Browse

By Author

• eBook available December 2015

  Ecological Migrants

  The Relocation of China's Ewenki Reindeer Herders

  Xie, Y.

  Reindeer-herding Ewenki hunters have lived in the forests of China’s Greater Khingan Range for over three hundred years. They have sustained their livelihoods by collecting plants and herbs, hunting animals and herding reindeer. This ethnography details changing Ewenki ways of life brought first by China’s modernization and development policies and more recently by ecological policies that aim to preserve and restore the badly damaged ecologies of western China. Xie reflects on modernization and urbanization in China through this study of ecological migration policies and their effects on relocated Aoluguya Ewenki hunters.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General)

• eBook available October 2021

  Moral Economy at Work

  Ethnographic Investigations in Eurasia

  Yalçın-Heckmann, L. (ed)

  The idea of a moral economy has been explored and assessed in numerous disciplines. The anthropological studies in this volume provide a new perspective to this idea by showing how the relations of workers, employees and employers, and of firms, families and households are interwoven with local notions of moralities. From concepts of individual autonomy, kinship obligations, to ways of expressing mutuality or creativity, moral values exert an unrealized influence, and these often produce more consent than resistance or outrage.

  Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Sociology

• July 2002

  Bali and Beyond

  Case Studies in the Anthropology of Tourism

  Yamashita, S.

  Based on field research carried out over two decades, the author surveys the development of the anthropology of tourism and its significance, using case studies drawn from Indonesia, New Guinea and Japan. He argues that tourism, once seen as rather peripheral by anthropologists, has to be treated as a phenomenon of major importance, both because the size of the flows of people and capital involved, and because it is one of the major sites in which the meeting and hybridization of culture takes place. Tourism, he suggests, leads not to the destruction of local cultures, as many critics have implied, but rather to the emergence of new cultural forms.

  The central part of the book presents a detailed case-study of the island of Bali in Indonesia. It traces the development of tourism there during the colonial period, and the ways in which "Balinese traditional culture" was developed first by western artists and scholars in the colonial period, and more recently by Balinese government officials in the guise of "cultural tourism." The general theme of the "presentation of tradition" is also discussed in relation to Toraja funerals in the Indonesian province of Sulawesi, western visitors to the Sepik River in Papua-New-Guinea, and the small city of Tono in northern Japan which has become a center for the study of folk-lore.

  Subjects: Travel and Tourism Development Studies Anthropology (General)

• eBook available December 2002

  Globalization in Southeast Asia

  Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives

  Yamashita, S. & Eades, J.S. (eds)

  The rapid postwar economic growth in the Southeast Asia region has led to a transformation of many of the societies there, together with the development of new types of anthropological research in the region. Local societies with originally quite different cultures have been incorporated into multi-ethnic states with their own projects of nation-building based on the creation of "national cultures" using these indigenous elements. At the same time, the expansion of international capitalism has led to increasing flows of money, people, languages and cultures across national boundaries, resulting in new hybrid social structures and cultural forms.

  This book examines the nature of these processes in contemporary Southeast Asia with detailed case studies drawn from countries across the region, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. At the macro-level these include studies of nation-building and the incorporation of minorities. At the micro-level they range from studies of popular cultural forms, such as music and textiles to the impact of new sects and the world religions on local religious practice. Moving between the global and the local are the various streams of migrants within the region, including labor migrants responding to the changing distribution of economic opportunities and ethnic minorities moving in response to natural disaster.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Development Studies

• October 2004

  The Making of Anthropology in East and Southeast Asia

  Yamashita, S., Bosco, J., & Eades, J.S. (eds)

  CHOICE OUTSTANDING BOOK OF THE YEAR 2005

  Despite the growth of interest in the history of anthropology as a over the last two decades, surprisingly little has been published in English on the development of anthropology in East and Southeast Asia and its relationship to the rest of the academic "world-system." The anthropological experience in this region has been varied. Japanese anthropology developed early, and ranks second only to that of the United States in terms of size. Anthropology in China has finally recovered from the experience of invasion, war, and revolution, and now flourishes both on the mainland and in Taiwan. Scholars in Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines have also attempted to break with the legacy of colonialism and develop research relevant to their own national needs.

