Perpustakaan UIN Jurai Siwo Lampung

Window on Humanity is intended to provide a concise, readable, lower-cost introduc-tion to general (four-field) anthropology. The combination of shorter length and lower cost increases the instructor's options for assigning additional reading—case studies, readers, and other supplements—in a semester course. Window also can work well in a quarter system, for which traditional texts may be too long.

As a college student, I was drawn to anthropology by its breadth and because of what it could tell me about the human condition, present and past. I've been very fortunate to spend my teaching career at a university (the University of Michigan) that values and unites an¬thropology's four subfields. I enjoy my contact with members of all those subfields, and by teaching and writing for the four-field introductory course, I'm happy to keep up with those subfields. Anthropology has compiled an impressive body of knowledge about human di¬versity, which I'm eager to introduce in the pages that follow. I believe strongly in anthro¬pology's capacity to enlighten and inform. Anthropology's subject matter is intrinsically fascinating, and its focus on diversity helps students understand their fellow human beings in an increasingly interconnected world and an increasingly diverse North America.

I wrote my first textbook at a time when there were far fewer introductory anthropol-ogy texts than there are today. The texts back then tended to be overly encyclopedic. I found them too long and too unfocused for my course and my image of contemporary anthropology. The field of anthropology was changing rapidly. Anthropologists were writing about a "new archaeology" and a "new ethnography." Fresh fossil finds and biochemical studies were challenging our understanding of human and primate evolu-tion. Studies of monkeys and apes in their natural settings were complementing conclu-sions based on work in zoos. Studies of language as it actually is used in society were revolutionizing formal and static linguistic models. In cultural anthropology, symbolic and interpretive approaches were joining ecological and materialist ones.

Today there are new issues and approaches, such as molecular anthropology and new forms of spatial and historical analysis. The fossil and archaeological records ex-pand every day. Profound changes have affected the people and societies anthropolo-gists traditionally have studied. In cultural anthropology it's increasingly difficult to know when to write in the present tense and when to write in the past tense. Anthropol¬ogy hasn't lost its excitement. Yet many texts ignore change—except maybe with a chapter tacked on at the end—and are written as though anthropology and the people it studies were the same as they were a generation ago. While any competent anthropol¬ogy text must present anthropology's core, it also should demonstrate anthropology's relevance to today's globalized world. Window on Humanity has been written to pres¬ent that relevance in clear and simple terms to the beginning student.