The present book examines the cultural diversities of the Northeast region in India. The chapters cover various aspects of cultural forms and practices of the communities. It serves as a bridge between vanishing cultural forms and their commodification, on the one hand, and their cultural ritual origins, evolution and significance in identity formation, on the other. The book analyses the continuity of cultural forms, their plural embodied representations associated with people's belief systems and their reinventions under globalisation. Further, the book underlines historical forces such as colonialism and religious conversion that transformed socio-cultural practices. Yet some of the pre-colonial, ritual-performative traditions hold on. Theoretically rich in analysis, this book presents a balanced view of the region's historical, ethnic-folk and socio-cultural aspects. The book is invaluable to students and researchers in cultural studies, anthropology, folklore, history and literature. It is also helpful for those critical readers engaged in research and interested in Northeast cultural forms and practices.

The complex, highly problematic, often thorny dynamics of trust and authority are central to the anthropological study of legitimacy. In this book, this sine qua non runs across the in-depth examination of the ways in which healthcare and public health are managed by the authorities and experienced by the people on the ground in urban Europe, the USA, India, Africa, Latin America and the Far and Middle East. This book brings comparatively together anthropological studies on healthcare and public health rigorously based on in-depth empirical knowledge. Inspired by the current debate on legitimacy, legitimation and de-legitimation, the contributions do not refrain from taking into account the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the health systems under study, but carefully avoid letting this issue monopolise the discussion. This book raises key challenges to our understanding of healthcare practices and the governance of public health. With a keen eye on urban life, its inequalities and the ever-expanding gap between rulers and the ruled, the findings address important questions on the complex ways in which authorities gain, keep, or lose the public’s trust.

This is the first full-length book to provide an introduction to badhai performances throughout South Asia, examining their characteristics and relationships to differing contexts in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Badhai's repertoires of songs, dances, prayers, and comic repartee are performed by socially marginalised hijra, khwaja sira, and trans communities. They commemorate weddings, births and other celebratory heteronormative events. The form is improvisational and responds to particular contexts, but also moves across borders, including those of nation, religion, genre, and identity. This collaboratively authored book draws from anthropology, theatre and performance studies, music and sound studies, ethnomusicology, queer and transgender studies, and sustained ethnographic fieldwork to examine badhai's place-based dynamics, transcultural features, and communications across the hijrascape. This vital study explores the form's changing status and analyses these performances' layered, scalar, and sensorial practices, to extend ways of understanding hijra-khwaja sira-trans performance.

Most cultural critics theorize modernity as a state of disenchanted distraction, one linked to both the rationalizing impulses of scientific and technological innovation and the kind of dispersed, fragmented attention that characterizes the experience of mass culture. Patrick Kindig's Fascination, however, tells a different story, showing that many fin-de-siecle Americans were in fact concerned about (and intrigued by) the modern world's ability to attract and fix attention in quasi-supernatural ways. Rather than being distracting, modern life in their view had an almost magical capacity to capture attention and overwhelm rational thought. Fascination argues that, in response to the dramatic scientific and cultural changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many American thinkers and writers came to conceive of the modern world as fundamentally fascinating. Describing such diverse phenomena as the electric generator, the movements of actresses, and ethnographic cinema as supernaturally alluring, they used the language of fascination to process and critique both popular ideologies of historical progress and the racializing logic upon which these ideologies were built. Drawing on an archive of primary texts from the fields of medicine, (para)psychology, philosophy, cultural criticism, and anthropology-as well as creative texts by Harriet Prescott Spofford, Charles Chesnutt, Theodore Dreiser, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Edward S. Curtis, Robert J. Flaherty, and Djuna Barnes-Kindig reconsiders what it meant for Americans to be (and to be called) modern at the turn of the twentieth century.

In this book, contemporary representations of Bolivian art, music, religion, literature, festivals, theater, and cinema document how history and geography have shaped Bolivia's modern culture. Bolivia has long been neglected by North American historians and anthropologists. Now, author Javier A. Galvan fills this gap with a book that analyzes the complex cultures of this South American nation within the context of its rich history and contemporary traditions. The first half of this text is dedicated to how and where people live-detailed geography, social traditions, religious practices, political institutions, and Bolivian cuisine and culture. The varied religious and linguistic traditions of the indigenous groups that comprise the majority of the national population are also described, giving readers a deeper appreciation for the diversity of Bolivia's character. The second half of the book explores the creative talent of Bolivians who are advancing the literary movements, painting styles, architectural design, theater productions, fashion design, and emerging film industry of the country. Culture and Customs of Bolivia also includes a detailed analysis of contemporary print and broadcasting media. Presents a chronology of historical, political, and cultural events from pre-Colombian times to the present Includes photographs that illustrate the country's richness of people, festivals, architectural treasures, artwork, and regional cultural celebrations as well as geographical and historic maps Contains a comprehensive bibliography for further reading Provides a glossary of regional expressions and key terms to understanding the cultural mosaic of Bolivia

