Browse

By Title

• October 2008

  I Dreamed the Animals

  Kaniuekutat: The Life of an Innu Hunter

  Henriksen†, G.

  This is Kaniuekutat's book. In it, he tells the story of his life and that of Innu culture in the northern parts of Labrador. The pages of this book are filled with the voice of Kaniuekutat giving his account of an Innu hunter's life and the problems and distress that have been caused by sedentarization and village life. Kaniuekutat invites us to see Innu society and culture from the inside, the way he lives it and reflects upon it. He was greatly concerned that young Innu may lose their traditional culture and the skills necessary to make a living as hunters, and wanted to convey a message: the Innu must take care of their language, their culture and their traditions.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Environmental Studies

• eBook available October 2018

  Ice and Snow in the Cold War

  Histories of Extreme Climatic Environments

  Herzberg, J., Kehr, C., & Torma, F. (eds)

  The history of the Cold War has focused overwhelmingly on statecraft and military power, an approach that has naturally placed Moscow and Washington center stage. Meanwhile, regions such as Alaska, the polar landscapes, and the cold areas of the Soviet periphery have received little attention. However, such environments were of no small importance during the Cold War: in addition to their symbolic significance, they also had direct implications for everything from military strategy to natural resource management. Through histories of these extremely cold environments, this volume makes a novel intervention in Cold War historiography, one whose global and transnational approach undermines the simple opposition of “East” and “West.”

  Subjects: Postwar History Environmental Studies General Geography

• February 2007

  Identifying with Freedom

  Indonesia after Suharto

  Day, T (ed)

  Indonesia, a huge secular, archipelagic nation-state in Southeast Asia, is one of the world's newest democracies. Yet little is known to outsiders about this complex and fascinating country, the home of the world's largest Muslim community and the scene of recent natural disasters and violent communal struggles. Eleven scholars provide incisive critical appraisals of the leading issues and controversies facing Indonesians as they seek to build a democratic nation that is tolerant of multicultural diversity and free from imperial domination.

  Subject: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology

• December 2002

  Identities

  Time, Difference and Boundaries

  Friese, H. (ed)

  "Identity" has become a core concept of the social and cultural sciences. Bringing together perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and literary criticism, this book offers a comprehensive and critical overview on how this concept is currently used and how it relates to memory and constructions of historical meaning.

  Subjects: General History General Cultural Studies General Anthropology Sociology

• eBook available November 2019

  Identities and Place

  Changing Labels and Intersectional Communities of LGBTQ and Two-Spirit People in the United States

  Crawford-Lackey, K. & Springate, M. E. (eds)

  With a focus on historic sites, this volume explores the recent history of non- heteronormative Americans from the early twentieth century onward and the places associated with these communities. Authors explore how queer identities are connected with specific places: places where people gather, socialize, protest, mourn, and celebrate. The focus is deeper look at how sexually variant and gender non-conforming Americans constructed identity, created communities, and fought to have rights recognized by the government. Each chapter is accompanied by prompts and activities that invite readers to think critically and immerse themselves in the subject matter while working collaboratively with others.

  Subjects: Archaeology General Cultural Studies

• March 2007

  Identity and Networks

  Gender and Ethnicity in a Cross-Cultural Context

  Bryceson, D., Okely, J., & Webber, J. (eds)

  Contrary to the negative assessments of the social order that have become prevalent in the media since 9/11, this wide-ranging collection of essays, mostly by social anthropologists, focuses instead on the enormous social creativity being invested as collective identities are reconfigured. Using fieldwork findings drawn from Africa, Asia, and Europe, special emphasis is placed on the reformulation of ethnic and gender relationships and identities in the cultural, social, political, and religious realms of public life. Under what circumstances does trust arise, paving the way for friendship, collegiality, knowledge creation, national unity, or emergence of leadership? How is social life constructed as a collective endeavour? Does the means towards sociability become its end? And what can be said about the agency and collegiality of women? The inspiration for examining these conundrums is the work and persona of Shirley Ardener, to whom the volume is dedicated.

  Contributors: Jonathan Benthall, Deborah Fahy Bryceson, Gina Buijs, Sandra Burman, Hilary Callan, Gaynor Cohen, Janette Davies, Tamara Dragadze, Ronnie Frankenberg, Peter Geschiere, Kirsten Hastrup, Paula Heinonen, Maria Jaschok, Grazyna Kubica, Rhian Loudon, Sharon Macdonald, Zdzislaw Mach, Fiona Moore, Judith Okely, Lidia D. Sciama, Shui Jingjun, Cecillie Swaisland, Jacqueline Waldren, Jonathan Webber.

  Subjects: Gender Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology Sociology

• eBook available May 2007

  Identity Matters

  Ethnic and Sectarian Conflict

  Peacock, J. M., Thornton, P. M., and Inman, P. B. (eds)

  In response to the attacks of September 11, 2001 and war in Afghanistan, the Fulbright New Century Scholars program brought together social scientists from around the world to study sectarian, ethnic, and cultural conflict within and across national borders. As one result of their year of intense discussion, this book examines the roots of collective violence — and the measures taken to avoid it — in Burma (Myanmar), China, Germany, Pakistan, Senegal, Singapore, Thailand, Tibet, Ukraine, Southeast Asia, and Western Europe.

  Case studies and theoretical essays introduce the basic principles necessary to identify and explain the symbols and practices each unique human group holds sacred or inalienable. The authors apply the methods of political science, social psychology, anthropology, journalism, and educational research. They build on the insights of Gordon Allport, Charles Taylor, and Max Weber to describe and analyze the patterns of behavior that social groups worldwide use to maintain their identities.

  Written to inform the general reader and communicate across disciplinary boundaries, this important and timely volume demonstrates ways of understanding, predicting and coping with ethnic and sectarian violence.

  Contributors: Badeng Nima, David Brown, Kwanchewan Buadaeng, Patrick B. Inman, Karina V. Korostelina, James L. Peacock, Thomas F. Pettigrew, Wee Teng Soh, Hamadou Tidiane Sy, Patricia M. Thornton, Mohammad Waseem.

  Subjects: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies

• eBook available January 2012

  Identity Politics and the New Genetics

  Re/Creating Categories of Difference and Belonging

  Schramm, K., Skinner, D., & Rottenburg, R. (eds)

  Racial and ethnic categories have appeared in recent scientific work in novel ways and in relation to a variety of disciplines: medicine, forensics, population genetics and also developments in popular genealogy. Once again, biology is foregrounded in the discussion of human identity. Of particular importance is the preoccupation with origins and personal discovery and the increasing use of racial and ethnic categories in social policy. This new genetic knowledge, expressed in technology and practice, has the potential to disrupt how race and ethnicity are debated, managed and lived. As such, this volume investigates the ways in which existing social categories are both maintained and transformed at the intersection of the natural (sciences) and the cultural (politics). The contributors include medical researchers, anthropologists, historians of science and sociologists of race relations; together, they explore the new and challenging landscape where biology becomes the stuff of identity.

  Subjects: Medical Anthropology Sociology

• August 1997

  Identity, Gender and Poverty

  New Perspectives on Caste and Tribe in Rajasthan

  Unnithan-Kumar, M.

  Most studies of the so-called tribal communities in India stress their social, economic, and political differences from communities that are organized on the basis of caste. It was this apparent contrast between tribal and caste lifestyle and, moreover, the paucity of material on tribal groups, that motivated the author to undertake this study of a poor "tribal" community, the Girasia, in northwestern India.

