The Majangir live on the thickly forested slopes of the south-western edge of the Ethiopian plateau, between the Anuak of the plains and the Galla of the highlands. Their way of life is markedly different from that of their neighbours, and is well adapted to their habitat. They are agriculturalists and the structure of their society is loose and simple. They have no political leaders, the only individuals of any authority being ritual leaders whose influence is restricted. Domestic groups tend to farm plots adjacent to those of friends or kin, but the settlements remain small and constantly change in composition (as well as in location). In addition to farming, in which the men and women share the work, the men make occasional hunting and fishing trips, as well as spending quite a considerable amount of time tending and making bee hives. Dr Stauder examines the various social and spatial groupings of Majang society and demonstrates the intimate ecological relationship between these groupings and the system of slash and burn cultivation practised by the Majangir.

The growth of ???new genetics??? has dramatically increased our understanding of health, diseases and the body. Anthropologists argue that these scientific advances have had far-reaching social and cultural implications, radically changing our self-understanding and perception of what it means to be human; that we have become ???biomedicalized???, fragmented and commodified - redefining our notions of citizenship, social relations, family and identity. This book shows how anthropology can contribute to and challenge the ways we have come to understand genetic issues. Exploring a range of issues and case studies in genetic research, it provides an ethnographic ???reality-check???, arguing that we must look beyond the ???gene-centrism??? of genetic codes, family trees and insular populations, to explore their wider cultural, ethical and philosophical implications. Including coverage of the controversial and widely discussed Icelandic Health Sector Database, this accessible survey will be welcomed by graduate students and researchers in social anthropology, human genetics and biotechnology.

Reproduction is among the most basic of human biological functions, both for our distant ancestors and for ourselves, whether we live on the plains of Africa or in North American suburbs. Our reproductive biology unites us as a species, but it has also been an important engine of our evolution. In the way our bodies function today we can see both the imprint of our formative past and implications for our future. It is the infinitely subtle and endlessly dramatic story of human reproduction and its evolutionary context that Peter T. Ellison tells in "On Fertile Ground,"

Ranging from the latest achievements of modern fertility clinics to the lives of subsistence farmers in the rain forests of Africa, this book offers both a remarkably broad and a minutely detailed exploration of human reproduction. Ellison, a leading pioneer in the field, combines the perspectives of anthropology, stressing the range and variation of human experience; ecology, sensitive to the two-way interactions between humans and their environments; and evolutionary biology, emphasizing a functional understanding of human reproductive biology and its role in our evolutionary history.

Whether contrasting female athletes missing their periods and male athletes using anabolic steroids with Polish farm women and hunter-gatherers in Paraguay, or exploring the intricate choreography of an implanting embryo or of a nursing mother and her child, "On Fertile Ground" advances a rich and deeply satisfying explanation of the mechanisms by which we reproduce and the evolutionary forces behind their design.

Racism, Culture, Markets explores the connections between cultural representations of `race' and their historical, institutional and global forms of expression and impact. John Gabriel examines the current fixation with market place philosophies in terms of the crisis in anti-racist politics and concern over questions of cultural identity. He explores issues such as the continuing relevance of terms like `black' as a basis for self definition; the need to think about identities in more fluid and complex ways, and the need to develop a much more explicit discussion of the construction of whiteness and white identities. Racism, Culture, Markets brings together a range of historical and contemporary case studies including the Rushdie affair; the Gulf War; debates around fostering, adoption and domestic violence; separate schooling; the service economy and its employment practices; tourism in the Third World; the Bhopal chemical disaster and racism in the new Europe. His case studies also consider the role played by contemporary media and popular culture in these debates, including film, television, music and the press.

Seeking the reasons behind Jewish altruism toward African-Americans, Hasia Diner shows how - in the wake of the Leo Frank trial and lynching in Atlanta - Jews came to see that their relative prosperity was no protection against the same social forces that threatened blacks. It thus became in the Jewish American self-interest to support the black struggle for racial justice and to fight against American prejudice. Jewish leaders and organisations genuinely believed in the cause of black civil rights, Diner suggests, but they also used that cause as a way of advancing their own interests without seeming "pushy" or "too demanding" - launching a vicarious attack on the nation that they felt had not lived up to its own pronouncements of freedom and equality.

