The sequel to the acclaimed Made in Niugini, which explored in unparalleled depth the material world of the Wola comprising moveable artefacts, Built in Niugini continues Paul Sillitoe's project in exemplary fashion, documenting the built environment, architecture and construction techniques in a tour de force of ethnography. But this is more than a book about building houses. Sillitoe also shows how material constructions can serve to further our understandings of intellectual constructions. Allowing his ethnography to take the lead, and paying close attention to the role of tacit understandings and know-how in both skilled work and everyday dwelling, his close experiential analyses inform a phenomenologically inflected discussion of profound philosophical questions - such as what can we know of being-in-the-world - from startlingly different cultural directions. The book also forms part of a long-term project to understand a radically different 'economy', which is set in an acephalous order that extends individual freedom and equality in a manner difficult to imagine from the perspective of a nation-state - an intriguing way of being-in-the-world that is entwined with tacit aspects of knowing via personal and emotional experience. This brings us back to the explanatory power of a focus on technology, which Sillitoe argues for in the context of 'materiality' approaches that feature prominently in current debates about the sociology of knowledge. Archaeology has long been to the fore in considering technology and buildings, along with vernacular architecture, and Sillitoe contributes to a much-needed dialogue between anthropology and these disciplines, assessing the potential and obstacles for a fruitful rapprochement. Built in Niugini represents the culmination of Sillitoe's luminous scholarship as an anthropologist who dialogues fluidly with the literature and ideas of numerous disciplines. The arguments throughout engage with key concepts and theories from anthropology, archaeology, architecture, material culture studies, cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy. The result is a significant work that contributes to not only our regional knowledge of the New Guinea Highlands but also to studies of tacit knowledge and the anthropology of architecture and building practices. Trevor Marchand, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies

Most studies of geriatric patients have focused on nursing homes. In fact, most people are placed in these institutions only after being evaluated by medical and social service staff. This ethnography details the day-to-day experiences of a geriatric and assessment unit by examining the staff, families, and patients themselves. It looks at the activities that take place in the unit as well as the less obvious cultural patterns of the process. Using the Ethnography of Speaking method, it explores the human side of this most difficult of life's decisions.

This thoughtful and engaging text challenges the widely held notion of science as somehow outside of society, and the idea that technology proceeds automatically down a singular and inevitable path. Through specific case studies involving contemporary debates, this book shows that science and technology are fundamentally part of society and are shaped by it.
Draws on concepts from political sociology, organizational analysis, and contemporary social theory.
Avoids dense theoretical debate.
Includes case studies and concluding chapter summaries for students and scholars.

This volume examines the varied ways in which the senses were perceived afresh during the Enlightenment. In addition to introducing new philosophical and scientific models which sometimes upended the classic hierarchy of the senses, this period witnessed major changes in living and working habits, including urbanization, travel and exploration, the invention of new sonic and visual media, and the rise of comfort and pleasure as values that cut across a range of social classes. As this volume shows, those developments inspired a wealth of sensorially stimulating styles of design, art, music, poetry, foodstuffs, material goods and modes of worship and entertainment. The volume also demonstrates the period's countervailing concern with managing the senses, evident in fields like natural philosophy, medicine, education, religion, and public hygiene. Finally, it explores some of the Enlightenment's desensualizing tendencies, like the separation of sensuous body from discerning mind in certain arenas of science and manufacturing, and the late 18th-century shift away from a politics of publicity, or intense visual and aural scrutiny, toward the secret ballot. A Cultural History of the Senses in the Age of Enlightenment presents essays on the following topics: the social life of the senses; urban sensations; the senses in the marketplace; the senses in religion; the senses in philosophy and science; medicine and the senses; the senses in literature; art and the senses; and sensory media.

After Haiti's 2010 earthquake, over half of U.S. households donated to thousands of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in that country. Yet we continue to hear stories of misery from Haiti. Why have NGOs failed at their mission?
Set in Haiti during the 2004 coup and aftermath and enhanced by research conducted after the 2010 earthquake, "Killing with Kindness" analyzes the impact of official development aid on recipient NGOs and their relationships with local communities. Written like a detective story, the book offers rich enthnographic comparisons of two Haitian women's NGOs working in HIV/AIDS prevention, one with public funding (including USAID), the other with private European NGO partners. Mark Schuller looks at participation and autonomy, analyzing donor policies that inhibit these goals. He focuses on NGOs' roles as intermediaries in "gluing" the contemporary world system together and shows how power works within the aid system as these intermediaries impose interpretations of unclear mandates down the chain--a process Schuller calls "trickle-down imperialism."

