From techniques for tapping maple trees and harvesting wild rice to extracting dyes from bloodroot to making dishes from birch bark and dolls with cattails, "Strength of the Earth details the many uses of over 200 forest and prairie plants. Early twentieth-century ethnologist Frances Densmore recorded traditions and techniques relayed by dozens of Ojibwe women to create this invaluable handbook perfect for readers interested in Native American art and culture, organic gardening, natural remedies, and living off the land. Brenda J. Child offers a fresh introduction focusing on the power of female healers in Native communities.

A rich ethnographic portrait of food-provisioning processes in a contemporary African city, offering valuable lessons about the powerful roles of gender, migration, exchange, sex, and charity in food acquisition. Based on anthropologist Karen Coen Flynn's study of Mwanza, Tanzania, this work draws on the personal accounts of over 350 market vendors, low, middle and high-income consumers, urban farmers as well as those, including children, who live on the streets. This strikingly original work offers interdisciplinary appeal to a broad audience of both students and professionals interested in anthropology, African studies, urban studies, gender studies and development economics.

Sexual Naturalization offers compelling new insights into the racialized constitution of American nationality. In the first major interdisciplinary study of Asian-white miscegenation from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, Koshy traces the shifting gender and racial hierarchies produced by antimiscegenation laws, and their role in shaping cultural norms. Not only did these laws foster the reproduction of the United States as a white nation, they were paralleled by extraterritorial privileges that facilitated the sexual access of white American men to Asian women overseas. Miscegenation laws thus turned sex acts into race acts and engendered new meanings for both. Koshy argues that the cultural work performed by narratives of white-Asian miscegenation dramatically transformed the landscape of desire in the United States, inventing new objects and relations of desire that established a powerful hold over U.S. culture, a capture of imaginative space that was out of all proportion to the actual numbers of Asian residents.

This collection focuses fresh attention on the relationships between "homeland" and "diaspora" communities in today's world. Based on in-depth anthropological studies by leading scholars in the field, the book highlights the changing character of homeland-diaspora ties. Homelands and Diasporas offers new understandings of the issues that these communities face and explores the roots of their fascinating, yet sometimes paradoxical, interactions. The book provides a keen look at how "homeland" and "diaspora" appear in the lives of both Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians and also explores how these issues influence Pakistanis who make their home in England, Armenians in Cyprus and England, Cambodians in France, and African-Americans in Israel. The critical views advanced in this collection should lead to a reorientation in diaspora studies and to a better understanding of the often contradictory changes in the relationships between people whose lives are led both "at home and away."

The changes that are engulfing the world today--the fall of nation-states and dictatorships, migrations and border crossings, revolution, democratization, and the international spread of capital--call for new approaches to the subject of crime. Anthropologists engage a variety of methods to answer that call in Crime’s Power. Their view of crime extends into the intimacies of everyday life as war transforms personal identities, the violence of a serial killer inhabits paintings, and the smell of imprisonment reveals society’s potentials. Moving beyond the fixities of law, this book explores the nature of crime as an expression of power across the spectrum of human differences.

This dazzling collection of original essays from some of the countries' leading thinkers asks the rather intriguing question - Are Italians White? Each piece carefully explores how, when and why whiteness became important to Italian Americans, and the significance of gender, class and nation to racial identity.

This book contends that race is a biologically real phenomenon with important consequences, contrary to widespread and politically correct views that race doesn't matter - or doesn't even exist When the head of the Human Genome Project and a former President of the United States both assure us that we are all, regardless of race, genetically 99.9 per cent the same, the clear implication is that racial differences among us are superficial. The concept of race, many would argue, is an inadequate map of the physical reality of human variation. In short, human races are not biologically valid categories, and the very ideas of race and racial difference are morally suspect in that they support racism. In Race, Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele argue strongly against received academic wisdom, contending that human racial differences are both real and significant. Relying on the latest findings in nuclear, mitochondrial, and Y-chromosome DNA research, Sarich and Miele demonstrate that the recent origin of racial differences among modern humans provides powerful evidence of the significance, not the triviality, of those differences. They place the 99.9 per cent the same figure in context by requires forthright recognition of racial differences, public policy should not recognize racial-group membership.

Following the collapse of international communism and the ending of the Cold War, the decade of the 1990s has seen international conflict replaced by internal, largely ethnic, conflict both of a violent and of a nonviolent nature. As a result, ethnicity has become one of the most important issues of the day. The social sciences and development studies have been slow to adopt new theoretical and practical perspectives with which to address this fundamentally changed situation. In traditional modernisation theory, ethnicity has been seen as an obstacle and claims to ethnic identity as anti-developmental. This book seeks to contribute towards a re-thinking of this position by focusing on the question of how policies of material improvement can be made compatible with the maintenance of fundamental ethnic identities which, in some senses, can even be considered a human right. Its argument is developed in two ways: firstly through a series of geographical studies, which examine the political and the economic contexts of the relationship between ethnicity and development through the consideration of significant national cases, such as South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore; and secondly through overview chapters, which place the case studies both within an appropriate theoretical frame and within a broader practical perspective of ethnicity as a highly significant contemporary global phenomenon. Ethnicity and Development will make essential reading for students of geography, development studies and African studies.