This anthropological work thoroughly illustrates the novel synthesis of Christian religion and New Age spirituality in Greece. It challenges the single-faith approach that traditionally ties southern European countries to Christianity and focuses on how processes of globalization influence and transform vernacular religiosity. Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in Greece, this book demonstrates how the popular belief in the 'evil eye' produces a creative affinity between religion and spirituality in everyday practice. The author analyses a variety of significant research themes, including lived and vernacular religion, alternative spirituality and healing, ritual performance and religious material culture. The book offers an innovative social scientific interpretation of contemporary religiosity, while engaging with a multiplicity of theoretical, analytic and empirical directions. It contributes to current key debates in social sciences with regard to globalization and secularization, religious pluralism, contemporary spirituality and the New Age movement, gender, power and the body, health, illness and alternative therapeutic systems, senses, perception and the supernatural, the spiritual marketplace, creativity and the individualization of religion in a multicultural world.

In 2001, Thailand introduced universal health care reforms that have become some of the most celebrated in the world, providing almost its entire population with health protection coverage. However, this remarkable implementation of health policy is not without its weaknesses. Drawing on two years of fieldwork at a district hospital in northern Thailand, Bo Kyeong Seo examines how people in marginal and dependent social positions negotiate the process of obtaining care. Using the broader concept of elicitation, Seo analyzes the social encounters and forces that shape caregivers. These dynamics challenge dichotomies of subjugation and resistance, consent and coercion, and dependence and autonomy. The intimate and moving stories at the core of Eliciting Care from patients and providers draw attention to a broader, critically important phenomenon at the hospital level. Seo's poignant ethnography engages with feminist theory on the ethics of care, and in so doing, makes a significant contribution to emerging work in the field of health policy and politics.

This edited book, by Rosalina Diaz, represents a radical form of ethnography, as it presents the voices of academic scholars and scientists side by side with those of grassroots activists, native healers and community herbalists and brujas, in addressing issues of cultural & indigenous identity, agroecology, sustainability and self-determination in the Greater Antillean region of the Caribbean. As a result of European colonialism, the cultural development of the indigenous population was radically disrupted. Five thousand years of cultural knowledge, including plant wisdom, went underground. Herbal healers, shamed and ridiculed as "brujas" and "santeras," continued to practice in obscurity. The industrialization, urbanization and tourism projects of the 20th century exacerbated the exploitation of the natural environment, which began in earnest with the plantation economy imposed by European colonialism, leaving it vulnerable to climate change threats. However, the history of environmental activism and push-back of the islands is also noteworthy, as Carmen M. Concepcion points out, "the Puerto Rican environmental movement got under way very early and has been distinctively political since its beginnings, twenty years before most other nations." In the Greater Antilles, environmental activism has sprung up alongside grassroots political movements, as well as a resurgence of indigenous identity, and, as explained by the authors in this book, continues to be an act of resistance against on-going political, social and economic repression. "In Decolonizing Paradise, Rosalina Diaz blends the voices of scientists with local healers and activists to explore a radical ethnography of plants and people in the Caribbean. Through their lived experiences in this crucially important bioregion, herbalists, brujas, and western-trained scientists resurrect and reveal indigenous and diasporic plant wisdom that has long been denigrated. This collection is an important ethnobotanical starting point for the colonized people of the Caribbean to redress centuries of cultural and environmental injustice." -Robert Voeks, Author of The Ethnobotany of Eden: Rethinking the Jungle Medicine Narrative "Decolonizing Paradise is a must-read primer for anyone interested in an insider perspective of environmental stewardship in the Caribbean region, as told by the voices of those currently active in the movement. In recognizing the long-standing environmental conflicts, clashes and actions of local activists and community groups, this book rectifies historical omissions and misperceptions, and challenges the still prevailing narrative of inaction and dependence that has wrongly stigmatized this population for centuries." -Alexis Massol-Gonzalez, Founding Director of Casa Pueblo of Adjuntas; Recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize (2002) "At a time when the world is intensely focused on finding solutions to complex and existential environmental issues, Decolonizing Paradise is an indispensable tool for those wanting to engage in collective action in the Caribbean. This timely anthology of scholars, scientists, farmers, grassroots activists and environmentalists provides both historical context and an agenda for the sustainable environmental future of the region, with a particular emphasis on Puerto Rico. Decolonizing Paradise will quickly become essential reading for those interested in the Caribbean's environmental struggles, particularly as understood and analyzed by those who are currently in the trenches. Decolonizing Paradise also provides hope and inspiration for all those-students, policy makers, activists, and scholars-who want to see change happen in the Caribbean." -Felix V Matos Rodriguez, Chancellor of the City University of New York (CUNY)