Healthcare issues have assumed significant socio-economic and political significance in contemporary India. Both the central and the state governments have responded to criticisms of health care inaccessibility by including it as a part of its developmental policies in the last two decades. Given this context, the contributors to this volume explore how the health care system is structured in India; the role of the state, market, private, and corporate sector in health care; the distribution of basic health care facilities by the state across caste, class, gender, and spatial locations; the implications of increasing clinical trials and use of pharmaceuticals in terms of cost, exclusion, and ethicality; how globalization created opportunities or built hurdles for democratizing health care facilities; and the critical role of communities in the new health care system. This edited volume thus provides a holistic narrative that explains the politics of health care access in terms of distribution, utilization, and outcomes as well as the context in which health inequalities are reproduced which is critical not only to our scholarly understanding of health care but to informing the development of health care policy in India at a critical juncture.

Both natural and cultural selection played an important role in shaping human evolution. Since cultural change can itself be regarded as evolutionary, a process of gene-culture coevolution is operative. The study of human evolution - in past, present and future - is therefore not restricted to biology. An inclusive comprehension of human evolution relies on integrating insights about cultural, economic and technological evolution with relevant elements of evolutionary biology. In addition, proximate causes and effects of cultures need to be added to the picture - issues which are at the forefront of social sciences like anthropology, economics, geography and innovation studies. This book highlights discussions on the many topics to which such generalised evolutionary thought has been applied: the arts, the brain, climate change, cooking, criminality, environmental problems, futurism, gender issues, group processes, humour, industrial dynamics, institutions, languages, medicine, music, psychology, public policy, religion, sex, sociality and sports.

A collection of articles that addresses the challenges that European ethnology is facing. Representing a variety of localities, they give new insights and perspectives to the importance of doing empirical fieldwork and of seeing the emergence of new patterns as well as the remaking of old ones.

Featuring several all-new chapters, revisions, and updates, the Second Edition of A Cultural Approach to Interpersonal Communication presents an interdisciplinary collection of key readings that explore how interpersonal communication is socially and culturally mediated. * Includes key readings from the fields of cultural and linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and communication studies * Features new chapters that focus on digital media * Offers new introductory chapters and an expanded toolkit of concepts that students may draw on to link culture, communication, and community * Expands the Ethnographer s Toolkit to include an introduction to basic concepts followed by a range of ethnographic case studies

"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.

The dead tell no tales. Or do they? In this fascinating book, Clark Spencer Larsen shows that the dead can speak to us--about their lives, and ours--through the remarkable insights of bioarchaeology, which reconstructs the lives and lifestyles of past peoples based on the study of skeletal remains. The human skeleton is an amazing storehouse of information. It records the circumstances of our growth and development as reflected in factors such as disease, stress, diet, nutrition, climate, activity, and injury. Bioarchaeologists, by combining the methods of forensic science and archaeology, along with the resources of many other disciplines (including chemistry, geology, physics, and biology), "read" the information stored in bones to understand what life was really like for our human ancestors. They are unearthing some surprises.

For instance, the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago has commonly been seen as a major advancement in the course of human evolution. However, as Larsen provocatively shows, this change may not have been so positive. Compared to their hunter-gatherer ancestors, many early farmers suffered more disease, had to work harder, and endured a poorer quality of life due to poorer diets and more marginal living conditions. Moreover, the past 10,000 years have seen dramatic changes in the human physiognomy as a result of alterations in our diet and lifestyle. Some modern health problems, including obesity and chronic disease, may also have their roots in these earlier changes.

Drawing on vivid accounts from his own experiences as a bioarchaeologist, Larsen guides us through some of the key developments in recent human evolution, including the adoption of agriculture, the arrival of Europeans in the Americas and the biological consequences of this contact, and the settlement of the American West in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Written in a lively and engaging manner, this book is for anyone interested in what the dead have to tell us about the living.

