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.

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.

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

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.

Benoit, Blaney, and Pier apply the functional theory of political campaign discourse to the 1996 presidential campaign. When a citizen casts a vote, he or she makes a decision about which candidate is preferable. There are only three types of rhetorical strategies for persuading voters to believe a candidate is the better choice: acclaiming or self-praise, attacking or criticizing an opponent, and defending or responding to attacks. As they illustrate, acclaims, if accepted by the audience, make the candidate appear better. Attacks can make the opponent seem worse, improving the source's apparent preferability. If attacked, a candidate can attempt to restore-or prevent-lost credibility by defending against that attack. As Benoit, Blaney, and Pier point out, the functional theory of political communication is relatively new, and their book illustrates it with a detailed analysis of the most recent presidential campaign. One of the major strengths of the study is the variety of message forms examined: television spots, debates, talk radio appearances, keynote speeches, acceptance speeches, speeches by spouses, radio addresses, and free television time remarks. It also examines all three parts of the campaign-primary, nominating conventions, and general campaign. This comprehensive analysis of the '96 presidential campaign will be of considerable use to students, scholars, and other researchers dealing with contemporary American electioneering.

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.

This collection of essays significantly refines the way we think about state and society in the British Southern Africa of the 19th and 20th centuries, from the conquest of the Transkei and Natal to contemporary Botswana and Zimbabwe. The essays embody a range of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, history, and historical sociology. Yet they share a set of theoretical and empirical concerns united by an interesting understanding the culture of power - and the power of culture - at Africa's southern tip. Contributing scholars are especially concerned with understanding the hidden and complex histories of state formation and popular culture, and the relationship among rule, experience, and meaning. By focusing on state formation, and not on who rules but on how rule is accomplished, the essays in this exemplary collection present a reinvigorated social history of state formation without reducing African historical actors to mere respondents to the intrusions of others. They argue that precisely because colonial conquest and rule were cross-cultural encounters requiring the exercise of both force and dialogue, state formation and the culture and consciousness of African subjects were intertwined historical developments.

Migration and borders are at the center of political debates in South Asia and around the world as more people migrate in search of safety and opportunity. This book brings a deep engagement with individuals whose lives are shaped by encounters with borders by telling the stories of a poor Bangladeshi women who regularly crosses the India border to visit family, of Muslims from India living in Gulf countries for work, and the harrowing journey of a young Afghan man as he sets off on foot to Germany. The international and interdisciplinary work in this book contributes to this moment by analyzing how borders are experienced by migrants and borderlanders in South Asia, how mobility and diaspora are engaged in literature and media, and how the lives of migrants are transformed during their journey to new homes in South Asia, the Middle East, North America, and Europe.

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.

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.

Focusing on Greater Khartoum following South Sudanese independence in 2011, In-Betweenness in Greater Khartoum explores the impact on society of major political events in areas that are neither urban nor rural, public nor private. This volume uses these in-between spaces as a lens to analyze how these events, in combination with other processes, such as globalization and economic neo-liberalization, impact communities across the region. Drawing on original fieldwork and empirical data, the authors uncover the reshaping of new categories of people that reinforce old dichotomies and in doing so underscore a common Sudanese identity.

Religions constrain the bodies of their members through dress. In many cases, dress immediately identifies a member of the community to the outside world and separates them from a society that members believe is threatened by evil forces. Dress identifies the wearer's community to other groups and communities, and may also reflect one's status. Most interestingly, perhaps, dress is a measure of one's level of commitment to the community. While communities vary greatly in terms of what is permissible, strict conformity to internal codes invariably is interpreted as a sign of piety, whereas deviation implies at best self-indulgence and at worst contempt for community values. In order to control sexuality, women's bodies in particular are constrained in religious communities in terms of emotional expression, diet, and especially dress.
This book investigates dress in American religious communities as a vital component of the social control of cultures, and also examines how people express themselves despite religious constraints. Gender issues feature prominently since the control of female sexuality within religious communities is a matter of vital concern to its members. Drawing on rich ethnographic case studies, this wide-ranging and interdisciplinary represents a major contribution to the study of both religion and dress.

