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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology
Primitive art is inseparable from primitive consciousness and can
be correctly understood only with the correct socio-cultural
context. This book examines the ancient art of Siberia as part of
the integral whole of ancient society.
For those interested in continuing the struggle for decolonization,
the word "multiculturalism" is mostly a sad joke. After all,
institutionalized multiculturalism today is a managerial muck of
buzzwords, branding strategies, and virtue signaling that has
nothing to do with real struggles against racism and colonialism.
But Decolonize Multiculturalism unearths a buried history.
Decolonize Multiculturalism focuses on the story of the student and
youth movements of the 1960s and 1970s, inspired by global
movements for decolonization and anti-racism, who aimed to
fundamentally transform their society, as well as the violent
repression of these movements by the state, corporations, and
university administrations. Part of the response has been sheer
violence-campus policing, for example, only began in the 1970s,
paving the way for the militarized campuses of today-with
institutionalized multiculturalism acting like the velvet glove
around the iron fist of state violence. But this means that today's
multiculturalism also contains residues of the original radical
demands of the student and youth movements that it aims to repress:
to open up the university, to wrench it from its settler colonial,
white supremacist, and patriarchal capitalist origins, and to
transform it into a place of radical democratic possibility.
This book explores the early history of the Pitt Rivers Museum and
its collections. Many thousands of people collected objects for the
Museum between its foundation in 1884 and 1945, and together they
and the objects they collected provide a series of insights into
the early history of archaeology and anthropology. The volume also
includes individual biographies and group histories of the people
originally making and using the objects, as well as a snapshot of
the British empire. The main focus for the book derives from the
computerized catalogues of the Museum and attendant archival
information. Together these provide a unique insight into the
growth of a well-known institution and its place within broader
intellectual frameworks of the Victorian period and early twentieth
century. It also explores current ideas on the nature of
relationships, particularly those between people and things.
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.
The Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea have been depicted as a
place of sexual freedom ever since these small atolls in the
southwest Pacific were made famous by anthropologist Bronislaw
Malinowski in the early twentieth century. Today in the era of the
HIV/AIDS pandemic, how do Trobrianders respond to public health
interventions that link their cultural practices to the risk of
HIV? How do they weigh HIV prevention messages of abstinence,
fidelity, and condom use against traditional sexual practices that
strengthen interclan relationships in a gift economy?
Written by an anthropologist who has direct ties to the Trobriands
through marriage and who has been involved in Papua New Guinea's
national response to the HIV epidemic since the mid-1990s, "Islands
of Love, Islands of Risk" is an unusual insider ethnography.
Katherine Lepani describes in vivid detail the cultural practices
of regeneration, from the traditional dance called "Wosimwaya" to
the elaborate exchanges that are part of the mortuary feasts called
"sagali." Focusing on the sexual freedom of young people, the
author reveals the social value of sexual practice. By bringing
cultural context and lived experience to the fore, the book
addresses the failure of standardized public health programs to
bridge the persistent gap between HIV awareness and prevention. The
book offers insights on the interplay between global and local
understandings of gender, sexuality, and disease and suggests the
possibility of viewing sexuality in terms other than risk.
"Islands of Love, Islands of Risk" illustrates the contribution of
ethnographic research methodology in facilitating dialogue between
different ways of knowing. As a contemporary perspective on
Malinowski's classic accounts of Trobriand sexuality, the book
reaffirms the Trobriands' central place in the study of
anthropology.
"This book is the recipient of the annual Norman L. and Roselea J.
Goldberg Prize for the best project in the area of medicine."
The twenty-first century has seen the emergence of a new style of
man: the metrosexual. Overwhelmingly straight, white, and wealthy,
these impeccably coiffed urban professionals spend big money on
everything from facials to pedicures, all part of a
multi-billion-dollar male grooming industry. Yet as this innovative
study reveals, even as the industry encourages men to invest more
in their appearance, it still relies on women to do much of the
work. Styling Masculinity investigates how men's beauty salons have
persuaded their clientele to regard them as masculine spaces. To
answer this question, sociologist Kristen Barber goes inside Adonis
and The Executive, two upscale men's salons in Southern California.
