Anthropology Books

This first volume is a compilation of numerous essays by Douglas on the Lele in the Belgian Congo covering a fifteen year period. There are early indications of Douglas's cultural imagination and written expression that were to make her works accessible...

First published in 1982, this is one of Mary Douglas' favourite books. It is based on her meetings with friends in which they attempt to apply the grip/group analysis from Natural Symbols. The essays have been important texts for preparing grid/group...

This volume is a reassessment of Malinowski's work by a group of his former pupils and colleagues. A frank evaluation, not a eulogy, it examines the real and lasting importance of Malinowski's ...

A reissue of Malinowski's first field monograph, containing historical and theoretical material. This edition includes a major essay by Michael Young who draws on Malinowski's diary, unpublished ...

This is an invaluable work looking into new areas relating to India's princely states. Based on an abundance of rarely used archival material, the book sheds new light on diversities related to the princely states such as health policies and practices,...

Agrarian transformations within and across countries have been significantly and dynamically altered during the past few decades compared to previous eras, provoking a variety of reactions from rural poor communities worldwide. The recent convergence of...

It has been customary in the appraisal of the different approaches to the study of Japan anthropology to invoke an East-West dichotomy positing hegemonic 'Western' systems of thought against a more authentic 'Eastern' alternative. Top scholars in the...

Using archaeology and social anthropology, and more than 100 original line drawings and photographs, An Archaeology of Images takes a fresh look at how ancient images of both people and animals were used in the Iron Age and Roman societies of Europe, 600...

First published in 1972. A revival of interest in primitive religion has been one of the most marked characteristics of British social anthropology of recent years. Inspired by the work of Audrey Richards, whose writing on ritual contains many of the...

In this book, renowned author José Maurício Domingues places Latin America within the third phase of global modern civilization and offers a general theoretical approach to contemporary Latin America. He sees modernity as configured by episodic...

Modern political anthropology began in 1940 with the first systematic comparative studies of how primitive societies maintained law and order. The focus was on government and the presence or absence of state institutions. Recently, interest has shifted...

This book is unique in its approach in that each chapter covers women in their everyday lives and the problems, which concern them. Until now, ethnographic research has almost always been carried out with the help of the male population and as a result...

This book examines the political structure of the Nandi tribe in the first half of the twentieth century and contains chapters on the following: · Land divisions and local authorities · Age-sets · War organisation · Administrative changes · Law ·...

First published in 1932.As well as an extensive introduction, this edition contains notes to all four books, a bibliographical index, a general index and an index of Tibetan words. The introduction is particularly valuable in that it sets the importance...

Examining the history and intellectual activity of the medieval Svetambara Jain renunciant order, the Tapa Gaccha, this book focuses on the consolidation by the Tapa Gaccha from the thirteenth century of its identity as the leading Svetambara order. The...

Senegalese Murid migrants have circulated cargo and currency through official and unofficial networks in Africa and the world. Muslim Families in Global Senegal focuses on trade and the transmission of enduring social value though cloth, videos of...

Applies an ethnographic perspective to the study of primatesPrimate Ethnographies, 1/e is a collection of first-person accounts of immersive field studies of primates, people, and institutions, revealing the wide spectrum of primate science (primatology)...

In the vast anthropological literature devoted to hunter-gatherer societies, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the place of hunter-gatherer children. Children often represent 40 percent of hunter-gatherer populations, thus nearly half the...

"A fast and exciting read. . . . This survey of Owsley's career will appeal to both science and legal buffs." --Publishers WeeklyThe story of the Smithsonian's brilliant forensic anthropologist and the 9,000-year-old skeleton that sparked his landmark...

Through a richly detailed examination of the practices of spinning yarn from the fleece of llamas and alpacas, Earth, Water, Fleece and Fabric explores the relationship that herders of the present and of the past have maintained with their herd animals...

First published in 1988. This large and authoritative volume offers, for the first time, a representative selection of the works of ninety-five of Arabia's best creative authors. It presents poetry, drama and short stories from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and...

Originally published in 1970, this book represents a unique study of beliefs and ritual practices in a pagan religion, and of the processes by which a transformation to Christianity took place.Christianity came to the major islands of Polynesia nearly...

The Rights and Wrongs of Land Restitution: 'Restoring What Was Ours' offers a critical, comparative ethnographic, examination of land restitution programs. Drawing on memories and histories of past dispossession, governments, NGOs, informal...

Over the last fifteen years local citizens' movements have spread rapidly throughout Japan. Created with the aim of improving the quality of the local environment, and of environmental management processes, such activities are widely referred to as...

Food is an important cultural marker of identity in contemporary Asian societies, and can provide a medium for the understanding of social relations, family and kinship, class and consumption, gender ideology, and cultural symbolism. However, a truly...

This book follows the work of the 'Good Roots Project' - a multi-year forestry and agriculture research project in the Philippines. The scheme is an attempt on the part of industry, science and the government to better understand the processes of...

In this highly personal account Joy Hendry relates her experiences of fieldwork in a Japanese town and reveals a fascinating cross-section of Japanese life. She sets out on a study of politeness but a variety of unpredictable events including a volcanic...

Indusrialisation and Society provides an essential introduction to the effects of industrialisation on British society, from Queen Victoria's reign to the birth of the welfare state in the 1940s.This book deals with the remarkable social consequences of...

By addressing the issue of food and eating in Britain today this collection considers the ways in which food habits are changing and shows how social and personal identities and perceptions of health risk influence people's food choices.The articles...

Anthropology poses an explicit challenge to standard notions of scientific knowledge. It claims to produce genuine insights into the workings of culture in general on the basis of individual social experience in the field. Social Experience and...

This book is the third in the trilogy of books looking at the comparatively less-known destinations of Sikh migration to non-English speaking countries. The first one was Sikhs in Latin America, followed by Sikhs in Asia Pacific.Earlier Sikh migration...

Originally published in 1974, Ritual in Industrial Society is based on several years' research including interviews and observations into the importance of ritual in industrial society within modern Britain. The book addresses how identity and meaning...

Originally published in 1989, Death, Ritual and Bereavement examines the social history of death and dying from 1500 to the 1930s. This edited collection focuses on the death-bed, funerals, burials, mourning customs, and the expression of grief. The...

Biological Influences on Criminal Behavior, Second Edition is fully updated to include recent research, studies, and publications examining the integration of the biological view with mainstream social, psychological, and environmental views in...

In colonial Africa, Christianity has often supported, sustained, and legitimated a violent process of governance. More recently, however, following decades of violence and oppression, churches and religious organizations have mobilized African publics...

Focusing on Mexican-American and Puerto Rican populations in Chicago, Latino Ethnic Consciousness documents the development of the a collective Hispanic or Latino ethnic identity, distinct and separate from the national and cultural affiliations of...

Does the achievement of economic equality in a multiethnic society require the complete loss of a minority's cultural identity? Beyond Aztlan argues that American society has historically viewed a distinctive cultural identity as something that an ethnic...

The Palace of Culture and Science is a massive Stalinist skyscraper that was "gifted" to Warsaw by the Soviet Union in 1955. Framing the Palace's visual, symbolic, and functional prominence in the everyday life of the Polish capital as a...

At one time Francis L.K. Hsu put forth a hypothesis on kinship that proposed a functional relationship between particular kinship systems and behavior patterns in particular cultural contexts. The controversy provoked among cultural anthropologists by...

A study of a rural region and plural society, this book is a distinctive contribution to anthropology, cultural ecology, the study of social and economic change, and North American studies.