  This book includes accounts of these developments by some of the most distinguished scholars in the region. Also discussed are issues of language, authorship, and audience; and the effects these have on writing by anthropologists, whether "native" or "foreign." The book will be invaluable to anyone with an interest in the anthropology of East and Southeast Asia or the development of anthropology as a global discipline.

  Subject: Theory and Methodology

• eBook available March 2018

  World Heritage Craze in China

  Universal Discourse, National Culture, and Local Memory

  Yan, H.

  There is a World Heritage Craze in China. China claims to have the longest continuous civilization in the world and is seeking recognition from UNESCO. This book explores three dimensions of the UNESCO World Heritage initiative with particular relevance for China: the universal agenda, the national practices, and the local responses. With a sociological lens, this book offers comprehensive insights into World Heritage, as well as China’s deep social, cultural, and political structures.

  Subjects: Heritage Studies Archaeology Sociology Travel and Tourism

• eBook available May 2022

  Soho on Screen

  Cinematic Spaces of Bohemia and Cosmopolitanism, 1948-1963

  Young, J.

  Despite Soho’s rich cultural history, there remains an absence of work on the depiction of the popular neighbourhood in film. Soho on Screen provides one of the first studies of Soho within postwar British cinema. Drawing upon historical, cultural and urban studies of the area, this book explores twelve films and theatrically released documentaries from a filmography of over one hundred Soho set productions. While predominantly focusing on low-budget, exploitation films which are exemplars of British and international filmmaking, Young also offers new readings of star and director biographies, from Laurence Harvey to Emeric Pressburger, and in so doing enlivens discussion on filmmaking in a time and place of intense social transformation, technological innovation and growing permissiveness.

  Subjects: Film and Television Studies Media Studies

• June 2000

  Under Siege

  Portraits of Civilian Life in France During World War I

  Young, R. (ed)

  Studies on the First World War are plentiful but most tend to focus on the combatants. This volume offers a new and highly original perspective that shows the reader the civilian side of this protracted and destructive war through a succession of "snapshots": 130 excerpts from leading American and Canadian newspapers provide a collective portrait of life behind the battle lines, what is often called the "second" front. Written principally by Paris-based journalists, and intended for popular reading audiences, these articles depict ordinary people in a way that still touches the reader of today. They record eye-witness testimony of Paris under aerial bombardment, the gutted cathedrals at Reims and Arras, the cemeteries around Compiègne, the subterranean living quarters at Cambrai, and the heart-breaking orphanages at Chambly.

  Introduced and concluded by the editor, the volume also offers biographical notes on some of the leadingjournalist contributors, maps to familiarize readers with the geography of northern France, and detailed subject and geographical indices. The volume ends with a select bibliography of works on the subject of French civilian life during the Great War.

• eBook available September 2015

  The Event of Charlie Hebdo

  Imaginaries of Freedom and Control

  Zagato, A. (ed)

  The January 2015 shooting at the headquarters of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and the subsequent attacks that took place in the Île-de-France region were staggeringly violent events. They sparked an enormous discussion among citizens and intellectuals from around Europe and beyond. By analyzing the effects the attacks have had in various spheres of social life, including the political, ideology, collective imaginaries, the media, and education, this collection of essays aims to serve as a contribution as well as a critical response to that discussion. The volume observes that the events being attributed to Charlie Hebdo go beyond sensationalist reports of the mainstream media, transcend the spatial confines of nation states, and lend themselves to an ever-expanding number of mutating discursive formations.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies Political and Economic Anthropology

• eBook available December 2016

  Microhistories of the Holocaust

  Zalc, C. & Bruttmann, T. (eds)

  How does scale affect our understanding of the Holocaust? In the vastness of its implementation and the sheer amount of death and suffering it produced, the genocide of Europe’s Jews presents special challenges for historians, who have responded with work ranging in scope from the world-historical to the intimate. In particular, recent scholarship has demonstrated a willingness to study the Holocaust at scales as focused as a single neighborhood, family, or perpetrator. This volume brings together an international cast of scholars to reflect on the ongoing microhistorical turn in Holocaust studies, assessing its historiographical pitfalls as well as the distinctive opportunities it affords researchers.

  Subjects: Genocide History History: World War II Jewish Studies

• November 2022

  Sexscapes of Pleasure

  Women, Sexuality and the Whore Stigma in Italy

  Zambelli, E.