"A remarkable work of scholarship and of fieldwork, "Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town" should be read by every social scientist interested in nationalism, or ethnicity, or community life, or Eastern Europe. It does a terrific job of showing how large-scale social changes and projects of identity play out in a local context. Along the way it raises important questions for both social theory and public affairs. It should shape discussion for years to come."--Craig Calhoun, Social Science Research Council

"For over a decade, Rogers Brubaker has been calling into question the entire edifice underpinning the study of ethnicity by challenging the idea that ethnicity is about real groups founded on 'Ethnic identities.' This superb book on Hungarians and Romanians in a Transylvanian town amply demonstrates the fruitfulness of his conception. Not only will this be the definitive statement on contemporary ethno-national relations in this very complex region in Europe: it will become a classic for the analysis of such relations in many other parts of the world."--Katherine Verdery, Graduate Center, City University of New York

"Here in this uncommonly sensitive study, Rogers Brubaker employs perspectives and analytical idioms rarely coupled in the study of ethnicity and nationhood as applied to a distinct geographical area. We are taken to Cluj, a city in western Romania scarcely known to the West but one whose profile fairly shimmers on the page with tensions accruing from a combined and culturally rich Hungarian-Romanian past. The author probes the symbolic and ritualistic aspects of daily life in the surrounding area, leading to groundbreaking views onethnicity."--Istvan Deak, Columbia University

"This wonderful book will be welcomed by students and scholars of ethnicity, because there are so few, if any, other studies that look closely at how decisions about one's ethnicity and nationality are actually made. The first half provides an excellent review of Cluj's and Transylvania's history, and the detailed examination of life in Cluj that makes up the second half represents a unique contribution to our understanding of how ethnicity really functions in a contested space."--Daniel Chirot, University of Washington, author of "Modern Tyrants"

"A fine book that will be widely read and influential. Not only does it serve as an empirical companion piece to the more theoretical essays in Rogers Brubaker's "Ethnicity without Groups," it also breaks new methodological ground while presenting a clear and subtle analysis of complex, little researched, but important social patterns associated with that trademark of modern times, the 'nation' or ethnic group."--Jeremy King, Mount Holyoke College, author of "Budweisers into Czechs and Germans"

Historical studies of white racial thought focus exclusively on white ideas about the "Negroes". Bay's study is the first to examine the reverse -- black ideas about whites, and, consequently, black understandings of race and racial categories. Bay examines African-American ideas about white racial character and destiny in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In examining black racial thought, this work also explores the extent to which black Americans accepted or rejected 19th century notions about innate racial characteristics.

""Racial Situations" is an innovative and theoretically sophisticated study of the process of racial formation among white residents of urban Detroit. Hartigan's ethnographic material is vivid and compelling and yields an uncompromisingly complex view of how whiteness is lived in American society. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the dynamic interplay of race, class, and culture in the everyday lives of urban residents."--Steven Gregory, Columbia University

"John Hartigan's distinctive ethnography will propel white readers across boundaries that they might prefer not to acknowledge. He effects a crucial move, long hoped for in 'whiteness studies'-a critical examination of liberal notions of race through a confrontation with whites' own despised 'others.'"--George Marcus, Rice University

"John Hartigan is a terrific listener and an insightful thinker, and this book shows why both are important. In an era of seemingly inescapable racial thinking in this country, Hartigan asks us to notice how and when 'race' matters, and to be open to the possibility that some situations will surprise us. Richly nuanced and wonderfully peopled, this book is also courageous. It conveys compassion and understanding even when we might just expect criticism. Compelling, at times even gripping, this is a book I am very glad to have read."--Virginia Dominguez, University of Iowa

"Drawing on rich comparative ethnography and subtle theorizing, Racial Situations is a timely reflection on major changes in the contemporary United States. The book makes an important contribution to theoretical and conceptual work on race and class in the various disciplines that converge aroundcultural studies and also provides this vital and contested field with further evidence of the value to be gained from innovative ethnographic research."--Roger Rouse, University of California, Davis

This work brings together research about a diverse range of groups: Welsh, Irish, Jewish, Arab, White, African and Indian. The aim of the book is to critique orthodox explanations in the field, drawing upon the best of "old" and "new" theory. Contemporary questions include issues about the black/white model of racism, the underplaying of anti-Semitism the need to examine ethnic majorities, as well as whiteness and the reconfiguration of the United Kingdom.

This volume offers comparative and relational analyses of race, ethnicity, and culture at a time when boundaries designating radicalized groups are being radically redrawn. Particular attention is paid to how best to theorize "race relations" in the context of demographic shifts, changing class formations, and new forms of global dislocations.

This comprehensive and timely reader covers a range of topics including critical race theory, class and nationality, multiracial feminism, mixed race, the whiteness debates, cultural citizenship, and globalization. The contributors include Angela Davis, Stuart Hall, Richard Delgado, Robert Miles, Michael Eric Dyson, Saskia Sassen, Etienne Balibar, Patricia Hill Collins, Renato Rosaldo, Stanley Arononwitz, Collette Guillaumin, Nira Yuval-Davis, and Maxine Baca Zinn.

