About the hearth

Addresses a major theme in anthropological theory. Has a full circumpolar range of examples. Is an interdisciplinary collection. Addresses the complexity of northern indigenous architectural design.

Much ado about nothing?

The year 2010 marked the halfway point for Silvio Berlusconi’s fourth government with the solidity of its electoral mandate threatened on a number of occasions by strong clashes with the opposition, ultimately leading to a “divorce” from Gianfranco Fini. The upheaval that followed this rift dom...

Indigenous peoples, civil society, and the neo-liberal state in latin america

In recent years the concept and study of “civil society” has received a lot of attention from political scientists, economists, and sociologists, but less so from anthropologists. A ground-breaking ethnographic approach to civil society as it is formed in indigenous communities in Latin America...

In search of legitimacy

Unique in proposing a model for how individuals engaged in a particular body-culture use travel as a way of signaling their commitment to the genre. The approach in describing how non-Brazilians position themselves to claim legitimacy within the field of capoeira on Brazilians’ ‘home tur...

Durkheim and foucault

Education and punishment are two crucial sites of the "disciplinary society," approached by Durkheim and Foucault from different perspectives, but also in a shared concern with what kind of society might constitute an "emancipatory" alternative. This collection of essays explores the issues tha...

The total work of art

Demonstrates how the lineage and legacies of Gesamtkunstwerk (the ideal of the "total work of art") extend well beyond German Romanticism. Eleven compact essays trace the idea’s evolution in German-speaking Europe. Provides a broad perspective on a distinctively modern cultural form.

Fire in the dark

Anthropologists who are employed to change the worlds they are researching find themselves in a potentially contradictory position. Combining the various roles and expectations involved in working with Gypsies and local government at the same time as conducting anthropological research, provide...

Mastering soldiers

Studies of the military that deal with the actual experience of troops in the field are still rare in the social sciences. In fact, this ethnographic study of an elite unit in the Israeli Defense Force is the only one of its kind. As an officer of this unit and a professional anthropologist, th...

Peaceful selves

With its focus on personhood and self-making, it investigates gaps in understanding left behind by dominant frameworks for analyzing life in post-conflict societies, such as reconciliation, justice, and commemoration politics The argument is built around fundamental tensions in Rwandan c...

Kharkov/kharkiv

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city located on the Ukrainian-Russian historical borderland, has often been overlooked given its historic role. Kharkov/Kharkov for the first time uncovers the city’s long history, from the 17th century to today, and its process of becoming a borderland and und...

Educational histories of european social anthropology

Aimed at professional anthropologists, their students and academic policy-makers, the contributions to this volume provide an unprecedented array of insights into the current teaching and learning of social anthropology across Europe. With case-studies from eighteen different countries this vol...

Waiting for elijah

Rare long-term ethnographic study of Bosnian sacral landscapes and the first anthropological exploration of syncretism in Bosnia   A seminal anthropological study of time and waiting Develops an analytical framework for approaching shared landscapes and syncretism Investigates pa...

The power of the story

Can a novel cause riots, start a war, free serfs or slaves, break up marriages, drive readers to suicide, close factories, bring about law change, swing an election, or serve as a weapon in a national or international struggle? The author explores this question in the form of a theoretical essa...

Shakespeare and the ethics of war

How does Shakespeare represent war? This volume reviews scholarship to date on the question and introduces new perspectives, looking at contemporary conflict through the lens of the past.

Cultural resource management

Stressing the interdisciplinary, public-policy oriented character of Cultural Resource Management (CRM), which is not merely “applied archaeology,” this short, relatively uncomplicated introduction is aimed at emerging archaeologists.

The hegemonic male

The construction of masculinity is becoming a field of growing interest because it is opening up new and fascinating perspectives, thus adding a further dimension to Gender Studies. However, so far the analysis has focused mostly on homosexuality. By contrast, the author examines social process...

Landscape ethnoecology

Although anthropologists and cultural geographers have explored “place” in various senses, little cross-cultural examination of “kinds of place,” or ecotopes, has been presented from an ethno-ecological perspective. In this volume, indigenous and local understandings of landscape are investigat...

Cinema of collaboration

Almost from their very inception, European cinemas frequently undertook collaborative ventures in an attempt to cultivate a transnational “Film-Europe.” And despite the significant obstacles that the East/West divide presented to achieving that ideal, in the postwar era it was DEFA, the state c...

Hope and insufficiency

Hope and Insufficiency seeks to question the histories, assumptions, intentions, and enactments that has led to the ubiquity of capacity building as an anthropological concept, thereby developing a much-needed critical purchase on its persuasive power.

Anthropology and consultancy

More and more, anthropologists are recruited as consultants by government departments, companies or as observers of development processes in their field areas generally. Although these roles can be very gratifying, they can create ambiguous situations for the anthropologists who find that new p...