This first full-scale account of Leviticus by a world renowned anthropologist presents the biblical work as a literary masterpiece. Seen in an anthropological perspective Leviticus has a mystical structure which plots the book into three parts corresponding to the three parts of the desert tabernacle, both corresponding to the parts of Mount Sinai. This completely new reading transforms the interpretation of the purity laws. The pig and other forbidden animals are not abhorrent, they command the same respect due to all God's creatures. Boldly challenging several traditions of Bible criticism, Mary Douglas claims that Leviticus is not the narrow doctrine of a crabbed professional priesthood but a powerful intellectual statement about a modern religion which emphasizes God's justice and compassion.

The Carolina, Mariana and Marshall Islands have experienced world war, atomic weapons testing and varying brands of colonialism in the 20th century. Following the seizure of the islands from Japan, agencies of the US government sought to better possess and control the area through a series of developmental initiatives. Interdisciplinary in its approach, this text goes beyond the liberal discourse surrounding modernity to examine what economic development actually entailed. It explores in ethnographic terms how different groups of island people responded to development programmes in multiple, complex, layered and sometimes conflicting ways that reflected their own historical experiences and cultural understandings.

Readings in Evolutionary Theory, Genetics, and the Origins of Modern Human Morphology provides students with a collection of readings that explore critical concepts in biological anthropology and human evolution. The text is divided into 10 distinct sections that feature an introduction, relevant readings, and post-reading questions. Opening sections explore creationism versus evolution, the history of evolutionary thought, population genetics and microevolution, and heritability. Students read about natural selection in action, primate behavior, evolutionary systematics, and human evolution and the origins of bipedalism. The final sections examine Neanderthals, the origins of modern humans, and what it is to be human. Concise and accessible, Readings in Evolutionary Theory, Genetics, and the Origins of Modern Human Morphology is an ideal resource for courses in anthropology and human evolution.

From clothing to the painted and scarified nude body, through overt, public display or esoteric symbols known only to the initiated, dress can convey information about beliefs, faith, identity, power, agency, resistance, and fashion. Taking a 'senses' approach, Hume's engaging account takes into consideration the look, smell, feel, touch and sound of religious apparel, the 'smells and bells' of dress and its accoutrements, as well as the emotions evoked by donning religious garb. The book's global perspective provides wide-ranging, yet detailed, coverage of religious dress, from the history and meaning of the simple 'no-frills' attire of the Anabaptists to the power structure displayed in the elaborate fabrics and colours of the Roman Catholic Church; Hume examines the 2,500 year-old tradition of Buddhist robes, the nudity of India's holy men, and much more. With chapters on Sufism, Vodou, modern Pagans, as well as painted and tattooed indigenous and modern Western bodies, the reader is swept along on a sensual journey of the sight, sound, smell and feel of wearing religion. Unique in its field, this intriguing and informative anthropological approach to the body and dress is an essential read for students of Anthropology, Anthropology of Dress, Sociology, Fashion and Textiles, Culture and Dress, Body and Culture and Cultural Studies.

In this broad condemnation of multiculturalism, the author works to uncover pernicious errors in the arguments of diversity's proponents and to sound a warning against the dire consequences for American culture if the tenets of political correctness are incorporated into our social structure. Schmidt begins by exposing multiculturalism, not as a movement aimed at expanding democratic ideals, but rather as a crypto-Marxist political ideology that seeks to import Marxist concepts into social and cultural institutions. Subsequent chapters then illuminate a number of dismaying trends: a tendency toward historical revisionism in multiculturalist arguments, the sly linguistic maneuvering and limits on speech that characterize political correctness, and the dismantling of the traditional image of the family unit-the primary building block of American society. Schmidt concludes with a rousing admonition to expel from our midst the latter-day Trojan horse that is multiculturalism. Casting a troubled glance over the list of social ills plaguing America today-besieged inner cities, divisive racial politics, diminishing educational standards, and rampant divorce and illegitimacy-we have cause to wonder whether the advocates of multiculturalism represent the solution or the source of the problem. In this rousing condemnation of the multiculturalist agenda, the author fixes an unflinching critical gaze on the subtle deceptions and wrongheaded conclusions at work in the arguments for cultural pluralism, moral relativism, and political correctness. An exhaustive and damning account of multiculturalism's wages and a compelling argument for the importance of traditional American values make this book essential reading for anyone concerned about our country's present plight and future prospects.

