This book explores the relationship between multiplicity and representation of non-European and European-American cultures, with a focus on comics and superheroes. The author employs a combination of research methodologies, including close reading of transmedia texts and interviews with transmedia storytellers and audiences, to better understand the way in which diverse cultures are employed as agents of multiplicity in transmedia narratives. The book addresses both commercial franchises such as superhero narratives, as well as smaller indie projects, in an attempt to elucidate the way in which key cultural symbols and concepts are utilized by writers, designers, and producers, and how these narrative choices affect audiences - both those who identify as members of the culture being represented and those who do not. Case studies include fan fiction based on Marvel's Black Panther (2018), fan fiction and art created for the Moana (2016) and Mulan (2020) films, and creations by both U.S.-based and international indie comics artists and writers. This book will appeal to scholars and students of new media, narrative theory, cultural studies, sociocultural anthropology, folkloristics, English/literary studies, and popular culture, transmedia storytelling researchers, and both creators and fans of superhero comics.

In Living Worth Stefan Ecks draws on ethnographic research on depression and antidepressant usage in India to develop a new theory of value. Framing depressive disorder as a problem of value, Ecks traces the myriad ways antidepressants come to have value, from their ability to help make one's life worth living to the wealth they generate in the multibillion-dollar global pharmaceutical market. Through case studies that include analyses of the different valuation of generic and brand-name drugs, the origins of rising worldwide depression rates, and the marketing, prescription, and circulation of antidepressants, Ecks theorizes value as a process of biocommensuration. Biocommensurations-transactions that aim or claim to make life better-are those forms of social, medical, and corporate actions that allow value to be measured, exchanged, substituted, and redistributed. Ecks's theory expands value beyond both a Marxist labor theory of value and a free market subjective theory, thereby offering new insights into how the value of lives and things become entangled under neoliberal capitalism.

Based on nine years of research, this is the first book to offer an in-depth ethnographic study of a transnational environmentalist federation and of activists themselves. The book presents an account of the daily life and the ethical strivings of environmental activist members of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), exploring how a transnational federation is constituted and maintained, and how different people strive to work together in their hope of contributing to the creation of "a better future for the globe." In the context of FoEI, a great diversity of environmentalisms from around the world are negotiated, discussed and evolve in relation to the experiences of the different cultures, ecosystems and human situations that the activists bring with them to the federation. Key to the global scope of this project is the analysis of FoEI experiments in models for intercultural and inclusive decision-making. The provisional results of FoEI's ongoing experiments in this area offer a glimpse of how different notions of the environment, and being an environmentalist, can come to work together without subsuming alterity.

Sacred Ecology examines bodies of knowledge held by indigenous and other rural peoples around the world, and asks how we can learn from this knowledge and ways of knowing. Berkes explores the importance of local and indigenous knowledge as a complement to scientific ecology, and its cultural and political significance for indigenous groups themselves. With updates of relevant links for further learning and over 180 new references, the fourth edition gives increased voice to indigenous authors, and reflects the remarkable increase in published local observations of climate change.

Since its first publication in 1971, Barry Cunliffe's monumental survey has established itself as a classic of British archaeology. This fully revised fourth edition maintains the qualities of the earlier editions, whilst taking into account the significant developments that have moulded the discipline in recent years. Barry Cunliffe here incorporates new theoretical approaches, technological advances and a range of new sites and finds, ensuring that Iron Age Communities in Britain remains the definitive guide to the subject.

In its most general sense, the term "Spiritual but Not Religious" denotes those who, on the one hand, are disillusioned with traditional institutional religion and, on the other hand, feel that those same traditions contain deep wisdom about the human condition. This edited collection speaks to what national surveys agree is a growing social phenomenon referred to as the "Spiritual but Not Religious Movement" (SBNRM). Each essay of the volume engages the past, present and future(s) of the SBNRM. Their collective contribution is analytic, descriptive, and prescriptive, taking stock of not only the various analyses of the SBNRM to date but also the establishment of a new ground upon which the continued academic discussion can take place. This volume is a watershed in the growing academic and public interest in the SBNRM. As such, it will vital reading for any academic involved in Religious Studies, Spirituality and Sociology.

Originally published in 1987, this book traces the broad outlines of urban food policy, drawing attention to the limited knowledge of regional social history. Urban food supply systems in Africa have developed very fast, in the midst of societies in which food production was not in general oriented to feeding distant populations of 'specialist consumers'. Institutional and political links had to be forged between town and country if food supply was to be cheap and predictable. This volume explores the political and material dynamics of urban food supply through 4 case studies: Kano, Yaounde, Dar es Salaam and Harare.

