Social and cultural anthropology Books

Being Jewish in Brazil--the world's largest Catholic country--is fraught with paradoxes, and living in São Paulo only amplifies these vivid contradictions. The metropolis is home to Jews from over 60 countries of origin, and to the Hebraica, the world's...

Gravestones, cemeteries, and memorial markers offer fixed points in time to examine Americans' changing attitudes toward death and dying. In tracing the evolution of commemorative practices from the seventeenth century to the present, Sherene Baugher and...

Prehistoric Florida societies, particularly those of the peninsula, have been largely ignored or given only minor consideration in overviews of the Mississippian southeast (A.D. 1000-1600). This groundbreaking volume lifts the veil of uniformity...

Built in 1566 by Spanish conquistador Juan Pardo, Fort San Juan is the earliest known European settlement in the interior United States. Located at the Berry site in western North Carolina, the fort and its associated domestic compound stood near the...

During Spanish colonization of the Greater Antilles, the islands' natives were forced into labor under the encomienda system. The indigenous people became "Indios," their language, appearance, and identity transformed by the domination imposed by a...

By AD 1000, the Colla controlled the high-altitude plains near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru. They fought over the region for many centuries before becoming a subject people of the Inca (who described them as the most formidible foes they faced) circa...

This collection of six original essays explores the peculiar ethnic composition and history of New Orleans, which the authors persuasively argue is unique among American cities. The focus of Creole New Orleans is on the development of a colonial...

Explores how the conditions that shaped Rwanda's labor organization and industries also shaped Rwanda's genocide.

Shows how the creation of an idealized image of the Mondragon cooperatives is part of a new global ideology that promotes cooperative labor-management relations in order to discredit labor unions and working-class organizations.

Liz Lally didn't know that Tom was a cartoon character when she agreed to marry him-but their honeymoon, more than forty years ago, was a good first indicator. Liz's groom had neglected to make reservations and ended up taking her to a run-down hotel...

Snapshots Behind the Façade is an absorbing collection of observations, many of them profound, on various facets of life on planet Earth. In essence, the author takes a broad look at the fabricated social environment that we humans have created for...

No other country can come close to claiming the diversity with which the United States interacts with the world. In a sense, Americans are so diverse that we look like the world, or to put it another way, the world is coming to look like us.Americans are...

This book uses a social world-today's undergraduate students' ubiquitous everyday experience of television-as a vehicle for helping awaken students to the true possibilities for learning and their responsibilities inherent in achieving those goals. The...

Using archaeological materials recovered from a housesite in Mobile, Alabama, Laurie Wilkie explores how one extended African-American family engaged with competing and conflicting mothering ideologies in the post-Emancipation South.

This dazzling collection of original essays from some of the country's leading thinkers asks the rather intriguing question - Are Italians White? Each piece carefully explores how, when and why whiteness became important to Italian Americans, and the...

For thousands of years, in the myths and folktales of people around the world, animals have spoken in human tongues. Western and non-Western literary and folkloric traditions are filled with both speaking animals, some of whom even narrate or write their...

Dance occupies a prestigious place in Indian performing arts, yet it curiously, to a large extent, has remained outside the arena of academic discourse. This book documents and celebrates the emergence of contemporary dance practice in India...

This theoretically innovative anthology investigates the problematic linkages between conserving cultural heritage, maintaining cultural diversity, defining and establishing cultural citizenship, and enforcing human rights. It is the first publication to...

This collection offers the fruits of a stimulating workshop that sought to bridge the fraught relationship which sometimes continues between anthropologists and indigenous/native/aboriginal scholars, despite areas of overlapping interest...

The twentieth anniversary edition of Henry Jenkins's Textual Poachers brings this now-canonical text to a new generation of students interested in the intersections of fandom, participatory culture, popular consumption and media theory. Supplementing the...

Praise for the first edition:'No one seriously interested in youth mass culture or style can afford to ignore this work.' - Stanley Cohen, The Times Higher Education Supplement 'The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies deserves our gratitude for...

Surrealism and the Exotic is the story of the obsessive relationship between surrealist and non-western culture. Describing the travels across Africa, Oceania, Mexico and the Caribbean made by wealthy aesthetes, it combines an insight into the mentality...

The largest Japanese community outside East Asia in the 1930s and one long neglected in English-language scholarship was in Brazil. Drawing heavily on little-used sources, including the Japanese-language press of Brazil, Stewart Lone explores the growth...

Pat Caplan is a social anthropologist who began doing research on Mafia Island for her Ph.D. in the 1960s when Mikidadi and his relatives made her part of their family . She has continued to revisit the island periodically since then and has published...

In this set of essays Walima T. Kalusa and Megan Vaughan explore themes in the history of death in Zambia and Malawi from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Drawing on extensive archival and oral historical research they examine the impact...

African Cultures, Memory and Space is an impeccable volume that powerfully grapples with a gamut of cultural heritage issues, challenges and problems from a vista of inter- and multi-disciplinary approach. The book, which is designed as a foundational...

In Coffee Time, Mary Njeri Kinyanjui uses her childhood experiences in a rural coffee farm to show the struggles that farmers go through to earn a living. They linger in poverty as intermediaries along the coffee value chain rake huge profits. It is a...

Chieftaincy in Africa has displayed remarkable dynamics and adaptability to new socio-economic and political developments, without becoming totally transformed in the process. Almost everywhere on the continent, chiefdoms and chiefs have become active...

This book provides a deep insight into the socio-economic reality and complexity of two of Ghana's largest slums - Nima and Maamobi - located in the capital city, Accra. It identifies and analyses the socio-religious, cultural and political contexts of...

Africa is rich in (neo) traditional dances; yet, not much exists in the form of written literature on the subject. Even worse, existing documents date back to the colonial period and are often disparaging. Dance to Africans is what martial arts are to...

Embark on an immersive journey through the captivating world of the Three Kingdoms Era, where history, intrigue, and cultural richness intertwine. "The Pulse of Change" offers a comprehensive exploration of the societal and cultural landscape...