While 'social inclusion' and 'cultural diversity' circulate frenetically as buzzwords, are we really ready to accept that ideas about 'race' and 'ethnicity', rather than being a peripheral concern, are at the core of how a nation's heritage is represented and imagined? This book interrogates just whose past gets to count as part of 'British heritage'. Bringing together a wide range of contributors, including academics, practitioners, policy makers and curators, it examines how many different of types of heritage - from football to stately homes, experience attractions to education - deal with the complex legacies of the idea of 'race'. Whether exploring the fallout of colonialism, the domination of 'England' over the other three nations, holocaust memorials, or the way British heritage is negotiated overseas, a recurring theme of this book is the need to accept that Britain has always been a place of shifting ethnicities, shaped by waves of migration, diaspora and globalisation. Analysing both theory and practice, this book is concerned with understanding the processes through which changes to heritage happens, and with exploring problems and possibilities for the future.

In The Weight of the Past, Michael Lambek explores the complex ways that history shapes, constrains, and enables daily life. Focusing on ritual performances of spirit mediumship in a multifaceted religious landscape, Lambek's analysis reveals the multiple ways that Sakalava "bear" history. In Mahajanga, Madagascar to bear history is at once a weighty obligation, a creative re-birthing, a scrupulous cultivation, and an exuberant performance of the past.This book describes the division of labor, creative production, and ethical practice entailed in imagining, embodying, and serving the past. It is at once a vivid ethnography of Sakalava life and a significant intervention in anthropological debates on culture and history, structure and practice, advocating a theoretical approach informed by Aristotelian categories of understanding.

"Sherri Gerbert Fuller provides us with a rare look at Chinese immigrant lives and aspirations in Minnesota, proudly reclaiming their voices as part of our great American heritage. I was delighted to read this book."--Iris Chang, author of "The Chinese in America
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Minnesota's first Chinese settlers, fleeing racial violence in California, established scores of businesses after they arrived in the late 1870s. Newspapers eagerly published reports of their activities, including New Year's festivities, marriages, and restaurant and laundry openings. Beginning in 1882 federal laws banning Chinese immigration and denying citizenship put particular pressure on the community. Sherri Gebert Fuller relates the story of the Chinese from these early days to the 1960s when a new wave of immigrants, including students, businessmen, and professionals from China and Taiwan, began to bring new energy and issues to the community and a flourishing of ties between Minnesota and China.

The winner of the 2002 OAH Rawley Prize for the best book on American race relations,Reimagining Indians investigates an important group of Anglo-American writers whose books about Native Americans helped reshape Americans' understandings and appreciations of Indian peoples at the turn of the twentieth century. As they celebrated their Indian cultures, they cast doubt on their supposed superiority, and encouraged broader acceptance of cultural relativism, pluralism, and tolerance in American thought, as well as making Native American cultural practices more accessible to Anglo-Americans.

Designing Collaborative Systems: A Practical Guide to Ethnography introduces a new 'ethnographic' approach that will enable designers to create collaborative and interactive systems, which are employed successfully in real-world settings. This new approach, adapted from the field of social research, considers both the social circumstances and the level and type of human interaction involved, thereby ensuring that future ethnographic systems are as user-friendly and as effective as possible. This book provides the practitioner with an invaluable introduction to this approach, and presents a unique set of practical strategies for incorporating it into the design process. Divided into four distinct sections with practical examples throughout, the book covers:- the requirements problem; - ethnographic practices for describing and analysing cooperative work; - the design process; and - the role of ethnography when evaluating systems supporting cooperative work. "Of the various perspectives that jostle together under the rubric of ethnography, ethnomethodology has often held the most appeal for designers. Yet, surprisingly, there has not been a systematic explication of ethnography and ethnomethodology for the purposes of system design. Andy Crabtree puts this to rights in a comprehensive, informative, and accessible practical guide which will be of great value to not only designers but also the ethnographers who work with them." (Graham Button, Lab. Director, Xerox Research Centre, Europe) "Not only is the book a must for those interested in bringing a social dimension to the system design process, it also makes a significant contribution to ethnomethodology." (Professor John A. Hughes, Lancaster University, UK)

Among the Americans who joined the ranks of the Doughboys fighting World War I were thousands of America's newest residents. Good Americans examines the contributions of Italian and Jewish immigrants, both on the homefront and overseas, in the Great War. While residing in strong, insular communities, both groups faced a barrage of demands to participate in a conflict that had been raging in their home countries for nearly three years. Italians and Jews "did their bit" in relief, recruitment, conservation, and war bond campaigns, while immigrants and second-generation ethnic soldiers fought on the Western front. Within a year of the Armistice, they found themselves redefined as foreigners and perceived as a major threat to American life, rather than remembered as participants in its defense. Wartime experiences, Christopher Sterba argues, served to deeply politicize first and second generation immigrants, greatly accelerating their transformation from relatively powerless newcomers to a major political force in the United States during the New Deal and beyond.