Originally published in 1990, this book reveals the extent to which petty landlordism is developing not just in the African urban settlements that have sprung up but in government-sponsored low-cost housing estates. The first part of the book traces African governments' changing responses to urban growth since the 1960s. The second presents case studies of housing markets and landlord-tenant relations north and south of the Sahara. The third examines World Bank involvement, and the book ends by considering policy implications.

Originally published in 1989, this book examines how the inter-ethnic relationships of the clans of the pastoral Rendille, Gabbra, Sakuye and some Somalis of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia came about. It also examines the uses to which these inter-ethnic relationships are put: for example in managing herds. Oral history is combined with cultural comparison and the analysis of social structure. Blending synchronic and diachronic perspectives, the book synthesises historical ethnology in the Continental tradition with social anthropology. Historically it overturns some established ideas about how the Horn of Africa was settled. Anthropologically it shows how relations may exceed the bounds of the ethnic group as the conventional unit of study.

We live in the age of fitness. Hundreds of thousands of people run marathons and millions go jogging in local parks, work out in gyms, cycle, swim, or practice yoga. The vast majority are not engaged in competitive sport and are not trying to win any medals. They just want to get fit. Why this modern preoccupation with fitness? In this new book, Jurgen Martschukat traces the roots of our modern preoccupation with fitness back to the birth of modern societies in the eighteenth century, showing how the idea of fitness was interwoven with modernity's emphasis on perpetual optimization and renewal. But it is only in the period since the 1970s, he argues, that the age of fitness truly emerged, as part and parcel of our contemporary neoliberal era. Neoliberalism enjoins individuals to work on themselves, to cultivate themselves in body and mind. Fitness becomes a guiding principle of social life, an era-defining network of discourses and practices that shape individuals' actions and self-conceptions. The pursuit of fitness becomes a cultural repertoire that is deeply ingrained in our institutions and way of life. This wide-ranging book shows how deeply fitness is inscribed in modern societies, and how important fitness has become to success or failure, recognition or exclusion, in a society that sets great store by self-responsibility, performance, market, and competition. It will be of great value not only to those interested in sport and fitness, but also to anyone concerned with the conditions of success and failure in our societies today.

(Un)sighted Archives of Migration acknowledges that migration is a fundamental part of social practice and collective memory. However, archives that have undergone migration or were established by individuals or communities with migration experience gain little public and institutional attention. This volume with its transversal perspective across the fields of art, anthropology and social activism, offers new perspectives on the enormous potential of migratory archives as resourceful spaces for encounter and remembrance, and as a contribution to the plural collective memories and identities of post-migratory societies. Emphasizing the archival agency by migrants, the chapters raise new questions with regard to the multi-directional, collaborative forms of knowledge production within and beyond an archive, its boundaries, and its materiality. Focusing on the complexities of power relations, spatial and temporal dynamics, media practices, and meaning production involved in the making, maintenance, viewing, appropriation, destruction and loss of such archives, the chapters contribute to a critical methodological and theoretical discussion about (un)sighted archives as spaces of encounter and resistance in a liminal zone of visibility and invisibility. This book was originally published as a special issue of Visual Anthropology.

This book advances an alternative critical posthumanist approach to mega-event organisation, taking into account both the new and the old crises which humanity and our planet face. Taking the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games as a case study, Tzanelli explores mega-event crisis and risk management in the era of extreme urbanisation, natural disasters, global pandemic, and technoscientific control. Using the atmospheric term 'irradiation' (a technology of glamour and transparency, as well as bodily penetration by harmful agents and strong affects), the book explores this epistemological statement diachronically (via Tokyo's relationship with Western forms of domination) and synchronically (the city as a global cultural-political player but victim of climate catastrophes). It presents how the 'Olympic enterprise's' 'flattening' of indigenous environmental place-making rhythms, and the scientisation of space and place in the Anthropocene lead to reductionisms harmful for a viable programme of planetary recovery. An experimental study of the mega-event is enacted, which considers the researcher's analytical tools and the styles of human and non-human mobility during the mega-event as reflexive gateways to forms of posthuman flourishing. Crossing and bridging disciplinary boundaries, the book will appeal to any scholar interested in mobilities theory, event and environment studies, sociology of knowledge, and cultural globalisation.