  Focusing on Italy, this book discusses how women negotiate sexuality and social status in a Western sexscape constituted by multifaceted articulations of women’s sexuality, commodities and modernity. Drawing from ethnographic research, this book brings together the narratives of Italian and migrant women pole dancing for leisure, women pole and lap dancing for work, as well as women selling sex. By tracing commonalities in women’s processes of subjectivation and othering across the non/sex working women divide, the book foregrounds the intersecting structures of oppression under which women negotiate selfhood.

  Subjects: Sociology Gender Studies and Sexuality Anthropology (General)

• November 2014

  Rivers, Memory, And Nation-building

  A History of the Volga and Mississippi Rivers

  Zeisler-Vralsted, D.

  Rivers figure prominently in a nation’s historical memory, and the Volga and Mississippi have special importance in Russian and American cultures. Beginning in the pre-modern world, both rivers served as critical trade routes connecting cultures in an extensive exchange network, while also sustaining populations through their surrounding wetlands and bottomlands. In modern times, “Mother Volga” and the “Father of Waters” became integral parts of national identity, contributing to a sense of Russian and American exceptionalism.  Furthermore, both rivers were drafted into service as the means to modernize the nation-state through hydropower and navigation. Despite being forced into submission for modern-day hydrological regimes, the Volga and Mississippi Rivers persist in the collective memory and continue to offer solace, recreation, and sustenance. Through their histories we derive a more nuanced view of human interaction with the environment, which adds another lens to our understanding of the past.

  Subjects: History (General) Environmental Studies (General) Memory Studies

• September 2022

  An Anthropological Toolkit

  Sixty Useful Concepts

  Zeitlyn, D.

  Presenting 60 theoretical ideas, David Zeitlyn argues ‘How to write about anthropological theory without making a specific theoretical argument.’

  “David Zeitlyn has written a wryly engaging, short book on, essentially, why we should not become theoretical partisans—that, indeed, being a serious theorist means accepting precisely that principle.”—Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University

  To answer, he gives a series of mini essays about an eclectic collection of theoretical concepts that over many years he has found helpful. The book celebrates the muddled inconsistencies in the ways that humans live their messy lives. However, for all the mess, there are patterns discernable: the actors can understand what is going on, they see an event unfolding in ways that are familiar, as belonging to a certain type and therefore, Zeitlyn suggests, so can researchers.

  From the introduction:
  This book promotes an eclectic, multi-faceted anthropology in which multiple approaches are applied in pursuit of the limited insights which each can afford…. I do not endorse any one of these idea as supplying an exclusive path to enlightenment: I absolutely do not advocate any single position. As a devout nonconformist, I hope that the following sections provide material, ammunition and succour to those undertaking nuanced anthropological analysis (and their kin in related disciplines)…. Mixing up or combining different ideas and approaches can produce results that, in their breadth and richness, are productive for anthropology and other social sciences, reflecting the endless complexities of real life.

  …This is my response to the death of grand theory. I see our task as learning how to deal with that bereavement and how to resist the siren lures of those promising synoptic overviews.

  This book is relevant to anthropology, communication studies, cultural studies and sociology.

  Subject: Theory and Methodology

• eBook available September 2018

  Elite Malay Polygamy

  Wives, Wealth and Woes in Malaysia

  Zeitzen, M. K.

  Elite Malay women’s polygamy narratives are multiple and varied, and their sentiments regarding the practice are conflicted, as they are often torn between personal and religious convictions. This volume explores the ways in which this increasingly prominent practice impacts Malay gender relations. As Muslims, elite Malay women may be forced to accept polygamy, but they mostly condemn it as women and wives, as it forces them to manage their lives and loves under the “threat” of polygamy from a husband able to marry another woman without their knowledge or consent; a husband that is married but available.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Gender Studies and Sexuality Political and Economic Anthropology

• February 2007

  Driving Germany

  The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930-1970

  Zeller, T.

  Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

  Hitler's autobahn was more than just the pet project of an infrastructure-friendly dictator. It was supposed to revolutionize the transportation sector in Germany, connect the metropoles with the countryside, and encourage motorization. The propaganda machinery of the Third Reich turned the autobahn into a hyped-up icon of the dictatorship. One of the claims was that the roads would reconcile nature and technology. Rather than destroying the environment, they would embellish the landscape. Many historians have taken this claim at face value and concluded that the Nazi regime harbored an inbred love of nature. In this book, the author argues that such conclusions are misleading. Based on rich archival research, the book provides the first scholarly account of the landscape of the autobahn.