Ethnicized border economies and tourist emotions, urban witchcraft and working lives, predictive genetic testing and vaccination programmes - the present issue of Ethnologia Europaea assembles a range of topics that demonstrate the vitality of the field in highly diverse arenas. David Picard probes the personal transformations of Germans touring the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion. Shifts and continuities in the border economies of the sub-Carpathian Hungarian social world are explored in Anne Marie Losonczy's contribution. Manuela Cunha and Jean-Yves Durand examine vaccine acceptability and the production of dissent as it emerges in routine vaccination in French and Portuguese settings, whereas Niclas Hagen traces the impact of potential genetic knowledge, taking a case of Huntington's disease as his point of departure. Scrutinizing the diversity of work lives, Irene Gotz questions the viability of the term post-Fordism in the new ethnography of work. Victoria Hegner analyses the ways in which neo-pagan witches interact with urban terrain. Finally, Carina Ren and Morten Krogh Petersen take a look at the sprouting cross-fertilizations between ethnology and Actor-Network Theory and how these intersections impact the study of culture.

The ideology of the American dream--the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort--is the very soul of the American nation. According to Jennifer Hochschild, we have failed to face up to what that dream requires of our society, and yet we possess no other central belief that can save the United States from chaos. In this compassionate but frightening book, Hochschild attributes our national distress to the ways in which whites and African Americans have come to view their own and each other's opportunities. By examining the hopes and fears of whites and especially of blacks of various social classes, Hochschild demonstrates that America's only unifying vision may soon vanish in the face of racial conflict and discontent.

Hochschild combines survey data and vivid anecdote to clarify several paradoxes. Since the 1960s white Americans have seen African Americans as having better and better chances to achieve the dream. At the same time middle-class blacks, by now one-third of the African American population, have become increasingly frustrated personally and anxious about the progress of their race. Most poor blacks, however, cling with astonishing strength to the notion that they and their families can succeed--despite their terrible, perhaps worsening, living conditions. Meanwhile, a tiny number of the estranged poor, who have completely given up on the American dream or any other faith, threaten the social fabric of the black community and the very lives of their fellow blacks.

Hochschild probes these patterns and gives them historical depth by comparing the experience of today's African Americans to that of white ethnic immigrants at the turn of the century. She concludes by claiming that America's only alternative to the social disaster of intensified racial conflict lies in the inclusiveness, optimism, discipline, and high-mindedness of the American dream at its best.

At the outset of the twentieth century, the Nivkhi of Sakhalin Island were a small population of fishermen under Russian dominion and an Asian cultural sway. The turbulence of the decades that followed would transform them dramatically. While Russian missionaries hounded them for their pagan ways, Lenin praised them; while Stalin routed them in purges, Khrushchev gave them respite; and while Brezhnev organized complex resettlement campaigns, Gorbachev pronounced that they were free to resume a traditional life. But what is tradition after seven decades of building a Soviet world?

Based on years of research in the former Soviet Union, Bruce Grant's book draws upon Nivkh interviews, newly opened archives, and rarely translated Soviet ethnographic texts to examine the effects of this remarkable state venture in the construction of identity. With a keen sensitivity, Grant explores the often paradoxical participation by Nivkhi in these shifting waves of Sovietization and poses questions about how cultural identity is constituted and reconstituted, restructured and dismantled.

Part chronicle of modernization, part saga of memory and forgetting, "In the Soviet House of Culture" is an interpretive ethnography of one people's attempts to recapture the past as they look toward the future. This is a book that will appeal to anthropologists and historians alike, as well as to anyone who is interested in the people and politics of the former Soviet Union.

A group of contributors highlight advances made in paleopathology and demography through the analyses of historic cemeteries. These advancements include associations of documentary evidence with skeletal evaluations, insights into history gained through the use of skeletal analyses when no documentation exists and applications of new evaluative techniques. Provides a glimpse into the problems faced by researchers embarking on the excavation and/or analysis of historic human remains.

