Chinese idioms and practices of separation are relevant to the experiences of ordinary people in many social domains, ranging from gender and kinship, to religion and the politics of ethnic identity. The contributors focus on a number of distinct yet closely interrelated case studies including:
* separation laments sung by women at marriages and funerals
* popular stories about gods who must leave their families in order to achieve 'recognition'
* attempts of the ghostly dead to make connection with the living
* dislocations from ancestral lands caused by dam-building projects
* the role of pilgrimmage in the construction of identity among Chinese Muslims
In addressing - through these case studies - the central theme of separation, this book also provides a good general introduction to many of the classic debates within anthropological and historical analyses of China. It will, therefore, prove an interesting and useful resource to students of Asian studies and anthropology as well as to the general reader with an interest in the chinese cultural tradition.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203613457

In 2017, nearly six thousand people were killed in suicide attacks across the world. In The Smile of the Human Bomb, Gideon Aran dissects the moral logic of the suicide terrorism that led to those deaths. The book is a firsthand examination of the bomb site at the moment of the explosion, during the first few minutes after the explosion, and in the last moments before the explosion. Aran uncovers the suicide bomber's final preparations before embarking on the suicide mission: the border crossing, the journey toward the designated target, penetration into the site, and the behavior of both sides within it. The book sheds light on the truth of the human bomb. Aran's gritty and often disturbing account is built on a foundation of participant observation with squads of pious Jewish volunteers who gather the scorched fragments of the dead after terrorist attacks; newly revealed documents, including interrogation protocols; interviews with Palestinian armed resistance members and retired Israeli counterterrorism agents; observations of failed suicide terrorists in jail; and conversations with the acquaintances of human bombs. The Smile of the Human Bomb provides new insights on the Middle East conflict, political violence, radicalism, victimhood, ritual, and death and unveils a suicide terrorism scene far different from what is conventionally pictured. In the end, Aran discovers, the suicide terrorist is an unremarkable figure, and the circumstances of his or her recruitment and operation are prosaic and often accidental. The smiling human bomb is neither larger than life nor a monster, but an actor on a human scale. And suicide terrorism is a drama in which cliches and chance events play their role.

Gary, Indiana was founded in 1906, and was part of the US Steel Corporation's plan to build the world's largest steel mill. The city's school system became world-famous as a progressive educational experiment until the 1930s when a changing political and economic climate led to an erosion of the system, which faced a serious overcrowding crisis in the 1950s.
Blending social and intellectual history, Ronald Cohen examines the economic, political, and cultural context of the unique educational experience developed in this urban industrial center. Cohen demonstrates that while various interest groups - local as well as national - helped mold educational policies and practices, the Gary schools operated within the framework of corporate capitalism. Despite their early experimental nature, the Gary schools exemplified the rise of mass education in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, class structure and urban setting.

Working and living as an authentic Muslim-comporting oneself in an Islamically appropriate way-in the global economy can be very challenging. How do middle-class Muslims living in the Middle East navigate contemporary economic demands in a distinctly Islamic way? What are the impacts of these efforts on their Islamic piety? To what authority does one turn when questions arise? What happens when the answers vary and there is little or no consensus? To answer these questions, Everyday Piety examines the intersection of globalization and Islamic religious life in the city of Amman, Jordan. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in Amman, Sarah A. Tobin demonstrates that Muslims combine their interests in exerting a visible Islam with the opportunities and challenges of advanced capitalism in an urban setting, which ultimately results in the cultivation of a "neoliberal Islamic piety." Neoliberal piety, Tobin contends, is created by both Islamizing economic practices and economizing Islamic piety, and is done in ways that reflect a modern, cosmopolitan style and aesthetic, revealing a keen interest in displays of authenticity on the part of the actors. Tobin highlights sites at which economic life and Islamic virtue intersect: Ramadan, the hijab, Islamic economics, Islamic banking, and consumption. Each case reflects the shift from conditions and contexts of highly regulated and legalized moral behaviors to greater levels of uncertainty and indeterminacy. In its ethnographic richness, this book shows that actors make normative claims of an authentic, real Islam in economic practice and measure them against standards that derive from Islamic law, other sources of knowledge, and the pragmatics of everyday life.

