Anthropology Books
The University of Chicago Press Debt and Dispossession
Book SynopsisThe farm crisis of the 1980s was the greatest economic disaster to hit rural America since the Depression. The crisis gave rise to a social trauma that affects farmers in the 21st century. This is a chronicle of the experience.Trade Review"Dudley presents a subtle, insightful, and nuanced treatment of the rural 'community' itself, emphasizing its divisions and contradictions.... [A] very good and enlightening book. With Debt and Dispossession, Kathryn Dudley joins the ranks of such anthropologists as Jane Adams, Deborah Fink, and Sonya Salomon." - David Danbom, Rural History; "Dudley writes with rare skill and passion. This is a mid-stream account of America coming of age. Midwesterners are protagonists who may yet wrest a more satisfactory resolution, thanks to this superb contribution." - Deborah Fink, Annals of Iowa
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Visayan Vignettes
Book SynopsisTo read the book is to appreciate the highly contingent, provisional, oblique, open-ended way in which people try to make sense of another culture.Resil B. Mojares, Philippine GraphicThis book is an interestingly complex ethnography that approaches the self-critical dialectical ethnography called for two decades ago....It is a welcome contribution to postmodernist theory and to the ethnography of the Visayas.Ronald Provencher, Journal of Asian Studies
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press A Touch of Innocence A Memoir of Childhood
Book SynopsisThis book is Dunham's story of the chaos and conflict that entered her childhood after her mother's early death. In stark prose, she tells of growing up in both black and white households and of the divisions of race and class in Chicago that become the harsh realities of her young life.
£19.00
The University of Chicago Press They Make Themselves Work and Play among the
Book SynopsisThis study describes the daily existence of the Baining people of Papua New Guinea, who present a challenge to anthropologists because of their apparent lack of a cultural or social structure; but Jane Fajans argues that the Baining define themselves by their own productive and reproductive work.
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Irony in Action Anthropology Practice and the
Book SynopsisThis collection is based on the idea that irony now extends beyond its classification as a figure of speech and is increasingly recognized as one of the major modes of human experience. The essays cover the limits to irony's liberating qualities as well as irony's more positive dimensions.
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press A Natural History of the New World The Ecology
Book SynopsisWhat are boys like? Who is the creature inhabiting the twilight zone between the perils of the Oedipus complex and the Strum und Drang of puberty? In With the Boys, Gary Alan Fine examines the American male preadolescent by studying the world of Little League baseball. Drawings on three years of firsthand observation of five Little Leagues, Fine describes how, through organized sport and its accompanying activities, boys learn to play, work, and generally be men.
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Under Construction
Book SynopsisIn the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, security became the paramount concern of virtually everyone involved in governing the United States. This title describes the human activities, emotions, relationships, and decisions that shaped the way Americans experienced homeland security.Trade Review"Under Construction is extraordinarily well written, original, timely, and its subject matter is extremely important. Fosher's demonstration of the usefulness of an ethnographic approach to the topic is truly valuable - practitioners, planners, and policy makers especially need to read this book." - Anna Simons, author of The Company They Keep: Life Inside the U.S. Army Special Forces"
£24.00
The University of Chicago Press Indian Reservations in the United States
Book SynopsisThis cultural-geographic study of the American Indian reservations in the 48 contiguous states explores the reservations as living environments rather than historical footnotes. The text seeks to discover and highlight the many possibilities for positive change.
£31.35
The University of Chicago Press Islam Observed
Book SynopsisIn four brief chapters, writes Clifford Geertz in his preface, I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan. Mr. Geertz begins his argument by outlining the problem conceptually and providing an overview of the two countries. He then traces the evolution of their classical religious styles which, with disparate settings and unique histories, produced strikingly different spiritual climates. So in Morocco, the Islamic conception of life came to mean activism, moralism, and intense individuality, while in Indonesia the same concept emphasized aestheticism, inwardness, and the radical dissolution of personality. In order to assess the significance of these interesting developments, Mr. Geertz sets forth a series of theoretical observations concerning the social role of religion.
