A classic and highly influential ethnography, which explores political leadership among Swat Pathans - and which emphasizes the importance of individual decision-making for wider social processes.

Cultures in Conversation introduces readers to the ethnographic study of intercultural and social interactions through the analysis of conversations in which different cultural orientations are operating. Author Donal Carbaugh presents his original research on conversation practices in Britain, Finland, Russia, Blackfeet County, and the United States, demonstrating how each culture is distinctive in its communication codes, particularly in its use of symbolic meanings, forms, norms, and motivational themes. Examining conversation in this way demonstrates how cultural lives are active in conversations and shows how conversation is a principle medium for the coding of selves, social relationships, and societies. Representing 20 years of research, this text offers unique insights into the social interaction within distinct cultures. It makes a significant contribution to communication scholarship, and will be illuminating reading in cultural communication, language and social interaction, and linguistics courses. In addition, it invites others to examine ethnographic inquiry as a way of studying intercultural conversations in particular, and communication practices in general.

THE PERFECT READ FOR TROUBLED TIMES From the bestselling author of The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places comes this inspiring and beautifully written meditation on the wisdom inherited from our ancestors. For all we have gained in the modern world, simple peace of mind is hard to find. In a time that is increasingly fraught with complexity and conflict, we are told that our wellbeing relies on remaining as present as possible. But what if the key to being present lies in the past? In Wisdom of the Ancients, Neil Oliver takes us back in time, to grab hold of the ideas buried in forgotten cultures and early civilizations. From Laetoli footprints in Tanzania to Keralan rituals, stone circles and cave paintings, Oliver takes us on a global journey through antiquity. A master storyteller, drawing on immense knowledge of our ancient past, he distils this wisdom into twelve messages that have endured the test of time, and invites us to consider how these might apply to our lives today. The result is powerful and inspirational, moving and profound.

What happens when a seemingly rational state becomes paranoid and delusional? The Encrypted State engages in a close analysis of political disorder to shed new light on the concept of political stability. The book focuses on a crisis of rule in mid-20th-century Peru, a period when officials believed they had lost the ability to govern and communicated in secret code to protect themselves from imaginary subversives. The Encrypted State engages the notion of sacropolitics-the politics of mass group sacrifice-to make sense of state delusion. Nugent interrogates the forces that variously enable or disable organized political subjection, and the role of state structures in this process. Investigating the role of everyday cultural practices and how affect and imagination structure political affairs, Nugent provides a greater understanding of the conditions of state formation, and failure.

Changing Lapps A Study in Culture Relations in Northernmost Norway is a study of culture contact between the Saami and the Scandinavians, chiefly Norwegians, in an historical perspective. This study is based primarily on literary sources and official records supplemented by field work. In order to correct the stereotype of the Saami as being a homogeneous people and entirely nomadic reindeer breeders, Gjessing describes Saami social structure and the functional aspects of the contact in terms of three Saami sub-cultures, those of the sea Saami, Reindeer Saami, and the permanently settled inland Saami. Gjessing points out that there is an increasing feeling of solidarity following economic lines rather than the local and cultural lines among the Saami

This sweeping history of the Serbian people starts with the settlement of the Slavs on the Balkan Peninsula in the seventh century and ends with the dissolution of Yugoslavia at the end of the twentieth. Drawing on his own research and on contemporary literature, Sima Cirkovic looks at how the Serbs have fared through the ages - struggling for independence against Byzantium, suffering as slaves of the Ottoman sultans, and modernizing in a troubled corner of south-eastern Europe.

Cirkovic's detailed account provides a counter-balance to traditionally one-sided political histories of the Serbs, paying close attention to the nation's socio-economic development. His narrative gives equal weight to the medieval and modern periods, but draws from the processes of both integration and disintegration that have characterized Serbian history. The book gives readers the historical background to the Serbs, providing an essential insight into recent events.

