Anthropology Books

This volume presents state-of-the-art empirical studies working in a paradigm that has become known as human behavioral ecology. The emergence of this approach in anthropology was marked by publication by Aldine in 1979 of an earlier collection of...

Awarded the W. W. Howells Award for the Outstanding Book in Biological Anthropology, this volume presents a comprehensive, integrated, and up-to-date overview of the major physiological and behavioral factors affecting human reproduction. In attempting...

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In the decades following the introduction of Communist Party rule in Shanghai in 1949, the city's economy, infrastructure and links with the world all atrophied. However, the past decade has seen far-reaching economic reforms implemented to recreate...

What does disgust have to do with citizenship? How might pain and pleasure, movement, taste, sound and smell be configured as aspects of national belonging? Senses and Citizenships: Embodying Political Life examines the intersections between sensory...

Originally published in 1998, Ritual, Identity, and the Mayan Diaspora examines the lives and the continuing ritual traditions of the Mayas in the United States. The book focuses on a predominantly Maya town in rural Florida and shows how members of this...

Originally published in 2002 Culture, Ritual and Revolution in Vietnam is a study of the history and consequences of the revolutionary campaign to transform culture and ritual in northern Vietnam. Based upon official documents and several years of field...

How did a random batch of chimpanzees come to populate a small island in Tanzania where apes had never lived before? Combining information gathered from fieldwork, laboratory and archival research, this book tells the unique story of chimpanzee babies...

Part of the series Key Concepts in Indigenous Studies, this book focuses on the concepts that recur in any discussion of nature, culture and society among the indigenous. This final volume in the five-volume series deals with the two key concepts of...

Originally published in 1946, Mongolian Journey follows Henning Haslund's trip across Mongolia, inspired by the 'desire to see what was hidden on the other side of the farthest of all known passes.' It includes chapters on the younger generation of...

In academic descriptions of cosmopolitanism, one particularly important distinction often recurs. Specifically, scholars have been concerned to distinguish between cosmopolitanism as a set of mundane practices and/or competences on the one hand and...

This book explores the conceptual basis for the events and processes in the prehistory of the Athapaskans, one of the most wide-spread peoples in western North America. The author bases his research on the premise that social structure is not passively...

Archaeoastronomy is a rapidly developing interdisciplinary inquiry into the minds of our prehistoric and ancient ancestors, one that attempts to reconstruct the ways in which early peoples made use of the sky and its significance to them. Astronomy...

Irish Ethnologies gives an overview of the field of Irish ethnology, covering representative topics of institutional history and methodology, as well as case studies dealing with religion, ethnicity, memory, development, folk music, and traditional...

Few would doubt that social science is in serious need of a new conceptual framework for the study of human organizations. For some time now such a framework has been sought in the notion that societies are functional systems, in which the individual...

Choreographies of the Living explores the implications of shifting from viewing art as an exclusively human undertaking to recognizing it as an activity that all living creatures enact. Carrie Rohman reveals the aesthetic impulse itself to be profoundly...

El libro relata la colonización dirigida de Ciudad Romero en las selvas de Panamá en Donoso, Atlántico Centro Occidental en la provincia de Colón y luego la repatriación de los refugiados salvadoreños a el Bajo Lempa. Asimismo, se aborda la migración...

Written by nationally recognized anthropologists Conrad Kottak and Lara Descartes, this ethnography of largely white, middle class families in a town in the midwest explores the role that the media play in influencing how those families cope with...

As peace activists have faced increased government repression and accusations of being unpatriotic since 9/11, Toussaint examines how current attempts to control dissent impact the peace movement. This study offers an analysis of self-identified...

Progressive Black Masculinities brings together leading black cultural critics including Michael Eric Dyson, Mark Anthony Neal, and Patricia Hill Collins to examine an alternatively demonized and mythologized black masculinity.

This book is an exploration of how Chinese communites in the United States and Germany create and disseminate a sense of diasporic Chinese identity.

In Intoxicated Identities, Tim Mitchell provides a novel and well-grounded framework for understanding subjective drinking experiences from the Aztecs to the present day in areas as diverse as Chiapas, Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Mexico City, Texas and...

