Social and cultural anthropology Books

Book SynopsisIn this jarring look at contemporary warfare and political visuality, renowned anthropologist of violence Allen Feldman provocatively argues that contemporary sovereign power mobilizes asymmetric, clandestine, and ultimately unending war as a will to truth. Whether responding to the fantasy of weapons of mass destruction or an existential threat to civilization, Western political sovereignty seeks to align justice, humanitarian right, and democracy with technocratic violence and visual dominance. Connecting Guantanamo tribunals to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, American counterfeit killings in Afghanistan to the Baader-Meinhof paintings of Gerhard Richter, and the video erasure of Rodney King to lynching photography and political animality, among other scenes of terror, Feldman contests sovereignty's claims to transcendental right -whether humanitarian, neoliberal, or democratic-by showing how dogmatic truth is crafted and terror indemnified by the prosecutorial

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Book SynopsisThe Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path launched its violent campaign against the government in Peru's Ayacucho region in 1980. Focusing on the peasant community of Sarhua that was at the epicenter of the conflict, the author follows the tangled thread of a public secret: the disappearance of Narciso Huicho.Trade Review"Gonzalez's ethnographic meditation on identity, history, violence, inequality, and cultural transformation is a joy to read. In writing that is sharp and insightful, she offers a cutting-edge analysis of local remembering and forgetting juxtaposed with recorded historic events. This is anthropology at its best and a real treat to read." - Victoria Sanford, Lehman College, City University of New York"

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Book SynopsisThe Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path launched its violent campaign against the government in Peru's Ayacucho region in 1980. Focusing on the peasant community of Sarhua which was at the epicenter of the conflict, the author follows the tangled thread of a public secret: the disappearance of Narciso Huicho.Trade Review"Gonzalez's ethnographic meditation on identity, history, violence, inequality, and cultural transformation is a joy to read. In writing that is sharp and insightful, she offers a cutting-edge analysis of local remembering and forgetting juxtaposed with recorded historic events. This is anthropology at its best and a real treat to read." - Victoria Sanford, Lehman College, City University of New York"

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Book SynopsisAddressing questions of life-course, research methods, institutional support, professional networks, ethnographic models, and disciplinary paradigm shifts, this title discusses the ways the authors' earlier and later projects compare on both scholarly and personal levels.Trade Review"Much in the way of the development of new topics, new questions, and new variants on the classic method of anthropological fieldwork has depended on the nature and experience of a now characteristic break with the investments of early-career fieldwork projects. Alma Gottlieb's collection is the first in-depth treatment of these 'moments' in anthropological careers, which are crucial to the understanding of new developments, forms, and interests in anthropological research generally." (George Marcus, University of California, Irvine)"

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Book SynopsisBraiding their own stories with those of the villagers of Asagbe and Kosangbe, the authors recounts a host of unexpected dramas with these West African villages, prompting serious questions about the fraught nature of cultural contact.Trade Review"At this moment in the history of our divided and violent world, we profoundly need to hear the voices of Alma Gottlieb and Philip Graham as they return to the Beng people of the Cote d'Ivoire and write not just about this remarkable people but about the ways that all of us are inextricably 'braided' together by our love, through our humanity, of sharing the great mystery of existence. Braided Worlds is not only an enthralling book but an important one. And linked with Gottlieb and Graham's earlier Parallel Worlds, the two books form a masterpiece of travel memoir." (Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain)"

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Book SynopsisWhen we donate our unwanted clothes to charity, we rarely think about what will happen to them: who will sort and sell them, and finally, who will revive and wear them. This volume looks at the multibillion dollar secondhand clothing business, as well as its impact on the African economy.

