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The principal book collection for Anthropology is located on the first floor of the Science Library.
Explore is UCL's library catalogue. This is the principal tool to find books, journals and other materials (either in print or in electronic format) held in UCL libraries. On the catalogue, you will find details such as: library site, collection and shelfmark, when you are looking for print resources. In order to access e-books via Explore, you will always need your UCL user ID and password.
Print books are arranged on the shelves according to their shelfmark. For example:
ANTHROPOLOGY B 34 LEW for a book on primate evolution
ANTHROPOLOGY QG 300 PRI for a book on Neur religion in Southern Sudan
The works of F. G. Bailey (1924-2020) provide a seminal template for good ethnography. Central to this is Bailey's ability to conceptually connect the well-described micro-contexts of individual interactions to the macro-context of culture. Bailey's core concerns - the tension between individual and collective interests, the will to power, and the dialectics of social forces which foster both collective solidarity as well as divisiveness and discontent - are themes of universal interest. This volume seeks to inspire new generations of anthropologists to revisit Bailey's seminal texts, to help them navigate their way through the ethnographic thicket of their own research.
Resources play a crucial role in the contemporary economy and society, are required in the production of a vast range of consumer products and are at the core of geopolitical strategies and environmental concerns for the future of humanity. Scholars have widely debated the economic and sociological aspects of resource management in our societies, offering interesting and useful abstractions. This book offers an overview of the key debates in the burgeoning anthropological literature on resource extraction.
Bringing together contributions from a global team of renowned scholars, this Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the dynamic field of psychological anthropology. It is divided into five parts and includes a critical updating of the theoretical foundations for psychological anthropology, covering cognitive, psychodynamic, linguistic, and phenomenological views. It provides the first-ever lifespan perspective on human development in culture from the perspective of anthropology and also contains sections that connect the biological dynamics involved in human experience through to social, cultural, and historical perspectives.
Weaving together ethnography and history, this book offers an in-depth analysis of the pre-colonial polity of the Meru of Kenya and its radical transformations from 1908 through the 1950s. It addresses the manifold issues of initiation and the politics of belonging, unravels the intertwined life courses of men and women, and disentangles the web of family life and the handover of power across political generations.
This Companion is comprised of 27 original contributions by leading scholars in the field and summarizes the state of anthropological knowledge of Indian peoples, as well as the history that got us to this point. The companion surveys the full range of American Indian anthropology: from ecological and political-economic questions to topics concerning religion, language, and expressive culture.
This incisive book elucidates the field of Anglophone heritage studies, outlining its historical development alongside core theoretical debates and research trends. Drawing on her own experiences working as an academic and practitioner in the subject, Laurajane Smith examines how diverse definitions of heritage have influenced international scholarship and preservation practices.
Crossings: Migrant Knowledges, Migrant Forms brings together activists, artists, scholars, and migrants with diverse histories to explore what the experience of migration does with, and to, knowledge, and how its own ways of knowing find expressive form. As the volume’s authors think about physical and imaginative crossings, and the traversals and transactions of knowledge they entail, the book itself crosses and complicates disciplinary and formal boundaries and the barriers between critical and creative intervention. Crucially, it brings together voices and forms emerging out of the experience of dislocation with responses to the encounters it generates.
This encylopedia explores the anthropological underpinnings of politics. Featuring biographical entries that reconstruct the life-works of key theorists from across the globe alongside topical entries on a range of issues in political anthropology, it poses the question: what does it mean to be human in contemporary times?
This book explores the concepts and practices of participation and community engagement in cultural heritage, examining the impact of the participatory turn in the heritage sector and the key opportunities and challenges it presents. The book explores these issues through 15 case studies drawn from across the globe and organised into three thematic sections: social inclusion in heritage practices, the role of digital tools in heritage participation, and participatory heritage management and governance. These case studies contribute to emerging debates on expanding the spaces where heritage participation and community engagement take place.
In Exorbitance, Deborah A. Thomas calls for new approaches to political sovereignty grounded in the embodied forms of autonomy and relation created in daily life. Rather than rooting sovereignty in the violence of the state and its institutions, Thomas conceives of sovereignty as the embodied refusal of law and dominion. By outlining the perils and promises of our inheritance of colonial logics and the tools to refuse them, Thomas models a collaborative and collective anthropology oriented toward improvisational experimentation rather than ethnographic extraction.
From winemaking in occupied territories to fishing in polluted seas, home cooking in refugee communities, and vegan cheesemaking, this collection explores the complex ways taste and place intersect with political, ecological, social, and economic issues. Through diverse ethnographic case studies, leading food scholars examine the meaning and making of place and taste. In doing so, the book challenges terroir-inspired notions of a fixed taste of place and pushes the boundaries of what we think we know about taste-place relations.
