Becoming other

Most of us are conscious of having a single and stable self, but the self is more fragmented and plastic than we care to think. David Berliner explores the captivating world of identity through an array of astonishing 'exo-experiences.'

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...

Social anthropology in the arab world

This book examines the history and institutionalisation of anthropology in the Maghreb, the Mashreq and the Gulf, in an open and collaborative manner and from various perspectives. It aims to reorient the anthropological focus towards studies conducted in the region and sheds light on anthropol...

Radcliffe-brown

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955) is widely renowned as a founder of modern social anthropology. This biography challenges popular stereotypes of him as a misplaced positivist and colonial conservative. It shows Radcliffe-Brown to be a thoroughly cosmopolitan scholar, a committed fieldworker, ...

Practice theory and the biosocial

From urban infrastructures to the medieval plague and from antibiotic resistance to epigenetics, this book develops an account of how previous and present arrangements make some futures more likely than others. By demonstrating the relevance of social and practice theories, this study considers...

Dances with spiders

Identity politics and the new genetics

Racial and ethnic categories have appeared in recent scientific work in novel ways and in relation to a variety of disciplines: medicine, forensics, population genetics and also developments in popular genealogy. Once again, biology is foregrounded in the discussion of human identity. Of partic...

Black schoolgirls in space

Black Schoolgirls in Space is a theoretical turn that advances the growing interest in transnational girlhoods by focusing on the Black girls as actors and agents in the construction of not only girlhood but also the educational worlds in which girlhoods are contained.

Secret spaces, forbidden places

In this highly original approach to the study of the construction of culture, this collection of previously unpublished essays explore the topography of the secret and the forbidden, focusing on specific moments in recent cultural and political history. By bringing together writers from differe...

Creating a nation with cloth

A well-written ethnographic study Adds a new dimension to the work on women's wealth A valuable addition to the work on diasporic populations Explores the barriers between tradition and modernity, gifts and commodities

Against machismo

Based on fieldwork conducted among middle-class university students primarily at the national university (UNAM) in Mexico City, this study explores gender relations as reflected in the words macho and machismo. The author concludes that the students use them to denote aspects of their families ...

Max gluckman

A short biography of one of the most significant social anthropologists of the 20th century Max Gluckman was the founder of the Manchester School of Anthropology, which still retains an international influence with its emphasis on case studies and use of Marxist analysis Book is part...

The men we loved

Some semi-public, exclusive male settings, most noticeably in the military, encourage the production of intimacy and desire. Yet whereas in most instances this desire is displaced through humor and aggressive gestures, it becomes acknowledged and outright declared once associated with sites of ...

When things become property

Interrogates the mixed outcomes of conferring ownership by examining postsocialist land and forest reforms in Albania, Romania and Vietnam. Describes how property reforms are no longer miracle tools available to governments for refashioning economies, politics or environments.

Colonial intervention and destabilization of african identities

Colonial Intervention and Destabilization of African Identities takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine how external forces and African elite impose trusteeship practices on Africans to construct and consolidate hierarchical power relations in African societies that infantilize Africans ...

Artifak

Artifak investigates the meaning and value of (art) objects as commodities in Vanuatu, in differing states of transit and transition: in the local place, on the market, and in the museum. It provides an ethnographic account of commoditization in the context of revitalization of culture and the ...

The archaeology of tribal societies

Anthropological archaeologists have long attempted to develop models that will let them better understand the evolution of human social organization. This volume explores social organization in tribal - or 'autonomous village' - societies from several different ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and ...

Thrift and its paradoxes

Through a wide range of ethnographic contexts this book explores how practices and moralities of thrift are intertwined with austerity, debt, welfare, and patronage across various social and temporal scales and are constantly re-negotiated at the nexus of socio-economic, religious, and kinship ...

Vision and change in institutional entrepreneurship

Sheltered for a long time within the public sector environment with high job security and professional research autonomy, defense R&D organizations faced unprecedented challenges when government support was being withdrawn and closure threatening. They needed to be led by a suitable vision ...

Cyborgs of the ecocene

Offers a detailed account of robots and robotics research across a number of field and test sites, many of which have not previously been subject to ethnographic attention. This provides novel insights into the work of robotics, the figure of the robot, and the use of robots. The book also c...

Crafting co-ops in denmark

Tinkering toward Transformation provides a vivid look at the conundrums of capitalism in the contemporary Danish Welfare state. This makes the book interesting to a broad range of scholars and students concerned with the political and social history as well as the present trajectory of this ...