"A poetic voice of great sensitivity." - Alexander McCall Smith. Beneath the Ice tells the fascinating, often troubling, story of the Sami - the indigenous people of the Scandinavian Arctic. A proud and resilient people in an unforgiving yet stunningly beautiful northern wildscape, the Sami have carved out an existence rich in tradition, where the old ways of reindeer herding, shamanic belief and the veneration of bears have not yet been forgotten. Author Kenneth Steven celebrates this unique culture in a collection of essays that chronicle his own lifelong love affair with the north, and his own encounters with the Sami. Displaying a deep empathy, he finds a people often persecuted and a community under threat from modernity and climate change. But he also uncovers the Sami's idiosyncratic culture - and captures the very essence of northern spirit.

This detailed and comprehensive guide provides biographical information on the most influential and significant figures in world anthropology, from the birth of the discipline in the nineteenth century to the present day. Each of the fifteen chapters focuses on a national tradition or school of thought, outlining its central features and placing the anthropologists within their intellectual contexts. Fully indexed and cross-referenced, The Routledge Dictionary of Anthropologists will prove indispensable for students of anthropology.

For decades, the field of bioethics has shaped the way we think about ethical problems in science, technology, and medicine. But its traditional emphasis on individual interests such as doctor-patient relationships, informed consent, and personal autonomy is minimally helpful in confronting the social and political challenges posed by new human biotechnologies such as assisted reproduction, human genetic modification, and DNA forensics. Beyond Bioethics addresses these provocative issues from an emerging standpoint that is attentive to race, gender, class, disability, privacy, and notions of democracy-a "new biopolitics." This authoritative volume provides an overview for those grappling with the profound dilemmas posed by these developments. It brings together the work of cutting-edge thinkers from diverse fields of study and public engagement, all of them committed to this new perspective grounded in social justice and public interest values.

YoungGiftedandFat is a critical autoethnography of "performing thin"- on the stage and in life. Sharrell D. Luckett's story of weight loss and gain and playing the (beautiful, desirable, thin) leading lady showcases an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to issues of weight and self-esteem, performance, race, and gender. Sharrell structures her project with creative text, interviews, testimony, journal entries, dialogues, monologues, and deep theorizing through and about the abundance of flesh. She explores the politics of Black culture, and particularly the intersections of her lived and embodied experiences. Her body and body transformation becomes a critical praxis to evidence fat as a feminist issue, fat as a Black-girl-woman issue, and fat as an ideological construct that is as much on the brain as it is on the body. YoungGiftedandFat is useful to any area of research or course offering taking up questions of size politics at the intersections of race and sexuality.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. (series description). Written by an internationally renowned expert in the field, Professor Ruth Towse, this book presents a comprehensive yet concise introduction to cultural economics. It covers a broad range of topics in the arts and cultural industries, using the tools of economics to explain their supply and demand, production and consumption. Starting from the 1960s concern about costs and public finance in the performing arts, the subject has developed over the last fifty years to include museums and built heritage, and lately, the wider creative industries and their issues with copyright. This book explains the theoretical underpinnings and reports on the main empirical research on the creative industries, cultural policy, performing arts, heritage, artists' labour markets, copyright, broadcasting, film and music, festivals, cities of culture, creative clusters and economic impact. Key features include: * a unique survey of the main developments in the field * written in straightforward language including explanations of all technical terms * each chapter offers guidance for further reading for those who wish to pursue the subject beyond an introductory level * accessible to anyone with an interest in what drives the creative economy and how the arts are financed. Composed in a succinct and engaging style, this commanding introduction will prove an essential resource for students of business economics and industrial organisation, particularly those with an interest in culture, the arts and the media.

Border regions are often considered to be the neglected margins. In this book, Paul Nugent argues that through a comparison of the Senegambia and the trans-Volta (Ghana/Togo), we can see that the geographical margins have shaped notional centres at least as much as the reverse. Through a study of three centuries of history, this book demonstrates that states were forged through an extended process of converting a topography of settled states and slaving frontiers into colonial borders. It argues that post-colonial states and larger social contracts have been configured very differently as a consequence. It underscores the impact on regional dynamics and the phenomenon of peripheral urbanism. Nugent also addresses the manner in which a variegated sense of community has been forged amongst Mandinka, Jola, Ewe and Agotime populations who have both shaped and been shaped by the border. This is an exercise in reciprocal comparison and shuttles between scales, from the local and the particular to the national and the regional.

In this, his most famous work, Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) presented to the world a book which revolutionized our understanding of some of the basic structures of society. A renowned anthropologist, Mauss sought in this work to transcend empirical observation and reach deeper realities. In so doing, he inaugurated a new era for the social sciences.;By identifying the complex web of exchange and obligation involved in the act of giving, Mauss called into question many of our social conventions and economic systems. As L'evi-Strauss remarked, "Few have managed to read it without feeling the whole gamut of the emotions: the pounding heart, the throbbing head, the mind flooded with the imperious, though not yet definable, certainty of being present at a decisive event in the evolution of science."

