Offering a dialogue between anthropology and literature, culture, and media, this book presents fine-grained ethnographic vignettes of monsters dwelling in the contemporary world. These monsters hail from Aboriginal Australia, the Pacific, Asia, and Europe, and their presence is inextricably intertwined with the lives of those they haunt.

This book provides a critical sociology of religion in Latin America. Its purpose is to discuss the notion of religion as part of social, cultural, and political processes in capitalist societies, drawing on the classics of sociological thought (Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Gramsci). Thus, churches are analyzed as organized institutions of religious mediation intimately linked to the production of social, cultural, and political hegemony in Latin America. The Catholic Church, the dominant church in the region, is analyzed in terms of its different faces, changes, and transformations from conquest and colonization through the changing winds of Vatican II to the revolutionary experiences of the popular church in the 1970s and 1980s.

This work will be of interest to scholars of Latin American studies, politics, religion, culture, and sociology. It also speaks to theologians and philosophers working in Latin America.

There are beastly forces in Belize. Forces that are actively involved in making paradise impossible. On the Nervous Edge of an Impossible Paradise is a collection of seven stories about local lives in the fictional village of Wallaceville. They turn rogue in the face of runaway forces that take the form and figure of a Belize beast-time, which can appear as a comic mishap, social ruin, tragic excess, or wild guesses. Inciting the affective politics of life in the region, this fable of emergence evokes the unnerving uncertainties of life in the tourist state of Belize.

O. R. Dathorne pursues the phenomenon of "contact" or "encounter" particularly as it relates to China and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. He looks at how the Chinese have perceived their Other as heathen and exotic, and how the West has in turn similarly perceived the Chinese. The failure of the West to relate to China in human terms is subtly documented, and is contrasted to the European experience in the New World and the African encounter of both China and the West. Dathorne breaks new ground in his analysis of the construct of the Other on the Pacific Islands. Using indigenous oral accounts, early texts of European explorers and castaways, and imaginative accounts, he reconstructs the period of contact from the native viewpoint, of those who acted as translators, pilots, guides, chartmakers and male and female companions. He calls attention to the Western habit of romancing the place while denigrating or mythologizing the people.

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This book presents a long-term study in genetic isolates of indigenous small ethnics of Dagestan, located in the North-East part of Caucasus in Russia. Dagestan is characterized by extreme cultural and linguistic differences in a small geographic area and contains 26 indigenous ethnic groups. According to archeological data these indigenous highland ethnics have been living in the same area for more than ten thousand years. Our long-term population-genetic study of Dagestan indigenous ethnic groups indicates their close relation to each other and suggests that they evolved from one common ancestral meta-population. Dagestan has an extremely high genetic diversity between ethnic populations and a low genetic diversity within them. Such genetic isolates are exceptional resources for the detection of susceptibility genes for complex diseases because of the reduction in genetic and clinical heterogeneity. The founder effect and gene drift in these primary isolates may have caused aggregation of specific haplotypes with limited numbers of pathogenic alleles and loci in some isolates relative to others. The book presents a study in four ethnically and demographically diverse genetic isolates with aggregation of schizophrenia that we ascertained within our Dagestan Genetic Heritage Research Project. The results obtained support the notion that mapping genes of any complex disease (e.g., schizophrenia) in demographically older genetic isolates may be more time and cost effective due to their high clinical and genetic homogeneity, in comparison with demographically younger isolates, especially with genetically heterogeneous outbred populations.

The distinguished Russian archeologist Aleksei P. Okladnikov's study reveals how a field archeologist goes about determining and writing prehistory. Over the course of his career, Okladnikov and his wife Vera Zaporozhskaya travelled across Siberia from the Lena River in the north to the Amur River in the south excavating archaeological sites. During that time Aleksei and Vera found and interpreted the rock art of the vast region from the Paleolithic Era to the present day. Relying on petroglyphs and pictographs left on cliffs and boulders, Okladnikov lays out in detail and straightforward language the prehistory of Siberia by "reading" these artifacts. This book permits the past to be told in its own words: the art portrayed on the cliffs of Siberia.

