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Book Synopsis2020 Award for Distinguished Book from the Animals & Society Section of the American Sociological Association One in five people in the United States is a birdwatcher, yet the popular understanding of birders reduces them to comical stereotypes, obsessives who only have eyes for their favorite rare species. In real life, however, birders are paying equally close attention to the world around them, observing the devastating effects of climate change and mass extinction, while discovering small pockets of biodiversity in unexpected places. For the Birds offers readers a glimpse behind the binoculars and reveals birders to be important allies in the larger environmental conservation movement. With a wealth of data from in-depth interviews and over three years of observing birders in the field, environmental sociologist Elizabeth Cherry argues that birders learn to watch wildlife in ways that make an invaluable contribution to contemporary conservation efforts. She investigates how birders develop a “naturalist gaze” that enables them to understand the shared ecosystem that intertwines humans and wild animals, an appreciation that motivates them to participate in citizen science projects and wildlife conservation. Trade Review"Without qualification, For the Birds will make a substantial and significant contribution to sociology. Cherry’s writing style and conversational tone take us through the training of a neophyte birder into a level of expertise all the while keeping the book extremely readable, lively and accessible." -- Lisa Jean Moore * author of Buzz: Urban Beekeeping and the Power of the Bee *“With its eagle-eyed sights on birders in their natural habitat, Elizabeth Cherry’s beautiful ethnography reveals the reverence and concern that citizen scientists feel for these charismatic creatures. Like the naturalist gaze itself, For the Birds is equal parts instructive and pleasurable.” -- David Grazian * author of American Zoo: A Sociological Safari *For the Birds by Elizabeth Cherry included in Publishers Weekly's Fall 2019 Adult Announcements * Publishers Weekly *"Recommended." * Choice *"With a wealth of data from in-depth interviews and over three years of observing birders in the field, environmental sociologist Elizabeth Cherry argues that birders learn to watch wildlife in ways that make an invaluable contribution to contemporary conservation efforts. She investigates how birders develop a 'naturalist gaze' that enables them to understand the shared ecosystem that intertwines humans and wild animals, an appreciation that motivates them to participate in citizen science projects and wildlife conservation." * ASA Environmental Sociology newsletter *"A major contribution." * Social Forces *"For the Birds provides both an interesting and accessible study of the birding community. Cherry provides deep and colorful description of birders and allows the community to speak directly to the reader by using interview quotes throughout the book. We have much to learn from birders about making the common uncommon and looking at our own backyards through a pair of binoculars." * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1 Becoming a Birder 2 The Naturalist Gaze 3 Common Birds and the Social Construction of Nature 4 Wilderness, Wildness, and Mobility 5 Good Birds, Bad Birds, and Animal Agency 6 Birding and Citizen Science 7 Birding as a Conservation Movement Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Book Synopsis'Honor' is used as a justification for violence perpetrated against women and girls considered to have violated social taboos related to sexual behavior. Several ‘honor’-based murders of Kurdish women, such as Fadime Sahindal, Banaz Mahmod and Du’a Khalil Aswad, and campaigns against 'honor'-based violence by Kurdish feminists have drawn international attention to this phenomenon within Kurdish communities.Honor and the Political Economy of Marriage provides a description of ‘honor’-based violence that focuses upon the structure of the family rather than the perpetrator’s culture. The author, Joanne Payton, argues that within societies primarily organized by familial and marital connections, women’s ‘honor’ is a form of symbolic capital within a ‘political economy’ in which marriage organizes intergroup connections. Drawing on statistical analysis of original data contextualized with historical and anthropological readings, Payton explores forms of marriage and their relationship to ‘honor’, sketching changing norms around the familial control of women from agrarian/pastoral roots to the contemporary era.Trade Review“Honor and the Political Economy of Marriage underlies ambitious narratives regarding the rights of women in marriage and formation of alliance, women offered as gifts to form and continue alliances. This is a rich text that dialogues with a global comparative approach analyzing the giving and receiving of women in various contexts, providing a survey of types of marriages and cultural significance of women as commodity within the lens of marriages and what unions entail.” -- Lina Fruzzetti * Professor of Anthropology, Brown University *"In a sophisticated layered fashion, the book links past studies to the present with keen attention to quantitative and qualitative data. It is an ideal work for courses addressing violence against women and girls." -- Eliz Sanasarian * author of The Women's Rights Movement in Iran *Table of ContentsSeries Foreword by Péter Berta Foreword by Deeyah Khan Note on Orthography Chapter 1: Honor Chapter 2: The Problems of Earthly Existence Chapter 3: The Patriarchal Order Chapter 4: Marriage Chapter 5: Modernity Chapter 6: Quantitative Analysis Chapter 7: The End of Honor Acknowledgements References Index Appendix

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Book Synopsis'Honor' is used as a justification for violence perpetrated against women and girls considered to have violated social taboos related to sexual behavior. Several ‘honor’-based murders of Kurdish women, such as Fadime Sahindal, Banaz Mahmod and Du’a Khalil Aswad, and campaigns against 'honor'-based violence by Kurdish feminists have drawn international attention to this phenomenon within Kurdish communities.Honor and the Political Economy of Marriage provides a description of ‘honor’-based violence that focuses upon the structure of the family rather than the perpetrator’s culture. The author, Joanne Payton, argues that within societies primarily organized by familial and marital connections, women’s ‘honor’ is a form of symbolic capital within a ‘political economy’ in which marriage organizes intergroup connections. Drawing on statistical analysis of original data contextualized with historical and anthropological readings, Payton explores forms of marriage and their relationship to ‘honor’, sketching changing norms around the familial control of women from agrarian/pastoral roots to the contemporary era.Trade Review“Honor and the Political Economy of Marriage underlies ambitious narratives regarding the rights of women in marriage and formation of alliance, women offered as gifts to form and continue alliances. This is a rich text that dialogues with a global comparative approach analyzing the giving and receiving of women in various contexts, providing a survey of types of marriages and cultural significance of women as commodity within the lens of marriages and what unions entail.” -- Lina Fruzzetti * Professor of Anthropology, Brown University *"In a sophisticated layered fashion, the book links past studies to the present with keen attention to quantitative and qualitative data. It is an ideal work for courses addressing violence against women and girls." -- Eliz Sanasarian * author of The Women's Rights Movement in Iran *Table of ContentsSeries Foreword by Péter Berta Foreword by Deeyah Khan Note on Orthography Chapter 1: Honor Chapter 2: The Problems of Earthly Existence Chapter 3: The Patriarchal Order Chapter 4: Marriage Chapter 5: Modernity Chapter 6: Quantitative Analysis Chapter 7: The End of Honor Acknowledgements References Index Appendix

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Book SynopsisIn a hard driving society like the United States, holidays are islands of softness. Holidays are times for creating memories and for celebrating cultural values, emotions, and social ties. All Together Now considers holidays that are celebrated by American families: Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Halloween, and the December holidays of Christmas or Chanukah. This book shows how entire families bond at holidays, in ways that allow both children and adults to be influential within their shared interaction. The decorations, songs, special ways of dressing, and rituals carry deep significance that is viscerally felt by even young tots. Ritual has the capacity to condense a plethora of meaning into a unified metaphor such as a Christmas tree, a menorah, or the American flag. These symbols allow children and adults to co-opt the meaning of symbols in flexible and age-relevant ways, all while the symbols are still treasured and shared in common. Trade Review“Beautifully written, persistently theoretically insightful and methodologically sound and innovative, All Together Now is a gem. Cindy Dell Clark builds on and expands her earlier work on holidays from an interdisciplinary and intergenerational perspective. This engaging book shines through with scholarship capturing the production of celebratory communal events at the individual, family, community and cultural level. A landmark study!” -- William A. Corsaro * author of The Sociology of Childhood 5th edition *"As a folklorist, it has long been my belief that we must look to the younger generations as well as the elder when studying tradition. Thankfully, Cindy Dell Clark provides us with a careful and important volume of research on American holidays as experienced by children. Clark examines children's holiday anxieties that we adults have forgotten or simply ignore. Her research includes the understudied Memorial Day and Chanukah, and focuses our attention on children who are marginalized by normative national celebrations such as diabetic children at Halloween and Jewish children at Christmas." -- Jack F Santino * editor of Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death *"Researcher’s New Book Explores Symbolism of Fourth of July and Other American Holidays" by Tom McLaughlin * Rutgers-Camden News Now *Not a positive review; no pull quote available. * Choice *"Let the Ghoul Times Roll: Halloween Culturally Significant Despite Social-Distancing Norms, Says Researcher," by Tom McLaughlin * Rutgers Today *“Beautifully written, persistently theoretically insightful and methodologically sound and innovative, All Together Now is a gem. Cindy Dell Clark builds on and expands her earlier work on holidays from an interdisciplinary and intergenerational perspective. This engaging book shines through with scholarship capturing the production of celebratory communal events at the individual, family, community and cultural level. A landmark study!” -- William A. Corsaro * author of The Sociology of Childhood 5th edition *"As a folklorist, it has long been my belief that we must look to the younger generations as well as the elder when studying tradition. Thankfully, Cindy Dell Clark provides us with a careful and important volume of research on American holidays as experienced by children. Clark examines children's holiday anxieties that we adults have forgotten or simply ignore. Her research includes the understudied Memorial Day and Chanukah, and focuses our attention on children who are marginalized by normative national celebrations such as diabetic children at Halloween and Jewish children at Christmas." -- Jack F Santino * editor of Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death *"Researcher’s New Book Explores Symbolism of Fourth of July and Other American Holidays" by Tom McLaughlin * Rutgers-Camden News Now *Not a positive review; no pull quote available. * Choice *"Let the Ghoul Times Roll: Halloween Culturally Significant Despite Social-Distancing Norms, Says Researcher," by Tom McLaughlin * Rutgers Today *Table of ContentsContents Preface 1 Introduction 2 Spring Season: Easter 3 Summer Season: Memorial Day and July 4th 4 Autumn Season: Halloween 5 Winter Season: Christmas and Chanukah 6 How Ritual Meaning Comes Together Appendix: About This Research Acknowledgements Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThere are currently a record-setting number of forcibly displaced persons in the world. This number continues to rise as solutions to alleviate humanitarian catastrophes of large-scale violence and displacement continue to fail. The likelihood of the displaced returning to their homes is becoming increasingly unlikely. In many cases, their homes have been destroyed as the result of violence. Why are the homes of certain populations targeted for destruction? What are the impacts of loss of home upon children, adults, families, communities, and societies? If having a home is a fundamental human right, then why is the destruction of home not viewed as a rights violation and punished accordingly? From Bureaucracy to Bullets answers these questions and more by focusing on the violent practice of extreme domicide, or the intentional destruction of the home, as a central and overlooked human rights issue.Trade Review“This innovative and noteworthy book adds an important perspective to human rights scholarship with valuable insight into the use of domicide as a political and military strategy.” -- Scott Harding * associate professor, University of Connecticut *"Tracking the widespread and often unseen practices of domicide – the deliberate destruction of home – this book forces us to rethink the meaning of home as a human right. Clear, rigorous, and persuasive, it makes the need for a Convention Against Domicide an urgent and necessary endeavor." -- Michael Vicente Pérez * assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Memphis *“This innovative and noteworthy book adds an important perspective to human rights scholarship with valuable insight into the use of domicide as a political and military strategy.” -- Scott Harding * associate professor, University of Connecticut *"Tracking the widespread and often unseen practices of domicide – the deliberate destruction of home – this book forces us to rethink the meaning of home as a human right. Clear, rigorous, and persuasive, it makes the need for a Convention Against Domicide an urgent and necessary endeavor." -- Michael Vicente Pérez * assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Memphis *Table of ContentsPart I: Introduction 1. Castles and Cages: A Theory of Home and Home Loss 2. The Difference Between Life and Death: The Human Right to Home 3. A Causal Pathway and Typology of Extreme Domicide Part II: From Bureaucracy To Bullets 4. “And Leave Them Burning Our Homes”: The Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya (1952-1960) 5. No Place to Call Home: Mutually Assured Domicide in Cyprus (1974) 6. “The Cruelest Work I Ever Knew”: Domicide and The Cherokee Trail of Tears (1838-1839) 7. Reducing Homes to Keys: The Occupation of Palestine and the Matrix of Control (1945-present) 8. "Their Home Will Be Razed Down to the Basement”: Chechnya’s Generations of Domicide (1944-2009) 9. Manufacturing Homogeneity: Domicide in Bosnia (1992-1995) 10. Wiping Neighborhoods Off the Map: The Syrian War (2011-present) 11. “All the Villages We Saw on the Way to the Sea Were Burning”: The Rohingya in Myanmar (2012-present) Part III: Conclusions 12. You Can’t Go Home Again: Justice, Reconciliation, and a Convention Against Domicide 13. Home Matters: Lessons Learned While Studying Extreme Domicide Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisWomen in North India are socialized to care for others, so what do they do when they get a disease like diabetes that requires intensive self-care? In Sugar and Tension, Lesley Jo Weaver uses women’s experiences with diabetes in New Delhi as a lens to explore how gendered roles and expectations are taking shape in contemporary India. Weaver argues that although women’s domestic care of others may be at odds with the self-care mandates of biomedically-managed diabetes, these roles nevertheless do important cultural work that may buffer women’s mental and physical health by fostering social belonging. Weaver describes how women negotiate the many responsibilities in their lives when chronic disease is at stake. As women weigh their options, the choices they make raise questions about whose priorities should count in domestic, health, and family worlds. The varied experiences of women illustrate that there are many routes to living well or poorly with diabetes, and these are not always the ones canonized in biomedical models of diabetes management. Trade Review"Recommended."