"The Body Multiple" is an extraordinary ethnography of an ordinary disease. Drawing on fieldwork in a Dutch university hospital, Annemarie Mol looks at the day-to-day diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis. A patient information leaflet might describe atherosclerosis as the gradual obstruction of the arteries, but in hospital practice this one medical condition appears to be many other things. From one moment, place, apparatus, specialty, or treatment, to the next, a slightly different "atherosclerosis" is being discussed, measured, observed, or stripped away. This multiplicity does not imply fragmentation; instead, the disease is made to cohere through a range of tactics including transporting forms and files, making images, holding case conferences, and conducting doctor-patient conversations.

"The Body Multiple" juxtaposes two distinct texts. Alongside Mol's analysis of her ethnographic material--interviews with doctors and patients and observations of medical examinations, consultations, and operations--runs a parallel text in which she reflects on the relevant literature. Mol draws on medical anthropology, sociology, feminist theory, philosophy, and science and technology studies to reframe such issues as the disease-illness distinction, subject-object relations, boundaries, difference, situatedness, and ontology. In dialogue with one another, Mol's two texts meditate on the multiplicity of reality-in-practice.

Presenting philosophical reflections on the body and medical practice through vivid storytelling, "The Body Multiple" will be important to those in medical anthropology, philosophy, and the social study of science, technology, and medicine.

In the last twenty years, immigration has become one of the most contested issues in Western Europe. The arrival of Africans, Asians, Eastern Europeans and others in Italy has reversed earlier trends of emigration. Debate, political activity and violence have raised questions of rejection and integration, of anti-racism and the new racism. Studies of these issues commonly focus on political activity and the plight of minorities, but this book breaks new ground in its emphasis on the everyday reactions of Italians to immigration and related issues. Drawing on research carried out in Palermo, Jeffrey Cole considers the role of class, culture, local history and political economy in the ambivalent responses of Sicilians to immigrants. He places Italian attitudes in a European context, and investigates why anti-immigrant politics are concentrated in the wealthy Italian North.

Skin colour is perhaps the most decisive and abused physical characteristic of humankind. This book presents a multidisciplinary overview of how and why human populations vary so markedly in their skin colour. The biological aspects of the pigment cell and its production of melanin are reviewed. The functions of melanin in the skin, brain, eye and ear are considered, and the common clinical abnormalities of pigmentation, such as albinism, are described and illustrated. Detailed reflectance data from worldwide surveys of skin colour are also presented. The historical and contemporary background of the phenomenon is explored in relation to the so-called 'colour problem' in society. Finally, the possible evolutionary forces which shape human pigmentation are assessed. This fascinating account will be of interest to graduate students and researchers of biological anthropology, anatomy, physiology and dermatology, as well as medical practitioners.

As our closest evolutionary relatives, nonhuman primates are integral elements in our mythologies, diets and scientific paradigms, yet most species now face an uncertain future through exploitation for the pet and bushmeat trades as well as progressive habitat loss. New information about disease transmission, dietary and economic linkage, and the continuing international focus on conservation and primate research have created a surge of interest in primates, and focus on the diverse interaction of human and nonhuman primates has become an important component in primatological and ethnographic studies. By examining the diverse and fascinating range of relationships between humans and other primates, and how this plays a critical role in conservation practice and programs, Primates Face to Face disseminates the information gained from the anthropological study of nonhuman primates to the wider academic and non-academic world.

The unique contribution made by biological anthropology to human welfare lies in the fundamental understanding it can provide of the dynamic interrelationships between physical and social factors. By understanding these patterns, we can interpret the significance of variation in such measures of human well-being in terms of the incidence of disease and mortality rates. Topics covered in this book include reproductive ecology and fertility, nutritional status in relation to health, and the effects of pollution on individual growth. In later chapters, the concepts of physiological adaptation and Darwinian fitness and their relation to individual physical fitness are explored.

Plasticity refers to the ability of many organisms to change their biology or behavior to respond to changes in the environment. Humans are probably the most plastic of all species, and hence the most variable. This is the first book to examine the history of research in this area and it provides information on state-of-the-art research methods and discoveries. It also maps out some areas of future research in human plasticity and variability. Topics discussed include child growth, starvation, diseases of both young and old, and the effects of migration, modernization and other life-style changes. The book will be especially useful to biological anthropologists, human biologists and medical scientists interested in knowing more about how and why humans vary.