Distributed objects

The first cross-disciplinary exploration of Art and Agency by leading scholars in their fields. Examines the reception and influence of a highly influential and still controversial theory 15 years after its publication. Includes a hitherto unpublished essay by Gell (‘The Network of S...

Bishkek boys

Pioneering: 1st long-term ethnographic study on an urban neighbourhood in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan Unique embedding of author: linking detailed micro-level insights from everyday encounters in a particular urban neighbourhood to larger-scale changes in Kyrgyz society, such as migration, econo...

Empire of pictures

Based on multi-lingual sources (German, Spanish, and English) and multi-archival research conducted in six different countries around the world. At the cutting edge of new research trends in the field of international/global history. The first work to analyze the important history of...

The new media nation

Around the planet, Indigenous people are using old and new technologies to amplify their voices and broadcast information to a global audience. This is the first portrait of a powerful international movement that looks both inward and outward, helping to preserve ancient languages and cultures ...

The manchester school

Pioneered by Max Gluckman to demonstrate the way in which social practice and structure together constitute and are themselves constituted by the situational flow of social life, the extended case method became diagnostic of the Manchester School of Social Anthropology. Anticipating practice th...

History of the low countries

The history of the smaller European countries is rather neglected in the teaching of European history at university level. We are therefore pleased to announce the publication of the first comprehensive history of the Low Countries - in English - from Roman Times to the present. Remaining polit...

Postcoloniality

Elusive promises

Focuses on the idea of the promise as a way to understand planning through time. Ethnographic accounts from highly-regarded anthropologists on planning. Comparative study of planning.

Existential anthropology

Inspired by existential thought, but using ethnographic methods, Jackson explores a variety of compelling topics, including 9/11, episodes from the war in Sierra Leone and its aftermath, the marginalization of indigenous Australians, the application of new technologies, mundane forms of rituali...

German television

First edited volume in English on its topic. Brings together scholars from US, UK and Germany. Combines historical with theoretical perspectives, history of technology with program content and economics, auteur directors and popular mainstream TV series.

Beyond posthumanism

Against the background of debates about a revival of humanist values, this volume seeks to recast the question of the viability of the humanities by analyzing their long-disputed premises in German literature and philosophy. It emphasizes the importance of the humanities’ original mission of es...

Food for health, food for wealth

Food and eating practices are central to current sociological and anthropological concerns about the body, health, consumption, and identity. This study explores the importance of these themes as they intersect with processes of globalization and cultural production within a specific group of c...

Refugees welcome?

Situates the 2015-16 ‘refugee crisis’ in Germany within the wider German history of responding politically to difference and diversity.

Crime and punishment in jewish law

The Bible presents only a small portion of the laws necessary for a state to function. Nevertheless, whole tractates of the Talmud discuss a wide variety of legal issues both civil and criminal. Although the jurisdiction of the beth din was limited in every land where Jews have lived, the schol...

Disenchantment with market economics

The life-worlds and personal experiences of workers and employees in three enterprises in East Berlin at the moment of political and economic upheaval stand at the centre of the book. It sets out in 1989 at the moment of the fall of the Berlin Wall witnessing the confrontations with the market ...

The language encounter in the americas, 1492-1800

Vertiginous life

Through individual stories from crisis Greece, this book explores the everyday effects of vertigo: nausea, dizziness, breathlessness, the sense of falling, and unknowingness of Self. Being lost in time, caught in the spin-cycle of crisis, people reflect on belonging to modern Europe, neoliberal...

Migration in the making of the gulf space

Combining visual and literary analyses and original ethnographic studies as part of a more general political reflection, Migration in the Making of Gulf Space examines the role of migrants and non-citizens in the processes of settling in the Arab States of the Gulf region.

Sound matters

The sounds of music and the German language have played a significant role in the developing symbolism of the German nation. In light of the historical division of Germany into many disparate political entities and regional groups, German artists and intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th cen...

Crisis of the state

Iconicity of the uto-aztecans

The attempt to study a snake simulacrum thus constitutes the basic objective of this volume. A long, all-embracing iconicity of snakes and related snake motifs are evident in different cultural expressions ranging from rock art templates to other cultural artifacts like basketry, pottery, templ...

How is a man supposed to be a man?

The global trend of declining fertility rates and an increasingly ageing population has serious implications for individuals and institutions alike. Childless men are mostly excluded from ageing, social science and reproduction scholarship and almost completely absent from most national statist...

Submerged on the surface

Crypto crowds

Develops a new, innovative approach to cryptocurrency by exploring crowd and community dynamics of cryptocurrency advocates. Analyses how the increasing digitalization and datafication of life will increase the relevance of cryptocurrencies. Includes short essays by prominent anthrop...