  While carrying out her fieldwork, the author soon became aware that the traditional tribe-caste categories needed to be revised; in fact, she found them more often than not to be constructs by outsiders, mostly academic. Of greater importance for an understanding of the Girasia was the wider and more complex issue of self-perception and identification by others that must be seen in the context of their poverty as well as in the strategic and shifting use of kinship, gender and class relations in the region.

  Subjects: Gender Studies Development Studies General Anthropology

• February 2020

  If Everyone Returned, The Island Would Sink

  Urbanisation and Migration in Vanuatu

  Petrou, K.

  Focusing on the small island of Paama, Vanuatu, and the capital, Port Vila, this book presents a rare and recent study of the ongoing significance of urbanization and internal migration in the Global South. Based on longitudinal research undertaken in rural ‘home’ places, urban suburbs and informal settlements, this book reveals the deep ambivalence of the outcome of migration, and argues that the fundamental organizing principles of cultural life – in this case centered on kinship and an ‘island home’ – are significantly more important for urban and rural living than the effects of migration.

  Subjects: General Mobility Studies Refugee & Migration Studies

• August 2001

  Ignaz Maybaum

  A Reader

  Lange, N. de (ed)

  Ignaz Maybaum (1897-1976) is widely recognized as one of the foremost Jewish theologians of the post-Holocaust era. Although he is mentioned in most treatments of post-Holocaust Jewish theology, his works are out of print and are only accessible to a small readership.

  Nicholas de Lange (who worked closely with Maybaum in his lifetime), has made a representative selection from his writings, under various headings: Judaism in the Modern Age, Trialogue between Jew, Christian, and Muslim, the Holocaust, and Zion. In an Introduction, he sets Maybaum's thoughts against the background of their time, indicates their main lines, and assesses how much of them is still of value today.

  Subject: Jewish Studies

• November 2003

  Illness and Irony

  On the Ambiguity of Suffering in Culture

  Lambek, M. & Antze, P. (ed)

  Theories of illness and therapy since Freud have included the possibility that sufferers are complicit in their conditions. The studies in this volume explore the ways in which illness and therapy may be characterized as sites at which ironies of the human condition are produced, encountered, acknowledged – or discounted in favor of more literal readings. They ask what these sites can teach us about questions of human agency and about the broader importance of irony for theory.

  Encompassing a variety of perspectives, the contributors included in Illness and Irony apply theories of irony to a myriad of cultural contexts, ranging from Freud’s consulting room and the Lacanian clinics of Buenos Aires to fright illness in a Yemeni village and spirit possession on the island of Mayotte. An introductory chapter by Michael Lambek establishes a contextual viewpoint on irony, arising from the writings of Thomas Mann, Alexander Nehamas and others. Vincent Crapanzano concludes the volume by linking the contributions to current debates about irony in rhetoric, linguistics and comparative literature.

  Subjects: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology General Cultural Studies

• eBook available August 2017

  Images from Paradise

  The Visual Communication of the European Union's Federalist Utopia

  Salgó, E.

  Drawing upon the disciplines of politics, anthropology, psychoanalysis, aesthetics and cinema studies, Salgó presents a new way of looking at the “art of European unification.” The official visual narratives of the European Union constitute the main object of inquiry – the iconography of the new series of euro banknotes and the videos through which the supranational elite seek to generate “collective effervescence,” allow for a European carnival to take place, and prompt citizens to pledge allegiance to the sacred dogma of the “ever closer union,” thereby strengthening the mythical sources of the organization’s legitimacy. The author seeks to illustrate how and why the federalist utopia turned into a political soteriology after the outbreak of the 2008 crisis.

  Subjects: General Anthropology General Cultural Studies Media Studies

• December 2004

  Images of Power

  Iconography, Culture and the State in Latin America

  Andermann, J. & Rowe, W. (eds)

  In Latin America, where even today writing has remained a restricted form of expression, the task of generating consent and imposing the emergent nation-state as the exclusive form of the political, was largely conferred to the image. Furthermore, at the moment of its historical demise, the new, 'postmodern' forms of sovereignty appear to rely even more heavily on visual discourses of power. However, a critique of the iconography of the modern state-form has been missing. This volume is the first concerted attempt by cultural, historical and visual scholars to address the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America, in a comparative perspective spanning various regions and historical stages. The case studies are divided into four sections, analysing the formation of a public sphere, the visual politics of avant-garde art, the impact of mass society on political iconography, and the consolidation and crisis of territory as a key icon of the state.

  Subjects: General Cultural Studies General History

• eBook available April 2012

  Images of Power and the Power of Images

  Control, Ownership, and Public Space

  Kapferer, J. (ed)

  Real places and events are constructed and used to symbolize abstract formulations of power and authority in politics, corporate practice, the arts, religion, and community. By analyzing the aesthetics of public space in contexts both mundane and remarkable, the contributors examine the social relationship between public and private activities that impart meaning to groups of people beyond their individual or local circumstances. From a range of perspectives—anthropological, sociological, and socio-cultural—the contributors discuss road-making in Peru, mass housing in Britain, an unsettling traveling exhibition, and an art fair in London; we explore the meaning of walls in Jerusalem, a Zen garden in Japan, and religious themes in Europe and India. Literally and figuratively, these situations influence the ways in which ordinary people interpret their everyday worlds. By deconstructing the taken for- granted definitions of social value (democracy, equality, individualism, fortune), the authors reveal the ideological role of imagery and imagination in a globalized political context.

  Subjects: General Cultural Studies Sociology

• eBook available July 2011

  Imagining the Post-Apartheid State

  An Ethnographic Account of Namibia

  Friedman, J. T.

  In northwest Namibia, people’s political imagination offers a powerful insight into the post-apartheid state. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork, this book focuses on the former South African apartheid regime and the present democratic government; it compares the perceptions and practices of state and customary forms of judicial administration, reflects upon the historical trajectory of a chieftaincy dispute in relation to the rooting of state power and examines everyday forms of belonging in the independent Namibian State. By elucidating the State through a focus on the social, historical and cultural processes that help constitute it, this study helps chart new territory for anthropology, and it contributes an ethnographic perspective to a wider set of interdisciplinary debates on the State and state processes.

  Subjects: General Anthropology

• February 1999

  Immigrants and Bureaucrats

  Ethiopians in an Israeli Absorption Center

  Hertzog, E.

  Since Israel is primarily a country of immigrants, the state takes on the responsibility for the settlement and integration of each new group. It therefore sees its role as benevolent and indispensable to the welfare of the immigrants. This be true to some extent. However, the overwhelming effect, the author argues, is exactly the opposite: in her study of Ethiopian immigrants she reaches the conclusion that the absorption centers, which are central to Israeli immigration policy, present an extreme case of bureaucratic control over immigrants; they hinder rather than facilitate integration through the creation of power-dependence relations, with immigrants - whose lives and social structures are constantly interfered with by the officials - being cast as weak, defenseless and needy. They are reduced to helpless charges of these officials whose main goals are to expand and perpetuate their respective organizations and to consolidate their own positions within them. Thus the absorption centers, rather than furthering integration, create dependence on state control and social segregation.

  Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies General Anthropology

• December 1997

  Immigration Admissions

  The Search for Workable Policies in Germany and the United States

  Hailbronner, K., Martin, D. A., & Motomura, H. (eds)

  There is general agreement today that traditional approaches to immigration admissions in the major receiving countries of the West have serious shortcomings either in concept or implementation, or at times in both. These essays, all written by leading immigration experts, consider the philosophical and moral constraints on immigration law and policy, the basic elements of a comprehensive migration policy, and specific policy areas, including family reunification and asylum. Taken together, these perspectives represent a fresh, comparative look at some of the most urgent issues in this pivotal area of law and policy.