£23.00
The University of Chicago Press Cultural Boundaries of Sciences Credibility on
Book SynopsisAn investigation of the boundaries of science. Gieryn argues that when scientific claims reach courtrooms, boardrooms and living rooms, we use cultural 'maps' to decide whom to believe and to demarcate science from ideology, faith or nonsense. He argues that there are no stable criteria to distinguish science from non-science.
£80.75
The University of Chicago Press Between Culture and Fantasy A New Guinea
Book SynopsisAn account of relations between the sexes and the role of myth in the transition between unconscious fantasy and cultural forms, based on studies of the mythologies of the Gimi, from the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.
£38.00
The University of Chicago Press Jewish Life in Muslim Libya Rivals and Relatives
Book Synopsis
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Parallel Worlds An Anthropologist and a Writer
Book SynopsisA memoir of Africa recounting the experiences of Alma Gottlieb, an anthropologist, and Philip Graham, a fiction writer, as they lived in two remote villages in the rain forest of Cote d'Ivoire.Table of ContentsMap: Cote d'Ivoire Map: Beng Region Cast of Characters Preface Pt. 1: Arriving 1: Premonitions (October 1-November 5, 1979) 2: Choosing a Host (November 6-November 28, 1979) 3: Trespassing (November 29-December 20, 1979) 4: Adrift (December 21, 1979-February 19, 1980) 5: The Elusive Epiphany (February 20-April 30, 1980) 6: Bedazzled, Beleaguered (May 1-June 30, 1980) 7: Divination and Trial (July 1-August 2, 1980) 8: Transgressions (August 3-October 3, 1980) 9: Metamorphoses (October 4, 1980-Spring 1981) Pt. 2: Returning 10: A Parallel World (June 11-August 13, 1985) Glossary Acknowledgments Index
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Under the Kapok Tree
Book SynopsisIn this companion volume to Parallel Worlds, Alma Gottlieb explores ideology and social practices among the Beng people of Cote d'Ivoire.
£24.00
The University of Chicago Press Anxious Pleasures The Sexual Lives of an
Book SynopsisGood fish get dull but sex is always fun. So say the Mehinaku people of Brazil. But Thomas Gregor shows that sex brings a supreme ambiguity to the villagers' lives. In their elaborate ritualsespecially those practiced by the men in their secret societiesthe Mehinaku give expression to a system of symbols reminiscent of psychosexual neuroses identified by Freud: castration anxiety, Oedipal conflict, fantasies of loss of strength through sex, and a host of others. If we look carefully, writes Gregor, we will see reflections of our own sexual nature in the life ways of an Amazonian people. The book is illustrated with Mehinaku drawings of ritual texts and myths, as well as with photographs of the villagers taking part in both everyday and ceremonial activities.
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Mehinaku
Book Synopsis
£30.00
University of Chicago Press Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe
Book Synopsis
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press The Victim Its Masks Paper An Essay on Sacrifice
Book SynopsisThe Ait Mazine of northern Morocco reenact the story of Abraham as a ritual sacrifice, a symbolic observance of submission to the divine. After comes a bacchanalian masquerade which seems to violate every principle the sacrifice affirmed. This study reunites them as a single ritual process.
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Cultural Excursions
Book SynopsisNeil Harris's scholarship of the past twenty-five years has helped to open up the study of American cultural history. This long-awaited collection gathers some of his rich and varied writings. Harris takes us from John Philip Sousa to Superman, with stops along the way to explore art museums and world fairs, shopping malls and hotel lobbies, urban design and utopian novels, among other artifacts of American cultures. The essays fall into three general sections: the first treats the history of cultural institutions, highlighting the role of museums; the second section focuses on some literary, artistic, and entrepreneurial responses to the new mass culture; and the final group of essays explores the social history of art and architecture. Throughout Harris's diverse writings certain themes recurthe redefining of boundaries between high art and popular culture, the relationship between public taste and technological change, and the very notion of what constitutes a shared social experience. Harris's pioneering work has broadened the field of cultural history and encouraged whole new areas of inquiry. Cultural Excursions will be useful for those in American and culture studies, as well as for the general reader trying to make sense of the culture in which we live.
