Engaging Anthropological Theory

Mark Moberg is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Alabama, USA, and has taught anthropological theory over many years. His research centers on labor, Fair Trade, and environmental politics in Central America, the Caribbean, and the United States. Among his other books are Slipping Away: Banana Politics and Fair Trade in the Eastern Caribbean (2010) and Fair Trade and Social Justice: Global Ethnographies (with Sarah Lyon, 2010).

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Boxes

Acknowledgments

1. Of politics and paradigms

2. Claims and critiques of anthropological knowledge

3. Anthropology before anthropologists

4. Theory and practice to change the world

5. Heirs to order and progress

6. Spencer, Darwin, and evolutionary tales for our time

7. The Boasian revolution

8. Culture and psychology

9. Functionalism, the pure and the hyphenated

10. Anti-structure and the collapse of empire

11. Evolution redux

12. Contemporary materialist and ecological approaches

13. Symbols, structures, and the “web of significance”

14. Postmodern political economy and sensibilities

15. The contemporary anthropological moment

References

Index