Matsutake worlds

Matsutake Worlds explores matsutake mushrooms through the lens of multispecies encounters, to explore the mushroom’s success on the world stage. This success cannot be accounted for by any one cultural or economic process—rather, the matsutake has flourished due to many different processes, cul...

Decolonizing african art history and heritage

The book is an in-depth exploration of African spirituality and cultural practices, focusing on the performative and symbolic roles of ritual objects. The book takes a decolonial perspective on art history and museology, challenging Eurocentric practices that often decontextualise Africa...

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.

Strangers either way

Croatia gained the world's attention during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. In this context its image has been overshadowed by visions of ethnic conflict and cleansing, war crimes, virulent nationalism, and occasionally even emergent regionalism. Instead of the norm, this book of...

The politics of relations

Rethinking the contributions of the Manchester School of Social Anthropology for political ethnography, the Politics of Relations elaborates its relational approach to the state along four interlaced axes of research – embeddedness, boundary work, modalities and strategic selectivity – that ena...

Democracy in modern europe

As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has reshaped not only the landscape of government, but also fundamental social and political thought on a global level. Democracy in Modern Europe covers the history of democracy in modern Europe.

Access to assisted reproductive technologies

Despite France and Belgium sharing and interacting constantly, access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies are strikingly different. The contributors to this volume are social scientists from France, Belgium, England and the United States and represent different disciplines. Each author has at...

When they came for me

Whilst a student in South Africa, John Schlapobersky was arrested for opposing apartheid and tortured, detained and deported. In this volume, apartheid and its resistance come to life in personal stories that make this a vital historical document - one of its time and one for our own.

Soup, love, and a helping hand

In-depth study of social relations in contemporary urban China. Examining different scales of social relations, from the interpersonal (family) to the neighborhood, to social institutions and organizations. A combined focus on social relations, help/ support, and morality in differen...

Boaters of london

London and the Southeast of England is home to many people living along rivers and canals. Boaters of London delves into the process of becoming a ‘boater’ and the political impact of the travelling population on the state. It examines an alternative style of living and the potential of a life ...

Beyond the looking glass

Explores the movie screen as a medium of shared experience between spectator and star Evaluates the fan’s desire for a material connection to the performer Utilises scholarly and theoretical studies as well as reviews and accounts from popular culture Examines the importance of g...

Culture change and ex-change

Biography&Relationship: I was born in PNG in 1972, lived there until I was 5 and thus have a very personal relationship to people and place. It is my home. Although not old-childhood friends of mine, Bena people adopted me more than 23 years ago into their community. The long-term relati...

Playing the hand we are dealt

The relationship between literature and life can be construed as a counterpoint of fate and freewill. Rather than equating fate to the ‘hand we are dealt’ which is reducible to the social or familial environments into which we are born, this book explores the idea of fate through the books that...

Social bonds as freedom

Articulates how social bonds uniting groups underpin concepts of freedom instead of creating obstacles, to achieve the universal. Describes ways to conceive liberal democracy in the light of globalization.

Brazilian steel town

Volta Redonda is a Brazilian steel town founded in the 1940s by dictator Getúlio Vargas on an ex-coffee valley as a powerful symbol of Brazilian modernization. Brazilian Steel-Town tells the story of the people tied to this ailing giant – of their fears, hopes, and everyday struggles.

Ecofeminism and rhetoric

By drawing on the complex interplay of ecology and feminism, ecofeminists identify links between the domination of nature and the oppression of women. This volume introduces a variety of innovative approaches for advancing ecofeminist activism, demonstrating how words exert power in the world. ...

Indigeneity on the move

“Indigeneity” has become a prominent yet contested concept in national and international politics, as well as within the social sciences. This edited volume draws from authors representing different disciplines and perspectives, aiming to convey a theoretical and empirical overview of indigenei...

Twilight of the merkel era

An in-depth look at the 2017 Bundestag campaign and election Detailed analyses of the major parties and political forces As assessment of the consequential Merkel chancellorship A focus on the rise of right-populism with the Alternative for Germany party

The best we share

As the most ambitious study of the World Heritage arena so far, this volume dissects the inner workings of a prominent global body, demonstrating the power of ethnography in the highly formalised and diplomatic context of a multilateral organisation.