Many aspects of human activity involve energy transfer of some type. Human Energetics in Biological Anthropology examines some of the ways in which measurements of energy intake, expenditure and balance have been used to study human populations by biological anthropologists and human biologists. The book provides an integration of human adaptation and adaptability approaches, placing these issues in an ecological context by considering traditional subsistence economies in the developing world. This is the first volume to present such an integrated approach, and will be useful in the teaching of biological anthropology, human population biology, nutritional anthropology, and third world nutrition at senior undergraduate and graduate student level.

Many researchers and professionals need to be able to measure, assess and interpret human growth between birth and adulthood. However, much of the methodology is scattered in diverse literature. Human Growth: Assessment and Interpretation provides a complete reference to the field for all those who measure and assess child growth. It emphasises the interpretation of growth data taking into account the adjusted effects of influences such as genes, hormones and substance abuse during pregnancy, gives descriptions of normal and abnormal growth patterns, and of variant growth patterns such as failure-to-thrive and catch-up growth. Including methods to measure size and maturity, the judgement and interpretation of recorded data, evaluations of influences on growth and the significance of abnormal growth, it will be an essential source of information for pediatricians, human biologists, health workers, nutritionists, epidemiologists and others who are responsible for the health and welfare of children.

The recent revolution in molecular genetics, which has already made such a significant impact in the biomedical sciences, is now becoming established in biological anthropology. New techniques have enabled anthropologists to study biological variation at the molecular level, and a wealth of exciting information on human and non-human primate populations is now becoming available for the first time. This volume presents a selection of pioneering research studies in which molecular techniques have been used to address key questions, for example about the human genetic system, the geographical movements of human populations in the past, and primate evolution. Providing not only a timely overview of current research, this book also presents an insight into the potential significance of molecular biology in the decades to come, that will be of interest to all biological anthropologists as well as molecular biologists, human geneticists, palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists.

This study brings together health-care professionals and scholars from a variety of disciplines who seek to understand, and prevent, the transmission of HIV. The biological and social factors concerned with the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS has resulted in dedicated research from each of the disciplines and provided unique insights into the disease. By assembling their insights in one multidisciplinary volume, this book provides a more complete picture of the complex disease, and demonstrates why preventing the spread of HIV will require interdisciplinary collaboration.

Contemporary feminist advocacy in human rights, international criminal law, and peace and security is gripped by the issue of sexual violence in conflict. But it hasn't always been this way. Analyzing feminist international legal and political work over the past three decades, Karen Engle argues that it was not inevitable that sexual violence in conflict would become such a prominent issue. Engle reveals that as feminists from around the world began to pay an enormous amount of attention to sexual violence in conflict, they often did so at the cost of attention to other issues, including the anti-militarism of the women's peace movement; critiques of economic maldistribution, imperialism, and cultural essentialism by feminists from the global South; and the sex-positive positions of many feminists involved in debates about sex work and pornography. The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict offers a detailed examination of how these feminist commitments were not merely deprioritized, but undermined, by efforts to address the issue of sexual violence in conflict. Engle's analysis reinvigorates vital debates about feminist goals and priorities, and spurs readers to question much of today's common sense about the causes, effects, and proper responses to sexual violence in conflict.

'Intensely moving, vital and artful' - Guardian 'A dizzying ride . . . both timely and beguiling' - Sunday Times At a moment in which basic rights are once again in danger, Olivia Laing conducts an ambitious investigation into the body and its discontents, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to chart a daring course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, from gay rights and sexual liberation to feminism and the civil rights movement. Drawing on her own experiences in protest and travelling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of McCarthy-era America, Laing grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century, among them Nina Simone, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag and Malcolm X. Everybody is a crucial examination of the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world. Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 'An ambitious, absorbing achievement that will make your brain hum' - Evening Standard 'Laing's gift for weaving big ideas together with lyrical prose sets her alongside the likes of Arundhati Roy, John Berger and James Baldwin. In other words, she is among the most significant voices of our time.' - Financial Times

Primate Dentition provides a comparative dental anatomy of living non-human primates that brings together information from many disciplines to present the most useful and comprehensive database possible in one consolidated text. The core of the book consists of comparative morphological and metrical descriptions with analyses, reference tables, and illustrations of the permanent dentitions of 85 living primate species to establish a baseline for future investigations. The volume also discusses dental microstructure and its importance in understanding taxonomic relationships between species, data on deciduous dentitions, prenatal dental development and ontogenetic processes, and material to aid age estimation and life history studies.

