What counts as ethnography and what counts as good ethnographic methodology are both highly contested. This volume brings together chapters presenting a diversity of views on some of the current debates and developments in the field. It does not try to present a single coherent view but, through its heterogeneity, illustrates the strength and impact of debate. The topics discussed include participant observation, research roles in fieldwork, access to places and people in research, ethical issues concerning anonymity and intimacy in research, generalization in ethnography, the use of video, developing stronger criteria for autoethnography, and the use of ethnography as a contribution to the generation and modification of indicators. Together the collection illustrates the strength and vitality of ethnography.

Violent ethno-nationalist conflicts continue to mar the history of the current century, yet no satisfactory answer to the question of why humans are susceptible to indoctrination by ideologies that lead to inter-group hostility has so far been found. In this volume an international team of leading scientists from many different fields approach this complex issue from a biological perspective, treating indoctrinability as a predisposition that has its roots in humanity's evolutionary past.

In the past decade philosophers and political theorists have increasingly pondered the role of religion in a modern secular society, and of the possible value of religion as a resource for contemporary thinking. The global resurgence of a new religious politics ? graphically symbolised by 9/11 - has added a new urgency to this project; how is religion to be integrated, and if necessary contested, in such a time? As this study shows, the desire to integrate religion into a ?progressive? politics is not new. Providing a comprehensive analysis of the Common Wealth movement, this work seeks to bring together for the first time the religious and political commitments of four of the leading thinkers in the movement, bringing to light the significance of the relationships between them.

This study examines at four interwar British radicals ? the philosopher John Macmurray, the novelist and sexual theorist Kenneth Ingram, the Science Fiction writer Olaf Stapledon, and the Liberal M.P. Richard Acland ? and examines their attempts to develop a socialism that whilst defending the achievements of the secular age was also sensitive to the virtues of religious traditions. Thus it considers Macmurray's attempt to draw on the seemingly antagonistic traditions of Marxism and Christianity, Ingram's long struggle to develop a Christian response to ?deviant? sexual behaviour, Stapledon's exploration of a non-Christian religious spirit, and Acland's journey from liberal atheist to Christian socialist. It then follows the activities of all four in the radical political movement founded by Acland in the midst of the Second World War, Common Wealth, particularly focusing on the positions they took in the serious battles over the function of religion that convulsed the leadership of this body.

This work will be of great interest to scholars of political theory, religious studies, social and political thought.

." . . an interesting collection of essays . . . the text is engaging and highly informative." . H-Net Review Literature on women, development and environment is abundant. This book offers a new perspective, specifically to challenge the assumption that women have a special affinity with the Earth and therefore a historic mission for the care of the environment. The book explores spiritual, religious and philosophical beliefs concerning women and ecology, and whether women are truly "sacred custodians" of the Earth. This concept has evolved from ideas developed by eco-feminists. Whether and how different belief systems can be put to use to create an awareness to protect, preserve and improve ecological conditions is discussed. The collection of papers demonstrates the complexity of the issues and the variations and vulnerability of the assumed relationship between women and the environment in different cultural and political contexts. The book challenges policy solutions which are devised to be on a global scale and to create unrealistic global aspirations, and the value of targeting women in a particular attempt to achieve environmentally sustainable development. Alaine Low has a D.Phil. in History from the University of Oxford. She has taught and carries out field work in Latin America and is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University. She is the Associate Editor of the five volumes of Oxford History of the British Empire. Soraya Tremayne has a D.Phil. in Social Anthropology from the University of Paris, Sorbonne and currently is the Co-ordinating Director of the Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group, University of Oxford. She was formerly the Acting Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, and has carried out research in Iran and Malaysia. She is a Vice-President of the Royal Anthropological Institute."

Spurred by wars and a drive to urbanize, Africans are crossing borders and overwhelming cities in unprecedented numbers. At the center of this development are young refugee men who migrate to urban areas. This volume, the first full-length study of urban refugees in hiding, tells the story of Burundi refugee youth who escaped from remote camps in central Tanzania to work in one of Africa's fastest-growing cities, Dar es Salaam. This steamy, rundown capital would seem uninviting to many, particularly for second generation survivors of genocide whose lives are ridden with fear. But these young men nonetheless join migrants in "Bongoland" (meaning "Brainland") where, as the nickname suggests, only the shrewdest and most cunning can survive. Mixing lyrics from church hymns and street vernacular, descriptions of city living in cartoons and popular novels and original photographs, this book creates an ethnographic portrait of urban refugee life, where survival strategies spring from street smarts and pastors' warnings of urban sin, and mastery of popular youth culture is highly valued. Pentecostalism and a secret rift within the seemingly impenetrable Hutu ethnic group are part of the rich texture of this contemporary African story. Written in accessible prose, this book offers an intimate picture of how Africa is changing and how refugee youth are helping to drive that change.