The movement of Brazilians of Japanese descent to Japan is one of the most intriguing transnational migrations of recent years. In 1990, seeking a supply of ethnically acceptable unskilled workers, Japan permitted overseas Japanese, along with their spouses and children, to enter the country as long-term residents. The prospect of high salaries eventually drew about 200,000 "nikkeis," as Brazilians of Japanese descent often call themselves, to Japan, making them Japan's third-largest minority group.
"No One Home" is an ethnographic study, based on fieldwork and extensive personal interviews, of nikkeis living in Toyota City. The migrants' dual identities coexist uneasily. The book focuses on how Brazilian factory workers and their children work through the problems arising from their ambiguous status. In Toyota City and environs, Brazilian men and women do hard, dirty, and dangerous physical labor in automobile-parts plants that supply Toyota Motors and other large automobile manufacturers. Japanese schools confront their children with an array of cultural, linguistic, educational, and personal obstacles. In the immediacies of the shop floor, classroom, and their leisure activities, nikkeis remake in Japan selves they had forged as citizens of Brazil, a process that is dynamic, varied, and unpredictable.
The book complements the recent literature on transnationalism in several important respects. While recognizing the influence of global economics and media, it emphasizes how transnationalism is "lived." It highlights people's experiences rather than the conditions of those experiences, and examines their senses of self rather than identity constructs. Instead of treating neighbors and interviewees as members of social categories, the author explores personal realms--the rich, complex, idiosyncratic selves nikkeis continually refashion during their sojourn in Japan. Overall, he underlines the significance of consciousness, experience, and biography for comprehensive studies of transnationalism and identity.

Ethnobotany, the study of the classification, use and management of plants by people, draws on a range of disciplines, including natural and social sciences, to show how conservation of plants and of local knowledge about them can be achieved. Ethnobotany is critical to the growing importance of developing new crops and products such as drugs from traditional plants. This book is the basic introduction to the field, showing how botany, anthropology, ecology, economics and linguistics are all employed in the techniques and methods involved. It explains data collection and hypothesis testing and provides practical ideas on fieldwork ethics and the application of results to conservation and community development. Case studies illustrate the explanations, demonstrating the importance of collaboration in achieving results. Published with WWF, UNESCO and Royal Botanic Gardens Kew

Thomas Csordas's eloquent analysis of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal answers one of the primary callings of anthropology: to stimulate critical reflection by making the exotic seem familiar and the familiar appear strange. Csordas describes the movement's internal diversity and traces its development and expansion across 30 years. He offers insights into the contemporary nature of rationality, the transformation of space and time in Charismatic daily life, gender discipline, the blurring of boundaries between ritual and everyday life, the sense of community forged through shared ritual participation, and the creativity of language and metaphor in prophetic utterance. Charisma, Csordas proposes, is a collective self-process, located not in the personality of a leader, but in the rhetorical resources mobilized by participants in ritual performance. His examination of ritual language and ritual performance illuminates this theory in relation to the postmodern condition of culture.

Based on Cohen's fieldwork in the 1960s among the Hausa migrants, a people of the Yoruba area (then the western region of the Federation of Nigeria), Custom and Politics in Urban Africa looks at how ethnic groups use elements of tradition in jostling for power and privilege in new urban situations. This is a landmark work in urban anthropology and provides a comparative framework for studying political processes in African societies.

The notion that intelligence is somehow related to race is a notoriously tenacious issue in America. Anthropologist Alexander Alland provides the most comprehensive overview of the recent history of research on race and IQ, offering critiques of the biological determinism of Carlton Coon, Arthur Jensen, Cyril Burt, Robert Ardrey, Konrad Lorenz, William Shockley, Michael Levin, and others. This reasoned, authoritative history also explains the basis of evolutionary genetics for the general reader, concluding that biologically, race cannot explain human variation. Written in a lively, conversational style, Alland imparts real, substantive scientific arguments, cuts through the ideological posturing and jargon that so often characterizes discussions about race, and shows us a more nuanced and scientifically valid way to understand the diversity that is the human condition.

