Stock market euphoria and blind faith in the post cold war economy have driven the topic of poverty from popular and scholarly discussion in the United States. At the same time the gap between the rich and poor has never been wider. The New Poverty Studies critically examines the new war against the poor that has accompanied the rise of the New Economy in the past two decades, and details the myriad ways poor people have struggled against it.

The essays collected here explore how global, national, and local structures of power produce poverty and affect the material well-being, social relations and politicization of the poor. In updating the 1960s encounter between ethnography and U.S. poverty, The New Poverty Studies highlights the ways poverty is constructed across multiple scales and multiple axes of difference.

Questioning the common wisdom that poverty persists because of the pathology, social isolation and welfare state "dependency" of the poor, the contributors to The New Poverty Studies point instead to economic restructuring and neoliberal policy "reforms" which have caused increased social inequality and economic polarization in the U.S.

Contributors include: Georges Fouron, Donna Goldstein, Judith Goode, Susan B. Hyatt, Catherine Kingfisher, Peter Kwong, Vin Lyon-Callo, Jeff Maskovsky, Sandi Morgen, Leith Mullings, Frances Fox Piven, Matthew Rubin, Nina Glick Schiller, Carol Stack, Jill Weigt, Eve Weinbaum, Brett Williams, and Patricia Zavella.

"These contributions provide a dynamic understanding of poverty and immiseration"
"--North American Dialogue, Vol. 4, No. 1, Nov. 2001"

In Iran, folksongs are part of folklore and offer an intimate portrait of a vanishing era. They are also 'the voice' of ordinary people, providing a medium to express emotions, opinions and concerns. This book is based on folksongs collected over a 50-year period among the Boir Ahmad tribal people in the Zagros Mountains of West Iran. Erika Friedl has recorded, transcribed and translated more than 600 lyrics from a Lur community, and her analysis of the folksongs provides an intimate portrait of local people's attitudes, attachments, fears and desires. From songs of love, sex and mourning, to lyrics discussing beauty, infatuation and the community's violent tribal history, Friedl's solid understanding of the cultural background, lifestyle and worldview of these people lets her add ethnographic details that illuminate the deep meaning of the texts. In this way, Friedl goes far beyond a translation of words: she sheds light on a culture where beliefs, critical evaluation of circumstances and philosophical tenets are shown to be integral to each song's message. Based on fieldwork that began in 1965, Erika Friedl's research on the folklore in Boir Ahmad represents the best-documented modern folklore compendium on an Iranian tribe. This new book will be important for future generations of scholars, including ethnographers, Iranists, linguists, ethnomusicologists and those researching Persian literature and cultures of the Middle East.

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."

Tooth enamel and dentin are the most studied hard tissues used to explore hominin evolution, life history, diet, health, and culture. Surprisingly, cementum (the interface between the alveolar bone and the root dentin) remains the least studied dental tissue even though its unique growth, which is continuous throughout life, has been acknowledged since the 1950s. This interdisciplinary volume presents state-of-the-art studies in cementum analysis and its broad interpretative potential in anthropology. The first section focuses on cementum biology; the second section presents optimized multi-species and standardized protocols to estimate age and season at death precisely. The final section highlights innovative applications in zooarchaeology, paleodemography, bioarchaeology, paleoanthropology, and forensic anthropology, demonstrating how cementochronology can profoundly affect anthropological theories. With a wealth of illustrations of cementum histology and accompanying online resources, this book provides the perfect toolkit for scholars interested in studying past and current human and animal populations.

How do chimpanzees say, 'I want to have sex with you?' By clipping a leaf or knocking on a tree trunk? How do they eat live aggressive ants? By using a short stick with one hand or long stick with both? Ivorian and Tanzanian chimpanzees answer these questions differently, as would humans from France and China if asked how they eat rice. Christophe Boesch takes readers into the lives of chimpanzees from different African regions, highlighting the debate about culture. His ethnography reveals how simple techniques have evolved into complex ones, how teaching styles differ, how material culture widens access to new food sources and how youngsters learn culture. This journey reveals many parallels between humans and chimpanzees and points to striking differences. Written in a vivid and accessible style, Wild Cultures places the reader in social and ecological contexts that shed light on our twin cultures.

In this worldwide survey, Clive Gamble explores the evolution of the human imagination, without which we would not have become a global species. He sets out to determine the cognitive and social basis for our imaginative capacity and traces the evidence back into deep human history. He argues that it was the imaginative ability to 'go beyond' and to create societies where people lived apart yet stayed in touch that made us such effective world settlers. To make his case Gamble brings together information from a wide range of disciplines: psychology, cognitive science, archaeology, palaeoanthropology, archaeogenetics, geography, quaternary science and anthropology. He presents a novel deep history that combines the archaeological evidence for fossil hominins with the selective forces of Pleistocene climate change, engages with the archaeogeneticists' models for population dispersal and displacement, and ends with the Europeans' rediscovery of the deep history settlement of the Earth.