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African religions, as well as those religions that derive much of their cosmology, beliefs, and rituals from African religions, are becoming more international in scope and appeal. Yet they continue to be viewed either as indiscriminately adaptable or as static traditions. Neither view suggests much spiritual or psychological value outside their original milieu when compared with the so-called world religions.

The chapters in this volume focus on African and African-derived religions, and challenge many of these positions. They examine how these religions display themselves in the contemporary world, particularly in the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe. These religions' continued dynamism and their relationship with other religious traditions, especially through the process of syncretism, are also explored. This multidisciplinary collection makes a major contribution not only to a better understanding of African and African-derived religions, but it also contributes to the wider and ongoing debate on syncretism that continues to engage those in anthropology, history, and sociology of religion.

This volume gives a vital and unique insight into the effects of mining and other forms of resource extraction upon the indigenous peoples of Australia and Papua New Guinea. Based on extensive fieldwork, it offers a comparative focus on indigenous cosmologies and their articulation or disjunction with the forces of 'development'. A central dimension of contrast is that Australia as a 'settled' continent has had wholesale dispossession of Aboriginal land, while in Papua New Guinea more than 95% of the land surface remains unalienated from customary ownership. Less obviously, there are also important similarities owing to: - a shared form of land title in which the state retains ownership of underground resources; - the manner in which Western law has been used in both countries to define and codify customary land tenure; - an emphasis on the reproductive imagery of minerals, petroleum and extraction processes employed by Aborigines and Papua New Guineans; - and some surprising parallels in the ways that social identities on either side of the Arafura Sea have traditionally been grounded in landscape These studies are essential reading for all scholars involved in assessing the effects of resource extraction in Third World and Fourth World settings. They contribute penetrating studies of the forms of indigenous socio-cultural response to multinational companies and Western forms of governance and law. ADVANCE PRAISE 'The writing is new and interesting. The essays mark out new ideas in seemingly effortless abundance. . . In sum - buy it, read it, I think you'll agree that its one of the really interesting books of the year.' Deborah Rose, Senior Fellow, Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, ANU. Alan Rumsey is a Senior Fellow in the Department of Anthropology and James Weiner a Visiting Fellow in the Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program, both in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.

This is a comparative study of the national significance of the classical revival which marked English and French art during the second half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the main focus of artists' interest in classical Greece, was the body of the Greek athlete. It explains this interest, first, by artists' contact with the art of Pheidias and Polycletus which portrayed it; and second, by the claim, made by physical anthropologists, that the classical body typified the race of the European nations.

Spurred by wars and a drive to urbanize, Africans are crossing borders and overwhelming cities in unprecedented numbers. At the center of this development are young refugee men who migrate to urban areas. This volume, the first full-length study of urban refugees in hiding, tells the story of Burundi refugee youth who escaped from remote camps in central Tanzania to work in one of Africa's fastest-growing cities, Dar es Salaam. This steamy, rundown capital would seem uninviting to many, particularly for second generation survivors of genocide whose lives are ridden with fear. But these young men nonetheless join migrants in "Bongoland" (meaning "Brainland") where, as the nickname suggests, only the shrewdest and most cunning can survive. Mixing lyrics from church hymns and street vernacular, descriptions of city living in cartoons and popular novels and original photographs, this book creates an ethnographic portrait of urban refugee life, where survival strategies spring from street smarts and pastors' warnings of urban sin, and mastery of popular youth culture is highly valued. Pentecostalism and a secret rift within the seemingly impenetrable Hutu ethnic group are part of the rich texture of this contemporary African story. Written in accessible prose, this book offers an intimate picture of how Africa is changing and how refugee youth are helping to drive that change.

