Pure food

Food purity and nutrition has inter-disciplinary roots in anthropological, ethnological, evolutionary, psychological and applied perspectives. Pure Food presents the theoretical and cross-cultural aspects of adopting food purity. It demonstrates variations and similarities in diverse cultural b...

Time work

Examining how people alter or customize various dimensions of their temporal experience, this volume discovers how we resist external sources of temporal constraint or structure. These ethnographic studies are international in scope and look at many different countries and continents.

In the absence of the gift

Rethinks remittance motivations among work migrants by focusing on notions of sharing. An elaborate focus on practices of sharing and demand sharing in a Melanesian context. Focuses on those ‘development projects’ people initiate and conduct themselves in a country otherwise often su...

The spirit of matter

A range of meaningful objects—exhibits of human remains or live people, fetishes, objects in a Catholic Museum, exotic photographs, commodities, and computers—demonstrate a subordinate modern consciousness about powerful objects and their “life”. The Spirit of Matter discusses these objects tha...

The children of gregoria

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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.

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...

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

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

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...

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.

Heritage movements in asia

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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 ...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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?

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...

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.

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…

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...

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...

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.

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.

Reading hitler’s victims

An original study exploring previously undiscovered archival sources and literary texts by neglected refugee authors and translators, including women. Significant to contemporary understanding and memory of the Holocaust – it illuminates Britian’s chronology of knowledge regarding the Ho...

José antonio primo de rivera

A leading figure in the Spanish Civil War, José Antonio Primo de Rivera was elevated to martyr status following his death and the victory of the Falangists. In this long-awaited translation, Joan Maria Thomàs cuts through the mythos surrounding Primo de Rivera’s life to give a measured, exhaust...

Opposing ostpolitik

Broadens our understanding of a crucial period of German foreign policy, namely the 1960s. Introduces a major political figure and makes an important contribution to our understanding of Strauss’s strategic thinking during the Cold War while also offering important insights for the conte...

Structures of protection?

Questioning what shelter is and how we can define it, this volume brings together twenty-three essays on different forms of refugee shelter, with a view to widening public understanding about the lives of forced migrants and developing theoretical understanding of this oft-neglected facet of th...

Anglo-american relations and the transmission of ideas

With a central objective to interrogate the notion of a shared Anglo-American political tradition, Anglo-American Relations and the Transmission of Ideas opens up new debate on the nature of the ‘first principles’ that were to frame the development of Anglo-American ideas embedded in our everyd...

Sense and essence

Contrary to popular perceptions, cultural heritage is not given, but constantly in the making, subject to dynamic processes of (re)inventing culture within particular social formations and via particular forms of mediation. Through the heuristic concepts of the "politics of authentication" and ...

Names and naming in early modern germany

Unique exploration of theSocial History of Nomenclature (socio-onomastics) Interdisciplinary and Archival Explores the Intentions of the Namers

Escapees

Escapes from deportation trains: First study of the phenomenon as Jewish resistance to National Socialistic persecution More than 750 escapees in Western Europe show various forms of motives and implementation (agency) First study of deportation train guards (who they were and how th...

On the geopragmatics of anthropological identification

An audacious critique of the issues that have plagued culturalization in anthropological thought and writing. Allen Chun argues that disciplinary knowledge has always been embedded in changing contexts of sociopolitical practice and that neglect of its underlying politics gives different meanin...

Abortion in post-revolutionary tunisia

Forging architectural tradition

During the nineteenth century, a change developed in the way architectural objects from the distant past were viewed by contemporaries. Architectural heritage often was (and still is) an important element of nation building. Authors address the process of building national myths around certain ...

Edges, fringes, frontiers

Based on an ethnographic account of subsistence forest use by Wapishana people in Guyana and developing an original analytical framework, Edges, Frontiers, Fringes examines the social, cultural and behavioral bases for sustainability and resilience in indigenous resource use.

Losing heaven

“Losing Heaven” is the first comprehensive history of religion in Germany since 1945. The book does not confine itself to (institutional) church history but takes on a wider perspective on religious life in Germany. Großbölting pursues an interdenominational approach that explores n...

The partial revolution

Located in the far-western Tarai region of Nepal, Kailali has been the site of dynamic social and political change in recent history. The Partial Revolution examines Kailali in the aftermath of Nepal’s Maoist insurgency, focusing primarily on the end of Kailali’s feudal system of bonded labor.

Entangled reactionaries

A transnational perspective of the construction of pre-fascist conservative identities in Spain at the beginning of the 20th century in relation to the European and Latin American contexts Explains the process of nationalization of the masses and the construction of political and social ...

