New media, especially in relation to video gaming, now occupies a dominant position within popular culture. The book offers new and critical perspectives on computer game culture. It illustrates key debates in game studies and is a guide to complexity and diversity of the phenomenon.It maintains its originality in bringing together international experts from among social scientists, game designers, artists and literature scholars. Internationally renowned media and literature scholars, social scientists, game designers and artists explore the cultural potential of computer games in this rich anthology, which introduces the latest approaches in the central fields of game studies and provides an extensive survey of contemporary game culture.

..".there's a great deal social researchers doing visual work can learn from Pink's book...It's a valuable resource for researchers, activists, and social service workers looking for innovative visual methodologies for collaborative research and social intervention. It makes an excellent contribution to the ongoing academic debate over the value of applied and visual social research, as well." . Contexts, Magazine of the American Sociological Association

Visual anthropology has proved to offer fruitful methods of research and representation to applied projects of social intervention. Through a series of case studies based on applied visual anthropological work in a range of contexts (health and medicine, tourism and heritage, social development, conflict and disaster relief, community filmmaking and empowerment, and industry) this volume examines both the range contexts in which applied visual anthropology is engaged, and the methodological and theoretical issues it raises.

Sarah Pink is a social anthropologist whose research includes a focus on visual methodologies and the relationship between applied and academic anthropology. Her books include Doing Visual Ethnography (2001), Home Truths (2004), Working Images (2004) and Applications of Anthropology (2005). She is reader in Social Anthropology in the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University.

The subject of the present study concerns the relationships between men and women and the composition of household groups among the lower Afro-American strata of the society of Curacao. The material on which it is based was collected in Curacao in the course of a 15-month period of fieldwork in 1965 and 1966.

Antony Alcock recounts four stages in the history of regional cultural minority protection: protection of religious minorities and the rise of cultural nationalism before 1914; attempts to assimilate minorities between the wars together with the League of Nations' system of protection; neglect of the complex issues in minority protection after 1945, leading in many cases to violence; and finally the renaissance of cultural minorities in the West, while in the East the new states after the fall of communism have had difficulties in coming to terms with the minorities.

That there are multiple ways of knowing the world has become a truism. What meaning is left in the sheer familiarity of the phrase? The essays here consider how humans come to know themselves and their worlds. Should anthropologists should seek complexity or simplicity in their analyses of other societies? By going beyond the notion that a way of knowing is a perspective on the world, this book explores paths to understanding, as people travel along them, craft their knowledge and shape experience. The topics examined here range from illness to ignorance, teaching undergraduates in Scotland to learning a Brazilian martial arts dance, Hegels concept of the dialectic to the poetry of a Swahili philosopher. A central concern is how anthropologists can know and write about the silent, the concealed and the embodied.

Since the publication of Philippe Aries's book, Centuries of Childhood, in the early 1960s, there has been great interest among historians in the history of the family and the household. A central aspect of the debate relates the story of the family to implicit notions of modernization, with the rise of the nuclear family in the West as part of its economic and political success. During the past decade, however, that synthesis has begun to break down. Historians have begun to examine kinship - the way individual families are connected to each other through marriage and descent - finding that during the most dynamic period in European industrial development, class formation, and state reorganization, Europe became a "kinship hot" society. The essays in this volume explore two major transitions in kinship patterns - at the end of the Middle Ages and at the end of the eighteenth century - in an effort to reset the agenda in family history.

The advances in neuroimaging technologies have led to substantial progress in understanding the neural mechanisms of cognitive functions. Thinking and reasoning have only recently been addressed by using neuroimaging techniques. The present book comprehensively explores current approaches and contributions to understanding the neural mechanisms of thinking in a concise and readable manner. It provides an insight into the state of the art and the potentials, but also the limitations of current neuroimaging methods for studying cognitive functions. The book will be a valuable companion for everyone interested in one of the most fascinating topics of cognitive neuroscience.

