Anthropology Books

A comprehensive collection of creation stories ranging across widely varying times and cultures, including Ancient Egyptian, African, and Native American.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore,...

Using Delhi's contemporary history as a site for reflection, Pirate Modernity moves from a detailed discussion of the technocratic design of the city by US planners in the 1950s, to the massive expansions after 1977, culminating in the urban crisis of...

Reframing Pilgrimage argues that sacred travel is just one of the twenty-first century's many forms of cultural mobility. The contributors consider the meanings of pilgrimage in Christian, Mormon, Hindu, Islamic and Sufi traditions, as well as in secular...

Drawing on ethnographic research at the British seaside, this book offers an original and insightful anthropological contribution to the study of contemporary Britain and nationalism. The volume focuses on people who have retired from different parts of...

This book shows how international influences profoundly shaped the 'English' home of Victorian and Edwardian London; homes which, in turn, influenced Britain's (and Britons') place on the world stage. The period between 1850 and 1914 was one of...

Focusing on the Sápmi region of Northern Europe as a point of departure, this book enriches and sharpens the concept of 'the North'. It combines detailed empirical research on the Sámi people and their life-worlds with theoretical contributions from...

Nonhuman animals are ubiquitous to our 'human' societies. Interdisciplinary human/animal research has - for 50 years - drawn attention to how animals are ever-present in what we think of as human spaces and cultures. Our societies are built with animals...

In recent years, scholars have understood the increasing use of the St George's Cross by football fans to be evidence of a rise in a specifically 'English' identity. This has emerged as part of a wider 'national' response to broader political processes...

This book offers a multifaceted look at Northeast India and the customs and traditions that underpin its legal framework. The book:charts the transition of traditions from colonial rule to present day, through constitutionalism and the consolidation of...

This volume looks at the politics of communication and culture in contemporary South Asia. It explores languages, signs and symbols reflective of current mythologies that underpin instances of performance in present-day India and its neighbouring...

In recent years, the Leveson Inquiry in Great Britain, as well as the EU High-Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism, have stirred heated debates about media accountability and media self-regulation across Europe. How responsible are journalists? How...

The central concern of this book is to find answers to fundamental questions about the British asylum system and how it operates. Based on ethnographic research over a two-year period, the work follows and analyses numerous asylum appeals through the...

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture presents the first comprehensive survey of research on the relationship between language and culture. It provides readers with a clear and accessible introduction to both interdisciplinary and...

Why is rudeness such a prominent feature of contemporary broadcasting? If broadcasting is about the enactment of sociability, then how can we account for the fact that broadcasting has become a sphere of anger, humiliation, anger, dispute and upset? And...

Prototypes have acquired much prominence and visibility in recent times. Software development is perhaps the case in point, where the release of non-stable versions of programmes (beta versions) has become commonplace, as is famously the case in free and...

This book investigates amaXhosa circumcision and the psychological processes involved. Lauraine Vivian employs concepts such as resilience, orthodoxy, broken men, and reciprocity to examine the experiences of men who have developed mental health issues...

Sensing the Everyday is a multi-sited ethnographic inquiry based on fieldwork experiences and sharp everyday observations in the era of crisis. Blending sophisticated theoretical analyses with original ethnographic data, C. Nadia Seremetakis journeys...

Contemporary Japan is in a state of transition, caused by the forces of globalization that are derailing its ailing economy, stalemating the political establishment and generating alternative lifestyles and possibilities of the self. Amongst this nascent...

Since the 1978 opening up of China and her active engagement in economic reformation and modernization, China has become a truly global economic power. These developments have, consequently, had an impact on ethnic Chinese people living across the world...

The rise of popular politics is among one the most significant social and political developments the People's Republic of China has witnessed in the post-Mao era. People from all walks of life have responded to rising inequalities and the privatization...

Emergent Masculinities in the Pacific focuses on the plasticity and contingent nature of Pacific Island masculinities over the course of colonial and postcolonial histories. The several case histories concern the use of sports to recuperate but also...

Food has, for most of our species history, been intensely political: who gets to eat what, how often, and through what means? The scale of polity in question has shifted over time, from very local institutions dividing up grain piles to an international...

