Social and cultural anthropology Books

Book SynopsisThe development industry has been criticized recently from very diverse quarters. This book is a nuanced and original investigation of Northern donor agency personnel as they deliver aid in Tanzania. The author explores in particular how donor identities are manifested in the practices of development aid, and how calls for equal partnership between North and South are often very different in practice. She demonstrates the conflicts and tensions in the development aid process. These reflect both the longstanding critique of the Eurocentric nature of development, and discourse that still assumes images of the superior, initiating, efficient 'donor' as opposed to the inadequate, passive, unreliable 'partner' or recipient. This book will be useful to students seeking an introduction to postcolonial studies and the ways in which it can throw light on contemporary social realities, and to scholars interested in the ethnographic realities of aid delivery.Trade Review'On the basis of an excellent analysis of the Nordic intervention in East Africa, Maria Eriksson Baaz takes us into the compexity of a difficult dialogue between aid to development and politics of identities. This is a remarkable study that will serve as a firm and well thought out introduction to postcolonial studies in general.'V. Y. Mudimbe'The post-colonial discourse has been somewhat lacking in empirixal substance. This is, therefore, a much welcomes and fascinating book on the construction of identity in the development industry.'Bjorn Hettne'Development theorists are beginning to acknowledge that aid workers reproduce and thrive on postcolonial representations of identity. The African "other" is sometimes seen through a romantic lens, more often a derogatory one: passive, corrupt and dangerous. Eriksson contributes to this emerging body of work by exposing and contextualising such racist assumptions.'Emma Crewe, University of Warwick'The Paternalism of Partnership is an important contribution to the development literature. The development industry is no stranger to criticism. Recent critiques have drawn on post-colonial approaches for their attack on the Euro-centric nature of much development policy and praxis, but few have explored detailed case studies. Eriksson moves the analysis to another level, examining the discourses, identities and politics of Nordic donor agents in Tanzania. Her grounded, in-depth analysis demonstrates the exciting potential of post-colonial approaches, both for illuminating the complexities of grassroots aid delivery and for understanding the impact of global development discourses policy and praxis. This book is a landmark study that will attract attention from students and scholars.'Jane Parpart, Lester B. Pearson chair in international development studies at Dalhousie University, CanadaTable of Contents Preface 1. Identity and development aid 2. 'The white man's burden' and other stories 3. Situating identity in the development aid context 4. The omniscient self and the backward, passive and unreliable partner 5. The equal partner and politics of desire 6. Concluding remarks

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Book SynopsisDoes the bible justify Zionism? Since the foundation of the Israeli state in 1948, Torah and tank have become increasingly inseparable, resulting in the forced expulsion and subjugation of millions of indigenous Palestinians. Nur Masalha's groundbreaking new book traces Zionism's evolution from a secular, settler movement in the late 19th century, to the messianic faith it has become today. He shows how the biblical language of 'chosen people' and 'promised land' has been used by many Christian and Jewish Zionists as the 'title deeds' for Israel, justifying ethnic division and violence. With Edward Said, Masalha argues that a new politics of peace can only be achieved through a single, democratic state, which replaces religious zealotry with secular equality.Trade Review'Groundbreaking'. Abrar 'His argument should be read and taken deadly seriously...Nur makes a fascinating comparison between US backing for Israel today and British Christian backing for the Zionist project over a hundred years ago.' John Rose, International Socialism ‘As a collection of virtually independent, yet interdependent essays, this books must strike the reader as unique in its breadth of discourse in the now increasingly over-subscribed as well as predominately ‘area study’ focussed discipline of Middle Eastern politics and history ... very important and contextually relevant.' Sam Jacob, University of Exeter, Friends of Al-Aqsa 'Challenging.' The Pastoral ReviewTable of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Bible and the Founding Myths of Israel: History, New Historiography and the Truth (1882-1948) 2. From the Secular to the Sacred: Messianic Zionism and the Occupied Territories (1967-2006) 3. Reinventing Maimonides: From Universalist Arabo-Jewish Philosopher to Religious Fundamentalist (1967-2006) 4. Jewish Fundamentalism and the 'Sacred Geography' of Jerusalem in Comparative Perspective: Implications for Inter-faith Relations 5. The Politics of Armageddon: Christian Fundamentalism, the State of Israel and Jerusalem 6. Political Islam in Palestine and Israel 7. Reading the Bible with the Eyes of the Canaanites: Michael Prior, Liberation Theology and Moral Obligations 8. The Secular Democractic State: Edward W. Said and a New Political Vision for Palestine and Israel Epilogue

