This introduction to social and cultural anthropology has become a modern classic, revealing the rich global variation in social life and culture across the world. Presenting a clear overview of anthropology, it focuses on central topics such as kinship, ethnicity, ritual and political systems, offering a wealth of examples that demonstrate the enormous scope of anthropology and the importance of a comparative perspective. Using reviews of key works to illustrate his argument, for over 25 years Thomas Hylland Eriksen's lucid and accessible textbook has been a much respected and widely used undergraduate-level introduction to social anthropology. This fully updated fifth edition features brand new chapters on climate and medical anthropology, along with rewritten sections on ecology, nature and the Anthropocene. It also incorporates a more systematic engagement with gender and digitalisation throughout the text.

The management of interpersonal social conflict within the American judicial system is changing. Of particular interest is the trend toward informal, decentralized alternatives to the courts for the resolution of many civil disputes. A manifestation of this trend, Neighborhood Dispute Resolution or NDR offers a means of resolving conflicts in a voluntary, peaceable manner without the intervention of attorneys. Proponents of NDR say that it is economical, efficient and fair. NDR, however, may not be the panacea it appears to be on the surface, argues the author. A Marxist interpretation of recent developments in state-sponsored alternatives to courts for the resolution of disputes, this book devises a framework for exploring the relationship between disruptions in reproducing the social order of American capitalism and transformations in the capitalist state that make these dispute mechanisms possible.

The essays in this volume seek to examine the uses to which concepts of genius have been put in different cultures and times. Collectively, they are designed to make two new statements. First, seen in historical and comparative perspective, genius is not a natural fact and universal human constant that has been only recently identified by modern science, but instead a categorical mode of assessing human ability and merit. Second, as a concept with specific definitions and resonances, genius has performed specific cultural work within each of the societies in which it had a historical presence.

What rallies or inspires people to champion the different causes surrounding filtering or free expression? How do people vary in their views on what the First Amendment guarantees? This book encourages students to think critically about the pros and cons of censorship. The profiles of individuals who are active in free speech debates show that while there aren't always black and white answers, there are numerous ways to take a firm stand on the issues.

Readers will be introduced to a wide variety of people, from feminists arguing both sides of the debate over pornography, to those who believe no one can clearly define what is harmful and what is not. The book also presents people motivated by religious convictions to censor material they consider negative or detrimental. Fifty individual stories about activists on frontlines, fighting for what they believe, bring the controversies surrounding filtering and freedom of expression into sharp focus, offering a rich platform for consideration and debate.

This study is a portrayal of the political, economic, and cultural history and present of community gardens in a New York City neighborhood, the Lower East Side of Manhattan. An ethnographic study of a particular instance of urban history, it provides a basis for an understanding of urban community gardens in the United States. Beginning with a historical overview of urban community gardening in the United States and other countries, the author concentrates on the last two decades of the 20th century in this portrayal of a social movement that seeks to impact urban environments both in social and economic terms and in terms of ecological dynamics. The last decade in particular has been critical with regard to the development of a broad network of community-based coalitions acting on behalf of urban community gardens.

The author considers internal dynamics and organization of individual gardens within the specific social, political, and economic context of the Lower East Side and analyzes the political struggle on behalf of community gardens in that neighborhood and the entire city. The author also addresses the diverse ways in which community gardens on the Lower East Side have become critical components in the daily life of urban gardeners, predominantly poor and low-income people.

As the Arab Spring continues to work through changes, the Occupy Movement is agitating for change and many are looking for alternatives in the face of global financial and political challenges, community organising offers a realistic way forward for many communities: a tried and tested way of improving people's lives. This book is the first to explore the diverse history of community organising, telling stories of how it developed, its successes and failures, and the lessons that can be applied today. It analyses contemporary examples of practice from the USA, UK, India, South Africa, Cambodia and Australia against both wider theoretical frameworks and their ability to contribute to sustainable social change. It will be useful for a wide range of practitioners, students and researchers engaged in the struggle to develop new ways of doing community.

This collection brings together new research on contemporary media, politics and power. It explores ways and means through which media can and do empower or dis-empower citizens at the margins that is, how they act as vehicles of, or obstacles to, civic agency and social change.

Social scientists are motivated to understand how various facets of society influence all sorts of behavior. Individual's perceptions about their significance in a given community can have meaningful effects on the way in which we look to communities to develop and foster democratic values and promote civic engagement. The focus of this book is on how community comes to influence political behavior; it takes an interdisciplinary approach blending the fields of community psychology, sociology, and political science. We know from previous research that the context in which an individual interacts influences his/her political behaviors and attitudes. With this in mind, the present research addresses two major questions, 1) how does sense of community influence political behavior and attitudes? and 2) what impact--if any--does involvement in multiple contexts have on political behavior and attitudes?

Although much has been written about how organizations renew themselves, little attention has been given to why they go into decline. Mary Guy's groundbreaking new study looks at both sides of the issue, first analyzing the symptoms of and reasons for organizational decline, and then exploring the requirements for renewal. Drawing upon her own original research and a detailed examination of case studies in both the public and private sector, Guy takes as her conceptual framework the theories that have informed organizational development research. She traces the decline-followed-by-renewal process, proposing an integrated model of organizational decline that includes certain identifiable stages of health and resilience common to all organizations in turmoil.