Full Contributors:
Ellis Cashmore, Staffordshire University, Michael Banton, University of Bristol, James Jennings, University of Massachusetts, Barry Troyna, University of Warwick, Pierre Van Den Berghe, University of Washington, Heribert Adam, Simon Fraser University, Molefi Kete Asanti, Temple University, Philadelphia, Stephanie Athey, Stetson University, Carl Bagley, Staffordshire University, Kingsley Bolton, University of Hong Kong, Roy L Brooks, San Diego Law School, Richard Broome, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Bonnie G Campodonico, Santa Clara University, Robin Cohen, University of Warwick, James W Covington, University of Tampa, Guy Cumberbatch, Aston University, John A Garcia, University of Arizona, Ian Hancock, University of Texas, Michael Hechter, University of Arizona / Oxford University, Gita Jaraj, Freelance Writer, Robert Kerstein, University of Tampa, Zeus Leonardo, University of California, Peter McLaren, University of California, Eugene McLaughlin, Open University, Robert Miles, University of Glasogow, Kogila Moodley, University of British Columbia, Marshall Murphree, University of Zimbabwe, Timothy J Lukes, Santa Clara Univeristy, George Paton, Aston University, Peter Ratcliffe, University of Warwick, Amy I Shepper, University of South Florida, John Solomos, University of Southampton, Stuart D Stein, University of the West of England, Betty Lee Sung, City College of New York, Roy Todd, University of Leeds, Steven Vertovec, University of Warwick, Robin Ward, Formerly of Nottingham Trent University, Loretta Zimmerman, University of Portland

This chronicles the interrelation of gender, class and race which shaped British imperialism and, subsequently, its bloody dismantling.

Ethnography familiarizes readers with ethnographic research and writing traditions through detailed discussions of ethnography's history, exploratory design, representational conventions, and standards of evaluation. Responding to the proliferation of ethnography both within and outside of academia, in this book, Anthony Kwame Harrison grounds ethnographic practices within the anthropological principles of cultural awareness, thick description, and embodied understanding. At the same time, the book introduces new frameworks for grasping ethnography's simultaneous strategic and improvisational imperatives, as well as for appreciating its experimental conventions of social science and humanistic research reporting. Central to this process, Ethnography introduces the concept of ethnographic comportment-defined as an historically informed politics of position that impacts ethnographers' conduct and disposition-which serves as a standard for gauging and engaging ethnography throughout the text. Part research primer, writing guide, and assessment handbook, Ethnography provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to one of the richest and most expansive traditions of qualitative research.

Articles included: Emotional Geography. Authenticity, Embodiment and Cultural Heritage; Anniversaries and Jubilees. Changing Celebratory Customs in Modern Times; The Meaning of Weaving. Textiles in a Museum Magazine; Contested Modernities. Politics, Culture and Urbanisation in Portugal: A Case Study from the Greater Lisbon Area; The Outsiders Gaze as Part of the Methodological Toolkit?; Reflections on the Research Project the "Musikantenstadl"; The Camino de Santiago. The Interplay of European Heritage and New Traditions.

A rapidly growing number of double homes connect different parts of Europe in new ways. The second home can be a cottage in the woods, an apartment in the Costa del Sol or a restored farm house in Tuscany. However, other forms of double homes must be added to these landscapes of leisure. There are long distance commuters who spend most of their week in an overnight flat, in a caravan on a dreary parking lot or at a construction site. Economic migrants dream of a house 'back home' for vacations or retirement. Dual homes come in all shapes and sizes -- from the caravans of touring circus artists to people turning sailboats into a different kind of domestic space. This special issue of "Ethnologic Europaea" captures some dimensions of lives that are anchored in two different homes. How are such lives organised in time and space in terms of identification, belonging and emotion? How do they, in very concrete terms, render material transnational lives? The next issue of the journal (2008:1) will take such a comparative perspective into another direction as the authors will consider different kinds of research strategies to achieve European comparisons and to gain new cultural perspectives on European societies and everyday life.

This volume starts out with two contrasting studies of monuments. How does the seemingly stability of stone and bronze hide a constantly changing cultural use? Anne Eriksen looks at the history of ruins in Norway. The murmur of ruins turns out to be a speech of modernity, a way of emotionalising place and history. Viktoriya Hryaban discusses the fate of socialist monuments in Ukraine and shows how the attempts to create alternative post-socialist memorials reproduce a traditional Soviet cultural grammar. Lace is a dominating decorative element in many Turkish Dutch homes. It has become a sign of "Turkishness" but as Hilje van der Horst points out, peoples relations to this mundane domestic element mirror some important conflicts and ideas about modernity and ethnicity. From the cultural media of monuments and lace, the discussion moves on to two more classic mass media and their role in identity politics. Stijn Reijnders explores a popular Dutch game show that has managed to survive for decades, becoming something of a national institution for some, an example of an outmoded genre for others. How does the involvement mirror ideas of an imagined national community? Finally, Silke Meyer looks at an 18th century national stereotype of The German quack in English popular debate and mass media. How did this caricature of Germanness become an alter ego of the English?