Sometimes we convey what we mean not by what we say but by what we do. This type of indirect communication is sometimes called 'indirection'. From patent miscommunication, through potent ambiguity to pregnant silence this incisive collection examines from a rare anthropological perspective the many aspects of indirect communication. From a Mormon Theme Park to carnival time on Montserrat the contributors analyse indirection by illustrating how food, silence, sunglasses, martial arts and rudeness call constitute powerful ways of conveying meaning. An Anthropology of Indirect Communication is an engaging text which provides a challenging introduction to this subject.

First published in 2000, Dipesh Chakrabarty's influential "Provincializing Europe" addresses the mythical figure of Europe that is often taken to be the original site of modernity in many histories of capitalist transition in non-Western countries. This imaginary Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty argues, is built into the social sciences. The very idea of historicizing carries with it some peculiarly European assumptions about disenchanted space, secular time, and sovereignty. Measured against such mythical standards, capitalist transition in the third world has often seemed either incomplete or lacking. "Provincializing Europe" proposes that every case of transition to capitalism is a case of translation as well--a translation of existing worlds and their thought--categories into the categories and self-understandings of capitalist modernity. Now featuring a new preface in which Chakrabarty responds to his critics, this book globalizes European thought by exploring how it may be renewed both for and from the margins.

How do people perceive the world around them? Why should their perceptions differ? This work offers an approach to understanding how human beings perceive their surroundings. It argues that what we are used to calling cultural variation consists, in the first place, of variations in skill. Neither innate nor acquired, skills are grown, incorporated into the human organism through practice and training in an environment. They are thus as much biological as cultural.;To account for the generation of skills, we have therefore to understand the dynamics of development. And this in turn calls for an ecological approach that situates practitioners in the context of an active engagement with the constituents of their surroundings. The 23 essays comprising this book, focus in turn on the procurement of livelihood, on what it means to "dwell", and on the nature of skill, weaving together approaches from social anthropology, ecological psychology, developmental biology and phenomenology.;The book aims to revolutionize contemporary thought about what is "biological" and "cultural" in humans, about evolution and history, and what it means for human beings to inhabit an environment.

What does a stockbroker in Istanbul navigating the rush of incoming trading figures have in common with a mother in Stockholm trying to organize a growing pile of baby clothes? They are both coping with excess or overflow. This book explores the ways in which institutions, corporations and individuals define and manage situations of 'too much' - too much information, too many choices, too many commodities or too many tasks. By analyzing a wide range of settings - from corporate firms and public administration to everyday domestic routines - the book offers an in-depth understanding of the complexities of overflow phenomena. It questions when, where and why overflow emerges and for whom this is a problem or a blessing. This broad introduction to a striking contemporary phenomenon will prove an enlightening read for a wide-ranging audience including academics and researchers in the disciplines of business and management, political science, economic history and sociology.

Financial Times Book of the Year Telegraph Top 50 Books of the Year Guardian Book of the Year New Statesman Book of the Year 'Roundly debunks racism's core lie - that inequality is to do with genetics, rather than political power' Reni Eddo-Lodge Where did the idea of race come from, and what does it mean? In an age of identity politics, DNA ancestry testing and the rise of the far-right, a belief in biological differences between populations is experiencing a resurgence. The truth is: race is a social construct. Our problem is we find this hard to believe. In Superior, award-winning author Angela Saini investigates the concept of race, from its origins to the present day. Engaging with geneticists, anthropologists, historians and social scientists from across the globe, Superior is a rigorous, much needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of the belief that race is real, and that some groups of people are superior to others.

This popular and engaging text, now revised in a second edition, offers readers a social perspective on food, food practices, and the modern food system. It engages readers' curiosity by highlighting several paradoxes: how food is both individual and social, reveals both distinction and conformity, and, in the contemporary global era, comes from everywhere but nowhere in particular. With updates and enhancements throughout, the new edition provides an empirically deep, multifaceted, and coherent introduction to this fascinating field. Each chapter begins with a vivid case study, proceeds through a rich discussion of research insights, and ends with discussion questions and suggested resources. Chapter topics include food's role in socialization, identity, health and social change, as well as food marketing and the changing global food system. The new edition gives more focused attention to labor (both paid and unpaid) in all aspects of the food system. In synthesizing insights from diverse fields of social inquiry, the book addresses issues of culture, structure, and social inequality throughout. Written in a lively style, this book will continue to be both accessible and revealing to beginning and intermediate students alike.

