Originally published in 1922, this early work on anthropology is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. It details the lives and customs of the Trobriand who live on an island chain in the western Pacific and is a highly regarded study of their tribal culture. This is a fascinating work and is thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in ethnology. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The studies included in this book examine quotidien acts of writing and their significance in a textually-mediated world. We live in a textually-mediated world where writing is central to society, its cultural practices and institutions. Writing has been the subject of much research but it is usually highly visible and valued texts that are studied - the work of novelists, poets and scholars. The studies included in this book examine every day acts of writing and their significance. Ordinary quotidian writing may be viewed as mundane and routine, but it is central to how societies operate and the ways individuals relate to each other and to institutions. Examples discussed in the book including writing in areas such as farming, photo-sharing, childcare work and health care. The chapters are united in their approach to examining this writing as cultural practice. The book also brings together two important traditions of this type of study: the Anglophone and Francophone. The work of French scholars in this field is made accessible for the first time to the Anglophone world. The insights and research in this collection will appeal to all linguists, anthropologists, sociolinguistics and cultural theorists.

This classic in the annals of village studies will be widely read and debated for what it reveals about China's rural dynamics as well as the nature of state power, markets, the military, social relations, and religion. Built on extraordinarily intimate and detailed research in a Sichuan village that Isabel Crook began in 1940, the book provides an unprecedented history of Chinese rural life during the war with Japan. It is an essential resource for all scholars of contemporary China.

Anthropomorphism - the projection of the human form onto the every aspect of the world - closely relates to early modern notions of analogy and microcosm. What had been construed in Antiquity as a ready metaphor for the order of creation was reworked into a complex system relating the human body to the body of the world. Numerous books and images - cosmological diagrams, illustrated treatises of botany and zoology, maps, alphabets, collections of ornaments, architectural essays - are entirely constructed on the anthropomorphic analogy. Exploring the complexities inherent in such work, the interdisciplinary essays in this volume address how the anthropomorphic model is fraught with contradictions and tensions, between magical and rational, speculative and practical thought. Contributors include Pamela Brekka, Anne-Laure van Bruaene, Ralph Dekoninck, Agnes Guiderdoni, Christopher P. Heuer, Sarah Kyle, Walter S. Melion, Christina Normore, Elizabeth Petcu, Bertrand Prevost, Bret Rothstein, Paul Smith, Miya Tokumitsu, Michel Weemans, and Elke Werner.

Dress Sense explores the importance of the senses and emotions in the way people dress, and how they attach value and significance to clothing. Inspired by the work of Joanne B. Eicher, contributors offer different multi-disciplinary perspectives on this key and unexplored topic in dress and sensory anthropology. The essays present historical, contemporary and global views, from British imperial dress in India, to revolutionary Socialist dress. Issues of body and identity are brought to the fore in the sexual power of Ghanian women's waistbeads, the way cross-dressers feel about their clothing, and how the latest three-dimensional body-scanning technology affects people's perception of themselves and their bodies. For students and researchers of dress and anthropology, Dress Sense will be invaluable in understanding the cross-cultural, emotional and sensual experience of dress and clothing.

Moroccan garment design and consumption have experienced major shifts in recent history, transforming from a traditional craft-based enterprise to a thriving fashion industry. Influenced by western fashion, dress has become commoditized and has expanded from tailoring to designer labels. This book presents the first detailed ethnographic study of Moroccan fashion. Drawing on interviews with three generations of designers and the lifestyle press, the author provides an in-depth analysis of the development of urban dress, which reveals how traditional dress has not been threatened but rather produced and consumed in different ways. With chapters examining themes such as dress and politics, gender, faith, modernity, and exploring topics from craft to e-fashion, this book will be essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, anthropology, material culture, sociology, cultural studies, gender studies and related fields.

Based on almost a decade of research in the Kathmandu Valley, Planning Families in Nepal offers a compelling account of Hindu Nepali women as they face conflicting global and local ideals regarding family planning. Promoting a two-child norm, global family planning programs have disseminated the slogan, ""A small family is a happy family,"" throughout the global South. Jan Brunson examines how two generations of Hindu Nepali women negotiate this global message of a two-child family and a more local need to produce a son. Brunson explains that while women did not prefer sons to daughters, they recognized that in the dominant patrilocal family system, their daughters would eventually marry and be lost to other households. As a result, despite recent increases in educational and career opportunities for daughters, mothers still hoped for a son who would bring a daughter-in-law into the family and care for his aging parents. Mothers worried about whether their modern, rebellious sons would fulfill their filial duties, but ultimately those sons demonstrated an enduring commitment to living with their aging parents. In the context of rapid social change related to national politics as well as globalization - a constant influx of new music, clothes, gadgets, and even governments - the sons viewed the multigenerational family as a refuge. Throughout Planning Families in Nepal, Brunson raises important questions about the notion of ""planning"" when applied to family formation, arguing that reproduction is better understood as a set of local and global ideals that involve actors with desires and actions with constraints, wrought with delays, stalling, and improvisation.