People and Change in Australia arose from a conviction that more needs to be done in anthropology to give a fuller sense of the changing lives and circumstances of Australian indigenous communities and people. Much anthropological and public discussion remains embedded in traditionalizing views of indigenous people, and in accounts that seem to underline essential and apparently timeless difference. In this volume the editors and contributors assume that "the person" is socially defined and reconfigured as contexts change, both immediate and historical. Essays in this collection are grounded in Australian locales commonly termed "remote." These indigenous communities were largely established as residential concentrations by Australian governments, some first as missions, most in areas that many of the indigenous people involved consider their homelands. A number of these settlements were located in proximity to settler industries including pastoralism, market-gardening, and mining. These are the locales that many non-indigenous Australians think of as the homes of the most traditional indigenous communities and people. The contributors discuss the changing circumstances of indigenous people who originate from such places. Some remain, while others travel far afield. The accounts reveal a diversity of experiences and histories that involve major dynamics of disembedding from country and home locales, and re-embedding in new contexts, and reconfigurations of relatedness. The essays explore dimensions of change and continuity in childhood experience and socialization in a desert community; the influence of Christianity in fostering both individuation and relatedness in northeast Arnhem Land; the diaspora of Central Australian Warlpiri people to cities and the forms of life and livelihood they make there; adolescent experiences of schooling away from home communities; youth in kin-based heavy metal gangs configuring new identities, and indigenous people of southeast Australia reflecting on whether an "Aboriginal way" can be sustained. The volume takes a step toward understanding the relation between changing circumstances and changing lives of indigenous Australians today and provides a sense of the quality and the feel of those lives.

The Jews from Aleppo, Syria, and their descendants compose a remarkable but little-known community that has spread throughout the world during the past two centuries, adapting to myriad social settings from Kobe to Buenos Aires. Aleppan Jews are known for their strong Jewish identity and commercial acumen, as well as their learning and piety. The religious leadership of Aleppan Jewry, unlike other Sephardim, is also noted for its militant conservatism.

A Global Community is the first comprehensive scholarly interpretation of the historical experience of this unusual community in Syria and in the other places to which Aleppan Jewry have immigrated. Their incorporation into the nation-states in the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas has forced Syrian Jews to change their modes of identification as Jews and reshape their culture while maintaining international familial and communal ties. A Global Community is pertinent to current discussions and debates concerning ethnic persistence and assimilation, transnational diasporas, and nationalism.

Walter P. Zenner points to the social, economic, and cultural links that the various Syrian Jewish communities have made for the unique persistence of community throughout the diaspora. He pisces special interest on the communities in Israel and the United States but also studies the communities in England and Latin America. He utilizes rabbinical responses, travelers' writings, secondary sources, interviews, and oral histories to provide a unique look into this Middle Eastern Jewish community for those interested in Ashkenazic as well as Sephardic Judaism.

examines Thai-Chinese relations, dating back to the first Thai dynasty (Sukhothai) to the present (Ratanakosin). The study explores the Thai domestic policies that have affected the Chinese population since World War II and assimilation policies of the Thai government towards the Chinese. This book also analyzes both Skinner's and Chan and Tong's arguments, and their main idea in the context of the present day environment and situation for the ethnic Chinese. This research supports the Skinnerian paradigm, which asserts that "a majority of the descendants of Chinese immigrants in each generation merge with Thai society and become indistinguishable from the indigenous population to the extent that fourth-generation Chinese are practically non-existent." The validation of the Skinnerian paradigm rejects Chan and Tong's hypothesis, which claims that Skinner has "overemphasized the forces of assimilation" and that the Chinese in Thailand have not assimilated but retained their Chinese identity. To support Skinner's assertion and reject Chan and Tong's argument, this book presents rich empirical data collected via surveys conducted with the ethnic Chinese in Thailand from 2003-2004. This study uncovers that the forces of assimilation occur at two levels. On the first level, the Chinese in Thailand possess natural attributes which facilitate social and cultural integration and assimilation into Thai society. On the second level, government pro-assimilation policies, driven by the bilateral relations between Thailand and China and the political situation in both countries, are also responsible for the assimilation of the Chinese in Thailand. As the most current in-depth study on the Chinese in Thailand, The Chinese Emigres of Thailand in the Twentieth Century is a critical addition for all collections in Asian Studies as well as Ethnic and Immigrant Studies.