  Subject: Refugee & Migration Studies

• March 1998

  Immigration Controls

  The Search for Workable Policies in Germany and the United States

  Hailbronner, K., Martin, D. A. & Motomura, H. (eds)

  Some of the most pressing questions in immigration law and policy today concern the problem of immigration controls. How are immigration laws administered, and how are they enforced against those who enter and remain in a receiving country without legal permission? Comparing the United States and Germany, two of the four extended essays in this volume concern enforcement; the other two address techniques for managing high-volume asylum systems in both countries.

  Subject: Refugee & Migration Studies

• eBook available November 2009

  Immigration Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany

  Negotiating Membership and Remaking the Nation

  Klusmeyer, D. & Papademetriou, D.

  German migration policy now stands at a major crossroad, caught between a fifty-year history of missed opportunities and serious new challenges. Focusing on these new challenges that German policy makers face, the authors, both internationally recognized in this field, use historical argument, theoretical analysis, and empirical evaluation to advance a more nuanced understanding of recent initiatives and the implications of these initiatives. Their approach combines both synthesis and original research in a presentation that is not only accessible to the general educated reader but also addresses the concerns of academic scholars and policy analysts. This important volume offers a comprehensive and critical examination of the history of German migration law and policy from the Federal Republic’s inception in 1949 to the present.

  Subjects: 20th Century History Refugee & Migration Studies

• eBook available July 2020

  Imperial Culture and Colonial Projects

  The Lusophone World from the Fifteen to the Eighteenth Centuries

  Curto, D. R.

  Beyond the immeasurable political and economic changes it brought, colonial expansion exerted a powerful effect on Portuguese culture. And as this book demonstrates, the imperial culture that emerged over the course of four centuries was hardly a homogeneous whole, as triumphalist literature and other cultural forms mingled with recurrent doubts about the expansionist project. In a series of illuminating case studies, Curto follows the history and perception of major colonial initiatives while integrating the complex perspectives of participating agents to show how the empire’s life and culture were richly inflected by the operations of imperial expansion.

  Subjects: Early Modern History Colonialism

• January 2005

  Imperial Germany 1871-1918

  Economy, Society, Culture and Politics

  Berghahn, V. R.

  A comprehensive history of German society in this period, providing a broad survey of its development. The volume is thematically organized and designed to give easy access to the major topics and issues of the Bismarkian and Wilhelmine eras. The statistical appendix contains a wide range of social, economic and political data. Written with the English-speaking student in mind, this book is likely to become a widely used text for this period, incorporating as it does twenty years of further research on the German Empire since the appearance of Hans-Ulrich Wehler's classic work.

  Subject: 18th/19th Century History

• eBook available September 2011

  Imperial Germany Revisited

  Continuing Debates and New Perspectives

  Müller, S. O. & Torp, C. (eds)

  The German Empire, its structure, its dynamic development between 1871 and 1918, and its legacy, have been the focus of lively international debate that is showing signs of further intensification as we approach the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. Based on recent work and scholarly arguments about continuities and discontinuities in modern German history from Bismarck to Hitler, well-known experts broadly explore four themes: the positioning of the Bismarckian Empire in the course of German history; the relationships between society, politics and culture in a period of momentous transformations; the escalation of military violence in Germany's colonies before 1914 and later in two world wars; and finally the situation of Germany within the international system as a major political and economic player. The perspectives presented in this volume have already stimulated further argument and will be of interest to anyone looking for orientation in this field of research.

  Subject: 18th/19th Century History

• May 2015

  Imperial Projections

  Screening the German Colonies

  Fuhrmann, W.

  The beginning of filmmaking in the German colonies coincided with colonialism itself coming to a standstill. Scandals and economic stagnation in the colonies demanded a new and positive image of their value for Germany. By promoting business and establishing a new genre within the fast growing film industry, films of the colonies were welcomed by organizations such as the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society). The films triggered patriotic feelings but also addressed the audience as travelers, explorers, wildlife protectionists, and participants in unique cultural events. This book is the first in-depth analysis of colonial filmmaking in the Wilhelmine Era.

  Subjects: Film Studies Colonialism

• December 2008

  Impotent Warriors

  Perspectives on Gulf War Syndrome, Vulnerability and Masculinity

  Kilshaw, S.

  From September 1990 to June 1991, the UK deployed 53,462 military personnel in the Gulf War. After the end of the conflict anecdotal reports of various disorders affecting troops who fought in the Gulf began to surface. This mysterious illness was given the name “Gulf War Syndrome” (GWS). This book is an investigation into this recently emergent illness, particularly relevant given ongoing UK deployments to Iraq, describing how the illness became a potent symbol for a plethora of issues, anxieties, and concerns. At present, the debate about GWS is polarized along two lines: there are those who think it is a unique, organic condition caused by Gulf War toxins and those who argue that it is probably a psychological condition that can be seen as part of a larger group of illnesses. Using the methods and perspective of anthropology, with its focus on nuances and subtleties, the author provides a new approach to understanding GWS, one that makes sense of the cultural circumstances, specific and general, which gave rise to the illness.

  Subjects: Medical Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies Gender Studies

• September 2012

  In Contrast

  Croatian Film Today

  Vidan, A. & Crnković, G. P. (eds)

  The Croatian film scene has remained largely inaccessible until now. In this first comprehensive volume on the subject recognized scholars explore not only its recent history, since the establishment of the Croatian state, but also revisit its development during the Yugoslav period. By introducing readers to the complex political and artistic circumstances, the authors approach animation, documentary, and feature films, through questions of style and vision, social engagement, industry, national identity, gender, audience, and domestic and international reception. In depth interviews with some of the most prominent Croatian film directors provide insights into their artistic practices while also serving as first-hand testimonials to both socialist and transitional cultural environments. Encompassing a rich selection of films with a broad palette of themes and styles, the review section provides an indispensible guide through a little known world.

  Subject: Film Studies

• April 2020

  In Fading Light

  The Films of the Amber Collective

  Leggott, J.

  For over five decades, the Newcastle-based Amber Film and Photography Collective has been a critical (if often unheralded) force within British documentary filmmaking, producing a variety of innovative works focused on working-class society. Situating their acclaimed output within wider social, political, and historical contexts, In Fading Light provides an accessible introduction to Amber’s output in both national and transnational perspectives, including experimental, low-budget documentaries in the 1970s; more prominent feature films in the 1980s; studies of post-industrial life in the 1990s; and the distinctive perils and opportunities posed by the digital era.

  Subjects: Film Studies Media Studies General Cultural Studies

• April 2001

  In God's Name

  Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century

  Bartov, O. & Mack, P. (eds)

  Despite the widespread trends of secularization in the 20th century, religion has played an important role in several outbreaks of genocide since the First World War. And yet, not many scholars have looked either at the religious aspects of modern genocide, or at the manner in which religion has taken a position on mass killing. This collection of essays addresses this hiatus by examining the intersection between religion and state-organized murder in the cases of the Armenian, Jewish, Rwandan, and Bosnian genocides. Rather than a comprehensive overview, it offers a series of descrete, yet closely related case studies, that shed light on three fundamental aspects of this issue: the use of religion to legitimize and motivate genocide; the potential of religious faith to encourage physical and spiritual resistance to mass murder; and finally, the role of religion in coming to terms with the legacy of atrocity.