Very few books on the history and culture of the southern New England Native peoples have been written by the Natives themselves. Standard academic books read like a clinical autopsy of a dead culture from many years ago. Contrary to this, A Cultural History of the Native Peoples of Southern New England provides an understanding of the ways, customs, and language of the southern New England American Indians from the Native's perspective. For the first time, a book written about the Native American peoples of southern New England is written by the Natives themselves. Incorporating voices of modern Elders and other Natives to the historic records of the 1500s and 1600s, everything about the beauty, power, and richness of their culture has been included. Sections of the book cover appearance, language, family and relations, religion, the body and senses, marriage, sickness, war, games, hunting, and much more. The proud and fiercely independent Native American peoples of southern New England once walked tall and proud on this land. With this book, they are now beginning to walk tall again.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Recent attention to historical, geographic, and class differences in the studies of women and gender in China has expanded our understanding of the diversity and complexity of gendered China. Nevertheless, the ethnic dimension of this subject matter remains largely overlooked, particularly concerning women's conditions and gender status. Consequently, the patriarchy and its oppression of women among the Han, the ethnic majority in China, are often inaccurately or erroneously associated with the whole gendered heritage of China, epitomized by the infamous traditions of footbinding and female-infanticide. Such academic and popular predisposition belies the fact that gender systems in China span a wide spectrum, ranging from extreme Han patriarchy to Lahu gender-egalitarianism. The authors contributing to this book have collectively initiated a systematic effort to bridge the gap between understanding the majority Han and ethnic minorities in regard to women and gender in contemporary Chinese societies. By achieving a quantitative balance between articles on the Han majority and those on ethnic minorities, this book transcends the ghettoization of ethnic minorities in the studies of Chinese women and gender. The eleven chapters of this volume are divided into three sections which jointly challenge the traditions and norms of Han patriarchy from various perspectives. The first section focuses on gender traditions among ethnic minorities which compete with the norms of Han patriarchy. The second section emphasizes the impact of radical social transformation on gender systems and practices among both Han and ethnic minorities. The third section underscores socio-cultural diversity and complexity in resistance to Han patriarchal norms from a broad perspective. This book complements previous scholarship on Chinese women and gender by expanding our investigative lens beyond Han patriarchy and providing images of the multiethnic landscape of China. By identifying the Han as an ethnically marked category and by bringing to the forefront the diverse gender systems of ethnic minorities, this book encourages an increasing awareness of, and sensitivity to the cross-cultural diversity of gendered China both in academia and beyond.

The development of new sexualities and gender identities has become a crucial issue in the field of literary and cultural studies in the first years of the twenty-first century. The roles of gender and sexual identities in the struggle for equality have become a major concern in both fields. The legacy of this process has its origins in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. The Victorian preoccupation about the female body and sexual promiscuity was focused on the regulation of deviant elements in society and the control of venereal disease; homosexuals, lesbians, and prostitutes' identities were considered out of the norm and against the moral values of the time. The relationship between sexuality and gender identity has attracted wide-ranging discussion amongst feminist theorists during the last few decades. The methodologies of cultural studies and, in particular, of post-structuralism and post-colonialism, urges us to read and interpret different cultures and different texts in ways that enhance personal and collective views of identity which are culturally grounded. These readings question the postmodernist concept of identity by looking into more progressive views of identity and difference addressing post-positivist interpretations of key identity markers such as sex, gender, race, and agency. As a consequence, an individual's identity is recognized as culturally constructed and the result of power relations. Identities on the Move: Contemporary Representations of New Sexualities and Gender Identities offers creative insights on pressing issues and engages in productive dialogue. Identities on the Move to addresses the topic of new sexualities and gender identities and their representation in post-colonial and contemporary Anglophone literary, historical, and cultural productions from a trans-national, trans-cultural, and anti-essentialist perspective. The authors include the views and concerns of people of color, of women in the diaspora, in our evermore multiethnic and multicultural societies, and their representation in the media, films, popular culture, subcultures, and the arts.

The core of the research reported in this study was a survey of men and women 55 years and older sampled from a comprehensive list of residents. The authors asked questions about social networks, control over household assets, household composition, life satisfaction, and subjective health, among other things. The social network questions had been used in an earlier study done in Kentucky. Nearly everything else had been developed for the Delhi study. The findings were similar to those in the earlier study: the size of people's networks does not decline materially until they are older (80 plus). Age itself did not seem that important, but health was crucial. Persons who reported they were healthy had larger networks.

