In recent years anthropologists have turned from previous concerns with salvaging the shreds of cultures to a concern with people whose rights to food, home, health, and other basic human necessities are continually threatened.
This volume provocatively questions the priorities of much anthropological work and urges the discipline to make a stronger commitment to the study of a world on the move, a world in constant change which must be engaged. The volume demonstrates the theoretical productivity of engagement in contemporary problems, and the importance of addressing these issues if theory is to advance and deal with the constant creativity of human societies.
The scholar contributors were selected by the American Anthropological Association to examine transformations and disorders taking place in pre-industrial and industrializing societies with a view to how the discipline might best be able to contribute to the understanding and amelioration of such problems. Individual essays take up questions of development, the media, hunger, health, and appropriate research methods.
This volume is, directly and indirectly, a constructive critique of the way anthropology is commonly practiced and of the way anthropologists are still being trained. It is essential reading for all who are concerned with the future of this discipline.
Emilio F. Moran is Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University, and Director, Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change.