£45.60
The University of Chicago Press Hunting the Ethical State The Benkadi Movement of
Book SynopsisIn 1990s the Ivoirian police failed to control the situation, so a group of poor, politically marginalized, and mostly Muslim men took on the role of the people's protectors as part of a movement they called Benkadi. This title reveals how dozos worked beyond the divisions to derive their new roles as enforcers of security.
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Guardians of the Flutes Volume 1 Idioms of
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsA Note on Language Foreword Robert A. LeVine Preface to the 1994 edition Preface Introduction 1: People of the Mountain Forest 2: Idioms and Verbal Behavior 3: The Inward Cosmos 4: Genderizing the Pandanus Tree 5: The Phantom Cassowary 6: Femininity 7: Masculinity 8: Male Parthenogenesis: A Myth and Its Meaning 9: Conclusion Appendix A: "Tali Says": On the problem of symbolic meaning and its relationship to field conditions among the Sambia Appendix B: Nilutwo's Dreams Appendix C: The Myth of Cassowary Appendix D: On the Origins of Warfare and Initiation Appendix E: The Myth of Gandei References Name Index Subject Index
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Qing Colonial Enterprise
Book SynopsisThe author shows how Qing China (1636-1911) used cartography and ethnography to pursue its imperial ambitions and her study provides a wealth of insights to anyone interested in the significance of cartography, the growth of empire, or this exciting period of Chinese history.Trade Review"This book makes a significant contribution to existing scholarship by drawing attention to the importance of visual representation in relation to the process of empire-building. This is a carefully researched, highly readable, and visually appealing work." - L.J. Newby, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute "This book's comparative approach and exciting insights should prove influential both inside and outside Qing history; serious students of cartography, ethnography, and empire cannot afford to overlook developments in Qing China or this book." - C. Pat Giersch, Journal of Asian Studies"
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange A
Book SynopsisUncovering strange plots by early British anthropologists to use scientific status to manipulate the stock market, Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange tells a provocative story that marries the birth of the social sciences with the exploits of global finance. Marc Flandreau tracks a group of Victorian gentleman-swindlers as they shuffled between the corridors of the London Stock Exchange and the meeting rooms of learned society, showing that anthropological studies were integral to investment and speculation in foreign government debt, and, inversely, that finance played a crucial role in shaping the contours of human knowledge. Flandreau argues that finance and science were at the heart of a new brand of imperialism born during Benjamin Disraeli's first term as Britain's prime minister in the 1860s. As anthropologists advocated the study of Miskito Indians or stated their views on a Jamaican rebellion, they were in fact catering to the impulses of the stock exchangefor their own
£91.00
The University of Chicago Press Uncertain Honor Modern Motherhood in an African
Book SynopsisOffers an intimate look at the lives of African women trying to reconcile motherhood with new professional roles in a context of dramatic social change. The author argues that Beti women delay motherhood as part of a broader attempt to assert a modern form of honor only recently made possible by formal education, Catholicism, and economic change.Trade Review"Jennifer Johnson-Hanks provocatively begins where other studies end. Rather than assuming a generic 'modernity' that inexplicably shapes pregnancy decisions, she probes deeply to find a complex tangle of lived realities that shape the maternity/education nexus among Beti women in Cameroon. A bold and beautifully realized meditation on schooling and education." - Alma Gottlieb, author of The Afterlife Is Where We Come From"
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press Uncertain Honor Modern Motherhood in an African
