Symbols and Meaning: A Concise Introduction - Softcover

Womack, Mari

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0759103224 ISBN 13: 9780759103221

Publisher: Altamira Press, 2005

Synopsis

Womack offers a concise and easy-to-read overview of the power and meaning of symbols in all human societies. She describes how symbols_images, words, or behaviors with multi-layered meanings_are mechanism of communication. She demonstrates how we experience the power of symbols in all aspects of human life: birth, death, love, sexual desire, and the need for food and shelter. Womack investigates the use of symbols in the language of religion, healing, politics, social organization and control, popular culture, psychology, philosophy, semiotics, magic and expressive culture, including art, aesthetics, literature, theater, sports, and music. The author's eclectic, anthropological approach incorporates the social, conceptual and psychological dynamics of symbols. Her new book is an essential introductory textbook for courses that define fundamental concepts in religion, cultural anthropology, communication, and art.

About this title

About the Author

Mari Womack is a writer and anthropologist specializing in symbols, religion, gender, American popular culture, and anthropological theory and methods. A research scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, she is scriptwriter for the PBS television series Faces of Culture and author of Being Human: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, and of The Other Fifty Percent, a reader on gender.

Edition details

• Publisher: Altamira Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0759103224
• ISBN 13: 9780759103221
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176