Privileges of birth

Gendering post-1945 german history

Becoming good women

This book illustrates that tuition space acts as an important site for identity formation and placemaking, where students play out their cosmopolitan aspirations whilst acquiring educational capital. It focuses on narratives of female Sinhalese students attending a national school in the Centra...

The long journey

Travel writing has, for centuries, comprised an essential historical record and wide-ranging literary form, reflecting the rich diversity of travel as a social and cultural practice, metaphorical process, and driver of globalization.

Money in a human economy

Contributors to this volume attempt to think about money as a category of thought, offer theories on luxury and sex in capitalist development, and follow the evolution of money today from the role of the global South in shaping its future, to cross-border investment in China, to Bitcoin as poli...

These were people once

People buy and sell human remains online. Most of this trade these days is over social media. In a study of this ‘bone trade’, how it works, and why it matters, the authors review and use a variety of methods drawn from the digital humanities to analyze the sheer volume of social media posts in...

Life with durham cathedral

An ethnographic account of daily life in Durham Cathedral, this book examines the processes of negotiation and change between a community and their cathedral.

The heritage arena

Demonstrates how a production and communication strategiy has been devised to establish an Italian cheese s as a resource for local development. Explores how the reinvention of cheese as a form of heritage is an ongoing and dynamic process rife with conflict and drama.

From recovery to catastrophe

Historians of the stabilization phase of Weimar Germany tend to identify German recovery after the First World War with the struggle to revise reparations and control hyperinflation. Focusing primarily on economic aspects is not sufficient, however, the author argues; the financial burden of re...

Heritage movements in asia

Archives, ancestors, practices

In line with the resurgence of interest in the history of archaeology manifested over the past decade, this volume aims to highlight state-of-the art research across several topics and areas, and to stimulate new approaches and studies in the field. With their shared historiographical commitmen...

After the event

Two of the most destructive moments of state violence in the twentieth century occurred in Europe between 1933 and 1945 and in China between 1959 and 1961 (the Great Leap famine). This is the first book to bring the two histories together in order to examine their differences and to understand ...

From missionaries to main street

The Htoo family, who are Sgaw Karen and originally from Burma, resettled in the United States refugee resettlement program in 2007. This book chronicles their life in their new country. The book provides historical and cultural information on the Sgaw Karen people against the backdrop of the Ht...

Money games

It is the only book about gambling in the Pacific It is the only monograph concerning a locale where gambling was adopted in living memory It is one of only a handful of ethnographies of an urban locale in Highland Papua New Guinea It uses uncommonly expansive cross-cultural ...

The paradoxical republic

Written by one of the nation’s leading historians, this account of postwar Austria explores the tensions that have defined it for over seven decades. This newly revised edition also addresses the major developments since 2005, including a resurgent far right, economic instability, and the poten...

The dance of nurture

Holistic approach to infant feeding Combines biological and cultural approaches to infant feeding in a single frame Integrates issues from the global north and south Provides ethnographic insight into advocacy work on infant feeding

Glimpses of hope

Over the last decade, Nepal has witnessed significant urban growth and an expanding urban middle class. Glimpses of Hope tells the story of the people who enable some of the middle class consumer practices in urban Nepal. The book focuses on workers in modern food-processing, water-bottling, ho...

Party responses to social movements

Focusing on Italy and the Netherlands since the 1970s, Party Responses to Social Movements demonstrates how political parties have incorporated the demands of social movements to a surprising extent, even as both have grappled with fundamental and inevitable tension between their respective rol...

Invisible founders

Literal and metaphorical excavations at Sweet Briar College reveal how African American labor enabled the transformation of Sweet Briar Plantation into a private women’s college in 1906. Despite being built and maintained by African American families, the college did not integrate its student b...

Individually ourselves

Individually Ourselves addresses the process of identity and community building through an examination of individuality and group dynamics during a formative juncture of life (based on ethnographic fieldwork in a London high school).

Field manual for the archaeology of ritual, religion, and magic

By bringing together in one place specific objects, materials, and features indicating ritual, religious, or magical belief used by people around the world and through time, this tool will assist archaeologists in identifying evidence of belief-related behaviors and broadening their understandi...

Cosmopolitan refugees

Exploring the dynamics of identity formation processes in diasporic spaces, this book analyses how gender, cultural and religious practices are renegotiated in a situation of displacement. The author presents the comparative case study of Somali migrant women in Nairobi and Johannesburg:  two c...