Ecstatic Encounters takes its readers to the threshold of Candomble temples in Bahia, Brazil, where - for many generations -- members of this spirit-possession cult and curious outsiders have been meeting to marvel at each other's otherness. Having allowed himself to be baffled by Candomble's mysteries and miracle productions, the author explores the notion of 'the-rest-of-what-is': the excess that is the inevitable by-product of all reality definitions; the non-sensical that is the surplus of all culturally informed sense-making. Ethnographical insights in Afro-Brazilian mysticism are thus made to speak to anthropological forms of world-making, in a study that rejects the totalizing pretensions of all reality definitions, emphatically including those of academia. The theoretical importance of this book lies in its critical assessment of the constructivist paradigm that long dominates cultural and social anthropology. Adopting the Lacanian premise that the meaningful worlds we inhabit are lacking, and depend on fantasy and make-belief to be perceived as coherent, persuasive and incontestable, this study argues that the analysis of cultural forms should always include an exploration of the processes of cultural enchantment that endow man-made worlds of meaning with a sense of the really real. Ecstatic Encounters is written in an accessible, engaging, literary style. Philosophical issues are taken out on the streets, to be pondered in the face of everyday life; just as mundane dimensions of being are allowed to soil the conventional proprieties of academic text production.

Many Yemenite Jews made their way to Israel in the first half of the century. Later, following the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, the rest of the community was flown in from the Yemen--an airlift of 50,000 people code-named Magic Carpet. These two groups, the early and late immigrants, afford a rare opportunity to describe the changes in health patterns during development toward a modern society. Using the fascinating but scanty information available from all manner of sources and comparing it with contemporary accounts of life in the Yemen today, Michael Weingarten relates the changes in the physical and psychological health of the Yemenite Jews to the various components of their new environment.

There was no modern medicine available in the Yemen, and most of the older generation of patients described in this study continue to believe in a threefold etiology of disease--magic, fate, and environment. Weingarten describes how traditional healers coexist with modern doctors and how, even when modern medicine is used, magical cures are expected. Although there are several sections dealing with largely medical data which will interest physicians and geneticists, most of the book is readable by anyone taking an interest in health and culture, including ethnologists, anthropologists, sociologists, health workers and planners, students of medical history, as well as all those interested in the study of Yemen, Judaic history, or Israeli culture.

Doing Fieldwork in Japan taps the expertise of North American and European specialists on the practicalities of conducting longterm research in the social sciences and cultural studies. In lively first-person accounts, they discuss their successes and failures doing fieldwork across rural and urban Japan in a wide range of settings: among religious pilgrims and adolescent consumers; on factory assembly lines and in high schools and wholesale seafood markets; with bureaucrats in charge of defense, foreign aid, and social welfare policy; inside radical political movements; among adherents of "New Religions"; inside a prosecutor's office and the JET Program for foreign English teachers; with journalists in the NHK newsroom; while researching race, ethnicity, and migration; and amidst fans and consumers of contemporary popular culture.

This book takes you to the "classical academy of shamanism," Siberian tribal spirituality that gave birth to the expression "shamanism." For the first time, in this volume Znamenski has rendered in readable English more than one hundred books and articles that describe all aspects of Siberian shamanism: ideology, ritual, mythology, spiritual pantheon, and paraphernalia. It will prove valuable to anthropologists, historians of religion, psychologists and practitioners of shamanism.

Since German unification, there have been many reports about xenophobia in Germany and the government has attempted to stem the new wave of racism. In contrast, the voices of the victims of racism -- refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants -- are seldom heard.
This first anthology of essays by significant writers from minority groups in Germany -- Turks, Afro-Germans, German Jews, Eastern Europeans and others -- sheds new light on the diverse experiences of minority groups living in Germany today. It also introduces to English-speaking audiences innovative literary talents whose contribution to German culture has not yet received the attention it deserves.
Students of contemporary German culture who wish to increase their understanding of the changing nature of German society will find this book invaluable. It will also be of interest to anyone following the rise of xenophobia in Germany, its possible causes, and the changing politics of immigration.

This volume brings together two classic works on the culture of the Russian people which have been long out of print. Gorer's Great Russian Culture and Mead's Soviet Attitudes towards Authority: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet Character were among the first attempts by anthropologists to analyze Russian society. They were influential both for several generations of anthropologists and in shaping American governmental attitudes toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War period. Additionally they offer fascinating insights into the early anthropological use of psychological data to analyze cultural patterns. Read as part of the history of the anthropology of complex contemporary societies, they are as fascinating for their more questionable conclusions as for their accurate characterizations of Russian life.