The Lake Kivu region, which borders Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has often been defined by scholars in terms of conflict, violence, and separation. In contrast, this innovative study explores histories of continuities and connections across the borderland. Drawing on cross-border oral history research and a wealth of archival material, Fractured Pasts embraces a new and powerful perspective of the region's history.
This open access book provides a unique way of documenting traditional Sámi knowledge that has survived almost 300 years followed by today’s analysis of the modern state of Sámi reindeer husbandry. Reindeer herders’ knowledge, their language and ways of managing the herds have hardly changed over the past centuries. It is the same ancient knowledge that now forms the basis for how reindeer herders think and carry out their operations. The book provides an overview of the knowledge systems and technical language of an ancient industry that has survived through millennia and is still crucial today.
The book contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between globalisation and transnationalisation and the development of social inequality. It addresses this challenge in the current transition to a multi-centred world. The contributions by international experts from different continents and different disciplines bring together current research on global inequality and social classes, covering a wide variety of thematic and spatial foci.
History through material culture is a unique, step-by-step guide for students and researchers who wish to use objects as historical sources. Responding to the significant, scholarly interest in historical material culture studies, this book makes clear how students and researchers ready to use these rich material sources can make important, valuable and original contributions to history. Written by two experienced museum practitioners and historians, the book recognises the theoretical and practical challenges of this approach and offers clear advice on methods to get the best out of material culture research.
How Humans Evolved has long been the leading text for helping students understand the science of human evolution. With comprehensive, up-to-date coverage of human genetics, recent fossil discoveries, race, and modern human behavior, it is clear why the Tenth Edition remains, in primatologist Sarah Hrdy’s words, “the text of choice for teaching physical anthropology and human evolutionary biology.” New 3D models of select human and non-human primate crania and anatomy, as well as fossil crania of key hominins, invite students to explore specimens in a tactile way.
In 1950, mathematician-philosopher Norbert Wiener ended this classic book on the place of machines in society with a warning: "We shall never receive the right answers to our questions unless we ask the right questions.... The hour is very late, and the choice of good and evil knocks at our door." Wiener, the founder of the science of cybernetics--the study of the relationship between computers and the human nervous system--was widely mislabeled as an advocate for the automation of human life. As The Human Use for Human Beings reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting, and is more relevant in today's world of AI than anyone could have anticipated.
This new study from Ben Highmore looks at the seemingly banal world of objects, work, daily media, and food, and finds there a scintillating array of passionate experience. Through a series of case studies, and building on his previous work on the everyday, Highmore examines our relationship to familiar objects (a favourite chair), repetitive work (housework, typing), media (distracted television viewing and radio listening) and food (specifically the food of multicultural Britain). The book discusses philosophers such as Jacques Rancière, William James and David Hume and combines them with autobiographical testimonies, historical research and the analysis of popular culture to investigate the minutiae of day-to-day life.
Reflecting on the final decades of socialism, eight individuals born in former Yugoslavia between 1971 and 1991 recount their memories of childhood and early adulthood, and how that time period has made a lasting impact on their lives. The Youngest Yugoslavs is an oral history collection that gives its readers in-depth, varied perspectives on why Yugoslavia continues to resonate among its former citizens more than 30 years since the state collapsed amid war, genocide, and dislocation. Their interviews with author Jovana Babović' showcase how these individuals remember their childhoods during the final decades of socialism and how they conceptualize the lasting impact Yugoslavia has had on their lives.
Use Explore to find individual e-books. Additionally, you can browse for e-books in the following databases:
Yale's A&AePortal is an eBook resource that features important works of scholarship in the history of art, architecture, decorative arts, photography, and design. Accessibility statement for A&AePortal.
On UCL Explore, you can look at the results of your search to quickly discover if a book is available in print or/and online: View Online means that the book is available electronically, while Available means that the book is available in print. In some cases a book is available both in print and online.
Consult introductory material or general reference works for a broad overview of your issue or topic, and to identify key concepts, theories and researchers in the field. Introductory material may include:
Find introductory material in Explore by combining a topic keyword with one of the material type descriptors above, e.g. international enceclopedia of anthropology.
These are some examples of introductory material available electronically for Anthropology. The list is not extensive, and you should perform your own searches on Explore to see what else is available in print in UCL Libraries.
UCL Library Services off-site store is a closed access collection which houses important research material not currently in high demand. The material at this site will have 'Store' as its location on Explore. Users can request store material for delivery to the Science Library. Users should complete a Store Request Form in order to request material from this location.
A brief guide to finding and accessing e-books via UCL Explore.
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UCL Library collections have been developed over 200 years. Some material reflects historic and structural inequalities in the university and in society. Today, as we work on ensuring our current collecting policy and practice supports and reflects a fully inclusive range of voices and perspectives, we still, on occasion, acquire material which is required for teaching and research that may be considered harmful or offensive. Find out more on our Inclusive Collections webpages.
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