Culture, Humanity, and History: Conversations About Anthropology provides students with an engaging collection of writings and cases studies centered on human diversity and culture across all societies, including the past, present, and future. Students learn how anthropologists and scholars in the humanities and social sciences study humans to better understand who and what we are, and how we should live. The reader is divided into four sections. In Section I, students learn about the origins of humanity and the concept of culture. Section II features readings that address ideas about humanity, race, ethnicity, and ritual from the perspectives of a biological anthropologist and a scholar of religion. In Section III, the selected articles examine ecological, economic, and medical anthropology, demonstrating human strategies for obtaining, using, and distributing resources. The final section focuses on a novel approach in the field called posthuman anthropology, demonstrating to students how the discipline of anthropology is growing and evolving. Approachable and thought provoking, Culture, Humanity, and History is an ideal text for foundational courses in anthropology.

This work is an examination of borderless markets where national boundaries are no longer the relevant criteria in making international marketing, economic planning, and business decisions. Understanding nonpolitical borders is especially important for products and industries that are culture bound and those that require local adaptation. Religion is one critical factor that affects economic development, demographic behavior, and general business policies around the world. Over 26,000 statistics are provided for over 70 religious groups covering a number of social, economic, and business variables. A significant review of literature is also included.

This book is a detailed ethnography of traditional, predominantly upper-caste, sequestered Hindu women in the temple town of Bhubaneswar in Odisha, a state in eastern India. It elaborates on a distinctive paradigm of domesticity and explicates a particular model of human wellbeing among this category. Part of the growing literature in "third wave" or "multicultural feminism", it seeks to broaden the parameters of feminist discourse by going beyond questions of individual liberty or gender equality to examine the potential for female empowerment that exists in the context of these women's lives. Its aims are twofold: first, to represent these women in ways that they themselves would recognize; and, second, to interpret, rather than merely "translate", the beliefs and practices of the temple town such that their underlying logic becomes readily accessible to readers, even those unfamiliar with the Hindu world.

Monasteries are one of the few types of communities that have been able to exist without the family. In this intimate, first-hand study of the daily life in a Trappist monastery, Hillery concludes that what binds this unusual and highly successful community together is its emphases on freedom and agape love. "The Monastery" reintegrates sociology with its allied disciplines in an attempt to understand the monastery on its own terms, and at the same time link that with sociology. Hillery delves into the history, the importance of the Rule of Benedict, the strictness of the Trappist interpretation, and the significance of the Second Vatican Council. Throughout, he uses a holistic anthropological approach.

The work begins with a detailed sociological analysis of freedom, love, and community. Other topics include ways in which candidates enter the monastery, their relation to their families, economic activities, politics, prayer, asceticism, recreation, illness, death, and deviance. Comparisons are made with nine of the other eleven Trappist monasteries in the United States. Anthropologists and sociologists, especially those interested in community, comparative analysis, and religion are challenged by "The Monastery" to move beyond the arbitrary limits they have placed on themselves, which maintain that all knowledge must be capable of being physically perceived and statistically measured.

Kecmanovic deals with the phenomenon of ethnonationalism, both as a broad, worldwide concern and as a key ingredient to the struggles in the former Yugoslavia. As in the former Yugoslavia, the rise of ethnonationalistic sentiments and attitudes coincided with the transition from a state-and party-run affair to a new, post-communist type of government and society. Drawing upon his personal experiences in Sarajevo, Kecmanovic provides a unique view of the conflict.

In a style accessible to students and general readers, he traces the transformations of leading principles, value systems, behavioral patterns, and views of people in times of severe ethnic tensions. At times nearly novelistic, the book examines epidemic ethnonationalism and individual manifestations such as violence toward members of other groups, beliefs that ethnic differences are genetic, a need to aggrandize and even manufacture differences between communities.

The study of literature and the environment evokes and promotes this highly original eco-critical collection and its contributions to evaluating the preservation of nature and human attachment and to situate it at a local, communitarian, or bio-regional level. Revisiting eco-literature can aid our exploration of numerous global issues and challenges through a literary rendition of the natural world in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Reflecting on different works will prompt the readers to intensify their search for viable and effective choices and healthy alternatives in a confusing world.

Communication in its most basic form--the sending of signals and exchange of messages within and between organisms--is the heart of evolution. From the earliest life-forms to "Homo sapiens," the great chain of communication drives the evolutionary process and is the indispensable component of human culture.
That is the central message of this unique perspective on both the biological evolution of life and the human development of culture. The book explores the totality of communication processes that create and sustain biological equilibrium and social stability. The authors argue that this ubiquitous connectivity is the elemental unity of life.
Introducing a new subdiscipline--evolutionary communication--the authors analyze the core domains of life--sheer survival, sex, culture, morality, religion, and technological change--as communications phenomena. What emerges from their analysis is a brilliant interpretation of life interconnected through communication from the basic molecular level to the most sophisticated manifestations of culture.
Challenging the boundaries of conventional approaches to cultural analysis, this is an original and engaging view of evolution and an encouraging prognosis for our collective future.

