Oxford University Press

John Monaghan

Peter Just

Professor John Monaghan

Associate Professor of Anthropology Peter Just

"If you want to know what anthropology is, look at what anthropologists do," write the authors of Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction. This engaging overview of the field combines an accessible account of some of the discipline's guiding principles and methodology with abundant examples and illustrations of anthropologists at work. Peter Just and John Monaghan begin by discussing anthropology's most important contributions to modern thought: its investigation of culture as a distinctively human characteristic, its doctrine of cultural relativism, and its methodology of fieldwork and ethnography. Drawing on examples from their own fieldwork in Indonesia and Mesoamerica, they examine specific ways in which social and cultural anthropology have advanced our understanding of human society and culture. Including an assessment of anthropology's present position, and a look forward to its likely future, Social and Cultural Anthropology will make fascinating reading for anyone curious about this social science. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction

This study of justice and morality among the Dou Donggo, a highland people of Indonesia, centers on the workings of law and dispute settlement in small communities. Just (anthropology, Williams College) argues that the operation of any legal system is best understood in the context of its moral ontology. Chapters cover the context of the debate, the author's field experiences, the history of the Dou Donggo, the constitution of the village as a moral community, the community's moral ontology, and three cases. c. Book News Inc.

Associate Professor of Anthropology Peter Just

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