Trained as a doctor, John Crawfurd (1783 1868) went on to have a distinguished career in colonial administration with the East India Company. He held senior posts in Java from 1811 to 1816, including that of resident at the court of Yogyakarta. A talented linguist and ethnologist, Crawfurd acquired a sound knowledge of ancient Kawi and contemporary Javanese. Upon his return to Britain in 1817, he became a fellow of the Royal Society and published this three-volume work on the Indonesian islands, principally Java, to great acclaim. Following further service abroad, he published accounts of his various missions in south-east Asia and an encyclopaedic sequel to the present work (all of which are reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection). Volume 2 examines language, literature, religion, and history, and the impact of Islam, Christianity and European colonisation.

Published in two volumes in 1857, this was the most successful work of the linguist and politician Sir John Bowring (1792 1872). His varied career included work as an editor and translator, service as an M.P. in Britain and as a consul in China, and the controversial governorship of Hong Kong. His appointment to this last post in 1854 saw him aggressively assert British interests with little regard for Asian sensibilities. The following year he travelled to Siam (Thailand) to negotiate a treaty with that country which became a model for future agreements, giving the Siamese government an insight into Western diplomacy which would be invaluable. Volume 1 is an illustrated introduction to the country, following the structure of Bishop Pallegoix's earlier work, with chapters on Siam's geography and history; population; manners and customs; legislation; resources, industry and finances; culture and religion; and its capital, Bangkok.

Published in two volumes in 1857, this was the most successful work of the linguist and politician Sir John Bowring (1792 1872). His varied career included work as an editor and translator, service as an M.P. in Britain and as a consul in China, and the controversial governorship of Hong Kong. His appointment to this last post in 1854 saw him aggressively assert British interests with little regard for Asian sensibilities. The following year he travelled to Siam (Thailand) to negotiate a treaty with that country which became a model for future agreements, giving the Siamese government an insight into Western diplomacy which would be invaluable. Volume 2 covers the political make-up of the nation, containing chapters on its dependencies and diplomatic relations, including an account of the work done by Bowring and his party. Also featured are personal accounts from long-term foreign residents of Siam and writings by its king, Mongkut (1804 68).

Trained as a doctor, John Crawfurd (1783 1868) went on to have a distinguished career in colonial administration with the East India Company. He held senior posts in Java from 1811 to 1816, including that of resident at the court of Yogyakarta. A talented linguist and ethnologist, Crawfurd acquired a sound knowledge of ancient Kawi and contemporary Javanese. Upon his return to Britain in 1817, he became a fellow of the Royal Society and published this three-volume work on the Indonesian islands, principally Java, to great acclaim. Following further service abroad, he published accounts of his various missions in south-east Asia and an encyclopaedic sequel to the present work (all of which are reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection). Volume 1 examines the character and manners of the islanders as well as their arts, sciences, medicine, and agricultural techniques.

Trained as a doctor, John Crawfurd (1783 1868) went on to have a distinguished career in colonial administration with the East India Company. He held senior posts in Java from 1811 to 1816, including that of resident at the court of Yogyakarta. A talented linguist and ethnologist, Crawfurd acquired a sound knowledge of ancient Kawi and contemporary Javanese. Upon his return to Britain in 1817, he became a fellow of the Royal Society and published this three-volume work on the Indonesian islands, principally Java, to great acclaim. Following further service abroad, he published accounts of his various missions in south-east Asia and an encyclopaedic sequel to the present work (all of which are reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection). Volume 3 examines political institutions and commerce, covering major exports and imports along with demographics, public revenue and laws.