Children of palestine

Palestinian children and young people living both within and outside of refugee camps in the Middle East are the focus of this book. For more than half a century these children and their caregivers have lived a temporary existence in the dramatic and politically volatile landscape that is the M...

Dust inside

Toxic production, disrupted lives and contaminated bodies. Care for unacknowledged suffering, incurable cancers, and immeasurable losses. This book bears witness to the invisible disasters provoked by the asbestos market worldwide and gives a voice to the communities of survivors who struggle d...

Shakespeare and stratford

As the site of literary pilgrimage since the eighteenth century, the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the topic of hundreds of imaginary portrayals, Stratford is ripe for analysis, both in terms of its factual existence and its fictional afterlife.

Disaster upon disaster

A consistent problem that confronts disaster reduction is the disjunction between academic and expert knowledge and policies and practices of agencies mandated to deal with the concern. Disaster Upon Disaster illuminates the numerous disjunctions between the suppositions, realities, agendas, an...

Concentrationary art

The seminal work of Jean Cayrol has experienced a revival in the French-speaking world since his death in 2005. Concentrationary Art represents the first translation into English of Cayrol’s two essays on concentrationary art, as well as the first book-length study of his theory.

Historical reenactment

The increasing number of historical reenactments, along with their growing popularity, are catching both attention in popular culture and in multiple academic disciplines. Historical Reenactment takes a transdisciplinary and global approach to define and theorize reenactments as an embedded cul...

Between tradition and modernity

Aby Warburg (1866-1929), founder of the Warburg Institute, was one of the most influential cultural historians of the twentieth century. Focusing on the period 1896-1918, this is the first in-depth, book-length study of his response to German political, social and cultural modernism. It analyse...

Waithood

The concept of “Waithood” was developed by political scientist Diane Singerman to describe the expanding period of time between adolescence and full adulthood as young people wait to secure steady employment and marry. The contributors to this volume employ the waithood concept as a frame for r...

Preservation and place

Historically significant archaeological sites affiliated with two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer history in the United States are examined in this unique volume. The importance of the preservation process in documenting and interpreting the lives and experiences of queer...

German public policy and federalism

Since unification German society and institutions have been challenged by various transformations and the need to adjust to changing conditions. While much has been accomplished, many political, legal, and institutional problems remain. This volume deals with selected aspects of domestic and Eu...

200 years of peace

In the wake of Sweden’s anniversary of 200 years of peace in 2014, this volume brings for the first time a targeted approach to the concept of claimed Swedish exceptionality. Taking on the nation’s policies of neutrality, 200 Years of Peace centers discussion around what it means for a nation t...

The french exception

The notion of French exceptionalism is deeply embedded in the nation's self-image and in a range of political and academic discourses. Recently, the debate about whether France really is "exceptional" has acquired a critical edge. Against the background of introspection about the nature of "nat...

Too jewish or not jewish enough

This volume explores the origins of the Jewish Museum of New York and its evolution from collecting and displaying Jewish ritual objects, to Jewish art, to exhibiting avant-garde art devoid of Jewish content, created by non-Jews. Established within a rabbinic seminary, the museum’s formation an...

Enlightening encounters

Drawing on his research in five Latin American countries, Steve Gudeman describes his anthropological fieldwork, bringing to life the excitement of gaining an understanding of the practices and ideas of others as well as the frustrations. He weaves into the text some of his findings as well as ...

Repair, brokenness, breakthrough

We are all repairers. Exploring some of the ways in which repair practices and perceptions of brokenness vary culturally Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough argues that repair is an attempt to extend the life of things as well as an answer to failures, gaps, wrongdoings and leftovers.

Morality and economic growth in rural west africa

Based on fieldwork conducted in 2 national economic cycles, one of petroleum-boom prosperity, the other of macro-economic decline Unveils new paradigm of economic change in the West African savannah Describes a uniquely African non-capitalist trajectory of accumulation, limiting the ...

Georgian women on the move

Makes excellent use of ethnographic research, written by an author who is intimately familiar with the history of the places she depicts and the theoretical concepts from which she draws. Timely focus on Georgian migrant women in Greece, and their struggle with the long-term economic cri...