"Christian theology has given to the human sciences at large hermeneutics as an interpretive science of meaning. This remarkable collection of essays by anthropologists turns a keen hermeneutic sensibility on Christian discourse and practice itself, and in the process not only makes an important contribution to the ethnography of Christianity, but also offers a profound meditation on the theory of meaning." Thomas Csordas, University of California - San Diego "The Limits of Meaning is by far the best instance I've seen of the fresh and powerful insights anthropologists are bringing to the study of Christianity. The fascinating ethnographic case studies, along with a fine Introduction by the editors and commentary by Joel Robbins, highlight the crucial importance of meaning for Christianity by focusing on points where it is most at risk or fails utterly. Extremely readable while advancing a sophisticated theoretical argument that links the deeper dynamics of Christianity with its local manifestations, this book challenges conventional understandings and opens new avenues of research. It deserves to be on the bookshelves of all serious students of contemporary world Christianity." John Barker, University of British Columbia Too often, anthropological accounts of ritual leave readers with the impression that everything goes smoothly, that rituals are "meaningful events." But what happens when rituals fail, or when they seem "meaningless"? Drawing on research in the anthropology of Christianity from around the globe, the authors in this volume suggest that in order to analyze meaning productively, we need to consider its limits. This collection is a welcome new addition to the anthropology of religion, offering fresh debates on a classic topic and drawing attention to meaning in a way that other volumes have for key terms like "culture" and "fieldwork." Matthew Engelke is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics. He has conducted research in Zimbabwe and published numerous articles in leading journals, focusing on Christian ritual, conversion, spirit possession, and textual authority. He is coeditor with Marshall Sahlins of Prickly Paradigm Press. Matt Tomlinson is an assistant lecturer in Anthropology at Monash University. He has conducted research in Fiji on Christianity's role in village and national politics, especially in relation to traditional chiefly systems and coups d'etat. He has published in American Anthropologist, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and Oceania.

After Cuba's 1959 revolution, the Castro government sought to instill a new social order. Hoping to achieve a new and egalitarian society, the state invested in policies designed to promote the well-being of women and children. Yet once the Soviet Union fell and Cuba's economic troubles worsened, these programs began to collapse, with serious results for Cuban families. Conceiving Cuba offers an intimate look at how, with the island's political and economic future in question, reproduction has become the subject of heated public debates and agonizing private decisions. Drawing from several years of first-hand observations and interviews, anthropologist Elise Andaya takes us inside Cuba's households and medical systems. Along the way, she introduces us to the women who wrestle with the difficult question of whether they can afford a child, as well as the doctors who, with only meagre resources at their disposal, struggle to balance the needs of their patients with the mandates of the state. Andaya's ground breaking research considers not only how socialist policies have profoundly affected the ways Cuban families imagine the future, but also how the current crisis in reproduction has deeply influenced ordinary Cubans' views on socialism and the future of the revolution. Casting a sympathetic eye upon a troubled state, Conceiving Cuba gives new life to the notion that the personal is always political.

Reanimating Industrial Spaces explores the relationships between people and the places of former industry through approaches that incorporate and critique memory-work. The chapters in this volume consider four broad questions: What is the relationship between industrial heritage and memory? How is memory involved in the process of place-making in regards to industrial spaces? What are the strengths and pitfalls of conducting memory-work? What can be learned from cross-disciplinary perspectives and methods? The contributors have created a set of diverse case studies (including iron-smelting in Uganda, Puerto Rican sugar mills and concrete factories in Albania) which examine differing socio-economic contexts and approaches to industrial spaces both in the past and in contemporary society. A range of memory-work is also illustrated: from ethnography, oral history, digital technologies, excavation, and archival and documentary research.

The 1990s have seen a growing interest in the role of local ecological knowledge in the context of sustainable development, and particularly in providing a set of responses to which populations may resort in times of political, economic and environmental instability. The period 1996-2003 in island southeast Asia represents a critical test case for understanding how this might work. The key issues to be explored in this book will be the creation, erosion and transmission of ecological knowledge, and hybridization between traditional and scientifically-based knowledge, amongst populations facing environmental stress (e.g. 1997 El Nino), political conflict and economic hazards. The book will also evaluate positive examples of how traditional knowledge has enabled local populations to cope with these kinds of insecurity.

