Anthropology, Ethnology All books
Alain Prochiantz
Darwin: 200 Years
More than an homage to a great scientist, this book, written by eminent specialists, is a perfect introduction to understanding the impact of Darwinism on contemporary thinking and science
Jean-Pierre Vernant, Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux
In the Eye of the Mirror
How do the Greeks think of themselves ? Why do mirrors rarely reflect the true image of the person that looks into them ? And what image are they trying to project on others ? Formulated from an abundance of literature, iconography, and archeology, this book discusses the beginning foundations of individual representation. It is primarily a study of realities and appearances in an interpersonal society where social and personal status are dependant on how one is viewed and received in society. Secondly, the book analyses sexual identity and what it was in ancient Greece, through the study of a universal symbol, the mirror. Jean-Pierre Vernant and Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux teach at the College of France.
Jacques Bouveresse, Daniel Roche
Freedom Through Knowledge: Pierre Bourdieu, 1930-2002 (Travaux du Collège de France)
Gathered in this volume are the texts of lectures given in memory of Pierre Bourdieu at an international colloquium held on 26-27 June 2003 and jointly organised by the Collège de France and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, with the backing of the Hugot Foundation.
Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, Lluis Quintana-Murci
Civilizations: Questioning Identity and Diversity: Autumn Colloquium of the Collège de France
The noun “civilization” entered Western European vocabulary in the Eighteenth Century, and at that time denoted a stage of material, social, and cultural evolution...
Gilles Tétart
The Blood of Poets
The first and constant motive of my scientific life has always been the blood, and its formation, diseases and mutations. During the day, I studied corpuscles and serums. In the evening I read or reread poetry. Sometimes I came across blood once again. An intuition, an allusion of a poet came to clarify my clinical or biological reflections of the next day. These kind of exchanges have inspired this book, which constitutes a personal anthology. It is the same blood which runs in the veins of Iphigenis before the planned sacrifice, as wriggles under our gaze using the microscope, and as draws our eyes to the lips it colours The present anthology bears witness to this unity and this diversity of the blood. Jean Bernard Jean Bernard is a member of the Acadamié française
Annick Le Guérer, Bruno Fourn
Scents and Sound, an Unexpected Association
The mysterious voice-scent synaesthesis
Alexandre Stern
Who Are You, Homo sapiens? Understanding Our Nature In Order to Live Better
After telling how the art of cooking had humanized, civilized our ancestral apes, Alexandre Stern explores the roots of our humanity to better examine our modern practices and ways of life.
Marc Augé
So Who Is the Other?
The originality of the subjects that Marc Augé studies: from soccer games to the heroes of American series, as well as roundabouts and urban architecture. The intellectual journey of one of the greatest, world-renowned anthropologists.
Françoise Héritier, Margarita Xanthakou
Body and Affects
The articles gathered here, written by eminent French anthropologists, present a novel angle on the way societies function. The writers argue that because societies are not abstract intellectual constructions, they cannot be dissociated from the physical individuals that constitute them, or from the affects (feelings and emotions) expressed by them. Included here are studies of Western and non-Western societies on such subjects as skin colour, religious rituals involving animals, witchcraft and flying sorcerers, passion in traditional North African cultures, and breast-feeding (both induced lactation to breastfeed infant girls and spontaneous lactation to breastfeed infant boys) in parts of Italy. Françoise Héritier is an anthropologist and teaches at the Collège de France. She is the author of Les Deux Soeurs et leur mère and Masculin/Féminin I and II, published by Editions Odile Jacob. Margarita Xanthakou, an anthropologist, is a research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
Maurice Bloch
The Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge
An introduction to cognitive anthropology by one of the world’s most distinguished anthropologists
Olivier Morin
How Traditions Are Born And Die Cultural Trans
A new approach to how culture is transmitted that helps us understand the multicultural society in which we live
Marc Abélès
Diary of an Anthropologist From May '68 to the Gilet Jaunes
The story of an intellectual and political commitment that takes its roots in May 68. From May 68 to the Yellow Vests, an anthropologist's look and analysis of new forms of political expression
Pascal Picq
Women, Modernity and Progress
A book that looks back at history from an evolutionary perspective, by bringing women to the forefront of history and rejecting gender stereotypes that are often endorsed by historians themselves.
Howard Gardner
Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed Educating for the Virtues in the Twenty-First Century
Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed is an approachable primer on the foundations of ethics in the modern age.
Dan Sperber
The Infectiousness of Ideas
Where do our ideas come from ? Some, just from ourselves, or at least we believe so, but the majority come from others which we then pass on in our turn. The age-old philosophical question on the origins of ideas is analysed here in relation to their mode of dissemination. In his search for the natural element of culture, Dan Sperber presents in this book an epidemiology of ideas which describes how they spread by passing from one person to another, undergoing transformations which are in the same category as mutations. He also investigates how these ideas establish themselves in the long-term by occupying our mental world without our conscious knowledge, which allows us to participate in our culture. Dan Sperber, an anthropologist, is the research director of CNRS.
Pascal Picq
Artificial Intelligence and the Chimpanzees of the Future For an Anthropology of Intelligence
Confronted with future challenges connected with the emergence of AI, a lucid and enlightening look by a paleoanthropologist, specialist in evolution.
Éric Dubreuil
Parents of the Same Sex
A growing number of gay men and women have founded families and are discovering the joys of parenting. It is estimated that there are approximately 500,000 families headed by parents of the same sex. They have brought the issue of homosexual parenting into the public arena, shattering traditional notions of the family and raising fundamental questions of filiation, adoption, and medically assisted procreation (artificial insemination, surrogate mothers) which go beyond the sphere of homosexuality and concern the future of our societyand therefore of all of us. Based on 29 interviews, including seven of children and teenagers, the book explores the little-known lives of same-sex-parent families.
Alexandre Stern
Monkeys in the Kitchen How Cooking Made Us Human
How the invention of culinary and agricultural practices, the discovery and exchange of products, through the millennia have contributed to civilizing the human being.
Pascal Picq
And Evolution Created Woman Sexual Coercion and Violence in Men
An accessible, compelling assessment of what has been learned concerning the relationships between the sexes/genders from an evolutionary point of view.
Jean-François Amadieu
The Looks Society Beautiful, Young People...and Others
An original thesis on breaking the silence surrounding the importance of appearance, and one that nobody — employer, employee, consumers — wishes to explicitly confront.
Anne Muxel
The Other at a Distance When a Pandemic Affects Intimacy
A sociological analysis that looks in depth at the upheavals brought about by the pandemic that have affected the intimate side of our existence and our relationships with others.