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Book SynopsisMany countries have a rich tradition of domestic travel and holidaying which not only predates but exceeds mass international travel. This is particularly the case in Asia where recent economic prosperity and trends in globalization have not merely spurred, but continue to shape traditions in domestic tourism. This book is the first to address specifically the continuities and changes in domestic tourism in Asia. It explores the ethos of domestic travel and holiday-making in order to understand the distinctive common strands that underlie conventional and contemporary tourism practices, against the local and global backdrop. A considerable range of countries is covered in the case studies, including those with patrimonial histories, namely China and India, the economically developed nation-state of Japan and the microstates of Taiwan, Singapore, Macao and Hong Kong, besides the coastal countries of Malaysia, Philippines, Laos and Vietnam, as well as the land-locked countries of Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. The book presents some of the many interfaces of Asian cultural and natural heritages with tourism, while giving due considerations to today's political and economic realities.Table of ContentsForeword - Linda K. Richter Editor's Preface 1. Domestic Tourism: Searching for an Asianic Perspective Part I: Aspects of Asian Domestic Tourism: Endemic 2. Zen and the Art of Tourism Maintenance: A Meditaion on So-called Prototourism in VIietnam 3. Cultural Solutions to Ecological Problems in Contemporary Japan: Heritage Tourism in Asuke 4. Pilgrim Culture of t rth? in India: Enculturation of New-age Movements within Age-old Rituals 5. From Community to Holiday Camps: The Emergence of Tourist Economy in Mongolia Part II: Bricolage 6. 'Domestic' Tourism and its Discontents: Han Tourists in Tibetan Areas of the Pr China's 'Little Tibet' 7. Year Zero!: Erasing to Resurrect Domestic Tourism in Cambodia 8. Kyrgyz Tourism at Lake Issyk-Kul - Legacies of Pre-Communist and Soviet Regimes 9. Indigenous People and Domestic Visitors of Taiwan 10. O We Are Not 'Eco-Tourist': Hill-Walking and Eco-Tourism in Hong Kong 11. Crafting Filipino Leisure: Tourism Programs in the Philippines 12. Awaiting Attention: Profiling Domestic Tourism Sector in Sri Lanka Part III: Embedded 13. Film-Induced Domestic Tourism In Singapore: The Case of 'Krrish' 14. Cultivating Domestic Tourism with Global Advantage: Malaysia and Singapore Compared 15. Holiday Making and Leisure Space of Macao People Part IV: The Epilogue 16. Domestic Tourism in Asia: Contexts and Directions Appendices Index

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Book SynopsisThe impulse to try to anticipate the future, and make sense of apparently random events, is irrepressible. Why and how the ancient Greeks tried to foretell the outcome of the present is the subject of Esther Eidinow's lively appraisal, which explores the legacy of ancient Greek notions of luck, fate and fortune in our own era, drawing on approaches to cognitive anthropology. Perhaps the most famous of all sites of prediction is the Oracle at Delphi. But the Delphic Oracle is only the best-known example from a landscape covered by oracular sanctuaries; while across the literary genres of antiquity there are myriad tales - such as that of doomed Oedipus - which wrestle with the cruel vicissitudes of fate and fortune. Exploring some of the key ideas of ancient Greek culture that resonate with modern conceptions of destiny, Eidinow examines the ancients' notion of luck as a means to explain daily experiences. Focusing on writers such as Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Demosthenes, the author shows how concepts of fate in antiquity changed over time, in response to social and political currents. She draws too on modern cultural texts like "Terminator 2" and "Lawrence of Arabia", demonstrating how the recurring questions 'what if?' and 'why me?' are fundamental to the human relationship with an uncertain future, whether it be in the ancient past or the present day.

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Book SynopsisOur culture is one that speaks rather than listens. From reality TV to political rallies, there is a clamour to be heard, to narrate, and to receive attention. It reduces 'reality' to revelation and voyeurism. The Art of Listening argues that this way of life is having severe and damaging consequences in a world that is increasingly globalized and interconnected. It addresses the question: how can we listen more carefully? Social and cultural theory is combined with real stories from the experiences of the desperate stowaways who hide in the undercarriages of jet planes in order to seek asylum, to the young working-class people who use tattooing to commemorate a lost love. The Art of Listening shows how sociology is in a unique position to record 'life passed in living' and to listen to complex experiences with humility and ethical care, providing a resource to understand the contemporary world while pointing to the possibility of a different kind of future. 'This is a wise and human piece of writing, concerned to break out of sociology's academic straitjacket and speak to a wider audience...If anything can recover the somewhat tarnished reputation of sociology amongst the general public, then it is a book like this. ' New Humanist 'The Art of Listening is a rare book in its commitment to vitalize an ethical, global sociology for the twenty-first century. Students are encouraging their parents to read it. Everyone needs this book -- especially jaded academics.' Sanjay Sharma, British Journal of SociologyTrade ReviewThis is a wise and humane piece of writing, concerned to break out of sociology's academic straitjacket and speak to a wide audience. Stuart Sim, New Humanist The Art of Listening is a rare book in its commitment to vitalize an ethical, global sociology for the twenty-first century. Students are encouraging their parents to read it. Everyone needs this book -- especially jaded academics. Sanjay Sharma, British Journal of Sociology A sparkling, thought-provoking book that challenges many of our assumptions as researchers and students David Bissell, University of Brighton Back has shown us how to produce an applied sociology to examine the everyday and see how it is actually constructed. Andy T. Hanson, Lancaster University His book provides clear examples of his principles that should be interesting and useful to those of us who work in communities. Michele Sexton, Community DevelopmentTable of ContentsSpeaking of Remarkable Things * Lines of Hate, Colours of Memory * Falling From the Sky * Concrete Screens and the Urban Uncanny * Listening with our Eyes * Inscriptions of Love * Curiosity at its Limit * Conclusion: Shelf Life * Postscript: Dancing and Wrestling with Scholarship