Praise for the first edition . . . "A welcome addition to the growing sociological literature that looks beyond the circumstances of victims for the solutions to various social problems." --Contemporary Sociology "A clear articulation of a number of historical, spatial, and international perspectives on race relations. The new and novel focus provides fresh insights into a field that has found the development of a unified theory elusive." --International Social Science Review Challenging the popularly held view that racism is disappearing as a social phenomenon, the second edition of Impacts of Racism on White Americans reexamines the questions proposed by its first edition and notes that one decade later little has changed. This stimulating collection of original papers focuses on the new ways in which white Americans act out racism and weighs the advantages and disadvantages that whites experience from racism. Drawing on evidence from the social and behavioral sciences, this timely revision argues that racism is essentially a problem of European Americans and that most whites do not benefit from racism in the long term. In addition, this volume holds that racism cannot be eliminated until it is viewed as a white problem that seriously compromises the quality of life. The concluding chapter of the first edition, which summarized the major insights and findings of that edition, has been reprinted and in the final chapter of this new edition, editors Benjamin P. Bowser and Raymond G. Hunt expand on recommendations and clearly illustrate how far we've come, and most important, how far we have to go. Sure to follow the success of its first edition, Impacts of Racism on White Americans will make a major contribution to our understanding of the impacts of racism while providing students and professionals in race/ethnic studies, sociology, urban studies, and social psychology with thought-provoking, quality material.

This book provides a concise overview of human prehistory. It shows how an understanding of the distant past offers new perspectives on present-day challenges facing our species - and how we can build a sustainable future for all life on planet Earth. Deborah Barsky tells a fascinating story of the long-term evolution of human culture and provides up-to-date examples from the archaeological record to illustrate the different phases of human history. Barsky also presents a refreshing and original analysis about issues plaguing modern globalized society, such as racism, institutionalized religion, the digital revolution, human migrations, terrorism, and war. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Human Prehistory is aimed at an introductory-level audience. Students will acquire a comprehensive understanding of the interdisciplinary, scientific study of human prehistory, as well as the theoretical interpretations of human evolutionary processes that are used in contemporary archaeological practice. Definitions, tables, and illustrations accompany the text.

While most of us live our lives according to the working week, we did not evolve to be bound by industrial schedules, nor did the food we eat. Despite this, we eat the products of industrialization and often suffer as a consequence. This book considers aspects of changing human nutrition from evolutionary and social perspectives. It considers what a 'natural' human diet might be, how it has been shaped across evolutionary time and how we have adapted to changing food availability. The transition from hunter-gatherer and the rise of agriculture through to the industrialisation and globalisation of diet are explored. Far from being adapted to a 'Stone Age' diet, humans can consume a vast range of foodstuffs. However, being able to eat anything does not mean that we should eat everything, and therefore engagement with the evolutionary underpinnings of diet and factors influencing it are key to better public health practice.

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.

With contributions from 70 experienced practitioners from around the world, this second edition of the authoritative Handbook of Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology provides a solid foundation in both the practical and ethical components of forensic work. The book weaves together the discipline's historical development; current field methods for analyzing crime, natural disasters, and human atrocities; an array of laboratory techniques; key case studies involving legal, professional, and ethical issues; and ideas about the future of forensic work--all from a global perspective. This fully revised second edition expands the geographic representation of the first edition by including chapters from practitioners in South Africa and Colombia, and adds exciting new chapters on the International Commission on Missing Persons and on forensic work being done to identify victims of the Battle of Fromelles during World War I. The Handbook of Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology provides an updated perspective of the disciplines of forensic archaeology and anthropology.

Drawing on ethnographic research, Living Sharia examines the role of sharia in the sociopolitical processes of contemporary Malaysia. The book traces the contested implementation of Islamic family and criminal laws and sharia economics to provide cultural frameworks for understanding sharia among Muslims and non-Muslims. Timothy Daniels explores how the way people think about sharia is often entangled with notions about race, gender equality, nationhood, liberal pluralism, citizenship, and universal human rights. He reveals that Malaysians' ideas about sharia are not isolated from-nor always opposed to-liberal pluralism and secularism. Living Sharia will be of interest to scholars as well as to policy makers, consultants, and professionals working with global NGOs.