Initially published in 1953, The Chinese of Sarawak, A Study of Social Structure, is the study of the social, economic and political organization of the Chinese Community during the author's visit of thirteen months in 1948 and 1949. Much of the material was obtained from personal interviews, as well as quotes from printed sources and from unpublished files of the Sarawak Government. The result is an enlightening and detailed analysis of a complex situation

The Ethnic Composition of Tswana Tribes

Kinship and Continuity is a vivid ethnographic account of the development of the Pakistani presence in Oxford, from after World War II to the present day. Alison Shaw addresses the dynamics of migration, patterns of residence and kinship, ideas about health and illness, and notions of political and religious authority, and discusses the transformations and continuities of the lives of British Pakistanis against the backdrop of rural Pakistan and local socio-economic changes. This is a fully updated, revised edition of the book first published in 1988.

This methods book will guide the reader through the process of conducting and producing an autoethnographic study through the understanding of self, other, and culture. Readers will be encouraged to follow hands-on, though not prescriptive, steps in data collection, analysis, and interpretation with self-reflective prewriting exercises and self-narrative writing exercises to produce their own autoethnographic work. Chang offers a variety of techniques for gathering data on the self, from diaries to culture grams to interviews with others, and shows how to transform this information into a study that looks for the connection with others present in a diverse world. She shows how the autoethnographic process promotes self-reflection, understanding of multicultural others, qualitative inquiry, and narrative writing. Samples of published autoethnographies provide exemplars for the novice researcher to follow.

Series Information:
Zones of Religion

Scholars have long recognized that ethnographic method is bound up with the construction of theory in ways that are difficult to teach. The reason, Allaine Cerwonka and Liisa H. Malkki argue, is that ethnographic theorization is essentially improvisatory in nature, conducted in real time and in necessarily unpredictable social situations. In a unique account of, and critical reflection on, the process of theoretical improvisation in ethnographic research, they demonstrate how both objects of analysis, and our ways of knowing and explaining them, are created and discovered in the give and take of real life, in all its unpredictability and immediacy.
"Improvising Theory" centers on the year-long correspondence between Cerwonka, then a graduate student in political science conducting research in Australia, and her anthropologist mentor, Malkki. Through regular e-mail exchanges, Malkki attempted to teach Cerwonka, then new to the discipline, the basic tools and subtle intuition needed for anthropological fieldwork. The result is a strikingly original dissection of the processual ethics and politics of method in ethnography.

The Political System of the Anuak of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan

Alice Roberts has been travelling the world - from Ethiopian desert to Malay peninsula and from Russian steppes to Amazon basin - in order to understand the challenges that early humans faced as they tried to settle continents. On her travels she has witnessed some of the daunting and brutal challenges our ancestors had to face: mountains, deserts, oceans, changing climates, terrifying giant beasts and volcanoes. But she discovers that perhaps the most serious threat of all came from other humans. When our ancestors set out from Africa there were already two other species of human on the planet: Neanderthal in Europe and Homo erectus in Asia. Both (contrary to popular perception) were intelligent, adept at making tools and weapons and were long adapted to their environments. So, Alice asks, why did only Homo sapiens survive? Part detective story, part travelogue, and drawing on the latest genetic and archaeological discoveries, Alice examines how our ancestors evolved physically in response to these challenges, finding out how our colour, shape, size, diet, disease resistance and even athletic ability have been shaped by the range of environments that our ancestors had to survive. She also relates how astonishingly closely related we all are. As a lecturer in Anatomy at Bristol University, Alice Roberts is eminently qualified to write this book. As a talented artist, she is perfectly qualified to illustrate it, and dotted throughout this lively book are many of the sketches and photographs from her travels.

Just who are 'the Malays'? This provocative study poses the question and considers how and why the answers have changed over time, and from one region to another. Anthony Milner develops a sustained argument about ethnicity and identity in an historical, 'Malay' context. "The Malays" is a comprehensive examination of the origins and development of Malay identity, ethnicity, and consciousness over the past five centuries.
Covers the political, economic, and cultural development of the Malays
Explores the Malay presence in Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and South Africa, as well as the modern Malay show-state of Malaysia
Offers diplomatic speculation about ways Malay ethnicity will develop and be challenged in the future

With close to 20 million members, the Zulu are the largest single ethnic group in all ofSouthern Africa. Their culture is known all over the world. However, defining what lies at the core of a Zulu identity remains a source of great controversy. What does it mean to be Zulu, and therefore African, in today's world? Is being Zulu different now than in the past?