Nature wars

Made up of 10 of Roy Ellen’s finest articles along with a new introduction linking them together, this book looks back at his ideas about nature before taking the arguments forward. Many of the chapters focus on research the author has conducted amongst the Nuaulu people of eastern Indonesia.

Humanitarian shame and redemption

Following the 2015 ‘refugee crisis,’ many different actors emerged to contest or mitigate the EU’s border policies. This book explores the birth and trajectory of a Norwegian volunteer organisation “A Drop in the Ocean“, established by a mother of five with no prior experience in humanitarian w...

Shakespeare and the first hamlet

The first edition of Hamlet – often called ‘Q1’, shorthand for ‘first quarto’ – was published in 1603. The essays in this collected volume explore the ways in which we might approach Q1’s Hamlet, from performance to book history, from Shakespeare’s relationships with this contemporaries to the ...

The anti-social contract

Set in a remote district of villagers and nomadic pastoralists in the northernmost part of Mongolia, this ethnography reveals an everyday universe where uncertain relations are as much internally cultivated in indigenous Mongolian perceptions of social relatedness, as it is externally confronte...

Working with diagrams

Arising from the need to go beyond the semiotic, cognitive, epistemic and symbolic reading of diagrams, this book looks at what diagrams are capable of in scholarly work. Rather than attempting to define what diagrams are, and what their dietic capacity might be, contributions to this volume dr...

The csce and the end of the cold war

The book brings together senior and junior scholars from eight countries to reflect on the significance of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe to the end of the Cold War. The book includes one of the first examinations of why Albania did not participate in the Conference...

Operation barbarossa and its aftermath

An illuminating re-examination of the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa and its Aftermath refocuses attention on the multiethnic nature of this military campaign, by considering the role played by troops from Slovakia, Romania, Italy, Spain, and others in Hitler’s plans fo...

The logic of environmentalism

Although modernity’s understanding of nature and culture has now been superseded by that of environmentalism, the power to define the meaning of both, and hence the meaning of the world itself, remains in the same (Western) hands. This bold argument is at the center of this provocative book tha...

Sustaining indigenous songs

Unraveling management

Management is everywhere. Schools teach it and professional organisations counsel about it. Books and articles are written for managers and about them. Management is usually understood in terms of styles of management, management policies and successful management but few tend to think about ma...

Gender, power, and non-governance

Using Sherry Ortner’s analogy of Female/Nature, Male/Culture, this volume interrogates the gendered aspects of governance by exploring the NGO/State relationship. By examining how NGOs/States perform gendered roles and actions and the gendered divisions of labor involved in different types of i...

Democracy's paradox

Does populism indicate a radical crisis in Western democratic political systems? Is it a revolt by those who feel they have too little voice in the affairs of state or are otherwise marginalized or oppressed? Or are populist movements part of the democratic process?

Shades of indignation

At the end of the twentieth century France found itself in the midst of another scandalous fin de siècle, awash with rumors and revelations of wrongdoing in high places. As the millennium expired, the Republic’s servants, some sitting, others retired, received much condemnation, whether welcome...

Practical archaeogaming

As a sequel to Archaeogaming: an Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games, the author focuses on the practical and applied side of the discipline, collecting recent digital fieldwork together in one place for the first time to share new methods in treating interactive digital built env...

From weimar to hitler

This is the first edited volume on the Nazi seizure of power that spans the entire period from the end of the Brüning chancellorship in the late spring of 1932 though the Nazi consolidation of power in the Röhm purge of June 30, 1934. The essays offer a multitude of different perspective...

The society of the cincinnati

In 1783, the officers of the Continental Army created the Society of the Cincinnati. This veterans’ organization was founded in order to preserve the memory of the revolutionary struggle and pursue the officers' common interest in outstanding pay and pensions. Henry Knox and Frederick Steuben w...

Transforming author museums

Literary museums today must respond to new challenges; the traditional image of the author’s home museum as a sacred place of literary pilgrimage centered around a national hero has been questioned, and literary museums have begun to develop new strategies. The book addresses how literary museu...

A new african elite

Focusing on a sub-set of the Dagomba of northern Ghana, this book looks at the first generation to go through secondary school in the north. This book charts their path into elite status and argues that this generation uses the tools gained through education and social connections to influence ...

Enchanted by cinema

Enchanted by Cinema explores the films of the European music film pioneer William Thiele, as well as his career as an exile in Hollywood. Examining a wide range of the director’s filmography, the contributors address a variety of political, aesthetic and cross-cultural issues.

