Museums are public institutions with various sets of obligations to, and legacies of, individuals and communities. This volume considers theoretically and geographically varied implications of these interactions. One thread considers particular sets of objects and the historical and social pathways they have moved along: Zuni cultural objects that remain uniquely and intrinsically sacred to their originating community, despite repeated movements and decontextualizations; West African collections in the Manchester Museum that embody historical connections between their places of origin and the northwest of England; and the movement of archaeological and ethnographic artifacts associated with Olov R. T. Janse against a variety of political backdrops, including colonialism, nationalism, and the Cold War. Other contributions consider the museum experience: challenges presented to the heritage sector by digital materials; how visitors find meaning in exhibitions; problems in the public articulation of history in Dubai, a city seen as lacking a material past; and the ongoing development of contemporary art biennials. A forum centered on museums and mental health begins with a Taiwanese study of the museum experiences of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, followed by responses from an international range of curatorial and academic voices. The volume is rounded out by reports and reviews of recent and current exhibits and scholarship.

This work rejects the view that the growth of Irish nationalism, Afrikaner nationalism and Zionism was due primarily to issues of race, religion or language. Instead, drawing on an analytical framework and close historical analysis, it shows how their ultimate success was the result of political, economic and organizational factors conditioned by sustained conflict with the existing state and other ethnic groups.

The relationship between religious majorities and minorities in the Middle East is often construed as one of domination versus powerlessness. While this may indeed be the case, to claim that this is only, or always, so is to give a simplified picture of a complex reality. Such a description lays emphasis on the challenges faced by the minorities while overlooking their astonishing ability to mobilize internal and external resources to meet these challenges. Through the study of strategies of domination, resilience, and accommodation among both Muslim and non-Muslim minorities, this volume throws into relief the inherently dynamic character of a relationship which is increasingly influenced by global events and global connections.

Shamanism has always been of great interest to anthropologists. More recently it has been "discovered" by westerners, especially New Age followers. This book breaks new ground byexamining pristine shamanism in Greenland, among people contacted late by Western missionaries and settlers. On the basis of material only available in Danish, and presented herein English for the first time, the author questions Mircea Eliade's well-known definition of the shaman as the master of ecstasy and suggests that his role has to be seen as that of a master of spirits. The ambivalent nature of the shaman and the spirit world in the tough Arctic environment is then contrasted with the more benign attitude to shamanism in the New Age movement. After presenting descriptions of their organizations and accounts by participants, the author critically analyses the role of neo-shamanic courses and concludes that it is doubtful to consider what isoffered as shamanism.

This book discusses fundamental discourses relating to health in Africa arising out of the consequences of endemic diseases in Africa. It identifies, explains and illustrates the contexts, challenges and efforts to combat these diseases. The book provides a unique comparative analysis of African contexts of health, thereby not ignoring the global contexts of health within which Africa exists. It follows a macro-analytic stance about health in Africa framed around significant/pressing issues. "Discourse of disease" is part of a profound sociological discourse of health in Africa, which provides a framework for students, academics and healthcare practitioners to understand the states of health and healthcare in Africa.

The melting pot is a myth, according to Fernandez, who shows that the United States is and always has been a "banquet of cultures." As he argues, the best way to deal with the more than 20 million new immigrants since 1965 is to accept, recognize, and eagerly explore the differences among the American people.

Fernandez seeks to forge a positive national consensus based on two building blocks. First, the nation's many ethnic groups can be a powerful source of unprecedented economic, artistic, and scientific creativity. Secondly, the nation's many ethnic groups offer a way to erase the black/white dichotomy which, masks the shared injustices of millions of European, Asian, African, Native, and Latino Americans. This is a provocative analysis of how we arrived at our current ethnic and racial dilemmas and what can be done to move beyond them. Scholars and students of American immigration and social policy as well as concerned citizens will find the book equally rewarding.

In the Foreword to Culture and Agriculture, distinguished anthropologist John W. Bennett writes Dr. Schusky's book is welcome. It marks a point of maturity for anthropology's interest in agriculture, a distillation of decades of research and thought on the most important survival task facing humankind, the production of food. Although applauded by a specialist in the field, Schusky's book is specifically written for the general reader who is interested in agriculture. It offers a historical overview of the two major periods of agriculture--the Neolithic Revolution, which occurred when humans initally domesticated plants and animals, and the Neoclaric Revolution, which began the introduction of fossil fuel into agriculture in the twentieth century. Culture and Agriculture dramatizes the extensive changes that are occurring in modern agriculture due to the intensified use of fossil energy. The book details how the overdependence on fossil energy, with its looming exhaustion, is a major cause of pessimism about food production. The book also addresses the possible solutions to this scenario--conservation steps, an increase in the mix of solar energy, and an emphasis on human labor--which hold out hope for the future. Part I introduces the discovery or domestication of plants and animals (the Neolithic), along with the later use of irrigation, in order to show that most agricultural development, until the twentieth century, occurred between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. Part II presents a brief survey of agricultural history which demonstrates that hunger had more to do with inequity in the social system than in the amounts of food produced. Agricultural history also emphasizes how little change occurred in agriculture from 5,000 years ago until the twentieth century, when the use of fossil energy revolutionized food production. In assessing the future of agricultural development, Schusky underscores the importance of economic and political policies that emphasize equity in distribution of wealth and government services. This book should appeal to the general reader interested in agriculture, rural sociology, or anthropology.