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Book SynopsisFocusing on the theoretical, methodological, and empirical frameworks of a variety of biological approaches to political attitudes and preferences, this title considers such topics as the comparative basis of political behavior, the utility of formal modeling informed by evolutionary theory, and the genetic bases of attitudes and behaviors.Trade Review"A major paradigmatic contribution relevant well beyond political science, Man Is by Nature a Political Animal provides a primer of what has been happening at the intersection of political science, biology, and cognitive neuroscience for the past twenty years. Hatemi and McDermott have put together a formidable group of the most creative scholars in the discipline, each of whom has attempted to show how the various methodologies and theoretical frameworks operate." (John M. Orbell, University of Oregon)"

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Book SynopsisForests are in decline, and the threats these outposts of nature face - including deforestation, degradation, and fragmentation - are the result of human culture. Or are they? This volume calls these assumptions into question, revealing forests' past, present, and future conditions to be the joint products of a host of natural and cultural forces.Trade Review"A clear message emerges that established views and conservation approaches based on seeing people as separate from nature-or viewing the land as divided into the pristine and wild versus the humanized and despoiled-are erroneous and doomed to generate unsuccessful policies and approaches to stewardship. These are not novel ideas, but this volume is unusual and valuable in making a forceful case for their validity based on work from many different landscapes and cultures and a great diversity of environmental and historical conditions." (David R. Foster, director of the Harvard Forest, Harvard University)"

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Book SynopsisWhat happens when three hundred alleged squatters go head-to-head with an enormous city government looking to develop the place where they live? As anthropologist Michael Herzfeld shows in this book, the answer can be surprising. He tells the story of Pom Mahakan, a tiny enclave in the heart of old Bangkok whose residents have resisted authorities' demands to vacate their homes for a quarter of a century. It's a story of community versus government, of old versus new, and of political will versus the law. Herzfeld argues that even though the residents of Pom Mahakan have lost every legal battle the city government has dragged them into, they have won every public relations contest, highlighting their struggle as one against bureaucrats who do not respect the age-old values of Thai/Siamese social and cultural order. Such values include compassion for the poor and an understanding of urban space as deeply embedded in social and ritual relations. In a gripping account of their standof

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Book SynopsisIf any anthropologist living today can illuminate our dim understanding of death's enigma, it is Robert Desjarlais. With Subject to Death, Desjarlais provides an intimate, philosophical account of death and mourning practices among Hyolmo Buddhists, an ethnically Tibetan Buddhist people from Nepal. He studies the death preparations of the Hyolmo, their specific rituals of grieving, and the practices they use to heal the psychological trauma of loss. Desjarlais's research marks a major advance in the ethnographic study of death, dying, and grief, one with broad implications. Ethnologically nuanced, beautifully written, and twenty-five years in the making, Subject to Death is an insightful study of how fundamental aspects of human existenceidentity, memory, agency, longing, bodilinessare enacted and eventually dissolved through social and communicative practices.

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Book SynopsisThe massive scale and complexity of international migration today tends to obscure the nuanced ways migrant families seek a sense of belonging. In this book, Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg takes readers back and forth between Cameroon and Germany to explore how migrant mothers through the careful and at times difficult management of relationships juggle belonging in multiple places at once: their new country, their old country, and the diasporic community that bridges them. Feldman-Savelsberg introduces readers to several Cameroonian mothers, each with her own unique history, concerns, and voice. Through scenes of their lives at a hometown association's year-end party, a celebration for a new baby, a visit to the Foreigners' Office, and many others as well as the stories they tell one another, Feldman-Savelsberg enlivens our thinking about migrants' lives and the networks and repertoires that they draw on to find stability and, ultimately, belonging. Placing women's individual voices with

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Book SynopsisThat parents in China greatly value higher education for their children is a well-known aspect of contemporary Chinese culture, but the intensity and effects of their desire to achieve this goal have largely gone unexamined. This title explores this universal desire for a college education and its vast consequences.Trade Review"Kipnis convincingly demonstrates how crucial education is for shaping the strategies, dreams, and desires of Chinese families. But the main contribution of this book is the way it manages to place this educational desire in a larger context of how China is governed and in a comparative framework that shows Chinese students' feverish desire for education as part of a global phenomenon that cannot be reduced to Chinese, or even East Asian, cultural peculiarity." (Stig Thogersen, Aarhus University)"