As one might expect, joint family life has great impact on the nature of social life among older people. This has to do with the big difference in the situation of men and women in India. In addition to being patrilineal kin groups, joint families are dominated by male economic interests. The males as a collective group inherit property. Women have much less control of household assets. This ethnographic fact appeared very clearly in the answers to questions about participation in household decision making. High involvement in decisions, which the authors construed as a measure of power, spilled over into other aspects of the social aging process. Persons who were powerful in their households tended to have large networks, better subjective health, and much higher life satisfaction. They also tended to be men. The women tended to have small networks, low life satisfaction, lower subjective health, and less power. These differences between men and women were all substantial and highly significant. Gender is an extraordinarily important factor in the outcomes of social aging processes in India.

Long caught between powerful neighbours, Ladakh is now a border region in the vast Indian nation state. In this detailed, anthropological study Fernanda Pirie traces the ways order has been created by, but also despite and in defiance of, the powerful external forces of religion, war, politics and wealth. Gradually a clear analysis unfolds of the subtle dynamics that have long characterised relations between local communities and centres of power and which can successfully be applied to the wider region. This exemplary study of conflict resolution brings to light the means by which small communities, both rural and urban, negotiate peace amidst the heterogeneous forces of modernity, while at the same time critically re-examining theories that over-emphasize the explanatory power of Buddhism. This rich ethnographic account of local practices fills a conspicuous gap in secondary literature on Tibetan law.

The Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology, now in its second edition, maintains a strong benchmark for understanding the scope of contemporary anthropological field methods. Avoiding divisive debates over science and humanism, the contributors draw upon both traditions to explore fieldwork in practice. The second edition also reflects major developments of the past decade, including: the rising prominence of mixed methods, the emergence of new technologies, and evolving views on ethnographic writing. Spanning the chain of research, from designing a project through methods of data collection and interpretive analysis, the Handbook features new chapters on ethnography of online communities, social survey research, and network and geospatial analysis. Considered discussion of ethics, epistemology, and the presentation of research results to diverse audiences round out the volume. The result is an essential guide for all scholars, professionals, and advanced students who employ fieldwork.

Unique and exciting, this ethnographic study is the first to address a little-known subculture, which holds a fascination for many. The first decade of the twenty-first century has displayed an ever increasing fixation with vampires, from the recent spate of phenomenally successful books, films, and television programmes, to the return of vampire-like style on the catwalk. Amidst this hype, there exists a small, dedicated community that has been celebrating their interest in the vampire since the early 1990s. The London vampire subculture is an alternative lifestyle community of people from all walks of life and all ages, from train drivers to university lecturers, who organise events such as fang fittings, gothic belly dancing, late night graveyard walks, and 'carve your own tombstone'.Mellins presents an extraordinary account of this fascinating subculture, which is largely unknown to most people. Through case study analysis of the female participants, "Vampire Culture" investigates women's longstanding love affair with the undead, and asks how this fascination impacts on their lives, from fiction to fashion. "Vampire Culture" includes photography from community member and professional photographer SoulStealer, and is an essential read for students and scholars of gender, film, television, media, fashion, culture, sociology and research methods, as well as anyone with an interest in vampires, style subcultures, and the gothic.

Dorothea Bleek (1873-1948) devoted her life to completing the 'bushman researches' that her father and aunt had begun in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. This research was partly a labour of familial loyalty to Wilhelm, the acclaimed linguist and language scholar of nineteenth-century Germany and later of the Cape Colony, and to Lucy Lloyd, a self-taught linguist and scholar of bushman languages and folklore; but it was also an expression of Dorothea's commitment to a particular kind of scholarship and an intellectual milieu that saw her spending her entire adult life in the study of the people she called'bushmen'. How has history treated Dorothea Bleek? Has she been recognised as a scholar in her own right, or as someone who merely followed in the footsteps of her famous father and aunt? Was she an adventurer, a woman who travelled across southern Africa driven by intellectual curiosity to learn all she could about the bushmen? Or was she conservative, a researcher who belittled the people she studied and dismissed them as lazy and improvident? These are some of the questions with which Jill Weintroub starts her thoughtful biography of Dorothea Bleek. The book examines Dorothea Bleek's life story and family legacy, her rock art research and her fieldwork in southern Africa, and, in light of these, evaluates her scholarship and contribution to the history of ideas in South Africa. The compelling and surprising narrative reveals an intellectual inheritance intertwined with the story of a woman's life, and argues that Dorothea's life work - her study of the bushmen - was also a sometimes surprising emotional quest.

