Great Readings in Anthropology
A curated collection of field-defining monographs, foundational theoretical treatises, and landmark empirical studies across the major subfields of anthropology.
Sociocultural Anthropology & Classical Ethnography
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Argonauts of the Western Pacific | Bronislaw Malinowski |
| The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies | Marcel Mauss |
| The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People | E. E. Evans-Pritchard |
| Patterns of Culture | Ruth Benedict |
| Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo | Mary Douglas |
Anthropological Theory & Critical Perspectives
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| The Interpretation of Cultures | Clifford Geertz |
| Outline of a Theory of Practice | Pierre Bourdieu |
| Europe and the People Without History | Eric R. Wolf |
| The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual | Victor Turner |
| Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography | James Clifford & George E. Marcus (eds.) |
| Orientalism | Edward W. Said |
| Woman, Culture, and Society | Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo & Louise Lamphere (eds.) |
| Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century | Charles King |
Biological Anthropology & Primatology
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes | Frans de Waal |
| Evolution's Bite: A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins | Peter S. Ungar |
| Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art | Rebecca Wragg Sykes |
Archaeology & Deep Human History
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science | Steven Mithen |
| The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity | David Graeber & David Wengrow |
Linguistic Anthropology & Semiotics
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech | Edward Sapir |
| Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf | Benjamin Lee Whorf |
| Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache | Keith H. Basso |