Recommended Reading
Some suggested reading materials
Introductions to social anthropology
Buy Now- An Introduction to Social Anthropology: Sharing Our Worlds
-
“A lovely, accessible and engaging introductory book. Joy’s friendly style, together with simple side-bar definitions of key terms, personal accounts and useful collections of additional resources, including films and novels, at the end of each chapter makes this an excellent gateway to the world of anthropology.” Gemma Jones, RAI Education Officer (2005-8).
Buy Now- Introducing Anthropology
-
A cartoon-style, very simple introduction to anthropology.
Buy Now- Small Places, Large Issues: an introduction to social and cultural anthropology
-
A great introductory text book for the study of anthropology. Often used on undergraduate courses.
Buy Now- What is Anthropology?
-
Anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen shows how anthropology is a revolutionary way of thinking about the human world. Good for students, but also for those who have never encountered anthropology before.
Introductions to biological anthropology
Buy Now- Biological Anthropology: The Natural History of Humankind
-
Intended for undergraduate introductory physical anthropology, biological anthropology or human origins courses.
Buy Now- Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years
-
Life isn't fair--here's why: Since 1500, Europeans have, for better and worse, called the tune that the world has danced to. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond explains the reasons why things worked out that way.
Buy Now- Introduction to Physical Anthropology
-
This book is easy to understand, colourful and has all the information you need to gain the basic knowledge of physical anthropology.
Ethnographies
Buy Now- An Anthropologist in Japan: Glimpses of Life in the Field
-
A highly personal narrative from the perspective of an anthropologist studying life in Japan. This is not an ethnography as such but rather an insight into how one is produced and what it feels like to live and work in a different culture.
Buy Now- Songs at the River's Edge: Stories from a Bangladeshi Village
-
Part autobiography, part travelogue, part anthropological study, this is an account of a young anthropologist living in a Muslim Bangladeshi village for 18 months.
Buy Now- The Sport of Kings: Kinship, Class and Thoroughbred Breeding in Newmarket
-
The Sport of Kings is an ethnography of the British racing industry based upon two years of participant observation in Newmarket, the international headquarters of flat racing.
Buy Now- Veiled Sentiments: Honour and Poetry in a Bedouin Society
-
Studies the oral lyric poetry of the Bedouins of the Western Desert of Egypt for its reflections on attitudes toward honor, sentiment, Bedouin life, and the place of women in their society.
Books by lecturers running workshops at last year’s London Anthropology
Buy Now- Avebury: Biography of a Landscape
-
This book concerns itself with the World heritage site of the Avebury stone circle and its surrounding landscape.
Buy Now- Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture
-
The emergence of human culture is generally traced to the development of a social order in which males hunted large game animals and females had access to the meat. This book presents a new theory of how this culture originated.
Buy Now- Highland Homecomings: Genealogy and Heritage Tourism in the Scottish Diaspora
-
The first full-length ethnographic study of its kind, "Highland Homecomings" examines the role of place, ancestry and territorial attachment in the context of a modern age characterized by mobility and rootlessness.
Buy Now- Homo Britannicus: The Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain
-
Homo Britannicus tells the epic history of life in Britain, from man's very first footsteps to the present day. Drawing on all the latest evidence and techniques of investigation, Chris Stringer describes times when Britain was so tropical that man lived alongside hippos and sabre tooth tiger.
Buy Now- Pacific Pattern
-
Lavishly illustrated throughout with a rare combination of contemporary, archival and museum images, Pacific Pattern takes us on a spectacular journey through the history of the Pacific and the myriad ways in which its peoples weave, bind, knit, plait, rub and stamp patterns of astonishing creativity.
Buy Now- Sport, Identity and Ethnicity
-
Until now sport has received little serious attention from anthropologists. In this first general book on the anthropology of sport, the contributors look at how different sports are used by a wide variety of peoples to express, manipulate and negotiate their identities.