— Choice "Sugar and Tension is a poignant ethnography that reveals how middle-class women in urban North India grapple with a mounting diabetes epidemic in the midst of shifting expectations and opportunities for women. Women with diabetes in Delhi often act in ways that run counter to biomedical recommendations. Weaver helps us to understand why, through her account of structural constraints that women face, and by showing how women justify their actions as they leverage ideas about relationships among diabetes, tension and self-sacrifice to engage in both social critique and self-validation. This book makes an important contribution to the studies of medical anthropology and gender in South Asia."— Cecilia VanHollen, author of Birth in the Age of AIDS: Women, Reproduction, and HIV/AIDS in India “This book is a must read not only for scholars and public health practitioners wanting to understand how women in contemporary India experience and respond to diabetes; but a broader audience interested in what ethnographies of chronic illness can tell us about gender roles, women’s life priorities, and challenges to their wellbeing across the life course.”— Mark Nichter, author of Global Health: Why Cultural Perceptions, Social Representation and Biopolitics Matter "Weaver identifies this tension between self-care and societal demands in women in India and offers a way forward for all, with generalizable lessons for anyone dealing with a chronic disease. Sugar and Tension provides a unique and incisive view of diabetes in modern India, and highlights the potential for women to change their own place in society."— Latha Palaniappan, The Lancet "This is a book where women's voices sing. It is filled with stories that make an imprint because they are narratively complex, in-depth, and speak to the heart of the issues that center the book: diabetes, the efforts and limitations of self-care, family, and, most importantly, gender....Beautifully articulates the everyday dilemmas women face as they manage competing demands and sometimes contradictory cultural poles as they try to live well, physically, mentally, and spiritually."— American Journal of Human Biology Human Biology Association - Sausage of Science 83- An Excerpt with Dr. Lesley Jo Weaver https://soundcloud.com/humanbiologyassociation/sos-82-an-excerpt-with-dr-lesley-jo-weaver— Sausage of Science "A clear and very compelling ethnography that demonstrates how for women in New Delhi, learning to be diabetic is as much about family and global development as it is about individual well-being. Weaver does not set up self-sacrifice and self-care as mutually exclusive possibilities but considers how acts of control and giving hold profound social meaning in North India. Overall, this highly readable book would be appropriate for undergraduate and graduate courses in medical anthropology, global health, biocultural anthropology, and the anthropology of gender."— Medical Anthropology QuarterlyTable of ContentsTable of Contents Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Opening a Window on Diabetes Experience Chapter 2: Seeking Modern India Chapter 3: Balance: The Moral and Practical Work of Diabetes Management Chapter 4: Tension: Diabetes, Distress, and Mental Health Chapter 5: Sacrifice: Domesticity and Care Among Women with Diabetes Chapter 6: Resilience: Living Well with Diabetes Chapter 7: Conclusions: Diabetes as Life Appendix References Index

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2022 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize​ This ethical and poetic ethnography analyses the upheavals to gender roles and marital relationships brought about by Somali refugee migration to the UK. Unmoored from the socio-cultural norms that made them men and women, being a refugee is described as making "everything" feel "different, mixed up, upside down." Marriage, Gender and Refugee Migration details how Somali gendered identities are contested, negotiated, and (re)produced within a framework of religious and politico-national discourses, finding that the most significant catalysts for challenging and changing harmful gender practices are a combination of the welfare system and Islamic praxis. Described as “an important and urgent monograph," this book will be a key text relevant to scholars of migration, transnational families, personal life, and gender. Written in a beautiful and accessible style, the book voices the participants with respect and compassion, and is also recommended for scholars of qualitative social research methods. Trade Review"Attentively observed and provocatively argued, this book explores the dynamic inter-relationship between culture, religion, ethnicity, and gender, and how migration remakes people’s understandings of their relationships. It is not only brilliant but beautiful too, capturing the creativity in struggles to craft places in the world. Truly inspirational reading." -- Bridget Anderson * co-editor of Citizenship and Its Others *“In this sensitively-described and expertly analysed ethnography of marriage among Somalis in Bristol, Natasha Carver shows how migration has unsettled Somali cultural norms of womanhood and masculinity. Marriage, Gender and Refugee Migration is an exemplary transnational sociology of how identities are constituted." -- Seán McLoughlin * co-editor of Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities *"An exciting insight into marriage, gender, and refugee migration." * Weekendavisen *Table of ContentsContents List of Figures List of Transcription Symbols Series Foreword by Péter Berta 1: Introduction 2: Context and Narrative: Speaking With and Speaking About 3: Atrocity Stories about Divorce 4: Personal Accounts of Relationship Breakdown 5: Being Responsible: Providing for the Family 6: Doing Responsibility: Caring for the Family 7: Somalinimo: An Existential Crisis? 8: Regendering Somaliness in the British Context 9: Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA Contested Caribbean Indigeneity is an in-depth analysis of the debates surrounding Taíno/Boricua activism in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean diaspora in New York City. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research, media analysis, and historical documents, the book explores the varied experiences and motivations of Taíno/Boricua activists as well as the alternative fonts of authority they draw on to claim what is commonly thought to be an extinct ethnic category. It explores the historical and interactional challenges involved in claiming membership in, what for many Puerto Ricans, is an impossible affiliation. In focusing on Taíno/Boricua activism, the books aims to identify a critical space from which to analyze and decolonize ethnoracial ideologies of Puerto Ricanness, issues of class and education, Puerto Rican nationalisms and colonialisms, as well as important questions regarding narrative, historical memory, and belonging.Trade Review"Sherina Feliciano-Santos has written a compelling and vital book on the multiplicity of ways of being Puerto Rican Taino—at once rigorous and theoretically sophisticated, highlighting again the value of language-centered work to the concerns of anthropology more broadly, it is also deeply personal, highlighting again the value of doing anthropology that matters." -- Anthony K. Webster * author of Intimate Grammars: An Ethnography of Navajo Poetry *"Sherina Feliciano-Santos’ ethnography offers us a beautifully written account that models rigorous scholarly analysis and ethical ethnographic practice as she examines controversial and critically important questions of Taino activism and identity claims within broader negotiations of Puerto Rican racial, ethnic and national identity. She reminds us of the generative value of embracing ambiguity, and incongruity and of listening carefully to what people have to say about their lives and their worlds." -- Gina Pérez * author of Citizen, Student, Soldier: Latina/o Youth, JROTC, and the American Dream *Table of ContentsContents List of Figures List of Abbreviations and Acronyms Glossary Transcription Conventions Prologue Introduction Part I: Competing historical narratives regarding Taíno extinction 1 The Stakes of Being Taíno 2 Historical Discourses and Debates about Puerto Rico’s Indigenous Trajectory Part II: The Puerto Rican Nation and Ethnoracial Regimes in Puerto Rico 3 Jíbaros and Jibaridades, Ambiguities and Possibilities 4 Impossible Identities Part III: Taíno Heritage and Political Mobilization 5 (Re)Constructing Heritage, Narratives of Linguistic Belonging 6 How Do You See the World as a Taíno? Conceptualizing the Taíno Gaze 7 Protest, Surveillance, and Ceremony Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis is a story about aging in place in a world of global movement. Around the world, many older people have stayed still but have been profoundly impacted by the movement of others. Without migrating themselves, many older people now live in a far “different country” than the one of their memories. Recently, the Brexit vote and the 2016 election of Trump have re-enforced prevalent stereotypes of “the racist older person”. This book challenges simplified images of the old as racist, nostalgic and resistant to change by taking a deeper, more nuanced look at older people’s complex relationship with the diversity and multiculturalism that has grown and developed around them. Aging in a Changing World takes a look at how some older people in New Zealand have been responding to and interacting with the new multiculturalism they now encounter in their daily lives. Through their unhurried, micro, daily interactions with immigrants, they quietly emerge as agents of the very social change they are assumed to oppose.Trade Review"Sure to become a classic of urban ethnography. A powerful and much needed account of the way in which older people respond to and negotiate change within urban communities. The research challenges views which present older people as 'victims' of global change, providing a highly nuanced description of both the perceived challenges of migration, but also the positive ways in which it is incorporated into new ways of adapting to social change."— Christopher Phillipson, coeditor of Precarity and Ageing: Understanding Insecurity and Risk in Later Life "Molly George’s book beautifully upends common assumptions about the widespread racism among elderly white Americans, Brits, and New Zealanders, offering a much more nuanced portrait of how ethnicity and migration are viewed by older generations. Examining everyday interactions between long-term residents and newcomers, Aging in a Changing World challenges stereotypical views of what it means to 'age in place' when places, and the people who occupy them, are in fact ever-changing. The result is a thought-provoking examination of multiculturalism as lived experience for the elderly."— Susanna Trnka, author of Traversing: Embodied Lifeworlds in the Czech RepublicTable of ContentsList of Illustrations 1 Aging in Times of Great Change 2 Global Movement, Everyday Multiculturalism, and Aging 3 Constructing the Field and Recruiting the Urban Stranger 4 “Then and Now”: Narratives of Change 5 Older New Zealanders’ Immigration-Related Concerns 6 A Surprise Twist? Older New Zealanders as Approachable and Accepting 7 Mentoring “Kiwiness” 8 Cosmopolitan Cadences 9 Conclusions Acknowledgments Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisWe’re losing our culture… our heritage… our traditions… everything is being swept away. Such sentiments get echoed around the world, from aging Trump supporters in West Virginia to young villagers in West Africa. But what is triggering this sense of cultural loss, and to what ends does this rhetoric get deployed? To answer these questions, anthropologist David Berliner travels around the world, from Guinea-Conakry, where globalization affects the traditional patriarchal structure of cultural transmission, to Laos, where foreign UNESCO experts have become self-appointed saviors of the nation’s cultural heritage. He also embarks on a voyage of critical self-exploration, reflecting on how anthropologists handle their own sense of cultural alienation while becoming deeply embedded in other cultures. This leads into a larger examination of how and why we experience exonostalgia, a longing for vanished cultural heydays we never directly experienced.Losing Culture provides a nuanced analysis of these phenomena, addressing why intergenerational cultural transmission is vital to humans, yet also considering how efforts to preserve disappearing cultures are sometimes misguided or even reactionary. Blending anthropological theory with vivid case studies, this book teaches us how to appreciate the multitudes of different ways we might understand loss, memory, transmission, and heritage.Trade Review“Losing Culture is about nostalgia, combining self-reflection and rich ethnographic examples from Africa and Asia with a critical view of the disciplinary anxieties of anthropology. Nostalgia, in this wonderful book, is treated as one more thing that is, in our tormented world, no longer what it used to be.” -- Arjun Appadurai * author of The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition *"David Berliner stands at the crossroads, observing the natives, the philosophers, the heritage bureaucrats, the tourists, and other anthropologists as well, from all nationalities, when they come to look at – or even live – the past in the present. But what does he become himself? A cultural chameleon? When you have read Losing Culture, perhaps your anthropology will never be the same again." -- Ulf Hannerz * author of