  Subjects: Transport Studies History: 20th Century to Present Mobility Studies Environmental Studies (General)

• eBook available April 2013

  Irish/ness Is All Around Us

  Language Revivalism and the Culture of Ethnic Identity in Northern Ireland

  Zenker, O.

  Focusing on Irish speakers in Catholic West Belfast, this ethnography on Irish language and identity explores the complexities of changing, and contradictory, senses of Irishness and shifting practices of 'Irish culture' in the domains of language, music, dance and sports. The author’s theoretical approach to ethnicity and ethnic revivals presents an expanded explanatory framework for the social (re)production of ethnicity, theorizing the mutual interrelations between representations and cultural practices regarding their combined capacity to engender ethnic revivals. Relevant not only to readers with an interest in the intricacies of the Northern Irish situation, this book also appeals to a broader readership in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, history and political science concerned with the mechanisms behind ethnonational conflict and the politics of culture and identity in general.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Peace and Conflict Studies Cultural Studies (General)

• eBook available May 2010

  Beyond Writing Culture

  Current Intersections of Epistemologies and Representational Practices

  Zenker, O. & Kumoll, K. (eds)

  Two decades after the publication of Clifford and Marcus’ volume Writing Culture, this collection provides a fresh and diverse reassessment of the debates that this pioneering volume unleashed. At the same time, Beyond Writing Culture moves the debate on by embracing the more fundamental challenge as to how to conceptualise the intricate relationship between epistemology and representational practices rather than maintaining the original narrow focus on textual analysis. It thus offers a thought-provoking tapestry of new ideas relevant for scholars not only concerned with ‘the ethnographic Other’, but with representation in general.

  Subject: Theory and Methodology

• October 2022

  At Home in a Nursing Home

  An Ethnography of Movement and Care in Australia

  Zhang, A. R. Y.

  Focusing on contemporary ideas about how aged care is provided, this book poses the question: How can people who are aged and frail live out the final phase of their lives with dignity? In seeking answers, the author examines what it means to be ‘at home’ in residential care in a novel and compassionate way. In an ethnographic study of how elderly residents can be given the right care, this book provides a new route into the bodily realities of ageing. It is a vital contribution to the search for alternative approaches to aged care provision.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology

• eBook available July 2004

  Resistance in an Amazonian Community

  Huaorani Organizing against the Global Economy

  Ziegler-Otero, L.

  Like many other indigenous groups, the Huaorani of eastern Ecuador are facing many challenges as they attempt to confront the globalization of capitalism in the 21st century. In 1991, they formed a political organization as a direct response to the growing threat to Huaorani territory posed by oil exploitation, colonization, and other pressures. The author explores the structures and practices of the organization, as well as the contradictions created by the imposition of an alien and hierarchical organizational form on a traditionally egalitarian society. This study has broad implications for those who work toward "cultural survival" or try to "save the rainforest."

  Subjects: Development Studies Sociology

• June 2014

  Encounters with Modernity

  The Catholic Church in West Germany, 1945-1975

  Ziemann, B.

  During the three decades from 1945 to 1975, the Catholic Church in West Germany employed a broad range of methods from empirical social research. Statistics, opinion polling, and organizational sociology, as well as psychoanalysis and other approaches from the “psy sciences,” were debated and introduced in pastoral care. In adopting these methods for their own work, bishops, parish clergy, and pastoral sociologists tried to open the church up to modernity in a rapidly changing society. In the process, they contributed to the reform agenda of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Through its analysis of the intersections between organized religion and applied social sciences, this award-winning book offers fascinating insights into the trajectory of the Catholic Church in postwar Germany.

  Subject: History: 20th Century to Present

• eBook available September 2011

  Multiple Moralities and Religions in Post-Soviet Russia

  Zigon, J. (ed)

  In the post-Soviet period morality became a debatable concept, open to a multitude of expressions and performances. From Russian Orthodoxy to Islam, from shamanism to Protestantism, religions of various kinds provided some of the first possible alternative moral discourses and practices after the end of the Soviet system. This influence remains strong today. Within the Russian context, religion and morality intersect in such social domains as the relief of social suffering, the interpretation of history, the construction and reconstruction of traditions, individual and social health, and business practices. The influence of religion is also apparent in the way in which the Russian Orthodox Church increasingly acts as the moral voice of the government. The wide-ranging topics in this ethnographically based volume show the broad religious influence on both discursive and everyday moralities. The contributors reveal that although religion is a significant aspect of the various assemblages of morality, much like in other parts of the world, religion in postsocialist Russia cannot be separated from the political or economic or transnational institutional aspects of morality.

  Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General)

• eBook available June 2021

  German Rule, African Subjects

  State Aspirations and the Reality of Power in Colonial Namibia

  Zimmerer, J.

  Although it lasted only thirty years, German colonial rule dramatically transformed South West Africa. The colonial government not only committed the first genocide of the twentieth century against the Herero and Nama, but in their efforts to establish a “model colony” and “racial state,” they brought about even more destructive and long-lasting consequences. In this now-classic study—available here for the first time in English—the author provides an indispensable account of Germany's colonial utopia in what is present-day Namibia, showing how the highly rationalized planning of Wilhelmine authorities ultimately failed even as it added to the profound immiseration of the African population.

  Subjects: Colonial History History: 20th Century to Present

• eBook available March 2019

  Raccomandazione

  Clientelism and Connections in Italy

  Zinn, D. L.

  The issue of patronage-clientelism has long been of interest in the social sciences. Based on long-term ethnographic research in southern Italy, this book examines the concept and practice of raccomandazione: the omnipresent social institution of using connections to get things done. Viewing the practice both from an indigenous perspective – as a morally ambivalent social fact – and considering it in light of the power relations that position southern Italy within the nesting relations of global Norths and Souths, it builds on and extends past scholarship to consider the nature of patronage in a contemporary society and its relationship to corruption.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Applied Anthropology

• eBook available January 2022

  Tropological Thought and Action

  Essays on the Poetics of Imagination

  Živković, M., Pelkey, J. & Fernandez, J. W. (eds)

  From twilight in the Himalayas to dream worlds in the Serbian state, this book provides a unique collection of anthropological and cross-cultural inquiry into the power of rhetorical tropes and their relevance to the formation and analysis of social thought and action through a series of ethnographic essays offering in-depth studies of the human imagination at work and play around the world.

  Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology

• June 2001

  Global Migrants, Global Refugees

  Problems and Solutions

  Zolberg, A. & Benda, P. (eds)

  In recent years, several influential commentators have stated or strongly implied that the advanced industrial democracies are today being overwhelmed by a host of problems - including rapid population growth, the breakup of multi-ethnic states, environmental degredation, and increasing economic differentials between the "developing" and "developed" worlds - for which no effective solutions are at hand. The migration-inducing potential of these post-Cold War developments has been a particular source of concern.

  This volume provides a counter-catastrophic view of developments and a more sober and balanced assessment of the challenges the United States and other industrial democracies face in the sphere of international migration than that offered in recent years. The first part is devoted to a diagnosis of the problem, revalution of the notion of a "migration crisis" by examining the likely consequences of population growth, environmental degredation, and political conflict in the developing and post-communist worlds. Special attention is also given to the manifestations of these forces in the western hemisphere where they may have direct consequences for immigration to the United States. In the second part the implications for U.S. policy are considered, ranging from promotion of democracy and development of strategies for minimizing international migrations and refugee flows to the intricacies of humanitarian relief and intervention when preventive measures prove ineffective.

  Subject: Refugee and Migration Studies

• February 2010

  Transnational Families, Migration and Gender

  Moroccan and Filipino Women in Bologna and Barcelona

  Zontini, E.

  By linking the experiences of immigrant families with the increased reliance on cheap and flexible workers for care and domestic work in Southern Europe, this study documents the lived experiences of neglected actors of globalization — migrant women — as well as the transformations of Western families more generally. However, while describing in detail the structural and cultural contexts within which these women have to operate, the book questions dominant paradigms about women as passive victims of patriarchal structures and brings out instead their agency and the creative ways in which they take control of their lives in often difficult circumstances. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, the author offers a valuable dual comparison between two Southern European countries on the one hand and between two migrant groups, one Christian and one Muslim, on the other, thus bringing to light unique detailed data on migration decision-making, settlement and on the multiple ways in which different women cope with the consequences of their transnational lives.

  Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Gender Studies and Sexuality Anthropology (General)