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Book SynopsisThis book can be purchased by customers in the US or Canada from the University of California Press.Sensory History introduces a topic that is rapidly becoming of enormous interest to historians--incorporating the senses into our understanding of the past.The book defines 'sensory history,' stresses the importance of historicizing the senses, and considers each sense chapter by chapter. The author concludes by pondering future directions of the field.Drawing on examples from across the globe throughout time, Sensory History includes examinations of visual culture in Victorian Britain and South America, sound in nineteenth-century Australia and France, gender politics and touch in Early Modern Europe and among Native Americans, "race" and olfaction in the United States and scent in ancient Christianity, and the role of taste in shaping national identity in modern China and Early America. By attending carefully to the social history of the senses, Sensory History also reconsiders the value of paradigmatic explanatory models linking print, vision, and modernity and evaluates their relevance to the study of sensory history.Sensory History will be a key text for an emerging field.Trade Review'This book is an excellent introduction to a distinctive style of inquiry and a trustworthy guide to what is now a fast-emerging field of study.'THE'Mark M. Smith has a good record of communicating his research to a broad constituency within and beyond the academy ... This will be required reading for anyone addressing sensory history.'Penelope Gouk, Manchester University'In this inspiring book, Mark M. Smith blows the dust off the documents and monuments historians normally concentrate on in their efforts to reconstruct the past, and breathes new life into the sounds and textures, scents and sights that have shaped the consciousness of historical actors from antiquity to the present. Sensory History thus makes for sensational reading, and at the same time offers a critical take on the burgeoning literature in this dynamic new field of inquiry. Smith's history of the sensate is destined to precipitate a revolution in our understanding of the sensibilities that underpinned theTable of ContentsIntroduction: Making Sense Of History 1. Seeing 2. Hearing 3. Smelling 4. Tasting 5. Touching Conclusion: Futures Of Senses Past Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe past 25 years has seen an extraordinary boom in a new kind of cultural complex: the memorial museum. These seek to research, represent, commemorate and teach on the subject of dreadful, violent histories. With World War and Holocaust memorials as precursors, the kinds of events now recognized include genocide in Armenia, Cambodia, Rwanda and the Balkans, state repression in Eastern Europe, apartheid in South Africa, terrorism in the United States, political "disappearances" in Chile and Argentina, massacres in China and Taiwan, and more. This book is the first of its kind to "map" these new institutions and cultural spaces, which, although varying widely in size, style and political situation, are nonetheless united in their desire to promote peace, tolerance and the avoidance of future violence. Moving across nations and contexts, Memorial Museums critically analyzes the tactics of these institutions and gauges their wider public significance.Trade ReviewA significant study of contemporary museological practices, offering a wealth of insights into how objects, images and exhibition spaces contribute to the politically charged field of commemoration and remembrance. Andrea Witcomb, Deakin University, Melbourne Williams's book offers a rigorous analysis of the key issues and should be read by anyone involved in a memorial project. Suzanne Bardgett, Oral History This book provides a critical survey of issues on memorial museums: what they contain; why they have proliferated worldwide in this particular sociopolitical epoch; the basis of their appeal for visitors; the effect that their creation might have on other kinds of museums and heritage sites; and if they will become a permanent feature of the urban landscape and of public historical consciousness. cabi.org (July 2008) Williams's work is best suited to for a specialized audience of graduate students, professors, and museum professionals. These readers will find an intellectually stimulating treatise that lays the groundwork for furture research in an area of museum studies that has not yet received much scholarly attention. Highly recommended. S. Ferentinos, CHOICE Magazine Williams should be applauded for his breadth of material ... His argument is an important one that I hope opens up further investigations into the sites he mentions. Museum Anthropology ReviewTable of Contents1. A Very Different Proposition: Introducing the Memorial Museum 2. The Surviving Object: Presence and Absence in Memorial Museums 3. Photographic Memory: Commemorating Calamitous Events through Images 4. Rocks and Hard Places: Location and Spatiality in Memorial Museums 5. A Diplomatic Assignment: The Political Fortunes of Memorial Museums 6. The Memorial Museum Identity Complex: Victimhood, Culpability, and Responsibility 7. Looming Disaster: Memorial Museums and the Shaping of Historic Consciousness 8. Conclusion: Fighting the Forgetful Future

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Book SynopsisQuilting, once regarded as a traditional craft, has broken through the barriers of history, art and commerce to become a global phenomenon, international multi-billion dollar industry and means of gendered cultural production. In Quilting, sociologist and quilter Marybeth C. Stalp explores how and why women quilt.This close ethnographic study illustrates that women's lives can be transformed in often surprising ways by the activity and art of quilting. Some women who quilt as a leisure pastime are too afraid to admit to being a quilter for fear of ridicule; others boldly identify themselves as quilters and regard it as part of their everyday lives.The place of quilting in women's lives affects core family and personal identity issues such as marriage, childcare, friendship and aging. The book's accessible and intimate portrayal of real quilters' lives provides a fabric for the sociology, anthropology and textile student to understand more about wider issues of cultural production and identity that stem from this very personal pastime.Table of ContentsChapter I: Introduction: Why Quilting? Why Quilts Matter ... The (Recent) Global Quilting Phenomenon What is a Quilt, Anyway? Cultural Production in the Economic Sphere The Sociology of Culture and the Culture of Non-Economic Cultural Production Chapter II: Tripping through the Tulips: Doing Research Close to Home Using Feminist Methods to Study Contemporary U.S. Quilters Local Knowledge and Grounded Theory Methods and Data When Quilting is Enough: Immediate Commonalities through Quilting Piecing Together My Personal and Professional Selves Gendered Assumptions about Quilting and Fieldwork How Long Did it Take You to Make That Quilt? How Many Quilts Have You Made? Revealing My Quilting and My Self When Quilting is Not Enough: Tripping through the Tulips of an Academic Career Chapter III: It's Not Just for Grannies Anymore: Learning to Quilt at Midlife Learning to Quilt as an Adult, and Not on your Mother's Knee Quilting Heritage The Skipped Generation of Quilters New Quilters Midlife Women and Quilting Subjective Careers Learning to Quilt at Midlife Becoming a Self-Identified Quilter Affirming a Subjective Career in Quilting Quilting as Identity Work Extending the Self: Quilts as Finished Products Chapter IV: The Guilty Pleasures of the Fabric Stash Quilting and Fabric Collecting Starting a Fabric Collection Stashing Fabric The Stigmatized Stash and Hiding One's Quilting Identity Quilters' Families as Greedy Institutions Can The Fabric Stash Ever Come Out of the Closet? Chapter V: Quilt Rhymes with Guilt: Finding the Time & Space to Quilt Quilting Seriously Not Enough Time Not Enough Space Not Having Space Rhymes with Guilt: Finding the Time to Quilt Finally! Negotiating a Room of One's Own From a Room of One's Own to a Life of One's Own? Chapter VI: Coming out of the Closet: Quilting is for Self and for Others Quilting as Carework for Self Quilting as Carework for Others Bookmarking Life Through Quilting Self, Space and Sanity Chapter VII: Piecing it All Together What's So Important About Quilting? Leisure, Carework and the Family Developing a Midlife Identity through Quilting Quilting and Other Creative Processes and Products Quilting as Gendered Non-Economic Cultural Production

