Today's world is one marked by the signs of digital capitalism and global capitalist expansion, and China is increasingly being integrated into this global system of production and consumption. As a result, China's immediate material impact is now felt almost everywhere in the world; however, the significance and process of this integration is far from understood. This study shows how the a priori categories of statistical reasoning came to be re-born and re-lived in the People's Republic - as essential conditions for the possibility of a new mode of knowledge and governance. From the ruins of the Maoist revolution China has risen through a mode of quantitative self-objectification. As the author argues, an epistemological rift has separated the Maoist years from the present age of the People's Republic, which appears on the global stage as a mirage. This study is an ethnographic investigation of concepts - of the conceptual forces that have produced and been produced by - two forms of knowledge, life, and governance. As the author shows, the world of China, contrary to the common view, is not the Chinese world; it is a symptomatic moment of our world at the present time.

Each family has its secrets, ones that shape family communication and relationships in a way generally unknown to the outsider and often the family itself. Autoethnographers, students of these relationships, confront many silences in their attempts to understand these social worlds. Now issued as a Routledge Education Classic Edition, Accidental Ethnography delves into this shadowy world of pain and loss in the hopes of finding productive, ethical avenues for transforming the secret lives of families into powerful narratives of hope. It merges autoethnographic method with the therapeutic power of storytelling to heal family wounds. A new preface text by the author reflects on the changes in the field of qualitative research and on his own research journey since the publication of the original edition.

Each family has its secrets, ones that shape family communication and relationships in a way generally unknown to the outsider and often the family itself. Autoethnographers, students of these relationships, confront many silences in their attempts to understand these social worlds. Now issued as a Routledge Education Classic Edition, Accidental Ethnography delves into this shadowy world of pain and loss in the hopes of finding productive, ethical avenues for transforming the secret lives of families into powerful narratives of hope. It merges autoethnographic method with the therapeutic power of storytelling to heal family wounds. A new preface text by the author reflects on the changes in the field of qualitative research and on his own research journey since the publication of the original edition.

In its assessment of the current "state of play" of ethnographic practice in social anthropology, this volume explores the challenges that changing social forms and changing understandings of "the field" pose to contemporary ethnographic methods. These challenges include the implications of the remarkable impact social anthropology is having on neighboring disciplines such as history, sociology, cultural studies, human geography and linguistics, as well as the potential 'costs' of this success for the discipline. Contributors also discuss how the ethnographic method is influenced by current institutional contexts and historical "traditions" across a range of settings. Here ethnography is featured less as a methodological "tool-box" or technique but rather as a subject on which to reflect.

Marit Melhuus is Professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her earlier work has been on issues of gender, morality and change in Latin America, and her publications include "Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas. Contesting the Power of Latin American Gender Imagery" (co-edited with Kristi Anne Stolen, Verso, 1996). Her current research concerns biotechnology, kinship, and law, and she has published numerous articles on these questions. Recent publications include "Holding Worlds Together: Ethnographies of Truth and Belonging" (co-edited with Marianne Lien, Berghahn, 2007) and "La Norvege, vues de l'interieur, " a special issue of Ethnologie francaise (jointly edited with Sophie Chevalier and Marianne Lien, 2009).

Jon P. Mitchell is Reader in anthropology at the University of Sussex. His main ethnographic research was conducted in Malta, covering themes of ritual and religion, politics and the state, history, memory and modernity, and popular culture. His publications include "Ambivalent Europeans: Ritual, Memory and the Public Sphere in Malta" (Routledge, 2002), "Powers of Good and Evil: Social Transformation and Popular Belief" (jointly edited with Paul Clough, Berghahn, 2002), "Modernity in the Mediterranean" (edited special issue of Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 2002), "Human Rights in Global Perspective" (jointly edited with Richard Ashby Wilson, Routledge, 2003). His current research focuses on the religious origins of secular charity.

Helena Wulff is Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Her research interests focus on expressive forms of culture in a transnational perspective, with a recent interest in writing and Irish literature as cultural process and form. Among her latest publications are "Dancing at the Crossroads: Memory and Mobility in Ireland" (2008, Berghahn), "The Emotions: A Cultural Reader" (editor, 2007, Berg), and "Ballet across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers" (Berg, 1998, reprinted 2001). She is also Editor of "Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, " the Journal of the European Association of Social Anthropologists."

Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory is a unique collection that integrates two increasingly key areas of social and cultural research: the body and ethnography. * Breaks new ground in an area of study that continues to be a central theme of debate and research across the humanities and social sciences* Draws on ethnography as a useful means of exploring our everyday social and cultural environments* Constitutes an important step in developing two key areas of study, the body and ethnography, and the relationship between them* Brings together an international and multi--disciplinary team of scholars

Illustrating the diversity and richness of biosocial theory, this contributor volume introduces numerous new views on the biological and social causes of criminality and pro/antisociality. From the biosocial perspective, criminal behavior becomes part of a behavioral continuum which may theoretically include basic moral reasoning and altruism. Contributors from diverse fields outline basic assumptions of the biosocial perspective. They examine various evolutionary, genetic, and neurochemical aspects of criminality; and push the limits of current knowledge to the outer edges of biosocial theorizing. This volume is intended to inform social scientists, particularly criminologists, of recent developments in biosocial approaches to the study of pro/antisociality and criminality.

It is the intent of the editors to give readers of this book a clear picture of the biosocial approach to the study of pro/antisociality. Emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of this field, contributors were selected from diverse academic backgrounds. The volume contains seventeen chapters and is organized in four sections. The first section conceptualizes the field, identifies behavioral and demographic variables correlated with criminality, and discusses the degree to which experts currently subscribe to the biosocial perspective. Section Two examines the contribution of evolutionary and genetic factors to variations in criminality. Section Three focuses on how brain functioning relates to pro/antisociality. The final section extends the theoretical limits of existing knowledge, illustrating the potential of this approach to social science.

With more than 40% of people eventually facing a cancer diagnosis, Conversing with Cancer is a much-needed addition to understanding and improving cancer care through strong communication among providers, patients, and caregivers. Each person whose life is affected by a cancer diagnosis-patient, healthcare provider, caregiver-has information and needs information in order to make the best decisions possible under the circumstances. After studying and writing about the topics of communication and cancer for many years separately, authors Lisa Sparks and Anna Leahy combine their expertise in this new tour de force. Here, they apply principles from the field of health communication to the cancer care experience, drawing from a wide range of scholarship to offer a comprehensive view of cancer care communication and extend existing work into new insights. Engaging chapters cover all phases of the journey through cancer, from prevention to recovery or end-of-life; analyze the roles of the variety of cultural and social identities and relationships; and explore written, verbal, non-verbal, and electronic communication. In addition, this book draws from the real-life stories of cancer patients themselves to enrich the book's unique discussions and to better understand how theory can be put into practice. Conversing with Cancer is ideal for use in health communication classes, medical and nursing programs, and formal caregiver training. In addition, it is useful for cancer patient and caregiver supports groups and for individual providers, patients, and caregivers.

Two-Faced Racism examines and explains the racial attitudes and behaviours exhibited by whites in private settings. While there are many books that deal with public attitudes, behaviours, and incidences concerning race and racism (frontstage), there are few studies on the attitudes whites display among friends, family, and other whites in private settings (backstage). The core of this book draws upon 626 journals of racial events kept by white college students at twenty-eight colleges in the United States. The book seeks to comprehend how whites think in racial terms by analyzing their reported racial events.

In many respects, this volume is a pioneer effort in anthropological literature. It remains firmly part of the genre of cooperative research, or "interdisciplinary research," though at the time of its original publication that phrase had yet to be coined. Additionally, this work is more theoretical in nature than a faithful anthropological record, as all the essays were written in New York City, on a low budget, and without fieldwork. The significance of these studies lies in the fact that Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples was the first attempt to think about the very complex problems of cultural character and social structure, coupled with a meticulous execution of comparative study.

The novelist Joseph Conrad expressed a great truth when he said: "The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future," Our evolutionary history of noble acts and foul deeds, leading to survival and reproduction, guarantees that we understand the most essential facets of our physical and social environment. The nature of our struggles--our lusts, our fears, our objectivity, our irra-tionality--lies embedded in our cellular DNA and the neurons of our mind, there to play itself out much like it did in the past and much like it will in the future. Many have seen the links between our minds and the universe, the common thread of our existence and the inevitability of our loves and hates. This book includes many demonstrations that our nature has been on the minds and lips of many--poets, play-wrights, philosophers, historians, novelists, kings, slaves, religious leaders, and the great-est of knaves. From Ralph Waldo Emerson to Arthur Schopenhauer, from Aldous Huxley to Arthur Conan Doyle, from Aristotle to William Shakespeare, the truths about our-selves have come tumbling out. Reflecting on their thoughts we see ourselves. The universal nature of our being reflects our common origins and our bittersweet destiny. In A Sociobiology Compendium, Del Thiessen mines the richness of biological inves-tigations of human behavior, comparing current views of human behavior with expres-sions by non-scientists who have, in one way or another, touched the evolutionary strings of men and women. He begins each section with a brief account of biological notions of human behavior. The book shows in astonishing ways how the earlier thoughts of men and women from all cultures anticipate the biological observations about our being. A Sociobiology Compendium will be engaging reading for all psychologists, sociologists, and biologists.