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.

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.

Based on an ethnographic account of subsistence use of Amazonian forests by Wapishana people in Guyana, Edges, Frontiers, Fringes examines the social, cultural and behavioral bases for sustainability and resilience in indigenous resource use. Developing an original framework for holistic analysis, it demonstrates that flexible interplay among multiple modes of environmental understanding and decision-making allows the Wapishana to navigate socio-ecological complexity successfully in ways that reconcile short-term material needs with long-term maintenance and enhancement of the resource base.

Who do "we" anthropologists think "we" are? And how do forms and notions of collective disciplinary identity shape the way we think, write, and do anthropology? This volume explores how the anthropological "we" has been construed, transformed, and deployed across history and the global anthropological landscape. Drawing together both reflections and ethnographic case studies, it interrogates the critical-yet poorly studied-roles played by myriad anthropological "we" ss in generating and influencing anthropological theory, method, and analysis. In the process, new spaces are opened for reimagining who "we" are - and what "we," and indeed anthropology, could become.

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.

In Projectland, anthropologist Holly High combines an engaging first-person narrative of her fieldwork with a political ethnography of Laos, more than forty years after the establishment of the Lao PDR and more than seven decades since socialist ideologues first "liberated" parts of upland country. In a remote village of Kandon, High finds that although socialism has declined significantly as an economic model, it is ascendant and thriving in the culture of politics and the politics of culture. Kandon is remarkable by any account. The villagers are ethnic Kantu (Katu), an ethnicity associated by early ethnographers above all with human sacrifice. They had repelled French control, and as the war went on, the revolutionary forces of Sekong were headquartered in Kandon territories. In 1996, Kandon village moved and resettled in a plateau area. "New Kandon" has become Sekong Province's first certified "Culture Village," the nation's very first "Open Defecation Free and Model Health Village," and the president of Laos personally granted the village a Labor Flag and Medal. High provides a unique and timely assessment of the Lao Party-state's resettlement politics, and she recounts with skillful nuance the stories that are often cast into shadows by the usual focus on New Kandon as a success. Her book follows the lives of a small group of villagers who returned to the old village in the mountains, effectively defying policy but, in their words, obeying the presence that animates the land there. Revealing her sensibility with tremendous composure, High tells the experiences of women who, bound by steep bride-prices to often violent marriages, have tasted little of the socialist project of equality, unity, and independence. These women spoke to the author of "necessities" as a limit to their own lives. In a context where the state has defined the legitimate forms of success and agency, "necessity" emerged as a means of framing one's life as nonconforming but also nonagentive.

This work deals with the identification and integration process of immigrants in Australia and the role that religion plays in this process. Viktor Zander investigates the immigrant community of Slavic Baptists in Victoria and analyzes the relationship between ethnic and religious identities as well as their social dynamics. "Identity" and "marginality" are addressed as crucial issues for Slavic immigrants and their Australian-born children. The work is based on the authora (TM)s field-research in the Slavic Baptist community in Victoria. Key Features Second volume in relaunch of the series "Religion and Society" (RS)

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.

The volume was inspired by the Children and Anthropology conference at the 14th International Congress of Anthropology and Ethnological Sciences, which was held at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in July of 1998. It was there that the contributing researchers/authors presented an argument aimed at changing the face of both anthropology and the study of children. They contend that anthropologists could and should contribute to a revitalized framework for the study of children and that childhood and youth culture are important sites for developing a more innovative and integrated anthropology.

As anthropologists struggle with competing research paradigms and agendas in this post-industrial, post-structural, late-modern world, it is argued here that research on children is an important arena for demonstrating the value of an anthropology that is both integrative (across sub-fields) and comparative. It seems clear that children in the 21st century will confront a range of both new and continuing problems that anthropologists are well-situated to address, such as the exploitation of Third World child labor, AIDS and other epidemics affecting children world-wide, and the impact of immigration as well as forced relocations due to war, natural disasters, and other social and environmental ills.

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).