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Book SynopsisEach morning we establish an image and an identity for ourselves through the simple act of getting dressed. Why Women Wear What They Wear presents an intimate ethnography of clothing choice. The book uses real women's lives and clothing decisions - observed and discussed at the moment of getting dressed - to illustrate theories of clothing, the body and identity. Woodward pieces together what women actually think about clothing, dress and the body in a world where popular media and culture presents an increasingly extreme and distorted view of femininity and the ideal body. Immediately accessible to all those who have stood in front of a mirror and wondered 'does this make me look fat?', 'is this skirt really me?' or 'does this jacket match?', Why Women Wear What They Wear provides students of anthropology and fashion with a fresh perspective on the social issues and constraints we are all consciously or unconsciously negotiating when we get dressed.Trade Review'Woodward writes in a marvellously clear and lively style, melding ethnographicanalysis nicely with an accomplished rendition of appropriate theory from herrelated fields. This book is ideal for undergraduate as well as graduate students, andwill be of value for researchers concerned with the body, fashion design, and retail. The book wears its learning lightly, provides fascinating case studies, and is a total delight to read.'Current SociologyTable of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1: Understanding Women and their Wardrobes. Chapter 2: Hanging Out in the Home and the Bedroom. Chapter 3: But What Were You Wearing? Clothes and Memories. Chapter 4: Looking Good, Feeling Right: The Aesthetics of Getting Dressed. Chapter 5: Looking in the Mirror: Seeing and Being Seen. Chapter 6: Mothers, Daughters, Friends: Dressing in Relationships. Chapter 7: Fashion: Making and Breaking the Rules. Chapter 8: Dressing up and Dressing Down: Can you Wear Jeans? Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisCompetitive ballroom is much more than a style of dance. Rather, it is a continually evolving and increasingly global social and cultural arena: of fashion, performance, art, sport, gender, and more. Ballroom explores the intersection of dance cultures, dress, and the body. Presenting the author's experiences at an international range of dance events from Europe, the US and UK, as well as featuring the views of individual dancers, the book shows how dancing influences mind and body alike. For students of anthropology, dance, cultural, and performance studies, Ballroom provides an ethnographic picture of how dancers and others live their lives both on and off the dance floor.Trade ReviewBallroom is a deeply layered and compelling account of competitive ballroom dance, combining Jonathan Marion's insightful roles as ethnographer, photographer, and accomplished ballroom dancer. The book should be read by everyone curious about the fundamental nature of dance in human society, no matter what their particular dance passion may be. Anyone interested in the world of competitive ballroom dance will find Ballroom an invaluable resource. Anya Peterson Royce, Indiana University With the ethnographic authority of a ballroom dancer, Jonathan Marion takes us to the world of competitions in this exciting dancesport. Ballroom is an absorbing book. It reveals how this dance form indexes broader issues of performance and costume as well as gender, transnationality and the visual. Helena Wulff, Stockholm University A welcome addition to a growing body of literature about competitive and social dance forms ... not only contributes to our understanding of ballroom dance but also furthers and suggests the continuing promise of dance research carried out through interdisciplinary methodologies. American EthnologistTable of ContentsIntroduction Part 1: Setting the Stage Chapter 1: What is Competitive Ballroom Dance? Chapter 2: A Brief History of Ballroom Chapter 3: Judging Ballroom Dance Part 2: Performing Dancesport Chapter 4: Ballroom as Spectacle Chapter 5: Ballroom as Art Chapter 6: Ballroom as Sport Part 3: Ballroom Competitions as Events Chapter 7: Competitions as Festival and Celebration Chapter 8: Competitions as Ritual Part 4: Costs, Consequences, and Outcomes Chapter 9: Costumes and Conduct Chapter 10: Performing Gender Chapter 11: Living the Dancesport Life Conclusion

