Social and cultural anthropology Books

Though not a systematic theologian, Thomas Merton spent a lifetime writing in an immensely appealing way about the monastic tradition and mystical theology. One of the fundamental questions he examined was that of the self; for Merton the recovery of the...

Egypt's January 2011 uprising spurred millions to action with a cacophony of demands-including the call to address Egypt's education crisis and adult literacy rates. Read in the Name of Your Lord traces the push for universal literacy as a project caught...

How does emigration affect those left behind? The fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s led citizens to look for a better, more stable life elsewhere. For the older generations, however, this wasn't an option. In this powerful and moving work, Ivana...

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,...

In an ethnically stratified work force, Japanese, South Sea Islander, Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal divers brought up from the sea floor the shell that produced mother-of-pearl, and sometimes pearls. Many men died at this dangerous work.This was...

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,...

In this study, E. Frances King explores how people first learn to relate to the images and artefacts of religious belief within their domestic environments. As a sense of religious belonging is instilled on a daily basis in the home, it also becomes...

In this delicious book, noted food scholar Carole M. Counihan presents a compelling and artfully told narrative about family and food in late 20th-century Florence. Based on solid research, Counihan examines how family, and especially gender have...

From Prague to Tennessee to Brazil, it's hard to find a consensus on what constitutes an average family. In today's world, the nuclear family is rarely the standard family structure, if it ever was. Families of a New World brings together an...

Rich with the voices and stories of participants, these touching, firsthand accounts examine how women of diverse racial, ethnic, class and religious backgrounds perceive prenatal testing, the most prevalent and routinized of the new reproducing...

Knowing Differently provides a comprehensive account of the worldviews nurtured and sustained by indigenous communities across the world through their distinctive understanding - of space and time, joy and pain, life and death, the epistemological clash...

Hailed as the beneficiary, driving force and result of globalisation, India's middle-class is puzzling in its diversity, as a multitude of traditions, social formations and political constellations manifest contribute to this project. This book looks at...

Taking a theoretical and multidisciplinary perspective, the essays in this collection provide compelling insight into contemporary Cambodian culture at home and abroad. The book represents the first sustained exploration of the relationship between...

In Working Images, prominent visual anthropologists and artists explore how old and new visual media can be integrated into contemporary forms of research and representation.

From its origins as a distinct set of ritualised practices in the sixteenth century to its international expansion in the twentieth, tea culture has had a major impact on artistic production, connoisseurship, etiquette, food, design and more recently, on...

This fascinating study explores how our prehistoric ancestors developed rituals from everyday life and domestic activities. Richard Bradley contends that for much of the prehistoric period, ritual was not a distinct sphere of activity. Rather it was the...

This book provides theoretical and empirical discussion of migration, identity and Europeanisation. With contributions from leading international scholars, it provides both an overview of theoretical perspectives and a comprehensive set of case studies,...

Yongding County in southeast China is famous for its large, multistory communal vernacular buildings known as tulou, translated "rammed earth building." These structures were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008. Living in Heritage introduces...

Staging Tianxia explores the ancient Chinese vision of world order known as tianxia (all under heaven) by focusing on the historical, performative, and rhetorical processes of expressive arts and cultural heritages that inform a vision of China as a...

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,...

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,...

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,...

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,...

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,...

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,...

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,...

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,...

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,...

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,...

Focusing on everyday experiences of sexuality in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, this book considers personal narratives and other queer artefacts to shed light on linguistic and performative strategies of resistance, referred to as queer...

The Legacy of Mesoamerica: History and Culture of a Native American Civilization summarizes and integrates information on the origins, historical development, and current situations of the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. It describes their...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...