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Book SynopsisIn music studies, Timothy D. Taylor is known for his insightful essays on music, globalization, and capitalism. Music and the World is a collection of some of Taylor's most recent writings essays concerned with questions about music in capitalist cultures, covering a historical span that begins in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and continues to the present. These essays look at shifts in the production, dissemination, advertising, and consumption of music from the industrial capitalism of the nineteenth century to the globalized neoliberal capitalism of the past few decades. In addition to chapters on music, capitalism, and globalization, Music and the World includes previously unpublished essays on the continuing utility of the culture of concept in the study of music, a historicization of treatments of affect, and an essay on value and music. Taken together, Taylor's essays chart the changes in different kinds of music in twentieth- and twenty-first-century music a

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Book SynopsisFor more than 250 years, Charles de Brosses's term fetishism has exerted great influence over our most ambitious thinkers. Used as an alternative to magic but nonetheless expressing the material force of magical thought, de Brosses's term has proved indispensable to thinkers as diverse as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Derrida. With this book, Daniel H. Leonard offers the first fully annotated English translation of the text that started it all: On the Worship of Fetish Gods, and Rosalind C. Morris offers incisive commentary that helps modern readers better understand it and its legacy. The product of de Brosses's autodidactic curiosity and idiosyncratic theories of language, On the Worship of Fetish Gods is an enigmatic text that is often difficult for contemporary audiences to assess. In a thorough introduction to the text, Leonard situates de Brosses's work within the cultural and intellectual milieu of his time. Then, Morris traces the concept of fetishism throu

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Book SynopsisIn this unsettling and innovative book, anthropologist Stefania Pandolfo addresses the problematic of the subject through a dual examination of psychoanalysis and Islamic theological-medical reasoning, reflecting on the unconscious maladies of the soul at a time of tremendous global upheaval. Drawing on in-depth historical research and sensitively listening to contemporary patients in Morocco, she offers both an ethnographic journey through madness and contemporary formations of despair and a philosophical and theological exploration of the vicissitudes of the soul. Pandolfo's study spans a breadth that encompasses experiences of psychosis in psychiatric hospitals, visionary torments of the soul in urban life, the difficulty of undocumented migration, and the liturgical space of Quranic healing. Demonstrating how contemporary Islamic cures for madness address some of the core preoccupations of the psychoanalytic approach, she reveals how a religious and ethical relation to the ordeal o

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Book SynopsisDuring the patron saint fiesta in the Andean town of San Jeronimo, Peru, crowds gather at sunset in the town square, eagerly awaiting the entrance of the colorful dance troupes, or comparsas. Offering a look at a tradition, this title is a compelling example of the anthropology of performance.

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Book SynopsisSong Walking explores the politics of land, its position in memories, and its foundation in changing land-use practices in western Maputaland, a borderland region situated at the juncture of South Africa, Mozambique, and Swaziland. Angela Impey investigates contrasting accounts of this little-known geopolitical triangle, offsetting textual histories with the memories of a group of elderly women whose songs and everyday practices narrativize a century of borderland dynamics. Drawing evidence from women's walking songs (amaculo manihamba)once performed while traversing vast distances to the accompaniment of the European mouth-harp (isitweletwele)she uncovers the manifold impacts of internationally-driven transboundary environmental conservation on land, livelihoods, and local senses of place. This book links ethnomusicological research to larger themes of international development, environmental conservation, gender, and local economic access to resources. By demonstrating that develo

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Book SynopsisFrom the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Europeans struggled to understand their identity in the same way we do as individuals: by comparing themselves to others. In Savages, Romans, and Despots, Robert Launay takes us on a fascinating tour of early modern and modern history in an attempt to untangle how various depictions of foreign cultures and civilizations saturated debates about religion, morality, politics, and art. Beginning with Mandeville and Montaigne, and working through Montesquieu, Diderot, Gibbon, Herder, and others, Launay traces how Europeans both admired and disdained unfamiliar societies in their attempts to work through the inner conflicts of their own social worlds. Some of these writers drew caricatures of savages, Oriental despots, and ancient Greeks and Romans. Others earnestly attempted to understand them. But, throughout this history, comparative thinking opened a space for critical reflection. At its worst, such space could give rise to a sense of E

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Book SynopsisTaking a longer historical and broader geographical perspective, this title contends that sorcery is best understood as an Atlantic phenomenon that has significant connections to modernity and globalization. It examines sorcery in Brazil, Cuba, South Africa, Cameroon, and Angola.