Much has been written on racism and ethic hatred. But what about traditions of racial tolerance and equality? "Anti-Racism" offers an historical and international introduction to the development of this topic. Drawing on sources from around the world, it explains the roots and illustrates the practice of anti-racism in Western and non-Western societies. The author introduces the contemporary dilemmas being tracked within anti-racist debate as well as the criticisms of anti-racism that have been heard within Western societies.
This is one of the first books to look at anti-racism as a topic of social, scientific, historical and geographical inquiry. This will prove a unique resource for anyone interested in issues of equality, race or ethnicity.

Nearly half of all Americans will be diagnosed with an invasive cancerOCoan all-too ordinary aspect of daily life. Through a powerful combination of cultural analysis and memoir, this stunningly original book explores why cancer remains so confounding, despite the billions of dollars spent in the search for a cure. Amidst furious debates over its causes and treatments, scientists generate reams of dataOCoinformation that ultimately obscures as much as it clarifies. Award-winning anthropologist S. Lochlann Jain deftly unscrambles the high stakes of the resulting confusion. Expertly reading across a range of material that includes history, oncology, law, economics, and literature, Jain explains how a national culture that simultaneously aims to deny, profit from, and cure cancer entraps us in a state of paradoxOCoone that makes the world of cancer virtually impossible to navigate for doctors, patients, caretakers, and policy makers alike. This chronicle, burning with urgency and substance leavened with brio and wit, offers a lucid guide to understanding and navigating the quicksand of uncertainty at the heart of cancer. "Malignant" vitally shifts the terms of an epic battle we have been losing for decades: the war on cancer.

Procreation is not just about how human beings come into being - it is also about how relationships come into being. Consequently changes in procreative practice will have repercussions for thinking about the formation of such relationships. What are the cultural and anthropological understandings of new reproductive technologies? Using evidence from cross-disciplinary research carried out in 1990-1991 this work tackles key debates relating to the concept of kinship.
When first published in 1993, Technologies of Procreation introduced many new insights into the anthropological issues associated with these new technologies. In what way do they affect society? What are the effects of the embryo's recent treatment as an individual? What does it mean to be 'interfering with nature'? What are the consequences of an increase in multiple births?
This book successfully bridges the gap between medical technology and cultural values. Now available in paperback, it is a welcome addition to the growing field of medical anthropology. This book will prove invaluable to academics and practitioners alike interested in the current debates surrounding recent technologies in assisted conception.

In his gripping and provocative debut, anthropologist Jason De Leon sheds light on one of the most pressing political issues of our time-the human consequences of US immigration policy. The Land of Open Graves reveals the suffering and deaths that occur daily in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona as thousands of undocumented migrants attempt to cross the border from Mexico into the United States. Drawing on the four major fields of anthropology, De Leon uses an innovative combination of ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, and forensic science to produce a scathing critique of "Prevention through Deterrence," the federal border enforcement policy that encourages migrants to cross in areas characterized by extreme environmental conditions and high risk of death. For two decades, this policy has failed to deter border crossers while successfully turning the rugged terrain of southern Arizona into a killing field. In harrowing detail, De Leon chronicles the journeys of people who have made dozens of attempts to cross the border and uncovers the stories of the objects and bodies left behind in the desert. The Land of Open Graves will spark debate and controversy.

Embodied Geographies provides a comprehensive account of different types of life crises which develop our identities and affect how we live our lives. Chapters focus on:
* pregnancy, childbirth, teenagers and parenthood
* migration
* the threat and reality of violence
* illness and disability
* bereavement, the ensuing family responsibilities and death itself.
It includes case studies from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada and the USA.

The result of 25 years of research with different tribal groups in the Arabian peninsula, this study focuses on ethnographic description of Arab tribal societies in five regions of the peninsula, with comparative material from others. Having become aware of the depth in time of Arab tribal structures, the authors have developed a view of Arabic tribal discourse where "tribe" is seen as essentially an identity that confers access to a social structure and its processes. This insight enables the authors to clarify tribal processes of land use and resource management which are normally "invisible," as they leave few written records and the archaeological remains are notoriously difficult to date. The contextual nature of description by local users leads to a reevaluation of social categories, and to an awareness of relationships between bedouin and peasant, tribesman and townsman. A detailed appreciation of the different agricultural, pastoral and fishing practices of the region is presented, together with the underpinning of indigenous theories of land use and resource management. This detailed monograph incorporates many theoretical aspects, including concepts of indigenous theories