This classic ethnography, now in second edition, describes the traditional way of life of the Kaluli, a tropical forest people of Papua New Guinea. The book takes as its focus the nostalgic and violent Gisaro ceremony, one of the most remarkable performances in the anthropological literature. Tracking the major symbolic and emotional themes of the ceremony to their sources in everyday Kaluli life, Schieffelin shows how the central values and passions of Kaluli experience are governed by the basic forms of social reciprocity. However, Gisaro also reveals that social reciprocity is not limited to the dynamics of transaction, obligation, and alliance. It emerges, rather, as a mode of symbolic action and performative form, embodying a cultural scenario which shapes Kaluli emotional experience and moral sensibility and permeates their understanding of the human condition.

A vivid look at China's shifting place in the global political economy of technology production How did China's mass manufacturing and "copycat" production become transformed, in the global tech imagination, from something holding the nation back to one of its key assets? Prototype Nation offers a rich transnational analysis of how the promise of democratized innovation and entrepreneurial life has shaped China's governance and global image. With historical precision and ethnographic detail, Silvia Lindtner reveals how a growing distrust in Western models of progress and development, including Silicon Valley and the tech industry after the financial crisis of 2007-8, shaped the rise of the global maker movement and the vision of China as a "new frontier" of innovation. Lindtner's investigations draw on more than a decade of research in experimental work spaces-makerspaces, coworking spaces, innovation hubs, hackathons, and startup weekends-in China, the United States, Africa, Europe, Taiwan, and Singapore, as well as in key sites of technology investment and industrial production-tech incubators, corporate offices, and factories. She examines how the ideals of the maker movement, to intervene in social and economic structures, served the technopolitical project of prototyping a "new" optimistic, assertive, and global China. In doing so, Lindtner demonstrates that entrepreneurial living influences governance, education, policy, investment, and urban redesign in ways that normalize the persistence of sexism, racism, colonialism, and labor exploitation. Prototype Nation shows that by attending to the bodies and sites that nurture entrepreneurial life, technology can be extricated from the seemingly endless cycle of promise and violence. Cover image: Courtesy of Cao Fei, Vitamin Creative Space and Spru th Magers

Sharon V. Salinger's "Taverns and Drinking in Early America" supplies the first study of public houses and drinking throughout the mainland British colonies. At a time when drinking water supposedly endangered one's health, colonists of every rank, age, race, and gender drank often and in quantity, and so taverns became arenas for political debate, business transactions, and small-town gossip sessions. Salinger explores the similarities and differences in the roles of drinking and tavern sociability in small towns, cities, and the countryside; in Anglican, Quaker, and Puritan communities; and in four geographic regions. Challenging the prevailing view that taverns tended to break down class and gender differences, Salinger persuasively argues they did not signal social change so much as buttress custom and encourage exclusion.

What is the connection between May Day and the Statue of Liberty? Between ancient solstice fires and Fourth of July fireworks? Between St. Valentine, the Groundhog, and the Virgin Mary? In The Book of the Year, Anthony Aveni offers fascinating answers to these questions and explains the many ways humans throughout time have tried to order and give meaning to time's passing. Aveni traces the origins of modern customs tied to seasonal holidays, exploring what we eat, the games we play, the rituals we perform, and the colorful cast of characters we invent to dramatize holidays. Along the way, Aveni illuminates everything from the Jack 'O Lantern and our faith in the predictive power of animals to the ways in which Labor Day reflects the great medieval "time wars," when the newly invented clock first pitted labor against management. Vividly written, filled with facts both curious and astonishing, this engrossing book allows us to hear that beat more clearly and to understand more fully the rhythms we all dance to throughout the year.

Gift-giving is extremely important in Japanese society, not only at personal and household levels, but at the national and macroeconomic levels as well. This book is the first in English to document the extraordinary scale, complexity, and variation of giving in contemporary Japan. Gift-Giving in Japan is based on eighteen months' fieldwork in the Tokyo metropolitan area, as well as short-term research in other parts of Japan. The core of the study is the experience of family representatives of different ages, classes, genders, occupations, neighborhoods, and religions. The author also interviewed experts, including the author of gift-giving etiquette books, Buddhist and Shinto priests, department store and funeral home employees, and workers at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market. She participated in neighborhood festivals, election rallies, house-building rites, and other ceremonies of which gift-giving was an integral part. Recent anthropological interest in drawing a strong contrast between commodities and gifts both reflects and reinforces the conception of the gift as part of the giver and the related distinction between the realm of the gift and the realm of the marketplace. The author argues that Japanese practices of giving and receiving challenge assumptions related to this idea of the gift.