This comprehensive and wholly up-to-date reference wrestles with these and many other questions. The book features a stunningly diverse group of close to thirty contributors, universally acknowledged to be the world's leading experts of Zulu culture and history. They discuss the characteristic traditions of a preindustrial people and how they evolved different cultural expressions of "Zulu-ness." They examine the legacies of Shaka, the social and political intrigues of Zulu royalty, gender and generational struggles, cultural and symbolic projections, and Zulu spirituality. The book also highlights the debates raging in contemporary South Africa over the manipulation of Zulu heritage and whether it is being exploited for political purposes or for the promotion of eco- and battlefield-tourism. In conclusion, the book contemplates the future of Zulu identity in a unified South Africa, a country that hopes to embrace the forces of globalization. Truly comprehensive and authoritative, "Zulu Identities" is the definitive volume on the Zulu people, history, and culture.

This engaging book tells the story of human evolution, asking if man is indeed the "chosen species" or merely an evolutionary accident.
Written by world-renowned paleoanthropologists who are co-directors of the excavations at Atapuerca---a World Heritage Site and Europe's oldest known burial site---where a new human species, "homo antecessor," was discovered
Discusses various hypotheses of human evolution, drawing conclusions from verifiable facts and well-founded argument
Offers a compelling narrative written for nonspecialists and students of human evolution
Includes over 60 illustrations
Sold over 100,000 copies in the original Spanish-language edition

Challenging Fronteras reflects an important new wave of research that moves beyond sweeping generalizations that treat Latinos as a monolithic cultural group. This anthology focuses on the diversity of Latino experiences by providing historical specificity and cutting-edge research that employs the conceptual and analytical tools of social science. Contributors, selected from leading researchers in Latino Studies, include Patricia Zavella, Suzanne Oboler, Alejandro Portes, Clara Rodriquez, Marta Tienda, Nestor Rodriquez, and others.

In this major contribution to debates about English identity, leading theorist Robert J.C. Young argues that Englishness was never really about England at all. In the nineteenth century, it was rather developed as a form of long-distance identity for the English diaspora around the world. Young shows how the effects of this continue to reverberate today, nationally and globally.
Written by an internationally established theorist, whose work has been translated into 20 languages
Shows how potent the idea of Englishness is
Helps to explain why the UK continues to act as if it has a 'special relationship' to the US
Helps to explain why the UK is so successfully multicultural
Part of the prestigious Blackwell Manifestos series

The transformation of Czechoslovakia into a democratic society has had both positive and negative effects on the Romanies. On the positive side, Romanies have been recognized as a national minority, guaranteeing them important cultural and legal protection under the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic. Despite improvements in their legal status, however, Helsinki Watch finds that the consequences of past policies towards Romanies continue to affect the Romany community in the 1990s. One matter is the government's failure to condemn publicly and to investigate and prosecute those responsible for medical procedures in which Romany women were sterilized without their consent and, in some cases, without their knowledge. In addition, Helsinki Watch notes the charges that Romanies suffer from many human rights abuses. It shows that discrimination against Romanies have reportedly increased in housing, employment, and access to public and private services since the democratic changes in 1989. It also notes that post-communist development has meant an incrase in nationalist tendencies that has led to the formation of several groups which have repeatedly attached members of the Romany population both verbally and physically.

The Social Archaeology of Indigenous Societies presents original and provocative views on the complex and dynamic social lives of Indigenous Australians from an historical perspective. Building on the foundational work of Harry Lourandos, the book critically examines and challenges traditional approaches which have presented Indigenous Australian past as static and tethered to ecological rationalism. The book reveals the ancient past of Aboriginal Australians to be one of long term changes in social relationships and traditions, as well as the active management and manipulation of the environment. The book encourages a deeper appreciation of the ways Aboriginal peoples have engaged with and constructed their worlds. It solicits a deeper understanding of the contemporary political and social context of research and the insidious impacts of colonialist philosophies. In short, it concerns people, both past and present. The Social Archaeology of Indigenous Societies looks beyond the stereo

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.

