Assault on Paradise - Tapa blanda

This is a revision of a highly readable, instructive, and entertaining ethnography for use as a supplemental text in introductory anthropology courses. The text chronicles the rapid social and economic change in Arembepe, a Brazilian coastal fishing village, where the author conducted anthropological fieldwork from 1962 to the present. This revision brings his research up to date with events that have occurred in this community in the 1990's, focusing primarily on the impact of modernization, technology and mass media. This ethnography can be used on its own, or in conjunction with any introductory anthropology text, but works particularly well with, Mirror for Humanity, 2/e (1999) also by Conrad Kottak. The coinciding publication of these two books offers professors the chance to give their students a brief text by a leading anthropologist, along with his most successful ethnography.

Conrad Phillip Kottak (A.B. Columbia, 1963; Ph.D. Columbia, 1966) is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1968.  In 1991 he was honored for his teaching by the University and the state of Michigan.  In 1992 he received an excellence in teaching award from the College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts of the University of Michigan.  Professor Kottak has done fieldwork in cultural anthropology in Brazil (since 1962), Madagascar (since 1966), and the United States. In current research projects, Kottak and his colleagues have investigated the emergence of ecological awareness in Brazil, the social context of deforestation in Madagascar, and popular participation in economic development planning in northeastern Brazil.