Books about Biocultural from Amazon.com

Breastfeeding is a biocultural phenomenon: not only is it a biological process, but it is also a culturally determined behavior As such, it has important implications for understanding the past, present, and future condition of our species. In general, scholars have emphasized either the biological or the cultural aspects of breastfeeding, but not both. As biological anthropologists the editors of this volume feel that an evolutionary approach combining both aspects is essential. One of the goals of their book is to incorporate data from diverse fields to present a more holistic view of breastfeeding, through the inclusion of research from a number of different disciplines, including biological and social/cultural anthropology, nutrition, and medicine. The resulting book, presenting the complexity of the issues surrounding very basic decisions about infant nutrition, will fill a void in the existing literature on breastfeeding..
Price: $31.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Supernatural as Natural examines ways in which our religious beliefs and experiences are products of our biological make-up. This book takes as its fundamental starting point the insight that humans are animals whose primary means of adapting to the world is culture, including religion..
Price: $58.42 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Human biology encompasses the central branches of the lifesciences (anatomy, physiology, genetics, and biochemistry) as the basis for comparative, evolutionary, and cross-cultural studies of human populations Human Biology: An Evolutionary and Biocultural Perspective reviews evolutionary, cultural, ecological, and genetic perspectives, and then explains how these data are used to reconstruct theories of human population, human adaptation to climate, infectious diseases, and food availability. World-renowned authors examine the human life span, including aging and the influence of biological and behavioral factors on growth variation. Although human biology relies heavily upon an evolutionary perspective to explain variation through space and time, it also regards the effect that human culture has had on our biology as crucial. This comprehensive introduction to the field of human biology covers genetic variation, variation related to climate, infectious and noninfectious diseases, growth, and demography. In addition, Human Biology: An Evolutionary and Biocultural Perspective is designed to maximize reader-friendliness, with glossary terms highlighted within the text and chapter summaries. Human Biology also includes:
Boxed text within the chapters, which clearly explains the methodology used by fieldworkers, laboratory researchers, and statisticians Numerous illustrations, summaries, key references, and a thorough glossary
This extensive guide to human biology is an essential resource for all professionals and academics in the fields of human biology, genetics, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and population biology..
Price: $80.52 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Prosthesis—pointing to an addition, replacement, extension, enhancement—has become something of an all-purpose metaphor for the interactions of body and technology Concerned with cybernetics, transplant technology, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, among other cultural and scientific developments, "the prosthetic" conjures up a posthuman condition. In response to this, the 13 original essays in The Prosthetic Impulse reassert the phenomenological, material, and embodied nature of prosthesis without dismissing its metaphorical potential. They examine the historical and conceptual edge between the human and the posthuman—between flesh and its accompanying technologies. Rather than tracking the transformation of one into the other, these essays address this borderline and the delicate dialectical situation in which it places us. Concentrating on this edge, the collection demonstrates how the human has been technologized and technology humanized.

The eclectic approach taken by The Prosthetic Impulse draws on disciplines ranging from gender studies, philosophy, and visual culture to psychoanalysis, cybertheory, and phenomenology. The first section, "Carnality: Between Phenomenology and the Biocultural" concentrates on the organic, describing a body that, by its very materiality, is always and already prosthetic. The second section, "Assembling: Internalization. Externalization," considers the technological qualities and peculiarities of prosthesis, raising questions about the ways in which film, photography, AI, drawing, and literature—representation itself—can be situated within the framework of a prosthetic discourse. Taken together, the essays suggest that prosthesis is material as well as metaphorical. "It is just a matter of pondering where the inelegant edges lie," the editors write, "and living them most wonderfully.".
Price: $18.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Anthropology, with its dual emphasis on biology and culture, is--or should be--the discipline most suited to the study of the complex interactions between these aspects of our lives. Unfortunately, since the early decades of this century, biological and cultural anthropology have grown distinct, and a holistic vision of anthropology has suffered.
This book brings culture and biology back together in new and refreshing ways. Directly addressing earlier criticisms of biological anthropology, Building a New Biocultural Synthesis concerns how culture and political economy affect human biology--e.g., people's nutritional status, the spread of disease, exposure to pollution--and how biological consequences might then have further effects on cultural, social, and economic systems.
Contributors to the volume offer case studies on health, nutrition, and violence among prehistoric and historical peoples in the Americas; theoretical chapters on nonracial approaches to human variation and the development of critical, humanistic and political ecological approaches in biocultural anthropology; and explorations of biological conditions in contemporary societies in relationship to global changes.
Building a New Biocultural Synthesis will sharpen and enrich the relevance of anthropology for understanding a wide variety of struggles to cope with and combat persistent human suffering. It should appeal to all anthropologists and be of interest to sister disciplines such as nutrition and sociology.
Alan H. Goodman is Professor of Anthropology, Hampshire College. Thomas L. Leatherman is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of South Carolina.
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Price: $25.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Intended as the primary text for introductory courses on medical anthropology, this text integrates human biological data relevant to health and disease with both evolutionary theory and the social environments that more often than not produce major challenges to health and survival. Students who take this fastest-growing anthropology course come from a variety of disciplines (anthropology, biology, especially pre-med students, and health sciences, especially), so the text does not assume anything beyond a basic high-school level familiarity with human biology and anthropology. In addition to being the only current text that takes a biocultural approach, it provides a state-of-the-science review of selected topics and looks at the potential application of the biocultural anthropological approach to health interventions/prevention. Among the topics covered are nutrition, infectious disease, stress, reproductive health, behavioral disease, aging, race/racism and health, mental health, and healers and healing..
Price: $33.83 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Based on qualitative and quantitative studies in the United States and Puerto Rico, this book demonstrates the significant effects of patients' and health providers'ethnic and cultural backgrounds on the chronic pain experience. A biocultural model from medical anthropologyis used to contribute to a better understanding of the interaction of biology and culture in human pain perception. In the studies described, the factors most often associated with successful adjustment to chronic pain are not biomedical but cultural, psychosocial, or the cultural, political, and economic contexts of medical care, compensation and rehabilitation. Truly multi-disciplinary chronic pain treatment programs must be staffed by providers knowledgeable in cultural relativity and cultural self-awareness and should integrate a cultural assessment with an individualized rehabilitation and biopsychosocial treatment plan for each patient..
Price: $19.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]