Conducting detailed observations and extensive interviews with both
customers and employees, she shows how female salon workers not
only perform the physical labor of snipping, tweezing, waxing, and
exfoliating, but also perform the emotional labor of pampering
their clients and pumping up their masculine egos. Letting salon
employees tell their own stories, Barber not only documents
occasions when these workers are objectified and demeaned, but also
explores how their jobs allow for creativity and confer a degree of
professional dignity. In the process, she traces the vast network
of economic and social relations that undergird the burgeoning male
beauty industry.
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.
"Feminist Anthropology" surveys the history of feminist
anthropology and offers students and scholars a fascinating
collection of both classic and contemporary articles, grouped to
highlight key themes from the past and present.
Offers vibrant examples of feminist ethnographic work rather than
synthetic overviews of the field.
Each section is framed by a theoretical and bibliographic essay.
Includes a thoughtful introduction to the volume that provides
context and discusses the intellectual "foremothers" of the field,
including Margaret Mead, Ruth Landes, Phyllis Kaberry, and Zora
Neale Hurston.
Michael Staack's multi-year ethnography is the first and only
comprehensive social-scientific analysis of the combat sport 'Mixed
Martial Arts'. Based on systematic training observations, the
author meticulously analyses how Mixed Martial Arts practitioners
conjointly create and immerse themselves into their own world of
ultimate bodily combat. With his examination of concentrative
technique demonstrations, cooperative technique train-ings, and
chaotic sparring practices, Staack not only provides a sociological
illumination of Mixed Martial Arts culture's defining theme - the
quest of 'Fighting As Real As It Gets'. Rather further-more, he
provides a compelling cultural-sociological case study on practical
social constructions of 'authenticity'.
In this ground-breaking new book on the Nortena/Surena
(North/South) youth gang dynamic, cultural anthropologist and
linguist Norma Mendoza-Denton looks at the daily lives of young
Latinas and their innovative use of speech, bodily practices, and
symbolic exchanges to signal their gang affiliations and
ideologies. She analyzes their use of language as well as social
and cultural practices such as the circulation of poetry,
photographs, and drawings, and also their practices around makeup
and bodily presentation. Through this detailed exploration,
"Homegirls" examines the localized North-South rivalry between the
bilingual, English-speaking and Americanized Norte girls and the
Mexican or Latin-American-oriented, Spanish-speaking Sur girls.
Mendoza-Denton uncovers a new dimension to studies of youth
styles, where gang members are innovative not only in terms of
dress, make-up, and music, but also by participating in crucial
processes of language variation and change. This engrossing
ethnographic and sociolinguistic book reveals the connection of
language behavior and other symbolic practices among youth, and
their connections to larger social processes of nationalism,
racial/ethnic consciousness, and gender identity.
This "Companion" provides the first definitive overview of
psychocultural anthropology: a subject that focuses on cultural,
psychological, and social interrelations across cultures.
Brings together original essays by leading scholars in the field
Offers an in-depth exploration of the concepts and topics that have
emerged through contemporary ethnographic work and the processes of
global change
Key issues range from studies of consciousness and time, emotion,
cognition, dreaming, and memory, to the lingering effects of racism
and ethnocentrism, violence, identity and subjectivity
"A profound personal meditation on human existence and a
tour-de-force weaving together of historic and contemporary thought
on the deepest question of all: why are we here?" - Gabor Mate
M.D., author, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts As our civilization
careens toward climate breakdown, ecological destruction, and
gaping inequality, people are losing their existential moorings.
The dominant worldview of disconnection, which tells us we are
split between mind and body, separate from each other, and at odds
with the natural world, has been invalidated by modern science.