Family beyond family

Arguably all humans invent or accept forms of family beyond those that are close biological kin. These fictive forms of kinship may vary across diverse cultures and serve different purposes. This book explores a wide variety of such kinship formations, while observing and examining the principl...

Understanding social images

Marcus Banks was one of the scholars who changed the way visual anthropology and visual methods were regarded in social and cultural anthropology. This collection of Banks’ essays considers the role of collaboration in the making of ethnographic films and makes the case for slow research.

Gypsy economy

An explanation of the relationship between the economic arrangements of members of Roma communities and their social position. An exploration of how economic exchanges forge key social relationships of gender and ethnicity, and how economic opportunities are constructed and seized. A...

Beyond pain

Through thirteen years of fieldwork, an experimental practice-based methodology, and a new theoretical approach to harmonize online and offline data, Beyond Pain provides a wholly unique ethnographical exploration of the misunderstood world of body suspensions.

Holocaust survivors

Many books on Holocaust survivors deal with their lives in the Displaced Persons camps, with memory and remembrance, and with the nature of their testimonies. Representing scholars from different countries and different disciplines such as history, sociology, demography, psychology, anthropolog...

Ethnoarchaeology of andean south america

The papers in this volume present detailed studies of highland and lowland pastoralists and horticulturalists in Andean South America, including taphonomy and sacred landscapes. This volume will be of use to anyone who studies human adaptations to highland or arid environments, and to those int...

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

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.

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, ...

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...

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...

Beyond wild and tame

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...

Working with spirit

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...

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.

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.

Mobile farmers

Humanism revisited

As heirs of a ‘heteronomic’ tradition, we are still stuck in Eurocentrism (often racism), and now even threaten to ruin nature by destroying biodiversity and causing the climate to warm up dangerously. Applied through an anthropological perspective, this book calls for a NEED-humanism: Not-Euro...

Breaking boundaries

Explores the applicability of the concept of liminality to a variety of concrete social and political problems. Examines case studies of some of the most important crises in history, society, and politics, Describes how liminality has the potential to be a leading paradigm for under...

Protest cultures

Expands the analytical perspective on protest beyond its political and sociological aspects, and considers cultural factors. Combines cutting-edge synthetic essays with concise, accessible case studies on an array of protest cultures, outlining key literature and future lines of inquiry.

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 ...

Going to pentecost

This is an experimental approach to Pentecostalism, departing from previous studies; It is explicitly comparative, with very close collaboration amongst the three authors; It offers new possibilities for the study of religion in global context

Post-war women's writing in german

Women in the Federal Republic, the former GDR, Switzerland and Austria have initiated a remarkable literary movement, especially after 1968, which is also attracting growing attention elsewhere. Informed by critical feminist and literary theory, this broad-ranging collection, the first of its k...

New regionalism and asylum seekers

Taking the context of forced migration, this book addresses the role that regional, in contrast to national or global, institutions and relationships play in shaping asylum policies and procedures. It examines the causes of forced migration movements; the direction of forced migration flows and...

Researching food habits

The term 'Anthropology of Food' has become an accepted abbreviation for the study of anthropological perspectives on food, diet and nutrition, an increasingly important subdivision of anthropology that encompasses a rich variety of perspectives, academic approaches, theories, and methods. Its m...

Moebius anthropology

Don Handelman’s groundbreaking work in anthropology is showcased in this collection of his most powerful essays. The book looks at the intellectual and spiritual roots of Handelman’s initiation into anthropology; his work on ritual and on “bureaucratic logic”; analyses of cosmology; and innovat...

The power of the story

A cross-disciplinary volume that combines and puts into dialogue perspectives on disasters, this book includes contributions from anthropology, history, cultural studies, sociology, and literary studies. Offering a rich and diverse set of arguments and analyses on the ever-relevant theme of cat...

Visions of marriage

Grounded in multi-generational stories from Kinmen in Taiwan, Visions of Marriage explores the historical entanglements between the pursuit of new personal and national futures. Focusing on the relational and future-making aspects of marriage, the ethnography highlights the intersection of tran...

Agency and archaeology of the french maritime empire

Through detailed archaeological case study, a multiregional approach and a theoretical approach around agencies and individuality, this volume focuses on the diversity of the population that participated in the maritime network of France through the 17th to the 19th century and whose agency and...

The nomads of mykonos

Studying contemporary western society

Few anthropologists today realize the pioneering role Margaret Mead played in the investigation of contemporary cultures. This volume collects and presents a variety of her essays on research methodology relating to contemporary culture. Many of these essays were printed originally in limited c...