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Book SynopsisFood preparation, consumption, and exchange are eminently social practices, and experiencing another cuisine often provides our first encounter with a different culture. This volume presents fascinating essays about cooking, eating, and sharing food, by anthropologists working in many parts of the world, exploring what they learned by eating with others.These are accounts of specific experiences - of cooking in Mombasa, shopping for organic produce in Vienna, eating vegetarian in Vietnam, raising and selling chickens in Hong Kong, and of refugees subsisting on food aid. With a special focus on the experience and challenge of ethnographic fieldwork, the essays cover a wide range of topics in food studies and anthropology, including food safety and food security, cultural diversity and globalization, colonial histories and contemporary identities, and changing ecological, social, and political relations across cultures.Food: Ethnographic Encounters offers readers a broad view of the vibrancy of local and global food cultures, and provides an accessible introduction to both food studies and contemporary ethnography.Trade ReviewThis is an excellent sampler of recent ethnographic work on food. Most of the chapters take you deep into the significance of food and eating in an unfamiliar cultural setting. The book is accessible to anyone interested in food, though it is going to be most useful to serious students. This could be an excellent text for a course in the anthropology of food. -- Richard R. Wilk * Amazon US *Table of ContentsPreface John Borneman Introduction Leo Coleman 1. Food and Morality in Yemen Anne Meneley, Trent University, Canada 2. It All Started with the Bhajias Nina Berman, The Ohio State University, USA 3. The Enchantments of Food in the Lower Amazon, Brazil Mark Harris, University of St Andrews, UK 4. Live Poultry Markets and Avian Flu in Hong Kong Frédéric Keck, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France 5. Revisiting Lao Food: Pain and Commensality Penny Van Esterik, York University, Canada 6. In Search of the Elusive Heirloom Tomato: Farms and Farmers' Markets, Fields and Fieldwork Jennifer A. Jordan, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA 7. Keeping out of the Kitchen: Cooking and Power in a Moroccan Household Claire Nicholas, Princeton University, USA 8. "Do You Know How to Eat . . .?" Edible Expertise in Ho Chi Minh City Nina Hien, New York University, USA 9. Learning to Exchange Words and Food in the Marquesas Kathleen C. Riley, Queens College, City University of New York, USA 10. Eating Vegetarian in Vietnam Christophe Robert, City University of Hong Kong, China 11. The Food of Sorrow: Humanitarian Aid to Displaced People Elizabeth Dunn, University of Colorado, USA Guide for Further Reading Endmatter

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Book SynopsisFirst published in Irish in 1961 and in English in 1967, this classic work has never been superseded as a treatment of the fascinating subject of traditional wakes in Ireland. As well as eating, drinking, smoking a pipe and taking snuff, many other forms of entertainment were common in Irish wakes, to pass the long hours of the night or two nights of the wake. These included storytelling, singing, dancing, music, card-playing, riddling and rhyming, and feats of agility and strength both inside the wake-house and in an adjoining field before the funeral started next day. Seán Ó Súilleabháin also shows that Ireland, far from being different from other countries, was part of the general European (and world) pattern in holding prolonged and merry wakes.Trade Review'Macabre but a fascinating exploration of the games, practical jokes and general revelry that accompanied wakes and which are now increasingly things of the past. Helpful background to Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, which takes place at a wake and features many jokes, literary games and high-spirited hijinks.' - J. Geary -- J GearyTable of ContentsIntroduction Wakes at Present and Long Ago Storytelling; Singing; Music and Dancing; Card Playing; Riddles; Tongue Twisters; Versifying and repetition of Jingles. Contests in Strength; Agility; Dexterity; Accuracy of Aim; Endurance and Toughness; Hardihood and Athletics. Taunting and Mocking; Booby Traps; Mischief-making; Horse-Play, Rough Games; Fights at Wakes and Funerals. Imitative Games Catch Games Games of Hide, Seek and Guessing Various Other Games The Keening of the Dead Church Opposition to Wake Abuses The Extent of Wake Abuses and Their Decline The Origin and Purpose of Wakes and Their Amusements Sources Index

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Book SynopsisThese essays on postcolonial subjectivities cross the frontiers of critical theory by illuminating the contradictory predicaments Africans confront in strikingly different parts of the continent at the start of the 21st century. The focus is on the making of subjectivities as a process which is political, a matter of subjugation to state authority; moral, reflected in the conscience and agency of subjects who bear rights, duties and obligations; and realised existentially, in the subjects' consciousness of their personal or intimate relations. The notion of agency is interrogated, without lapsing into the new Afro-pessimism. The essays recognise postcolonies troubled by state decline and increasing exploitation, dispossession and marginalisation, but avoid Afro-pessimism's reduction of subjects to mere victims. Even more against the grain of conventional postcolonial studies is the radical questioning of the force of 'modern subjectivism' in struggles for control of identity, autonomy and explicit consciousness, and through artistic self-fashioning in globally driven consumption. With substantial cases based on autobiography, personal experience and long-term scholarly fieldwork in countries as diverse as Madagascar, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Botswana and Cameroon, the book opens out a fresh field for comparative research and theory on postcolonial transformations in intersubjectivity. This is to take seriously the people's perception, so widespread in postcolonial Africa, that to live life to the full is to live it in interdependence, in conviviality, if possible; that care and respect for others - indeed, civility - is a precious, and indeed, precarious condition of survival and as such is the object of recognised strategies for its conscious defence; and that because significant others are opaque - never being totally knowable - uncertainty, ambivalence and contingency are inescapable conditions of human existence.Trade Review'An inspirational collection of themes and methods for future researchers in Africa.' Richard Fardon, SOAS, University of London 'A lively collection of essays on a topic that could hardly be more timely or challenging. It will be widely read and discussed, and will help scholars in several disciplines to understand questions of consciousness and identity in contemporary Africa.' James Ferguson, University of California, IrvineTable of Contents Introduction: Postcolonial Subjectivities: The Personal, The Political and the Moral - Richard Werbner Part I: Consciousness, Conscience and the Other 1. Nuriaty, the Saint, and the Sultan: Virtuous Subject and Subjective Virtuoso of the Post-Modern Colony - Michael Lambek 2. "I am like a movie star in my street": Photographic Self-creation in Postcolonial Kenya - Heike Behrend 3. The Making and Unmaking of Consciousness: Nuba and Gamk Strategies for Survival in a Sudanese Borderland - Akira Okazaki 4. Gendered Violence and the Militarization of Ethnicity: A Case Study from South Sudan - Sharon Elaine Hutchinson and Jok Madut Jok Part II: Uncertainties, subjection and the subjunctive 5. 'A child is one person's only in the womb': Domestication, Agency and Subjectivity in the Cameroonian Grassfields - Francis B. Nyamnjoh 6. Uncertain Citizens: Herero and the New Intercalary Subject in Postcolonial Botswana - Deborah Durham 7. Subjectivity and Subjunctivity: Hoping for Health in Eastern Uganda - Susan Reynolds Whyte 8. Ancestral Incests and Postcolonial Subjectivities in the Karembola (Madagascar) - Karen Middleton Afterword: Provoking Postcolonial Subjectivities in Africa - Paul Stoller

