American Ethnic Practices in the Early Twenty-first Century: The Milwaukee Study is a work based on a twelve-year research project conducted in the greater Milwaukee area by Urban Anthropology Inc. The qualitative study examined the current strength of ethnicity and the contributions that ethnic practices have made to the wider society. Since Barth (1970), social scientists-especially sociocultural anthropologists-have moved toward deconstructing ethnicity by concentrating on the malleability of ethnic identity. This work takes a new approach by focusing on ethnic practices. The most prominent findings in The Milwaukee Study were the ways that community-building activities of ethnic groups contributed to the wider society; and how this, in turn, can help restore a needed balance between individualism and collectivism in the United States. Since the first edition of Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al, 1985), public discourse about ways to restore this balance has been ubiquitous. Most discussions have focused only on strengthening families, faith communities, or neighborhoods, and have ignored the activity and potential of ethnic groups, even though it was during this span of time that interest in multiculturalism in education and politics reached its peak.

In the first book on Aztec dance in the United States, Ernesto Colin combines cultural anthropology, educational theory, and postcolonial theory to create an innovative, interdisciplinary, long-term ethnography of an Aztec dance circle and makes a case for the use of the metaphor of palimpsest as an ethnographic research tool.

Since the early 1990s, the seventeen-fold growth in South African sport hunting has made the South African wildlife ranching industry the sixth largest contributor to South Africa's agricultural sector, bringing in $680 million per annum. Biltong Hunting as a Performance of Belonging in Post-Apartheid South Africa links biltong hunting's rapid growth to the 1990s disassembly of the apartheid state and analyzes how the hierarchy, and belonging that biltong hunters associate with it, emerges anew in the post-apartheid context. It examines the narrative and embodied strategies employed by hunters and farmers to create a space that naturalizes the mythic Afrikaner nationalist past in the post-apartheid present.

For all peoples on all continents and for all times, water has been the blood of life. It is fitting then, that this book about the peoples of the Southwest be dedicated to an examination of water in a land that has historically been dry, making the need to locate water supplies essential. The Southwest became an important frontier for Spanish and then Anglo explorers and colonizers who battled with native occupants for strategic locations. Each one of these groups who made the Southwest their home were ethnically quite different. They represented diverse histories, cultures, nationalities, classes, religions and world views.

Beginning with discussion of innovative prehistoric land and water use, the book describes the ways in which early farmers learned how to harness the precious drops of water for their fields. The story then continues with views from the Pueblos and beyond as the living sacredness of earth's resource is described by native peoples. This emic view, however, is often in conflict with the various legal definitions of resources carved by federal, state and local officials and developers. The book goes on to examine the background of contemporary land conflicts and water litigation between numerous contestants: Indian, Hispanic, and Anglo. The book ends with articles that attest to the clever ways in which ethnicity is configured and boldly proclaimed in order to reclaim privilege.

In this book, scholars from across the world explore the appearance, portrayal and significance of the suburb on film. By the mid-20th Century, supported by changes in transportation, suburbs became the primary location of entire national populations and films about the suburbs began to concertedly reflect those suburbs' significance as well as their increasingly lively cultures! Suburbia very soon became filmurbia, as films of the suburbs and those made in the suburbs reflected both the positive and the negative aspects of burgeoning suburban life. Film-makers explored the existences of new suburbanites, their interests, their newly emerging neighbourhood practices, their foibles, their fantasies and their hopes. Whether depicting love, ambition, commerce, family, home or horror, whether traveling to or living in suburban spaces, whether exhibiting beauty, brazenness or brutality, the films of suburbia capture human life in all its diverse guises.