Miriam Meyers celebrates the positive role that food plays in the mother-daughter relationship. Despite their increasing freedom to pursue other roles in society, women still retain primary responsibility for food-related tasks in the home. With that responsibility comes considerable work, but it also affords women in families a special opportunity for companionship, communication, learning, and inspiration. To illuminate the ways women use this role to connect with their daughters, Meyers combines original research, encompassing focus groups, interviews, and a national survey, with a personal memoir and a wide range of other sources. She shows, in women's own voices, how food offers, more than just nourishment for the body, something for the mind, heart, and soul. Browse through the list of books that come out each year on women and food. The vast majority treat food as the enemy of women everywhere, either by pitching (or criticizing) the latest diet fad or by focusing on such problems as eating disorders, and parents' implication in them. Taking a different path, Miriam Meyers celebrates the positive role that food plays in women's lives, and in the relationship between mother and daughter. Despite the changes wrought by modern technology, the provision of food remains necessary to sustain physical, social, religious, and familial life. The idealized homemaker of the 1950s, working ceaselessly to achieve the perfectly clean home and perfectly arranged food, has all but disappeared from the American scene. While the ways we acquire and prepare our food has shifted, women still have primary responsibility for home food management, despite their increasing pursuit of other roles. With that responsibility comes considerable work, but it also affords women in families a special opportunity for companionship, communication, learning, and inspiration. Beginning with a look at food's place in the greater family, A Bite Off Mama's Plate explores the connections mothers and daughters enjoy in the kitchen and beyond. To illuminate those links, Meyers combines original research, encompassing focus groups, interviews, and a national survey, with personal memoir and a wide range of other sources. She shows, in women's own voices, how food offers, more than just nourishment for the body, something for the mind, heart, and soul.

China is in the midst of dramatic economic and social reform--reform that may well suggest a long-term developmental trend toward modernization and democracy. This evolution in the structure of Chinese society means that the authoritarian social control system in China must change if loss of community ties, dislocation, and social disintegration are to be avoided in the coming years. This book provides a blueprint for the social architecture of China and offers an argument for how change in the essential structure of Chinese society must be implemented. Shaw's investigation of work units--the building blocks of contemporary China--pinpoints them as the primary sites of social control and as the most important components of any efforts at reform.

Originally published in London 1929. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: The Missing Words. - The Origin of the Gypsies. - The Macedonian Gypsy. - The Gypsies in Roumania. - The Gypsies in Hungary. - The Gypsies in France. - The Gypsies in Spain. - The Gypsies in Germany. - The Russian Gypsy. - The English Gypsy. - The American Gypsy. - Nordic Gypsies and Other Strays. - The Tent in the Wind. A learned discussion of the mystery of the origin of the Gypsy race and their language, their achievement of happiness without civilisation, and the wild romanticism of their complete denial of nearly all accepted ethical and social values.

A resource guide by and about elders and the process of aging, this volume provides a list of over 1,500 references, all annotated, covering a wide range of subject areas. It is organized under such topics as "Customs and Beliefs," "Narratives," "Traditional Arts," "Health and Healing," and "Applied Folklore," and is further divided into regional and topical subheadings. It also features works on methods and concepts in field research in folklore, oral history, and community studies, a chapter on general works from other fields of interest, as well as a chapter on films. The introduction offers not only a description of the nature and role of elders as creators and carriers of culture, but also a challenge to readers--reflected in the broad range of materials cited--defying both narrow conceptions of aging and the aged, and limited notions about the full scope of expressive culture addressed by folklore studies.

Social Inclusion of Ethnic Communities in Contemporary Nepal focuses on the dynamics of ethnic identities and movement in South Asian states in a comparative framework. As we witness a series of explosive ethnic revivals across the globe, this study investigates the issues around ethnicity that have come to occupy centre stage in Nepal's contemporary political and development discourse. Nepal is at the crossroads of state building. The Constituent Assembly is now looking into the modalities of establishing a multi-cultural, multi-social, multi-linguistic, multi-religious and multi-ethnic federal state. In the aftermath of the April 2006 Jana Andolan II and the commitment of the ruling political alliance to restructuring Nepal along federal republican lines, the assessment of Nepal's ethnic question from multiple perspectives - political, sociological, economic and spatial - has acquired a new urgency. Ethnic identity is only one part of the problem of ethnicity in Nepal. Federalism therefore has to be conceived of as an exercise in addressing the multiplicity of issues that form the agenda of Nepal's development, so that a politically, socially and economically integrated, dynamic and progressive Nepal emerges from the shadows of the past. This work includes an intensive analysis of facts, figures and particulars collected from available records and surveys. One of the aims of the study is to assess the defining ethnic identity among the Limbus, centred on a case in an urban area in the Kathmandu Valley. This work is mainly based on qualitative data but quantitative data has also been used to measure various aspects of the community, like the level of educational, economy etc. This volume will be an invaluable guide for the scholars of federalism in Nepal while also educating the lay reader in general.

