by Genese Marie Sodikoff (Editor), Peter Whiteley (Contribution by), Jill Constantino (Contribution by)

We live in an era marked by an accelerating rate of species death, but since the early days of the discipline, anthropology has contemplated the death of languages, cultural groups, and ways of life. The essays in this collection examine processes of--and our understanding of--extinction across various domains. The contributors argue that extinction events can be catalysts for new cultural, social, environmental, and technological developments--that extinction processes can, paradoxically, be productive as well as destructive. The essays consider a number of widely publicized cases: island species in the Galápagos and Madagascar; the death of Native American languages; ethnic minorities under pressure to assimilate in China; cloning as a form of species regeneration; and the tiny hominid Homo floresiensis fossils ("hobbits") recently identified in Indonesia. The Anthropology of Extinction offers compelling explorations of issues of widespread concern.

Author Biography

Genese Marie Sodikoff is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rutgers University, Newark. She is author of Forest and Labor in Madagascar: From Colonial Concession to Global Biosphere (IUP, 2012).

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