The concept of sustainability holds that the social, economic, and environmental factors within human communities must be viewed interactively and systematically. Sustainable development cannot be understood apart from a community, its ethos, and ways of life. Although broadly conceived, the pursuit of sustainable development is a local practice because every community has different needs and quality of life concerns. Within this framework, contributors representing the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, geography, economics, law, public policy, architecture, and urban studies explore sustainability in communities in the Pacific, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and North America. Contributors: Janet E. Benson, Karla Caser, Snjezana Colic, Angela Ferreira, Johanna Gibson, Krista Harper, Paulo Lana, Barbara Yablon Maida, Carl A. Maida, Kenneth A. Meter, Dario Novellino, Deborah Pellow, Claude Raynaut, Thomas F. Thornton, Richard Westra, Magda Zanoni

Mental retardation in the United States is currently defined as " ... signif icantly subaverage general intellectual functioning existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior, and manifested during the development period" (Grossman, 1977). Of the estimated six million plus mentally retarded individuals in this country fully 75 to 85% are considered to be "func tionally" retarded (Edgerton, 1984). That is, they are mildly retarded persons with no evident organic etiology or demonstrable brain pathology. Despite the relatively recent addition of adaptive behavior as a factor in the definition of retardation, 1.0. still remains as the essential diagnostic criterion (Edgerton, 1984: 26). An 1.0. below 70 indicates subaverage functioning. However, even such an "objective" measure as 1.0. is prob lematic since a variety of data indicate quite clearly that cultural and social factors are at play in decisions about who is to be considered "retarded" (Edgerton, 1968; Kamin, 1974; Langness, 1982). Thus, it has been known for quite some time that there is a close relationship between socio-economic status and the prevalence of mild mental retardation: higher socio-economic groups have fewer mildly retarded persons than lower groups (Hurley, 1969). Similarly, it is clear that ethnic minorities in the United States - Blacks, Mexican-Americans, American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Hawaiians, and others - are disproportionately represented in the retarded population (Mercer, 1968; Ramey et ai., 1978)."

Focusing on racial, ethnic, and religious groups, the author proposes a historical overview of group life and its impact on American society. His objectives and arguments are multiple. Covering a period from precolonial days to the present, he discusses the dynamics of group identity as well as the dynamics of intragroup and intergroup relations. The underlying theme is: All groups have at one time endured discrimination in American society. But, the trend in the United States historically has been toward guaranteeing and protecting individual rights. The author concludes that over the past few decades, however, the trend has shifted. Since the civil rights movement, the course has been toward government promotion of group rights over individual rights. He argues that this promotion of group rights has been chipping away at traditional individual rights. The impact of these preferences-specifically affirmative action programs-has been to create competition and antagonism among groups. Concerned with how to preserve national unity in the wake of this increasing animosity, Perlmutter concludes with ominous observations for America's future if the current trend of the government promoting group rights continues.

The Gran Chaco region of South America constitutes a cultural area that is little known and largely misunderstood by the majority of people living outside its borders. From the earliest period of European contact, the societies under consideration here defended their territory and resisted first colonial and later national policies of domination and assimilation. The unique forms such resistance took constitute the subject of this book. Contrary to common assumptions, the hunter-gatherer values forged out of a unique environment have shown remarkable resilience throughout the centuries. It is the variety and relentless nature of cultural resistance that is documented in the various chapters presented here.

The points of view expressed are those of scholars trained in a variety of academic settings (England, Sweden, U.S., Argentina) each with its unique perspective and frame of reference. Four of the seven writers are Argentine, three of whom have received training and experience in the U.S. Yet, it is the individual voices of indigenous people themselves that tell the story of contemporary life as experienced in the various societies concerned. They tell about the conditions that shape their lives and engender resistance to full assimilation into the white man's world. These are the voices of the future.

Whereas most anthropological research is grounded in social, cultural and biological analysis of the human condition, this volume opens up a different approach: its concerns are the psychic depths of human cultural life-worlds as explored through psycho-analytic practice and/or the psychoanalytically framed ethnographic project. In fact, some contributors here argue that the anthropological interpretation of human existence is not sustainable without psychoanalysis; others take a less extreme radical stance but still maintain that the unconscious matrix of the human psyche and of the intersubjective (social) reality of any given cultural life-world is a vital domain of anthropological and sociological inquiry and understanding. Jadran Mimica lectures in Anthropology at the University of Sydney.

