"An examination of how individuals strive for social status and how this creates our culture as a whole Contrary to belief, status signaling isn't just the province of the immature or insecure but a fundamental human need to secure social standing. It drives our behavior, forms our tastes, determines what we buy, and ultimately shapes who we are. It's what's behind "cool" and what drives fashion, music, food, sports, slang, travel, hairstyles, and...

This groundbreaking book by the acclaimed Dorothy Roberts examines how the myth of biological concept of race-revived by purportedly cutting-edge science, race-specific drugs, genetic testing, and DNA databases-continues to undermine a just society and promote inequality in a supposedly "post-racial" era. Named one of the ten best black nonfiction books 2011 by AFRO.com.

Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life-and death-in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims...

"Tourism and Culture provides detailed case studies that explore the complexity of modern tourism relationships. The book challenges the often assumed primacy of the relationships between "hosts" and their "guests," arguing that virtually all forms of tourism are mediated by parties who stand outside of such immediate relationships. Individual contributions to the book describe tourism developments in specific locales, offering a variety of perspectives...

Assembling the latest evidence from the fields of sociology, criminology, economics, medicine, biology, and psychology and exploring the effects of such factors as gender, age, race, and family, two eminent social scientists frame a groundbreaking theory of criminal behavior.

Twenty-four lectures on the philosophy and the history of the study of religion presented by Charles B. Jones, Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America.

"Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call "racecraft." And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history,...

In this course of lectures Prof. Fischer surveys anthropology, the study of human societies and comparative customs with a special emphasis on pre-capitalist societies and the things which pre-capitalist societies and modern societies have in common.