  Subject: Genocide Studies

• eBook available June 2019

  In Pursuit of Belonging

  Forging an Ethical Life in European-Turkish Spaces

  Rottmann, S, B.

  Belonging is a not a state that we achieve, but a struggle that we wage. The struggle for belonging is more difficult if one is returning to a homeland after many years abroad. In Pursuit of Belonging is an ethnography of Turkish migrants’ struggle for understanding, intimacy and appreciation when they return from Germany to their Turkish homeland. Drawing on an established tradition of life story writing in anthropology, Rottmann conveys the struggle to forge an ethical life by relating the experiences of a second-generation German-Turkish woman named Leyla.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Refugee & Migration Studies Sociology

• eBook available August 2019

  In Search of European Liberalisms

  Concepts, Languages, Ideologies

  Freeden, M., Fernández-Sebastián, J. & Leonhard, J. (eds)

  Since the Enlightenment, liberalism as a concept has been foundational for European identity and politics, even as it has been increasingly interrogated and contested. This comprehensive study takes a fresh look at the diverse understandings and interpretations of the idea of liberalism in Europe, encompassing not just the familiar movements, doctrines, and political parties that fall under the heading of “liberal” but also the intertwined historical currents of thought behind them. Here we find not an abstract, universalized liberalism, but a complex and overlapping configuration of liberalisms tied to diverse linguistic, temporal, and political contexts.

  Subject: General History

• eBook available January 2016

  In Search of Legitimacy

  How Outsiders Become Part of the Afro-Brazilian Capoeira Tradition

  Griffith, L. M.

  Every year, countless young adults from affluent, Western nations travel to Brazil to train in capoeira, the dance/martial art form that is one of the most visible strands of the Afro-Brazilian cultural tradition. In Search of Legitimacy explores why “first world” men and women leave behind their jobs, families, and friends to pursue a strenuous training regimen in a historically disparaged and marginalized practice. Using the concept of apprenticeship pilgrimage—studying with a local master at a historical point of origin—the author examines how non-Brazilian capoeiristas learn their art and claim legitimacy while navigating the complexities of wealth disparity, racial discrimination, and cultural appropriation.

  Subjects: Performance Studies General Anthropology

• August 2006

  In Search of Salt

  Changes in Beti (Cameroon) Society, 1880-1960

  Quinn, F.

  Relatively recent Bantu-speaking migrants to central Cameroon, the Beti have had an eventful history. Based on extensive interviews and traditional Beti (Fang) poetry, in addition to German and French archival sources, the author of this readable study recreates the social structure of the Beti and their self-perceptions in pre-colonial times, their disruptive encounters with first German (1880-1918) and then French (1918-1960) colonialism, until Cameroon’s independence.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Colonialism

• September 2015

  In the Absence of the Gift

  New Forms of Value and Personhood in a Papua New Guinea Community

  Rasmussen, A. E.

  By adopting ideas like “development,” members of a Papua New Guinean community find themselves continuously negotiating what can be expected of a relative or a community member. Nearly half the people born on the remote Mbuke Islands become teachers, businessmen, or bureaucrats in urban centers, while those who stay at home ask migrant relatives “What about me?” This detailed ethnography sheds light on remittance motivations and documents how terms like “community” can be useful in places otherwise permeated by kinship. As the state withdraws, Mbuke people explore what social ends might be reached through involvement with the cash economy.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Development Studies

• eBook available May 2018

  In the Best Interests of the Child

  Loss and Suffering in Adoption Proceedings

  Mass, M.

  Marshalling her experience as an expert witness in court proceedings on non-consensual, confidential adoption in Israel, Mass describes legal proceedings following the Israeli state petition that declares children eligible for adoption because of alleged parental incapability, and explores the politics of state intervention in the parent/child relationship. The selected case studies present the testimonies of the children, the parents, the designated adoptive parents, and the state’s representatives, as well as the author’s own testimony.

  Subject: Sociology

• eBook available May 2015

  In the Event

  Toward an Anthropology of Generic Moments

  Meinert, L. & Kapferer, B. (eds)

  Events are “generative moments” in at least three senses: events are created by and condense larger-scale social structures; as moments, they spark and give rise to new social processes; in themselves, events may also serve to analyze social situations and relationships. Based on ethnographic studies from around the world—varying from rituals and meetings over protests and conflicts to natural disasters and management—this volume analyzes generative moments through events that hold the key to understanding larger social situations. These events—including the Ashura ritual in Bahrain, social cleavages in South Africa, a Buddhist cave in Nepal, drought in Burkina Faso, an earthquake in Pakistan, the cartoon crisis in Denmark, corporate management at Bang & Olufsen, protest meetings in Europe, and flooding and urban citizenship in Mozambique—are not simply destructive disasters, crises, and conflicts, but also generative and constitutive of the social.

  Subject: General Anthropology

• January 2001

  In the Mind's Eye

  Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Evolution of Human Cognition

  Nowell, A. (ed)

  The last decade has witnessed a sophistication and proliferation in the number of studies focused on the evolution of human cognition, reflecting a renewed interest in the evolution of the human mind in anthropology and in many other disciplines. The complexity and enormity of this topic requires the coordinated efforts of many researchers. This volume brings together the disciplines of palaeontology, psychology, anatomy, and primatology. Together, they address a number of issues, including the evolution of sex differences in spatial cognition, the role of archaeology in the cognitive sciences, the relationships between brain size, cranial reorganization and hominid cognition, and the role of language and information processing in human evolution.

  Subjects: Archaeology General Anthropology

• eBook available September 2016

  In the Name of the Great Work

  Stalin's Plan for the Transformation of Nature and its Impact in Eastern Europe

  Olšáková, D. (ed)

  Beginning in 1948, the Soviet Union launched a series of wildly ambitious projects to implement Joseph Stalin’s vision of a total “transformation of nature.” Intended to increase agricultural yields dramatically, this utopian impulse quickly spread to the newly communist states of Eastern Europe, captivating political elites and war-fatigued publics alike. By the time of Stalin’s death, however, these attempts at “transformation”—which relied upon ideologically corrupted and pseudoscientific theories—had proven a spectacular failure. This richly detailed volume follows the history of such projects in three communist states—Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia—and explores their varied, but largely disastrous, consequences.

  Subjects: Postwar History Environmental Studies

• eBook available October 2016

  Incarceration and Regime Change

  European Prisons during and after the Second World War

  De Vito, C. G., Futselaar, R., & Grevers, H. (eds)

  Political instability is nearly always accompanied by fuller prisons, and this was particularly true during the “long” Second World War, when military mobilization, social disorder, wrenching political changes, and shifting national boundaries swelled the ranks of the imprisoned and broadened the carceral reach of the state. This volume brings together theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich studies of key transitional moments that transformed the scope and nature of European prisons during and after the war. It depicts the complex interactions of both penal and administrative institutions with the men and women who experienced internment, imprisonment, and detention at a time when these categories were in perpetual flux.

  Subjects: WWII History Postwar History

• October 2007

  Inclusionary Rhetoric/Exclusionary Practices

  Left-wing Politics and Migrants in Italy

  Però, D.

