Pacific automobilism

In this expansive volume, historian Gijs Mom explores how contemporary mobility has been impacted by social, political, and economic forces on a global scale, as in light of local mobility cultures, the car as an ‘adventure machine’ seems to lose cultural influence in favor of the car’s status ...

An introduction to two theories of social anthropology

Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, was one of the most important figures in post-war French anthropology. He is well-known for his early work on India, which culminated in Homo Hierarchicus (1966; in English 1972, 1980), an anthropological account of the caste system. He later extended this work i...

Let them not return

The fist edited volume about the Assyrian genocide Focusing specifically on by far under-studied and denied genocide Authors from different disciplines

An anthropological trompe l'oeil for a common world

Explores key elements in early modern political philosophy Inquires into the cultural epistemology fuelling the aggrandizement and miniaturisation of description Charts an itinerary for an internal anthropology of theorizing

Exchanging objects

As an historical account of the exchange of “duplicate specimens” between anthropologists at the Smithsonian Institution and museums, collectors, and schools around the world in the late nineteenth century, this book reveals connections between both well-known museums and little-known local ins...

Two armies and one fatherland

In October 1990 West German general Jörg Schönbohm and a small team of experts moved into the headquarters of the former East German army to effect the unprecedented: the takeover, in peacetime and without the firing of a single shot, of a well-equiped army that had been the Bundeswehr's main e...

Young men in uncertain times

International range of cross cultural cases Context driven Ethnographically rich

Illness and enlightenment

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Tibetan region of Amdo in northwest China, Illness and Enlightenment examines Tibetan medical and religious texts, to explore the multi-faceted concept of nyoné through key Tibetan concepts of wind, heart, and mind, as well as human-spirit relationships.

Race, color, identity

Contributes to the discussion over the attribution of inherent physiological traits to certain ethnic groups Opens up concepts of the relationship between the terms "color", "race" and "Jews" Addresses academic and social discourses that continue to place Jews and others in a race/co...

Starry nights

Critiques the postmodern tenets of anthropology, while articulating a new strategy for conducting research. Provides an important critique of mainstream anthropology as represented by Geertz and the postmodern legacy. Envisions a mode of anthropological research that addresses social...

Birds of passage

Drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork in Malta, this book traces the complex interactions between hunters, birds and the landscapes they inhabit, as well as the dynamics and politics of bird conservation. Birds of Passage looks at the practice and meaning of hunting in a specific context, ...

Constructing charisma

Examines the origins and nature of modern mass media and the culture of celebrity and fame they helped to create Presents multidisciplinary approach: history, art history, literature, sociology Focuses on arts celebrities (Sarah Bernhardt, Byron and Liszt); charismatic political figu...

After unity

The unification of Germany is the most important change in Central Europe in the last four decades. Understanding this rapid and unforeseen development has raised old fears as well as inspired new hopes. In order to make sense out of the bewildering process and to help both expert and lay reade...

Exploring regimes of discipline

The pursuit and practice of discipline have become near ubiquitous elements of contemporary social life and parlance, as discipline has become a commonplace and ever sought-after social technology. From the celebrated “discipline of the market” proclaimed by neo-liberal politicians, to self-act...

African political systems revisited

Reexamining a classical work of Social Anthropology, African Political Systems (1940), edited by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, this book looks at the colonial and academic context from which the work arose, as well as its reception and its subject matter and looks at how the work can help with an...

Je t’aime... moi non plus

A series of limiting definitions have tended to delineate the Franco-British cinematic relationship. As this collection of essays reveals, there is much more to it than simple oppositions between British critical esteem for the films of France and French dismissal of ‘le cinéma British’, or the...

Voices of the valley, voices of the straits

Protest campaigns against large-scale public works usually take place within a local context. However, since the 1990s new forms of protest have been emerging. This book analyses two cases from Italy that illustrate this development: the environmentalist protest campaigns against the TAV (the b...

Rethinking internal displacement

To tackle the vast numbers of internally displaced people, a UN regime has emerged that seeks to replicate the long-established regime of refugee protection by applying international law and humanitarian assistance to citizens within their own borders. This book looks at the origins, structure ...

Collaborative happiness

Collaborative Happiness looks at two urban cohousing communities: Kankanmori, in Tokyo; and Quayside Village, in Vancouver. In expanding beyond mainstream approaches to happiness focused exclusively on the individual, Quayside Village and Kankanmori provide an alternative model for how to under...

Intimate mobilities

This book explores how various types of migration that are often seen as distinct phenomena – such as marriage migration, romance tourism and sex work migration – are in fact variations of cross-border mobilities that evolve around experiences and constructions of “intimacy”, and are facilitate...

Beyond wild and tame

Landscapes beyond land

Goes beyond the theoretical dichotomy of structure and experience Focuses on routes, aesthetics and narratives Wide regional spread of ethnography Links British and French traditions of landscape study

Kinship in europe

Since the publication of Philippe Ariès’s book, Centuries of Childhood, in the early 1960s, there has been great interest among historians in the history of the family and the household. A central aspect of the debate relates the story of the family to implicit notions of modernization, with th...