Writing Future Worlds: An Anthropologist Explores Global Scenarios *“By linking the chameleon figure of the anthropologist with the theme of nostalgia, Berliner demonstrates anthropologists’ important role in disabusing the general public of the illusion that “cultures” can be rebuilt in their original form. This subtle departure from conventional studies of heritage places a new and desirable emphasis on the ethical choices facing anthropologists when confronted with the politics of contested pasts. Of particular value is the unusual but well-grounded comparative perspective that Berliner draws from his findings in West Africa and Southeast Asia.” -- Michael Herzfeld * author of Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok *"What Berliner sets out to do in this concisely insightful little book is to 'refine our understanding of how cultural loss manifests today in different contexts' with a special view to 'the rhetorical forms that lead to this diagnosis.' This ambitious task of addressing such a tremendous, worldwide problematic without losing touch with ethnography is anything but simple....Impressive." * Anthropos *"Losing Culture speaks to us both through its fascinating ethnographic cases and the lucid eye it poses onto ourselves, the plastic and nostalgic anthropologists. Its insight can apply to numerous cultural contexts, as diverse as they may be, by situating participant observers in contradictory and complex globalized cultural networks… Berliner offers a lucid study of the heterogeneity and multiplicity of participants in the accelerated times of a rapidly changing world." -- Francisco Rivera * Anthropologica *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Loss of Culture and the Desire to Transmit It Onward Chapter 1: Transmission Impossible in West Africa Chapter 2: UNESCO, Bureaucratic Nostalgia, and Cultural Loss Chapter 3: Toward the End of Societies? Chapter 4: The Plastic Anthropologist Conclusion: For a cultural and patrimonial diplomacy Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWe’re losing our culture… our heritage… our traditions… everything is being swept away. Such sentiments get echoed around the world, from aging Trump supporters in West Virginia to young villagers in West Africa. But what is triggering this sense of cultural loss, and to what ends does this rhetoric get deployed? To answer these questions, anthropologist David Berliner travels around the world, from Guinea-Conakry, where globalization affects the traditional patriarchal structure of cultural transmission, to Laos, where foreign UNESCO experts have become self-appointed saviors of the nation’s cultural heritage. He also embarks on a voyage of critical self-exploration, reflecting on how anthropologists handle their own sense of cultural alienation while becoming deeply embedded in other cultures. This leads into a larger examination of how and why we experience exonostalgia, a longing for vanished cultural heydays we never directly experienced.Losing Culture provides a nuanced analysis of these phenomena, addressing why intergenerational cultural transmission is vital to humans, yet also considering how efforts to preserve disappearing cultures are sometimes misguided or even reactionary. Blending anthropological theory with vivid case studies, this book teaches us how to appreciate the multitudes of different ways we might understand loss, memory, transmission, and heritage.Trade Review“Losing Culture is about nostalgia, combining self-reflection and rich ethnographic examples from Africa and Asia with a critical view of the disciplinary anxieties of anthropology. Nostalgia, in this wonderful book, is treated as one more thing that is, in our tormented world, no longer what it used to be.” -- Arjun Appadurai * author of The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition *"David Berliner stands at the crossroads, observing the natives, the philosophers, the heritage bureaucrats, the tourists, and other anthropologists as well, from all nationalities, when they come to look at – or even live – the past in the present. But what does he become himself? A cultural chameleon? When you have read Losing Culture, perhaps your anthropology will never be the same again." -- Ulf Hannerz * author of Writing Future Worlds: An Anthropologist Explores Global Scenarios *“By linking the chameleon figure of the anthropologist with the theme of nostalgia, Berliner demonstrates anthropologists’ important role in disabusing the general public of the illusion that “cultures” can be rebuilt in their original form. This subtle departure from conventional studies of heritage places a new and desirable emphasis on the ethical choices facing anthropologists when confronted with the politics of contested pasts. Of particular value is the unusual but well-grounded comparative perspective that Berliner draws from his findings in West Africa and Southeast Asia.” -- Michael Herzfeld * author of Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok *"What Berliner sets out to do in this concisely insightful little book is to 'refine our understanding of how cultural loss manifests today in different contexts' with a special view to 'the rhetorical forms that lead to this diagnosis.' This ambitious task of addressing such a tremendous, worldwide problematic without losing touch with ethnography is anything but simple....Impressive." * Anthropos *“Losing Culture is about nostalgia, combining self-reflection and rich ethnographic examples from Africa and Asia with a critical view of the disciplinary anxieties of anthropology. Nostalgia, in this wonderful book, is treated as one more thing that is, in our tormented world, no longer what it used to be.” -- Arjun Appadurai * author of The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition *"David Berliner stands at the crossroads, observing the natives, the philosophers, the heritage bureaucrats, the tourists, and other anthropologists as well, from all nationalities, when they come to look at – or even live – the past in the present. But what does he become himself? A cultural chameleon? When you have read Losing Culture, perhaps your anthropology will never be the same again." -- Ulf Hannerz * author of Writing Future Worlds: An Anthropologist Explores Global Scenarios *“By linking the chameleon figure of the anthropologist with the theme of nostalgia, Berliner demonstrates anthropologists’ important role in disabusing the general public of the illusion that “cultures” can be rebuilt in their original form. This subtle departure from conventional studies of heritage places a new and desirable emphasis on the ethical choices facing anthropologists when confronted with the politics of contested pasts. Of particular value is the unusual but well-grounded comparative perspective that Berliner draws from his findings in West Africa and Southeast Asia.” -- Michael Herzfeld * author of Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok *"What Berliner sets out to do in this concisely insightful little book is to 'refine our understanding of how cultural loss manifests today in different contexts' with a special view to 'the rhetorical forms that lead to this diagnosis.' This ambitious task of addressing such a tremendous, worldwide problematic without losing touch with ethnography is anything but simple....Impressive." * Anthropos *"Losing Culture speaks to us both through its fascinating ethnographic cases and the lucid eye it poses onto ourselves, the plastic and nostalgic anthropologists. Its insight can apply to numerous cultural contexts, as diverse as they may be, by situating participant observers in contradictory and complex globalized cultural networks… Berliner offers a lucid study of the heterogeneity and multiplicity of participants in the accelerated times of a rapidly changing world." -- Francisco Rivera * Anthropologica *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Loss of Culture and the Desire to Transmit It Onward Chapter 1: Transmission Impossible in West Africa Chapter 2: UNESCO, Bureaucratic Nostalgia, and Cultural Loss Chapter 3: Toward the End of Societies? Chapter 4: The Plastic Anthropologist Conclusion: For a cultural and patrimonial diplomacy Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisMuslim marriages have been the focus of considerable public debate in Europe and beyond, in Muslim-majority countries as well as in settings where Muslims are a minority. Most academic work has focused on how the majority Sunni Muslims conclude marriages. This volume, in contrast, focuses on Twelver Shi'a Muslims in Iran, Pakistan, Oman, Indonesia, Norway, and the Netherlands. The volume makes an original contribution to understanding the global dynamics of Shi'a marriage practices in a wide range of contexts--not only its geographical spread but also by providing a critical analysis of the socio-economic, religious, ethnic, and political discourses of each context. The book sheds light on new marriage forms presented through a bottom up approach focusing on the lived experiences of Shi'a Muslims negotiating a diverse range of relationships and forms of belonging.Trade Review"In this pioneering book, Shanneik and Moors have deftly amended the dearth of scholarly books on Shi’i cultures and traditions. The ethnographically diverse chapters brought together in this collected volume on the Global Dynamics of Shi’a Marriages engage with local practices as they are embedded within the wider contexts of migration, diaspora and transnationalism. It is a very timely and accessible book, and I highly recommend it." -- Shahla Haeri * author of The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority, Gender *"Global Dynamics of Shi’a Marriages is a fascinating addition to the emerging literature on marriage and sexuality in the Muslim world. Young people engage in 'dating cultures' facilitated by mobile phones, young women are reluctant to live with in-laws, and there is a growing desire for love-based marriages. While the authority of the older generation has been diminished, the move towards more companionate marriages in every Shi’a community still involves family negotiations over choice of partner, marital gifts, and wedding expenses." -- Janet Afary * co-editor of Iranian Romance in the Digital Age: From Arranged Marriage to White Marriage *Table of ContentsSeries Foreword by Péter Berta Introduction ANNELIES MOORS AND YAFA SHANNEIK PART ONE Gender and Generation: New Dating and Marriage Practices 1 Marriage Modifications in Aliabad: Social Change Overrides Clerical Directives MARY ELAINE HEGLAND 2 The New Marital Romance: How Bollywood, Islamic Doctrines, and Mobile Phones Dissect the Imperative of Spouse Evasion ANNA-MARIA WALTER PART TWO Dower Practices: Signifying Religion, Ethnicity, and Class 3 The Dower (Mahr) and Wedding Ceremony among the Shi‘a of Oman: Religion, Class, and Ethnicity JIHAN SAFAR 4 Mahr Iranian Style in Norway: Negotiating Gender Equality and Religious and Cultural Belonging through Transnational Shia Marriage Practices PART THREE Temporary Marriage: A Flexible and Controversial Institution 5 Mutʿa Marriage among Youth in the Non-Shi‘i Environment of Indonesia EVA F. NISA 6 Between Love and Sex, Modernity and Archaism: Iranian Students’ Discourse in the Netherlands about Sigheh SOPHIE-YVIE GIRARD 7 “Laboratory Sigheh”: The (Dis)Entanglements of Temporary Marriage and Third-Party Donation in Iran TARA ASGARILALEH AND ANNELIES MOORS Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisMuslim marriages have been the focus of considerable public debate in Europe and beyond, in Muslim-majority countries as well as in settings where Muslims are a minority. Most academic work has focused on how the majority Sunni Muslims conclude marriages. This volume, in contrast, focuses on Twelver Shi'a Muslims in Iran, Pakistan, Oman, Indonesia, Norway, and the Netherlands. The volume makes an original contribution to understanding the global dynamics of Shi'a marriage practices in a wide range of contexts--not only its geographical spread but also by providing a critical analysis of the socio-economic, religious, ethnic, and political discourses of each context. The book sheds light on new marriage forms presented through a bottom up approach focusing on the lived experiences of Shi'a Muslims negotiating a diverse range of relationships and forms of belonging.Trade Review"In this pioneering book, Shanneik and Moors have deftly amended the dearth of scholarly books on Shi’i cultures and traditions. The ethnographically diverse chapters brought together in this collected volume on the Global Dynamics of Shi’a Marriages engage with local practices as they are embedded within the wider contexts of migration, diaspora and transnationalism. It is a very timely and accessible book, and I highly recommend it." -- Shahla Haeri * author of The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority, Gender *"Global Dynamics of Shi’a Marriages is a fascinating addition to the emerging literature on marriage and sexuality in the Muslim world. Young people engage in 'dating cultures' facilitated by mobile phones, young women are reluctant to live with in-laws, and there is a growing desire for love-based marriages. While the authority of the older generation has been diminished, the move towards more companionate marriages in every Shi’a community still involves family negotiations over choice of partner, marital gifts, and wedding expenses." -- Janet Afary * co-editor of Iranian Romance in the Digital Age: From Arranged Marriage to White Marriage *"In this pioneering book, Shanneik and Moors have deftly amended the dearth of scholarly books on Shi’i cultures and traditions. The ethnographically diverse chapters brought together in this collected volume on the Global Dynamics of Shi’a Marriages engage with local practices as they are embedded within the wider contexts of migration, diaspora and transnationalism. It is a very timely and accessible book, and I highly recommend it." -- Shahla Haeri * author of The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority, Gender *"Global Dynamics of Shi’a Marriages is a fascinating addition to the emerging literature on marriage and sexuality in the Muslim world. Young people engage in 'dating cultures' facilitated by mobile phones, young women are reluctant to live with in-laws, and there is a growing desire for love-based marriages. While the authority of the older generation has been diminished, the move towards more companionate marriages in every Shi’a community still involves family negotiations over choice of partner, marital gifts, and wedding expenses." -- Janet Afary * co-editor of Iranian Romance in the Digital Age: From Arranged Marriage to White Marriage *Table of ContentsSeries Foreword by Péter Berta Introduction ANNELIES MOORS AND YAFA SHANNEIK PART ONE Gender and Generation: New Dating and Marriage Practices 1 Marriage Modifications in Aliabad: Social Change Overrides Clerical Directives MARY ELAINE HEGLAND 2 The New Marital Romance: How Bollywood, Islamic Doctrines, and Mobile Phones Dissect the Imperative of Spouse Evasion ANNA-MARIA WALTER PART TWO Dower Practices: Signifying Religion, Ethnicity, and Class 3 The Dower (Mahr) and Wedding Ceremony among the Shi‘a of Oman: Religion, Class, and Ethnicity JIHAN SAFAR 