  Migration and multiculturalism are hotly discussed in public debates across Europe. Whereas ethnographic research has begun to examine the Right in this context, the Left remains largely unexplored. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Bologna – the show-case city of the Italian Left – this book provides fresh perspectives on how the contemporary Left "frames" these issues in practice and how such framing has changed in recent decades. By focusing on the official rhetoric grassroots discourses, policy and civil societal practices of the Left as well as on the immigrants' own views, this book timely offers a comprehensive, vivid, and critical account of changing ideas about ethnicity, class, identity and difference in "progressive" politics and of the implications that such ideas have for the incorporation of migrants in Europe.

  Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies General Anthropology

• eBook available October 2018

  Indeterminacy

  Waste, Value, and the Imagination

  Alexander, C. & Sanchez, A. (eds)

  What happens to people, places and objects that do not fit the ordering regimes and progressive narratives of modernity? Conventional understandings imply that progress leaves such things behind, and excludes them as though they were valueless waste. This volume uses the concept of indeterminacy to explore how conditions of exclusion and abandonment may give rise to new values, as well as to states of despair and alienation. Drawing upon ethnographic research about a wide variety of contexts, the chapters here explore how indeterminacy is created and experienced in relationship to projects of classification and progress.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Sociology Political Economy

• eBook available June 2017

  Indigeneity and the Sacred

  Indigenous Revival and the Conservation of Sacred Natural Sites in the Americas

  Sarmiento, F. & Hitchner, S. (eds)

  This book presents current research in the political ecology of indigenous revival and its role in nature conservation in critical areas in the Americas. An important contribution to evolving studies on conservation of sacred natural sites (SNS), the book elucidates the complexity of development scenarios within cultural landscapes related to the appropriation of religion, environmental change in indigenous territories, and new conservation management approaches. Indigeneity and the Sacred explores how these struggles for land, rights, and political power are embedded within physical landscapes, and how indigenous identity is reconstituted as globalizing forces simultaneously threaten and promote the notion of indigeneity.

  Subjects: Environmental Studies Development Studies General Anthropology

• eBook available December 2017

  Indigeneity on the Move

  Varying Manifestations of a Contested Concept

  Gerharz, E., Uddin, N., & Chakkarath, P. (eds)

  “Indigeneity” has become a prominent yet contested concept in national and international politics, as well as within the social sciences. This edited volume draws from authors representing different disciplines and perspectives, exploring the dependence of indigeneity on varying sociopolitical contexts, actors, and discourses with the ultimate goal of investigating the concept’s scientific and political potential.

  Subjects: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology General Anthropology

• eBook available May 2017

  Indigenist Mobilization

  Confronting Electoral Communism and Precarious Livelihoods in Post-Reform Kerala

  Steur, L.

  In Kerala, political activists with a background in Communism are now instead asserting political demands on the basis of indigenous identity. Why did a notion of indigenous belonging come to replace the discourse of class in subaltern struggles? Indigenist Mobilization answers this question through a detailed ethnographic study of the dynamics between the Communist party and indigenist activists, and the subtle ways in which global capitalist restructuring leads to a resonance of indigenist visions in the changing everyday working lives of subaltern groups in Kerala.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Sociology

• eBook available October 2015

  Indigenous Medicine Among the Bedouin in the Middle East

  Abu-Rabia, A.

  Modern medicine has penetrated Bedouin tribes in the course of rapid urbanization and education, but when serious illnesses strike, particularly in the case of incurable diseases, even educated people turn to traditional medicine for a remedy. Over the course of 30 years, the author gathered data on traditional Bedouin medicine among pastoral-nomadic, semi-nomadic, and settled tribes. Based on interviews with healers, clients, and other active participants in treatments, this book will contribute to renewed thinking about a synthesis between traditional and modern medicine — to their reciprocal enrichment.

  Subject: Medical Anthropology

• eBook available August 2011

  Indigenous Peoples and Demography

  The Complex Relation between Identity and Statistics

  Axelsson, P. & Sköld, P. (eds)

  When researchers want to study indigenous populations they are dependent upon the highly variable way in which states or territories enumerate, categorise and differentiate indigenous people. In this volume, anthropologists, historians, demographers and sociologists have come together for the first time to examine the historical and contemporary construct of indigenous people in a number of fascinating geographical contexts around the world, including Canada, the United States, Colombia, Russia, Scandinavia, the Balkans and Australia. Using historical and demographical evidence, the contributors explore the creation and validity of categories for enumerating indigenous populations, the use and misuse of ethnic markers, micro-demographic investigations, and demographic databases, and thereby show how the situation varies substantially between countries.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Sociology

• eBook available October 2008

  Indigenous Peoples, Civil Society, and the Neo-liberal State in Latin America

  Fischer, E. F. (ed)

  In recent years the concept and study of “civil society” has received a lot of attention from political scientists, economists, and sociologists, but less so from anthropologists. A ground-breaking ethnographic approach to civil society as it is formed in indigenous communities in Latin America, this volume explores the multiple potentialities of civil society’s growth and critically assesses the potential for sustained change. Much recent literature has focused on the remarkable gains made by civil society and the chapters in this volume reinforce this trend while also showing the complexity of civil society - that civil society can itself sometimes be uncivil. In doing so, these insightful contributions speak not only to Latin American area studies but also to the changing shape of global systems of political economy in general.

  Subjects: General Anthropology

• September 1997

  Indigenous Rights and Development

  Self-Determination in an Amazonian Community

  Gray, A.

  The Arakmbut are an indigenous people who live in the Madre de Dios region of the southeastern Peruvian rain forest. Since their first encounters with missionaries in the 1950s, they have shown resilience and a determination to affirm their identity in the face of many difficulties. During the last fifteen years, Arakmbut survival has been under threat from a goldrush that has attracted hundreds of colonists onto their territories. This trilogy of books traces the ways in which the Arakmbut overcome the dangers that surround them: their mythology and cultural strength; their social flexibility; and their capacity to incorporate non-indigenous concepts and activities into their defence strategies. Each area is punctuated by the constant presence of the invisible spirit, which provides a seamless theme connecting the books to eachother.

  Over a period of about two decades the indigenous movement has grown into an international force, making a marked impact on the United Nations and the International Labor Organization. In this volume, the author looks at the growing consciousness among the Arakmbut who are increasingly demanding that their rights to their territories and resources should be respected in tandem with the growing development of indigenous rights internationally. However, the author points to a significant difference of perception: whereas non-indigenous human-rights legislation receives its legitimacy by judicial means, the Arakmbut find their legal system legitimized through the spirit world. The invisibility of this world makes it appear non-existent to non-indigenous observers. However, to overlook its importance prevents outsiders from understanding and appreciating its significance in the Arakmbut struggle for survival.

  Buy all three volumes for 20% discount

  Subjects: Development Studies General Anthropology

• May 2009

  Indispensable Eyesores

  An Anthropology of Undesired Buildings

  Hoorn, M. v der

  Collapsing concrete colossuses, run-down overgrown skeletons, immutable architectural misfits: the outcasts from our built environment, which we are dying to dispose of — and yet cannot do without — have inspired many ghost stories, crime novels and urban legends. Such narratives reveal the significance of architectural eyesores for the people who live or work in or near them. After exploring various approaches to building lives and deaths, the author presents a rich variety of undesired edifices in Germany, Hungary, Austria and Bosnia-Herzegovina and investigates the different methods used to dispose of them: eliminating, damaging, transforming or ‘reframing’ them, abandoning them to progressive dilapidation or virtually rejecting them. Discarding an edifice, however, need not bring its social life to an end. This analysis continues with a reflection on the afterlife of unwanted buildings, and concludes with a discussion on the life expectancy of buildings, their multi-sensory materiality and ‘thingly’ agency.

