the right place, at the moment of weakness, when our guard is down, those weaknesses might just shine through as they have before and probably will again at some point.
We are all anthropologists at the end of the day and what we believe about humans matters to how we look at life in general. Zahl invites us to consider a grace-rich conception of humanity in light of our inflated anthropologies.
Joshua Ryan Farris, Rev, Ph.D, He is Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellow at the University of Bochum, Germany, 2022-2023; Mundelein Seminary Chester and Margaret Paluch Professor, 2020-2021, March 2020 Center of Theological Inquiry; Director of Trinity School of Theology; International Advisor, Perichoresis, The Theological Journal of Emanuel University; Associate Editor, Philosophical and Theological Studies for the Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies; Associate Editor, European Journal of Philosophy of Religion.
At the end of 2015 Allegra launched a virtual survey among junior and senior anthropologists in order to select the 30 essential books in anthropology, a list of unmissable readings that have significantly influenced humanities and social sciences debates as well as popular knowledge and Western thought more broadly.
The list is also awakening justified criticism: it is very white and male, and barely incorporates any works after the post modern turn including works by indigenous anthropologists, inter-sectionalism and feminist critiques. How could that happen, at Allegra, with our determined criticism both of the ethnocentrism of our field as well as its male dominance?!
Shared Voices is a student-centered cultural anthropology mini textbook built with an equity lens. We are excited to share this with you all. This book attempts to address the lack of current, reliable, and relevant resources for introductory anthropology courses that center equity and anti-racism.
The contents of this book were developed under an Open Textbooks Pilot grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), U.S. Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.
Asking and answering questions about what culture entails and examines the fundamental properties and intertwining nature of language and culture. This text explores linguistic relativity, lexical differences among languages and intercultural communication, including high and low contexts.
Anthropology is the study of humanity, in all its biological and cultural aspects, past and present. It is a four-field discipline comprised of biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology. The focus of this book is biological anthropology, which explores who we are from biological, evolutionary, and adaptive perspectives.
Where did we come from? What were our ancestors like? Why do we differ from other animals? How do scientists trace and construct our evolutionary history? The History of Our Tribe: Hominini provides answers to these questions and more. The book explores the field of paleoanthropology past and present. Beginning over 65 million years ago, Welker traces the evolution of our species, the environments and selective forces that shaped our ancestors, their physical and cultural adaptations, and the people and places involved with their discovery and study. It is designed as a textbook for a course on Human Evolution but can also serve as an introductory text for relevant sections of courses in Biological or General Anthropology or general interest. It is both a comprehensive technical reference for relevant terms, theories, methods, and species and an overview of the people, places, and discoveries that have imbued paleoanthropology with such fascination, romance, and mystery.
We are delighted to bring to you this novel textbook, a collection of chapters on the essential topics in cultural anthropology. Different from other introductory textbooks, this book is an edited volume with each chapter written by a different author. Each author has written from their experiences working as an anthropologist and that personal touch makes for an accessible introduction to cultural anthropology.
Native Peoples of North America is intended to be an introductory text about the Native peoples of North America (primarily the United States and Canada) presented from an anthropological perspective. As such, the text is organized around anthropological concepts such as language, kinship, marriage and family life, political and economic organization, food getting, spiritual and religious practices, and the arts. Prehistoric, historic and contemporary information is presented. Each chapter begins with an example from the oral tradition that reflects the theme of the chapter. The text includes suggested readings, videos, and classroom activities.
The Anthropology Book Forum was awarded the 2022 GAD New Directions Award (Group Category) which calls attention to the myriad ways anthropologists are expanding anthropological perspectives in the twenty-first century.
This summer we will begin merging the Anthropology Book Forum with the Anthropology Review Database, a previous journal that published over 3,000 reviews of books, software and films relevant to anthropological audiences.
We are looking for reviewers to review books in languages other than English. If you have a book in mind, or are interested in providing a review in a language other than English, please get in touch!
Open Access, as defined in the Berlin Declaration, means unrestricted, online access to peer-reviewed, scholarly research papers and articles for reading and productive re-use, not impeded by any financial, organizational, legal or technical barriers.
"A remarkably perceptive, funny, subversive, and nourishing book that hasn't left my mind since I read it. David Zahl shows that transformation--and the kind of hope we can actually rely on--isn't to be found in the oppressive perfectionism of self-improvement but rather in accepting the liberating truth that we're all flawed, finite, prone to overconfidence and messing things up, and in need of forgiveness."
c80f0f1006