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Book SynopsisIn recent years the British mass media have discovered a new and urgent social problem - the Asian gang. Images of urban deprivation and the Underclass have combined with fears of growing youth militancy and masculinities-in-crisis to position Asian, and especially Muslim, young men as the new folk devil. This reimagination of Asian young men has focused on violence, drug abuse and crime, set against a backdrop of cultural conflict, generational confusion and religious fundamentalism. The Asian gang, it seems, is the inevitable product of these social forces. But what is the reality? Based on three years fieldwork with a group of Bangladeshi young men in inner-city London, this book attempts to explore the complex mythologies and realities of contemporary Asian youth experience. Taking the gang as its starting point, the study examines the interaction of representation and reality, ethnicity and masculinity in a textured, in-depth and personal perspective that challenges traditional views on Asian communities and identities.Trade Review'Refreshing and highly readable.'Contemporary Sociology'Alexander's book is a fascinating analysis of the social construction and demonisation of Asian young men as members of 'the Asian Gang' ... A fascinating and challenging account of the construction of meaning of racialised masculinity and a welcome addition to studies of the social construction of identity.'Gender, Place and Culture'It is rare to find a book that comes anywhere near allowing its informants to 'live and breathe' within the scope of its bleached pages. Claire Alexander's book on young 'Bengali' men in London does just that.'Ethnic and Racial Studies'This is an exceptional book that is both lucid and engaged ... The Asian Gang could be a landmark in how to conduct social research.'Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies'Through interviews with several young people Alexander nicely debunks the notion that they might embrace a unified Asian identity based exclusively (or primarily) on ethnicity.

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Philip Abrams Memorial Book Prize 2001 'No one likes us, we dont care' is the anthem of the most notorious fans in British football. But little is known about the actual people who generated and continue to maintain this most infamous of working-class subcultures. In addition to the voices of the fans themselves, this book provides a rich and original account of the historical background, social sources, expressive culture and ritual practices of Millwallism, a far more complex, meaningful and anthropologically compelling phenomenon than the media stereotypes suggest. The author argues that Millwall functions in the popular consciousness as a powerful symbol: specific understandings of football hooliganism, working-class masculinity, and violent neo-fascism are triggered by its use in the media and in everyday social interaction. There are, it follows, few social groups as heavily mythologized as Millwall fans. Further, the generation and maintenance of this myth has significance far beyond the club itself, and is rooted in the meanings attached to working-class identities and modernity, masculinity and the body. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Millwall, the issues of football hooliganism or working-class masculinity, sociology, anthropology, or sports studies.Trade Review'An immediate classic.'Culture, Sport and Society 'Garry Robson does his subject proud and in coining the term 'Millwallism' has surely achieved a sociological first.'Philosophy Football'A fine piece of sociological work ... which anyone interested in this field of so-called 'football studies' should read immediately.'Sociology'A fine piece of work.'Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute'With the partial exception of the work of Anthony King, it is, in my opinion, the single most penetrating, insightful, and original contribution to the understanding of soccar hoologanism in the United Kingdom to have been produced since the 1980s.'Cognitions, Emotions, and Identities'There aren't too many sociological books that make their way into the Christmas stocking. In this, and many other respects, Garry Robson's study of Millwall football culture is exceptional.'Les Back, Reader in Sociology, Goldsmiths College, London

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Book SynopsisProusts famous madeleine captures the power of food to evoke some of our deepest memories. Why does food hold such power? What does the growing commodification and globalization of food mean for our capacity to store the past in our meals in the smell of olive oil or the taste of a fresh-cut fig? This book offers a theoretical account of the interrelationship of culture, food and memory. Sutton challenges and expands anthropology's current focus on issues of embodiment, memory and material culture, especially in relation to transnational migration and the flow of culture across borders and boundaries. The Greek island of Kalymnos in the eastern Aegean, where Islanders claim to remember meals long past -- both humble and spectacular provides the main setting for these issues, as well as comparative materials drawn from England and the United States. Despite the growing interest in anthropological accounts of food and in the cultural construction of memory, the intersection of food with memory has not been accorded sustained examination. Cultural practices of feasting and fasting, global flows of food as both gifts and commodities, the rise of processed food and the relationship of orally transmitted recipes to the vast market in speciality cookbooks tie traditional anthropological mainstays such as ritual, exchange and death to more current concerns with structure and history, cognition and the anthropology of the senses. Arguing for the crucial role of a simultaneous consideration of food and memory, this book significantly advances our understanding of cultural processes and reformulates current theoretical preoccupations.Trade Review'A charming book about food's role in the construction of memory. It must be important to say something that everybody knows, but is ignored by the specialists. It will stop nutritionists, psychologists and philosophers of mind from systematically ignoring that eating is primarily social, and memory is embedded in taste and smell.' Mary Douglas 'An excellent contribution to the anthropology of the politics of the senses and emotion.' South European Society and Politics 'The recipe [Sutton] has chosen to present, the Kalymnian Filla, is indeed one of the best strategies of remembering Greece and of planning in the present to re-taste it in the future.' South European Society and Politics 'Sutton is a keenly sensitive observer of the everyday routines and subtle variations of life and brings a greatly appreciated seriousness to his study of the performances of everyday life.' Gastronomica 'Sutton has put the topic of food and memory firmly onto the map of anthropological inquiry and theory... Not only to new vistas of investigation and methodology open up, but there is the particularly pleasing side-effect that reading this stimulating book makes one aware of personal, seemingly long-forgotten food memories' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5:1

