Anthropology professor Eric Gable’s book Anthropology and Egalitarianism was published recently by Indiana University Press (IUP). Below is a description that appears on the IUP website:

Anthropology and Egalitarianism is an artful and accessible introduction to key themes in cultural anthropology. Writing in a deeply personal style and using material from his fieldwork in three dramatically different locales—Indonesia, West Africa, and Monticello, the historic home of Thomas Jefferson—Eric Gable shows why the ethnographic encounter is the core of the discipline’s method and the basis of its unique contribution to understanding the human condition. Gable weaves together vignettes from the field and discussion of major works as he explores the development of the idea of culture through the experience of cultural contrast, anthropology’s fraught relationship to racism and colonialism, and other enduring themes.

“A major work of scholarship, with the potential to become a classic work of anthropology that will be read and debated for years to come.” —Paul Stoller, author of The Power of the Between: An Anthropological Odyssey

“Among the most eloquent and deeply reflexive works I have read in some time. . . . Accessible, conversational, and at times disarmingly colloquial, it is precisely the kind of work that should be taught at the undergraduate level.” —Liam D. Murphy, co-author of A History of Anthropological Theory