In later life the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, the Norwegian explorer and scientist Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) led the team that in 1888 made the first successful crossing of Greenland's interior. Finding themselves cut off from the rest of the world for the winter, Nansen and his men spent several months living among the Greenlandic Inuit. Although 'far too short a time in which to attain a thorough knowledge', it was nevertheless sufficient to form a strong acquaintance and affection. First published in 1893, this English translation of the 1891 Norwegian original offers a valuable insight into much that was, and remains, foreign and peculiar to European experience. The coverage ranges from culinary to linguistic observations, and Nansen is by turns repulsed, fascinated and full of compassion, asking what the future holds for a people 'already stung with the venom of our civilisation'.

Originally published in 1962, the information in this survey was based on a study of the physical characteristics of the inhabitants of Southern Nigeria. The study took place during the course of thirty years spent in West Africa, with the examination of nearly seven thousand people from various areas. After an introductory chapter reviewing earlier classification of the peoples of the region, the statistical chapters define certain sample characteristics and describe methods for their calculation. The relationship between sample and population and the problem of group divergence are then investigated. The final sections constitute the statistical analysis of the complete material assembled in the study. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in statistics and the development of anthropology.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

"The excellent vignettes throughout the book further show, in striking detail, how immigrants from Fuzhou use the language and ideas of their faith traditions to make sense of their journeys and their daily lives in the United States. This book is a welcome addition to recent research about religion and the post-1965 immigrants."--"Contemporary Sociology"

""God in Chinatown" is useful for historians as well as those interested in the sociology of religion, the Chinese Diaspora, or New York City."--"Religious Studies Review"

""God in Chinatown" is an important study for historians and social scientists. Guest has...expanded the horizons of students of ethnic history."
--"Journal of American Ethnic History"

"In this volume Guest has succeeded in showing the importance of religion to the self-definition of immigrants from Fuzhou in their new home in New York's Chinatown and other cities across the United States. As a student of theology, he understands the importance of religion to human survival and flourishing in the face of tremendous obstacles, especially for the immigrants of Fuzhou in urban America."--"China Review international"

"There is no question that this book makes an important contribution to the emerging field of religion and immigration as well as to research on contemporary Asian religions. The information and perspective Guest provides not only substantially enhance our knowledge of these topics but help us view them in a new light."
--"The Journal of Religion"

"Guest does an excellent job of helping the reader understand the place of these religious institutions both within Chinatown andthe religious landscape in China. The book is so stimulating that it leads the reader to formulate more questions."--"Sociology of Religion"

"Students and scholars in the fields of church history, religion in the US, the history of religions, comparative religions, and Asian studies will find that this intriguing book suggests a variety of directions for further exploration."
-- "Choice"

"A well-researched, well-written, and timely ethnographic study of the importance of religious groups in the lives of Fuzhounese immigrants to the United States. It should be of great interest to scholars of contemporary Chinese religion, and to sociologists and anthropologists interested in religion and transnationalism. A readable and affordable monograph."--"Journal of Chinese Religions"

""God in Chinatown" is a pioneering ethnographic study....A must read for those interested in ethnic communities, immigration, and religion. It is a welcome addition to the growing number of studies that are recognizing the important connections between religion and immigration in the incorporation of immigrants and the reconstructions of what is America itself."
--"Journal of the American Academy of Religion"

"As a first ethnographic study to systematically examine the role of religious organizations and immigrant adaptations among the Fuzhounese, the book is a welcome edition to the existing literature of the sociology of religion. Guest devotes much of the book to describing the religious life that the Fuzhounese left behind in Fujian and the new one that they have rebuilt in New York. he shows clearly and unequivocally that ethnic religious institutions play a central and intrumental role inassisting disadvantaged immigrants to survive adverse circumstances. He also makes a nuanced point about the interconnectedness between ethnic religious institutions and ethnic economies in Chinatown and between Chinatown and its transnational networks."
--"Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion"

"The exceptionally rich ethnography is very interesting to read."
--"American Journal of Sociology"

"In this volume Guest has succeeded in showing the importance of religion in the self-definition of Fuzhounese immigrants in their new home in New York Chinatown and in the network of cities across the United States."
--" China News Update"

"This book fascinates by making what is familiar much more complicated and interesting. Recommended."
-- "CHOICE"

God in Chinatown is a path breaking study of the largest contemporary wave of new immigrants to Chinatown. Since the 1980s, tens of thousands of mostly rural Chinese have migrated from Fuzhou, on China's southeastern coast, to New York's Chinatown. Like the Cantonese who comprised the previous wave of migrants, the Fuzhou have brought with them their religious beliefs, practices, and local deities. In recent years these immigrants have established numerous specifically Fuzhounese religious communities, ranging from Buddhist, Daoist, and Chinese popular religion to Protestant and Catholic Christianity.