La Fee Verte (or "The Green Fairy") has intoxicated artists, poets, and writers ever since the late eighteenth century. Stories abound of absinthe's druglike sensations of mood lift and inspiration due to the presence of wormwood, its infamous "special" ingredient, which ultimately leads to delirium, homicidal mania, and death. Opening with the sensational 1905 Absinthe Murdres, Phil Baker offers a cultural history of absinthe, from its modest origins as an herbal tonic through its luxuriantly morbid heyday in the late nineteenth century. Chronicling a fascinatintly lurid cast of historical characters who often died young, the absinthe scrapbook includes Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Aleister Crowley, Arthur machen, August Strindberg, Alfred Jarry, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alphonse Allais, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso. Along with discussing the rituals and modus operandi of absinthe drinking, Baker reveals the recently discovered pharmacology of how real absinthe actually works on the nervous system, and he tests the various real and fake absinthe products that are available overseas. Written with "seductive verve and gentle insight" (Times Literary Supplement), The Book of Absinthe is a witty, erudite primer to the world's most notorious drink.

Boasting a rich, complex history in Celtic and Christian ritual, Halloween has evolved from ethnic celebration to a blend of street festival, fright night, and vast commercial enterprise. In this colorful history, Nicholas Rogers takes a lively, entertaining look at the cultural origins and development of one of the most popular holidays of the year.

The Rajputs ruled the vast majority of the kingdoms that were joined together after Indian Independence to form the state Rajasthan, "Land of Kings." An important part of Rajput religion is the worship of "heroes" who have died in battle. In this book, Harlan explores the idea of the Rajput hero. She is particularly interested in the role played by gender in stories about heroes and their worship. She looks at the differences between female and male storytellers, the relationships of the hero to the woman in his tale, and the relationship of the hero to the goddess for whom he is both a sacrifice and henchman. She obtains her materials from interviews with Rajput families and their servants, from songfests, from bystanders at shrines, from ritual specialists. Ultimately she shows how heroic traditions encapsulate and express ideals of perfection and masculinity, defied most visibly against the backdrop of domesticity and femininity. More broadly she argues that heroes reflect ever-changing valuations of history, and serve as sources of inspiration for facing contemporary challenges (domestic, communal, national) and concerns about the future.

Tobacco was first cultivated and enjoyed by the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, who used it for medicinal, religious, and social purposes long before the arrival of Columbus. But when Europeans began to colonize the American continents, it became something else entirely -- a cultural touchstone of pleasure and success, and a coveted commodity that would transform the world economy forever. Iain Gately's Tobacco tells the epic story of an unusual plant and its unique relationship with the history of humanity, from its obscure ancient beginnings, through its rise to global prominence, to its current embattled state today. In a lively narrative, Gately makes the case for the tobacco trade being the driving force behind the growth of the American colonies, the foundation of Dutch trading empire, the underpinning cause of the African slave trade, and the financial basis for our victory in the American Revolution. Informed and erudite, Tobacco is a vivid and provocative look into the complex history of this precious plant. "A rich, complex history ... Deeply engaging and witty." -- Carmela Ciuraru, Los Angeles Times "Ambitious ... informative and perceptive ... Gately is an amusing writer, which is a blessing." -- Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post " Gately] documents the resourcefulness with which human beings of every class, religion, race, and continent have pursued the lethal leaf." -- John Leland, The New York Times Book Review

Every day of the year, somewhere in the United States, some sort of holiday or special remembrance is being observed by individuals, organisations, or governments. January 30 is Pennsylvanians with Disabilities Day. On March 26, Hawaii celebrates Prince Janah Kuhio Kalanianaole Day. November 9 is set aside for Women Veterans Day in Alaska, while in Puerto Rica they honour baseball scout Pedrin Zorilla, and as the sun sets, New Jersey holds a Kristallnacht Memorial Night. This book is a detailed reference work about holidays and special observances established by statute in the United States, including American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Because the United States is a member state of the United Nations, U.N.-designated holidays and longer periods of time, such as years and decades devoted to important world issues, are also included. Following the day-by-day section, holidays are listed chronologically within their jurisdictions (federally designated observances are first in the list; states and territories follow in alphabetical order). A subject index offers invaluable aid to those wishing to celebrate a particular topic, such as nursing, education, or peace, while a name index provides swift access to holidays celebrating the lives of individuals.

Americans love to eat. They are also deeply religious. So it’s no surprise that food has an important place in the religious lives of Americans.. They eat in worship services. They drink coffeein church basements. They feed neighbors and strangers in the name of their god. For countless American Protestants, food and church are inseparable. From dry cookies and punch at coffee hour to potlucks and spaghetti dinners, Whitebread Protestants looks at the role food plays in the daily life of white mainline Protestant congregations.