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Book SynopsisArguing that village life is an effect of the modern and the global, this text analyzes everyday and social practices, and suggests that Kabre culture is shaped as much by colonial and postcolonial history as by anything indigenous or local.

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Book SynopsisBased on years of fieldwork in both rural and urban Greece, The Last Word explores women's cultural resistance as they weave together diverse social practices: improvised antiphonic laments, divinatory dreaming, the care and tending of olive trees and the dead, and the inscription of emotions and the senses on a landscape of persons, things, and places. These practices compose the empowering poetics of the cultural periphery. C. Nadia Seremetakis liberates the analysis of gender from reductive binary models and pioneers the alternative perspective of self-reflexive native anthropology in European ethnography.

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Book SynopsisPresents an extended case study of the 20th-century AIDS epidemic and the cultural circumstances from which it emerged. The book brings together anthropology, demography and epidemiology to explain how the Chagga people of Tanzania in Africa experience AIDS.

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Book SynopsisThe Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is the nation's regulatory overseer. In this book, the author draws on his experience as the Administrator of OIRA from 2009 to 2012, to argue that we can humanize regulation - and save lives in the process.Trade Review"What happens when the world's leading academic expert on regulation is plunked into the real world of government? Sunstein is that expert, and he was the regulatory boss of the US government from 2009 to 2012. Valuing Life describes both how Sunstein's ideas about regulation influenced his tenure in government, and how his experiences in government have influenced his ideas about regulation. This immensely rewarding book, written in the humane, beautiful style that Sunstein is known for, should be read by everyone who cares about how our government works." (Eric Posner, University of Chicago)"

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Trade Review"Colwell, too, argues that it's time to rethink our ties to the material world. But Colwell is an archeologist, and, as such, he takes a longer view. In So Much Stuff, he seeks to explain how Homo sapiens went from knapping chert to ordering granite countertops. What happened, he asks, 'that led our species from having nothing to needing everything?' . . . The industrialized world was built out of mountains of sand, iron, and copper, and it cannot operate without vast quantities of these or other materials. Colwell traces the problem back even further. Our special talent as a species is our ability to refashion raw materials-first rocks into tools, then, eventually, quartz into integrated circuits. We are, he suggests, Homo stuffensis, a creature 'defined and made by our things.' We should change our ways-we must change our ways-but this long history is against us." * New Yorker * "The book ends on one of its strongest points: the honest, personal account of Colwell's attempt to streamline his material life and get rid of things and how the system of things we live in defeated it. This account does not solve the dilemma the book poses, but it highlights it in ways that will resonate with most readers. Ultimately, So Much Stuff provides an engrossing introduction for nonexperts into the big questions of material culture studies." * Science * "In So Much Stuff, Colwell takes readers from that genesis in eastern Africa to Hong Kong, New Zealand, Europe and, excitingly, to Denver's dump. It's probably no surprise that he found stuff everywhere he went." * Denverite * "After Colwell's engaging account of scattered developments over huge stretches of time, much of it drawing on archaeological finds, the third panel in his triptych covers much more familiar territory-the world as reshaped by capitalism and industrial production, with everything that happens doing so at a manic pace. . . . It's an engaging book, and the photographs of artifacts are occasionally stunning. . . . Colwell makes an observation that may prove as memorable as Carlin's monologue: he defines hoarding as 'an animal instinct that is often veiled in humans by what some consume and insist on keeping and what others consume'-and then store in a landfill." * Inside Higher Ed * "Since this is the season for accumulating and giving so much new stuff, this is the perfect read. Archeologist Colwell does an entertaining and expansive dive into how humans evolved into diehard consumers (hint: that transformation began almost three million years ago)." * Totonto.com * "Chip Colwell presents us with a history of humanity's ever-growing desire for possessions, together with the looming catastrophic results." * inews * "Humans have too much stuff, and it is breaking the planet. Colwell brilliantly relates how and why we got here. Weaving an engaging, and fun, narrative through deep history and across societies, he describes our intense relations to the stuff we make, dream about, and accumulate. And most importantly, he offers us a path to more just, equitable, and sustainable lives with our stuff (and each other)." -- Agustin Fuentes, author of "Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being" "In this engaging and personal exploration into the world of things, Colwell reveals the very stuff that makes us human. Eminently readable, So Much Stuff takes us on a journey around the world, examining everything from stone tools to fast fashion, and asks how we became attached to so many things and whether we'll ever be able to survive without them." -- Lynn Meskell, author of "A Future in Ruins: UNESCO, World Heritage, and the Dream of Peace" "Colwell gives us a fascinating, beautifully written, and provocative history of how humans acquire possessions, or, as he describes it, 'stuff.' His journey takes us from human origins to today, with a glance at the future, where, he says 'our story with stuff goes on.' This is a notable, and at times humorous, essay on the excesses of consumerism since prehistoric times, of relevance to all of us, rich or poor." -- Brian Fagan, coauthor of "What We Did in Bed: A Horizontal History"Table of ContentsOn the Origin of Things: An Introduction Leap 1: Make Tools 1. First Things First 2. The Matter at Hand 3. Everything under the Sun Leap 2: Make Meaning 4. A Thing of Beauty 5. Articles of Faith 6. Dress Coded Leap 3: Make More 7. In the Thick of Things 8. A Material World 9. Too Much of a Good Thing On the Future of Things: A Conclusion Acknowledgments Key Terms and Concepts Notes References Image Credits Index