4 Mahr Iranian Style in Norway: Negotiating Gender Equality and Religious and Cultural Belonging through Transnational Shia Marriage Practices PART THREE Temporary Marriage: A Flexible and Controversial Institution 5 Mutʿa Marriage among Youth in the Non-Shi‘i Environment of Indonesia EVA F. NISA 6 Between Love and Sex, Modernity and Archaism: Iranian Students’ Discourse in the Netherlands about Sigheh SOPHIE-YVIE GIRARD 7 “Laboratory Sigheh”: The (Dis)Entanglements of Temporary Marriage and Third-Party Donation in Iran TARA ASGARILALEH AND ANNELIES MOORS Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisIn Through Japanese Eyes, based on her thirty-year research at a senior center in upstate New York, anthropologist Yohko Tsuji describes old age in America from a cross-cultural perspective. Comparing aging in America and in her native Japan, she discovers that notable differences in the panhuman experience of aging are rooted in cultural differences between these two countries, and that Americans have strongly negative attitudes toward aging because it represents the antithesis of cherished American values, especially independence. Tsuji reveals that American culture, despite its seeming lack of guidance for those aging, plays a pivotal role in elders’ lives, simultaneously assisting and constraining them. Furthermore, the author’s lengthy period of research illustrates major changes in her interlocutors’ lives, incorporating their declines and death, and significant shifts in the culture of aging in American society as Tsuji herself gets to know American culture and grows into senescence herself.Through Japanese Eyes offers an ethnography of aging in America from a cross-cultural perspective based on a lengthy period of research. It illustrates how older Americans cope with the gap between the ideal (e.g., independence) and the real (e.g., needing assistance) of growing older, and the changes the author observed over thirty years of research. Trade Review“Through Japanese Eyes is a warm and sympathetic portrait of mutual support and cooperation among older people in the United States. Spanning from the 1980s through to the present day, it reveals the value of long-term personal engagement with a research site and subject matter.” -- Iza Kavedžija * author of Making Meaningful Lives: Tales from an Aging Japan *“Yohko Tsuji offers carefully crafted prose and an inviting tone that welcomes the reader to share her three decades of research on community-based aging. She begins with a critical overview of the anthropological scholarship on aging, giving students and colleagues a firm foundation in anthropological approaches to aging and why they are distinctly powerful. A native of Japan, she draws on both emic and etic perspectives in discussing how culture informs social networks based on mutual support, friendship, kinship, and proximity.” -- Maria Vesperi * co-editor of Anthropology off the Shelf: Anthropologists on Writing *"Anthropologist examines aging in U.S. ‘Through Japanese Eyes,’" by Kate Blackwood https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/11/anthropologist-examines-aging-us-through-japanese-eyes * Cornell Chronicle *"Aging in America: Professors study offers hope for fear of getting old" by Matt Steecker * The Ithaca Journal *"Tsuji was born in Japan and came to the U.S. for college in the Seventies; she’s now an adjunct associate professor of anthropology on the Hill. Her new book, based on three decades of research at a senior center in Upstate New York, examines old age in America from a cross-cultural perspective, comparing how aging is experienced in her adopted and native countries. 'It seems that Americans detest old age because it represents the antithesis of the country’s cultural ideals. In other words, culture is the culprit for the plight of American elders,' Tsuji writes in the introduction. 'By contrast, Japanese culture seems to offer a neat prescription for the problems of old age: for example, co-residence with children, an emphasis on interdependence, and the Confucian ethics of filial piety.'” * Cornell Alumni Magazine *Made of Clay Review interview with Yohko Tsuji * Made of Clay *"The Gifts of Elders" by Yohko Tsuji * Triton Magazine *"I recommend the book for everyone." * The Plaza Review *Table of ContentsContents List of Illustrations List of Tables Preface Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Japanese Names Introduction: Anthropology, Cultural Values, and Aging 1 Activities as Value at Lake District Senior Center 2 Elders Supporting Each Other to Help Themselves 3 Networking at Lake District Senior Center 4 Post-Retirement Housing and Living Arrangements 5 Who Supports Older Americans?: Families, Self, and Other Sources 6 Temporal Complexity in Older Americans’ Lives 7 Changes and Continuities Over Thirty Years of Research Conclusion: Challenges and Hopes in the New Frontier of Aging Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIntimate Connections dissects ideas, feelings, and practices around love, marriage, and respectability in the remote high mountains of Gilgit-Baltistan in northern Pakistan. It offers insightful perspectives from the emotional lives of Shia women and their active engagement with their husbands. These gender relations are shaped by countless factors, including embodied values of modesty and honor, vernacular fairy tales and Bollywood movies, Islamic revivalism and development initiatives. In particular, the advent of media and communication technologies has left a mark on (pre)marital relations in both South Asia and the wider Muslim world. Juxtaposing different understandings of ‘love’ reveals rich and manifold worlds of courtship, elopements, family dynamics, and more or less affectionate matches that are nowadays often initiated through SMS. Deep ethnographic accounts trace the relationships between young couples to show how Muslim women in a globalized world dynamically frame and negotiate circumstances in their lives.Trade Review"Intimate Connections is an elegant and nuanced ethnographic account of gendered intimacy as experienced by women in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. Eschewing simplistic formulations such as 'love vs. arranged marriages' and 'agency vs. gendered subordination,' Anna-Maria Walter instead pushes us to consider emotions anew, in particular 'love,' as sites of embodied, ethical formation of the self, and as significant to gendered norms that shape marriage and emergent forms of conjugality." -- Attiya Ahmad * author of Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work and South Asian Migrant Women in Kuwait *"Intimate Connections is a richly ethnographic account of women’s and men’s experiences of kinship and sexuality in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, showing how young women’s changing expectations of marriage and love are reforming the institution from within." -- Katherine Lemons * author of Divorcing Traditions: Islamic Marriage Law and the Making of Indian Secularism *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Series Foreword by Péter Berta Preface and Acknowledgments Note on Transcription 1 Politics of the Sensible 2 Embodying Modest Reserve 3 Arranging Affection 4 Fearing Passion 5 Romancing Marriage Glossary Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisUrban Dwellings, Haitian Citizenships explores the failed international reconstruction of Port-au-Prince after the devastating 2010 earthquake. It describes the failures of international aid in Haiti while it analyzes examples of Haitian-based reconstruction and economic practices. By interrogating the relationship between indigenous uses of the cityscape and the urbanization of the countryside within a framework that centers on the violence of urban planning, the book shows that the forms of economic development promoted by international agencies institutionalize impermanence and instability. Conversely, it shows how everyday Haitians use and transform the city to create spaces of belonging and forms of citizenship anchored in a long history of resistance to extractive economies. Taking readers into the remnants of failed industrial projects in Haitian provinces and into the streets, rubble, and homes of Port-au-Prince, this book reflects on the possibilities and meanings of dwelling in post-disaster urban landscapes.Trade Review"Joos’ Urban Dwellings, Haitian Citizenships undertakes a monumental task—analyzing the failures of international aid and post-disaster reconstruction through the lens of urban housing. Arguing for embodied forms of dwelling, Joos compellingly argues for Haitian models of urban housing built upon communal living, vernacular architecture, and sustainable habitation. Through his intimate, empathic ethnography, Joos powerfully asserts a 'right to the city' (and the country) through spatial citizenship, a correlate to what Mimi Sheller (Island Futures) defines as mobile justice." -- Jana Evans Braziel * author of Riding with Death: Vodou Art and Urban Ecology in the Streets of Port-au-Prince *"Urban Dwellings, Haitian Citizenships is a tour de force, arguing for the importance of place in belonging and citizenship. Exceptionally well-researched, weaving a rich and diverse set of first-hand accounts with scholars from Haiti and elsewhere, Joos brings a critique of foreign disaster capitalism to the highest level, pushing hard against sensationalist narratives." -- Mark Schuller * author of Humanity's Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe *New Books Network - New Books in Caribbean Studies interview with Vincent Joos * New Books Network - New Books in Caribbean Studies *"A Big Hole: Notes from Jovenel Moïse’s Hometown," by Vincent Joos * The Society for Cultural Anthropology *"Richly narrated ethnographies accompanied by well-documented urban projects convey Joos’ principal argument: that culturally anchored practices related to reciprocal networks, income-generation (ti komés), social organization, and vernacular dwelling typologies (structures that withstood the earthquake on most occasions), are socially, economically and ecologically sustainable forms of urbanism that may offer viable alternatives to conventional post-disaster rehabilitation trajectories and internationally sponsored urban planning that turn a blind eye to ‘what already is.’" * ERLACS *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction 1 Developing Disasters: Dispossession and Industrialization in Northern Haiti 2 Industrial Futures: Abstract and Disciplinarian Landscapes in Post-Earthquake Haiti 3 State Interventions: Infrastructure and Citizenship 4 Inhabiting Port-au-Prince after 2010: Indigenous Urbanization, History, and Belonging 5 Daily Life in the Shotgun Neighborhoods of Downtown Port-au-Prince 6 Demolishing Shotgun Neighborhoods Conclusion: Peyi a Lok Acknowledgments Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisViral Frictions takes the reader along a trail of intersecting narratives to uncover how and why it is that HIV-related stigma persists in the age of treatment. Pfeiffer convincingly argues that stigma is a socially constructed process co-produced at the nexus of local, national, and global relationships and storytelling about and practices associated with HIV. Based on a decade of fieldwork in one highway trading center in Kenya, Viral Frictions offers compelling stories of stigma and discrimination as a lens for understanding broader social processes, the complexities of globalization and health, and their profound impact on the everyday social lives and relationships of people living through the ongoing HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. This highly engaging book is ideal reading for those interested in teaching and learning about intersectionality, as Pfeiffer meticulously demonstrates how HIV stigma interacts with issues of treatment, race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, social change, and international aid systems.Trade Review"Through engaging storytelling and careful analysis, Viral Frictions examines the persistence of stigma surrounding AIDS in Kenya. Tracing the intersection of multiple axes of inequality and illuminating the complicity of global actors, Elizabeth Pfeiffer provides a new and insightful perspective on an enduring problem. Further, her rich ethnography takes a Rift Valley 'truck stop'—stereotypically reduced to a risk site—and reveals a vibrant community." -- Daniel Jordan Smith * author of AIDS Doesn’t Show Its Face: Inequality, Morality, and Social Change in Nigeria *“An exquisite ethnography of the complex social frictions arising from decades of HIV interventions, and more recent efforts to 'end AIDS,' in Kenya. Deftly interweaving history, theory, and ethnographic stories, Viral Frictions offers a humane and carefully wrought reminder that HIV stigma persists in social relations even as the virus becomes increasingly 'undetectable' in bodies due to biomedical treatment.” -- Nora Kenworthy * author of Mistreated: The Political Consequences of the Fight Against AIDS in Lesotho *"Through engaging storytelling and careful analysis, Viral Frictions examines the persistence of stigma surrounding AIDS in Kenya. Tracing the intersection of multiple axes of inequality and illuminating the complicity of global actors, Elizabeth Pfeiffer provides a new and insightful perspective on an enduring problem. Further, her rich ethnography takes a Rift Valley 'truck stop'—stereotypically reduced to a risk site—and reveals a vibrant community." -- Daniel Jordan Smith * author of AIDS Doesn’t Show Its Face: Inequality, Morality, and Social Change in Nigeria *“An exquisite ethnography of the complex social frictions arising from decades of HIV interventions, and more recent efforts to 'end AIDS,' in Kenya. Deftly interweaving history, theory, and ethnographic stories, Viral Frictions offers a humane and carefully wrought reminder that HIV stigma persists in social relations even as the virus becomes increasingly 'undetectable' in bodies due to biomedical treatment.” -- Nora Kenworthy * author of Mistreated: The Political Consequences of the Fight Against AIDS in Lesotho *Table of ContentsSeries Foreword by Lenore Manderson PrefaceAcronyms and Abbreviations Introduction 1 Uneven Anthropological and Epidemiological Stories in Historical HIV Context2 “The Postelection Violence Has Brought Shame on Us All”: HIV and Legacies of Racism, Political Violence, and Ethnic Conflict 3 Stigma and the Cultural Politics of Uncertainty 4 “We Call HIV a Sex Worker Disease”: Economic Inequalities, Social Change, and the Politics of Gender and Sexuality 5 (Re)Imagining Stigma at the Intersection of HIV and Mental Health Statuses6 “What Has Happened to You?” HIV and the (Re)Making of Moral Personhood Conclusion AcknowledgmentsNotes References Index

