An accessible, balanced undergraduate textbook on anthropological theory. Jerry D. Moore's Visions of Culture presents students with a brief, readable treatment of theoretical developments in the field from the days of Tylor and Morgan through contemporary postmodernists and cultural materialists. The key ideas of 21 major theorists are briefly described and linked to biographical and fieldwork experiences that helped shape those theories. An assessment of the scholar's impact on contemporary theorizing is presented, along with numerous explanatory examples, illuminating quotes from the theorists' writings, and a description of the broader intellectual setting in which these anthropologists worked. An ideal book for classes on the theory or the history of anthropology.
Jerry Moore is an anthropological archaeologist and Professor of Anthropology at California State University Dominguez Hill. Moore has conducted archaeological research in Peru, Mexico, and southern California.
Moore's principal expertise is on the prehistoric architecture in the Andes. He has written three books, Architecture and Power in the Prehispanic Andes: The Archaeology of Public Buildings (1996 Cambridge University Press), Cultural Landscapes in the Prehispanic Andes: Archaeologies of Place (2005 University Press of Florida), and the fortchoming The Prehistory of Home (University of California Press); in addition Moore has written nineteen peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and thirty professional papers on that topic. Moore also has conducted archaeological research in Baja California and is the co-editor with Donald Laylander of The Prehistory of Baja California: Advances in the Archaeology of the Forgotten Peninsula (2006 University Press of Florida) which was chosen as a 2007 Choice Distinguished Book.
In addition, Moore has written one of the leading textbooks on anthropological theory, (2008) Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists which is in its 3rd Edition and he edited a companion collection of primary materials published this year, Visions of Culture: An Annotated Reader.
Moore has been a fellow in Precolumbian Studies at Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks Research Libraries and Collections in Washington D.C., a senior scholar at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, and a Fellow at the Getty Research Institute. In 2003 he was selected as the CSUDH Outstanding Professor and in 2008 was selected as the campus's "Outstanding Researcher." In Spring 2013 he will be a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Durham University, UK.