Ethnoarchaeology in Action is the first and only comprehensive study of ethnoarchaeology, the ethnographic study of living cultures from archaeological perspectives, and is designed for senior undergraduates and above in archaeology and anthropology. Its geographical coverage is global and the book includes relevant theory, practical advice regarding fieldwork, and complete topical coverage of the discipline. Critical discussions of varied case studies make this a very readable book. It is illustrated with numerous figures and photographs of many leading ethnoarchaeologists in action.

Grimshaw sets a new agenda for visual anthropology, attempting to transcend the old division between image and text-based ethnography. She argues for the use of vision as a critical tool with which anthropologists can address issues of knowledge and technique. The first part of the book critically examines anthropology's history, focusing on the work of key individuals--Rivers, Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown--in the context of early modern art and cinema. In the book's second part, Grimshaw considers the anthropological films of Jean Rouch, David and Judith MacDougall and Melissa Llewelyn-Davies.

Frontiers of Citizenship is an engagingly-written, innovative history of Brazil's black and indigenous people that redefines our understanding of slavery, citizenship, and the origins of Brazil's 'racial democracy'. Through groundbreaking archival research that brings the stories of slaves, Indians, and settlers to life, Yuko Miki challenges the widespread idea that Brazilian Indians 'disappeared' during the colonial era, paving the way for the birth of Latin America's largest black nation. Focusing on the postcolonial settlement of the Atlantic frontier and Rio de Janeiro, Miki argues that the exclusion and inequality of indigenous and African-descended people became embedded in the very construction of Brazil's remarkably inclusive nationhood. She demonstrates that to understand the full scope of central themes in Latin American history - race and national identity, unequal citizenship, popular politics, and slavery and abolition - one must engage the histories of both the African diaspora and the indigenous Americas.

Over seventy per cent of the population in industrialized nations live in cities; soon, so will most of the world's population. This volume examines the impact of urban living on human health and biology. Cities pose numerous and diverse social and biological challenges to human populations which bear little resemblance to the forces that moulded human biology through millions of years of evolution. Urban populations in industrialized nations have distinctive patterns of behaviour, social stratification, stress, infectious disease, diet, activity and exposure to pollutants from years of industrialization. These features affect diverse aspects of human function including human nutrition, energy expenditure, growth and reproduction. This volume begins with an introduction to the history of urbanism and poverty, infectious disease, reproductive function, child health, nutrition, physical activity and psychosocial stress. The book will appeal to workers in urban planning, human biology, anthropology, preventative medicine, human ecology and related areas.

Douglass, Ellison and Marley lived on racial frontiers. Their interactions with mixed audiences made them key figures in an interracial consciousness and culture, integrative ancestors who can be claimed by more than one group. An abolitionist who criticized black racialism; the author of Invisible Man, a landmark of modernity and black literature; a musician whose allegiance was to "God's side, who cause me to come from black and white." The lives of these three men illustrate how our notions of "race" have been constructed out of a repression of the interracial.

The Origins of Humankind gives a concise account of human evolution. It covers evolutionary theory, the primates, the human fossil story, the cultural evolution of humans and the origins of agriculture and civilisation. It begins with an account of the development of ideas about evolution, from pre-Darwinian theories through to the study of molecular evolution, and goes on to give detailed explanations of the physical and evolutionary stages leading to Homo sapiens.

To look upon a mummy is to come face to face with our past. This book presents the story of mummification as a practice worldwide. Mummies have been found on every continent, some deliberately preserved by use of a variety of complex techniques (as with the ancient Egyptians), others accidentally by dry baking heat, intense cold and ice, or by tanning in peat bogs. By examining these preserved humans, we can get profound insights into the lives, health, culture and deaths of individuals and populations long gone. The first edition of this book was acclaimed as a classic. This readable new edition builds on these foundations, investigating the fantastic new findings in South America, Europe and the Far East. It will be a must-have volume for anyone working in paleopathology and a fascinating read for all those interested in anthropology, archaeology, and the history of medicine.