Book SynopsisOffers an intimate look at the lives of African women trying to reconcile motherhood with new professional roles in a context of dramatic social change. The author argues that Beti women delay motherhood as part of a broader attempt to assert a modern form of honor only recently made possible by formal education, Catholicism, and economic change.Trade Review"Jennifer Johnson-Hanks provocatively begins where other studies end. Rather than assuming a generic 'modernity' that inexplicably shapes pregnancy decisions, she probes deeply to find a complex tangle of lived realities that shape the maternity/education nexus among Beti women in Cameroon. A bold and beautifully realized meditation on schooling and education." - Alma Gottlieb, author of The Afterlife Is Where We Come From"
£30.00
University of Chicago Press African Futures Essays on Crisis Emergence and
Book SynopsisCivil wars, corporate exploitation, AIDS, and Ebola but also democracy, burgeoning cities, and unprecedented communication and mobility: the future of Africa has never been more uncertain. Indeed, that future is one of the most complex issues in contemporary anthropology, as evidenced by the incredible wealth of ideas offered in this landmark volume. A consortium comprised of some of the most important scholars of Africa today, this book surveys an intellectual landscape of opposed perspectives in order to think within the contradictions that characterize this central question: Where is Africa headed? The experts in this book address Africa's future as it is embedded within various social and cultural forms emerging on the continent today: the reconfiguration of the urban, the efflorescence of signs and wonders and gospels of prosperity, the assorted techniques of legality and illegality, lotteries and Ponzi schemes, apocalyptic visions, a yearning for exile, and many other phenomena. Bringing together social, political, religious, and economic viewpoints, the book reveals not one but multiple prospects for the future of Africa. In doing so, it offers a pathbreaking model of pluralistic and open-ended thinking and a powerful tool for addressing the vexing uncertainties that underlie so many futures around the world.
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press African Futures Essays on Crisis Emergence and
Book SynopsisCivil wars, corporate exploitation, AIDS, and Ebola but also democracy, burgeoning cities, and unprecedented communication and mobility: the future of Africa has never been more uncertain. Indeed, that future is one of the most complex issues in contemporary anthropology, as evidenced by the incredible wealth of ideas offered in this landmark volume. A consortium comprised of some of the most important scholars of Africa today, this book surveys an intellectual landscape of opposed perspectives in order to think within the contradictions that characterize this central question: Where is Africa headed? The experts in this book address Africa's future as it is embedded within various social and cultural forms emerging on the continent today: the reconfiguration of the urban, the efflorescence of signs and wonders and gospels of prosperity, the assorted techniques of legality and illegality, lotteries and Ponzi schemes, apocalyptic visions, a yearning for exile, and many other phenomena.
£26.00
The University of Chicago Press On Concepts and Classifications of Musical
Book SynopsisKartomi first moves through a culture-specific inspection of several societies in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and then, synthesizing current ethnomusicological trends, proceeds to make a large-scale comparative study of classification schemes and the concepts which govern them.
£38.00
University of Chicago Press The Hungry Soul Eating and the Perfecting of Our
Book SynopsisAn exploration of the natural and cultural act of eating. The author reveals how the various aspects of this phenomenon, and the customs, rituals, and taboos surrounding it, relate to universal and profound truths about the human animal and its deepest yearnings.
£27.00
The University of Chicago Press Gender
Book SynopsisKessler and McKenna convincingly argue that gender is not a reflection of biological reality but rather a social construct that varies across cultures. Valuable for its insights into gender, its extensive treatment of transsexualism, and its ethnomethodological approach, Gender reviews and critiques data from biology, anthropology, sociology, and psychology.