Democracy in europe

Since the beginning of the European Community students of international politics and of international, resp. Constitutional law, have been wondering what kind of animal it is, and will be, once integration has been completed. Whereas the EC Treaty of 1957 stressed the economic aspects and envis...

Bulldozer capitalism

Set in the resource frontier of northeastern Turkey, Bulldozer Capitalism studies the rise and decline of an anti-dam/anti-displacement campaign and the political responses to other extractive projects that it helped to shape in its aftermath.

Post-ottoman topologies

With contributions from several of the Balkan countries that once were united under the aegis of the Ottoman Empire, this latest volume proposes new theoretical approaches to the experience and transmission of the past through time.

The engaged historian

Investigates relationship between historical scholarship and political engagement Wide global coverage Raises questions about professionalism and normativity in historical work Strong theoretical framework

The kings and the pawns

The most encompassing representation of the phenomenon of Byelorussian collaboration during World War II Illumination of virtually unknownaspects in modern East European history Study basing on multiple sources in different languages

Modern lusts

Detlef Siegfried’s long-awaited English translation chronicles Ernest Borneman’s journey from his days as a young Jewish Communist in Berlin to his ventures in England and Canada, and ultimately, to his endeavors as the most prominent sexologist spearheading the sexual revolution in West German...

Cash transfers in context

Students and scholars in Anthropology, Development studies, social policies, Latina American and African studies. Development practitioners, policy makers, humanitarian workers, international organizations and NGOs personnel. And, of course, cash transfer programs agents and staff…

Silence

This book is about silence and power and how they interact. It argues that only by studying how silence works—how it is implicated in the construction of meaning—can we arrive at the elusive roots of power in all its dimensions. Silence becomes the currency of power by delineating the margins o...

War stories

This collection of essays is one of the first to explore the modern war memoir. Reveals the genre’s capacity for breadth and sophistication while remaining sensitive to the challenges it poses for scholars. Considers how memoirs have been used to transmit particular views of war even...

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...

Bedouin of mount sinai

Based on fieldwork over ten years Builds on the central theoretical understanding that the complex political economy of the Mount Sinai Bedouin is integrated in urban society and is part of the modern global world.

Cameroon's tycoon

Max Esser was an adventurous young merchant banker, a Rhinelander, who became the first managing director of the largest German plantation company in Cameroon. This volume gives a vivid account of the antecedents and early stages as experienced and described by Esser. In 1896 he ventured, with ...

Nurturing the other

Business as usual

Examines continuities across 1945, so contextualizes the Nazi period in the longer arc of German history Offers a highly condensed social history of the period, drawing on source material that has received little attention to date. Attempts to dissolve the purportedly clear distincti...

Engaging evil

Exploring the anthropology of evil as an empirical human phenomenon, this volume attempts to show the usefulness of treating evil as a descriptive reality where concepts such as violence, criminality, and hatred fall short of capturing the darkest side of human existence.

Beyond filial piety

This volume explores emerging cultural meanings and social responses to population aging in contemporary East Asian societies. Drawing on ethnographic, demographic, policy, archival, and media data, the authors trace both common patterns and diverging trends across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Sin...

Israel-palestine

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has raised a plethora of unanswered questions, generated seemingly unreconcilable narratives, and profoundly transformed the land’s physical and political geography. This volume seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the links between the region tha...

An archaeology of unchecked capitalism

By drawing parallels between the past and present – for example, the coal mines of the nineteenth-century northeastern Pennsylvania and the sweatshops of the twenty-first century in Bangladesh – we can have difficult conversations about the past and advance our commitment to address social just...

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...

Subjective realist cinema

Explores range of films which depict subjective experience and employ "subjective realist" narration Highlights examples of recent films, including Mulholland Drive and Memento Proposes that an understanding of narrative structures, enhances viewers' comprehension and enjoyment

Collecting educational media

Over the last two centuries, collectors from around the world have historicized, politicized, and digitized media in the pursuit of knowledge and education. This collected volume explores how collections of educational media influence the ways in which people learn in both the present and future.

Elite malay polygamy

Ethnography of elite polygamy as lived practice. Exploring internal dynamics of elite kinship in Muslim Southeast Asia. Uncovering changing elite gender relations in Muslim Southeast Asia.