Ritual has long been a central concept in anthropological theories of religious transmission. Ritual, Performance and the Senses offers a new understanding of how ritual enables religious representations - ideas, beliefs, values - to be shared among participants.Focusing on the body and the experiential nature of ritual, the book brings together insights from three distinct areas of study: cognitive/neuroanthropology, performance studies and the anthropology of the senses. Eight chapters by scholars from each of these sub-disciplines investigate different aspects of embodied religious practice, ranging from philosophical discussions of belief to explorations of the biological processes taking place in the brain itself. Case studies range from miracles and visionary activity in Catholic Malta to meditative practices in theatrical performance and include three pilgrimage sites: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the festival of Ramlila in Ramnagar, India and the mountain shrine of the Lord of the Shiny Snow in Andean Peru. Understanding ritual allows us to understand processes at the very centre of human social life and humanity itself, making this an invaluable text for students and scholars in anthropology, cognitive science, performance studies and religious studies.

Hate Narratives examines the limits of free speech and focuses on the role of language in creating images of reality, and on language's power to build social relationships based on hatred. The study provides an analysis of language used in totalitarian systems, along with a particular kind of narrative description, namely dogmatic hate narratives, which are used in democratic systems as well. It focuses on the notion that the media and other sources of information create "parallel realities", and that facts created by media are translated into social fact. Central to this line of thought are the determinants by which an individual chooses from among the various broadcasted images of reality.

Migration involves change of geographical place, social relations and cultural habits. This volume brings together contributions from an international group of scholars including studies of ritual change and social transformation in Singapore, Germany and the US. In situations of change, individuals as well as social groups mobilize rituals to reaffirm a sense of identity. Usually thinking of rituals as fixed sets of symbolic behaviour, handed down through generations, migration forces a fresh look at rituals: that they are open to change and adjustment as well as means of social transformation. The authors show the challenge of the transformation of symbolic behaviour for those who experience spatial and social change. They emphasise that ritual change is also common when cultures become intercultural.

Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland is the first major book to explore the dynamic religious landscape of contemporary Ireland, north and south, and to analyse the island's religious transition. It confirms that the Catholic Church's long-standing 'monopoly' has well and truly disintegrated, replaced by a mixed, post-Catholic religious 'market' featuring new and growing expressions of Protestantism, as well as other religions. It describes how people of faith are developing 'extra-institutional' expressions of religion, keeping their faith alive outside or in addition to the institutional Catholic Church. Drawing on island-wide surveys of clergy and laypeople, as well as more than 100 interviews, Gladys Ganiel describes how people of faith are engaging with key issues such as increased diversity, reconciliation to overcome the island's sectarian past, and ecumenism. Ganiel argues that extra-institutional religion is especially well-suited to address these and other issues due to its freedom and flexibility when compared to traditional religious institutions. She explains how those who practice extra-institutional religion have experienced personal transformation, and analyses the extent that they have contributed to wider religious, social, and political change. On an island where religion has caused much pain, from clerical sexual abuse scandals, to sectarian violence, to a frosty reception for some immigrants, those who practice their faith outside traditional religious institutions may hold the key to transforming post-Catholic Ireland into a more reconciled society.

During his 2009 inaugural speech, President Obama described the United States as a nation of "Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus-and nonbelievers." It was the first time an American president had acknowledged the existence of this rapidly growing segment of the population in such a public forum. And yet the reasons why more and more people are turning away from religion are still poorly understood. In Faith No More, Phil Zuckerman draws on in-depth interviews with people who have left religion to find out what's really behind the process of losing one's faith. According to a 2008 study, so many Americans claim no religion (15%, up from 8% in 1990) that this category now outranks every other religious group except Catholics and Baptists. Exploring the deeper stories within such survey data, Zuckerman shows that leaving one's faith is a highly personal, complex, and drawn-out process. And he finds that, rather than the cliche of the angry, nihilistic atheist, apostates are life-affirming, courageous, highly intelligent and inquisitive, and deeply moral. Zuckerman predicts that this trend toward nonbelief will likely continue and argues that the sooner we recognize that religion is frequently and freely rejected by all sorts of men and women, the sooner our understanding of the human condition will improve. The first book of its kind, Faith No More will appeal to anyone interested in the "New Atheism" and indeed to anyone wishing to more fully understand our changing relationship to religious faith.