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Book SynopsisDonald Tuzin first studied the New Guinea village of Ilahita in 1972. Years later he returned to find that the village's men had voluntarily destroyed their secret cult which allowed them dominance over women. This study examines the labyrinth of motives behind this improbable, devastating act.Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Ch. 1: Going Home Ch. 2: The Mission Ch. 3: The Repeal of Custom Ch. 4: The Cassowary and the Swan Maiden Ch. 5: The Web of True Prophecy Ch. 6: Millennium Ch. 7: Fear in the Heart Ch. 8: Sanctuary Notes Maps References Index

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Book SynopsisThis volume explores the history of musica tropical, analyzing its rise in the context of the development of the broadcast media, rapid urbanization, and regional struggles for power.

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Book SynopsisThe authors look at points in American and British culture where the colour line has blurred. Through accounts of racial masquerades in literature and by looking at music throughout recent history, they upset the idea of race as a symbol of inherent human attributes.

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Book SynopsisExamines literary and historical texts to show how writers have manipulated images and ideas associated with the cattle killing - harvest, sacrifice, rebirth, devastation - to speak to their contemporary predicaments.Trade Review"Taking the Xhosa cattle killing as her focus, Wenzel offers something beautifully paradoxical: a new, anticanonical canon of South African writing. Concerned with historical and literary 'failures,' this work is a profound reflection on the fragmentary and spectral (but not therefore any less compelling) nature of echoes, influences, and prophecies. A work of sophistication and intellectual ambition, Bulletproof is a timely and innovative intervention in postcolonial studies." - Rita Barnard, University of Pennsylvania"

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Book SynopsisAzar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran,Marjane Satrapi's comics, and Baghdad Blogger Salam Pax's Internet diary are just a few examples of the new face of autobiography in an age of migration, globalization, and terror. But while autobiography and other genres of life writing can help us attend to people whose experiences are frequently unseen and unheard, life narratives can also be easily co-opted into propaganda. In Soft Weapons, Gillian Whitlock explores the dynamism and ubiquity of contemporary life writing about the Middle East and shows how these works have been packaged, promoted, and enlisted in Western controversies. Considering recent autoethnographies of Afghan women, refugee testimony from Middle Eastern war zones, Jean Sasson's bestsellers about the lives of Arab women, Norma Khouri's fraudulent memoir Honor Lost, personal accounts by journalists reporting the war in Iraq, Satrapi's Persepolis, Nafisi's book, and Pax's blog, Whitlock explores the contradictions and ambigu

