Part I. What Makes Us Human?
1. Being human
2. Baron von Pufendorf
3. Ghost theories
4. The secret lives of Lou, Laurence, and Leslie
Part II. The Archaeology of Friendship
5. Suddenly all was chaos
6. A wimpy idea
7. In the footsteps of A. B. Lewis
8. Confronting the obvious
9. The archaeology of friendship
10. The sign of the sea turtle
11. Drawing conclusions
Part III. Selfish Desires
12. Houston, we've had a problem
13. You can't get there from here
14. The wizard of Down House
15. The numbers game
Part IV. The Social Baseline
16. Animal cooperation
17. The question of animal awareness
18. Babies and big brains
19. Mission impossible
Part V. Social Being
20. Alone in a crowd
21. A state of mind
22. It's who you know
23. Bloodlust, fear, and other emotions
Part VI. Principles To Live By
24. The lady or the tiger?
25. A kiss is just a kiss?
26. Friend or Facebook?
27. What was the Garden of Eden like?
28. The strength of weak ties
29. Meet me on the marae
30. Being in a family way
Appendix
Index
John Edward Terrell, A.B., A.M., Ph.D. (Harvard) has long been
recognized as one of the world's leading experts on the peopling of
the Oceania and the remarkable biological, cultural, and linguistic
diversity of modern Pacific Islanders. He is also a pioneer in the
study of global human biogeography, baseline probability analysis,
and the application of social network analysis in archaeology and
anthropology. Since 1971 he has been the curator of
Oceanic archaeology and ethnology at the Field Museum of Natural
History in Chicago where he now holds the endowed Regenstein
Curatorship of Pacific Anthropology established there in 2005. A
strong voice for recognizing
museums today as key players in global heritage management, he is
currently working closely with Chicago's large Filipino-American
community to foster the co-curation with them of Field Museum's
outstanding early 20th century Philippines cultural
collections.
The author of more than 180 books, scientific papers, reports, and
reviews, his book Prehistory in the Pacific Islands (Cambridge,
1986, paper 1988) is considered by many to be a classic study of
human diversity in all its complexity. He has been called one of
the best writers in anthropology today, someone with a keen and
well-demonstrated commitment to writing that can be read for
pleasure as well as content. He also has the distinction of being
the resident kaitiaki (guardian) of the only
19th century Maori meeting house in the New World, Ruatepupuke II,
now at the Field Museum but originally from Tokomaru Bay, Aotearoa
(New Zealand) where it was first opened with great pomp and
circumstance in 1881.
"Terrell is a fine storyteller, and the book is an engaging read
with a number of thought-provoking case studies and examples...The
book's select case studies nicely illustrate the importance of
friendship among human in a few places and times...an enjoyable
read that weaves together many streams of thought and case studies
to illustrate the remarkable capacity that humans can have for
building new relationships with strangers." --Daniel Hruschka,
American
Anthropologist
"Is friendship a transaction designed to smooth over our naturally
brutish human nature? Or is it intrinsic to our being? Terrell, a
leading anthropologist of Oceania and author of the seminal
Prehistory in the Pacific Islands, offers a more complex answer...
As a theory of friendship, Terrell's work is elegant." - PUBLISHERS
WEEKLY
"Riveting... I highly recommend A Talent for Friendship... The
author's engaging style and infectious enthusiasm also make the
book appealing to any general reader with an interest in
archaeology, geography, psychology, and anthropology." - American
Scientist
"With A Talent for Friendship, John Terrell offers a mature view of
human relatedness-one that takes us beyond the well-trodden ground
of romantic pairings, filial bonds, and dependence upon caregivers.
Here we get an extended, inclusive discussion of a profound and
unaccountably neglected phenomenon: our ability to form
friendships. Terrell's passion for the subject is matched by his
compassion for the reader. Taking us by the proverbial hand, he
guides us through some pretty woolly territory-an intellectual and
scientific dreamscape of theories, disciplines, methods, and
controversies leading, in the end, to an integrated land where we
may finally
understand what it means to be a person in relation to other
persons, a self within a larger self." --James Coan, Associate
Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of the Virginia
Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, University of Virginia
"An engaging, astute, and boldly original proposal about the nature
of being human, this is five-fields anthropology at its best.
Positioning insights against human history, sometimes debatable
'common' sense from the West, and Pacific islander life ways,
Terrell draws on intellectual and literary threads to sew together
the argument that humans have a predisposition toward friendship as
surely as we have a predisposition to speak." --Janet Dixon
Keller,
Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
"This is a book about friendship told through stories of friendship
and rooted in anthropological and evolutionary analyses. Terrell
takes us on a journey of discovery, demonstrating both personally
and professionally how, where, and why friendship forms the
backbone of what it means to be human. Intermingling history,
ethnography, evolutionary theory, and personal experience, John
Terrell reveals the deep and intricate realities of friendship and
delightfully
illustrates why it is a (or even 'the') central factor in what
makes us human." --Agustin Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology,
University of Notre Dame
"John Edward Terrell, using his archeological and ethnographic
background of the peoples of New Guinea, an extraordinary eclectic
bibliography, and a number of personal events and experiences,
shows us that humans are not inherently selfish and dangerous. He
leads us on a remarkable trail showing us that humans have an
extraordinary talent for friendship." --Robert Sussman, Professor
of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis
"In this original and imaginative book, Terrell explores the
anthropology of friendship, which seems to define a peculiarly
human relationship. Part of this book's considerable charm lies in
its unashamed attempt to cross from descriptive and scientific into
prescriptive and 'applied' by giving the reader hints on how to be
a friend and even providing some crosscultural perspective from
Polynesia. This comprises the book's final major theme and, for me,
evokes
some of the best of Ashley Montagu's mid-century popular
anthropology
books." --Jonathan Marks, Evolutionary Anthropology
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