  Subjects: Urban Studies General Anthropology General Cultural Studies

• October 1998

  Indoctrinability, Ideology and Warfare

  Evolutionary Perspectives

  Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. & Salter, F.K. (eds)

  Violent ethno-nationalist conflicts continue to mar the history of the twentieth century; yet no satisfactory answer to the question of why humans are susceptible to indoctrination by ideologies that lead to inter-group hostility has so far been found. In this volume an international team of leading scientists from many different fields approach this complex issue from a biological perspective, treating indoctrinability as a predisposition that has its roots in humanity's evolutionary past.

  Subject: 20th Century History

• June 1999

  Industrial Culture and Bourgeois Society in Modern Germany

  Kocka, J.

  Jürgen Kocka is one of the foremost historians of Germany whose work has been devoted to the integration of different genres of the social and economic history of Europe during the period of industrialization. This collection of essays gives a representative sample of his effort to develop, by reference to Marx and Weber, new and powerful analytical tools for understanding the dynamics of modern industrial societies.

  Subjects: Economic History 18th/19th Century History

• eBook available March 2018

  Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism

  Precarity, Class, and the Neoliberal Subject

  Hann, C. & Parry, J. (eds)

  Bringing together ethnographic case studies of industrial labor from different parts of the world, Industrial Labor on the Margins of Capitalism explores the increasing casualization of workforces and the weakening power of organized labor. This division owes much to state policies and is reflected in local understandings of class. By exploring this relationship, these essays question the claim that neoliberal ideology has become the new ‘commonsense’ of our times and suggest various propositions about the conditions that create employment regimes based on flexible labor.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Political Economy

• July 1996

  Insiders and Outsiders

  Paradise and Reality in Mallorca

  Waldren, J.

  The indigenous population of Deià has lived side by side with increasing numbers of foreigners over the past century, and what has occurred there over this period offers an example of how the population of one Mediterranean village has gained full advantage from the economic opportunities opened up by foreign investments, without losing the fabric of social relations, the meaning and values of their culture. Deià has been able to continue as a community with its own symbolic boundaries and identity, not in spite of the outsiders (some of whom are well-known literary personalities, artists and musicians) but because of their presence. This study shows how, under the impact of wars, migration, national politics, global economic and technological developments and especially tourism, the categories of Insider and Outsider are contracted and expanded, and reinterpreted to fit the constantly changing "reality" of the society; they assume different meanings at different times. The conflicts and resulting compromises over a hundred-year period have provided a sense of history that allows each group to define, develop, adapt and sustain their sense of belonging to their own communities.

  Subjects: Travel & Tourism General Anthropology

• January 2020

  Institutionalised Dreams

  The Art of Managing Foreign Aid

  Drążkiewicz, E.

  Using examples from Poland, Elżbieta Drążkiewicz explores the question of why states become donors and  individuals decide to share their wealth with others through foreign aid. She comes to the conclusion that the concept of foreign aid requires the establishment of a specific moral economy which links national ideologies and local cultures of charitable giving with broader ideas about the global political economy. It is through these processes that faith in foreign aid interventions as a solution to global issues is generated. The book also explores the relationship linking a state institution with its NGO partners, as well as international players such as the EU or OECD.

  Subjects: Political Economy General Anthropology

• eBook available May 2014

  Intellectuals and (Counter-) Politics

  Essays in Historical Realism

  Smith, G.

  Contemporary forms of capitalism and the state require close analytic attention to reveal the conditions of possibility for effective counter-politics. On the other hand the practice of collective politics needs to be studied through historical ethnography if we are to understand what might make people’s actions effective. This book suggests a research agenda designed to maximize the political leverage of ordinary people faced with ever more remote states and technologies that make capitalism increasingly rapacious. Gavin Smith opens and closes this series of interlinked essays by proposing a concise framework for untangling what he calls “the society of capital” and subsequently a potentially controversial way of seeing its contemporary features. This book tackles the political conundrums of our times and asks what roles intellectuals might play therein.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Political Economy

• February 2004

  International Adventures

  German Popular Cinema and European Co-Productions in the 1960s

  Bergfelder, T.

  West German cinema of the 1960s is frequently associated with the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers, collectively known by the 1970s as the "New German Cinema." Yet for domestic and international audiences at the time, German cinema primarily meant popular genres such as exotic adventure films, Gothic crime thrillers, westerns, and sex films, which were dismissed by German filmmakers and critics of the 1970s as "Daddy's Cinema."

  International Adventures provides the first comprehensive account of these genres, and charts the history of the West German film industry and its main protagonists from the immediate post-war years to its boom period in the 1950s and 1960s. By analyzing film genres in the context of industrial practices, literary traditions, biographical trajectories, and wider cultural and social developments, this book uncovers a forgotten period of German filmmaking that merits reassessment.

  International Adventures firmly locates its case studies within the wider dynamic of European cinema. In its study of West German cinema's links and co-operations with other countries including Britain, France, and Italy, the book addresses what is perhaps the most striking phenomenon of 1960s popular film genres: the dispersal and disappearance of markers of national identity in increasingly international narratives and modes of production.

  Subjects: Film Studies Postwar History

• eBook available December 2016

  International Organizations and Environmental Protection

  Conservation and Globalization in the Twentieth Century

  Kaiser, W. & Meyer, J.-H. (eds)

  Pollution, resource depletion, habitat management, and climate change are all issues that necessarily transcend national boundaries. Accordingly, they and other environmental concerns have been a particular focus for international organizations from before the First World War to the present day. This volume is the first to comprehensively explore the environmental activities of professional communities, NGOs, regional bodies, the United Nations, and other international organizations during the twentieth century. It follows their efforts to shape debates about environmental degradation, develop binding intergovernmental commitments, and—following the seminal 1972 Conference on the Human Environment—implement and enforce actual international policies.

  Subjects: Environmental Studies 20th Century History

• May 2007

  Intersected Identities

  Strategies of Visualisation in 19th and 20th Century Mexican Culture

  Segre, E.

  There has always been an important visual element to the construction and questioning of national identity in post-Independence Mexico, though one that has not always been given its due, outside of the celebrated and much-studied muralists. Ranging from the early nineteenth century to the present – from the vogue for the picturesque, illustrated periodicals and the influential writings of Altamirano to a wealth of twentieth-century graphic artists, filmmakers and photographers – this book re-examines the complex variety of ways in which that visual element has operated. In particular, it looks at the ways in which discourses concerning ethnicity and cultural hybridity have been echoed and transformed in Mexican visual culture, resulting in fields of visual discourse which are eclectic and increasingly self-reflexive.

  Subject: General Cultural Studies

• eBook available May 2018

  Intimate Mobilities

  Sexual Economies, Marriage and Migration in a Disparate World

  Groes, C. & Fernandez, N. T. (eds)

  As globalization and transnational encounters intensify, people’s mobility is increasingly conditioned by intimacy, ranging from love, desire, and sexual liaisons to broader family, kinship, and conjugal matters. This book explores the entanglement of mobility and intimacy in various configurations throughout the world. It argues that rather than being distinct and unrelated phenomena, intimacy-related mobilities constitute variations of cross-border movements shaped by and deeply entwined with issues of gender, kinship, race, and sexuality, as well as local and global powers and border restrictions in a disparate world.