This ethnographic study examines the central role of these religious communities in the immigrant incorporation process in Chinatown's highly stratified ethnic enclave, as well as the transnational networks established between religious communities in New York and China. The author's knowledge of Chinese coupledwith his extensive fieldwork in both China and New York enable him to illuminate how these networks transmit religious and social dynamics to the United States, as well as how these new American institutions influence religious and social relations in the religious revival sweeping southeastern China.

God in Chinatown is the first study to bring to light religion's significant role in the Fuzhounese immigrants' dramatic transformation of the face of New York's Chinatown.

Within the United Kingdom questions about the relevance of educational research and its relationship to policy have recently been the centre of a prolonged, public and sometimes acrimonious debate.
The chapters in this book illustrate the ability of ethnographic work to assist in understanding the effects of educational policies to gradually influence the policy discourse. The book includes studies of policy initiatives at the local level that show the extent to which an intended change actually occurred in practice, others where actual change occurred, but there were unintended consequences as well as those planned by the policy, and others that illuminate the contradictions within the original policy itself. Chapters focus on a diversity of topics such as the ideology of educational 'success', politics and school mathematics, ITC teaching, sports coaching, basic skills provision for offenders, second language learning, ESOL teaching, primary teachers work, and the teaching of reading and spelling.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Chapter 1.

"Provides important insight into the manner in which federal support of faith-based poverty relief initiatives affect religious identity in the Golden Triangle Region of rural Mississippi."--"Journal of Church and State"

"The book provides a thorough historical overview of the events that led up to the Bush administration's decision to promote faith-based social welfare. This thoughtful book is a useful addition to the growing literature on the subject and should be widely consulted."--"Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare"

"Well-written and clearly organized."--"Journal of Social Services"

"In depth profiles...with obvious strengths."--"Contemporary Sociology"

"The findings raise serious concerns related to discriminatory practices around who will get served, and the qualification of those providing the services. . . . Highly recommended."
--"CHOICE"

"The comparative case method stretched across a complex analytical framework sketches the terrain in broad, suggestive, analytical strokes. We benefit from the timeliness of Bartkowski and Regis's study."
--"American Journal of Sociology"

"Nothing short of exceptional..."Charitable Choices" is a very readable book that makes an evident contribution to contemporary discourse about welfare reform and its possibilities and pitfalls."
--"Social Forces"

aThese stories reveal not only the profound commitment that clergy can have for their flock but how existing social structures can render the poor invisible. Charitable Choices is more useful as a description of an under-recognized aspect of American religious life than as an analysis of government welfarepolicy.a
"Religious Studies Review"

Congregations and faith-based organizations have become key participants in America's welfare revolution. Recent legislation has expanded the social welfare role of religious communities, thus revealing a pervasive lack of faith in purely economic responses to poverty.

Charitable Choices is an ethnographic study of faith-based poverty relief in 30 congregations in the rural south. Drawing on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in Mississippi faith communities, it examines how religious conviction and racial dynamics shape congregational benevolence. Mississippi has long had the nation's highest poverty rate and was the first state to implement a faith-based welfare reform initiative. The book provides a grounded and even-handed treatment of congregational poverty relief rather than abstract theory on faith-based initiatives.

The volume examines how congregations are coping with national developments in social welfare policy and reveals the strategies that religious communities utilize to fight poverty in their local communities. By giving particular attention to the influence of theological convictions and organizational dynamics on religious service provision, it identifies both the prospects and pitfalls likely to result from the expansion of charitable choice.

This is the first historical study of indigenous Australian masculinity. Using the reactions of eighteenth-century western explorers to Aboriginal men, Konishi argues that these encounters were not as negative as has been thought.

"I would recommend this book to anyone contemplating the study of religion using interviews and/or participant observations."--"Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion"

"This is a rich collection in every sense of the word. It is rich in ideas, in examples, and in approaches. . . . Beautifully written and impeccably edited."
--"Journal of Contemporary Religion"

"This is a timely book on the actual "doing" of ethnography, and how doing ethnography of religion demands specific attentiveness, not least to the transformations undergone by the observer herself."
--"Journal of Religion"

"This is an excellent and courageous book. It makes an important contribution to the social sciences and the sociology of religion in particular. It will help shape the way we do and think about field research and should be read by students and scholars alike."
-- "Sociology of Religion Book Reviews"

"The essays in this volume persuasively argue for the value of ethnographic research, which complements and enriches statistical analysis done by more traditional quantitative social scientists."
--"Contemporary Sociology"

Over the last decade the sociology of religion and religious studies have experienced a surge of ethnographic research. Scholars now use ethnography, as anthropologists have long done, as a valued source of knowledge from which they draw their pictures of the religious world.