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Book SynopsisAfrica is known both for having a primarily youthful population and for its elders being held in high esteem. However, this situation is changing: people in Africa are living longer, some for many years with chronic, disabling illnesses. In Ghana, many older people, rather than experiencing a sense of security that they will be respected and cared for by the younger generations, feel anxious that they will be abandoned and neglected by their kin. In response to their concerns about care, they and their kin are exploring new kinds of support for aging adults, from paid caregivers to social groups and senior day centers. These innovations in care are happening in fits and starts, in episodic and scattered ways, visible in certain circles more than others. By examining emergent discourses and practices of aging in Ghana, Changes in Care makes an innovative argument about the uneven and fragile processes by which some social change occurs. There is a short film that accompanies the book, “Making Happiness: Older People Organize Themselves” (2020), an 11-minute film by Cati Coe. Available at: https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-thke-hp15Trade Review“Combining an innovative set of conceptual tools with meticulous presentation of ethnographic and historical research in both rural and urban contexts, this study makes a compelling contribution to understanding the dynamics of changing elder-care practices in Ghana. Topics covered include the intertwining of kin and non-kin roles in the work of care-giving and the uneasy relations between care-givers and domestic servants in households.” -- Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart * co-authors of Language and Culture in Dialogue *"Cati Coe understands the language of change, care and aging in Africa as well as the diversity of change in the context of the broader globalized world. She critically but sensitively explores these complexities without falling into tired binaries. Change in Africa and its implications for care are approached as complex, quiet and sporadic processes and not simplistically linear as still often proposed by exponents of modernization theory." -- Jaco Hoffman * co-editor of Intergenerational Contact Zones: Place-Based Strategies for Promoting Social Inclusion and Belonging *“Combining an innovative set of conceptual tools with meticulous presentation of ethnographic and historical research in both rural and urban contexts, this study makes a compelling contribution to understanding the dynamics of changing elder-care practices in Ghana. Topics covered include the intertwining of kin and non-kin roles in the work of care-giving and the uneasy relations between care-givers and domestic servants in households.” -- Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart * co-authors of Language and Culture in Dialogue *"Cati Coe understands the language of change, care and aging in Africa as well as the diversity of change in the context of the broader globalized world. She critically but sensitively explores these complexities without falling into tired binaries. Change in Africa and its implications for care are approached as complex, quiet and sporadic processes and not simplistically linear as still often proposed by exponents of modernization theory." -- Jaco Hoffman * co-editor of Intergenerational Contact Zones: Place-Based Strategies for Promoting Social Inclusion *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 The Orthodoxy of Family Care Part I Changes in Aging in the Rural Towns of the Eastern Region 2 Heterodox Ideas of Elder Care: From Nursing Homes to Savings 3 Alterodox Practices of Elder Care: Domestic Service and Neighborliness 4 “Loneliness Kills”: Stimulating Sociality among Older Churchgoers Part II Changes in Aging in Urban Ghana 5 Market-Based Solutions for the Globally Connected Middle Class 6 Going to School to Be a Carer: A New Occupation and the Enchantment of Nursing Education 7 Carers as Househelp: Aging and Social Inequalities in Urban Households Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisAfrica is known both for having a primarily youthful population and for its elders being held in high esteem. However, this situation is changing: people in Africa are living longer, some for many years with chronic, disabling illnesses. In Ghana, many older people, rather than experiencing a sense of security that they will be respected and cared for by the younger generations, feel anxious that they will be abandoned and neglected by their kin. In response to their concerns about care, they and their kin are exploring new kinds of support for aging adults, from paid caregivers to social groups and senior day centers. These innovations in care are happening in fits and starts, in episodic and scattered ways, visible in certain circles more than others. By examining emergent discourses and practices of aging in Ghana, Changes in Care makes an innovative argument about the uneven and fragile processes by which some social change occurs. There is a short film that accompanies the book, “Making Happiness: Older People Organize Themselves” (2020), an 11-minute film by Cati Coe. Available at: https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-thke-hp15Trade Review“Combining an innovative set of conceptual tools with meticulous presentation of ethnographic and historical research in both rural and urban contexts, this study makes a compelling contribution to understanding the dynamics of changing elder-care practices in Ghana. Topics covered include the intertwining of kin and non-kin roles in the work of care-giving and the uneasy relations between care-givers and domestic servants in households.” -- Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart * co-authors of Language and Culture in Dialogue *"Cati Coe understands the language of change, care and aging in Africa as well as the diversity of change in the context of the broader globalized world. She critically but sensitively explores these complexities without falling into tired binaries. Change in Africa and its implications for care are approached as complex, quiet and sporadic processes and not simplistically linear as still often proposed by exponents of modernization theory." -- Jaco Hoffman * co-editor of Intergenerational Contact Zones: Place-Based Strategies for Promoting Social Inclusion and Belonging *“Combining an innovative set of conceptual tools with meticulous presentation of ethnographic and historical research in both rural and urban contexts, this study makes a compelling contribution to understanding the dynamics of changing elder-care practices in Ghana. Topics covered include the intertwining of kin and non-kin roles in the work of care-giving and the uneasy relations between care-givers and domestic servants in households.” -- Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart * co-authors of Language and Culture in Dialogue *"Cati Coe understands the language of change, care and aging in Africa as well as the diversity of change in the context of the broader globalized world. She critically but sensitively explores these complexities without falling into tired binaries. Change in Africa and its implications for care are approached as complex, quiet and sporadic processes and not simplistically linear as still often proposed by exponents of modernization theory." -- Jaco Hoffman * co-editor of Intergenerational Contact Zones: Place-Based Strategies for Promoting Social Inclusion *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 The Orthodoxy of Family Care Part I Changes in Aging in the Rural Towns of the Eastern Region 2 Heterodox Ideas of Elder Care: From Nursing Homes to Savings 3 Alterodox Practices of Elder Care: Domestic Service and Neighborliness 4 “Loneliness Kills”: Stimulating Sociality among Older Churchgoers Part II Changes in Aging in Urban Ghana 5 Market-Based Solutions for the Globally Connected Middle Class 6 Going to School to Be a Carer: A New Occupation and the Enchantment of Nursing Education 7 Carers as Househelp: Aging and Social Inequalities in Urban Households Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisChildren of the Rainforest explores the lives of children growing up in a time of radical change in Amazonia. The book draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Matses, a group of hunter-gatherer forest dwellers who have lived in voluntary isolation until fairly recently. Having worked with them for over a decade, returning every year to their villages in the rainforest, Camilla Morelli follows closely the life-trajectories of Matses children, watching them shift away from the forest-based lifestyles of their elders and move towards new horizons crisscrossed by concrete paving, lit by the glow of electric lights and television screens, and centered around urban practices and people. The book uses drawings and photographs taken by the children themselves to trace the children’s journeys—lived and imagined—from their own perspectives, proposing an ethnographic analysis that recognizes children’s imaginations, play, and shifting desires as powerful catalysts of social change.Trade Review"This brief summary of Children of the Forest barely conveys the significance of this grand accomplishment. Seldom has childhood been studied so thoroughly nor yielded so many original findings. This is a must read for anthropologists who study childhood and scholars across the spectrum interested in the process of social change." -- David Lancy * Anthropology Book Forum *"While it is often argued that children are the leading change agents in Indigenous communities, Camilla Morelli provides one of the first and the most thorough documentation of this phenomenon." -- David F. Lancy * author of The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings *"This is a highly innovative book that offers a remarkable perspective on the immense social change facing the Matses since the 1960s through the eyes and lives of children. It is as eminently readable as it is theoretically challenging and offers a truly exceptional ethnography that will appeal to a wide audience. This is one of the most insightful and inspiring books on Indigenous people that I have read in recent years." -- Andrew Canessa * author of Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex, and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life *"Children of the Rainforest is a much awaited and fine-grained analysis of Amazonian childhood! Morelli's ethnographic account is timely, highly informative, and moving." -- Olga Ulturgasheva * coeditor of Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary *Table of ContentsForeword by Roldán Dunú Tumi Dësi Introduction 1 The Child in the Forest: A Glimpse into the Childhood of the Past 2 River Horizons: Moving toward the Big Water 3 The Sound of Inequality: Children as Agents of Economic Change 4 Consuelo’s Dolls: Shifting Desires and the Subversion of Womanhood 5 Jean-Claude Van Damme in the Rainforest: The Spoken Weapons of Masculinity 6 Yearning for Concrete: Children’s Imagination as a Catalyst for Change 7 Urban Futures: When Dreams of Concrete Come True Conclusion Afterword by Roldán Dunú Tumi Dësi Acknowledgments Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisBrazil changed drastically in the 21st century’s second decade. In 2010, the country’s outgoing president Lula left office with almost 90% approval. As the presidency passed to his Workers' Party successor, Dilma Rousseff, many across the world hailed Brazil as a model of progressive governance in the Global South. Yet, by 2019, those progressive gains were being dismantled as the far right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro assumed the presidency of a bitterly divided country. Digging beneath this pendulum swing of policy and politics, and drawing on rich ethnographic portraits, Precarious Democracy shows how these transformations were made and experienced by Brazilians far from the halls of power. Bringing together powerful and intimate stories and portraits from Brazil's megacities to rural Amazonia, this volume demonstrates the necessity of ethnography for understanding social and political change, and provides crucial insights on one of the most epochal periods of change in Brazilian history. Trade Review"Precarious Democracy presents a kaleidoscopic view of contemporary Brazil through a rich collection of ethnographies and a range of thoughtful analyses and insights about ordinary people throughout the country as they respond in multiple ways to the rise and political consolidation of the far-right in recent years. It is essential reading for understanding what is going on in Brazil today." -- James N. Green * author of Exile within Exiles: Herbert Daniel, Gay Brazilian Revolutionary *"This collection offers rich, theoretically evocative ethnographies on a range of sites seldom brought together in a single volume, from family frictions that expose the polarization of the past decade to guns and the performance of masculinity to Black queer resilience amid Brazil’s rightward shift. The assembled cases foreground feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial epistemologies and shed unique light on Brazil’s 'unraveling,' bringing into view the precarity often underlying formal democratic arrangements, even, or perhaps especially, those governed by the Left." -- Sonia E. Alvarez * co-editor of Beyond Civil Society: Activism, Participation, and Protest in Latin America *"Precarious Democracy presents a kaleidoscopic view of contemporary Brazil through a rich collection of ethnographies and a range of thoughtful analyses and insights about ordinary people throughout the country as they respond in multiple ways to the rise and political consolidation of the far-right in recent years. It is essential reading for understanding what is going on in Brazil today." -- James N. Green * author of Exile within Exiles: Herbert Daniel, Gay Brazilian Revolutionary *"This collection offers rich, theoretically evocative ethnographies on a range of sites seldom brought together in a single volume, from family frictions that expose the polarization of the past decade to guns and the performance of masculinity to Black queer resilience amid Brazil’s rightward shift. The assembled cases foreground feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial epistemologies and shed unique light on Brazil’s 'unraveling,' bringing into view the precarity often underlying formal democratic arrangements, even, or perhaps especially, those governed by the Left." -- Sonia E. Alvarez * co-editor of Beyond Civil Society: Activism, Participation, and Protest in Latin America *Table of ContentsList of Acronyms Editors’ Introduction: Ethnographies of the Brazilian Unravelling by Benjamin Junge, Alvaro Jarrin, Lucia Cantero, and Sean T. Mitchell A Plan for a Country Still Looking for Democracy: A Critical Overview by Lilia Moritz Schwarcz Part I: The Intimacy of Power Chapter 1: “Family is Everything”: Generational Tensions as a Working-Class Household from Recife, Brazil Contemplates the 2018 Presidential Elections by Benjamin Junge Chapter 2: Among Mothers and Daughters: Economic Mobility and Political Identity in a Northeastern Periferia by Jessica Jerome Chapter 3: Dreaming with Guns: Performing Masculinity and Imagining Consumption in Bolsonaro’s Brazil by Isabela Kalil, Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, and Lucia Mury Scalco Chapter 4: Whiteness Has Come Out of the Closet and Intensified Brazil’s Reactionary Wave by Patricia de Santana Pinho Part II: Corruption and Crime Chapter 5: Cruel Pessimism: The Affect of Anti-Corruption and the End of the New Brazilian Middle Class by Sean T. Mitchell Chapter 6: The