  Subjects: General Mobility Studies General Anthropology

• March 2013

  Introductory Readings in Anthropology

  Callan, H., Street†, B. & Underdown, S. (eds)

  Anthropology seeks to understand the roots of our common humanity, the diversity of cultures and world-views, and the organisation of social relations and practices. As a method of inquiry it embraces an enormous range of topics, and as a discipline it covers a multitude of fields and themes, as shown in this selection of original writings. As an accessible entry point, for upper-level students and first year undergraduates new to the study of anthropology, this reader also offers guidance for teachers in exploring the subject’s riches with their students. That anthropology is an immensely expansive inquiry of study is demonstrated by the diversity of its topics – from nature conservation campaigns to witchcraft beliefs, from human evolution to fashion and style, and from the repatriation of indigenous human remains to research on literacy. There is no single ‘story of anthropology’. Taken together, these fundamental readings are evidence of a contemporary, vibrant subject that has much to tell us about all the worlds in which we live.

  Subject: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology

• eBook available June 2012

  Investigating Srebrenica

  Institutions, Facts, Responsibilities

  Delpa, I., Bougarel, X., & Fournel, J.-F. (eds)

  In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb Army commanded by General Ratko Mladic attacked the enclave of Srebrenica, a UN “safe area” since 1993, and massacred about 8,000 Bosniac men. While the responsibility for the massacre itself lays clearly with the Serb political and military leadership, the question of the responsibility of various international organizations and national authorities for the fall of the enclave is still passionately discussed, and has given rise to various rumors and conspiracy theories. Follow-up investigations by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and by several commissions have dissipated most of these rumors and contributed to a better knowledge of the Srebrenica events and the part played by the main local and international actors. This volume represents the first systematic, comparative analysis of those investigations. It brings together analyses from both the external standpoint of academics and the inside perspective of various professionals who participated directly in the inquiries, including police officers, members of parliament, high-ranking civil servants, and other experts. Evaluating how institutions establish facts and ascribe responsibilities, this volume presents a historiographical and epistemological reflection on the very possibility of writing a history of the present time.

  Subjects: Genocide Studies Postwar History

• eBook available June 2019

  Invisible Founders

  How Two Centuries of African American Families Transformed a Plantation into a College

  Rainville, L.

  Literal and metaphorical excavations at Sweet Briar College reveal how African American labor enabled the transformation of Sweet Briar Plantation into a private women’s college in 1906. This volume tells the story of the invisible founders of a college founded by and for white women. Despite being built and maintained by African American families, the college did not integrate its student body for sixty years after it opened. In the process, Invisible Founders challenges our ideas of what a college “founder” is, restoring African American narratives to their deserved and central place in the story of a single institution — one that serves as a microcosm of the American South.

  Subjects: Archaeology General History

• eBook available October 2019

  Inward Looking

  The Impact of Migration on Romanipe from the Romani Perspective

  Marinov, A. G.

  At present, Roma are an integral part of Europe, though they face structural and social inequalities and different forms of exclusion and discrimination. Inward Looking seeks to understand the relationship between Romani identity, performance and migration. Particularly, it studies the idea of ‘Romanipe’ through the prism of the personal accounts of Romani migrants. It also seeks to understand the relationships between the Romani groups in Europe, due to their increased travel and convergence, and predict the effects of migration on (new) Romani consciousness. The findings are based on qualitative data gathered from Romani migrants from three towns in Bulgaria.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Sociology

• 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: General Anthropology Peace & Conflict Studies General Cultural Studies

• June 2008

  Iron in the Soul

  Displacement, Livelihood and Health in Cyprus

  Loizos†, P.

  In his vivid, lively account of how Greek Cypriot villagers coped with a thirty-year displacement, Peter Loïzos follows a group of people whom he encountered as prosperous farmers in 1968, yet found as disoriented refugees when revisiting in 1975. By providing a forty year in-depth perspective unusual in the social sciences, this study yields unconventional insights into the deeper meanings of displacement. It focuses on reconstruction of livelihoods, conservation of family, community, social capital, health (both physical and mental), religious and political perceptions. The author argues for a closer collaboration between anthropology and the life sciences, particularly medicine and social epidemiology, but suggests that qualitative life-history data have an important role to play in the understanding of how people cope with collective stress.

  Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies General Anthropology

• March 1998

  Iron-making Societies

  Early Industrial Development in Sweden and Russia, 1600-1900

  Agren, M. (ed)

  The title of this book has a double meaning: on the one hand, it deals with two very different societies both of which made iron in the early modern period. On the other hand, iron "made" these societies: the needs of iron production and the resistance to these demands from local peasant communities gave the societies a special kind of cohesion and rationality.

  This volume presents the findings of a joint team of Swedish and Russian scholars examining the social organization of work in early modern iron industry and their respective societies. The comparison was carried out against the backdrop of the international discussion on proto-industrialization, its prerequisites and consequences. There has, however, been a certain bias in much of that debate, the focus being mainly on Western Europe, particularly on Britain, and on textile trades. This book offers an important contribution to the debate in that it widens the perspective by discussing Northern and Eastern Europe and by studying the iron industry. More particularly it examines actual production processes, the organization of work, social conflict, questions of ownership and its evolution, as well as the diffusion and organization of technical knowledge. The comparative approach is consistently applied throughout, with each chapter closely integrating the results relating to the two selected geographical areas, thus showing ways of solving some of the problems arising from comparative history.

  Subject: General History

• eBook available July 2012

  Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies

  Sunni and Shia Perspectives

  Inhorn, M. C. & Tremayne, S. (eds)

  How and to what extent have Islamic legal scholars and Middle Eastern lawmakers, as well as Middle Eastern Muslim physicians and patients, grappled with the complex bioethical, legal, and social issues that are raised in the process of attempting to conceive life in the face of infertility? This path-breaking volume explores the influence of Islamic attitudes on Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) and reveals the variations in both the Islamic jurisprudence and the cultural responses to ARTs.

  Subject: Medical Anthropology

• eBook available June 2009

  Islam and New Kinship

  Reproductive Technology and the Shariah in Lebanon

  Clarke, M.

  Assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization have provoked global controversy and ethical debate. This book provides a groundbreaking investigation into those debates in the Islamic Middle East, simultaneously documenting changing ideas of kinship and the evolving role of religious authority in the region through a combination of in-depth field research in Lebanon and an exhaustive survey of the Islamic legal literature. Lebanon, home to both Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities, provides a valuable site through which to explore the overall dynamism and diversity of global Islamic debate. As this book shows, Muslim perspectives focus on the moral propriety of such controversial procedures as the use of donor sperm and eggs as well as surrogacy arrangements, which are allowed by some authorities using surprising and innovative legal arguments. These arguments challenge common stereotypes of the rigidity and conservatism of Islamic law and compel us to question conventional contrasts between ‘liberal’ and Islamic notions of moral freedom, as well as the epistemological assumptions of anthropology’s own ‘new kinship studies’. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary Islam and the impact of reproductive technology on the global social imaginary.

  Subjects: Medical Anthropology Religion Gender Studies

• January 2018

  Island Historical Ecology

  Socionatural Landscapes of the Eastern and Southern Caribbean

  Siegel, P. (ed)

  In the first book-length treatise on historical ecology of the West Indies, Island Historical Ecology addresses Caribbean island ecologies from the perspective of social and cultural interventions over approximately eight millennia of human occupations. Environmental coring carried out in carefully selected wetlands allowed for the reconstruction of pre-colonial and colonial landscapes on islands between Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Comparisons with well-documented patterns in the Mediterranean and Pacific islands place this case study into a larger context of island historical ecology.