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Book SynopsisThe Olympic ideal and the Olympic Games stand as symbols of global cooperation, international understanding and the bonding of individuals through the medium of sports. However, throughout the twentieth century, Olympic rhetoric was often confronted by a different reality. The Games have regularly been faced by crises that have threatened the spirit of Olympism and even the Games themselves. Given the many changes that have occurred in the Olympic Games during the past century it seems reasonable to ask if this global event has a future and, if so, what form it might take. With this larger issue in mind, the authors of Post-Olympism? ask probing questions about the following: the infamous 1936 Olympics the effect of new technologies on the Games the future impact of the 2008 Beijing Games on China and of China on the Olympics the local and regional impact of the Sydney green Olympics the Games and globalization Disneyfication racism drug abuse The book provides a useful overview of the ongoing significance of the Olympics and will be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the Games.Trade Review'The editor has successfully gathered fifteen articles that discuss sport on several theoretical levels... as well as critically evaluating the dilema of olympic competition.'Milan Hosta, 'Sport' Magasine, Faculty of Sport in Ljubljana, SloveniaTable of ContentsThe Future of Multi-Sport Mega EventsRichard Cashman, University of New South WalesTroping Along: A Historian's View of Olympic ScholarshipDouglas Booth, University of OtagoCitius, Altius, Fortius: A Critique and a ReinterpetationSigmund Loland, Norwegian Sports University, Oslo"What's the Difference between Propaganda for Tourism or for a Political Regime?" The 1936 Olympics in World PerspectiveArnd Krger, University of GttingenAccelerating Olympism: The Poetics and Problematics of Nano, Virtual, and Cyborg Sport TechnologiesSynthia Sydnor, University of IllinoisThe Aesthetic Dimensions of SportSoren Damkjaer, University of CopenhagenDrugs and the Olympics in the Context of AestheticsVerner Moller, University of South Denmark, OdenseOlympic Legacies: Sport, Space and the Practices of Everyday LifeDouglas Brown, University of AlbertaOlympism, Post-Humanism and the Spectacle of RaceBen Carrington, University of BrightonChina and OlympismSusan Brownell, University of Missouri, St LouisThe Global, the Popular and the Inter-Popular: Olympic Sport between Market, State and Civil SocietyHenning Eichberg, IFO, DenmarkLaying Olympism to RestKevin Wamsley, University of Western OntarioSportive Nationalism in an Age of GlobalizationJohn Hoberman, University of TexasMaking the World Safe for Global Capital? The Sydney 2000 OlympicsHelen Lenskyj, University of Toronto The Disneyfication of the Olympics: Selling the SpectacleAlan Tomlinson, University of Brighton

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Book SynopsisA CLASSIC STUDY OF CULTURAL ENDURANCE AND RADICAL CHANGE IN THE ARABIAN DESERT The Bedouin tribes of Northern Arabia have lived thousands of years as pastoralists, migrating across the semi-arid badia in search of graze and browse for their herds. Romantic images of Bedouin - black tents, robed Arabs and camels - still persist. However, mobile pastoral livelihoods have come under pressure to change in recent years. The modern nation-states of the Middle East view pastoralism as anachronistic and encourage Bedouin to become settled cultivators. An even more dramatic shift has taken place within the last few decades: the Bedouin have traded in their camels as beasts of burden in favour of the half-ton truck. The ship of the desert is now a Toyota, Datsun, Nissan or General Motors pick-up. Nevertheless, many Bedouin continue to herd livestock - sheep, goat and camel - at the same time as engaging in new economic activities. They have been open to remarkable change whilst firmly holding onto their culture, and their traditional moral and value systems. The truck has allowed many the possibility of interacting with the region's modern economy while still pursuing their mobile pastoral livelihoods. Extensive field research underlies anthropologist Dawn Chatty's comprehensive study. She examines contemporary Bedouin society of Lebanon and Syria in the contexts of history, economy and political and moral culture. She details the consequences of motorized transport for this community - and she draws some surprising conclusions about its future viability.Table of ContentsList of Maps List of Figures and Charts List of Plates Acknowledgements Notes on Transliteration of Arabic Words Foreword to the New Edition Introduction Chapter 1. The Bedouin and How They Came to Be Where They Are Chapter 2. Pacification of the Bedouin in Northern Arabia Chapter 3. Arab Society and the Bedouin Chapter 4. The Camel: The Traditional Way of Life of a Bedouin Household Chapter 5. The Truck: The Changing Pastoral Way of Life Chapter 6. Conclusion: The Bedouin in the Modern World Appendix A: Glossary Appendix B: Table of Measures Selected Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn this ground-breaking synthesis of evolutionary and cultural theory, Wendy Wheeler draws on the new field of complex adaptive systems and biosemiotics in order to argue that - far from being opposed to nature - culture is the way that nature has evolved in human beings. Her argument is that these evolutionary processes reveal the fundamental sociality of human creatures, and she thus rejects the selfish individualism that is implied both in the biological reductionism of much recent evolutionary psychology, and in the philosophies of neoliberalism. She shows, instead, that the complex structures of biosemiotic evolution have always involved a creativity which is born from the difficult but productive phenomenological encounter between the Self and its Others; and she argues that this creativity, in both the sciences and the humanities, is fundamental to human progress. In this major contribution to both cultural studies and ecocriticism, Wheeler shows how complexity and biosemiotics forge the link between nature and culture, and provide a new and better understanding of how 'the whole human creature' operates as both social and biological being.Trade Review'What a pleasure to read this book, which integrates biosemiotics into a wider argument about the material basis for human sociality. What struck me the is the political dimension which Wheeler brings to my work. When I began developing biosemiotics my old political friends didn't appreciate it because they didn't see how it connected to other issues. I was therefore extraordinarily pleased to see her drawing social consequences which I had had in mind from the outset. I am grateful to her for seeing that.' Jesper Hoffmeyer This book provides some really useful pathways to an important truth - that culture is natural. That obvious fact has been amazingly obscured of late by fashionable doctrines, and by the walls that now divide different learned specialities from each other. Wendy Wheeler helps us to break through these barriers and to see that we are indeed Whole Creatures. Mary Midgley

