Gabriel W. Lasker – författare

The Teaching of Anthropology (Abridged Edition), edited by David G. Mandelbaum, Gabriel W. Lasker, and Ethel M. Albert, is a landmark appraisal of how anthropology should be taught, particularly at the undergraduate level in the United States. Emerging at a moment of expanding enrollments, proliferating subfields, and growing institutional demands, the volume grapples with the central pedagogical challenge of transmitting anthropology’s unique culture of inquiry. Its contributors argue that anthropology’s value lies in its holistic scope, its grounding in field research, and its insistence on viewing human variation through scientific method—qualities that not only illuminate diverse peoples but also provide students with transferable analytic habits for understanding their own world.The collection ranges across the major subfields—biological, archaeological, linguistic, and cultural/social anthropology—while also treating applied anthropology, graduate training, and the discipline’s broader academic context. Essays emphasize the unity of anthropology through the central concept of culture, advocate for carefully chosen case studies to balance scope with depth, and show how applied and comparative studies can clarify theory. With a focus on practical teaching concerns—curricular sequencing, course design, and coordination within expanding departments—the book demonstrates how anthropology can remain scientifically rigorous, pedagogically compelling, and socially relevant. In presenting both points of consensus and unresolved debates, it provides a foundational guide for instructors, departments, and planners committed to sustaining anthropology’s vitality in higher education.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1963.

The Teaching of Anthropology (Abridged Edition), edited by David G. Mandelbaum, Gabriel W. Lasker, and Ethel M. Albert, is a landmark appraisal of how anthropology should be taught, particularly at the undergraduate level in the United States. Emerging at a moment of expanding enrollments, proliferating subfields, and growing institutional demands, the volume grapples with the central pedagogical challenge of transmitting anthropology’s unique culture of inquiry. Its contributors argue that anthropology’s value lies in its holistic scope, its grounding in field research, and its insistence on viewing human variation through scientific method—qualities that not only illuminate diverse peoples but also provide students with transferable analytic habits for understanding their own world.The collection ranges across the major subfields—biological, archaeological, linguistic, and cultural/social anthropology—while also treating applied anthropology, graduate training, and the discipline’s broader academic context. Essays emphasize the unity of anthropology through the central concept of culture, advocate for carefully chosen case studies to balance scope with depth, and show how applied and comparative studies can clarify theory. With a focus on practical teaching concerns—curricular sequencing, course design, and coordination within expanding departments—the book demonstrates how anthropology can remain scientifically rigorous, pedagogically compelling, and socially relevant. In presenting both points of consensus and unresolved debates, it provides a foundational guide for instructors, departments, and planners committed to sustaining anthropology’s vitality in higher education.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1963.

The unique contribution made by biological anthropology to human welfare lies in the fundamental understanding it can provide of the dynamic interrelationships between physical and social factors. By understanding these patterns, we can interpret the significance of variation in such measures of human well-being in terms of the incidence of disease and mortality rates. Topics covered include reproductive ecology and fertility, nutritional status in relation to health, and the effects of pollution on growth. In the later chapters, the concepts of physiological adaptation, and Darwinian fitness and its relation to individual physical fitness are explored.

In past years considerable interest has been focused on migration as an important cause of change in the genetic and demographic structure of human populations. This book synthesises the biological consequences of changes environments on the migrants and the genetic impact of immigration on the host populations. Patterns of migration, past and present and genetic, epidemological and demographic consequences are considered, forming a unique synthesis for human biologists in general. Individual chapters deal with the peopling of the continents, migration in the recent past, the effects of gene flow and rural to urban migration. In addition, a detailed analysis of the relationship between migration, adaptation and disease is presented. Advanced students and research workers in a wide variety of disciplines, including population genetics, demography, anthropology and social geography will find this book particularly valuable in relating their own special interests to other biological aspects of human migration.