Writing mothers and daughters

The psychoanalytic discovery of the importance of the pre-oedipal mother-daughter bond in the 1970s generated a vast amount of feminist theory attempting to identify the specificity of, and give value to, the daughter's relationship to her mother. At the same time women writers engaged in the c...

When will we talk about hitler?

Observation of history classes to analyze student’s relationship to German history Adolescents appropriation of history within peer groups Taking adolescents political position seriously Analyzing schools, families and peer groups together, overstepping disciplinary frontiers ...

Coproducing europe

By focusing on regional film markets in Thessasloniki, Sarajevo, and Tbilisi, Coproduction Europe uses comparative ethnography to look beyond the economic nature of film coproductions to explore their role in Europeanisation, memories of the Cold War, and preconstructed political agendas.

Marxism and film activism

This collection examines how filmmakers have tried to change the world by engaging in emancipatory politics in their work, and how audiences have received them. It presents a wide spectrum of case studies, covering both film and digital technology. Discussions range from the classic ...

The early morning phonecall

Offers valuable insights into remittance dynamics in conflict-affected settings, a rarely studied area A perspective on everyday life in the Somali regions and the diaspora Features a transnational view encompassing three contrasting locations A multi-method, interdisciplinary ap...

Cultures of technology and the quest for innovation

Underlying the current dynamics of technological developments, their divergence or convergence and the abundance of options, promises and risks they contain, is the quest for innovation, the contributors to this volume argue. The seemingly insatiable demand for novelty coincides with the rise o...

Region-building

After two centuries of nation-building, the world has entered an era of region-building in search of political stability, cultural cohesion, and socio-economic development. Nations involved in the regional structures and integration schemes that are emerging in most regions of the world are dee...

Coping with tourists

Once content to sunbathe and follow guides and established itineraries, tourists are increasingly seeking authentic culture. This is taking them into the private areas and zones to which the locals retire in order to escape the tourist gaze, creating tensions between the two groups. Based on re...

Women and men in love

It has often been assumed that Europeans invented and had the exclusive monopoly over courtly and romantic love, commonly considered to be the highest form of relations between men and women. This view was particularly prevalent between 1770 and the mid-twentieth century, but was challenged in ...

Working with spirit

Jerzy skolimowski

First monograph, written in English, to be devoted to the cinema of Jerzy Skolimowski Addresses the main features of Skolimowski's films, such as their affinity to autobiographism and surrealism Situates Skolimowski's work within the context of Polish and world cinema Draws paral...

Media, anthropology and public engagement

This is the first book to explore how anthropologists are engaging with publics through media – it is an essential up date to existing work on public anthropology. The book explores a range of different ways in which anthropologists can engage with publics through media – from blogs to t...

Facing the crisis

Facing the Crisis brings together ethnographic material from anthropological research projects carried out in various Italian industrial locations during the last economic crisis. With its wide number of locations and industries, the volume looks at all corners of the diverse Italian manufactur...

This land is not for sale

As violent conflict has declined in northern Uganda, tensions and mistrust concerning land have increased. Residents try to deal with acquisitions by investors and exclusions from forests and wildlife reserves. Using extended case studies, collaborating researchers analyze the principles and pr...

Fire on the island

In 2014, the island of Ahamb in Vanuatu became the scene of a startling Christian revival movement led by thirty children with ‘spiritual vision’. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork on Ahamb between 2010 and 2017, this book investigates how upheavals like the Ahamb revival can eme...

Culture, catastrophe, and rhetoric

It develops the concept of political culture through case studies of communicative action. It introduces the concept of the texture of political action, which refers to how social context operates on the surface of an event to shape political experience. It focuses on thecatastrophic...

Trapped in the gap

A forensic analysis of the dilemmas of well intentioned white development workers in Australia. Explores what happens when well-meaning people, supported by the state, find themselves trapped by endless ambiguities and contradictions — a microcosm of the broader dilemmas of postcolonial ...

One hundred years of argonauts

Malinowski’s pioneering work remains critical for anthropology in a postcolonial age. This volume uses ethnographic studies from around the world to contextualize the work politically and intellectually, examining its gestation and influence from multiple perspectives.

The art of fate calculation

The Art of Fate Calculationexplores how conceptions of fate circulate in Chinese and Taiwanese societies while resisting uniformization and institutionalization. This is not only due to the stigma of “superstition” but also to the internal dynamic of fate calculation practice and learning.

Subsistence-settlement systems and intersite variability in the moroiso phase of the early jomon period of japan

This book examines the settlement patterns and intersite variability in lithic assemblages of Early Jomon (ca. 5000 BP) hunter-gatherers in Japan. The results of this study suggest that the Early Jomon people were not sedentary, as previously assumed, but instead moved their residential basis s...

Growing up in transit

Tanu offers the first ethnographic study of young people who experience high levels of international mobility while growing up, either moving across national borders or by attending international schools with trans-national student bodies.