Property and equality

The ethnography of egalitarian social systems was first met with sheer disbelief. Today it is still hotly debated in a number of fields and has gained sophistication as well as momentum. This collection of essays on "property and equality" acknowledges this diversification by presenting researc...

Losing place

Refugee flight, settlement, and repatriation are not static, self-contained, or singular events. Instead, they are three stages of an ongoing process made and mirrored in the lives of real people. For that reason, there is an evident need for historical and longitudinal studies of refugee popul...

Recasting west german elites

The rapid shift of German elite groups' political loyalties away from Nazism and toward support of the fledgling democracy of the Federal Republic, in spite of the continuity of personnel and professional structures, has surprised many scholars of postwar Germany. The key, Hayse argues, lies in...

Lobbying hitler

Lobbying in the Third Reich. Office and Bureaucratic Management in Nazi Germany. A comparison of successful liberal and failed (suicidal) conservative business leaders’ experiences in Nazi Germany. A comparison of how skeptical businessmen came to support the Nazi regime.

Corporate scandal

When the Enron filed the biggest bankruptcy petition in the history of the United States, if not the world, the immediate response by most politicians and financiers was that this scandal was a “failure of regulatory institutions” that can be corrected and may possibly even be a purely North Am...

From tax populism to ethnic nationalism

During the last 15-20 years a new party family of radical right-wing populism (RRP) has emerged in Western Europe, consisting of parties such as the French Front National and the Austrian Freedom's Party, among many others. Contrary to the situation in the other Scandinavian countries, such par...

The german economy during the nineteenth century

In the 19th Century, economic growth was accompanied by large-scale structural change, known as industrialization, which fundamentally affected western societies. Even though industrialization is on the wane in some advanced economies and we are experiencing substantial structural changes again...

European business, dictatorship, and political risk, 1920-1945

For much of the twentieth century, the prevalence of dictatorial regimes has left business, especially multinational firms, with a series of complex and for the most part unwelcome choices. This volume, which includes essays by noted American and European scholars such as Mira Wilkins, Gerald F...

Land and the mortgage

The mortgaging of land is not just economic and legal but also social and cultural. Here, anthropologists, historians, and economists explore origins, variations, and meanings of the land mortgage, and the risks to homes and livelihoods.

Global migrants, global refugees

In recent years, several influential commentators have stated or strongly implied that the advanced industrial democracies are today being overwhelmed by a host of problems - including rapid population growth, the breakup of multi-ethnic states, environmental degredation, and increasing economi...

The moral work of anthropology

Looking at anthropologists at work, this book investigates what kind of morality they perform in their occupations and the impact of this morality. The book includes ethnographic studies of anthropologists at work in four professional arenas: health care, business, management and interdisciplin...

Modernizing bavaria

In 1949 Bavaria was not only the largest and best known but also the poorest, most agricultural, and most industrially backward region of Germany. It was further its most politically conservative region. The largest political party in Bavaria was the Christian Social Union (CSU), an extremely c...

The neoliberal landscape and the rise of islamist capital in turkey

The contributors to this volume offer a detailed history on the Turkish economy and the rise of Islamist capitalism. This study explores the underlying tensions behind the Taksim Square conflicts. Argues that capitalism is the driving force behind the division of the Turkish Bourgeoi...

State collapse and reconstruction in the periphery

In the 1990s, Yugoslavia, which had once been a role model for development, became a symbol for state collapse, external intervention and post-war reconstruction. Today the region has two international protectorates, contested states and borders, severe ethnic polarization and minority concerns...

The dynamics of german industry

Contemporary megaprojects

Contemporary “megaprojects” have evolved from the centralized, modernist projects undertaken in the past. With case studies ranging from mega-plantations in Southeast Asia to sports events, Contemporary Megaprojects explores the increasing ambition and pervasiveness of these projects, as well a...

Management and morality

Drawing on extended ethnographic studies of management consultancies in the Oslo region of Norway, this book seeks to find a richer understanding of their role in contemporary work life and the attraction their practices exert on people. The author shows that management consultancy is an arena ...

The problem of money

Based on long-term medical anthropological research in northern Ghana, the author analyses issues of health and healing, of gender, and of the control and use of money in a changing rural African setting. He describes the culture of medical pluralism, so typical for neo-colonial states, and peo...

Participating in the global enterprise

Viewed through an anthropological lens, Automobili Lamborghini, the renowned Italian factory of super cars, presents a compelling case study. As an ethnography spanning three years, the book focuses on the different perspectives of the managers and the workers and the effects of the organizatio...

Shaping taxpayers

Ethnography up-close of a successful revenue authority. Fiscal anthropology in a modern / developed country. Application of tax law in practice. Knowledge making in a modern bureaucracy.

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...

Experiencing wages

When discussing wages, historians have traditionally concentrated on the level of wages, much less on how people were paid for their work. Important aspects were thus ignored such as how frequently were wages actually paid, how much of the wage was paid in non-monetary form - whether as traditi...

Money counts

Credit and debt in an unequal society

Investigates the political reasons for South Africa adopting an allegedly self-regulating market despite its disastrous effects and identifies the colonialist ideas of property rights as a mainstay of the existing social order.