The police are perhaps the most visible representation of government. They are charged with what has been characterized as an "impossible" mandate -- control and prevent crime, keep the peace, provide public services -- and do so within the...

In the first decade of the twentieth-century, many composers rejected the principles of tonality and regular beat. This signaled a dramatic challenge to the rationalist and linear conceptions of music that had existed in the West since the Renaissance...

This book examines the legacy of Lebanon's civil war and how the population, and the youth in particular, are dealing with their national past. Drawing on extensive qualitative research and social observation, the author explores the efforts of those who...

In its second edition, Method in Social Science was widely praised for its penetrating analysis of central questions in social science discourse. This revised edition comes with a new preface and a full bibliography. The book is intended for students and...

An anthropologist among aid workers. Her objective: to study that exotic tribe, humanitarian and development workers, along with their state and non-state partners, as they "export democracy" to post-soviet countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Her...

This first full-length study of the history of Iranian anthropology charts the formation and development of anthropology in Iran in the twentieth century. The text examines how and why anthropology and culture became part of wider socio-political...

This book examines the role played by the media in China's cultural transformation in the early years of the 21st century. In contrast to the traditional view that sees the Chinese media as nothing more than a tool of communist propaganda, it...

What implications are applications of new genetic technologies in biomedicine having on social identity in today's society? New Genetics, New Identities, a wide-ranging multi-disciplinary volume in the CESAGen Genetics & Society Book series, presents...

In a new and engaging study, Halemba explores the religion and world outlook of the Telengits of Altai. The book provides an account of the Altai, its peoples, clans and political structures, focusing particularly on on the Telengits, whilst also...

As the full effects of human activity on Earth's life-support systems are revealed by science, the question of whether we can change, fundamentally, our relationship with nature becomes increasingly urgent. Just as important as an understanding of our...

Land reform has been an indisputable part of Indonesian revolution. The consequent execution of development programmes for nation-building have provoked intense hostility over territorial rights. Global market forces in Indonesia have seen increasing...

How do we become who we are? How is it that people are so similar in the ways they differ from one another, and so different in the ways they are the same?Christina Toren's theory of mind as not only a physical phenomenon, but an historical one, sets out...

Syncretism - the synthesis of different religious - is a contentious word. Some regard it as a pejorative term, referring to local versions of notionally standard `world religions' which are deemed `inauthentic' because saturated with indigenous content...

Interweaving ethnography and autoethnography, this book documents the emergence of doulas as care professionals in Italy. It considers their training, practices, and representation, and analyses their role in national and international context. 

This Handbook offers a cross-cultural examination of labor around the world and presents the breadth of a growing and vital subfield of anthropology. Bringing together the work of an impressive group of international scholars, the book is essential for...

The Pacific Islands have some of the highest rates of family violence in the world. Addressing the contemporary mutations of Pacific Island families and the shifting understandings of violence in the context of rapid social change, this book investigates...

This book provides a theoretically and empirically grounded examination of the struggle for maternity care in contemporary Russia, framed by changes to the healthcare system and the roles of its participants after socialism.

This book explores the universe of locative tourism applications.

This volume uses osteobiography and individual-level analyses of burials retrieved from the La Plata River Valley (New Mexico) to illustrate the variety of roles that Ancestral Pueblo women played in the past (circa AD 1100-1300).

This book demonstrates the fragility of democratic norms and institutions, and the allure of fascist politics within the Trump era. The chapters consider the antagonistic cultural practices through which divergent political machinations, including white...

Mannequins in Museums is a collection of historical and contemporary case studies that examine how mannequins are presented in exhibitions and shows that, as objects used for storytelling, they are not neutral objects. Demonstrating that mannequins have...

Elizabeth Collick, herself a widow, writes out of her own experience and that of many others to describe what happens, in the hope that it may bring strenght and support to those in grief. She writes of the yearning ache, the strange fears, the anger,...

This title explores the role of women in the politics of national identity in Vietnam. Drawing on diverse primary resources--including state news media, government contests, tabloid journalism, and extensive interviews--the author examines the intimate...