Social and cultural anthropology Books

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 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...

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...

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. 

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 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...

This book gives a social anthropological account of whaling culture in Japan. When originally published this was the first comprehensive account in English of the history of Japanese whaling, showing how it has given rise to a particular culture. The...

From Rebellion to Riots is a critical analysis of the roots of contemporary violence in one of Indonesia s most ethnically heterogeneous provinces, West Kalimantan. Since the late 1960s, this province has suffered periodic outbreaks of ethnic violence...

As European colonies in Asia and Africa became independent nations, as the United States engaged in war in Southeast Asia and in covert operations in South America, anthropologists questioned their interactions with their subjects and worried about the...

Focusing on former socialist states in Eastern Europe, the contributors disclose the political and physical dangers inherent in field research. They reveal how communities undergo political and economic dislocations, plummeting living standards, and...

Contends that the ambivalence felt by all humans about sex, death and eating other animals can be explained by a set of coordinated principles that are expressed in taboos. Valeri evokes the world of the Huaulu, to show the attractions of the animal...

Romantic Motives explores a topic that has been underemphasized in the historiography of anthropology. Tracking the Romantic strains in the the writings of Rousseau, Herder, Cushing, Sapir, Benedict, Redfield, Mead, Levi-Strauss, and others, these essays...

The transition to democracy in South Africa was one of the defining events in twentieth-century political history. The South African women's movement is one of the most celebrated on the African continent. Shireen Hassim examines interactions between the...

This volume offers information on how, for 50 years, the bush Kaliai in Melanesia have worked the deserted cargo left by US Marines during World War II into their indigenous culture. The author seeks to show how cargo cults in general bring together...

A rich ethnography of present-day Iranian seminarian women, revealing the complex ways that they create and define their intellectual and political connections to the Islamic republic.

The Realness of Things Past proposes a new paradigm of historical practice. It questions the way we conventionally historicize the experiences of non-modern peoples, western and non-western, and makes the case for an alternative. It shows how our...

Have you ever wondered what people say in Focus Groups? Focus Groups have been an extremely effective marketing research tool for decades. The fate or success of many products has been decided by people discussing their values and needs in small groups...

Systems of Classification in Premodern Medical Cultures puts historical disease concepts in cross-cultural perspective, investigating perceptions, constructions and experiences of health and illness from antiquity to the seventeenth century...

This book provides a comprehensive and multifaceted analysis of the Sámi society and its histories and people, offering valuable insights into how they live and see the world. The chapters examine a variety of social and cultural practices, and...

Social, economic, and technological changes disrupt many Indigenous, ethnic, and rural communities even when offering progress. Under these conditions, social and psychological dysfunctions are likely to emerge. This book provides insights regarding how...

This book examines the stories that corporations tell about themselves-and explores the powerful influence of corporations in the transformation of cultural and social life. Six case studies draw on CEO memoirs, annual reports, management manuals,...

The great expanse of Arctic and Sub-Arctic lands that stretch across the northern edge of the American continent is as difficult and demanding to human beings as any in the world. The Athapaskan-speaking Indians who made it their home never captured the...

Based on an intensive fourteen-year study of a Hungarian peasant village, Proper Peasants greatly expands our knowledge of Eastern European social organizations with its accurate portrayal of a rapidly vanishing peasant way of life. Centering on the...

This book examines the complex relationship between class and gender dynamics among tea ceremony (chadō) practitioners in Japan. Focusing on practitioners in a provincial city, Akita, the book surveys the rigid, hierarchical chadō system at grass roots...

Originally published in 1915, this pioneer study has long occupied an important place in the literature of sociology. An exercise in the statistical correlation of the economic and social institutions of the working classes of the early twentieth...

In this book Martin McQuillan brings Derrida's writing into the immediate vicinity of geo-politics today, from the Kosovan conflict to the war in Iraq.  The chapters in this book follow both Derrida's writing since Specters of Marx and the present...

Sandra Beckett's book explores the contemporary retelling of the Red Riding Hood tale in Western children's literature.

This encyclopedia examines Russian culture from 1953, Stalin's death, to the present day. Both 'Russian' and 'Culture' are defined broadly. Given the diversity of the Federation in its ethnic composition and regional characteristics,...

First published in 1930, this is the final of Edward Westermarck's trilogy of titles that explore the society, culture and customs of Morocco. Compiled from years of personal research and interviews conducted with local people, this collection of native...

Artifacts in organizations are ubiquitous but often overlooked. The chapters in this book illustrate that artifacts are everywhere in organizational life. They prevail in how offices are decorated, language is used, business cards are designed, and...

First published in 1987, Constructive Drinking is a series of original case studies organized into three sections based on three major functions of drinking. The three constructive functions are: that drinking has a real social role in everyday life;...

First published in 1980, this book provides an overview of E. E. Evans-Pritchard's approach to anthropology. His seminal works on the Azande and the Nuer had an immense impact on the field in Britain. He wrote these works in his thirties and forties,...