Talk:Cultural Anthropology

Welcome!
This Cultural Anthropology textbook is a very new one (As of Feb 4, 2008), and I would like to encourage any and all people knowledgeable of Cultural Anthropology to modify this textbook in any way they see fit, or add comments on this page.

Before getting started please review the following

Help:Editing for details on how to edit and format additions

and Guidelines_for_class_projects for basic information about logging in etc.

Feel free to create new topics and headings or collapse/move sections as you think best. Those that are there but have no details filled in are just someones ideas. If you have better ideas, change it.

-Note on Images and Wikipedia links-

Large images are useful in Anth texts because they allow the reader to appreciate the detail that people go to to create meaning, the detail contributes to the readers understanding of the values and choices of a culture as well as hilighting potentially unfamiliar details, textures, what activities are occurring in the background etc. Larger images are preferred, specifically for the purpose of making the text more comparable to commercially available texts, many high quality images are available in wikimedia commons.

Links to wikipedia. For the most part in wikibooks the preference is to make the content stand alone with fewer links to wikipedia. However in the case of an introductory textbook the links to wikipedia function as a glossary for the introductory text so as students encounter a new term they can, with a single click, find the definition and encyclopedic content to explain the concept. This is a valuable learning tool that should remain in the text. --Paul James (discuss • contribs) 00:04, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Course Project
Back at it in Oct-Dec 2017 with a class project creating a glossary for each chapter. Paul James (discuss • contribs) 22:21, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

From January through June 2009 this text will be under expansion by students in Anthropology at Western Washington University.

Once again opening up this textbook to student editing Nov 2016 in hopes of getting i t to a usable format this year. --Paul James (discuss • contribs) 01:01, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

the existing Table of contents (Jan 09) is
 * Foundations
 * Introduction Development stage: 25% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * Anthropological Methods Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * General Anthropological Theory Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * Modern Cultural Anthropological Perspectives
 * Material culture Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * Cultural ecology Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * Socialization Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * Symbolism and communication Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * Statuses, roles, and relationships Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * The life cycle Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * Social groups and institutions Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * Marriage and the family Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * Kinship systems and groups Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)
 * Case Studies
 * The Yanomami of South America Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 03, 2008)

We will revise it to meet the organization of the course.


 * Introduction to Anthropology and Culture
 * The History of Anthropology
 * Fieldwork Methods
 * Language and Communication
 * Symbolism and Expressive Culture
 * Ritual and Religion
 * Production, Inequality and Development
 * Health, Healing and Human Rights
 * Marriage, Reproduction and Kinship
 * Social Stratification, Power and Conflict
 * Globalization and Migration

Suggestion
I would like to suggest ...

PDF
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/File:PDF_template.sxw

Updated 'printable version' and PDF files need to be created Media:Introduction to anthropology.pdf text needs to be created--Paul James (talk) 16:22, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Welcomes and help
Congratulations on a fast growing book. I wouldn't be surprised to see it amongst our featured books before long.

I've been adding welcome messages to some of the contributors of this wikibook. This provides a number of useful links to help users learn more about the Wikibooks project. I haven't been very methodical; I've just added it when I've seen valuable contributions (and I've only noticed contributions to a small part of this book).

I'm currently trying to improve the Wikibooks documentation and would be particularly interested to hear any comments on whether you find the help pages and this template useful, or if something is missing or could be done better.

If you think the welcome message is of value, you can actually add it too! Just place " " on the recipient's talk page. Other versions are available in the Category:Welcome templates.

Happy editing! --Swift (talk) 01:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

References and Content
Write information in your own words based on your understanding of concepts.

Do not cite 'about.com' or other low quality web info as your source in the wikibook. Also please avoid quoting the textbook.

As a simple alternative try these 1) search for your topic at http://www.anthrosource.net (you have access to abstracts and many full texts, without even using the library). 2) in Google scholar http://scholar.google.com/ - combine your topic term with anthropology and see what articles come up. 3) use information in wikipedia, although the quality is only as good as you make it. 4)

An excellent link to definitions of terms as well as full online ethnographies is available at http://www.anthrobase.com/

In all cases write it in your own words to avoid plagiarism.

It is easiest to copy the markup for images already used in wikipedia articles, they are formatted for size, location and often have captions and citations (although if there are links in the caption they may need to be removed or redirected to wikipedia) OR if you cant find the image you want look and browse from here http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Photographs

Also remember the focus is quality not quantity, write as much as you think others will want to read. --Paul James (talk) 19:27, 2 March 2009 (UTC)