This book studies the internal framework of the Indo-Pacific region and examines the strategic issues faced by the countries that belong to it. Over the years, the Indo-Pacific region has become a prime driver of global economic growth and has generated considerable interest from countries both within and without. The region is now witnessing an intensified great power competition for greater geostrategic space, thus shaping the 21st-century world order. The volume focuses on the emerging strategies of the main actors involved in this competition. It discusses various key issues such as the purpose of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and its post-pandemic agenda, the conceptualisation of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) amid an intensifying Sino-US great power competition, the strategies of ASEAN and South Korea, China's activities in the Indo-Pacific, economic architecture and supply chain disruption in the region, as well as the geopolitical strategy of the European Union for the Indo-Pacific. A crucial study of the Indo-Pacific region in the post-COVID-19 world, the book gives fresh insights into the areas of convergence and divergence in the strategic visions of the many regional actors. It will be of great interest to policymakers as well as students and academics in the fields of political science, international relations, foreign policy, geopolitics, security studies, strategic studies, as well as area studies, namely East and Southeast Asian studies, European Union studies, American studies and Australian studies.

This book describes how anthropologists in the twentieth century went about documenting the religions of those independent peoples who still lived beyond the frontiers of the global economy and the world religions. It begins by examining the enormous popularity of the newly invented field of anthropology in the nineteenth century as a site of multiple intellectual developments. Its climax was Frazer's Golden Bough, which is a pillar of modernity second only to Darwin's Origin of Species. But its notion of religion was entirely speculative. When anthropologists went to see for themselves, they encountered formidable obstacles. How to access a people's most profound understandings of the world and everything in it? Holding fast to the premise that ethnographers have no special powers of seeing inside other people's brains, this book teaches students to proceed slowly, a step at a time, watching how people perform rituals great and small, asking questions that seem stupid to their hosts, and struggling to translate abstract terms in unrecorded languages. Using a handful of examples from different continents, the book shows the potential of an anthropological approach to religion.

The human use of nature is a polarizing topic in India and across the globe, often perceived as contradictory to traditional exclusionary conservation. However, India's natural landscapes serve as important sources of biological resources for many communities. This collection of case studies on sustainable use practices throughout India aims to identify the policies, management strategies, and knowledge contexts that contribute to resource use without damaging biological diversity. Through a diverse array of personal accounts, stories and photographs from the field, and ongoing research studies across biogeographic zones, readers will connect with academics, practitioners, managers, and policy analysts who challenge us to rethink the conservation paradigm. These chapters provide a reflection on the history of conservation and sustainable use in India and illuminate a path towards a local and global future in which biodiversity and human well-being go hand in hand. The wide variety of authors in this book reflects the broad audience this book will be of interest to, from students studying environmental conservation and sustainability to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers who work in the field and seek to learn about successful sustainable use systems and resulting lessons that have widespread application. This book will appeal to readers interested in the areas of environment sciences, biodiversity management, sustainable development, developmental studies, forestry, wildlife and protected area management, public policy, environmental policy, and governance.

This book is an ethnographic exploration of what it means to be human from a more-than-human perspective, the microbial perspective. It engages with the scientific study of the microbiome and the vast microbial biodiversity that surrounds and constitutes us. Microbes connect human bodies with the environment in which they live and have important implications for both human and environmental health. Scientists studying the microbiome are explorers of uncharted life and in this venture they are constrained by onto-epistemic working practices grounded in the reductionist paradigm of molecular biology. At the same time, however, they configure the microbiome ecosystem as an aspirational form of ecological co-habitation. The aim of the book is to critically explore the ethical, political and ontological implications of microbiome science in times of profound socio-technical and ecological transition and engage with them productively from an anthropological perspective. It suggests ways to revitalize current debates within medical anthropology, environmental anthropology, science and technology studies and anthropology at large, especially with regard to posthumanism, the ontological turn and critical data study.

What can social spaces tell us about social relations in society? How do everyday social spaces like teashops, reading rooms, and libraries reify-or subvert-dominant social structures like caste and gender? These are the questions that this book explores through a study of modern Kerala. Using archival material, discourse analysis, participant observation, and personal interviews, this book traces the transformation of public spaces through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The volume focuses on how "modernity" has also been a struggle for access to public spaces, and non-institutional spaces like teashops, markets, public roads, temple grounds, reading rooms, and libraries have all been crucial to how political culture was shaped, and how dominant hegemonies-caste, class, or capital-have been challenged. It suggests that the secular public sphere that emerged in the last century in Kerala was a result of the constant negotiations between conflicting ideas which were put to test in these social spaces. At a time when digital spaces are fast replacing physical ones, this book is a timely reminder of the struggles that led to the emergence of secular public spaces in Kerala. It contributes to similar studies on public space that have emerged from other parts of the world over the last decades. A major contribution to understanding modern India, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of social history, political science, political sociology, gender studies, linguistics, and South Asian studies.