"Exotic Appetites" is a far-reaching exploration of what Lisa Heldke calls "food adventuring": the passion, fashion and pursuit of experimentation with ethnic foods. The aim of Heldke's critique is to expose and explore the colonialist attitudes embedded in our everyday relationship and approach to foreign foods. "Exotic Appetites" brings to the table the critical literatures in postcolonialism, critical race theory, and feminism in a provocative and lively discussion of eating and "ethnic" cuisine. Chapters look closely at the meanings and implications involved in the quest for unusual restaurants and exotic dishes, related restaurant reviews and dining guides, and ethnic cookbooks.

This book is a far-reaching exploration of what the Heldke calls 'food adventuring': the passion, fashion and pursuit of the experimentation with ethnic foods. Exotic Appetites brings to the table the critical literatures on colonialism and anticolonialism, on racism and antiracism, and on feminist theory, in a provocative discussion of eating and 'ethnic' food. Chapters examine the meanings and socio-political implications involved in the quest for new and interesting restaurants and exotic dishes, restaurant reviews and dining guides and ethnic cookbooks.

Although the debate over same-sex marriage in the United States has ended, no one seems to know what lies on the horizon. The conversation about what marriage could be like in the future is no longer confined to academics. In his dissent in Obergefell, Chief Justice Roberts linked the constitutionally-mandated legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the possibility that states may also have to recognize multi-person intimate relationships as well to avoid discriminating against plural marriage enthusiasts. The popularity of television shows like TLC's Sister Wives and HBO's Big Love suggests that Americans no longer can be dismissive of the possibility that in the foreseeable future, marriage could, and perhaps should, look very different than it does today. Rather than settling the question of whether states ought to abolish marriage, make it more inclusive, contractual, or call it something else, this book exposes readers to some of the normative, legal, and empirical questions that Americans must address before they can deliberate thoughtfully about whether to keep the marital status quo where monogamy remains privileged. Unlike much of the debate over same-sex marriage, they exchange reasons with one another as they discuss marital reform. This book is for ordinary Americans, their elected representatives, and judges, to help them ultimately decide whether they want to continue to define marriage so narrowly, make it more inclusive to avoid discrimination, or have the state leave the marriage business. This edited, interdisciplinary volume contains eight original contributions, all of which illuminate important but often neglected areas of the topic.

"The Absence of Grace" is a study of male fantasy, representation anxiety, and narratorial authority in two sixteenth-century books, Baldassare Castiglione's "Il libro del Cortegiano" (1528) and Giovanni Della Casa's "Galateo" (1558). The interpretive method is a form of close reading the author describes as reconstructed old New Criticism, that is, close reading conditioned by an interest in and analysis of the historical changes reflected in the text. The book focuses on the way the "Courtier" and "Galateo" cope with and represent the interaction between changes of elite culture and the changing construction of masculine identity in early modern Europe. More specifically, it connects questions of male fantasy and masculine identity to questions about the authority and reliability of narrators, and shows how these questions surface in narratorial attitudes toward socioeconomic rank or class, political power, and gender.
The book is in three parts. Part One examines a distinction and correlation the "Courtier" establishes between two key terms, (1) "sprezzatura, " defined as a behavioral skill intended to simulate the attributes of (2) "grazia, " understood as the grace and privileges of noble birth. Because "sprezzatura" is negatively conceptualized as the absence of grace it generates anxiety and suspicion in performers and observers alike. In order to suggest how the binary opposition between these terms affected the discourse of manners, the author singles out the titular episode of "Galateo, " an anecdote about table manners, which he reads closely and then sets in its historical perspective. Part Two takes up the question of "sprezzatura" in the gender debate that develops in Book 3 of the "Courtier, " and Part Three explores in detail the characterization of the two narrators in the "Courtier" and "Galateo, " who are represented as unreliable and an object of parody or critique.

The "ordines coronationis" are essentially the scripts for the coronation of Frankish and French sovereigns. Combining detailed religious, ceremonial, and political material, they are an extraordinarily important source for the study of individual rulers or dynasties, as well as for the study of kingship, queenship, and the evolution of political institutions. Complete in two volumes, Richard A. Jackson's is the first full edition of these texts, including all the "ordines" from the early thirteenth century through the end of the fifteenth century, a period during which the texts shift from Latin to the vernacular, and the institutions of kingship become distinctively French.