  Subjects: Archaeology Environmental Studies General Anthropology

• December 1993

  Islands in the Interior

  The Dynamics of Prehistoric Adaptations Within the Arid Zone of Australia

  Veth, P. M.

  In this book, Veth develops a model of settlement and subsistence in the Western Desert of Australia, drawing on his own archaeological investigations, as well as ethnographic and environmental data. Building on this model, he concludes with a plausible reconstruction of the colonization of the harsh, arid interior of this continent.

  Subject: Archaeology

• October 2000

  Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah

  Reoccupying the Territories of Silence

  Lentin, R.

  The murder of a third of Europe's Jews by the Nazis is unquestionably the worst catastrophe in the history of contemporary Judaism and a formative event in the history of Zionism and the State of Israel. Understandably, therefore, the Shoah, written about, analyzed, and given various political interpretations, has shaped public discourse in the history of the State of Israel. The key element of Shoah in the Israeli context is victimhood and as such it has become a source of shame, shrouded in silence and subordinated to the dominant discourse which, resulting from the construction of a "new Hebrew" active subjectivity, taught the postwar generation of Israelis to reject diaspora Jewry and its alleged passivity in the face of catastrophe.

  This book is the culmination of years of preoccupation with the meaning of the Shoah for the author, an Israeli woman with a "split subjectivity: - that of a daughter of a family of Shoah survivors, and that of a daughter of the first Israeli-born generation; the culmination of her need to break the silence about the Shoah in a society which constructed itself as the Israeli antithesis to diaspora Jewry, and to excavate a "truth" from underneath the mountain of Zionist nation-building myths. These myths, the author argues, not only had deep implication for the formation of her generation but also a profound impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, they are shot through with images of the "masculine" Israeli, constrasted with those of the weak, passive, non-virile Jewish "Other" of the diaspora. This book offers the first gendered analysis of Israeli society and the Shoah. The author employs personal narratives of nine Israeli daughters of Shoah survivors, writers and film makers, and a feminist re-reading of official and unofficial Israeli and Zionist discourses to explore the ways in which the relationship between Israel and the Shoah has been gendered in that the Shoah was "feminized" while Israel was "masculinized." This new perspective has considerable implications for the analysis of Israeli society; a gendered analysis of Israeli construction of nation reveals how the Shoah and Shoah discourse are exploited to justify Israel's, i.e. the "new Hebrew's," self-perceived right of occupation. Israel thus not only negated the Jewish diaspora, but also stigmatized and feminized Shoah victims and survivors, all the while employing Shoah discourses as an excuse for occupation, both in the past and in the present.

  Subjects: Genocide Studies Gender Studies Jewish Studies

• November 1997

  Israel and the Diaspora in Jewish Law

  Essays and Responsa

  Jacob†, W. & Zemer†, M. (eds)

  THE FREEHOF INSTITUTE OF PROGRESSIVE HALAKHAH
  The Freehof Institute of Progressive Halakhah is a creative research center devoted to studying and defining the progressive character of the halakhah in accordance with the principles and theology of Reform Judaism. It seeks to establish the ideological basis of Progressive halakhah, and its application to daily life. The Institute fosters serious studies, and helps scholars in various portions of the world to work together for a common cause. It provides an ongoing forum through symposia, and publications including the quarterly newsletter, HalakhaH, published under the editorship of Walter Jacob, in the United States. The foremost halakhic scholars in the Reform, Liberal, and Progressive rabbinate along with some Conservative and Orthodox colleagues as well as university professors serve on our Academic Council.

  Subject: Jewish Studies

• eBook available March 2012

  Israeli Identities

  Jews and Arabs Facing the Self and the Other

  Auron, Y.

  The question of identity is one of present-day Israel’s cardinal and most pressing issues. In a comprehensive examination of the identity issue, this study focuses on attitudes toward the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora; the Holocaust and its repercussions on identity; attitudes toward the state of Israel and Zionism; and attitudes toward Jewish religion. Israeli Arab students (Israeli Palestinians) and Jewish Israeli students were asked corresponding questions regarding their identity. It was found that, rather than lessening its impact over the years, the Holocaust has become a major factor, at times the paramount factor in Jewish identity. Similarly, among Palestinians the Naqba has become a major factor in Palestinian-Israeli identity. However, the overall results show that the identity of a Jewish citizen of Israel is not purely Israeli, nor is it purely Jewish. It is, to varying degrees, a synthesis of Jewish and Israeli components, depending on the particular sub-groups or sub-identities. The same holds for Israeli-Arabs or Israeli-Palestinians who have neither a purely Israeli identity nor a purely Palestinian (or Arab) one.

  Subjects: Jewish Studies Sociology

• June 2003

  Issues in Medical Research Ethics

  Boomgaarden, J. & Louhiala, P & Wiesing, U.

  With the advances of medicine, questions of medical ethics have become more urgent and are now considered of great social and political significance. An innovatively designed, activity-based workbook, this text was prepared using papers and case studies collected from several countries in the European Union. It reflects the issues and concerns that confront clinical practitioners throughout Europe and elsewhere today and presents varying national responses in law and policy to these concerns, as identified by ethicists, lawyers, theologians and practitioners. The problems they examine include the relationship between medical research and medical practice, elementary regulations of medical research, the complexity of informed consent, and the role of the sponsor or scientific community.

  Subject: Medical Anthropology

• eBook available November 2019

  It Happens Among People

  Resonances and Extensions of the Work of Fredrik Barth

  Wu, K. & Weller, R. P. (eds)

  Written by eleven leading anthropologists from around the world, this volume extends the insights of Fredrik Barth, one of the most important anthropologists of the twentieth century, to push even further at the frontiers of anthropology and honor his memory. As a collection, the chapters thus expand Barth’s pioneering work on values, further develop his insights on human agency and its potential creativity, as well as continuing to develop the relevance for his work as a way of thinking about and beyond the state. The work is grounded on his insistence that theory should grow only from observed life.

  Subject: General Anthropology

• January 2008

  Italian Neofascism

  The Strategy of Tension and the Politics of Nonreconciliation

  Bull, A. Cento

  During the Cold War Italy witnessed the existence of an anomalous version of a civil conflict, defined as a 'creeping' or a 'low-intensity' civil war. Political violence escalated, including bomb attacks against civilians, starting with a massacre in Milan, on 12 December 1969, and culminating with the massacre in Bologna, on 2 August 1980. Making use of the literature on national reconciliation and narrative psychology theory, this book examines the fight over the 'judicial' and the 'historical' truth in Italy today, through a contrasting analysis of judicial findings and the 'narratives of victimhood' prevalent among representatives of both the post- and the neo-fascist right.

  Subject: Postwar History

• February 2004

  Italy Between Europeanization and Domestic Politics

  Fabbrini, S. & Sala, V. Della (eds)

  In 2003, the government headed by Silvio Berlusconi attempted to take Italian public policy in a new direction. In social and labor market policy it challenged concertation; in foreign policy, it tried to transform the country’s traditional Europeanist position into a pro-Atlantic stance; within the European Union, it promoted an inter-governmental position. The government's plans to alter the status quo did not always succeed, due to tensions within the majority. The opposition, in the meantime, mobilized around the issue of peace and the Iraq war. European Commission President Romano Prodi responded to the Ulivo coalition’s fragmentation by proposing a unitary list for the 2004 European elections. There were also repeated attempts to change the features of public policy and political competition, countered by noteworthy forms of resistance.

  Subject: Postwar History