MHHE - Product Details

Description

On Being Different provides an up-to-date, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary account of diversity and multiculturalism in the United States and Canada. Kottak and Kozaitis clarify essential issues, themes, and topics in the study of diversity, including ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. The book also presents an original theory of multiculturalism, showing how human agency and culture work to organize and change society. The authors use rich and varied ethnographic examples, from North America and abroad, to help students apply the material to their own lives, and thus gain a better understanding of diversity and multiculturalism.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Culture

3. From Territory to Identity

4. The Multicultural Society

5. Ethnicity

6. Race: Its Social Construction

7. Race: Its Biological Dimensions

8. Religion

9. Gender

10. Sexual Orientation

11. Age and Generation

12. Bodies and Fitness

13. Class

14. Where We Live

15. Speech

16. Family Background

17. Conclusion

About the Authors

Conrad Phillip Kottak (A.B. Columbia, 1963; Ph.D. Columbia, 1966) is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1968. In 1991 he was honored for his teaching by the University and the state of Michigan. In 1992 he received an excellence in teaching award from the College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts of the University of Michigan. In 1999 the America Anthropological Association awarded Professor Kottak the AAA/Mayfield Award for Excellence in the Undergraduate Teaching of Anthropology.

Professor Kottak has done fieldwork in cultural anthropology in Brazil (since 1962), Madagascar (since 1966), and the United States. Conrad Kottak's articles have appeared in academic journals including American Anthropologist, Journal of Anthropological Research, American Ethnologist, Ethnology, Human Organization, and Luso-Brazilian Review. He has also written for more popular journals, including Transaction/SOCIETY, Natural History, Psychology Today, and General Anthropology.

In current research projects, Kottak and his colleagues have investigated the emergence of ecological awareness in Brazil, the social context of deforestation in Madagascar, and popular participation in economic development planning in northeastern Brazil.

Recently, Kottak was inducted to The National Academy of Sciences. This is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare.

Kathryn A. Kozaitis is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Georgia State University, and holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Anthropology at Emory University. She received her Ph.D. in Social Work and Anthropology at the University of Michigan in 1993. Her key interests are in the relationship between global transformations and local adaptations, particularly in the processes by which economically, politically, and socially subordinated collectivities in a postcolonial world use culture to construct community, identity, and meaning. Professor Kozaitis has conducted ethnographic research on sociocultural change and adaptation among Gypsies in Athens, Greece, and on ethnicity and aging among Greek immigrants in Chicago, Illinois.

New Features

Newly available 2000 census material and statistical updates are integrated in every chapter.

The discussion of the multicultural movement has been strengthened and made relevant to contemporary events.

More global examples have been added throughout.

More material has been added on the diversity that exists among whites in the United States – to break down the WASP stereotype.

The religion chapter includes relevant information on Islam, internationally, and in the context of religious diversity and tolerance in the U.S, and examines the American reaction to the 9/11 attacks in terms of the concepts of liminality and communitas.