Samuel Kneeland (1821 88), educated at Harvard and in Paris as a doctor, served as an army surgeon during the American Civil War. After the war, he returned to lecturing on physiology, and expanded his academic interests to zoology and to natural history in general. His expedition to Iceland was fuelled by a fascination with volcanoes, volcanic islands and the flora and fauna that abounded on them, but Kneeland was as much a cultural and historical tourist as a scientist, enjoying the millennial celebration of the first settlement by Norwegians, the spectacle of geyser eruptions, and the Norse history and traditions of the Icelanders. This 1876 work offers a chronological account of his party's travels through the Scottish islands and around Iceland, bringing a very individual touch to a description of the country, its culture and its outstanding landscapes.

Ola Hanson (1864 1927) was a Swedish-American missionary from Minnesota, posted to northern Burma in 1890. He lived with the Kachin people and became fluent in their language, compiling a word-list and eventually producing a Kachin English dictionary. Their own culture and complex belief system were orally transmitted: Hanson therefore devised an alphabetical transcription for his translation of the Bible into Kachin, and this writing system later became widespread in Burma. First published in 1913, this book was written after Hanson had lived with the Kachins for over twenty years, and offers a unique insight into their culture at this time. It outlines their origins, dialects, law and weapons, as well as the details of Kachin religious beliefs and ceremonies for births, marriage and death. This book is valuable as both an ethnography of the Kachin and as an example of the perspective of an early twentieth-century missionary.

Socialist Literature studies the relationship between the development of socialist literary theory and the process of cultural transformation in modern society by tracing the outline of the theory in the works of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, and examining its reflection in actual works of literature. This analysis is set alongside a detailed examination of the literary part of the cultural superstructure in China and in the Soviet Union. Among the major literary and theoretical works discussed are The Communist Manifesto, Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, Gorky's Mother, and the poetry of Mayakovsky. Key issues, like the position of the writer in society, the relationship of the old and the new in literature, and the much discussed relationship between the "creator" and the "audience", are examined and explained in a different light by regarding them as more than purely theoretical issues or abstract cultural problems and, instead, considering them as social issues that can only be settled at the level of practice. Abdulla Al-Dabbagh amplifies the area of research by discussing some of the major opposing positions to the theory outlined and, by examining at length the portrayal of proletarian heroism, one of its key concepts, in the literary works of the same epoch. The result of the close textual analysis of a large number of major works of poetry, drama, and fiction reveals the course of the artistic development to be complementary to that of the theoretical advance.

This book explores the transformation of Chinese food in the U.S. after 1965 from a cultural perspective. The author asks how Chinese food reflects the racial relation between the Chinese community and the mainstream white society and investigates the symbolic meanings as well as the cultural functions of Chinese food in America. She argues that food is not only a symbol that mirrors social relations, but also an agent which causes social and cultural change. A particular geographic focus of this book is California.

As Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy, Sir Edward Reed (1830 1906) oversaw the final move from wooden to ironclad ships. Upon resigning from the Navy in 1870 he designed warships for Germany, Chile, Brazil and Japan, and was invited to Japan in 1879 to advise its government on plans to strengthen its navy. Eleven years after the restoration of the monarchy, the country was embarking on a period of rapid industrial and military development. Published in 1880, and part history, part travel narrative, Reed's book gives a fascinating insight into Japan during a key period in her history and is an informal yet informed assessment of her people, customs, history and geography. Volume 2 is an account of Reed's travels, often in a rickshaw, around the country during his three-month stay. It includes his more personal observations, taken directly from his diary, of Japan's scenery, cities and people.

