This text is a sophisticated introduction to cultural anthropology that explores the interplay of cultural creativity, human agency, and material constraint in the shaping of human cultural traditions. Cultural practices that work become part of local traditions and serve as resources on which people can draw when faced with ambiguities in the future. However, the power struggles that go on in all societies always shape decisions about what "works" and what does not, further complicating the relationship between what people do and what "ecology" or "economics" or "rationality" is thought to require. The result is a tremendous variety of culturally constructed ways of life, none of which can easily be explained as the inevitable outcome of a single shaping force. This book focuses on people as creative beings bringing meaning to the world and transforming it through practical action.