Poverty archaeology

The Poor Laws in the United Kingdom left a built and material legacy of over two centuries of legislative provision for the poor and infirm. Workhouses represent the first centralized, state-organized system for welfare. This volume forms a social archaeology of the lived experience of poverty ...

Managing sacralities

What happens when religious sites, objects and practices become cultural heritage? Case studies from Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom present an analysis of the paradoxes and challenges that arise when religious sites are transformed into heritage.

(re)constructing armenia in lebanon and syria

For almost nine decades, since their mass-resettlement to the Levant in the wake of the Genocide and First World War, the Armenian communities of Lebanon and Syria appear to have successfully maintained a distinct identity as an ethno-culturally diverse group, in spite of representing a small n...

Centering the margin

In a completely new approach to borders and border crossing, this volume suggests a re-conceptualization of the nation in Southeast Asia. Choosing an actor approach, the individual chapters in this volume capture the narratives of minorities, migrants and refugees who inhabit and cross borders ...

Human adaptation at grasshopper pueblo, arizona

A detailed study of the bone chemistry of individuals buried at the 14th century Grasshopper Pueblo site is presented in this volume. This is a data-rich study which provides much information for social and economic reconstructions of prehistoric Pueblo adaptation to their environment.

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...

What now

Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork undertaken since 2006, the book addresses some of the most topical aspects of remote Aboriginal life in Australia. This includes the role of kinship and family, relationships to land and sea, and cross-cultural relations with non-Aboriginal residents.

The categorical impulse

Classification, as an object of recent anthropological scrutiny came to prominence during the 1960s, exemplified in the British (constructionist) tradition by the writings of Mary Douglas, and in the American ethno-semantics (cognitive) tradition by the likes of Harold Conklin and Brent Berlin....

A new look at thai aids

Following the detection of the first HIV infections in the early 1980s, by the 1990s Thailand was routinely depicted as having the world’s fastest moving HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, by the early 2000’s the bulk of scholarly and medical AIDS literature portrayed the epidemic as being largely und...

Vital diplomacy

Focusing on the major ceremonial cycle of the Enawene-nawe people, Vital Diplomacy sheds new light on classic Amazonian themes such as manioc cultivation and cuisine, predatory relations with non-humans, and the interplay of myth and practice, and to consider dynamics of kin, clan, and gender r...

Europeanizing contention

A study on the Europeanization of a specific social movement, using a cross-national comparative perspective. A longitudinal research design based on qualitative methods. A theoretical approach on the political sociology of Europe. A focus on a movement which remains under-resear...

Oceanic socialities and cultural forms

In anthropology, theoretical approaches attempting to come to terms with experiences of social interaction, often inspired by phenomenology, have come to the fore in opposition to the previously favored emphasis on symbolic and social structures. These essays attempt a new kind of ethnographic ...

Constructing risk

Reviewing current policies and practices, the book assesses the financial, economic and physical risk of building in hazardous areas, and looks at how societies are trying to create a more resilient built environment in spite of the dangers.

Post-ottoman coexistence

Examines the peaceful co-existence of religious and ethnic groups under the Ottoman Empire. Investigates the reasons behind the breakdown of tolerance and the legacy of division from ethno-nationalist conflict post-empire. A discussion of both historical and contemporary practices of...

Representations of “japanese nature”

“Nature” as a concept and word is extremely elusive, yet it is commonly taken for granted that “the pristine nature” is “out there.” This book explores the factors that have naturalized the idea of nature as pristine into our psyche, and as something that has a spatial, visual, and temporal dim...

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...

Border straddling heritages

In this geographically wide-ranging reassessment of the overlap between borders and heritage, Ali Mozaffari and David C. Harvey interrogate how “hyperglobalization” has simultaneously challenged and intensified notions of sovereignty and nationality, advancing a theory of heritage that recogniz...

Silences and divided memories

Dealing with the difficult, silenced past of the so called "Istrian exodus" after the Second World War, this book shifts the usual focus from migrants to those who stayed behind and to the new immigrants who came to the “emptied” towns.

The southeast asia connection

Over world history, Southeast Asia’s contribution to the world economy (during the late prehistoric and early historic periods) has not been given much attention. This book attempts to recalibrate these interactions of Southeast Asia with other parts of the world economy, and gives the region i...

Living kinship in the pacific

Provides strong accounts of contemporary understandings of kinship in the Pacific. The ethnographic focus is on transformation and continuity over time. Describes how kinship is constituted in day-to-day ritual and ritualized behavior.