Tooth enamel and dentin are the most studied hard tissues used to explore hominin evolution, life history, diet, health, and culture. Surprisingly, cementum (the interface between the alveolar bone and the root dentin) remains the least studied dental tissue even though its unique growth, which is continuous throughout life, has been acknowledged since the 1950s. This interdisciplinary volume presents state-of-the-art studies in cementum analysis and its broad interpretative potential in anthropology. The first section focuses on cementum biology; the second section presents optimized multi-species and standardized protocols to estimate age and season at death precisely. The final section highlights innovative applications in zooarchaeology, paleodemography, bioarchaeology, paleoanthropology, and forensic anthropology, demonstrating how cementochronology can profoundly affect anthropological theories. With a wealth of illustrations of cementum histology and accompanying online resources, this book provides the perfect toolkit for scholars interested in studying past and current human and animal populations.

In September 1781, the captain of the British slave ship Zong ordered 133 slaves thrown overboard, enabling the ship's owners to file an insurance claim for their lost "cargo." Accounts of this horrific event quickly became a staple of abolitionist discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Ian Baucom revisits, in unprecedented detail, the Zong atrocity, the ensuing court cases, reactions to the event and trials, and the business and social dealings of the Liverpool merchants who owned the ship. Drawing on the work of an astonishing array of literary and social theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Giovanni Arrighi, Jacques Derrida, and many others, he argues that the tragedy is central not only to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the political and cultural archives of the black Atlantic but also to the history of modern capital and ethics. To apprehend the Zong tragedy, Baucom suggests, is not to come to terms with an isolated atrocity but to encounter a logic of violence key to the unfolding history of Atlantic modernity. Baucom contends that the massacre and the trials that followed it bring to light an Atlantic cycle of capital accumulation based on speculative finance, an economic cycle that has not yet run its course. The extraordinarily abstract nature of today's finance capital is the late-eighteenth-century system intensified. Yet, as Baucom highlights, since the late 1700s, this rapacious speculative culture has had detractors. He traces the emergence and development of a counter-discourse he calls melancholy realism through abolitionist and human-rights texts, British romantic poetry, Scottish moral philosophy, and the work of late-twentieth-century literary theorists. In revealing how the Zong tragedy resonates within contemporary financial systems and human-rights discourses, Baucom puts forth a deeply compelling, utterly original theory of history: one that insists that an eighteenth-century atrocity is not past but present within the future we now inhabit.

The island of Mauritius lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean, about 550 miles east of Madagascar. Uninhabited until the arrival of colonists in the late sixteenth century, Mauritius was subsequently populated by many different peoples as successive waves of colonizers and slaves arrived at its shores. The French ruled the island from the early eighteenth century until the early nineteenth. Throughout the 1700s, ships brought men and women from France to build the colonial population and from Africa and India as slaves. In Creating the Creole Island, the distinguished historian Megan Vaughan traces the complex and contradictory social relations that developed on Mauritius under French colonial rule, paying particular attention to questions of subjectivity and agency. Combining archival research with an engaging literary style, Vaughan juxtaposes extensive analysis of court records with examinations of the logs of slave ships and of colonial correspondence and travel accounts. The result is a close reading of life on the island, power relations, colonialism, and the process of cultural creolization. Vaughan brings to light complexities of language, sexuality, and reproduction as well as the impact of the French Revolution. Illuminating a crucial period in the history of Mauritius, Creating the Creole Island is a major contribution to the historiography of slavery, colonialism, and creolization across the Indian Ocean.

Through an intensive examination of photographs and engravings from European, Peruvian, and U.S. archives, Deborah Poole explores the role visual images and technologies have played in shaping modern understandings of race. "Vision, Race, and Modernity" traces the subtle shifts that occurred in European and South American depictions of Andean Indians from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, and explains how these shifts led to the modern concept of "racial difference." While Andean peoples were always thought of as different by their European describers, it was not until the early nineteenth century that European artists and scientists became interested in developing a unique visual and typological language for describing their physical features. Poole suggests that this "scientific" or "biological" discourse of race cannot be understood outside a modern visual economy. Although the book specifically documents the depictions of Andean peoples, Poole's findings apply to the entire colonized world of the nineteenth century.

Poole presents a wide range of images from operas, scientific expeditions, nationalist projects, and picturesque artists that both effectively elucidate her argument and contribute to an impressive history of photography. "Vision, Race, and Modernity" is a fascinating attempt to study the changing terrain of racial theory as part of a broader reorganization of vision in European society and culture.