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Book SynopsisGathers together forty years of anthropological study by a researcher and writer with one of the broadest fieldwork resumes in anthropology. In its twelve essays, this book covers encounters with transvestites in Oman, childbirth in Bhutan, poverty in Cairo, and honor killings in Scandinavia, with visits to several other locales.Trade Review"Unni Wikan has spent more time in sustained fieldwork in more societies than any other anthropologist I know, and these essays are the connective tissue among her most substantial work. They demonstrate her theoretical acuity in defining an approach that always places human experience first. They are exemplars and a test, as well, of just that approach which understands that common humanity is to be found anywhere, though complicated by distinctive cultural orientations to the expression of personhood." (George Marcus, University of California, Irvine)"

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Book SynopsisIn the mid-1970s, David M. Schneider announced that kinship did not exist in any culture known to humankind. This volume provides an assessment of Schneider's ideas, focusing particularly on his contributions to kinship studies and the implications of his work for cultural relativism.Trade Review"David M. Schneider was one of the most influential and important figures in post-World War II American anthropology, and a critical evaluation of his scholarship is both timely and welcome. This stimulating volume will be of genuine interest to academic anthropologists the world over." -- Mac Marshall, author of American Anthropology in Micronesia: An Assessment

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Book SynopsisShows us how modern-day cannibalism has been recaptured as in the vampire story, resurrected into the human blood stream, and mutated into the theory of germs through AIDS, Ebola, and the like. This book provides an interdisciplinary study of cannibalism in contemporary culture.Table of Contents"Donner, party of fifty!"; The body politic; "I want to bite your neck"; Dog eat dog: Mad cow disease; Diet disorders; "If you love someone, hunt them down and kill them"; Cannibal culture

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Book SynopsisPresents a multi-voiced debate on technologies designed to improve women's lives.Trade Review"This coherent and integrated collection lays out the issues and questions of feminist technology, crossing a true range of disciplinary boundaries including science and technology studies, architecture, biology, and the social sciences."--Barbara Katz Rothman, author of Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in a Patriarchal SocietyTable of ContentsContributors are: Jennifer Aengst, Maia Boswell-Penc, Kate Boyer, Frances Bronet, Shirley Gorenstein, Anita Hardon, Deborah G. Johnson, Linda L. Layne, Deana McDonagh, and Sharra L. Vostral

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Book SynopsisExplores Indian (as opposed to tribal) ethnic identity among Native American people in Oklahoma through their telling, in their own words, of how they became Indian and what being Indian means to them. This book features Oklahoma Indians' constructions of their histories and their view of native populations.Trade Review"In this very readable and accessible study, James Hammill examines one specific instance of the construction of modern American Indian ethnicity and identity."--Journal of American Ethnic History"Anthropologist James Hamill's work comes as close as any to explaining how an ethnic Indian identity can supplant a tribal one. . . . A highly original book that will be of interest to both scholar and general reader."--Great Plains Quarterly"Hamill's work is valuable for its inclusion of many Indigenous voices from the 1930s, 1960s-1970s, and 1990s and is commendable for the author's painstaking process of compiling and arranging the data."--Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas"An excellent exploration of ethnic and social identity."--Multicultural Review"Richly textured and palpably human. . . . Going Indian is a remarkable book."--Journal of the West"Hamill's contributions are two-fold. First, he shows how Native peoples in the twentieth century have re-crafted the colonial experiences of removal and forced assimilation into stories of not just sorrow, but also of hope and survival. . . . Second, Hamill succeeds in his nuanced, yet accessible, discussion of Indian blood politics."--Western Historical Quarterly