Award-winning author, Jeremy Lent, investigates humanity's age-old
questions - Who am I? Why am I? How should I live? - from a fresh
perspective, weaving together findings from modern systems
thinking, evolutionary biology, and cognitive neuroscience with
insights from Buddhism, Taoism, and Indigenous wisdom. The result
is a breathtaking accomplishment: a rich, coherent worldview based
on a deep recognition of connectedness within ourselves, between
each other, and with the entire natural world. It offers a
compelling foundation for a new philosophical framework that could
enable humanity to thrive sustainably on a flourishing Earth. The
Web of Meaning is for everyone looking for deep and coherent
answers to the crisis of civilization. AWARDS GOLD | 2022 Nautilus
Book Awards - World Cultures' Transformational Growth &
Development SILVER | 2022 Nautilus Book Awards - Science &
Cosmology NOMINATED | 2021 Foreword INDIES - Ecology &
Environment
Music of the Baduy People of Western Java: Singing is a Medicine by
Wim van Zanten is about music and dance of the indigenous group of
the Baduy, consisting of about twelve-thousand people living in
western Java. It covers music for rice rituals, for circumcisions
and weddings, and music for entertainment. The book includes many
photographs and several discussed audio-visual examples that can be
found on DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5170520. Baduy are suppposed to
live a simple, ascetic life. However, there is a shortage of
agricultural land and there are many temptations from the changing
world around them. Little has been published on Baduy music and
dance. Wim van Zanten's book seeks to fill this lacuna and is based
on short periods of fieldwork from 1976 to 2016.
This book carries an ethnographic signature in approach and style,
and is an examination of a small Brooklyn, New York,
African-American, Pentecostal church congregation and is based on
ethnographic notes taken over the course of four years. The
Pentecostal Church is known to outsiders almost exclusively for its
members' "bizarre" habit of speaking in tongues. This ethnography,
however, puts those outsiders inside the church pews, as it paints
a portrait of piety, compassion, caring, love-all embraced through
an embodiment perspective, as the church's members experience these
forces in the most personal ways through religious conversion.
Central themes include concerns with the notion of "spectacle"
because of the grand bodily display that is highlighted by
spiritual struggle, social aspiration, punishment and spontaneous
explosions of a variety of emotions in the public sphere. The
approach to sociology throughout this work incorporates the
striking dialectic of history and biography to penetrate and
interact with religiously inspired residents of the inner-city in a
quest to make sense both empirically and theoretically of this
rapidly changing, surprising and highly contradictory late-modern
church scene. The focus on the individual process of becoming
Pentecostal provides a road map into the church and canvasses an
intimate view into the lives of its members, capturing their
stories as they proceed in their Pentecostal careers. This book
challenges important sociological concepts like crisis to explain
religious seekership and conversion, while developing new concepts
such as "God Hunting" and "Holy Ghost Capital" to explain the
process through which individuals become tongue-speaking
Pentecostals. Church members acquire "Holy Ghost Capital" and
construct a Pentecostal identity through a relationship narrative
to establish personal status and power through conflicting
tongue-speaking ideas. Finally, this book examines the futures of
the small and large, institutionally affiliated Pentecostal Church
and argues that the small Pentecostal Church is better able to
resist modern rationalizing forces, retaining the charisma that
sparked the initial religious movement. The power of charisma in
the small church has far-reaching consequences and implications for
the future of Pentecostalism and its followers.
This is a book of great originality that analyses cultural change
and experience of development in terms of the pursuit of the 'good
life' as a social process. While recent anthropological critiques
of development highlight the importance of 'local knowledge', this
book argues that these critiques have not gone far enough, and
suggests that a much more fundamental issue concerns the ends of
development as seen from a more holistic, cultural perspective.
Based on ethnographic research among an ethnic Tibetan community in
the Nepal Himalaya, the book eloquently illustrates how the pursuit
of the good life is inextricably tied to space and history, and
demonstrates the relevance of ethno-historically generated
conceptions of the 'good life' to the practice of development.