El autor de esta colactanea considera que la etnologia es una disciplina que debe recurrir a otras, principalmente en la arqueologia y en la linguistica. Hizo sus primeros estudios en la Escuela Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, de orientacion pedagogica fuertemente humboldtiana, en Ciudad de Mexico. Posteriormente se doctoro en la Facultad de Filosofia y Letras de Koln, de orientacion completamente humboldtiana. Este libro es la recopilacion de veintitres notas de etnologia y arqueologia en distintas revistas academicas. De ellas, 16 son investigaciones propias con lo que esto supone de aportes personales y 7 son resenas bibliograficas muy informativas acerca de libros del ramo. La casi totalidad de estos articulos fue escrita en los anos mozos del autor, epoca de la cual es tambien este retrato. En lo geografico, esas notas abarcan desde Europa Oriental ("Guerra de razas y reaccion gitana," "Origen y ocaso de tadtl monoteista," "Serbokroatische Volkskunde," "Pasteurs nomades mediterraneens"), y, pasando por sitios de ocupacion paleolitica en Europa Central y Occidental, llegan a la actualidad en la Peninsula berica ("El chozo en Extremadura," "La vivienda rustica en Espana"), para dar el gran salto a Austroamerica ("Existet-il le maitre des bois en Argentine?," "Tigres de papel y tigres verdaderos," "Cuentos chilenoargentinos." En seguida, estas Analectas presentan trabajos que se refi eren al Ecuador y a Colombia ("Diccionario del Folklore Ecuatoriano," "Ceramica erotica de Tumaco, y otras, descifrada"), desde donde el autor encuentra puentes hacia America Media ("Parturienta de Tumaco, y otras, descifrada"), hasta incluir un analisis, hecho de estudiante, de "Dos capas de elementos paleoliticos entre los cazadores de Mejico." El resto de esta coleccion se ocupa de cuestiones teoricas ("Exigencias de una ciencia cultural: la Prehistoria," "Anthropologists in the Field," y otros).

While much work has been done to apply anthropological insights to the study of missions, the sociological perspective has been generally neglected by missiologists. This volume defines the sociology of missions as a discrete subdiscipline within the sociology of religion and provides a working set of conceptual resources for those involved in mission work to use in furthering their understanding of their task. The author reviews the major areas of sociology that are most relevant to missions and presents his findings as a basis for discussion and a stimulus to further exploration of relevant sociological concepts and theories. One of his main goals is to increase dialogue between missiologists and sociologists of religion, by providing the former with a sociological perspective and the latter with a deeper understanding of the missionary enterprise.

This is the extraordinary story of Mikidadi, an ordinary Tanzanian from a remote coastal island, who became a Koran-school teacher, charity leader, environmental activist and guardian of an extended family. But this biography is not only about Mikidadi's life and legacy, but also his times. He lived through transitions from colonialism to independence, socialism to neoliberalism, a single- to a multi-party state, and a local Swahili Islam to a more globalized and politicized form. He also experienced the growth of corruption, and the increasing role of Western NGOs and Islamic charities. In considering how wider historical processes impacted on Mikidadi, as life got progressively harder for his family, this book seeks to counter some of the recent rewriting of Tanzania's post-colonial history. Skilfully moving through the decades, between events at national, regional and individual levels, between three generations, and even adding a further layer of her own life as an anthropologist, Caplan succeeds in writing an engaging, accessible account that will appeal to both academics and students. For at the centre of this book is an unlikely friendship that began in 1966 between a 12-year-old boy and a 23-year-old woman, and lasted nearly four decades, to be cut short by Mikidadi's untimely death in 2002. Recollections of meetings, and extracts from fieldwork notes and correspondence, bring a lively immediacy to this exchange, in which profound cultural differences between researcher and researched are transcended in interconnected lives. "This clear and well-written book celebrates a life and its place in history. It is an exemplar of public anthropology." - David Zeitlyn, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford. 'An unprecedented ethnographic analysis of contemporary Tanzanian history exploring how individuals, families and communities over time perceive, act, negotiate and strive to adjust in the shade of shifting political, economic and ideological conditions.' - Kjersti Larsen, Professor, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo 'Clear, engaging, and insightful, this accessible biography provides a rich entry point into African history and anthropology through an intimate account of life in a coastal East African village.' - Christine J. Walley, Professor of Anthropology, Director of Graduate Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 'A model of participatory and ethical research, Mikidadi is an invaluable resource for scholars, students, development practitioners, and environment activists.' - Marjorie Mbilinyi, Professor, University of Dar es Salaam (1968-2003); Principal Policy Analyst, Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (2004-14)