The author addresses the neglected issue of the relations between the functioning of powerful state industrial firms and the town under socialism. As they strived for labor force, the manufacturing and mining employers in Central and Eastern Europe became prominent gatekeepers controlling access to scarce goods and services, which reflected a specific labor market segmentation. The distribution of social benefits and burdens they generated enhanced life chances of certain groups by and large at the cost of the underprivileged--women and the elderly in particular. This socialist industry contributed to social injustice and deprivation as well as the reproduction of entrapping spatial settings such as factory colonies and areas reserved for potential expansion.

The study reveals a great diversity of mechanisms of industrial control over and exploitation of socialist towns in Poland. Spatial organization of local activities and facilities exhibited the power of industrial gatekeepers, and in several cases became a mediating element facilitating achievement of the firM's objectives. The residents' sense of place was permeated by the company through its multiple involvement outside the factory gates, which could justify its dominant position and conceal sources of social inequalities and conflicts. The legacy of socialist factory paternalism bears heavily upon post-socialist society, which is evident in anti-egalitarian attitudes and social closure attempts demonstrated by the beneficiaries of the gatekeepers' allocation.

Hardbound. The chapters in this volume illustrate the ways in which U.S. sociologists of education continue to plumb the depths of fundamental questions about how schools are organized and consequences of school organization for students and teachers. These studies present new ideas and/or findings in an engaging way, and they attempt to enlarge the audience for sociological research on education. Perhaps even more importantly, however, they generate a host of questions that warrant sustained inquiry by our community. If these authors lead us to think in new ways or to ask new questions, their efforts will have been well-rewarded.

Language Origin: A Multidisciplinary Approach presents a synthesis of viewpoints and data on linguistic, psychological, anatomical and behavioral studies on living species of Primates and provides a comparative framework for the evaluation of paleoanthropological studies. This double endeavor makes it possible to direct new research on the nature and evolution of human language and cognition. The book is directed to students of linguistics, biology, anthropoloy, anatomy, physiology, neurology, psychology, archeology, paleontology, and other related fields. A better understanding of speech pathology may stem from a better understanding of the relationship of human communication to the evolution of our species. The book is conceived as a timely contribution to such knowledge since it allows, for the first time, a systematic assessment of the origins of human language from a comprehensive array of scientific viewpoints.

Western societies draw crucially on concepts of the 'individual' in constructing their images of the ethnic group and nation and define these in terms of difference. This study explores the implications of these constructs for Western understanding of social order and ethnic conflicts. Comparing them with the forms of cultural identity characteristic of Melanesia as they have developed since pre-colonial times, the author arrives at a surprising conclusion: he argues that these kinds of identities are more properly and adequately viewed as forms of disguised or denied resemblance, and that it is these covert commonalities that give rise to, and prolong, social divisions and conflicts between groups.

This book examines the structural dynamics of HIV among populations at heightened vulnerability to infection as the result of stigma, discrimination and marginalization. It first examines how the socio-structural context shapes HIV risk and how affected populations and national governments and programs have responded to these structural constraints. Chapters focus on structural determinants of HIV risk among transgender women in Guatemala, migrant workers in Mexico, Nigeria and Vietnam, and people who inject drugs in Tanzania. Next, the book examines resilience and community empowerment and mobilization among key populations such as female sex workers in the Dominican Republic and India, and young women and girls in Botswana, Malawi and Mozambique. A third set of chapters explores how national responses to HIV have addressed the role of structural factors in diverse political, geographic and epidemic settings including: Brazil, South Africa, Ukraine and the USA. Ultimately, effective and sustainable responses to HIV among marginalized groups must be grounded in an in-depth understanding of the factors that create vulnerability and risk and impede access to services. Throughout, this book brings together a rigorous social science research perspective with a strong rights-based approach to inform improvements in HIV programs and policies. It offers new insights into how to better address HIV and the health and human rights of historically excluded communities and groups.