This book focuses on the development of bilateral Jewish-Muslim relations in London and Amsterdam since the late-1980s. It offers a comparative analysis that considers both similarities and differences, drawing on historical, social scientific, and religious studies perspectives. The authors address how Jewish-Muslim relations are related to the historical and contemporary context in which they are embedded, the social identity strategies Jews and Muslims and their institutions employ, and their perceived mutual positions in terms of identity and power. The first section reflects on the history and current profile of Jewish and Muslim communities in London and Amsterdam and the development of relations between Jews andMuslims in both cities. The second section engages with sources of conflict and cooperation. Four specific areas that cause tension are explored: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; antisemitism and Islamophobia; attacks by extremists; and the commemoration of wars and genocides. In addition to 'trigger events', what stands out is the influence of historical factors, public opinion, the 'mainstream' Christian churches and the media, along with the role of government. The volume will be of interest to scholars from fields including religious studies, interfaith studies, Jewish studies, Islamic studies, urban studies, European studies, and social sciences as well as members of the communities concerned, other religious communities, journalists, politicians, and teachers who are interested in Jewish-Muslim relations. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)4.0 license. Funded by University of Amsterdam

This book provides a timely, critical, and thought-provoking analysis of the implications of the disruption of COVID-19 to the foreign aid and development system, and the extent to which the system is retaining a level of relevance, legitimacy, or coherence. Drawing on the expertise of key scholars from around the world in the fields of international development, political science, socioeconomics, history, and international relations, the book explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on development aid within an environment of shifting national and regional priorities and interactions. The response is specifically focused on the interrelated themes of political analysis and soft power, the legitimation crisis, poverty, inequality, foreign aid, and the disruption and re-making of the world order. The book argues that complex and multidirectional linkages between politics, economics, society, and the environment are driving changes in the extant development aid system. COVID-19 and Foreign Aid provides a range of critical reflections to shifts in the world order, the rise of nationalism, the strange non-death of neoliberalism, shifts in globalisation, and the evolving impact of COVID as a cross-cutting crisis in the development aid system. This book will be of interest to researchers and students in the field of health and development studies, decision-makers at government level as well as to those working in or consulting to international aid institutions, regional and bilateral aid agencies, and non-governmental organisations.

Looking at a range of cases from around the Transpacific, the contributors to this book explore the complex formulations of race and racism emerging from transoceanic migrations and encounters in the region. Asia has a history of ceaseless, active, and multidirectional migration, which continues to bear multilayered and complex genetic diversity. The traditional system of rank order between groups of people in Asia consisted of multiple "invisible" differences in variegated entanglements, including descent, birthplace, occupation, and lifestyle. Transpacific migration brought about the formation of multilayered and complex racial relationships, as the physically indistinguishable yet multifacetedly racialized groups encountered the hegemonic racial order deriving from the transatlantic experience of racialization based on "visible" differences. Each chapter in this book examines a different case study, identifying their complexities and particularities while contributing to a broad view of the possibilities for solidarity and human connection in a context of domination and discrimination. These cases include the dispossession of the Ainu people, the experiences of Burakumin emigrants in America, the policing of colonial Singapore, and data governance in India. A fascinating read for sociologists, anthropologists, and historians, especially those with a particular focus on the Asian and Pacific regions.

This book takes a case study approach to explore the crisis of legitimacy in American political culture. The question of legitimacy resides at the heart of any political system. However, understanding why an individual should recognize another's power over them is not solely limited to the analytically political but is deeply embedded in the larger cultural context of any society. Through a series of ethnographic case studies focused on the United States - from those involving the rhetoric of presidential prophecy and abuse of power to the dispute over a local sewerage authority's reach and a case of classroom blasphemy - the book aims to demonstrate both a ground-up approach to the problem of legitimacy and to capture some of the common cultural features that bond the examples together. The book will, therefore, be of interest to scholars of anthropology, sociology, political science, and socio-legal studies.