Effects of Some Religious Affects: Revolutions in Crime by Karina Biondi Chapter 7: “Look at that”: Cures, Poisons, and Shifting Rationalities in the Backlands that have become a Sea (of Money) by John Collins Chapter 8: The Oil is Ours: Petrobras, Corruption and Extractive Global Lawfare by Lucia Cantero Part III: Infrastructures of Hope Chapter 9: Despairing Hopes (and Hopeful Despair) in Amazonia by David Rojas, Andrezza Alves Spexoto Olival, and Alexandre de Azevedo Olival Chapter 10: Tempered Hopes: (Re)producing the Middle Class in Recife’s Alternative Music Scene by Falina Enriquez Chapter 11: Withering Dreams: Material Hope and Apathy among Brazil’s Once Rising Poor by Moisés Kopper Chapter 12: Bolsonaro Wins Japan: Support for the Far Right among Japanese-Brazilian Overseas Labor Migrants by Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer Part IV: Old Challenges, New Activism Chapter 13: Holding the Wave: Black LGBTI+ Feminist Resilience Amidst the Reactionary Turn in Rio de Janeiro by LaShandra Sullivan Chapter 14: LGBTTI Elders in Brazil: Subjectivation and Narratives about Resilience, Resistance and Vulnerability by Carlos Eduardo Henning Chapter 15: Disgust and Defiance: The Visceral Politics of Trans and Travesti Activism Amidst a Heteronormative Backlash by Alvaro Jarrín Chapter 16: “Barbie e Ken, Cidadãos de Bem”: Memes and Political Participation among College Students in Brazil by Melanie A. Medeiros, Patrick McCormick, Erika Schmitt, and James Kale Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisIslamic Divorce in the 21st Century shows the wide range of Muslim experiences in marital disputes and in seeking Islamic divorces. For Muslims, having the ability to divorce in accordance with Islamic law is of paramount importance. However, Muslim experiences of divorce practice differ tremendously. The chapters in this volume discuss Islamic divorce from West Africa to Southeast Asia, and each story explores aspects of the everyday realities of disputing and divorcing Muslim couples face in the twenty-first century. The book’s cross-cultural and comparative look at Islamic divorce indicates that Muslim divorces are impacted by global religious discourses on Islamic authority, authenticity, and gender; by global patterns of and approaches to secularity; and by global economic inequalities and attendant patterns of urbanization and migration. Studying divorce as a mode of Islamic law in practice shows us that the Islamic legal tradition is flexible, malleable, and context-dependent.Trade Review"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a wonderful book in which we travel geographically and intellectually. Its importance draws on the variety of national experiences it documents in a truly comparative perspective, as well as on the scholarship of both coeditors and contributors. It is a compulsory read for everybody interested in understanding how Islam is a global phenomenon with a huge array of local declensions." -- Baudouin Dupret * author of Positive Law from the Muslim World: Jurisprudence, History, Practices *"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century provides rich empirical data and sophisticated theoretical perspectives on the gendered complexities of kinship and marriage, divorce, inequality, and Islamic law and normativity in nine nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This engagingly written and compelling volume will be welcomed by scholars in various fields and has great potential for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses." -- Michael G. Peletz * author of Sharia Transformations: Cultural Politics and the Rebranding of an Islamic Judiciary *"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a tour de force, offering both breadth and depth on Muslim divorce practices. In addition to presenting scholarship from rarely documented countries, this volume provides a perspective on global connections and the transformations that ensue. It is a must-read for scholars of Muslim family law." -- Arzoo Osanloo * author of The Politics of Women's Rights in Iran *"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a wonderful book in which we travel geographically and intellectually. Its importance draws on the variety of national experiences it documents in a truly comparative perspective, as well as on the scholarship of both coeditors and contributors. It is a compulsory read for everybody interested in understanding how Islam is a global phenomenon with a huge array of local declensions." -- Baudouin Dupret * author of Positive Law from the Muslim World: Jurisprudence, History, Practices *"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century provides rich empirical data and sophisticated theoretical perspectives on the gendered complexities of kinship and marriage, divorce, inequality, and Islamic law and normativity in nine nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This engagingly written and compelling volume will be welcomed by scholars in various fields and has great potential for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses." -- Michael G. Peletz * author of Sharia Transformations: Cultural Politics and the Rebranding of an Islamic Judiciary *"Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century is a tour de force, offering both breadth and depth on Muslim divorce practices. In addition to presenting scholarship from rarely documented countries, this volume provides a perspective on global connections and the transformations that ensue. It is a must-read for scholars of Muslim family law." -- Arzoo Osanloo * author of The Politics of Women's Rights in Iran *Table of ContentsNote on TransliterationList of AbbreviationsSeries Foreword by Péter BertaPreface (Acknowledgment)Chapter 1: Muslim Marital Disputes and Islamic Divorce Law in Twenty-First Century Practice by Erin E. Stiles and Ayang Utriza Yakin Part I : State Politics and Divorce Law: Reform and RecommendationsChapter 2: Divorce by Khul‘ in Pakistani Courts: Expanding Women’s Rights through Reconfiguring Religious Authority by Elisa Giunchi Chapter 3: Male-Initiated Divorce before the Egyptian Judiciary by Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron Chapter 4: Problems of and Possibilities for Islamic Divorce in South Africa by Fatima Essop Part II: Gendered Strategies and Judicial Responses in Marital DisputingChapter 5: Women in the Search of Sexual Pleasure: The Judicial Practices of Divorce on the Ground of Sexual Dissatisfaction within Indonesian Religious Courts by Ayang Utriza YakinChapter 6: “I Divorced Him but He Said He Has Not Divorced Me”: Gendered Perspectives on Muslim Divorce In Accra, Ghana by Fulera Issaka-Toure Chapter 7: Undoing Marriage in Lebanon. Divorce within and beyond Family Courts by Jean-Michel LandryPart III: Islamic Divorce in the Context of Global Patterns of Mobility, Upheaval, and Changing Household EconomiesChapter 8: Islamic Renewal, Muslim Divorce and Gender Relations in Mali by Dorothea Schulz and Souleymane DialloChapter 9: A ‘Much-Married Woman’ Revisited: Kinship Perspectives on the High Frequency of Divorce among Uyghurs in Southern Xinjiang, China by Rune SteenbergChapter 10: The Ends of Divorce: Marital Dispute as a Locus of Social Change in India by Katherine Lemons with Nadia HusseinAfterword: Islamic Divorce in Context and in Action: Notes from the Field and Concluding Thoughts by Erin E. Stiles with Ayang Utriza Yakin Notes on ContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisSet in the remote, mountainous Guangxi Autonomous Region and based on ethnographic fieldwork, Families We Need traces the movement of three Chinese foster children, Dengrong, Pei Pei, and Meili, from the state orphanage into the humble, foster homes of Auntie Li, Auntie Ma, and Auntie Huang. Traversing the geography of Guangxi, from the modern capital Nanning where Pei Pei and Meili reside, to the small farming village several hours away where Dengrong is placed, this ethnography details the hardships of social abandonment for disabled children and disenfranchised, older women in China, while also analyzing the state’s efforts to cope with such marginal populations and incorporate them into China’s modern future. The book argues that Chinese foster families perform necessary, invisible service to the Chinese state and intercountry adoption, yet the bonds they form also resist such forces, exposing the inequalities, privilege, and ableism at the heart of global family making.Trade Review"Families We Need is a brilliant and warmly empathic book. Written with grace and lucidity, it elevates readers’ understanding of the need for family, and of how neediness can be a source of strength, and even abundance."— Kathie Carpenter, Author of Life in a Cambodian Orphanage "Raffety’s work provides a rare and precious view on foster care and other kinship practices in mountainous Southwest China, showing us their deep entanglements with forces of urbanization and globalization. It reveals how life-transforming care could emerge where the most vulnerable individuals encounter each other, quietly resisting the deeply-seated biases of ableism, classism, and even imperialism. The book exemplifies the most empathic and humanizing type of ethnography."— Zhiying Ma, Assistant Professor at The University of Chicago "Raffety’s work provides a rare and precious view on foster care and other kinship practices in mountainous Southwest China, showing us their deep entanglements with forces of urbanization and globalization. It reveals how life-transforming care could emerge where the most vulnerable individuals encounter each other, quietly resisting the deeply-seated biases of ableism, classism, and even imperialism. The book exemplifies the most empathic and humanizing type of ethnography."— Zhiying Ma, Assistant Professor at The University of Chicago "Families We Need is a brilliant and warmly empathic book. Written with grace and lucidity, it elevates readers’ understanding of the need for family, and of how neediness can be a source of strength, and even abundance."— Kathie Carpenter, Author of Life in a Cambodian OrphanageTable of ContentsPrologue Glossary of People, Places, and Concepts Introduction: Needy Kinship 1 Abandonment, Affinity, and Social Vulnerability 2 Fostering (Whose) Family? 3 Needy Alliances 4 Envying Kinship 5 Replaceable Families? 6 Disruptive Families Conclusion: Families We Need Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Cancer Within examines cervical cancer in Romania as a point of entry into an anthropological reflection on contemporary health care. Cervical cancer prevention reveals the inner workings of emerging post-communist medicine, which aligns the state and the market, public and private health care providers, policy makers, and ordinary women. Fashioned by patriarchal relations, lived religion, and the historical trauma of pronatalism, Romanian women’s responses to reproductive medicine and cervical cancer prevention are complicated by neoliberal reforms to medical care. Cervical cancer prevention – and especially the HPV vaccination – provided Romanians a legitimate instance to express their conflicting views of post-communist medicine. What sets Romania apart is that pronatalism, patriarchy, lived religion, medical reforms, and moral contestation of preventive medicine bring into line systemic contingencies that expose the historical, social, and cultural trajectories of cervical cancer. Trade Review"The Cancer Within is a compelling analysis of Romanian women’s resistance to cervical cancer screening and the HPV vaccine by a cultural 'insider.' In this wide-ranging and readable account, Pop reveals how Romanians’ reproductive lives and choices are profoundly shaped by the country’s violent history of reproductive governance under Ceausescu, as well as by inequities of health care delivery in the post-communist era." -- Elise Andaya * author of Conceiving Cuba: Reproduction, Women, and the State in the Post-Soviet Era *"Beautifully written and theoretically inspired, this vivid and pathbreaking ethnography shows how history continues to haunt Romanian women’s sexual and reproductive lives, and how post-socialist healthcare provides no panacea for a cervical cancer crisis and accompanying HPV vaccine hesitancy. The Cancer Within is a must-read for those interested in gender, sexuality, and reproductive health, as well as medicine in the post-socialist era." -- Marcia Inhorn * author of America’s Arab Refugees: Vulnerability and Health on the Margins *"The Cancer Within is a compelling analysis of Romanian women’s resistance to cervical cancer screening and the HPV vaccine by a cultural 'insider.' In this wide-ranging and readable account, Pop reveals how Romanians’ reproductive lives and choices are profoundly shaped by the country’s violent history of reproductive governance under Ceauşescu, as well as by inequities of health care delivery in the post-communist era." -- Elise Andaya * author of Conceiving Cuba: Reproduction, Women, and the State in the Post-Soviet Era *Table of ContentsList of Figures List of Tables Series Foreword by Lenore Manderson Note on Terminology Introduction: Systemic Contingencies Part I: Women’s, Men’s and God’s Will 1. ”We All Descend from Communism” 2. Reproductive Invisibility Interlude: Cervical Cancer Prevention: A Romanian Odyssey. Part One. 3. Beyond Rationalities Part II: Medicine and Its Moralities 4. Dismantling Medicine Interlude: Cervical Cancer Prevention: A Romanian Odyssey. Part Two. 5. The Other Hospital 6. Locating Corruption Conclusion: The Space between Informed and Non-informed Refusal Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFor any country that has a large and diverse migrant population, it is a struggle to connect these people to the country’s institutions, including the healthcare system, which can be overwhelming in its complexity. Cultural and language barriers often make it difficult for doctors to fully understand the symptoms of their migrant patients, reach accurate diagnoses, or properly treat their suffering. Thus, medical practitioners must attempt new, innovative practices in order to reach patients where they are and convince them to accept treatment from doctors they don’t totally understand. In France, Serge Bouznah and Catherine Lewertowski have pioneered one such practice—that of transcultural mediation. Drawn from two decades of their experience with transcultural mediation, Spirits in the Consulting Room tells the stories of eight patients—mainly migrants—and their families. Each chapter focuses on a different patient, and Christelle, Djibril, Moncef, Alhassane, Jacinthe, Amy, Cyril, Alice, and Pierre leap off the page as distinct people with unique situations. Together, these chapters reveal how patients’ comprehension of their symptoms is shaped by their cultural background, while recounting the challenges of translating that into terms the doctors can grasp. The book shows how trained transcultural mediators can help to redress the power imbalance between doctors and the migrants they treat, providing patients with advocates who respect the authority of their background and experiences and don’t just take the side of the medical professionals. The groundbreaking insights modeled in this book can be applied to any medical situation where doctors and patients find themselves speaking different languages. Trade Review"The Spirits in the Consulting Room is a must-read for all who wish to immerse themselves in eight heart-wrenching cases that rely on transcultural or intercultural mediation in healthcare. A great tool to equip healthcare providers or anyone working with diverse patients, this book vividly showcases how to consider a more intercultural approach and empower patients with the agency they need to help transform their conditions from a human perspective.""The Spirits in the Consulting Room is a must-read for all who wish to immerse themselves in eight heart-wrenching cases that rely on transcultural or intercultural mediation in healthcare. A great tool to equip healthcare providers or anyone working with diverse patients, this book vividly showcases how to consider a more intercultural approach and empower patients with the agency they need to help transform their conditions from a human perspective." -- Izabel E. T. de V. Souza * author of Intercultural Mediation in Healthcare: From the Professional Medical Interpreters' Perspec *"This wonderful book is a compelling invitation to listen closely, not only to the complexity of human narratives of suffering, but also to the way they weave across cultural and social divides. The plurality and beauty of the stories evoked here contribute to this weaving, building bridges between universal culture and the individual human experience. An inspiring book, worth fully inhabiting and meditating upon, which also provides critical tools we can use to improve our healing practices." -- Cécile Rousseau * coeditor of Working with Refugee Families: Trauma and Exile in Family Relationships *Table of ContentsSeries Foreword by Javier I. Escobar Foreword by Jaswant Guzder Prologue: “When I was two years old, I killed my grandmother” Introduction 1. The Title Deed of Grandfather Léon 2. An Angry Man 3. “If You’re a Human Being, Change Your Skin Immediately!” 