The Gender/Sexuality Reader is a sophisticated survey which contextualizes gender and sexuality in a matrix of varied racial formations, nationalisms, colonialisms, imperialisms and movements for social change. Contributors include: Lila Abu-Lughod,...

The weakness of Brazil's black consciousness movement is commonly attributed to the fragility of Afro-Brazilian ethnic identity. In a major account, John Burdick challenges this view by revealing the many-layered reality of popular black consciousness...

The Ma' Betisek are a group of aborigines who live on the mangrove coastal area of Selangor in peninsular Malaysia. Dr Karim's study is mainly focused on the Ma' Betisek communities on Carey Island, off the west coast of Selangor and in particular...

This wide-ranging, comparative, and multidisciplinary collection addresses the significance of books in creating the idea of home. The chapters present cases that reveal the affective and sensory dimensions of books and reading in the practice of...

Through a range of ethnographic case studies focusing on the Portuguese recovery after the economic crisis, this book begins a conversation about the experience of recuperation and repair.

This book explores indigenous dances and social relationships surrounding the dance activities among Yupik on St. Lawrence Island and Iñupiat in Utqiaġvik, Northern Alaska.

This handbook critically examines the three concepts of exclusion, inequality and stigma and their interrelationship in the Indian context. Divided into five parts, the volume deals with the issues of exclusion, inequality, gender discrimination, health...

Japan is not only the oldest society in the world today, but also the oldest society to have ever existed. This aging trend, however, presents many challenges to contemporary Japan, as it permeates all areas of life, from the economy and welfare to...

This volume considers the role of analogy in symbol formation, with reference to bodily process. It focuses on symbols and symbolic structures that can be traced over millenia and across geographical distance and addresses the beginnings of figurative...

This book contains the most recent archaeological and ethnohistorical studies of west and northwest Mexico, two of the least known areas of Mesoamerica. It discusses areal and cultural syntheses and specific problems such as chronology, social...

This is an evaluation of the religious culture of Lingayatism, a religion of more than eight million people about whom little is known outside India. The author records the achievements of Basava, an emissary prophet who waged a crusade against...

Predominantly a rural nation, Poland is most often depicted with urban scenes: steelworkers, trade unions, Communist party members, and Solidarity meetings. In contrast to this industrial vision, Reluctant Socialists, Rural Entrepreneurs views historical...

This ethnographic study offers a detailed picture of how modern biomedicine is altered when practised in a developing country. Addressing the question of therapeutic outcome, Dr Finkler examines various aspects of biomedicine that influence patient...

Museums as Agents for Social Change is the first comprehensive text to examine museum practice in a decolonised moment, moving beyond known roles of object collection and presentation. Drawing on studies of Mutare museum, a regional museum in Eastern...

In this lively and witty history of the study of political culture, Michael Brint examines the differences between the French sociological tradition from Montesquieu to Tocqueville; the German tradition of cultural philosophy from Kant to Weber; and the...

Time pressure, speed and the desire for instant consumption pervade accounts of contemporary lives. Why is it that people feel pressed for time, in what ways have societies changed to create this condition, and with what implications? This book...

The idea of diversity dominates cultural policy in the twenty-first century. Against the perceived elitism of the past, policy-makers seek to use culture to address social exclusion. Drawing on original research, this book exposes problems with this...

In recent years the spatial turn in literary and cultural studies has opened up new ways of looking at the interactions among writers, readers, texts, and places. Geocriticism offers a timely new approach, and Geocritical Explorations presents an array...

One of the world's most eminent social anthropologists draws upon his many years of study and research in the field of kinship and social organization to review the development of anthropological theory and method from Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) to...

Much of what we are comes from our ancestors. Through cultural and biological inheritance mechanisms, our genetic composition, instructions for constructing artifacts, the structure and content of languages, and rules for behavior are passed from parents...

Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood charts new territory by exploring the notion of motherhood for women of differing classes, races, religions and nations in the light of various strategies and new technologies used to attain motherhood.

This book makes a significant contribution to contemporary debates on "globalization," culture and gender. Focusing on intersections of the local and the global in Africa, contributors elucidate how translocal and transnational cultural currents are...