Linda L. Lindsey.:Gender Roles: A Sociological Perspective.
- Paperback 2010, ISBN: 9780133503074
0, US: North Point Press, 1987. Paperback. Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remai… More...
0, US: North Point Press, 1987. Paperback. Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. From mountain shrines to lowland oases, ethnobiologist Gary Nabhan takes us on a series of journeys with contemporary Papago Indians, the Tohono O'odham, or "Desert People." From these journeys we discover how much the Desert People know about the dynamics of their arid homeland in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. The Desert Smells Like Rain offers insights into the natural history of desert plants and animals as it documents a dying agricultural tradition that has enriched the biological diversity of the Papago's seemingly harsh environment. Drawing on his extensive scientific research and study of Papago folklore, as well as his years of work among the Desert People in village gardening and nutrition programs, Nabhan portrays a desert-adapted way of life that has persisted despite the pressures of modern civilization., North Point Press, 1987, 3, Field Studies Council, 1983. 16, 9 test figs. . PB. Vg.. Reprinted from Field Studies 5 (pp. 867-882)., Field Studies Council, 1983, 0, OUP Oxford. Very Good/Very Good. 2001. Hard Cover. 8vo 0198507062 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership marks. Illustrated. 235 pages clean and tight. Madness is the central mystery of the human psyche. Our minds evolved to give us a faithful understanding of reality, to allow us to integrate into our communities, and to help us adapt our behaviour to our environment. Yet in serious mental illness, the mind does exactly the opposite of these things. The sufferer builds castles of imaginative delusion, fails to adapt, and becomes a stranger among his own people. Yet mental illness is no marginal phenomenon: it is found in all societies and all historical epochs, and the genes that underlie it are quite common. Furthermore, the traits that identify the madman are found in attenuated form in normal thinking and feeling. The persistence of madness, then, is a terrible puzzle from both an evolutionary and a human point of view. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare suggested a link between madness and artistic creativity: 'The lunatic, the lover, and the poet', he wrote, 'Are of imagination all compact'. Recent studies have shown that there is indeed a connection. Rates of mental illness are hugely elevated in the families of poets, writers and artists, suggesting that the same genes, the same temperaments, and the same imaginative capacities are at work in insanity and in creative ability. Thus the reason madness continues to exist is that the traits behind it have psychological benefits as well as psychological costs. In Strong Imagination, Daniel Nettle explores the nature of mental illness, the biological mechanisms that underlie it, and its link to creative genius. He goes on to consider the place of both madness and creative imagination in the evolution of our species. ., OUP Oxford, 2001, 3, Transworld Publishers. Very Good. 5.06 x 0.94 x 7.81 inches. Paperback. 2003. 416 pages. <br>From the ambition to be successful in our careers to what we will have for lunch each day, instinct is the invisibl e motivating force that shapes our world. But how well do these i nstincts, our most basic modes of interacting with the world, equ ip us for modern life? We are driven to pursue material wealth an d status. We have an innate impulse to find a mate, to fight to p rotect our young, and to find food and shelter. In Human Instinct , which accompanies a BBC1 television series, Robert Winston take s us to the forefront of modern science, exploring our instincts and gaining a deeper insight into the wonderful complexity of hum an nature. Editorial Reviews From the Publisher Whether we know it or not, our daily lives are shaped by powerful currents of in stinct. The conscious and unconscious decisions we all make are d eeply affected by an ancient genetic program: our ambition and lu st, our drives to compete and cooperate are essential components of the human mind, forged among our ancestors on the African sava nnah. Instincts were instrumental in the evolutionary success of the species, and success meant a fondness for sex and violence, f or status and wealth-and a will to survive. From ordering lunch t o one-night stands, human behavior is still heavily influenced by this genetic agenda. But how well do instincts equip us for the 21st century? Do instincts help or hinder us as we deal with larg e anonymous cities, low-level stress, and the fracturing of commu nal life? In this engrossing study, Robert Winston takes us deep into the human mind in search of the answers to these questions a nd more. Robert Winston is one of Britain's leading scientists. A s a consulting physician and Professor of Fertility Studies at th e University of London, he has pioneered in vitro fertilization a nd been a leading voice in the debate on genetic engineering. Fr om the Inside Flap Whether we know it or not, our daily lives are shaped by powerful currents of instinct. The conscious and uncon scious decisions we all make are deeply affected by an ancient ge netic program: our ambition and lust, our drives to compete and c ooperate are essential components of the human mind, forged among our ancestors on the African savannah. Instincts were instrument al in the evolutionary success of the species, and success meant a fondness for sex and violence, for status and wealth?and a will to survive. From ordering lunch to one?night stands, human behav ior is still heavily influenced by this genetic agenda. But how w ell do instincts equip us for the 21st century? Do instincts help or hinder us as we deal with large anonymous cities, low?level s tress, and