4. Who Will Carry the Parasol for Me? 5. When the Black Cat Bit 6. The Curse 7. Leave Me Out of All This! 8. A Defaced Skin Conclusion Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisFor any country that has a large and diverse migrant population, it is a struggle to connect these people to the country’s institutions, including the healthcare system, which can be overwhelming in its complexity. Cultural and language barriers often make it difficult for doctors to fully understand the symptoms of their migrant patients, reach accurate diagnoses, or properly treat their suffering. Thus, medical practitioners must attempt new, innovative practices in order to reach patients where they are and convince them to accept treatment from doctors they don’t totally understand. In France, Serge Bouznah and Catherine Lewertowski have pioneered one such practice—that of transcultural mediation. Drawn from two decades of their experience with transcultural mediation, Spirits in the Consulting Room tells the stories of eight patients—mainly migrants—and their families. Each chapter focuses on a different patient, and Christelle, Djibril, Moncef, Alhassane, Jacinthe, Amy, Cyril, Alice, and Pierre leap off the page as distinct people with unique situations. Together, these chapters reveal how patients’ comprehension of their symptoms is shaped by their cultural background, while recounting the challenges of translating that into terms the doctors can grasp. The book shows how trained transcultural mediators can help to redress the power imbalance between doctors and the migrants they treat, providing patients with advocates who respect the authority of their background and experiences and don’t just take the side of the medical professionals. The groundbreaking insights modeled in this book can be applied to any medical situation where doctors and patients find themselves speaking different languages. Trade Review"The Spirits in the Consulting Room is a must-read for all who wish to immerse themselves in eight heart-wrenching cases that rely on transcultural or intercultural mediation in healthcare. A great tool to equip healthcare providers or anyone working with diverse patients, this book vividly showcases how to consider a more intercultural approach and empower patients with the agency they need to help transform their conditions from a human perspective.""The Spirits in the Consulting Room is a must-read for all who wish to immerse themselves in eight heart-wrenching cases that rely on transcultural or intercultural mediation in healthcare. A great tool to equip healthcare providers or anyone working with diverse patients, this book vividly showcases how to consider a more intercultural approach and empower patients with the agency they need to help transform their conditions from a human perspective." -- Izabel E. T. de V. Souza * author of Intercultural Mediation in Healthcare: From the Professional Medical Interpreters' Perspec *"This wonderful book is a compelling invitation to listen closely, not only to the complexity of human narratives of suffering, but also to the way they weave across cultural and social divides. The plurality and beauty of the stories evoked here contribute to this weaving, building bridges between universal culture and the individual human experience. An inspiring book, worth fully inhabiting and meditating upon, which also provides critical tools we can use to improve our healing practices." -- Cécile Rousseau * coeditor of Working with Refugee Families: Trauma and Exile in Family Relationships *Table of ContentsSeries Foreword by Javier I. Escobar Foreword by Jaswant Guzder Prologue: “When I was two years old, I killed my grandmother” Introduction 1. The Title Deed of Grandfather Léon 2. An Angry Man 3. “If You’re a Human Being, Change Your Skin Immediately!” 4. Who Will Carry the Parasol for Me? 5. When the Black Cat Bit 6. The Curse 7. Leave Me Out of All This! 8. A Defaced Skin Conclusion Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisIn our highly interconnected and globalized world, people often pursue their aspirations in multiple places. Yet in public and scholarly debates, aspirations are often seen as the realm of younger, mobile generations, since they are assumed to hold the greatest potential for shaping the future. This volume flips this perspective on its head by exploring how aspirations are constructed from the vantage point of later life, and shows how they are pursued across time, space, and generations. The aspirations of older people are diverse, and relate not only to aging itself but also to planning the next generation’s future, preparing an "ideal" retirement, searching for intimacy and self-realization, and confronting death and afterlives. Aspiring in Later Life brings together rich ethnographic cases from different regions of the world, offering original insights into how aspirations shift over the course of life and how they are pursued in contexts of translocal mobility.This book is also freely available online as an open-access digital edition.​Download the open access book here.Trade Review"A welcome addition to the study of migration and aging, this volume explores ambition, intimacy, and other aspirations as elders envision a good life and craft new vistas in later years. Ethnographically vivid fieldwork draws the reader into the uncertainties and elations of intergenerational households of transmigrants, returnees, and refugees." -- Michele Ruth Gamburd * author of Linked Lives: Elder Care, Migration, and Kinship in Sri Lanka *“This important volume advances the idea that people do have aspirations all through the life course and that we need to know more about their thoughts, choices, and how they dynamically engage with cultural scripts about aging." -- Sherylyn Briller * professor of anthropology at Purdue University *Table of Contents Introduction 1Megha Amrith, Victoria K. Sakti, and Dora Sampaio PA R T IDesire and Self-Realization 1 Growing Old Hand in Hand: Aspirations of Romantic Love in Later Life among Romanian Transmigrants in RomeDumitrița Luncă 2 Letting Go and Looking Ahead: The Aspirations of Middle-Aged Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore and Hong KongMegha Amrith 3 Aspirational Movements: Later-Life Mobility as a Female Resource to Age WellLisa Johnson PA R T I IIntergenerational Negotiations 4 Aspiring to Retire: Intergenerational Care in a Ghanaian Transnational FamilyCati Coe 5 Between Aging Parents There and Young Children Here: The Aspirations of Late-Middle-Aged Peruvian Migrants in Santiago as a Transnational Sandwich GenerationAlfonso Otaegui 6 Whose Aspirations? Intergenerational Expectations and Hopes in Eastern UgandaSusan Reynolds Whyte PA RT I I ILiving in the Present 7 Before It Ends: Aging, Gender, and Migration in a Transnational Mexican CommunityJulia Pauli 8 Disrupted Futures: The Shifting Aspirations of Older Cameroonians Living in DisplacementNele Wolter 9 “Setting Off from the Mountain Pass”: Facing Death and Preparing for the Journey Ahead in Tibetan ExileHarmandeep Kaur Gill AfterwordErdmute Alber Acknowledgments Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisIn our highly interconnected and globalized world, people often pursue their aspirations in multiple places. Yet in public and scholarly debates, aspirations are often seen as the realm of younger, mobile generations, since they are assumed to hold the greatest potential for shaping the future. This volume flips this perspective on its head by exploring how aspirations are constructed from the vantage point of later life, and shows how they are pursued across time, space, and generations. The aspirations of older people are diverse, and relate not only to aging itself but also to planning the next generation’s future, preparing an "ideal" retirement, searching for intimacy and self-realization, and confronting death and afterlives. Aspiring in Later Life brings together rich ethnographic cases from different regions of the world, offering original insights into how aspirations shift over the course of life and how they are pursued in contexts of translocal mobility. This book is also freely available online as an open-access digital edition. Download the open access book here.Trade Review"A welcome addition to the study of migration and aging, this volume explores ambition, intimacy, and other aspirations as elders envision a good life and craft new vistas in later years. Ethnographically vivid fieldwork draws the reader into the uncertainties and elations of intergenerational households of transmigrants, returnees, and refugees." — Michele Ruth Gamburd, author of Linked Lives: Elder Care, Migration, and Kinship in Sri Lanka “This important volume advances the idea that people do have aspirations all through the life course and that we need to know more about their thoughts, choices, and how they dynamically engage with cultural scripts about aging." — Sherylyn Briller, professor of anthropology at Purdue UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction 1 Megha Amrith, Victoria K. Sakti, and Dora Sampaio PA R T I Desire and Self-Realization 1 Growing Old Hand in Hand: Aspirations of Romantic Love in Later Life among Romanian Transmigrants in Rome Dumitrița Luncă 2 Letting Go and Looking Ahead: The Aspirations of Middle-Aged Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore and Hong Kong Megha Amrith 3 Aspirational Movements: Later-Life Mobility as a Female Resource to Age Well Lisa Johnson PA R T I I Intergenerational Negotiations 4 Aspiring to Retire: Intergenerational Care in a Ghanaian Transnational Family Cati Coe 5 Between Aging Parents There and Young Children Here: The Aspirations of Late-Middle-Aged Peruvian Migrants in Santiago as a Transnational Sandwich Generation Alfonso Otaegui 6 Whose Aspirations? Intergenerational Expectations and Hopes in Eastern Uganda Susan Reynolds Whyte PA RT I I I Living in the Present 7 Before It Ends: Aging, Gender, and Migration in a Transnational Mexican Community Julia Pauli 8 Disrupted Futures: The Shifting Aspirations of Older Cameroonians Living in Displacement Nele Wolter 9 “Setting Off from the Mountain Pass”: Facing Death and Preparing for the Journey Ahead in Tibetan Exile Harmandeep Kaur Gill Afterword Erdmute Alber Acknowledgments Contributors Index

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Book Synopsis Why hasn’t polygamous marriage died out in African cities, as experts once expected it would? Enduring Polygamy considers this question in one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities: Bamako, the capital of Mali, where one in four wives is in a polygamous marriage. Using polygamy as a lens through which to survey sweeping changes in urban life, it offers ethnographic and demographic insights into the customs, gender norms and hierarchies, kinship structures, and laws affecting marriage, and situates polygamy within structures of inequality that shape marital options, especially for young Malian women. Through an approach of cultural relativism, the book offers an open-minded but unflinching perspective on a contested form of marriage. Without shying away from questions of patriarchy and women’s oppression, it presents polygamy from the everyday vantage points of Bamako residents themselves, allowing readers to make informed judgments about it and to appreciate the full spectrum of human cultural diversity. Trade Review"In some wide regions, people deem polygamy a normal, natural option. In others, it’s spurned as an archaic, immoral form of oppression. But if monogamy may be human history’s exception, eyes and minds need opening to polygamy’s enduring pros, cons, and complexities. This collaboratively researched, empathic volume does it superbly." -- Parker Shipton * author of Mortgaging the Ancestors: Ideologies of Attachment in Africa *Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsSeries Foreword by Péter Berta Introduction: It’s Complicated: Polygamy and the Marriage System in Bamako, Mali INTERLUDE ONE The Midnight Callers 1 “Marriage Is an Obligation”: The Marital Life Course 2 Polygamous Marriage Formation INTERLUDE TWO Virtual Monogamy in Practice 3 Polygamous Household Dynamics 4 What’s Culture Got to Do with It? Religion, Gender, and Power 5 Marriage Markets and Marriage Squeezes: The Demographic Underpinnings of Polygamous Marriage INTERLUDE THREE Family Law, Identity, and Political Islam 6 Marriage Law, Polygamy, and the Malian State Conclusion: The Polygamy of the Future Acknowledgments Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisFor two decades, Sébastien Tutenges has conducted research in bars, nightclubs, festivals, drug dens, nightlife resorts, and underground dance parties in a quest to answer a fundamental question: Why do people across cultures gather regularly to intoxicate themselves? Vivid and at times deeply personal, this book offers new insights into a wide variety of intoxicating experiences, from the intimate feeling of connection among concertgoers to the adrenaline-fueled rush of a fight, to the thrill of jumping off a balcony into a swimming pool. Tutenges shows what it means and feels to move beyond the ordinary into altered states in which the transgressive, spectacular, and unexpected take place. He argues that the primary aim of group intoxication is the religious experience that Émile Durkheim calls collective effervescence, the essence of which is a sense of connecting with other people and being part of a larger whole. This experience is empowering and emboldening and may lead to crime and deviance, but it is at the same time vital to our humanity because it strengthens social bonds and solidarity. The book fills important gaps in Durkheim’s social theory and contributes to current debates in micro-sociology as well as cultural criminology and cultural sociology. Here, for the first time, readers will discover a detailed account of collective effervescence in contemporary society that includes: an explanation of what collective effervescence is; a description of the conditions that generate collective effervescence; a typology of the varieties of collective effervescence; a discussion of how collective effervescence manifests in the realm of nightlife, politics, sports, and religion; and an analysis of how commercial forces amplify and capitalize on the universal human need for intoxication. This book is also freely available online as an open access digital edition. Download the open access ebook here.Trade Review"Intoxication is a remarkable and ambitious book. Rarely is ethnography connected to classical social theory with such productive results. Tutenges offers a significant extension of the concept of collective effervescence. We learn that Durkheim, Mauss, and Bataille are essential resources for understanding the self, the sacred, and the collectivity in modernity."