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Book SynopsisExploring the structure, motives, and meanings of humor in everyday life In Engaging Humor, Elliott Oring asks essential questions concerning humorous expression in contemporary society, examining how humor works, why it is employed, and what its messages might be. This provocative book is filled with examples of jokes and riddles that reveal humor to be a meaningful--even significant--form of expression. Oring scrutinizes classic Jewish jokes, frontier humor, racist cartoons, blonde jokes, and Internet humor. He provides alternate ways of thinking about humorous expressions by examining their contexts--not just their contents. He also shows how the incongruity and absurdity essential to the production of laughter can serve serious communicative ends. Engaging Humor examines the thoughts that underlie jokes, the question of racist motivation in ethnic humor, and the use of humor as a commentary on social interaction. The book also explores theTrade Review"This readable, well-reasoned book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in humor. Highly recommended."--Choice"Elliott Oring has written a profound as well as clear and entertaining book."--Folklore"In every way, Elliott Oring's Engaging Humor leads the pack. . . . It is thoughtful and learned without being dull or pedantic; it combines a folklorist's attention to the social life of jokes with the textual critic's appreciation of verbal nuance. Courage marks every chapter."--Studies in American Humor"Engaging Humor . . . would prove a useful source to anyone working on the philosophy of humor. It is also a very good read."--Philosophy in Review“I have read well over a hundred books on humor. None is superior to this one in clarity of expression or liveliness of ideas.”--John Morreall, author of Taking Laughter Seriously and Humor Works and review editor of Humor: International Journal of Humor Research from 1988 to 1999

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Book SynopsisOffering a survey of variety musical theatre, this title chronicles the social history and class dynamics of the robust, nineteenth-century American theatrical phenomenon that gave way to twentieth-century entertainment forms such as vaudeville and comedy on radio and television.Trade Review"A pathbreaking contribution. This is the first in-depth, scholarly treatment of variety musical theater, and there is nothing comparable to it. Rodger follows sound scholarly methodology and is innovative in her pursuit of information from underutilized sources. No one interested in musical theater will be without it."--Dale Cockrell, author of Demons of Disorder: Early Blackface Minstrels and Their World "One of the most critically astute studies of another slighted aspect of American popular culture."--The Journal of American History"An unparalleled resource and an enlightening and enjoyable read."--American Music "A comprehensive, nuanced analysis of the evolution of American variety performance in the 19th century. Highly recommended."--Choice"Gillian M. Rodger has produced a clearly written and well-researched book that is wide enough in scope to be considered an indispensable source on the subject. . . . Traverses a swatch of popular culture which for too long has been talked about but rarely explored."--American Studies"An impressive book that should appeal to students and scholars of American business, cultural, and performance history and inspire additional research on this fascinating subject."--American Historical Review

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Casey High weaves together memories, facts and fantasies as these occur in contemporary Ecuadorian Amazonia, offering us a fascinating picture of Waorani life today. This highly original book takes us a step further in the understanding of current sociocultural transformations among Amazonian indigenous peoples." --Carlos Fausto, National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro "An exciting analysis of the most intimate aspects of memory and experience in a contemporary Amazonian indigenous group in dialogue with its own stereotypes. . . . A compelling book not only for anthropologists but for anyone interested in contemporary Amerindian groups."--European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies"What do Bruce Lee, American missionaries being speared to death, Amerindians dancing in a national pride day, urban warrior performances, and a deeply felt sense of victimhood possibly have in common? In a refined narrative, Casey High weaves together memories, facts and fantasies as these occur in contemporary Ecuadorian Amazonia, offering us a fascinating picture of Waorani life today. This highly original book takes us a step further in the understanding of current sociocultural transformations among Amazonian indigenous peoples."--Carlos Fausto, National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro"Insightful and terrifically readable. Victims and Warriors is a timely, innovative look at how Waorani use images of their violent past to craft new forms of masculinity and identity that remain remarkably resistant to gender hierarchy and sexual antagonism."--Beth Conklin, author of Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society"Usually Waorani voices are distorted due to some other outside agenda, but here we have a nuanced account that communicates their experiences, remembrances, and perspective. Being able to hear what Waorani people think and say about violent encounters and violence in general, as well as Christianity, development, and other topics related to Waorani life and history, makes for a compelling read."--Michael A. Uzendoski, author of The Ecology of the Spoken Word: Amazonian Storytelling and Shamanism among the Napo Runa

