Greg Urban is an American anthropologist who specializes in indigenous peoples ofSouth America and on general theoretical problems in linguistic and cultural anthropology. Much of his work has been oriented toward the development of a discourse-centered theory of culture.[1] Urban is the Arthur Hobson Quinn Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.

A Tapirs Heart
1

We the Living
28

The Hole in the Sky
66

A Lock of Hair in a Ball of Wax
99

The Jaguars Spots
134

This Is Your Making
172

Rocks That Talk
215

Between Myth and Dream
241

Notes 259

References
267

Index
279

This is one of the most sophisticated explanations available on the many and varied links between language and culture.... By constantly juxtaposing the sensible and the intelligible, [Urban] shows the adaptive qualities of culture and communication, and casts an old controversy about social organization in a totally new light. As abstract as this may sound, it is concretized with one of the best explications in print about the process of ethnographic fieldwork and how an outsider can go from observations of behavior to analysis and interpretation of historical and sociocultural patterns and processes. (Choice)

The only ethnographic work on a small scale society by a linguistic anthropologist which is accessible to scholars in other disciplines.... A major and distinct voice on how language and culture work together. (Benjamin Lee, Director, Center for Transcultural Studies, Chicago)