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Book SynopsisAn original ethnography of sound and listening in one of our major institutions, Hearing and the Hospital reveals the hospital to be a space in which several modes of listening are simultaneously in play and in which different layers of auditory knowledge and experience coexist. Engaging with Sound Studies, the Anthropology of the Senses, Medical Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies in this volume, Tom Rice shows how sound and listening produce, articulate and mediate social relations inside the hospital; how listening acquires direction and focus within that environment; and how certain sounds become endowed with particular meanings and associations. He also exposes many of the sensory minutiae that both underpin and undermine the production of medical knowledge and skill. Hearing and the Hospital creates an acoustic interrogation of hospital life, and in doing so questions accepted ideas about the sense of hearing itself. There's a great deal to admire in Tom Rice's ethnography of the aural politics of the hospital. First because it represents a unique conjunction of the ethnography of sound and senses with medical anthropology and social studies of science. Next because it patiently details how sound as a way of knowing so deeply informs social practices of medical listening. And finally because it is so successful in revealing both how hospitals and bodies pulse as acoustic spaces, and how patients and doctors professionalize, personalize, and participate as situated listeners.(Steven Feld, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Music, University of New Mexico). Tom Rice is Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Exeter, and specializes in auditory culture. As well as writing and teaching on sound he has produced audio pieces including the BBC Radio 4 feature The Art of Water Music.

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Book SynopsisA compelling travel book based on fieldnotes and diaries and a landmark study of Greek island life in the mid 1960s on the eve of changes that would transform Greece by mass tourism., In this new edition, Kenna returns to Anafi to find the world she observed almost gone but not quite yet.

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Book SynopsisBased on ethnographic research conducted in a town on the Polish-Belarussian border, this book examines borders and the lingering echoes of conflict. Using hauntology as a guiding framework to understand how people live amidst the histories and reverberations of conflicts, the author investigates the role that landscape, with its material presences and absences, plays in evoking and maintaining the border. The ethnography probes themes of ethnicity, religious practice, memory and space, investigating the border as a dynamic social process. By immersing herself in the everyday lives of the borderland, Joyce unravels how traces – lingering imprints of the past – shape local relationships in the present, influencing shared understandings of history and the future. Introducing the concept of the spectral border as a lens to reveal the ambiguous presence of afterlives and memories tied to a historical boundary, the book unveils its present-day ghostly forms in the local ideas and practices of neighbourliness at the heart of borderland identity. Spectral Borders interrogates the use and limitations of these practices by exploring points of tension, where the meanings and uses of ‘being a neighbour’ and ‘being from the borderland’ are tested and challenged. In doing so, the book raises important questions about how conviviality is created and managed in a place with a long and unresolved history marked by ethnic and religious violence, war, and civil unrest.Trade ReviewJoyce has written a layered and nuanced ethnography of a formerly little-known Polish borderland. While tragic events have recently brought the region to world attention, she shows that the Polish–Belarus border has long been politicized, as it has shifted between different nations. The book focuses on the hauntings that underlie much of the social, religious and cultural life of the region: the spectres of religious conflicts played out in contested spaces by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox institutions and actors, and ofa large Jewish community now all but disappeared. Joyce explores the complex relations local people have with the forest, a place full of secret histories as well as environmentalminitiatives, tourist trails, local foragers and more clandestine economic practices. The border follows the River Bug, also a site where traces of past conflicts lurk below the surface, easily evoked by present occurrences. This beautifully written book, moving easily between anthropology and history, in a dialogue between vivid ethnography and sophisticated theory, deserves to be read by anyone interested in the region, or in memory, place and landscape, and the complex social worlds that encompass and make them.Frances Pine, Emerita Reader in Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London; This monograph is a fascinating read, offering a fresh and original perspective on the complex cultural landscape of the Polish-Belarusian borderland. The concept of spectral borders is presented with particular ethnographic sensitivity and offers an engaging and elegant literary narrative.Justyna Straczuk, Associate Professor, Polish Academy of Sciences.Table of ContentsIntroduction – Around the kitchen table: neighbours and spectres; Chapter 1 – The House of Culture: working with fragments, traces and absences; Chapter 2 – The Bug Cycle Path: the border as a tourist destination; Chapter 3 – Boundary markers: spectral borders in eastern Poland; Chapter 4 – The Church of the Holy Spirit: contested churches and religious borders; Chapter 5 – The iron gate: ruins, absence and uncanny façades; Chapter 6 – The basilica: pilgrimage, presence and co-presence; Conclusion – construction sites; References; Index.

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