Picturing the Primitive explores the relationship between early German cinema and anthropology's fascination with "primitive" cultures. At the core of this study is a mythic first contact between the camera and the non-Western body. The term that binds the two is the 'Primitive', referring both to cultures ostensibly existing outside of modern time and also to a way of seeing the world via the lens. Oksiloff examines how the movie camera, with its capacity to record reality in a supposedly direct fashion, is legitimated by the primitive body in the first decades of the 20th century.

Two-Faced Racism examines and explains the racial attitudes and behaviours exhibited by whites in private settings. While there are many books that deal with public attitudes, behaviours, and incidences concerning race and racism (frontstage), there are few studies on the attitudes whites display among friends, family, and other whites in private settings (backstage). The core of this book draws upon 626 journals of racial events kept by white college students at twenty-eight colleges in the United States. The book seeks to comprehend how whites think in racial terms by analyzing their reported racial events.

The keystone of U.S. security in East Asia, Okinawa is a troubled symbol of resistance and identity. Ambivalence about the nature of Okinawan identity lies behind relations between Japan, the United States, and Okinawa today. Fully one-fifth of Okinawa's land is occupied by a foreign military power (the United States), and Okinawans carry a disproportionate responsibility for Japanese and U.S. security in the region. It thus figures prominently in the re-examination of key questions such as the nature of Japan, including the debate over Japanese "purity" and the nature of Japanese colonialism. Yet underneath the rhetoric of the "Okinawa problem" lies a core question: who are Okinawans? In contrast to approaches that homogenize Okinawan cultural discourse, this perceptive historical ethnography draws attention to the range of cultural and social practices that exist within contemporary Okinawa. Matthew Allen's narrative problematizes both the location of identity and the processes involved in negotiating identities within Okinawa. Using the community on Kumejima as a focus, the author describes how people create and modify multitextured and overlapping identities over the course of their lives. Allen explores memory, locality and history; mental health and shamanism; and regionalism and tourism in his richly nuanced study. His chapter on the Battle of Okinawa, which opens the book, is a riveting, fresh analysis of the battle in history and memory. His analysis of yuta (shamans) opens new terrain in rethinking the relationship between the traditional and the modern. Based on fieldwork, interviews, and historical research, Allen argues that identity in Okinawa is multivocal, ambivalent, and still very much "under construction." With its interdisciplinary focus, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians alike will find this book an important source for understanding broad questions of identity formation in the contexts of national, ethnic, cultural, historical and economic experience.

The Indian diaspora is one of the largest and most significant in the world today with between nine and twelve million people of Indian origin living outside South Asia. With successive waves of migration over the last two hundred years to almost every continent, it has assumed increasing self-consciousness and importance.
Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora examines the Indian diaspora in Mauritius, South Africa, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, Trinidad, Australia, the US, Canada and the UK and addresses the core issues of demography, economy, culture and future development. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the crucial relationship between culture and economy in the diaspora over time.
This book will appeal to all those interested in transnational communities, migration, ethnicity and racial studies, and South Asia.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203398297

Most women who elect to have cosmetic surgery want a "natural" outcome-a discrete alteration of the body that appears unaltered. Under the Knife examines this theme in light of a cultural paradox. Whereas women are encouraged to improve their appearance, there is also a stigma associated with those who do so via surgery. Samantha Kwan and Jennifer Graves reveal how women negotiate their "unnatural"-but hopefully (in their view) natural-looking-surgically-altered bodies. Based on in-depth interviews with 46 women who underwent cosmetic surgery to enhance their appearance, the authors investigate motivations for surgery as well as women's thoughts about looking natural after the procedures. Under the Knife dissects the psychological and physical strategies these women use to manage the expectations, challenges, and disappointments of cosmetic surgery while also addressing issues of agency and empowerment. It shows how different cultural intersections can produce varied goals and values around body improvement. Under the Knife highlights the role of deep-seated yet contradictory gendered meanings about women's bodies, passing, and boundary work. The authors also consider traditional notions of femininity and normalcy that trouble women's struggle to preserve an authentic moral self.

Winner of the Outstanding Book Award on the subject matter of human rights in North America by The Gustavus Myers Center While race relations research is currently a central topic in most social science disciplines, it was not long ago that it was a stigmatized, understudied specialty. How this transformation took place is the focus of this fascinating volume. Here, many of the key figures in the post-World War II development of race research tell their own stories--of their experiences with race and racism, of the developing interest in understanding race as a social force, and of the major milestones that established it as a legitimate research domain. Through a mixture of personal and intellectual biographical information by such noted figures as Bob Blauner, Daniel Fusfeld, Milton Gordon, Lewis Killian, Harry Kitano, Hyland Lewis, Stanley Lieberson, Thomas Pettigrew, Richard Robbins, Peter Rose, Pierre van den Berghe, and Frank Westie, this collection of life histories gives the reader an insider's history of this exciting field of study. For students and professionals across the social sciences, this book is a must.