In this edited collection, institutional ethnographers draw on their field research experiences to address different aspects of institutional ethnographic practice. As institutional ethnography embraces the actualities of people's experiences and lives, the contributors utilize their research to reveal how institutional relations and regimes are organized. As a whole, the books aims to provide readers with an accurate overview of what it is like to practice institutional ethnography, as well as the main varieties of approaches involved in the research.

"I would recommend this book to anyone contemplating the study of religion using interviews and/or participant observations."--"Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion"

"This is a rich collection in every sense of the word. It is rich in ideas, in examples, and in approaches. . . . Beautifully written and impeccably edited."
--"Journal of Contemporary Religion"

"This is a timely book on the actual "doing" of ethnography, and how doing ethnography of religion demands specific attentiveness, not least to the transformations undergone by the observer herself."
--"Journal of Religion"

"This is an excellent and courageous book. It makes an important contribution to the social sciences and the sociology of religion in particular. It will help shape the way we do and think about field research and should be read by students and scholars alike."
-- "Sociology of Religion Book Reviews"

"The essays in this volume persuasively argue for the value of ethnographic research, which complements and enriches statistical analysis done by more traditional quantitative social scientists."
--"Contemporary Sociology"

Over the last decade the sociology of religion and religious studies have experienced a surge of ethnographic research. Scholars now use ethnography, as anthropologists have long done, as a valued source of knowledge from which they draw their pictures of the religious world.

Yet, many researchers of religion have yet to grapple with the issues that are changing anthropologists' use of the method. Personal Knowledge and Beyond seeks to foster a cross-disciplinary rethinking of ethnography's possibilities and limits for the study of religions. It providesan overview of recent debates while also pushing them in new directions. In addition, it offers critiques of some of anthropology's reigning conceptualizations.

The volume brings together many of the best-known ethnographic researchers of religion, including Karen McCarthy Brown, Lynn Davidman, Armin Geertz, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Mary Jo Neitz, and Thomas Tweed. Together, they share substantively from their fieldwork and consider the consequences for the study of religion of rejecting old ethnographic myths, as well as the risks of replacing them with new ones. The volume will be of interest to students as well as to experienced scholars in the field.

The rise of the multi-billion dollar ancestry testing industry points to one immutable truth about us as human beings: we want to know where we come from and who our ancestors were. John H. Relethford and Deborah A. Bolnick explore this topic and many more in this second edition of Reflections of Our Past. Where did modern humans come from and how important are the biological differences among us? Are we descended from Neandertals? How should we understand the connections between genetic ancestry, race, and identity? Were Native Americans the first to inhabit the Americas? Can we see evidence of the Viking invasions of Ireland a millennium ago even in the Irish of today? Through engaging examination of issues such as these, and using non-technical language, Reflections of Our Past shows how anthropologists use genetic information to suggest answers to fundamental questions about human history. By looking at genetic variation in the world today and in the past, we can reconstruct the recent and remote events and processes that have created the variation we see, providing a fascinating reflection of our genetic past.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Chapter 1.

"Provides important insight into the manner in which federal support of faith-based poverty relief initiatives affect religious identity in the Golden Triangle Region of rural Mississippi."--"Journal of Church and State"

"The book provides a thorough historical overview of the events that led up to the Bush administration's decision to promote faith-based social welfare. This thoughtful book is a useful addition to the growing literature on the subject and should be widely consulted."--"Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare"

"Well-written and clearly organized."--"Journal of Social Services"

"In depth profiles...with obvious strengths."--"Contemporary Sociology"

"The findings raise serious concerns related to discriminatory practices around who will get served, and the qualification of those providing the services. . . . Highly recommended."
--"CHOICE"

"The comparative case method stretched across a complex analytical framework sketches the terrain in broad, suggestive, analytical strokes. We benefit from the timeliness of Bartkowski and Regis's study."
--"American Journal of Sociology"

"Nothing short of exceptional..."Charitable Choices" is a very readable book that makes an evident contribution to contemporary discourse about welfare reform and its possibilities and pitfalls."
--"Social Forces"

aThese stories reveal not only the profound commitment that clergy can have for their flock but how existing social structures can render the poor invisible. Charitable Choices is more useful as a description of an under-recognized aspect of American religious life than as an analysis of government welfarepolicy.a
"Religious Studies Review"

Congregations and faith-based organizations have become key participants in America's welfare revolution. Recent legislation has expanded the social welfare role of religious communities, thus revealing a pervasive lack of faith in purely economic responses to poverty.