Stephenson Percy Smith (1840-1922) arrived in New Zealand as a boy, and soon became fascinated by Maori culture. After retiring in 1900 from his career as a government surveyor, Smith devoted himself to the study of the Maori and co-founded the Polynesian Society, which published this two-volume study in 1913-15. The book contains the Maori text of an important body of beliefs and traditions which had been committed to writing over fifty years earlier, when the young W. H. Whatahoro had acted as scribe for a group of senior elders concerned to preserve this ancient and sacred knowledge. Only long afterwards was Whatahoro willing to divulge it to Europeans, and he personally assisted Smith with the translation provided here. Volume 2 focuses on traditions relating to the history and migrations of the Maori people and their arrival in New Zealand in the 'Great Fleet'.

First published between 1887 and 1890, this six-volume work, containing Maori texts with English translations and commentary, and engraved illustrations, was one of the first printed records of the oral traditions of the Maori. The project was commissioned by the New Zealand government in 1879 when it was observed that, due to the introduction of European culture and education, indigenous traditions were in danger of dying out. The material was collected by John White (1826-91), an ethnographer, public servant and writer who had arrived in New Zealand as a boy and first began documenting Maori poetry in the 1840s. Volume 3, published in 1887, includes myths of the rainbow god Uenuku, canoe migrations, and legends of the South Island Maori, many of them relating to ancestry, feuds and warfare.

Images of the devastation wreaked by typhoons, flooding, earthquakes and drought in the Philippines circulate globally as an important part of disaster discourses. This collection seeks to move beyond these simplistic representations of calamity by bringing together a group of Filipino and international scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to grapple with the complex nature of disaster in the Philippines. Firmly grounded in the relationship between disaster and place, the volume's contributors confront the challenges of the Philippine nation's internal heterogeneity of language, ethnicity and class. In doing so, this book seeks to engage the specificities of place amid diversity, and explores two broad but interrelating avenues of investigation through case studies drawn from across the archipelago: How can environmental extremity in the Philippines help us understand disasters? How can disasters help us understand the Philippines?

These are just a few samples from an eighteenth-century Commonplace Book, passed down the generations from Mary Cannon's kitchen to her many times great-granddaughter Marjorie Quarton. A Commonplace Book was a scrapbook for sayings, letters, prayers, measurements, or, as in this instance, of recipes. Mary Cannon lived in Dunleary (now Dun Laoghaire) and collected over 120 recipes between 1700 and 1707. They are presented here in sections such as ffishe, ffleshe, Puddings and Deserts, Pickles and Preserves. The visceral vocabulary and archaic spellings of these dishes will refresh our word hoard, while imparting a sumptuous flavour to Ireland's gastronomic repertoire. Unopened and untried for over 300 years, they form a unique resource for food historians and knights of the dining table. Marjorie Quarton has edited these recipes, commenting on the significance and usage of certain ingredients. She has added fragments of family history, from Jacobite leaders and Huguenot refugees to tales of the Indian Mutiny. The recipes are illustrated by Alice Bouilliez, also a descendent of Mary Cannon.

Despite predictions that commercial mass culture would displace customs of the past, traditions firmly abound, often characterized as folklore. In The Practice of Folklore: Essays toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life. Bronner proposes a distinctive "praxic" perspective that will answer the pressing philosophical as well as psychological question of why people enjoy repeating themselves. The significance of the keyword practice, he asserts, is the embodiment of a tension between repetition and variation in human behavior. Thinking with practice, particularly in a digital world, forces redefinitions of folklore and a reorientation toward interpreting everyday life. More than performance or enactment in social theory, practice connects localized culture with the vernacular idea that "this is the way we do things around here." Practice refers to the way those things are analyzed as part of, rather than apart from, theory, thus inviting the study of studying. "The way we do things" invokes the social basis of "doing" in practice as cultural and instrumental. Building on previous studies of tradition in relation to creativity, Bronner presents an overview of practice theory and the ways it might be used in folklore and folklife studies. Demonstrating the application of this theory in folkloristic studies, Bronner offers four provocative case studies of psychocultural meanings that arise from traditional frames of action and address issues of our times: referring to the boogieman; connecting "wild child" beliefs to school shootings; deciphering the offensive chants of sports fans; and explicating male bravado in bawdy singing. Turning his analysis to the analysts of tradition, Bronner uses practice theory to evaluate the agenda of folklorists in shaping perceptions of tradition-centered "folk societies" such as the Amish. He further unpacks the culturally based rationale of public folklore programming. He interprets the evolving idea of folk museums in a digital world and assesses how the folklorists' terms and actions affect how people think about tradition.

