To date the Anthropology of Sport has been dominated by accounts that have emphasized the social and cultural dimensions of such activities. This volume makes a significant contribution to the Anthropology of Sport through the development of a more systematic biocultural approach to sporting activities. What is particularly exciting about this volume is that the authors have been encouraged to explore the interactive and dynamic relationship between culture and biology in such a variety of ways and from such a variety of positions. Framed by Geertz's account of the importance of a concept of culture for human evolution, even while moving well beyond this early attempt, the ethnographic papers in this volume are theorised with a keen sense of the biocultural complexity of human movements. This book will find a place on bookshelves of all of us interested in the meanings and organization of human movement in social life.

Philip Moore, Curtin University of Technology, Australia

The Anthropology of Sport and Human Movement moves the discussion about the role of sport in human society to a new level, integrating the latest findings of biogenetics and physiology with the insights regarding sport as a cultural phenomenon. The collection is a breakthrough for the discipline, a gold mine of ideas for future research, and important reading for everyone who appreciates and takes seriously the study of human movement, sport, and play.

Kendall Blanchard, Georgia Southwestern State University

The editors of this volume want to promote an anthropology of sport and, in particular, advocate a biocultural approach to the subject. To that end, they have gathered 13 articles arranged in four sections. The book first presents foundational thinking on sport, play, and the concept of "man" (the latter in a Clifford Geertz reprint). There follow sections on the evolution of human running, the role of race in sports (principally running), and the final mix of topics on exercise, pain, and ineptness (among Paleolithic athletes, contemporary hunter-gatherers, and Brazilian capoeira practitioners, as well as in pain management systems of the future). While claiming interest in sport and human movement broadly understood, the articles show a major emphasis on running. Similarly, while the stated aim is to show the intersection of the biological and cultural, the more complex data, sophisticated analyses, and general awareness of recent scholarship lay on the biological side. This orientation can be explained in part by the disciplinary spread of the authors: three are anthropologists while other work the fields such as sociology, biology, health and exercise, medical science, international health, and business.

Choice Reviews