£26.00
The University of Chicago Press The Unsteady March The Rise Decline of Racial
Book SynopsisThis work aims to disprove the idea that the United States has been on a "steady march" toward the end of racial discrimination. Rather, progress has been made only in brief periods, under special conditions, and it has always been followed by periods of stagnation and retrenchment.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Unsteady March One: "Bolted with the Lock of a Hundred Keys" The Era of Slavery, 1619-1860 Two: "Thenceforward, and Forever Free" The Civil War, 1860-1865 Three: "The Negro Has Got as Much as He Ought to Have" Reconstruction and the Second Retreat, 1865-1908 Four: "The Color Line" Jim Crow America, 1908-1938 Five: "Deutschland and Dixieland" Antifascism and the Emergence of Civil Rights, 1938-1941 Six: "Double V: Victory Abroad, Victory at Home" World War II Seven: "Hearts and Minds" The Cold War and Civil Rights, 1946-1954 Eight: "There Comes a Time" The Civil Rights Revolution, 1954-1968 Nine: "Benign Neglect?" Post-Civil Rights America, 1968-1998 Conclusion: Shall We Overcome? Notes Index
£38.00
The University of Chicago Press Black and White Styles in Conflict
Book Synopsis"Goes a long way toward showing a lay audience the value, integrity, and aesthetic sensibility of black culture, and moreover the conflicts which arise when its values are treated as deviant version of majority ones."--Marjorie Harness Goodwin, "American Ethnologist"
£14.87
The University of Chicago Press Travesti Sex Gender Culture among Brazilian
Book SynopsisFollowing the lives of a group of transgendered prostitutes in Salvador, this text analyzes the ways that they modify their bodies, explores their motivations, examines their complex relationships and discovers how prostitution for most travestis is a positive and affirmative experience.
£25.00
The University of Chicago Press The Cultural Territories of Race Black and White
Book SynopsisSince the 1960s social scientists have been reluctant to discuss the cultural dimensions of racial inequality - not wanting to blame the victim for having wrong values. This text employs cultural analysis toward an understanding of how cultural structures articulate the black/white problem.
£34.20
The University of Chicago Press The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography
Book SynopsisPresents a historical, theoretical, and practice-oriented road map for the shift from incidental collaboration to a more conscious and explicit collaborative strategy. The author charts the history of collaborative ethnography from its earliest implementation to its contemporary emergence in fields such as feminism and humanistic anthropology.
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press The Jealous Potter
Book SynopsisIn this volume Levi-Strauss explores the mythologies of the Americas, with occasional incursions into European and Japanese folklore, tales of sloths and squirrels are interwoven with discussions of Freud, Saussure, "signification," and plays by Sophocles and Labiche.
£24.00
The University of Chicago Press Social Theory Now
Book Synopsis
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Victorian Science in Context
Book SynopsisVictorians were fascinated by the strange new worlds which science was revealing to them. This study sets out to capture the essence of this fascination, charting the many ways in which science influenced and was influenced by the larger Victorian culture.
£42.75
The University of Chicago Press Reading National Geographic
Book SynopsisFor its millions of readers, the National Geographic has long been a window to the world of exotic peoples and places. In this fascinating account of an American institution, Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins explore the possibility that the magazine, in purporting to teach us about distant cultures, actually tells us much more about our own. Lutz and Collins take us inside the National Geographic Society to investigate how its photographers, editors, and designers select images and text to produce representations of Third World cultures. Through interviews with the editors, they describe the process as one of negotiating standards of balance and objectivity, informational content and visual beauty. Then, in a close reading of some six hundred photographs, they examine issues of race, gender, privilege, progress, and modernity through an analysis of the way such things as color, pose, framing, and vantage point are used in representations of non-Western peoples. Finally, through
£26.00
The University of Chicago Press Leisure Settings Bourgeois Culture Medicine and
Book SynopsisExploring the links between class identity and vacationing, the text looks at the popularity of France's health resorts in the 19th century. It shows how spas were promoted as an ordered equivalent to the busy lives of the bourgeoisie, and this premier vacation made and was made by the bourgeoisie.
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Technoscientific Imaginaries Conversations
Book SynopsisHow have shifts in power and in assumptions about knowledge affected scientific practice? Who controls the new technologies, and how are moral and professional issues addressed during a time of global change? This work explores such questions of relevance in the current scientific climate.