In the last decade of the twentieth century and on into the
twenty-first, Israelis and Palestinians saw the signing of the Oslo
Peace Accords, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the
assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the
escalation of suicide bombings and retaliations in the region.
During this tumultuous time, numerous collaborations between
Israeli and Palestinian musicians coalesced into a significant
musical scene informed by these extremes of hope and despair on
both national and personal levels. Following the bands Bustan
Abraham and Alei Hazayit from their creation and throughout their
careers, as well as the collaborative projects of Israeli artist
Yair Dalal, Playing Across a Divide demonstrates the possibility of
musical alternatives to violent conflict and hatred in an intensely
contested, multicultural environment. These artists' music drew
from Western, Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and Afro-diasporic
musical practices, bridging differences and finding innovative
solutions to the problems inherent in combining disparate musical
styles and sources. Creating this new music brought to the
forefront the musicians' contrasting assumptions about sound
production, melody, rhythm, hybridity, ensemble interaction, and
improvisation. Author Benjamin Brinner traces the tightly
interconnected field of musicians and the people and institutions
that supported them as they and their music circulated within the
region and along international circuits. Brinner argues that the
linking of Jewish and Arab musicians' networks, the creation of new
musical means of expression, and the repeated enactment of
culturally productive musical alliances provide a unique model for
mutually respectful and beneficial coexistence in a chronically
disputed land.
Using a theoretical approach and a critical summary, combining the
perspectives in the postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis and
narratology with the tools of hermeneutics and deconstruction, this
book argues that Jean Rhys's work can be subsumed under a poetics
of cultural identity and hybridity. It also demonstrates the
validity of the concept of hybridization as the expression of
identity formation; the cultural boundaries variability; the
opposition self-otherness, authenticity-fiction, trans-textuality;
and the relevance of an integrated approach to multiple cultural
identities as an encountering and negotiation space between writer,
reader and work. The complexity of ontological and epistemological
representation involves an interdisciplinary approach that blends a
literary interpretive approach to social, anthropological, cultural
and historical perspectives. The book concludes that in the
author's fictional universe, cultural identity is represented as a
general human experience that transcends the specific
conditionalities of geographical contexts, history and culture. The
construction of identity by Jean Rhys is represented by the
dichotomy of marginal identity and the identification with a human
ideal designed either by the hegemonic discourse or metropolitan
culture or by the dominant ideology. The identification with a
pattern of cultural authenticity, of racial, ethnic, or national
purism is presented as a purely destructive cultural projection,
leading to the creation of a static universe in opposition to the
diversity of human feelings and aspirations. Jean Rhys's fictional
discourse lies between "the anxiety of authorship" and "the anxiety
of influence" and shows the postcolonial era of uprooting and
migration in which the national ownership diluted the image of a
"home" ambiguous located at the boundary between a myth of origins
and a myth of becoming. The relationship between the individual and
socio-cultural space is thus shaped in a dual hybrid position.
New York Jews, so visible and integral to the culture, economy and
politics of America's greatest city, has eluded the grasp of
historians for decades. Surprisingly, no comprehensive history of
New York Jews has ever been written. City of Promises: A History of
the Jews of New York, a three volume set of original research,
pioneers a path-breaking interpretation of a Jewish urban community
at once the largest in Jewish history and most important in the
modern world. Volume II, Emerging Metropolis, written by Annie
Polland and Daniel Soyer, describes New York's transformation into
a Jewish city. Focusing on the urban Jewish built environment-its
tenements and banks, synagogues and shops, department stores and
settlement houses-it conveys the extraordinary complexity of Jewish
immigrant society. Each volume includes a visual essay by art
historian Diana Linden interpreting aspects of life for New York's
Jews from their arrival until today. These illustrated sections,
many in color, illuminate Jewish material culture and feature
reproductions of early colonial portraits, art, architecture, as
well as everyday culture and community. Overseen by noted scholar
Deborah Dash Moore, City of Promises offers the largest Jewish city
in the world, in the United States, and in Jewish history its first
comprehensive account.
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