This book examines how computer-based programs can be used to acquire 'big' digital cultural heritage data, curate, and disseminate it over the Internet and in 3D visualization platforms with the ultimate goal of creating long-lasting "digital heritage repositories.' The organization of the book reflects the essence of new technologies applied to cultural heritage and archaeology. Each of these stages bring their own challenges and considerations that need to be dealt with. The authors in each section present case studies and overviews of how each of these aspects might be dealt with. While technology is rapidly changing, the principles laid out in these chapters should serve as a guide for many years to come. The influence of the digital world on archaeology and cultural heritage will continue to shape these disciplines as advances in these technologies facilitate new lines of research. serif">The book is divided into three sections covering acquisition, curation, and dissemination (the major life cycles of cultural heritage data). Acquisition is one of the fundamental challenges for practitioners in heritage and archaeology, and the chapters in this section provide a template that highlights the principles for present and future work that will provide sustainable models for digital documentation. Following acquisition, the next section highlights how equally important curation is as the future of digital documentation depends on it. Preservation of digital data requires preservation that can guarantee a future for generations to come. The final section focuses on dissemination as it is what pushes the data beyond the shelves of storage and allows the public to experience the past through these new technologies, but also opens new lines of investigation by giving access to these data to researchers around the globe. Digital technology promises significant changes in how we approach social sciences, cultural heritage, and archaeology. However, researchers must consider not only the acquisition and curation, but also the dissemination of these data to their colleagues and the public. Throughout the book, many of the authors have highlighted the usefulness of Structure from Motion (SfM) work for cultural heritage documentation; others the utility and excitement of crowdsourcing as a 'citizen scientist' tool to engage not only trained students and researchers, but also the public in the cyber-archaeology endeavor. Both innovative tools facilitate the curation of digital cultural heritage and its dissemination. Together with all the chapters in this volume, the authors will help archaeologists, researchers interested in the digital humanities and scholars who focus on digital cultural heritage to assess where the field is and where it is going.

This phenomenologically oriented ethnography focuses on experiential aspects of Yanomami shamanism, including shamanistic activities in the context of cultural change. The author interweaves ethnographic material with theoretical components of a holographic principle, or the idea that the "part is equal to the whole," which is embedded in the nature of the Yanomami macrocosm, human dwelling, multiple-soul components, and shamans' relationships with embodied spirit-helpers. This book fills an important gap in the regional study of Yanomami people, and, on a broader scale, enriches understanding of this ancient phenomenon by focusing on the consciousness involved in shamanism through firsthand experiential involvement.

This book reveals the structures of poverty, power, patriarchy and imperialistic health policies that underpin what the World Health Organization calls the "hidden disease" of vaginal fistulas in Africa. By employing critical feminist and post-colonial perspectives, it shows how "leaking black female bodies" are constructed, ranked, stratified and marginalised in global maternal health care, and explains why women in Africa are at risk of developing vaginal fistulas and then having adequate treatment delayed or denied. Drawing on face-to-face, in-depth interviews with 30 Kenyan women, it paints a rare social portrait of the heartbreaking challenges for Kenyan women living with this most profound gender-related health issue - an experience of shame, taboo and abjection with severe implications for women's wellbeing, health and sexuality. In absolutely groundbreaking depth, this book shows why research on vaginal fistulas must incorporate feminist understandings of bodily experience to inform future practices and knowledge.

The development of new sexualities and gender identities has become a crucial issue in the field of literary and cultural studies in the first years of the twenty-first century. The roles of gender and sexual identities in the struggle for equality have become a major concern in both fields. The legacy of this process has its origins in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. The Victorian preoccupation about the female body and sexual promiscuity was focused on the regulation of deviant elements in society and the control of venereal disease; homosexuals, lesbians, and prostitutes' identities were considered out of the norm and against the moral values of the time. The relationship between sexuality and gender identity has attracted wide-ranging discussion amongst feminist theorists during the last few decades. The methodologies of cultural studies and, in particular, of post-structuralism and post-colonialism, urges us to read and interpret different cultures and different texts in ways that enhance personal and collective views of identity which are culturally grounded. These readings question the postmodernist concept of identity by looking into more progressive views of identity and difference addressing post-positivist interpretations of key identity markers such as sex, gender, race, and agency. As a consequence, an individual's identity is recognized as culturally constructed and the result of power relations. Identities on the Move: Contemporary Representations of New Sexualities and Gender Identities offers creative insights on pressing issues and engages in productive dialogue. Identities on the Move to addresses the topic of new sexualities and gender identities and their representation in post-colonial and contemporary Anglophone literary, historical, and cultural productions from a trans-national, trans-cultural, and anti-essentialist perspective. The authors include the views and concerns of people of color, of women in the diaspora, in our evermore multiethnic and multicultural societies, and their representation in the media, films, popular culture, subcultures, and the arts.

