Anthropology Books

When it comes to evangelical Christianity, the internet is both a refuge and a threat. It hosts Zoom prayer groups and pornographic videos, religious revolutions and silly cat videos. Platforms such as social media, podcasts, blogs, and digital Bibles...

In An Ethnography of Hunger Kristin D. Phillips examines how rural farmers in central Tanzania negotiate the interconnected projects of subsistence, politics, and rural development. Writing against stereotypical Western media images of spectacular famine...

The scientific study of human evolution and culture is about a hundred years old. This volume surveys its achievements and methods. Originally published more than forty years ago, the volume's contributors include people who have shaped anthropology's...

Recent theoretical and methodological innovations in the anthropological analysis of South Asian societies have introduced distinctive modifications in the study of Indian social structure and social change. This book, reporting on twenty empirical...

This festschrift commemorates Julian H. Steward. The essays were contributed by former students, colleagues, and other anthropologists whose research or thinking has been influenced by him. There was no preconceived attempt to give the volume any greater...

Ethos and Identity asks the ever-puzzling question: What is ethnicity and how is it to be explained? In a new introduction to this work, Athena Leoussi describes Epstein's response to this challenging age-old query, and demonstrates why this classic...

"à required reading for anyone interested in the economy, ecology, and demography of human societies." --American Journal of Human Biology "This excellent book can serve both as a text¼book and as a scholarly reference." --American Scientist

With a new introduction by Helen Fisher, Ph.D., the classic gender study by renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead, which delivers pertinent insights into today's battle of the sexes.Mead's anthropological examination of seven Pacific island tribes...

A precursor to Mead's illuminating Male & Female, Sex & Temperament lays the groundwork for her lifelong study of gender differences.First published in 1935, Sex & Temperament is a fascinating and brilliant anthropological study of the intimate lives of...

Colorfully written by two popular and respected sociologists, this volume shows how sociology has evolved, how it became divided from Christian faith, and how Christian sociologists can make sense of this branch of social science.

This book demonstrates the usefulness of anthropological concepts by taking a critical look at Wal-Mart and the American Dream. Rather than singling Wal-Mart out for criticism, the authors treat it as a product of a socio-political order that it also...

"The Anthropology of Stuff" is part of a new Series dedicated to innovative, unconventional ways to connect undergraduate students and their lived concerns about our social world to the power of social science ideas and evidence. Our goal with the...

"The Anthropology of Stuff" is part of a new Series dedicated to innovative, unconventional ways to connect undergraduate students and their lived concerns about our social world to the power of social science ideas and evidence. Our goal with the...

Ways of Sensing is a stimulating exploration of the cultural, historical and political dimensions of the world of the senses. The book spans a wide range of settings and makes comparisons between different cultures and epochs, revealing the power and...

This wide-ranging and accessible book offers a stimulating introduction to the field of media anthropology and the study of religious ritual. Johanna Sumiala explores the interweaving of rituals, communication and community. She uses the tools of...

First published in 2006. Produced during the Second World War for the use of commanding officers, this work is a complete guide to the lands of Western Arabia. Sections on geology, geography, the coasts, climate, vegetation, history, administration,...

Published in the year 2005, Quest for Sheba is a valuable contribution to the field of Middle Eastern Studies.

This book questions the political logic of foregrounding cultural collectives in a world shaped by globalization and neoliberalization. Throughout the world, it is no longer only individuals, but increasingly collective "cultures" who are made...

Cosmopolitan Memory in Europe's 'Backwaters' reconsiders the definitional relationships of 'national character' and 'national heritage' in the context of Western industrial modernity. Taking as a case study the Greek islands of Skiathos and Skopelos...

Based on original ethnographic research with scientists, clinicians and families, this book examines Rett syndrome to illuminate more general issues concerning the construction and interpretation of diseases and syndromes. It derives from research with a...

In the Japanese language the word 'ie' denotes both the materiality of homes and family relations within. The traditional family and family house - often portrayed in ideal terms as key foundations of Japanese culture and society - have been subject to...

During the decade of its existence in India, the multiplex cinema has been very much a sign of the times - both a symptom and a symbol of new social values. Indicative of a consistent push to create a 'globalised' consuming middle class and a new urban...

