Anthropology book recommendations

First a note from real life: Change of location of meetup to our place in the outskirts of civilization, Western Blekinge, Sweden. Car rides from Kristiansand train station to the location are on offer. The day is still Saturday 27 September at about 15.00. The exact location will be given to those who send an email to woodfromeden@gmail.com or a PM to me. Feel free to send any questions as well. (And I promise to make my local brand of stir fry with our own vegetables.)

Now to the post on anthropology books:

Anthropology is nothing less than raw data about the limits of human existence. Social studies, economics, engineering and history all study the opportunities of human existence. They collect evidence of what humans are capable of doing under favorable circumstances. Anthropology studies the baseline: What humans can become, under all known circumstances.

Anthropology provides the constraints that prevent evolutionary psychology from becoming pure speculation. The human mind can make up a multitude of perfectly logically possible theories about the past and future of the human race. Anthropology helps sorting the few plausible theories from the many thinkable theories.

Or at least, it should do so. Studying anthropology is difficult. In theory, it should be very simple: Just find the anthropological literature and read it. But finding that literature is really hard. It is hidden in plain sight: Available, but unknown.

The most efficient method I have found is to read a book by an anthropologist that refers to many different books and to meticulously go through the references and make a list of titles to search for. I did this with a book called Sick Societies by Robert Edgerton. Not because I specifically wanted to learn about maladapted cultures, but because I figured out that such a book must contain references to books about cultures in general.

I often think: There must be a better way of doing this. Isn't there some kind of club where people interested in anthropology can share information? I have looked and found nothing in operation. But I can do one thing to reach out to other people who are interested in anthropology: Publish a list about the anthropology books I know and ask everyone who sees it to publish their own.

When choosing anthropology books, I apply one basic rule: I want to be as close as possible to the source. Anthropologists ...