In Biomedical Hegemony and Democracy in South Africa Ngambouk Vitalis Pemunta and Tabi Chama-James Tabenyang unpack the contentious South African government's post-apartheid policy framework of the ''return to tradition policy''. The conjuncture between deep sociopolitical crises, witchcraft, the ravaging HIV/AIDS pandemic and the government's initial reluctance to adopt antiretroviral therapy turned away desperate HIV/AIDS patients to traditional healers. Drawing on historical sources, policy documents and ethnographic interviews, Pemunta and Tabenyang convincingly demonstrate that despite biomedical hegemony, patients and members of their therapy-seeking group often shuttle between modern and traditional medicine, thereby making both systems of healthcare complementary rather than alternatives. They draw the attention of policy-makers to the need to be aware of ''subaltern health narratives'' in designing health policy.

Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama enjoy global popularity and relevance, yet the longstanding practice of oracles within the tradition is still little known and understood. The Nechung Oracle, for example, is believed to become possessed by an important god named Pehar, who speaks through the human medium to confer with the Dalai Lama on matters of state. The Dalai Lama and the Nechung Oracle is the first monograph to explore the mythologies and rituals of this god, the Buddhist monastery that houses him, and his close friendship with incarnations of the Dalai Lama over the centuries. In the seventeenth century, during the reign of the Fifth Dalai Lama, the protector deity Pehar and his oracle at Nechung Monastery were state-sanctioned by the nascent Tibetan government, becoming the head of an expansive pantheon of worldly deities assigned to protect the newly unified country. The governments of later Dalai Lamas expanded the deity's influence, as well as their own, by establishing Pehar at monasteries and temples around Lhasa and across Tibet. Pehar's cult at Nechung Monastery came to embody the Dalai Lama's administrative control in a mutual relationship of protection and prestige, the effects of which continue to reverberate within Tibet and among the Tibetan exile community today. The friendship between these two immortals has spanned nearly five hundred years across the Tibetan plateau and beyond.

Se explica que para la salud humana la satisfacci n de ""Las Hambres B sicas"" de Caricias, Tiempo y Reconocimiento es tan importante como la ingesta de alimentos, ox geno y agua. Comprenderemos qu son las Endorfinas -la droga de salud, la alegr a, el bienestar y el bienhacer. Conoceremos variadas formas de producirlas en nuestro organismo, pero ante todo la que nos proporciona las cinco ganancias m s codiciadas: envejecer despacio, mantener un sistema inmunol gico invencible, disponer de una gran energ a, vivir alegremente, y poder superar cualquier dolor f sico o corporal. Esta forma nica es la pr ctica de las Virtudes: Prudencia, Justicia, Fortaleza, Templanza, Fe, Esperanza y Caridad. Queda demostrado que para educar a nuestros hijos en la Virtud, la receta no consiste en ""hacer que ellos hagan lo que creemos que ellos deben hacer"," ni mucho menos en lograr que ""ellos hagan lo que los padres queremos"," sino algo muy distinto: que dentro de un "Sistema Incondicional" de Caricias, Tiempo y Reconocimiento, les hagamos vivir la fuerza de nuestro Amor, para que ""ellos quieran hacer habitualmente lo que conviene al Bien Com n y al Bien Integral"" de todos los involucrados en el proceso educativo. Para esto hace falta desarrollar un Liderazgo Transformador: s lo quien se siente amado puede ser educado. Se propone el justo medio entre los dos extremos en pugna: ni moralismo r gido, ni naturalismo hedonista o utilitario, sino del equilibrio entre esos dos extremos. Como estrategias auxiliares se plantea lo que es la Reingenier a de Valores y Virtudes, se analizan las Bases Filos ficas para Jerarquizar los Valores Operantes, Reales; y se propone la sana jerarqu a de los Nueve Valores Universales, as como el rechazo de los Contravalores. El libro concluye con una explicaci n apasionante: Qui n Soy Yo? A la vez que se exponen los Fundamentos Filos ficos de la Dignidad de la Persona.

Issues of race and ethnicity in Europe have been brought to the fore by the recent electoral successes of extreme right-wing parties, while immigration and refugee policies are exposing deep uncertainties across the political spectrum. The politicization of 'race', ethnicity and immigration is a key feature of contemporary European society. In this important new volume, leading specialists explore the political mediation of racism across western Europe, examining its causes, character and consequences. Racism, Ethnicity and Politics in Contemporary Europe includes an overview of contemporary racism, investigations into its socio-economic and ideological roots, analyses of its role in party politics and studies of multilateral and non-governmental initiatives designed to promote anti-racism. The contributors provide case studies of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. They consider both the experience of racism in specific countries and common issues thrown up by the resurgence of racism at a time of profound socio-economic restructuring and political uncertainty. The rich insights offered by this book will be of interest to students and scholars active in many disciplines ranging from politics and sociology to discourse analysis and social psychology.