Although today in France church attendance is minimal, when death occurs many families still cling to religious rites. In exploring this common reaction to one of the most painful aspects of existence, Thomas Kselman turns to nineteenth-century French beliefs about death and the afterlife not only to show how deeply rooted the cult of the dead is in one Western society, but how death and the behavior of mourners have been politicized in the modern world. Drawing on sermons preached in rural and urban parishes, folktales, and accounts of seances, the author vividly re-creates the social and cultural context in which most French people responded to death and dealt with anxieties about the self and its survival. Inspired mainly by Catholicism, beliefs about death provided a social basis for moral order throughout the nineteenth century and were vulnerable to manipulation by public officials and clergy. Kselman shows, however, that by mid-century the increase in urbanization, capitalism, family privacy, and expressed religious differences generated diverse attitudes toward death, causing funerals to evolve from Catholic neighborhood rituals into personalized symbolic events for Catholics and dissenters alike--the civil burial of Victor Hugo being perhaps the greatest symbol of rebellion. Kselman's discussion of the growth of commercial funerals and innovations in cemetery administration illuminates a new struggle for control over funeral arrangements, this time involving businessmen, politicians, families, and clergy. This struggle in turn demonstrates the importance of these events for defining social identity.

Originally published in 1992.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

G. F. Abbott spent two years at the turn of the twentieth century studying the cultural beliefs and folklore of Greek-speaking Macedonia. His results are formulated in this 1903 book and include accounts of such varying topics as the folk-calendar, funeral rites and bird legends among many other observations. Filled with anecdotes of his adventure and reports from local inhabitants, this work is a highly engaging travelogue with many ethnographic insights. Those interested in the development of anthropology will find Abbott's study a telling example of Victorian methods while the general reader will find his prose style warm and enjoyable.

Most of us know a bit about what passes for good manners - holding doors open, sending thank-you notes, no elbows on the table. We certainly know bad manners when we see them. But where has this patchwork of beliefs and behaviours come from? How did manners develop? How do they change? And why do they matter so much to us? In examining our manners, Henry Hitchings delves into the English character and investigates our notions of Englishness. Sorry! presents an amusing, illuminating and quirky audit of English manners. From basic table manners to appropriate sexual conduct, via hospitality, chivalry, faux pas and online etiquette, Hitchings traces the history of our country's customs and courtesies. Putting under the microscope some of our most astute observers of humanity, including Jane Austen and Samuel Pepys, he uses their lives and writings to pry open the often downright peculiar secrets of the English character. Hitchings' blend of history, anthropology and personal journey helps us understand our bizarre and contested cultural baggage - and ourselves.

Renowned food scholar Carole Counihan serves up a delicious narrative about family and food in twentieth-century Florence. By looking at how family, and especially gender relations, have changed in Florence since the ending of World War II and continuing on to an examination of current food practices today, "Around the Tuscan Table" offers a portrait of the changing nature of modern life as exemplified through food. How food is produced, distributed, and consumed speaks volumes about a given culture, and this compelling and artfully narrated book aims to preserve, propagate, and interpret Florentines' world-renowned cuisine and culture.
At the market, in the kitchen, and around the table, Counihan gives readers a taste of everyday life in this region of Italy: how eating together unites the family; how the production of food is gendered; how food is a key tool of socialization, and how culture forms aesthetic tastes.
With more than 20 illustrations and age-old family recipes, this is a treat for the senses and the intellect.