Charitable Choices is an ethnographic study of faith-based poverty relief in 30 congregations in the rural south. Drawing on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in Mississippi faith communities, it examines how religious conviction and racial dynamics shape congregational benevolence. Mississippi has long had the nation's highest poverty rate and was the first state to implement a faith-based welfare reform initiative. The book provides a grounded and even-handed treatment of congregational poverty relief rather than abstract theory on faith-based initiatives.

The volume examines how congregations are coping with national developments in social welfare policy and reveals the strategies that religious communities utilize to fight poverty in their local communities. By giving particular attention to the influence of theological convictions and organizational dynamics on religious service provision, it identifies both the prospects and pitfalls likely to result from the expansion of charitable choice.

Many believe that we are passing through a period during which, due largely to globalization's challenge to the idea and sovereignty of nation-states, there is now the intellectual and political space for the construction of new models of citizenship, involving new relations between individuals and their governments. These new relations may be mediated through individuals' membership in communities that are recognized within states. In various ways, the resurgence of ethnic nationalism, the rise of multiculturalism, the ideas associated with communitarianism, and the apparent erosion of national sovereignty have all contributed to the creation of this interest in new ways of conceptualizing citizenship and carrying out the tasks of governance.

Brooks and his colleagues examine various aspects of the challenge of cultural pluralism. Together they cover a wide range of national cases, theoretical issues, and empirical research. The collection is intended for all scholars, students, and researchers who have an interest in cultural pluralism, consociationalism, and inter-community relations in socieites divided by language, ethnicity, and culture.

In its assessment of the current "state of play" of ethnographic practice in social anthropology, this volume explores the challenges that changing social forms and changing understandings of "the field" pose to contemporary ethnographic methods. These challenges include the implications of the remarkable impact social anthropology is having on neighboring disciplines such as history, sociology, cultural studies, human geography and linguistics, as well as the potential 'costs' of this success for the discipline. Contributors also discuss how the ethnographic method is influenced by current institutional contexts and historical "traditions" across a range of settings. Here ethnography is featured less as a methodological "tool-box" or technique but rather as a subject on which to reflect.

What it means to be a Jew lies at the very heart of Confessions of a Secular Jew, a provocative memoir and a thoughtful speculation on the nature of Jewish identity and experience in an increasingly secular world.The legacy bequeathed to Eugene Goodheart was a "progressive" secular Yiddish education which identified Jewish struggles against oppression with working class struggles against exploitation. In the vanguard was the Soviet Union. Goodheart's heroes were Moses, Bar Kochbah, Judah Maccabee, Karl Marx and that strange honorary Jew, Joseph Stalin, whose anti-Semitism would later become known to the world. Confessions of a Secular Jew is the story of Goodheart's disillusionment with the naive, even false, progressivism of that education. At the same time, it is an attempt to rescue and come to grips with the positive remains of that education and heritage.In the introduction to the new Transaction edition of his memoir, Goodheart addresses the themes of social justice, Zionism, chosenness, messianism, and alienation from a secular Jewish perspective. The memoir takes the reader from Goodheart's coming of age in Brooklyn to his higher education at Columbia College in the early fifties and beyond to his varied career as university teacher and literary critic. The memoir provides memorable characterizations of writers whom he knew, among them Lionel Trilling (his teacher), Saul Bellow, Richard Wright (whom he met in Paris), Hannah Arendt, and Philip Rahv.

"In the wake of considerable recent biographical attention to Marcel Mauss in English-language publications, it is fitting that works by him still available only in French appear in translation. The Manual of Ethnography has been expertly translated by Dominique Lussier, and appropriately edited and introduced by N. J. Allen. This historically important document, ... reflects the youthful moment of modern anthropology when the questions and subjects of this discipline came to depend on rigorous collection of material from field research... an important historical document in the context of Mauss's teaching of anthropology and in the originary hopes for ethnography. Highly recommended." . George Marcus in Choice

Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) was the leading social anthropologist in Paris between the world wars, and his Manuel d'ethnographie, dating from that period, is the longest of all his texts. Despite having had four editions in France, the Manuel has hitherto been unavailable in English. This contrasts with his essays, longer and shorter, many of which have long enjoyed the status of classics within anthropology. We are therefore pleased to present, in the English language for the first time, this extraordinary work that is based on the more than thirty lectures Mauss delivered each year under the title "Instructions in descriptive ethnography, intended for travelers, administrators and missionaries." Despite his dates, Mauss's treatment of fundamental questions, such as how to conceptualize and classify the range of social phenomena known to us from history and ethnography, has lost none of its freshness."