When this work - one that contributes to both the history and anthropology fields - first appeared in 1982, it was hailed as a landmark study of the role of folklore in nation-building. It has since been highly influential in reshaping the analysis of Greek and European cultural dynamics. In this expanded edition, a new introduction by the author and an epilogue by Sharon Macdonald document its importance for the emergence of serious anthropological interest in European culture and society and for current debates about Greece's often contested place in the complex politics of the European Union.

The Irish Potato Famine caused the migration of more than two million individuals who sought refuge in the United States and Canada. In contrast to previous studies, which have tended to focus on only one destination, this collection allows readers to evaluate the experience of transatlantic Famine refugees in a comparative context. Featuring new and innovative scholarship by both established and emerging scholars of Irish America and Irish Canada, it carefully dissects the connection that arose between Ireland and North America during the famine years (1845-1851).

In the more than 150 years since the onset of Ireland's Great Famine, historians have intensely scrutinized the causes, the year-by-year events, and the consequences of his human catastrophe. Who was to blame? Were the hunger and misery inevitable? Did the famine have revolutionary effects on the Irish economy? How did it change the nature of Irish religion? This new study complements the wealth of existing literature on the social, cultural, and political aspects of the Famine and invites the reader to consider the fate of the Irish refugees in their new home lands.

Arguing against the postmodern claim that systematic theory is unable to account for difference, "Difference in Time: A Critical Theory of Culture" adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of cultural judgement and social change. With music as her model for theory, Hanrahan explores the role of time, the creation of meaning, the identification of difference, and the basis for judgements in cultural life, and in doing so provides a foundation for the critique of cultural objects and practices that avoids both the elitism of traditional aesthetics and the unwavering relativism of so much contemporary cultural analysis. A broad-ranging and deeply philosophical work building on the scholarship of the Frankfurt School, "Difference in Time: A Critical Theory of Culture "drives home the need for critique in the evaluation and revision of the social knowledge and institutions of democratic civic life.

In Hanrahan's analysis, the dualism of critique--that of universal judgement and relative standpoint--is false when critique is understood as a dynamic process in which both judgement and standpoint are emergent and contingent. Differences are not given or static but are articulated in time; therefore, both the categories of critique and of social theory in general must be temporalized. Hanrahan's musical model draws attention to the fundamental temporality of social life and social structure, and integrates that understanding into the structure of a new dynamic in which difference is compatible with both system and structure. Thus, Hanrahan demonstrates that it is possible to construct critical categories that do not become orthodoxies.

While typically the victims of war, civilians are not necessarily passive recipients of violence. What options are available to civilians in times of war? This book suggests three broad strategies - flight, support, and voice. It focuses on three conflicts: Aceh, Indonesia; Patani, southern Thailand; and Mindanao, southern Philippines.

This book examines the roles that public space plays in gentrification. Considering both cultural norms of public behavior and the municipal regulation of behavior in public, it shows how commonplace acts in everyday public spaces like sidewalks, streets, and parks work to establish neighborhood legitimacy for newcomers while delegitimizing once authentic public practices of long-timers. With evidence drawn from the formerly Latino neighborhood of Highland in Denver, Colorado, this ethnographic study demonstrates how the regulation of public space plays a pivotal role in neighborhood change. First, there is often a profound disharmony between how people from different cultural complexes interpret and sanction behavior in everyday public spaces. Second, because regulations, codes, urban design, and enforcement protocols are deliberately changed, commonplace activities longtime neighborhood residents feel they have a right to do along sidewalks and streets and within their neighborhood parks sometimes unexpectedly misalign with what is actually possible or legal to do in these publicly accessible spaces.

This book explores the language and literacy practices which sustain transnational migration across generations and across traditional boundaries such as school and home. The author has conducted extensive fieldwork in Pakistan and the UK to study migration between the two countries. Individuals' access to the dominant literacies of migration are contrasted with the vernacular practices which migrants take up at home as part of their digital literacies. The study explores the blurring of boundaries between home and school as well as the blurring of boundaries between language varieties. Tracing access to literacy in this way also shines a light on the literacy mediators migrants turn to for help with English language learning and when trying to access the bureaucratic literacies of migration. The study ends by exploring how migrants use all of their language resources, not just English, to fit into their new homes once they have arrived in the UK.

