Category: book-series

SPA Publication No. 1
by Roy G. D’Andrade and Claudia Strauss, eds.
Cambridge University Press, 1992.
ISBN: 0521423384

This volume seeks to integrate knowledge, desire, and action in a single explanatory framework. A full understanding of human action requires an understanding of what motivatespeople to do what they do. Typically, human motivation has been modeled on animal behavior, resulting in an insufficient appreciation of the role of culture in human motivation. Developed from research in cognitive anthropology on cultural models, through which human realities are constructed and interpreted, this study of human motivation also draws upon developmental psychology, and psychoanalytic and social theory.

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SPA Publication No. 2
by Nancy R. Rosenberger
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
ISBN: 0521466377

Demonstrating the Japanese ability to reconcile opposition within their community, this presentation of the idea of the self as interactive with society challenges previous simplistic comparisons between Western individualism and non-Western collectivism.

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SPA Publication No. 3
by Theodore Schwartz, Geoffrey M. White, and Catherine A. Lutz, eds.
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
ISBN: 052142609X

The contributors to this state-of-the-art collection are prominent figures in psychological anthropology, and they write about recent developments in this field. Psychological anthropology’s present scope includes the psychology of cognition and affect, to which it has made substantial contributions.

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SPA Publication No. 4
by Barbara Diane Miller, ed.
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
ISBN: 0521423686

A generation of feminist research has explored the extent to which the roles – and expectations – of women and men vary across cultures. In this volume, leading anthropologists reflect on the evidence and theories, broadening the conventional field of comparison to include female/male relationships among non-human primates and introducing fresh case studies which range from lemurs to hominids, from Japanese peasants to male strippers in Florida, from skeletal remains of a Korean queen to mother/child conversations in Samoa. They document the rich and often surprising diversity in sex and gender hierarchies among both humans and non-human primates.

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SPA Publication No. 5
by Peter G. Stromberg
Cambridge University Press, 1993.
ISBN: 0521440777

This is a study of how self-transformation may occur through the practice of reframing one’s personal experience in terms of a canonical language: that is, a system of symbols that purports to explain something about human beings and the universe they live in. The Christian conversion narrative is used as the primary example here, but the approach used in this book also illuminates other practices such as psychotherapy in which people deal with emotional conflict through language.

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SPA Publication No. 6
by John Wesley Mayhew Whiting and Eleanor Hollenberg Chasdi, eds.
Cambridge University Press, 1994.
ISBN: 0521435153

John Whining is a leading figure in psychological anthropology and one of the pioneers in the development of systematic cross-cultural research. His work is interdisciplinary and he draws mainly upon the fields of anthropology, psychoanalysis and learning and behavior theory. This book includes some of his most influential articles on culture and human development, as well as a comprehensive autobiographical essay. Roy D’Andrade’s introduction assesses the unique contributions of John Whiting and locates his work within the contemporary currents of psychological anthropology.

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SPA Publication No. 7
by Robert L. Winzeler
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
ISBN: 0521472199

Latah, the Malayan hyperstartle pattern, has fascinated Western observers since the late nineteenth century and is widely regarded as a “culture-bound syndrome”. Dr Winzeler critically reviews the literature on the subject, and presents new ethnographic information based on his own fieldwork in Malaya and Borneo. He considers the biological and psychological hypotheses that have been proposed to account for latah, and explains the ways in which local people understand it. Arguing that latah has specific social functions, he concludes that it should not be treated as an “illness” or “syndrome”.

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SPA Publication No. 8
by John M. Ingham
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
ISBN: 0521559189

John M. Ingham reviews recent developments in psychological anthropology and argues for an inclusive approach that finds room for psychoanalytic, dialogical, and social perspectives on personality and culture. The argument is devloped with special refernce to human nature, child development, personality, and menatl disorder, and it draws on studies set in many different cultures. He also shows the relevance of some recent work in psychoanalysis and child development to current concerns in anthropology with agency and rhetoric.

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SPA Publication No. 9
by Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
ISBN: 052159541X

Anthropologists must draw on modern psychological theories of cognition in order to understand how the shared schemas of a culture are learnt, and come to shape everyday actions and decisions. Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn review a range of current psychologic al theories of cultural meaning, many unfamiliar to anthropologists, and formulate a new approach which draws particularly on ‘connectionist’, or ‘neural network’, modelling This is illustrated by original research on understandings of marriage, and ideas of success, in the United States.

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