The editors and their contributors explore the world from a pluralistic perspective. There are several models proposed and used by authors that could serve as a framework for multicultural and diversity programs in both education and the workplace. The implementation of programs which target the workplace and specific strategies for success are identified. The international implications of globalization and the need for international as well as "at home" experiences are addressed by several authors. Regional research-based programs and strategies, in particular academic disciplines to promote pluralism, are explored from the university perspective. These models, strategies, and research findings should prove to be most useful for individuals seeking to implement programs to promote pluralism.

"Penan Histories" is an ethnographic examination of the transition from nomadism to agriculture and employment in the timber industry, to protest against that industry, and back once more to working as loggers; a story also of cultural change, collective action and individual corruption.

Explores the worldwide popularity of the love-lock as a ritual token of love and commitment by considering its history, symbolism, and heritage. "[T]his is an eminently enjoyable and thorough investigation of a popular phenomenon through the lens of heritage and folk tradition."-Sara De Nardi, Western Sydney University A padlock is a mundane object, designed to fulfil a specific - and secular - purpose. A contemporary custom has given padlocks new significance. This custom is 'love-locking', where padlocks are engraved with names and attached to bridges in declaration of romantic commitment. This custom became popular in the 2000s, and its dissemination was rapid, geographically unbound, and highly divisive, with love-locks emerging in locations as diverse as Paris and Taiwan; New York and Seoul; Melbourne and Moscow. From the introduction: I was distractedly perusing the photo frame aisle, my eyes skimming the generically sentimental stock pictures of happy families smiling at the camera, pretty landscapes, cute pets and couples walking hand-in-hand, when I came across one that jumped out at me.... I recognised the image instantly as a photograph of love-locks: the padlocks that had been appearing en masse on bridges and other public structures on a global scale since the early 2000s. And, having been researching the custom known as lovelocking for about five years at that point, it was with a peculiar sense of pride that I realised love-locks had accomplished the status of a stock image.

From its beginning as an independent state, Israel has been beset by the divisions and tensions that characterize most ethnically mixed societies. Kraus and Hodge investigate the process of stratification in Israel and document what happened to Arabs as well as to Jewish immigrants and their children in the Promised Land by tracing not just the socioeconomic locations, but also the proximate social determinants of the locations of significant ethnic, cultural, gender, and religious groups. The first extensively detailed analysis to account for status attainment in Israel, this work contributes to a general understanding of the status-attainment process in ethnically heterogeneous societies by focusing on the experience of immigrants as they carved out careers in their homeland. By generalizing the results for Israel, the authors contend, the study illustrates processes that occurred during periods of sustained immigration in the United States and other ethnically and religiously heterogeneous populations for which relevant data can no longer be collected. Many of the research findings about Israeli society have significant implications for social policy in Israel and elsewhere. The investigation begins with a brief review of relevant recurring themes in the sociological literature with particular reference to the functional theory of stratification to provide a theoretical background for the study--the authors' novel analyses have not been reported elsewhere. Chapter 2 provides the social context by presenting a picture of Israeli society and its development. The extension of the scope of functional theory is worked out in chapter 3 which develops a basic model of the status-attainment process in Israeli society. Chapters 4 through 6 propose two alternative hypotheses for ethnic stratification in Israel and test them by examining the attainment process in the two main Jewish ethnic groups. Chapter 7 discusses the two hypotheses by distinguishing between Arabs and Jewish ethnic groups. In chapter 8 the attainment processes of ethnic and gender groups are examined. Kraus and Hodge conclude with an overview of findings and places the Israeli case in comparative perspective. Promises in the Promised Land will be of interest to students of Israeli society and to scholars concerned with issues of racial and ethnic stratification, immigration, and status-attainment processes. Informal Israel watchers of all backgrounds and persuasions as well as policy-makers, especially those working in multiethnic societies where national policy can impact profoundly on sociocultural integration, will find the insights offered here of particular value.