Although so much of the life we care about takes place at home, this private space often remains behind closed doors and is notoriously difficult for researchers to infiltrate. We may think it is just up to us to decorate, transform and construct our homes, but in this book we discover a new form of 'estate agency', the active participation of the home and its material culture in the construction of our lives. What do the possessions people choose to take with them when moving say about who they are, and should we emphasize the mobility of a move or the stability of what movers take with them? How is the home an active partner in developing relationships? Why are our homes sometimes haunted by 'ghosts'?.This intriguing book is a rare behind-the-scenes expose of the domestic sphere across a range of cultures. Examples come from working class housewives in Norway, a tribal society in Taiwan, a museum in London, tenants in Canada and students from Greece, to produce a genuinely comparative perspective based in every case on sustained fieldwork. So Japan, long thought to be a nation that idealizes uncluttered simplicity, is shown behind closed doors to harbour illicit pockets of disorganization, while the warmth inside Romanian apartments is used to expel the presence of the state.Representing a vital development in the study of material culture, this book clearly shows that we may think we possess our homes, but our homes are more likely to possess us.

Patricia Feigl zeigt, dass der neuartige Wettbewerbsdruck zwischen den Akteuren am Wohnimmobilienmarkt die Generierung und Sicherung von Vorteilen notwendig macht. Fur eine Zielgruppenbestimmung von Wohnimmobilienmietern stellt sie die Wohnbedurfnisse von Nachfragern zusammen und entwickelt auf der Basis des Nutzensegmentierungsansatzes einen wohnungswirtschaftlichen Marktsegmentierungsansatz. Das Spektrum des Themenfeldes offenbart sich in der Abgrenzung der Wohnbedurfnisse gegenuber anderen soziologischen und psychologischen Aspekte des Wohnens, der Identifikation untersuchungsrelevanter Wohnbedurfnisse und deren UEberleitung in produktspezifische Segmentierungsmerkmale. Basierend auf den Ergebnissen einer empirischen Untersuchung uberpruft die Autorin den Ansatz auf seine Anwendbarkeit, um abschliessend Handlungsoptionen fur die Praxis aufzuzeigen.

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.

As the saying goes, everyone loves a parade. But never more so than in 1950s America, when flag waving, martial pomp, and staged ceremony were presented and often perceived as America's last best defence against the communist threat. Historian Richard Fried, author of Nightmare in Red, ploughs new ground with this exploration of the often absurd lengths the average citizen in McCarthyite America went to to help shore up patriotism and fend off the threat of the Red Menace.

As a conquest dynasty, Qing China's new Manchu leaders desperately needed to legitimize their rule. To win the approval of China's native elites, they developed an ambitious plan to return Confucianism to civil society. Filial piety, the core Confucian value, would once again be upheld by the state, and laborious and time-consuming mourning rituals, the touchstones of a well-ordered Confucian society, would be observed by officials throughout the empire. In this way, the emperor would be following the ancient dictate that he 'govern all-under-heaven with filial piety'. Norman Kutcher's study of mourning looks beneath the rhetoric to demonstrate how the state - unwilling to make the sacrifices that a genuine commitment to proper mourning demanded - quietly but forcefully undermined, not reinvigorated, the Confucian mourning system. With acute sensitivity to language and its changing meanings, Kutcher sheds light on a wide variety of issues that are of interest to historians of late Imperial China.

Textiles play a decisive role in history: attire not only indicates status, gender, ethnicity, and religion but illustrates how such boundaries are continuously being negotiated, shifted, and recreated. Fashionable Traditions captures the complex reality of Asian handmade textile production and consumption. From traditionalist discourse and cultural authenticity to fashion and market trends, the contributors to this collection demonstrate the multilayered influence of often contradictory forces. In-depth, ethnographic case studies reveal the entangled relationships between local artisans, external interventions, and consumers, while acknowledging the broader frameworks in which such relationships are situated. Together these stories offer a vivid account of the socio-economic, political, and cultural dynamics in various parts of Asia and emphasize that fashion is neither a Western prerogative nor do its roots reside solely in the West.

In Cannibalism and the Colonial World, published in 1998, an international team of specialists from a variety of disciplines - anthropology, literature, art history - discusses the historical and cultural significance of western fascination with the topic of cannibalism. Addressing the image as it appears in a series of texts - popular culture, film, literature, travel writing and anthropology - the essays range from classical times to contemporary critical discourse. Cannibalism and the Colonial World examines western fascination with the figure of the cannibal and how this has impacted on the representation of the non-western world. This group of literary and anthropological scholars analyses the way cannibalism continues to exist as a term within colonial discourse and places the discussion of cannibalism in the context of postcolonial and cultural studies.