This collection follows anthropological perspectives on peoples (Canadian Inuit, Norwegian Sami, Yupiit from Alaska, and Inuit from Greenland), places, and practices in the Circumpolar North from colonial times to our post-modern era. This volume brings together fresh perspectives on theoretical concepts, colonial/imperial descriptions, collaborative work of non-Indigenous and Indigenous researchers, as well as articles written by representatives of Indigenous cultures from an inside perspective. The scope of the book ranges from contributions based on unpublished primary sources, missionary journals, and fairly unknown early Indigenous sources and publications, to those based on more recent Indigenous testimonies and anthropological fieldwork, museum exhibitions, and (self)representations in the fields of fashion, marketing, and the arts. The aim of this volume is to explore the making of representations for and/or by Circumpolar North peoples. The authors follow what representations have been created in the past and in some cases continue to be created in the present, and the Indigenous employment of representations that has continuity with the past and also goes beyond "traditional" utilization. By studying these representations, we gain a better understanding of the dynamics of a society and its interaction with other cultures, notably in the context of the dominant culture's efforts to assimilate Indigenous people and erase their story. People's ideas about themselves and of "the Other" are never static, not even if they share the same cultural background. This is even more the case in the contact zone of the intercultural arena. Images of "the Other" vary according to time and place, and perceptions of "others" are continuously readjusted from both sides in intercultural encounters. This volume has been prepared by the Research Group Circumpolar Cultures (RGCC) which is based in the Netherlands. Its members conduct research on social and cultural change focusing on topics that are of interest to the Indigenous peoples of the Arctic. The RGCC builds on a long tradition in Arctic studies in the Netherlands (Nico Tinbergen, Geert van den Steenhoven, Gerti Nooter, and Jarich Oosten) and can rely on rich Arctic collections of artefacts and photographs in anthropological museums and extensive library collections. The expertise of the RGCC in Arctic studies is internationally acknowledged by academics as well as circumpolar peoples.

This book examines the performance of Bauls, 'folk' performers from Bengal, in the context of a rapidly globalizing Indian economy and against the backdrop of extreme nationalistic discourses. Recognizing their scope beyond the musical and cultural realm, Sukanya Chakrabarti engages in discussing the subversive and transformational potency of Bauls and their performances. In-Between Worlds argues that the Bauls through their musical, spiritual, and cultural performances offer 'joy' and 'spirituality,' thus making space for what Dr. Ambedkar in his famous 1942 speech had identified as 'reclamation of human personality'. Chakrabarti destabilizes the category of 'folk' as a fixed classification or an origin point, and fractures homogeneous historical representations of the Baul as a 'folk' performer and a wandering mendicant exposing the complex heterogeneity that characterizes this group. Establishing 'folk-ness' as a performance category, and 'folk festivals' as sites of performing 'folk-ness,' contributing to a heritage industry that thrives on imagined and recreated nostalgia, Chakrabarti examines different sites that produce varied performative identities of Bauls, probing the limits of such categories while simultaneously advocating for polyvocality and multifocality. While this project has grounded itself firmly in performance studies, it has borrowed extensively from fields of postcolonial studies and subaltern histories, literature, ethnography and ethnomusicology, and cosmopolitan studies.

In this original and innovative work, Yu boldly tackles the increasingly influential collaborative translation phenomenon, with special reference to China. She employs the unique perspective of an ethnographer to explore how citizen translators work together as they select, translate, edit and polish translations. Her area of particular interest is the burgeoning yet notably distinctive world of the Chinese internet, where the digital media ecology is with Chinese characteristics. Through her longitudinal digital ethnographic fieldwork in Yeeyan, Cenci and other online translation platforms where the source materials usually come from outside China, Yu draws out lessons for the various actors in the collaborative translation space, focusing on their communities, working practices and identities, for nothing is quite as it seems. She also theorises relationships between the actors, their work and their places of work, offering us a rich and insightful perspective into the often-hidden world of collaborative translation in China. The contribution of Yu's work also lies in her effort in looking beyond China, providing us with a landscape of collaborative translation in practice, in training, and in theory across geographic contexts. This volume will be of particular interest to scholars and postgraduate students in translation studies and digital media.

Community Engagement Through Collaborative Writing: Storytelling Together is designed to support scholars and communities storytelling together to reach multiple audiences and facilitate social change. Social scientists, public health practitioners, community leaders, and others recognize that there can be no forward movement in addressing the problems and inequalities facing the world today without collaboration across interdisciplinary, multisectoral, geographic, and socioeconomic divides. The book uses real-world experiences to guide individuals and groups through a process of identifying the knowledge they have and sharing that knowledge through various genres. This process includes identifying and honoring different forms of knowledge, not just academic research and training. Combining the principles of trust and collaboration with practical tools, the chapters contain discussions, examples, and instruments for working together across divides toward a common goal of telling stories together. Community Engagement Through Collaborative Writing: Storytelling Together is a valuable resource for applied anthropologists and other social scientists doing community-engaged work for research methods courses and for fields such as public health and education.