All or none

All or None is a social history and anthropological study of the world’s oldest voluntary collective farms in Ravenna, Italy, addressing the question of the viability of cooperative enterprise as a potential solution for displaced workers, and as a more humane alternative to capitalist agribusi...

The social origins of thought

The volume does not focus on Durkheim or Mauss, but understands the Durkheimian School as a collective enterprise that cannot be dealt with by solely focusing upon individual scholars. The “Category Project” is dealt with for the first time systematically as a collective enterprise of th...

Ours once more

Voices of the dunera

Sheds new light on an infamous decision by the British government to deport German refugees (most of them Jewish) to Australia during WWII. Presents for the first hand first hand testimony from internees about their life and treatment. Has a contemporary relevance reflecting issues r...

Medicinal rule

Based on ethnography-driven regional comparison and a critical re-examination of classic monographs on some forty cultural groups, this volume makes the arresting claim that across equatorial Africa, the model of rule has been medicine – and not (as Europeans have long assumed) the colonizer’s ...

Nation branding in modern history

New theme: nation branding and history New approach: introduces a new way of thinking about nation self-projection in the international arena Comparison: a comparative book on the history of nation branding – there is none to date Intercontinental approach: that comparison reache...

Tropical nature

An insightful and wide-ranging study of the colonial history of conservation projects, Tropical Nature seeks to provide a much-needed history of the Global South from its own perspective. In doing so, this volume collection spotlights a “small-scale global history” that deciphers the relations ...

Cutting cosmos

Exploring the notion of masculinity among the Bugkalot, Cutting Cosmos is not only an experimental, anthropological study of the paradoxes around which Bugkalot society revolves, but also a reflection on anthropological theory and writing.

Gulag memories

This book shows how the memory of the Soviet repressions was shaped in Russia in the 90’s, beginning of 21st century - at a time when the state no longer made memory of the repressions a taboo topic, but had not yet become actively involved in shaping it. It is an ethnographic descriptio...

Mattering the invisible

Exploring how technological apparatuses “capture” invisible worlds, this book looks at how spirits, UFOs, discarnate entities, spectral energies, atmospheric forces and particles are mattered into existence by human minds. The book uses contemporary case studies where the realm of the invisible...

The configuration of the spanish public sphere

This volume brings together leading scholars in Spanish and Latin American studies to explore the concept of the Spanish “public sphere” and its relation to society and political power over time. It offers a long-term, panoramic view—spanning from the Enlightenment to current developments in th...

Rescuing the vulnerable

A combination of European and British case studies, from London to Bucharest. Focus on politics of inclusion. Historical approach to the concept of vulnerability. Micro-historical approach.

The ethics of seeing

The Ethics of Seeing brings together an international group of scholars to explore the complex relationship between the visual and the historic in German history. These revealing case studies illustrate photography’s multilayered role as a new form of representation, a means to subjective exper...

Archaeogaming

Video games exemplify contemporary material objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture. This book serves as a general introduction to "archaeogaming"; it describes the intersection of archaeology and video games and applies archaeological method and theory into 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...

A u-turn to the future

Unsustainable practices since the Industrial Revolution still impact our everyday lives. This book looks at how we can achieve sustainable urban mobility now and in the future by tapping into our knowledge of the historical trajectories leading up to the features of modern mobility in cities to...

To see a moose

Guiding the reader through the development of sex education in Poland, Agnieszka Kościańska looks at how it has changed from the 19th century to the present day. The book also identifies the women and men who changed the way sex was written about in the country, and how they established the fie...

Witches and demons

The first published work on children accused of witchcraft in Europe. Based on ethnographic research. Comprehensive use of research data. The work uses research data. The chapters concern UK.

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 world of children

In an era of technological advances and rapidly increasing international exchange, how did young Germans come to understand the world beyond their doorstep? Bringing together contributions from specialists in historical, literary, and cultural studies, this is a fascinating kaleidoscopic explor...

Contrarian anthropology

Allow people to think about censorship, self and other Being an “ist” (e.g. feminist, Marxist etc.) gets in the way of creativity How not to be a silo (e.g. specialized) anthropology –e.g. from law to energy renewal What we can learn from chronologies re: intellectual autobiog...

The give and take of wind

In much of Europe, the energy transition away from fossil fuels is slowing down or has stopped altogether. Policy- makers and most academics are frustrated and stymied. Why should superior technology – technology that is becoming cheaper as well – not immediately replace the archaic gadgetry...