the fracturing of communal life? In this engrossing st udy, Robert Winston takes us deep into the human mind in search o f the answers to these questions and more. Robert Winston is one of BritainÂ's leading scientists. As a consulting physician and P rofessor of Fertility Studies at the University of London, he has pioneered in vitro fertilization and been a leading voice in the debate on genetic engineering. About the Author Robert Winston is a professor of fertility studies at the University of London. He is also the author of The Human Mind. Excerpt. ® Reprinted b y permission. All rights reserved. The Origins of Survival Fight or flight You are walking home late one dark, wet and misty win ter evening. It's been tiring today, so you are keen to get insid e, close the door behind you and put the stresses of the day to r est. As you amble along, thinking in neutral, you realize you can hear measured but quickening footsteps behind you. A snatched gl ance over your shoulder reveals a man approaching in the gloomy s treet-light. He is moving rather quicker than you are walking, an d he is looking at you all the while. There's no-one else in sigh t - no-one on the street except you and the stranger. The house s uddenly seems a long way away. In less than an instant, you sudde nly feel very afraid. Your heart starts beating wildly, your mout h goes very dry and you have a huge urge to start running towards the safety beyond your front door. There is a very simple reaso n why you feel so terrified. Inside your body, all hell has broke n loose. Biological sirens and alarms are wailing. Perceiving the threat of the potential mugger with lightning speed, your brain and autonomic nervous system - the automatic controller of the gu t, heart, vessels and lungs - have gone into overdrive and produc ed a huge surge of adrenalin. This triggers a hormonal cascade in side you, an incredibly fast and powerful chemical relay-race des igned to propel you away from a threatening situation. Just a fra ction of a second later, the hypothalamus in your brain begins pu mping out a substance called corticotropin-releasing hormone, or CRH, which in turn sends alarms to the pituitary gland in your br ain to pour out adrenocorticotropin, or ACTH. Finally, the abnorm ally high levels of ACTH in your bloodstream are the warning sign al for the adrenal glands, near your kidneys, to start producing cortisol. Imagine the speed at which these precise yet complex c ombinations of hormones are produced - your body's reaction to fr ight and attack is virtually instantaneous. Almost immediately th ese chemical alarm bells are set off inside us, we are forcibly s hoved into the (all too familiar) feeling of being acutely afraid . The adrenalin makes your heart pound faster, increasing its nor mal resting rate by as much as two or three times. You would have to cycle really vigorously for maybe fifteen minutes to produce that kind of rise in your heart rate under normal circumstances, but in the sudden grip of fear, the rate can triple in just a mat ter of seconds. You are also breathing much faster now and the bl ood is being rapidly redistributed around your body. The blood ve ssels in unimportant areas like your stomach and your skin constr ict, shunting blood away and into the now dilated vessels of the muscles of the limbs. Here the extra oxygen and fuel gained by yo ur increased breathing can be best harnessed to flee from the thr eat, or even fight it. There wouldn't be much sense in your stoma ch busily digesting that lunchtime sandwich right now, when every drop of your body's available energy needs to be used to save yo u from the approaching threat. As the adrenalin and cortisol con tinue to gush out into your blood, your pupils dilate, allowing y ou to see better in darkness and shadows and to perceive any move ment around you more keenly. A kind of pain-dampening effect is s witched on so that you won't be distracted from getting away by a ny injuries. Emergency reserves of glucose are released inside yo u to allow for especially intense bursts of muscular activity. Ev en your immune system is mobilizing to cope with the possibility of dealing with a serious wound. In just a matter of moments, you r body has propelled you into a state of extreme physical and psy chological readiness to run or fight - whichever course of action best suits the threatening situation. As the stranger, now just feet away from you, holds out the single, familiar glove you now realize you'd obviously dropped some way back, you may ask wheth er all your body's efforts were really worth it. Whether it's 'bu tterflies' in the tummy before an interview, the dry mouth and th roat we feel minutes before we have to make a speech, or even the quickening pulse and sudden jump as we hear an unexpected bump i n the night, it often seems that our bodies are overreacting. So where does this physical and psychological reaction come from? It 's not as if we were taught as children to start breathing faster in threatening situations, nor can we consciously make our heart beat so much faster or force our body to produce adrenalin. What we are actually experiencing is our very own personal link to ou r most ancient human ancestors - a reaction which hundreds of tho usands of years ago almost certainly made the difference between life and death, but which now, in most cases, simply serves to re mind us of the remarkable fact that while living in a very advanc ed modern world, we all do so with Stone Age brains and bodies. Indeed, this reaction in response to stress hormones goes way bac k in time, well before our immediate ancestors. Even animals that aren't mammals react basically in a similar way. Try startling y our goldfish as it meanders around its bowl. If you place a net o r a threatening object into its water, you will immediately see a very similar kind of reaction. Its fins stand out ready to flee and the