Guy's analytical framework can be effectively used to pinpoint the position of any organization--large or small, public or private, old or new. She explains how people behave in organizations under stress and outlines the enduring characteristics of organizations in the decline and renewal stages. Numerous examples illustrate the actual process of decline and renewal in real-world settings--small businesses, large corporations, hospitals, schools, voluntary agencies, and government agencies, including the Johnson White House during the Vietnam War. An entire chapter is devoted to tracing the path of decline within NASA's manned space flight program and looking toward its future. Students of organizational development and management theory will find here important new insights into the dynamics of organizational decline and the period of renewed vigor that often follows.

This book focuses upon the contributions that research can make towards strengthening community development and working for social justice agendas in Britain. Drawing upon original research, as part of the Third Sector Research Capacity Building Cluster, the volume explores different ways in which research can contribute to capacity building and 'research mindedness' in the Third Sector. This includes the contributions that community-university research partnerships can make, enabling organisations and social movements to undertake research for themselves. Examples include research with refugee and asylum seeker organisations and groups, research with faith-based organisations and research exploring the relevance of community arts, media and sports. Whilst the book covers a number of related themes, they share an overall focus upon community development to promote active citizenship and social justice.

Many of the available resources for teaching courses on feminist spirituality either come from the 1980s to 1990s or are written by the same authors as those earlier texts, thus showing us a progression of spiritual beliefs and practices of 'second-wave' feminists. This is useful, but when addressing this topic with university students it is also important to show the ways in which spirituality has been rethought by 'third-wave' feminists. This rethinking can be found in various small circulation 'zines, but these are not always accessible to a wide audience. This anthology addresses the experiences of third-wave feminists in the construction and reformulation of spirituality. It examines the experiences of young feminists and others who have been influenced by second-wave feminist spirituality and engaged in developing and critiquing themes of Goddess religion, queer theory, protest movements, and popular culture.

This volume is directed toward researchers and health professionals with an interest in the interstices of social networks and health. It consists of original papers that address critical themes in health-related social network research and disease prevention. The sections discuss the dynamics of social networks and their role in providing social support under varying conditions and contexts; how social network theory and research contribute to disease prevention and control; methodological issues that affect recall and agreement when conducting social network studies; how social networks structure and facilitate or discourage health risk; and the role of network ties in disease prevention. The volume concludes by examining the influence of social support in health promotion, symptom identification and disease management.

The editors bring together an international team of contributors consisting of archaeologists, geographers, historians, anthropologists and agronomists in a penetrating account of the transformation of nomadic society. The chapters provide an integrated analysis of the changing relations of ecology, economy and socio-political organization in the steppes of the central Middle East, documenting the longue-durée of history alongside the rapid transformations in the twentieth century. This is an accessible and interactive book that will attract readers from a variety of disciplines, including environmental and development issues.

This book provides a political narrative of the rise and fall of the Tudor monarchy - key to understanding the history of the years 1450 to 1660. The theme is the relationship between the Crown and the aristocracy and how a partnership was created partly by the actions of the Crown and partly by the changing composition and attitudes of the political nation. It begins with the chaos of factional quarrels which was the political life of England under Henry VI in the 1450s and then examines the rebuilding of the strength of royal government under Edward IV, Henry VII and Henry VIII. That government was tested in various ways under Edward VI and Mary, reached its peak under Elizabeth, and declined under James I. The partnership finally broke down in the civil war of the 1640s and the Tudor monarchy collapsed. This is the life cycle of a political system created out of necessity and fashioned by a mixture of vision and circumstance. After its collapse the Republic failed to create a viable alternative, but the resurrection of the old system after 1660 was more apparent than real.

This unique collection of thoughtful and provocative essays brings together the personal retrospectives of seventeen of the most prominent American futurists. Their reflections on how the reality of the 1980s differs from what was anticipated, and what has been learned about social and technological change will provide important reading for futurists and planners who must confront a constantly changing horizon.

This book nuances our understanding of the contemporary creative economy by engaging with a set of three key tensions which emerged over the course of eight European Colloquiums on Culture, Creativity and Economy (CCE): 1) the tension between individual and collaborative creative practices, 2) the tension between tradition and innovation, and 3) the tension between isolated and interconnected spaces of creativity. Rather than focusing on specific processes, such as production, industries or locations, the tensions acknowledge and engage with the messy and restless nature of the creative economy. Individual chapters offer insights into poorly understood practices, locations and contexts such as co-working spaces in Berlin and rural Spain, creative businesses in Leicester and the role and importance of cultural intermediaries in creative economies within Africa. Others examine the nature of trans-local cultural flows, the evolving "field" of fashion, and the implications of social media and crowdfunding platforms. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and professionals researching the creative economy, as well as specific cultural and creative industries, across the humanities and social sciences.

This interdisciplinary monograph applies the theory of games of strategy (or game theory) to an important subset of American literature: minoritarian texts. Fittingly, John von Neumann's game theory, as a mathematical subdiscipline practically abandoned by its founder after the publication of 'Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele' (1928), but purposefully reengaged with on his permanent relocation to America in 1938, carries the minoritarian credentials of a Hungarian-born national of Jewish descent. The state of international politics in the late 1930s certainly contributed to von Neumann's renewed interest in his theory, but a socioeconomic environment built on the legacy of slavery focused a reengagement with coordination problems that would last until his death. In these strategic situations, people must make choices in the knowledge that other people face the same options and that the outcome for each person will result from everybody's decisions. The four most frequently encountered coordination problems are the Stag Hunt, the Prisoner's Dilemma, Chicken, and Deadlock Minoritarians find majoritarian attempts to control these social dilemmas particularly challenging. Hence, a game-theoretically inflected hermeneutic that identifies the logical, rational, and strategic state of human interrelations not only helps to categorize, but also to analyze minoritarian texts. The authors under detailed consideration are Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, Harriet A. Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Mohsin Hamid.