Social and Cultural Anthropology by John Monaghan and Peter Just

Part of my work is understanding people and their behaviors within their context so that I can advise clients how to reach them effectively with their products and services. The things that are important to people are not as apparent as it seems, and research methodologies such as ethnography can provide insight into motivations that are not conscious to the consumer. 

What this book does primarily is to introduce the questions that anthropologists ask and the methods that they use to get their answers. The key research practice is to live among the people being studied long enough to be "forgotten" as an outsider, whereupon the routines and nonroutine events gradually surface what the values and mores of the culture truly are. Every culture has its assumptions about what is normal, and the authors make an effort to expose some of the common differences through examples of varied marriage practices, rituals of reaching adulthood, etc.  One had studied a tribal group in Papua New Guinea, a synchretistic Islamic group. Their practice after birth is to discard the placenta in a field, but the placenta has a spirit that is angry because it "did not become human" and this spirit can cause problems later. Their primary crops are considered sentient and receive offering before being harvested. 

The book is a brief introduction to the study practices of anthropologists and some of their findings. It naturally ignores the reasons for the adoption of some of the practices--worship of creation rather than the creator, and violation of the natural Law--that would be condemned as biblically abhorrent. 

The version of this that I read was published by a different publisher and the subtitle was "A Brief Insight." I finished this on 6/9/12 as we were driving home from the beach. I'll probably shoot it to the used bookstore. 

Gospel Centered Discipleship by Jonathan Dodson

I'd been looking forward to this since I started reading in Dodson's blog where he mentioned that he was writing it. It's an expansion of his book on "Fight Clubs" that focus on fighting sin in the believer's life. Overall, it's a helpful book. It's strength is in defining the problems it sees in certain areas of the current church and then helping to focus on the gospel as the solution rather than moralism. He suggests that small groups of men or women (2-3 at largest) read scripture together, confess to one another, and apply the gospel truth to fight against sin. Among the useful practices he suggests in the Fight Clubs (as he calls these groups) is defining the promises of God vs. the promises of sin. For example, what is the appeal of anger--self justification, power, getting my own way? Compare that to the promise of God to trust in His way and be justified by the person and work of Jesus Christ. 

Overall, a good book on putting the gospel in the center of discipleship, with some practical framework for helping that happen without making a list of legal requirements that constitute a new law. Having heard and read much in this line from Paul Kooistra and Jack Miller, I thought Dodson's work was a good primer to this critical understanding of Christian discipleship, with some new ways of implementing it within the current cultural framework. 

I read this during our vacation in Daytona Beach in early June 2012.

Blankets by Craig Thompson

Thompson writes his memoir of a pair of boys (himself and his younger brother)  raised in a fundamentalist household, and of his first love. It was interesting and the boys are very convincing. It's well-drawn and paced. It left me sad because ultimately it is a tale of lost faith. His spirit was stifled as a youth by a father who does not take seriously the command to fathers to "not exasperate your children." Rather, the father locked them in a scary cubby-hole when they misbehaved. Thompson sees mainly the negatives of "religion" as a result, and is lured away by more attractive prospects, especially in the form of a young girl he meets at camp.

I started Thompson's Habibi, which was recommended on Paste's list of the best graphic novels of 2011. Again it was well-drawn and engaging, but I got tired of the frank depictions of the harem, (which Thompson obviously relished,) and also found some of the character development so unbelievable as to be offputting. I finally gave up about 2/3 of the way through and moved on to more profitable reading.

Finished Blankets about 3/31/12. Gave up on Habibi about a week before that. Both library books. I was on a graphic novel tear for a while and moved on to regular novels and nonfiction for some balance.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Well, I had a post here with a couple of paragraphs about my thoughts on this. But I tried to edit it to change a typo and somehow managed to wipe it out. So I'll just say this: The Power of Habit is an interesting layman's look at the influence of habit on daily behaviors and purchasing. Some of it seemed less related to habits than others (like the programming of radio stations and the making of hits, which was more about the use of repetition to "cause" popularity. Maybe that's forming a habit of "liking" a song?) The chapter on Target and the use of predictive models is interesting and touches the tip of the iceberg on that topic. All in all, a really enjoyable read, and one I have in my business book library now.