— Philip Smith, Professor of Sociology, Yale University "Tutenges’s study of collective effervescence is commanding, thoughtful, and thought-provoking. Intoxication is a stunning example of ethnographically informed social theory."— Lois Presser, author of Why We Harm "From sports to religion to party venues, effervescence is as much a blind spot of research as it is a phenomenon fundamental to society’s very make-up. Intoxication introduces us to the party practices of today’s youth in vivid fashion and with a remarkable interpretative sensitivity. Far from being the wastelands of meaning they appear to be, these drunken landscapes are existential theaters for the abandonment of the self to social forces and the experience of other ways of being and feeling. A long-awaited book which could well become a campus classic."— François Gauthier, author of Religion, Modernity, Globalisation. Nation-State to Market "Tutenges’s study of collective effervescence is commanding, thoughtful, and thought-provoking. Intoxication is a stunning example of ethnographically informed social theory."— Lois Presser, author of Why We Harm "From sports to religion to party venues, effervescence is as much a blind spot of research as it is a phenomenon fundamental to society’s very make-up. Intoxication introduces us to the party practices of today’s youth in vivid fashion and with a remarkable interpretative sensitivity. Far from being the wastelands of meaning they appear to be, these drunken landscapes are existential theaters for the abandonment of the self to social forces and the experience of other ways of being and feeling. A long-awaited book which could well become a campus classic."— François Gauthier, author of Religion, Modernity, Globalisation. Nation-State to Market "Intoxication is a remarkable and ambitious book. Rarely is ethnography connected to classical social theory with such productive results. Tutenges offers a significant extension of the concept of collective effervescence. We learn that Durkheim, Mauss, and Bataille are essential resources for understanding the self, the sacred, and the collectivity in modernity."— Philip Smith, Professor of Sociology, Yale UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgements 1 Introduction 2 Ways to Effervescence 3 Unity 4 Intensity 5 Transgression 6 Symbolization 7 Revitalization 8 Afterword Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisIn both local and international imaginations, Vancouver, Canada, is often celebrated as one of the world’s most beautiful, cosmopolitan, and livable cities. Simultaneously, the city continues to be ground zero for successive waves of public health emergency and intervention, including a recent and unprecedented drug overdose crisis driven by the proliferation of illicitly manufactured fentanyl and related analogs in the local drug supply. In The Best Place: Addiction, Intervention, and Living and Dying Young in Vancouver, Danya Fast explores these politics of place from the perspectives of young people who use drugs. Those who are the subject of this book were in many ways relegated to the social, spatial, and economic margins of the city. Yet, they were also often at the very center of city life and state projects, including the project of protecting life in the context of the current overdose crisis.Trade Review"Wow! A gripping ethnography of the everyday ecstatic emergency and boredom of methamphetamine, fentanyl and failed relationships that cuts short the lives of Canadian youth—often indigenous—desperately seeking community, meaning and survival. Documents the dysfunctional meshes of care/jail/gentrification/predatory narcotics markets and human betrayals that betrays their persistent universally recognizable dreams/hopes against all odds for a better futures that never arrives." -- Philippe Bourgois * author of In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio and coauthor of Righteous Dopefiend *"The Best Place offers an analysis of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, British Columbia, a locale where young people's illicit drug use has received international attention. Fast has worked in this area for many, many years, developing long-term relationships with young drug users and health professionals. This is a collaboration that offers a model of multi-level analyses and showcases the hope of Fast's interlocutors for the future. Fast draws on their visions of possible futures, and on their critiques of current approaches, articulated with those of healthcare professionals. This is a book many have been waiting for." -- Dara Culhane * cofounder and cocurator for the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography *Table of Contents Foreword by Lenore Manderson Acknowledgments Dramatis Personae Places Introduction PART I: DREAMS OF PLACE Lee, the Best Place on Earth, 2009 Jeff, Paradise, 2009 Big-City Dreams Lula and Jeff, Paradise, 2012 Senses of Place Lee, World City, 2009 Where I’m Going, Lee, 2011 Jordan, Normal Places, 2012 Danya and Nancy, the Field, 2010 Lee, Not These Service Places, 2009 Jordan, Normal People, 2008 Frictions Danya, around Downtown, 2008 Janet and the Lost Boys, Never Never Land, 2008 Trajectories Carly and Connor, Family, 2009 Geographies Patty and Joe, Home, 2012 Part II: SOMETHING Patty, Coast Salish Territories, 2009 Vital Experimentation Shae, Lula, and Jeff, Lighthouse Shelter, 2009 Momentum Laurie and Aaron, Trafalgar Hotel, 2010 Moral Worlds Terry, Jail, 2011 Carly and Connor, Apartment, 2013 Stagnation Janet, Trafalgar Hotel, 2010 Patty and Joe, Mackenzie Hotel, 2010 Endless Business Terry, Field Office, 2012 Lee, Mackenzie Hotel, 2012 Reentering Never Never Land Jordan, Beachwood Hotel, 2013 74 Shae, Mackenzie Hotel, 2009 Disappearances Lee, Gone, 2015 PART III: LOST Patty, City of Glass, 2011 Community Care Patty and Joe, Lakeshore Hotel, 2010 Losing Everything Patty and Joe, St. Mary’s, 2012 Boredom Aaron, Northwest Apartments, 2013 (No)Exit, Shae, 2013 Flashbacks and Futures Patty, Terminal City, 2013 The Dance of Death Patty and Joe, St. Mary’s, 2013 Where We’ve Ended Up, Patty and Joe, 2013 Waiting Terry, St. Mary’s, 2014 Flights Patty and Joe, Lakeshore Hotel, 2014 PART IV: NOWHERE Patty, Saltwater City, 2017 The Will to Intervene Shane, Passages, 2017 Living on the Edge of Change Jessica, Horizons, 2018 Filling the Hours Shane, Downtown, 2017 Stalls and Dead Ends Lula, Wenonah House, 2016 Everything We Need, Carly and Connor, 2013 A Churn of Intervention Raymond, Downtown, 2017 The Colonial Present Aaron, Field Office, 2017 Living with Death Lula and Jeff, Field Office, 2017 The Broken Promise Land Janet, Johnny, Rachel, and Gordo, Camp under the Tracks, 2017 Exits, Janet, 2015 PART V: EVERYWHERE Jordan, Rain City, 2016 Laura, Field Office, 2017 Shae/Trix, Apartment, 2017 Janet, Recovery House, 2018 Exits, Janet, 2018 Terry, Psychiatric Ward, 2018 The Way Home, Terry, 2011 Laurie, Downtown, 2018 Aaron, Beachwood Hotel, 2019 Lula and Jeff, Greystone Hotel, 2019 Dom, BC Children’s Hospital, 2020 Carly and Connor, Field Office, 2018 Joe, Field Office, 2018 Patty, Everywhere, 2018 Where We’ve Ended Up, Patty and Joe, 2013 Afterword Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisDrawing on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in northwest China, Casey James Miller offers a novel, compelling, and intimately personal perspective on Chinese queer culture and activism. In Inside the Circle: Queer Culture and Activism in Northwest China, Miller tells the stories of two courageous and dedicated groups of queer activists in the city of Xi’an: a grassroots gay men’s HIV/AIDS organization called Tong’ai and a lesbian women’s group named UNITE. Taking inspiration from “the circle,” a term used to imagine local, national, and global queer communities, Miller shows how everyday people in northwest China are taking part in queer culture and activism while also striving to lead traditionally moral lives in a rapidly changing society. The queer stories in this book broaden our understandings of gender and sexuality in contemporary China and show how taking global queer diversity seriously requires us to de-center Western cultural values, historical experiences, and theoretical perspectives.Trade Review"There are many meaningful contributions throughout Inside the Circle, from its central findings to its smaller observations. The discussion of romantic/passionate versus companionate/familial love; the inclusion of Buddhist faith perspectives that are still rare in studies of queer China; the compassionate and critical analysis of how an organization grew, deteriorated, and was rebirthed/reimagined– these and more will stick with me long after reading this work." -- Amy Brainer * author of Queer Kinship and Family Change in Taiwan *"Inside the Circle challenges understandings of queer personhood in China. Tracing the struggles of queer activists in northwest China to reconcile their sexual identities with their deeply held beliefs about what it means to be a moral person, Miller convinces the reader with his rich ethnography that in postsocialist China, queer activism from the margins challenges reductive ideas about homonormativity, expands the public sphere without directly opposing state power, and helps us to imagine new forms of transnational solidarity." -- Lisa Rofel * author of Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture *Table of ContentsList of Figures and Tables 1 Introduction: Queer Stories, Chinese Stories 2 The View from Inside the Circle: Queer Gender and Sexuality in Northwest China 3 “Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots”: Queer Love, Kinship, and Personhood 4 “Living in the Gray Zone”: Queer Activism and Civil Society 5 “Dying for Money”: Conflict and Competition among Queer Men’s NGOs 6 From Rainbow Flags to Mr. Gay World: Transnational Queer Culture and Activism Conclusion List of Names Glossary of Chinese Characters Acknowledgments Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisMany of us feel a pressing desire to be different—to be other than who we are. Self-conscious, we anxiously perceive our shortcomings or insufficiencies, wondering why we are how we are and whether we might be different. Often, we wish to alter ourselves, to change our relationships, and to transform the person we are in those relationships. Not only a philosophical question about how other people change, self-alteration is also a practical care—can I change, and how? Self-Alteration: How People Change Themselves across Cultures explores and analyzes these apparently universal hopes and their related existential dilemmas. The essays here come at the subject of the self and its becoming through case studies of modes of transformation of the self. They do this with social processes and projects that reveal how the self acquires a non-trivial new meaning in and through its very process of alteration. By focusing on ways we are allowed to change ourselves, including through religious and spiritual traditions and innovations, embodied participation in therapeutic programs like psychoanalysis and gendered care services, and political activism or relationships with animals, the authors in this volume create a model for cross-cultural or global analysis of social-self change that leads to fresh ways of addressing the 'self' itself. Trade Review"Anthropology has only recently focused on one of the basic human experiences: that people set out to change themselves, and they do so using the tools that their culture offers to them. This volume presents a rich array of observations around this theme to carry the conversation forward." -- Tanya Luhrmann * author of How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others *"This remarkable volume casts new light on our understanding of selfhood, by looking at the ways different people in different contexts alter themselves." -- Jon P. Mitchell * author of Ambivalent Europeans: Ritual, Memory and the Public Sphere in Malta *Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction: A Time for Change: Modes of Self-Alteration Jean-Paul Baldacchino and Christopher Houston Part I: Religious Cultures, Spiritual Practices, and Self-Alteration Chapter 2 Exemplary Masters, Exemplary Reeds: Pedagogies of Self-Alteration in Sufi Music Banu Şenay Chapter 3 Re-imagining Self and Self-Alteration in Contemporary New Age, Pagan and Neo-Shamanic Spiritualities Kathryn Rountree Chapter 4 Wounded by Grace: Becoming a Prophet in an Evangelical Revival in Solomon Islands Jaap Timmer Part II: Self-Alteration and Political Activism Chapter 5 Fabricating the New Man and Woman: Self-Alteration Through Revolutionary Socialism Christopher Houston Chapter 6 Transcendental Terror: Zen Self-Transformation through White Supremacist Atrocity, from Nazi Germany to Utøya and Christchurch Max Harwood Part III: Gendered Bodies and Therapeutic Interventions Chapter 7 Beautiful, Moral, Functional: Bodily Self-Alteration in an Italian Centre for Eating Disorders Gisella Orsini Chapter 8 Porous Individuality as Self-Alteration: Commercial Self-Improvement in Urban China Gil Hizi Chapter 9 How Is Psychoanalysis a Mode of Self-Alteration? Anthropological Interrogations Jean-Paul Baldacchino Part IV: Self-Alteration, The Human, and the More-Than-Human Chapter 10 Mutualistic Self-Alteration: Human-Pigeon Assemblages in Rural Pakistan Muhammad A. Kavesh Chapter 11 Self-Alteration as Human Capacity and as Cosmopolitan Right Nigel Rapport Part V: Afterword Chapter 12 Making Oneself Otherwise: Reflections on Natality Michael Jackson Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Index

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Book Synopsis

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