Historians as well as anthropologists have contributed to this volume of studies on aspects of witchcraft in a variety of cultures and periods from Tudor England to twentieth-century Africa and New Guinea. Contributors include: Mary Douglas, Norman Cohn, Peter Brown, Keith Thomas, Alan Macfarlane, Alison Redmayne, R.G. Willis, Edwin Ardener, Robert Brain, Julian Pitt-Rivers, Esther Goody, Peter Rivi re, Anthony Forge, Godfrey Lienhardt, I.M. Lewis, Brian Spooner, G.I. Jones, Malcolm Ruel and T.O. Beidelman. First published in 1970.

Present trends indicate that in the years to come transnational science, whether basic or applied and involving persons, equipment or funding, will grow considerably. The main purpose of this volume is to try to understand the reasons for this denationalization of science, its historical contexts and its social forms. The Introduction to the volume sets out the socio-political, intellectual, and economic contexts for the nationalization and denationalization of the sciences, processes that have extended over four centuries. The articles examine the specific conditions that have given rise to the growth of transnational science in the 20th century. Among these are: the need for cognitive and technical standardization of scientific knowledge-products, pressure toward cost-sharing of large installations such as CERN, the voluntary and involuntary migration of scientists, and the global market for R&D products that has emerged at the end of the century. The volume raises many new questions for research by historians and sociologists of science and poses problems that are of concern both to scientists and science policy-makers.

..". lively and ethnographically interesting. This makes Powers of Good and Evil an excellent teaching resource." . Ethnos

A key theme in the anthropology of beliefs is the relationship between socio-economic change and changes in the belief system. It has been widely argued that rapid economic change, particularly the introduction of capitalism, leads to an increase in beliefs in, and representations of, evil and the devil. These beliefs, it is argued, constitute forms of resistance to, or rejection of, "modernity." This volume builds on these arguments, suggesting that rather than an indigenous resistance to capitalism, such representations signal a profound moral ambivalence towards the socio-economic process inherent in capitalist economy. Using a range of examples, from Surinamese zombies to American horror films, it demonstrates the extent to which evil imagery is linked to a fear of excess, particularly in situations where people find themselves, or perceive themselves, to be peripheral to the centers of political, economic, and cultural power.

Paul Clough is Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Malta.

Jon P. Mitchell is Lecturer in Cultural and Community Studies at the University of Sussex."

The national dancers of Uzbekistan are almost always female. In a society that has been Muslim for nearly seven hundred years, why and how did unveiled female dancers become a beloved national icon during the Soviet period? Also, why has their popularity continued after the Uzbek republic became independent? The author argues that dancers, as symbolic girls or unmarried females in the Uzbek kinship system, are effective mediators between extended kin groups, and the Uzbek nation-state. The female dancing body became a tabula rasa upon which the state inscribed, and reinscribed, constructions of Uzbek nationalism.

Doi describes the politics of gender in households as well as the dominant kinship idioms in Uzbek society. She traces the rise of national dance as a profession for women during the Soviet period, prior to which women wore veils and kept purdah. The final chapter examines emerging notions of Uzbek, as regional and national groups contest the notion through debates about what constitutes authentic Uzbek dance. Doi concludes with a comparative discussion of the power of marginality, which enabled Uzbeks to maintain a domain where Uzbek culture and history could be honored, within the Russocentric hegemony of the Soviet state.

The wittiest introduction to the life of a social anthropologist ever written. Studying in the Cameroons for his first experience of fieldwork, Barley discovers that the society of the Dowayo people refuses to conform to the rules of his new discipline. Although set amongst a little-known tribe in the Cameroons, this slim volume reaches out to a vast audience who would otherwise never look at a travel book about West Africa, let alone an anthropological field study. A seminal text for any student in search of a laugh. Witty, hilarious and unconventional, but also a remarkable intellectual achievement; Barley manages to turn the western science of anthropology on its head, so that for once the laugh is on the professional practitioners not the observed.

The author examines practitioners of medicine, as well as patients, as embodied and sexed subjects in this book. She brings together cultural and feminist theories on the body, 19th-century medical history and the history of gender and Victorian feminism. The book seeks to investigate the ways in which many different practitioners - male and female doctors, nurses, midwives, accoucheurs - were implicated in a discourse and a material practice about the pure and the polluted.