Based on a 500,000 word corpus of early sources collected from ex-slave narratives, ex-slave recordings, and interviews with hoodoo priests, this book reconstructs the English spoken by African Americans between 1830 and 1920. By means of detailed quantitative analyses, three linguistic features (negation patterns, copula usage, and relative marker choice) are interpreted along the lines of temporal change, regional diversity, and variation across gender. Additionally, some 300 non-standard letters written by African Americans in the 19th century are compared to the main corpus in order to identify differences between speech and writing.

Forensic Anthropology serves as a graduate level text for those studying and teaching forensic anthropology, as well as an excellent reference for forensic anthropologist libraries or for use in casework. Covers taphonomy, recovery and analysis, identification, statistical interpretation, and professional issues. Edited by a world-renowned leading forensic expert, the Advanced Forensic Science Series grew out of the recommendations from the 2009 NAS Report, Strengthening Forensic Science: A Path Forward, and is a long overdue solution for the forensic science community.

In this thoroughly revised fourth edition, with ten new chapters, the editors provide thought-provoking discussions on the importance of ethnicity in different cultural and social contexts. The authors focus especially on changing ethnic and national identities, on migration and ethnic minorities, on ethnic ascription versus self-definitions, and on shifting ethnic identities and political control. The international group of scholars examines ethnic identities, conflicts and accommodations around the globe, in Africa (including Zaire and South Africa), Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, the United States, Thailand, and the former Yugoslavia. It will serve as an excellent text for courses in race & ethnic relations, and anthropology and ethnic studies.

Reducing Bodies: Mass Culture and the Female Figure in Postwar America explores the ways in which women in the years following World War II refashioned their bodies-through reducing diets, exercise, and plastic surgery-and asks what insights these changing beauty standards can offer into gender dynamics in postwar America. Drawing on novel and untapped sources, including insurance industry records, this engaging study considers questions of gender, health, and race and provides historical context for the emergence of fat studies and contemporary conversations of the "obesity epidemic."

Reducing Bodies: Mass Culture and the Female Figure in Postwar America explores the ways in which women in the years following World War II refashioned their bodies-through reducing diets, exercise, and plastic surgery-and asks what insights these changing beauty standards can offer into gender dynamics in postwar America. Drawing on novel and untapped sources, including insurance industry records, this engaging study considers questions of gender, health, and race and provides historical context for the emergence of fat studies and contemporary conversations of the "obesity epidemic."

Today's world is one marked by the signs of digital capitalism and global capitalist expansion, and China is increasingly being integrated into this global system of production and consumption. As a result, China's immediate material impact is now felt almost everywhere in the world; however, the significance and process of this integration is far from understood. This study shows how the a priori categories of statistical reasoning came to be re-born and re-lived in the People's Republic - as essential conditions for the possibility of a new mode of knowledge and governance. From the ruins of the Maoist revolution China has risen through a mode of quantitative self-objectification. As the author argues, an epistemological rift has separated the Maoist years from the present age of the People's Republic, which appears on the global stage as a mirage. This study is an ethnographic investigation of concepts - of the conceptual forces that have produced and been produced by - two forms of knowledge, life, and governance. As the author shows, the world of China, contrary to the common view, is not the Chinese world; it is a symptomatic moment of our world at the present time.

Contrary to ingrained academic and public assumptions, wherein indigenous lowland South American societies are viewed as the product of historical emplacement and spatial stasis, there is widespread evidence to suggest that migration and displacement have been the norm, and not the exception. This original and thought-provoking collection of case studies examines some of the ways in which migration, and the concomitant processes of ecological and social change, have shaped and continue to shape human-environment relations in Amazonia. Drawing on a wide range of historical time frames (from pre-conquest times to the present) and ethnographic contexts, different chapters examine the complex and important links between migration and the classification, management, and domestication of plants and landscapes, as well as the incorporation and transformation of environmental knowledge, practices, ideologies and identities.