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Based on finely detailed ethnography, lovingly treated by an author who knows how to write."--Daniel M. Goldstein, author of Outlawed: Between Security and Rights in a Bolivian City"An engagingly written, and often moving, depiction of the lives of working class women in Bolivia and their stories of suffering and success navigating the social and political economic obstacles of everyday life in the twenty-first century. Throughout, the finely detailed analysis illuminates the cultural parameters of emotion and illness and the local politics of neoliberalism and we gain an appreciation for individuals' efforts to protest the distress in their lives and enhance the well-being of themselves and others. A clear contribution to the field."--Krista E. Van Vleet, author of Performing Kinship Narrative, Gender, and the Intimacies of Power in the Andes

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Ought to adorn the shelves not only of Amazonianists and ethnomusicologists, but also of anyone, anthropologist or otherwise, who is interested in the history and practice of story-telling in all its various, equally beautiful and equally valid forms."--Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"An enlightening contribution for anyone interested in storytelling, Amazonian culture, or Quichua language."--Journal of Folklore Research"A fascinating and successful study of an oral tradition, with implications far beyond the Amazonian context."--Anthropology Review Database"The Ecology of the Spoken Word is one of the most successful attempts to communicate the beauty and untranslatability of mythology to emerge from Amazonian ethnography."--Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford"The Ecology of the Spoken Word makes a very significant contribution to the fields of Amazonian Quichua ethnoaesthetics and linguistic culture. The work is stimulating, exciting, and provocative, and the documentation is excellent. This book will be useful to cultural anthropologists and others interested in applied education and public policy–related disciplines because it helps clarify how knowledge is conceived by the Quichua people."--Janis B. Nuckolls, author of Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman: Ideophony, Dialogue, and Perspective"This work is exceptional for its depth of understanding and the details of presentation. The authors offer a new take on orality and storytelling by addressing debates in orality versus literacy and connecting them with South Americanist anthropology of indigenous cosmology, translation studies, verse-analysis, and ethnopoetics."--Alexander D. King, author of Living with Koryak Traditions: Playing with Culture in Siberia

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A well written and often gripping ethnographical study of the young, marginalized, and poor youth who live there, and who are separated from distant homes that are either unable or unwilling to provide for them. . . . The book's findings and discussions around gender dynamics make a worthy contribution to anthropological analysis of youth and understandings of the logics of social organization that develop in tough urban environments."--African Studies Quarterly "Margaretten's ethnographic realism and dialogical writing style make for compelling reading, while her appreciation of Zulu idioms and metaphors adds depth and thickness to her ethnographic accounts."--Journal of the Anthropological Institute "An important contribution to the anthropology of youth in Africa. Margaretten's rich, experience-near, ethnographic descriptions support a complex analysis of the lives of South African street youth in a context of dramatic inequality. It is nearly impossible to read Street Life under a Roof without feeling a connection with the youth of Point Place, and taking a deep interest in their struggles with love, family, and money."--Daniel Mains, author of Hope Is Cut: Youth, Unemployment, and the Future in Urban Ethiopia"An exemplary ethnography of post-apartheid life. Margaretten takes us to a place that few people know even exists: a self-run shelter for homeless young people in Durban. What emerges is a searing portrait of drugs, violence, and AIDS but also of compassion, love, loyalty, and humanity."--Mark Hunter, author of Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa"A major addition to the literature on youth in Africa as well as 'homelessness' and street children more generally."--Adam Ashforth, author of Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa

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Book SynopsisWhy we need a daily dose of touch: an investigation of the effects of touch on our physical and mental well-being. Although the therapeutic benefits of touch have become increasingly clear, American society, claims Tiffany Field, is dangerously touch-deprived. Many schools have “no touch” policies; the isolating effects of Internet-driven work and life can leave us hungry for tactile experience. In this book Field explains why we may need a daily dose of touch.The first sensory input in life comes from the sense of touch while a baby is still in the womb, and touch continues to be the primary means of learning about the world throughout infancy and well into childhood. Touch is critical, too, for adults' physical and mental health. Field describes studies showing that touch therapy can benefit everyone, from premature infants to children with asthma to patients with conditions that range from cancer to eating disorders.This second edition of Touch

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