Sartre, self-formation and masculinities

Published on the occasion of Sartre's Centenary, this book helps to understand the man behind the work, offering a psycho-social analysis of Jean-Paul Sartre with an emphasis on his masculinity. It sets out to contextualize Sartre in terms of his psycho-sexual formation and processes of self-co...

Empathy and healing

Anthropology and sexual morality

The history of sexual morality in Ireland has been traditionally associated with repression. In the last two decades, however, repression seems to have given way to its exact opposite. But where did this “repression” originate? And how can we account for this sudden and sweeping transformation ...

Louis dumont and hierarchical opposition

The work of Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, on India and modern individualism represented certain theoretical advances on the earlier structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. One such advance is Dumont's idea of hierarchical opposition, which he proposed as a truer representation of indigenous ide...

Iron in the soul

In his vivid, lively account of how Greek Cypriot villagers coped with a thirty-year displacement, Peter Loïzos follows a group of people whom he encountered as prosperous farmers in 1968, yet found as disoriented refugees when revisiting in 1975. By providing a forty year in-depth perspective ...

Changing cultural tastes

Changing Cultural Tastes offers a critical survey of the taste wars fought over the past two centuries between the intellectual establishment and the common people in Germany. It charts the uneasy relationship of high and popular culture in Germany in the modern era. The impact of National Soci...

Correcting the record

The critique of twentieth-century American anthropology often portrays anthropologists of the past as servants of colonialism who “extracted” information from indigenous peoples and published works causing them harm. This volume presents powerful refutations of these damaging myths.

Critical theory

The retirement of the distinguished philosopher Jürgen Habermas from his chair at the University of Frankfurt signalled an important caesura in the history of Critical Theory: the transition from the Habermasian project, to different forms of inquiry in the work of the next generation. This cha...

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...

Violent becomings

It is theoretically original in its insistence on radical reading of state formation as related to violence and irreducible to the formal state apparatus. It is a long-term study of transformations – building on fieldwork from 1998 onwards – which surpasses a number of other relevant stu...

The origins of complex societies in late prehistoric iberia

A series of papers by a wide range of authors from different countries and backgrounds focuses firmly on the question of the origin and development of social complexity, from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age, in Iberia writ large. A wide range of specific topics is covered with this specifi...

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...

Reconstructing the house of culture

Notions of culture, rituals and their meanings, the workings of ideology in everyday life, public representations of tradition and ethnicity, and the social consequences of economic transition— these are critical issues in the social anthropology of Russia and other postsocialist countries. Eng...

Class, contention, and a world in motion

Addresses the question of migrant agency in the context of globalisation and capitalist change Focuses on class in the study of migration and migrant politics Addresses gender and ethnicity in study of migration politics Presents analysis of conditions which enable and disable po...

Subject lessons

Life histories are a class of oral data distinct from memoirs, autobiography, and conventional history in multiple ways.Subject Lessons examines the use of and value in using one’s life history as research within the social sciences.

Migration, memory, and diversity

Explores the complex history of migration and diversity in Germany from 1945 to today. Shows how conceptions of “otherness” developed while memories of the Nazi era were still fresh. Identifies the continuities and transformations they exhibited through the Cold War and reunification...

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...

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 ...

The body in balance

Offers new perspectives for studying the so-called "humoral medical traditions" over the last 2,000 years Re-visits "harmony" and "holism" as main characteristics of these traditions Asks how "balance" is defined, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances

Russian culture

This volume brings together two classic works on the culture of the Russian people which have been long out of print. Gorer's Great Russian Culture and Mead's Soviet Attitudes towards Authority: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet Character were among the first attempts by anthr...

Work, society, and the ethical self

Primarily on the basis of ethnographic case-studies from around the world, this volume links investigations of work to questions of personal and professional identity and social relations. The authors uncover complex entanglements between the drudgery and exploitation experienced by most people...

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...

Religion, politics, and globalization

While social scientists, beginning with Weber, envisioned a secularized world, religion today is forthrightly becoming a defining feature of life all around the globe. The complex connections between religion and politics, and the ways in which globalization shapes these processes, are central ...

Folsom lithic technology

This book offers a series of studies focused on the analysis of stone tool technology of the Folsom Culture. The analyses presented here use comparative methods to identify patterns of lithic assemblage structure and variation that provide insights into the organization of Folsom technology and...

The image that never ends

This book explores the relationship between images and anthropology, offering a deeper understanding of how visual culture shapes our world. It addresses how anthropology can help us reflect on the role of images in daily life and reconsiders classic anthropological themes—ritual, kinship, and ...