gills and mouth start opening and closing in overtime. Th at fright reaction is caused by the same hormone, inherited down the ages: adrenalin. Our early human ancestors lived in a very d angerous and threatening environment. When they first made it out of the trees to try their luck on the grassy plains of the east African savannah, they were vastly outnumbered by vicious and hun gry predators. They lacked the brute strength of the great apes a nd many other large land mammals, especially the big cats. Nor we re they particularly fast or agile like the antelope or gazelles. They could not fly, nor were they especially well designed for l ife in water. Their senses were poorly developed: no night vision , no extra-sensitive hearing to detect prey rustling in the grass hundreds of feet away, and an extremely unsophisticated sense of smell. Ape-man infants were helpless and dependent, and parents were distracted from practical matters of survival by having to c are for their young. But these naked and defenceless prototype hu mans had to contend with the searing African heat as they travers ed the vast distances of the plains in search of food, shelter an d mates. If they stayed in one area, they risked starvation and a ttack from a stalking predator; if they were on the move, they fa ced the test of the unknown, of coming face to face with some ter rible beast. And terrible they were. While the most probable thr eat you may experience today is a brush with a suspicious person in a local street, our ancient ancestors had to face the reality of encounters with violent sabre-toothed cats and other predators . One variety was Smilodon, a sabre-toothed cat whose remains sho w it was almost a foot shorter than a modern-day lion, but weighe d almost twice as much. Instead of the long, graceful tail cheeta hs and leopards use for balance as they race across the African p lains, Smilodon had a short, stumpy bobtail. This beast was a sim mering hunk of muscle, designed for quick and furious violence. Smilodon almost certainly hunted in packs. We know this because f ossil specimens of the huge cat, dug up in California, show evide nce of healing injuries. Some of these injuries were so serious t hat immediately after the trauma the cat would have been unable t o hunt, so it couldn't have survived long enough for the injury t o heal unless other animals from the pack had brought it food. Sm ilodon could roar - we know that from the structure of the hyoid bones in its throat - but like any modern feline predator it woul d have been silent when stalking. Once it had ambushed its prey, by charging the frightened antelope or artiodactyl with an explos ive burst of power, it would have used its long, curved, sabre-li ke teeth, viciously ripping open the belly or throat. It's highl y likely that predators such as these would have killed and eaten early humans. In a cave at Swartkrans in South Africa, palaeonto logists found the skull of an early human, Homo habilis, buried d eep in sediment dated to around two million years. It belonged to an eleven-year-old child and bears the mark of an African predat or: the bone is punctured in two places, an exact match for a pai r of leopard's canines. A child such as this stood absolutely no chance of defending itself against these powerful beasts; even a fully grown male would have been practically helpless, given the speed, power and aggression of the big cats. To stand the best p ossible chance of survival all animals have to protect themselves from danger and death, so they need a means to be alert to threa ts at all times, to fear them and to fight or flee in response to them. The imperative is self-preservation as well as the surviva l of the species. In evolutionary terms, a fearless animal would be much less likely to survive and pass on its fearless genes. Si x billion humans now populate the world; our species has become t he most successful in the history of all life on the planet. Our early ancestors must have developed and evolved some spectacularl y successful ways to protect themselves from predators and threat s - physiological and psychological reactions that were so fundam ental to their survival they still exist deep within us today. ., Transworld Publishers, 2003, 3, USA: Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Paperback. Very Good/No Jacket. Trade Paperback in Near Fine Condition. Cleab and unmarked illustrated wraps, with whisper of wear to corners, tight and solid, square binding, Internals as new. The study of human evolution. New discoveries cause changes in what scientists thought they knew about evolution. "Ida", the most complete primate fossil ever found, is forty-seven million years old, older than the famous primate fossil Lucy by forty-four million years. "The Link" gives us the history of Ida and her place in the world; her discovery opens up a new window into our past. 262 pages indexed. 5.5 x 9 9 inches. 2010, Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Co., USA, Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2010, 3, Academic Journal Offprint from - Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section B - Biological, Geological and Chemical Science, Vol. 83, B, No. 23, 1983 9pp, 1 b/w pls, Printed Card Cover, VGC, 0, Prentice Hall Press, 1994. Second Edition. Trade Paperback. Good. GOOD BOOK! MODERATE WEAR & SEVERAL BENDS ON COVER. HIGHLIGHTING & UNDERLINING IN TEXT. Description: This text provides an in-depth survey of modern gender roles and issues from a sociological perspective which emphasizes interdisciplinary links between gender, history, psychology, biology and cross-cultural studies. Basic sociological concepts and theories, such as functionalism, conflict and symbolic interaction, are explained and used throughout. The book also shows the interdependence of gender roles and highlights both male and female issues throughout., Prentice Hall Press, 1994, 2.5<