Using an interdisciplinary framework, this book offers a fresh perspective on the issues of diaspora culture and border crossings in the films, popular cultures, and media and entertainment industries from the popular Hindi cinema of India. It analyses...

The balance between individual independence and social interdependence is a perennial debate in Japan. A series of educational reforms since 1990, including the implementation of a new curriculum in 2002, has been a source of fierce controversy. This...

This century has been marked by the rapid and divergent uptake of mobile telephony throughout the world. The mobile phone has become a poignant symbol for postmodernity and the attendant modes of global mobility and immobility. Most notably, the icon of...

New genetic technologies cut across a range of public regulatory domains and private lifeworlds, often appearing to generate an institutional void in response to the complex challenges they pose. As a result, a number of new social formations are being...

How, if it all, do museums shape the ways in which society understands difference?In recent decades there has been growing international interest amongst practitioners, academics and policy makers in the role that museums might play in confronting...

Providing insights into this neglected Southeast Asian city, this interesting book interprets Vientiane's landscape - physical as well as imagined - as a reflection of key aspects of Lao geo-political history, the nature of Lao urbanism, and its...

This is a comprehensive introduction to the social and cultural anthropology of South-East Asia. It provides an overview of the major theoretical issues and themes which have emerged from the engagement of anthropologists with South-East Asian...

Modernization in Africa has created new problems as well as new freedoms. Multiparty democracy, resource privatization and changing wealth relationships, have not always created stable and prosperous communities, and violence continues to be endemic in...

This collection suggests that the disciplines of literature and anthropology are not static entities but instead fluid sites of shifting cultural currents and academic interests. The essays conclude that the origins, sources, and intersections of the two...

This book explores new approaches to the remarkably detailed information that archaeologists now have for the study of our early ancestors. Rather than explaining the archaeology of stones and bones as the product of group decisions, the contributors...

The importance of the Chinese diaspora is widely recognized. Wanning Sun examines the key role of the media in the Chinese diaspora. She focuses especially on the media's role in communication, in fostering a sense of community, in defining...

Children's Places examines the ways in which children and adults, from their different vantage-points in society, negotiate the 'proper place' of children in both social and spatial terms. It looks at some of the recognised constructions of children,...

Those who have been privileged to watch baboons long enough to know them as individuals and who have learned to interpret some of their more subtle interactions will attest that the rapid flow of baboon behavior can at times be overwhelming

This brilliant and engrossing work of social synthesis, replete with profound insights, opens up new vistas on the relationship between culture and mental health. The author uses his own extensive findings and his abundant knowledge of the cross-cultural...

The Italian peasantry has often been described as tragic, backward, hopeless, downtrodden, static, and passive. In Fate and Honor, Family and Village, Rudolph Bell argues against this characterization by reconstructing the complete demographic history of...

Social anthropology, defined operationally in terms of what social anthropologists have done in the last fifty years, is the study and comparison of tribal societies and of small fields of social life with emphasis on the role of custom. When a social...

This new edition of Culture, Behavior, and Personality is organized into  ve parts. Part I de nes the  eld of inquiry, Part II presents a critical review of existing theories and methods, Part III expounds LeVine's unique Darwinian model of...

Society and Politics in India

Originally published in 1892 by the Fine Art Society in London and simultaneously in Yokohama, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, this book shows the context and growing interest in the arts and crafts of this newly discovered burgeoning country with such artistry...

This volume investigates ideas, beliefs and sentiments in relation to social organization.

Spirited Histories combines ethnography with critical theory to provide a sophisticated exploration of the intersection of haunting and the paranormal with technology, media, and history. Retrieving the past in places of trauma and death can take on many...

The current higher education policy and practice landscape is simultane-ously marked by uncertainty and hope, and nowhere are these tensions more present than in discussions and actions around general education. This volume uses an anthropological...

Exploring the controversy surrounding therapeutic human cloning, this book draws upon data collected from news articles and interviews with journalists to examine the role of mass media in shaping biomedical controversies. With specific reference to the...

How do the media represent obesity and eating disorders? How are these representations related to one another? And how do the news media select which scientific findings and policy decisions to report? Multi-disciplinary in approach, Obesity, Eating...