Social and cultural anthropology Books

Uncommon DominionVenetian Crete and the Myth of Ethnic PuritySally McKee"Sally McKee's magisterial book on the character of Venetian dominion in fourteenth-century Crete contributes immensely to our understanding of that neglected subject. Moreover, the...

Toward an Anthropology of the Will, the first book that systematically explores volition from an anthropological point of view, demonstrates how a richly nuanced, ethnographically-informed approach to the cultural experience of willing can help shape...

Envisioning America is a revealing ethnographic portrait of how naturalized Chinese in Southern California have pursued the democratic ideals of participation through political empowerment and community recognition despite impediments to their full...

The study shows, in chronological fashion, how African women writers in the past five decades have introduced a new, autobiographical discourse around their experience of excision, bringing nuance and vitality to the FGM debate.

This book is about the migrations for family reunion that have taken place in post-1997 Hong Kong between mothers and children living in mainland China and their long-absent husbands and fathers, residents of Hong Kong.

In what is today Malaysia, the British established George Town on Penang Island in 1786 and encouraged Chinese merchants and laborers to settle there. This book analyzes the relations between the Chinese and British and between the Chinese and Malays,...

The last several decades have witnessed major restructurings-economic, political, and cultural-in the international arena. The depth and scope of these changes have prompted anthropologists to rethink many of their most basic assumptions, to problematize...

The high school reunion occurs throughout the United States and cuts across differences in age, locality, and ethnicity. This popular event is commonly thought of as a light-hearted social occasion or an exercise in nostalgia that has little other...

This innovative work explores the historical consciousness of a people caught between two life-worlds. The Duna of Papua New Guinea have developed their own views of historical change, expressed in a fusion of two elements: indigenous ideas of...

A Stanford University Press classic.

This study of three Argentine provincial capitals introduces a new concept in Latin American urban studies: the historical role of secondary cities, settlements large enough to possess all the elements commonly associated with urban areas and yet too...

Why did a practice that had been considered a duty stop being a duty, or, conversely, why did daughters lose the right they had previously enjoyed of receiving from their parents the wherewithal to contribute to the support of their marriage? Despite the...