Yet, many researchers of religion have yet to grapple with the issues that are changing anthropologists' use of the method. Personal Knowledge and Beyond seeks to foster a cross-disciplinary rethinking of ethnography's possibilities and limits for the study of religions. It providesan overview of recent debates while also pushing them in new directions. In addition, it offers critiques of some of anthropology's reigning conceptualizations.

The volume brings together many of the best-known ethnographic researchers of religion, including Karen McCarthy Brown, Lynn Davidman, Armin Geertz, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Mary Jo Neitz, and Thomas Tweed. Together, they share substantively from their fieldwork and consider the consequences for the study of religion of rejecting old ethnographic myths, as well as the risks of replacing them with new ones. The volume will be of interest to students as well as to experienced scholars in the field.

While most of us live our lives according to the working week, we did not evolve to be bound by industrial schedules, nor did the food we eat. Despite this, we eat the products of industrialization and often suffer as a consequence. This book considers aspects of changing human nutrition from evolutionary and social perspectives. It considers what a 'natural' human diet might be, how it has been shaped across evolutionary time and how we have adapted to changing food availability. The transition from hunter-gatherer and the rise of agriculture through to the industrialisation and globalisation of diet are explored. Far from being adapted to a 'Stone Age' diet, humans can consume a vast range of foodstuffs. However, being able to eat anything does not mean that we should eat everything, and therefore engagement with the evolutionary underpinnings of diet and factors influencing it are key to better public health practice.

Engaging exploration of race and youth culture which examines the development of new identities, ethnicities and forms of racism. This text analyzes the relationship between racism, community and adolescent social identities in the African and South Asian diasporas.; This book is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students on courses in race and ethnicity, urban sociology, cultural studies and social anthropology. It will also have some appeal within social policy and social work.

From AD 1550 to 1850, the Araucanian polity in southern Chile was a center of political resistance to the intruding Spanish empire. In this book, Tom D. Dillehay examines the resistance strategies of the Araucanians and how they used mound building and other sacred monuments to reorganize their political and culture life in order to unite against the Spanish. Drawing on anthropological research conducted over three decades, Dillehay focuses on the development of leadership, shamanism, ritual, and power relations. His study combines developments in social theory with the archaeological, ethnographic, and historical records. Both theoretically and empirically informed, this book is a fascinating account of the only indigenous ethnic group to successfully resist outsiders for more than three centuries and to flourish under these conditions.

Humans adapt to their environment through a unique amalgamation of culture and biology. Both are intrinsic to our existence and constitute the dual aspect of human nature. This book addresses topics and themes exploring this close inter-relationship by presenting principles and applications of scientific approaches to human remains. Their appreciation within a human ecological context, incorporating conditions of the natural environment as well as cultural, social and political circumstances of the past, provides the framework for the detection and interpretation of our biocultural identity. Written for academic researchers and students alike, Between Biology and Culture assembles chapters that encompass topics from taphonomy to individual life histories, from seasonality to food, from well-being to disease, from genetics to mobility, and from body theory to forensic individualization. In doing so, the contributions probe the potential of skeletal analysis to look beyond the face value of observations and to detect the biological outcomes of cultural strategies encoded in human remains.

How do chimpanzees say, 'I want to have sex with you?' By clipping a leaf or knocking on a tree trunk? How do they eat live aggressive ants? By using a short stick with one hand or long stick with both? Ivorian and Tanzanian chimpanzees answer these questions differently, as would humans from France and China if asked how they eat rice. Christophe Boesch takes readers into the lives of chimpanzees from different African regions, highlighting the debate about culture. His ethnography reveals how simple techniques have evolved into complex ones, how teaching styles differ, how material culture widens access to new food sources and how youngsters learn culture. This journey reveals many parallels between humans and chimpanzees and points to striking differences. Written in a vivid and accessible style, Wild Cultures places the reader in social and ecological contexts that shed light on our twin cultures.

This book examines how the social and cultural paradigms of contemporary Israel are articulated through the body. To construct a panoramic view of how the Israeli body is chosen, regulated, cared for, and ultimately made perfect, the author draws upon some twenty years of ethnographic research in Israel in a range of subjects. These include premarital and prenatal screening, the regulation of the body and its imagery among appearance-impaired children and their families, the screening and sanctifying of the body as part of the bereavement and commemoration of fallen soldiers, and the discourse of the chosen body as it surfaces during terrorist attacks, military socialization, war, and the peace process.