This book focuses on the transmission of ethnic identity across three generations of Italian-Australians, specifically Italian-Australians of Calabrian descent in the Adelaide region of Australia. Simone Marino analyzes ethnographic data collected over a three-year period to consider individual, familial and community cultural practices, as well as societal influences on ethnic identity transmission, in order to present generational differences in the understandings of Italian-Australian identity. Among other factors, the role of community events, community networks, and cultural practices associated with being Italian-Australian are examined. The transmission of ethnic identity is analysed through the lens of sociological theories, including Sayad's concept of double absence and Bourdieu's ideas of habitus and cultural capital, and is considered at the macro, meso, and micro spheres of social life. Ultimately, Marino's study reveals clear generational differences amongst Italian-Australians: the first generation, those who arrived from Italy, manifest a condition of feeling absent, the second generation present a condition of 'in-between-ness', between the world of their immigrant parents and that of Australians, and the third generation experience a sense of ethnic revival.

How are ethnographic knowledge and anthropological theory created out of field experiences? Working in the Field explores emplacement and experience-centered narratives as the modes in working in places brings anthropology to life. Stewart and Strathern show how first impressions of an area carry depths of meanings which can gradually be unpacked in later analysis and how the fieldworker's memories may become blended with those of the people studied as a result of long-term engagement with them. Spanning Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, and Scotland, and Ireland, Stewart and Strathern show how fieldwork in apparently different areas can lead to unexpected comparisons and discoveries of similarities in human cross-cultural patterns of behavior.

Within the Asian American population, a new trend is emerging in which the second generation (children of immigrants, born in the United States) has redefined what being Asian American means to them. The notion of who Asian Americans are as a group has vastly shifted from the time the 1965 Immigration Act was passed. The definition of who is fit for inclusion within the Asian American category has been contested in recent years, and this book explores the experiences of those categorized as such at the dawn of the 21st century. Beyond the scope of how people are defined and categorized by the state, the central question explored in this book addresses how individuals themselves define what it means to be Asian American. "This book provides an insightful look into Asian American identity. It provides readers with a comprehensive overview of the historical, psychological, and social issues surrounding the development of the Asian American identity." - Professor Margaret Shih, University of Michigan

Obsolescence is fundamental to the experience of modernity, not simply one dimension of an economic system. The contributors to this book investigate obsolescence as a historical phenomenon, an aesthetic practice, and an affective mode.

The longevity of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio, Texas, suggests that it is possible for a social change organization to simultaneously address racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, imperialism, environmental justice, and peace-and to succeed. Activism, Alliance Building, and the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center uses ethnographic research to provide an instructive case study of the importance and challenges of confronting injustice in all of its manifestations. Through building and maintaining alliances, deploying language strategically, and using artistic expression as a central organizing mechanism, The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center demonstrates the power of multi-issue organizing and intersectional/coalitional consciousness. Interweaving artistic programming with its social justice agenda, in particular, offers Esperanza a unique forum for creative and political expression, institutional collaborations, and interpersonal relationships, which promote consciousness raising, mobilization, and social change. This study will appeal to scholars of communication, Chicana feminism, and ethnography.

Looking at one's face in the mirror and finding one's self in the mirror are not the same. The former capacity is something we share with other animals; the latter is a skill: something we have to learn. What does it mean and what does it take to find oneself the mirror? This book provides a comparative anthropological enquiry into the unity and diversity of mirror gazing. The reader is encouraged to reflect upon and experiment with different mirror gazes through a range of case studies. Koukouti and Malafouris weave together anthropology with philosophy and draw on examples from literature and experiments from psychopathology in a way that has never been attempted before. The master metaphor is that of the mirror as trap. Mirror gazing is viewed on a par with hunting. Mirroring signifies the hunt for self-knowledge. In a time obsessed with the digital self-image, Koukouti and Malafouris reflect on the structures of consciousness that underpin the different ways of looking at and through the mirror. Combining metaphor, comparison and estrangement, they gesture towards a therapeutic alliance between body and mirroring. This allows us to look in the mirror, and think of our shared humanity differently.

In the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, medical patients engage a variety of healing practices to seek cures for their ailments. Patients use the expanding biomedical network and a growing number of traditional healthcare units, while also seeking alternative practices, such as shamanism and other religious healing, or even more provocative practices. The Patient Multiple delves into this healthcare complexity in the context of patients' daily lives and decision-making processes, showing how these unique mountain cultures are finding new paths to good health among a changing and multifaceted medical topography.