Urban renewal has been the dominant approach to revitalizing industrialized communities that fall into decline. A national, community-based organization, the Skillman Foundation sought to engage in a joint effort with the University of Michigan's School of Social Work to bring six neighborhoods in one such declining urban center, Detroit, back to positions of strength and national leadership. A Twenty-First Century Approach to Community Change introduces readers to the basis for the Foundation's solicitation of social work expertise and the social context within which the work of technical assistance began. Building on research, the authors introduce the theory and practice knowledge of earlier scholars, including the conduct of needs assessments at multiple levels, engagement of community members in identifying problem-solving strategies, assistance in developing community goals, and implementation of social work field instruction opportunities. Lessons learned and challenges are described as they played out in the process of creating partnerships for the Foundation with community leaders, engaging and maintaining youth involvement, managing roles and relationships with multiple partners recruited by the Foundation for their specialized expertise, and ultimately conducting the work of technical assistance within a context of increasing influence of the city's surrounding systems (political, economic, educational, and social). Readers will especially note the role of technical assistance in an evolving theory of change.

Exploring the multiple communities of healing among the Tuareg people of Niger, this work examines the beliefs and practices that surround healing and the quest for medicine. In studying ideals of healing that face challenges from wider political and economic forces, the author enables us to understand these culturally and historically constructed processes. This leads us to comprehend how many Tuareg construct and deconstruct local notions of medicine and healers, how patients cope with current problems in health care, and more broadly, how medical knowledge is constructed in anthropology and ethnography.

Rasmussen reveals new perspectives on healing in systems of power and symbolism, bridging interpretive cultural and political economy approaches. This book explores the consequences and implications of the idea that in order to obtain medicine, one must submit to authority, but proceeds beyond merely demonstrating this idea, already largely a truism in anthropology. The Tuareg data show how local residents are not passive victims, but rather active agents in responding to and resisting authority structures of medicine and medical knowledge.

This work is an examination of borderless markets where national boundaries are no longer the relevant criteria in making international marketing, economic planning, and business decisions. Understanding nonpolitical borders is especially important for products and industries that are culture bound and those that require local adaptation. Ethnic culture is one critical factor that affects economic development, demographic behavior, and general business policies around the world. Over 120,000 statistics are provided for over 400 ethnic groups covering a number of social, economic, and business variables. A significant review of literature is also included.

Over 3,000 years ago, in what would be northern North America, there was a cultural fluorescence. Native Americans were exchanging materials and ideas over long distances, and their shamans were overseeing treatment of the dead and conducting ceremonies to insure entry into the spirit world. The author details how archaeologists discovered their story.

The discovery, excavation, and interpretation of data on one of the most significant ancient Native American archaeological sites in the Northeast is chronicled. Research team leader Alan Leveillee outlines the regional, environmental, and cultural contexts, details the archaeological methodology, and synthesizes the results of analyses of lithics, metals, flora, fauna, and soils, and presents the on-site observations and interpretations of the Native American representative of the team.

Focusing on the discovery and subsequent archaeological approach to the first professionally excavated secondary burial complex in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Leveillee demonstrates that anthropological models enable consideration of how artifacts and features reveal 3,500-year-old ideologies, ceremonies, and social systems--the archaeology of ideas.

This study compares household energy use, environmental awareness, and consumerism among residents of small towns in Sweden and America. The author, a cultural anthropologist, uses quantitative and qualitative data from fieldwork to formulate a holistic analysis. The study considers broader questions about the uses of energy, consumer goods, quality of life, and the environment. The industrial worldview is critiqued at both individual and institutional levels. It concludes with a call for a more spiritual approach to environmentalism and social issues.

"Readings in Contemporary Political Sociology" collects the best published writings of prominent sociologists and political theorists currently working in the field. The essays chart new territory in the field of political sociology, going beyond the traditional focus on the relationship between state and society.

The first section consists of articles addressing the concerns of the "postmodern turn" in sociology and its implications for the study of politics. Subsequent sections deal with substantive topics in the field, linking influential pieces on globalization, social movements, citizenship, and democracy.

For students of political sociology and political theory, this collection is a milestone, representing the field's most noteworthy research and publications of recent years. It may be used independently or in conjunction with Kate Nash's introductory book "Contemporary Political Sociology: Globalization, Politics, and Power."