£34.20
The University of Chicago Press The Black Extended Family
Book SynopsisMisunderstood and stereotyped, the black family in America has been viewed by some as pathologically weak while others have acclaimed its resilience and strength. Those who have drawn these conflicting conclusions have gnerally focused on the nuclear familyhusband, wife, and dependent children. But as Elmer and Joanne Martin point out in this revealing book, a unit of this kind often is not the center of black family life. What appear to be fatherless, broken homes in our cities may really be vital parts of strong and flexible extended families based hundreds of miles awayusually in a rural area. Through their eight-year study of some thirty extended families, the Martins find that economic pressures, including federal tax and welfare laws, have begun to make the extended family's flexibility into a liability that threatens its future.
£23.00
The University of Chicago Press Fundamentalisms and Society Reclaiming the
Book SynopsisProvides a systematic overview of the advances made by anti-secular religious movements since 1972, showing their impact on human relations, education, women's rights and scientific research. This text considers developments within Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism in 12 nations.
£42.75
The University of Chicago Press In Search of Dreamtime The Quest for the Origin
Book SynopsisObserves that the modern study of religion is peculiarly ambivalent toward the question of origin. Historians of religion have abandoned speculative quests for the origin of religion; at the same time, they allege that concepts of absolute beginnings are fundamental to religion itself.
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Religion in the Old South Chicago History of
Book SynopsisA major study of American cultural history, a book distinguished both for its careful research and for its innovative interpretations. . . . Professor Mathews's book is an explanation of what religion meant in the everyday lives of southern whites and blacks. It is indispensable reading not just for those who want to know more about the Old South but for anyone who wants to understand the South today.David Herbert Donald, Harvard University A major achievementa magnificently provocative contribution to the understanding of the history of religion in America.William G. McLoughlin, Book ReviewsA meticulous and well-documented study . . . In the changing connotations of the word 'liberty' lie most of the dilemmas of Southern (and American) history, dilemmas Dr. Mathews analyses with considerable penetration.Times Literary Supplement The most compact and yet comprehensive view of the Old South in its religious dimension that is presently available. This is a pioneering work by one who is w
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Bloodtaking and Peacemaking
Book SynopsisThis work seeks to delve beneath the chaos and brutality of the Norse world to discover a complex interplay of ordering and disordering impulses.
£27.00
The University of Chicago Press Critical Terms for the Study of Africa
Book SynopsisFor far too long, the Western world viewed Africa as unmappable terraina repository for outsiders' wildest imaginings. This problematic notion has had lingering effects not only on popular impressions of the region but also on the development of the academic study of Africa. Critical Terms for the Study of Africa considers the legacies that have shaped our understanding of the continent and its place within the conceptual grammar of contemporary world affairs. Written by a distinguished group of scholars, the essays compiled in this volume take stock of African studies today and look toward a future beyond its fraught intellectual and political past. Each essay discusses one of our most critical terms for talking about Africa, exploring the trajectory of its development while pushing its boundaries. Editors Gaurav Desai and Adeline Masquelier balance the choice of twenty-five terms between the expected and the unexpected, calling for nothing short of a new mapping of the scholarly
£79.80
The University of Chicago Press Critical Terms for the Study of Africa
Book SynopsisFor far too long, the Western world viewed Africa as unmappable terraina repository for outsiders' wildest imaginings. This problematic notion has had lingering effects not only on popular impressions of the region but also on the development of the academic study of Africa. Critical Terms for the Study of Africa considers the legacies that have shaped our understanding of the continent and its place within the conceptual grammar of contemporary world affairs. Written by a distinguished group of scholars, the essays compiled in this volume take stock of African studies today and look toward a future beyond its fraught intellectual and political past. Each essay discusses one of our most critical terms for talking about Africa, exploring the trajectory of its development while pushing its boundaries. Editors Gaurav Desai and Adeline Masquelier balance the choice of twenty-five terms between the expected and the unexpected, calling for nothing short of a new mapping of the scholarly
£28.00