During the colonial period, Pacific Islanders’ acceptance of clothing was seen by Europeans as a civilizing sign. In reality, Islanders’ use of foreign cloth and clothing generally involved translating indigenous preoccupations into new forms of dress. Today, both imported and indigenous cloth feature prominently in Pacific Island exchange, religious practice, clothing, domestic space, public political activity, festivals, and the art and tourist markets. This book sets out to examine the multiple histories of cloth and clothing in the Pacific and to investigate its role in social innovation and resistance from the period of contact to the present day.
The past three decades have witnessed the emergence of Pacific fashion stylists as well as cloth producers who, like anthropologists, are acutely aware of how globalization impacts on identity. Typically, their work integrates both Pacific and introduced forms. This book compares these synthetic forms with others that developed in the region during the colonial period, when foreign cloth was typically adapted and incorporated within indigenous textile systems, and shows how cloth is central to the transmission of identity as well as a vehicle for associative thinking.
From an analysis of the place of cloth in traditional Tahitian religion, to fashion activism within the diaspora population in New Zealand, Clothing the Pacific provides fascinating insights into the shifting relationship between cloth and social imagination. By tracing the diverse responses to the imposition of dress upon Pacific Islanders, this book profoundly challenges Western assumptions about the place of cloth in culture.

While books on archaeological and anthropological ethics have proliferated in recent years, few attempt to move beyond a conventional discourse on ethics to consider how a discussion of the social and political implications of archaeological practice might be conceptualized differently. The conceptual ideas about ethics posited in this volume make it of interest to readers outside of the discipline; in fact, to anyone interested in contemporary debates around the possibilities and limitations of a discourse on ethics. The authors in this volume set out to do three things. The first is to track the historical development of a discussion around ethics, in tandem with the development and "disciplining" of archaeology. The second is to examine the meanings, consequences and efficacies of a discourse on ethics in contemporary worlds of practice in archaeology. The third is to push beyond the language of ethics to consider other ways of framing a set of concerns around rights, accountabilities and meanings in relation to practitioners, descendent and affected communities, sites, material cultures, the ancestors and so on.

Routledge Library Editions: Slavery is a collection of previously out-of-print titles that examine various aspects of international slavery. Books analyse the Atlantic slave trade, and its effects on Africa; modern slavery around the world; slave rebellions and resistance; the Abolitionist movements; the suppression of the slave trade; slavery in the ancient world; and more besides. These writings form part of the vital research into slavery through the ages, and together form a succinct overview.

Most Jews who now live in Germany have lived elsewhere. They are neither the remnant of those who survived the Holocaust nor those who are in transit to Israel or the United States. They are a disparate but vibrant and growing community of over 80,000 people. Forty thousand of them are members of official Jewish communities in today's Germany. Because of the Nazi past, this proportionately small number of individuals plays an out-of-scale role in German politics and world consciousness. As a study in the formation of minority communities within European national matrices, Cohn's work has interest for sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists as well. It is the only published work on the Jewish community in Germany today.

This book systematically assesses the value systems of active Muslims around the globe. Based on a multivariate analysis of recent World Values Survey data, it sheds new light on Muslim opinions and values in countries such as Indonesia, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey. Due to a lack of democratic traditions, sluggish economic growth, escalating religiously motivated violence, and dissatisfaction with ruling elites in many Muslim countries, the authors identify a crisis and return to conservative values in the Muslim world, including anti-Semitism, religious and sexual intolerance, and views on democracy and secularism, business and economic matters. Based on these observations, they offer recommendations for policymakers and civil societies in Muslim countries on how to move towards tolerance, greater democratization and more rapid economic growth.

This book covers the ethnobiology and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of the Solega people of southern India. Solega TEK is shown to be a complex, inter-related network of detailed observations of natural phenomena, well-reasoned and often highly accurate theorizing, as well as a belief system, derived from cultural norms, regarding the relationships between humans and other species on the one hand, and between non-human species on the other. As language-based studies are strongly biased toward investigations of ethno-taxonomy and nomenclature, the importance of studying TEK in its proper context is discussed as making context and encyclopedic knowledge the objects of study are essential for a proper understanding of TEK.

'One of the key feminist texts' Guardian The Descent of Woman is a pioneering work, the first to argue for the equal role of women in human evolution. On its first publication in 1972 it sparked an international debate and became a rallying-point for feminism, changing the terminology of anthropologists forever. Starting with her demolition of the Biblical myth that woman was an afterthought to the creation of man, Elaine Morgan rewrites human history and evolution.

This is a beautifully written study, mixing film studies with cultural studies, of how the Hollywood film industry has treated the 'Other' throughout its history. In "Otherness in Hollywood Cinema", Michael Richardson argues that the Hollywood system has been the only national cinema with the resources and inclination to explore images of others through stories set in exotic and faraway places. He traces many of the ways in which Hollywood has constructed otherness, and discusses the extent to which those images have persisted and conditioned today's understanding. Hollywood was from the beginning teeming with people who had experienced cultural displacement. Coaxing the finest talents from around the world and needing to produce films with an almost universal appeal, Hollywood confounded American insularity while simultaneously presenting a vision of 'America' to the world. The book examines a range of genres from the perspective of otherness, including the Western, film noir, and zombie movies. Films discussed include "Birth of a Nation", "The New World", "The Searchers", "King Kong", "Apocalypse Now", "Blade Runner", "Jaws", and "Dead Man". Erudite and highly informed, this is a sweeping survey of how the American film industry has portrayed the foreign and the exotic.