The Anthropology of Real Life is about people living their lives through the flow of events in the world. Real life is the events to which people respond from day to day and year to year: droughts and migrations, new state regulations and local violation of established norms, deaths and marriages, forest fires and job opportunities, murders and social contracts. The Anthropology of Real Life is about how events push and pull, oppress and liberate, enhance and destroy people's lives. While people are shaped by their cultures and their positions in society, events-- whether authored by natural forces, by other people, or by people themselves--take on a life of their own, and become independent forces determining human destinies. The Anthropology of Real Life is illustrated with original ethnographic case studies from a Middle Eastern desert and a Mediterranean island. Broader conclusions are drawn from these ethnographic examples through comparative analysis. The Anthropology of Real Life shows the way in which the substance and texture of life changes over time, as one major event fades and another arises, itself only to fade and be replaced by yet a new event. The Anthropology of Real Life does not offer a new theory or paradigm, but draws on classical and contemporary anthropological works to identify a recognized and proven strategy for understanding people's real lives.
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Philip Carl Salzman, B.A. (Antioch), M.A., Ph.D. (Chicago)
Professor of Anthropology, McGill University (1968-present):
As a sociocultural anthropologist, I had the good fortune to carry out ethnographic field research for 27 months among nomadic tribes and settled cultivators in Iranian Baluchistan during the period 1967-76. My findings have been reported in Black Tents of Baluchistan (Smithsonian, 2000; winner of the Premio internazionale Pitré-Salomone Marino), and have contributed to a more general treatment of pastoral nomads and tribes, discussed in Pastoralists: Equality, Hierarchy, and the State (Westview, 2004). My interests in nomadic peoples led me to organize the Commission on Nomadic Peoples of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and to found the international journal, Nomadic Peoples (currently published by Berghahn), for which the IUAES granted me their "Gold Award."
Drawing on my appreciation of tribal organization, I have tried in Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Humanity, 2008) to explain what appear to be structural problems underlying the seemingly endless conflicts and counterproductive movements in the contemporary Middle East. At the same time, in Postcolonial Theory and the Arab-Israel Conflict, P. C. Salzman and D. R. Divine, eds. (Routledge, 2008), my collaborators and I have tried to demonstrate that alternative, postcolonial explanations of current problems in the Middle East are ill-conceived and unfounded. For this and other related work, in 2009 Scholars for Peace in the Middle East honored me with their Presidential Award.
Complementing my study of tribes with field research among peasants, I carried out ethnographic field research among pastoralists in Gujarat and Rajasthan (1985) and, leading a team of researchers, among shepherds and others in highland Sardinian communities (1990-95), the latter reported in The Anthropology of Real Life: Events in Human Experience (1999).
My current research on the compatibility of ultimate value objectives focuses on freedom and equality, and the ways in which these are reconciled or balanced in societies around the world, among tribes, peasants, farmers, and urbanites.
Professor of Anthropology, McGill University (1968-present):
As a sociocultural anthropologist, I had the good fortune to carry out ethnographic field research for 27 months among nomadic tribes and settled cultivators in Iranian Baluchistan during the period 1967-76. My findings have been reported in Black Tents of Baluchistan (Smithsonian, 2000; winner of the Premio internazionale Pitré-Salomone Marino), and have contributed to a more general treatment of pastoral nomads and tribes, discussed in Pastoralists: Equality, Hierarchy, and the State (Westview, 2004). My interests in nomadic peoples led me to organize the Commission on Nomadic Peoples of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and to found the international journal, Nomadic Peoples (currently published by Berghahn), for which the IUAES granted me their "Gold Award."
Drawing on my appreciation of tribal organization, I have tried in Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Humanity, 2008) to explain what appear to be structural problems underlying the seemingly endless conflicts and counterproductive movements in the contemporary Middle East. At the same time, in Postcolonial Theory and the Arab-Israel Conflict, P. C. Salzman and D. R. Divine, eds. (Routledge, 2008), my collaborators and I have tried to demonstrate that alternative, postcolonial explanations of current problems in the Middle East are ill-conceived and unfounded. For this and other related work, in 2009 Scholars for Peace in the Middle East honored me with their Presidential Award.
Complementing my study of tribes with field research among peasants, I carried out ethnographic field research among pastoralists in Gujarat and Rajasthan (1985) and, leading a team of researchers, among shepherds and others in highland Sardinian communities (1990-95), the latter reported in The Anthropology of Real Life: Events in Human Experience (1999).
My current research on the compatibility of ultimate value objectives focuses on freedom and equality, and the ways in which these are reconciled or balanced in societies around the world, among tribes, peasants, farmers, and urbanites.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
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The Events of Our Lives,
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This review is from: Anthropology of Real Life : Events in Human Experience (Paperback)
My introductory cultural anthropology students and I started reading this book in early September this fall. I kept wondering what real events had influenced my students' lives. After September 11th we used Salzman's framework for studying real events and how they shape people's lives to predict how 9-11 would influence us and change our lives. This book really has something to say about how events do influence us--whether we come from kinship-based societies like the Baluchi of Iran or from class-based societies like the Sardinians of Italy. If you have ever tried to think about how a forest fire, a bombing of a local factory, or a kidnapping or vendetta has influenced your life or those around you, then you can really relate to the shape of violence in the everyday lives of the Sicilians. Or perhaps you can relate to a small squabble that turns into a major feud between groups, as in the case of the Baluchi herder whose camel strayed into another man's date palms and partook heartily. This introductory anthropology book really does explain how events influence the lives of ordinary folks. It sure gave me and my students lots to chew on after 9-11.
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