Biocultural or biosocial anthropology is a research approach that views biology and culture as dialectically and inextricably intertwined, explicitly emphasizing the dynamic interaction between humans and their larger social, cultural, and physical environments. The biocultural approach emerged in anthropology in the 1960s, matured in the 1980s, and is now one of the dominant paradigms in anthropology, particularly within biological anthropology. This volume gathers contributions from the top scholars in biocultural anthropology focusing on six of the most influential, productive, and important areas of research within biocultural anthropology. These are: critical and synthetic approaches within biocultural anthropology; biocultural approaches to identity, including race and racism; health, diet, and nutrition; infectious disease from antiquity to the modern era; epidemiologic transitions and population dynamics; and inequality and violence studies. Focusing on these six major areas of burgeoning research within biocultural anthropology makes the proposed volume timely, widely applicable and useful to scholars engaging in biocultural research and students interested in the biocultural approach, and synthetic in its coverage of contemporary scholarship in biocultural anthropology. Students will be able to grasp the history of the biocultural approach, and how that history continues to impact scholarship, as well as the scope of current research within the approach, and the foci of biocultural research into the future. Importantly, contributions in the text follow a consistent format of a discussion of method and theory relative to a particular aspect of the above six topics, followed by a case study applying the surveyed method and theory. This structure will engage students by providing real world examples of anthropological issues, and demonstrating how biocultural method and theory can be used to elucidate and resolve them. Key features include: * Contributions which span the breadth of approaches and topics within biological anthropology from the insights granted through work with ancient human remains to those granted through collaborative research with contemporary peoples. * Comprehensive treatment of diverse topics within biocultural anthropology, from human variation and adaptability to recent disease pandemics, the embodied effects of race and racism, industrialization and the rise of allergy and autoimmune diseases, and the sociopolitics of slavery and torture. * Contributions and sections united by thematically cohesive threads. * Clear, jargon-free language in a text that is designed to be pedagogically flexible: contributions are written to be both understandable and engaging to both undergraduate and graduate students. * Provision of synthetic theory, method and data in each contribution. * The use of richly contextualized case studies driven by empirical data. * Through case-study driven contributions, each chapter demonstrates how biocultural approaches can be used to better understand and resolve real-world problems and anthropological issues.

This important volume rethinks the conventional parameters of Middle East studies through attention to popular cultural forms, producers, and communities of consumers. The volume has a broad historical scope, ranging from the late Ottoman period to the second Palestinian uprising, with a focus on cultural forms and processes in Israel, Palestine, and the refugee camps of the Arab Middle East. The contributors consider how Palestinian and Israeli popular culture influences and is influenced by political, economic, social, and historical processes in the region. At the same time, they follow the circulation of Palestinian and Israeli cultural commodities and imaginations across borders and checkpoints and within the global marketplace.The volume is interdisciplinary, including the work of anthropologists, historians, sociologists, political scientists, ethnomusicologists, and Americanist and literary studies scholars. Contributors examine popular music of the Palestinian resistance, ethno-racial "passing" in Israeli cinema, Arab-Jewish rock, Euro-Israeli tourism to the Arab Middle East, Internet communities in the Palestinian diaspora, cafe culture in early-twentieth-century Jerusalem, and more. Together, they suggest new ways of conceptualizing Palestinian and Israeli political culture. Contributors. Livia Alexander, Carol Bardenstein, Elliott Colla, Amy Horowitz, Laleh Khalili, Mary Layoun, Mark LeVine, Joseph Massad, Melani McAlister, Ilan Pappe, Rebecca L. Stein, Ted Swedenburg, Salim Tamari

How were early stone tools made, and what can they tell us about the development of human cognition? This question lies at the basis of archaeological research on human origins and evolution, and the present volume fulfils a growing need among advanced students and researchers working in this field. The individual chapters by a range of leading international scholars approach stone knapping from a multidisciplinary perspective that embraces psychology, physiology, behavioural biology and primatology as well as archaeology. The skills and behaviour of humans and their primate relatives are key parts of the enquiry. The result is a better understanding of early human engagement with the material world and the complex actions required for the creation of stone tools. The book contains many illustrations and is extensively referenced, and provides a landmark contribution in this field.