This book provides an ethno-historical study of the trade system in Ladakh (India), a busy entrepot for Silk Route trade between Central and South Asia. Previously a part of global networks, Ladakh became an isolated border area as national boundaries were defined and enforced in the mid-20th century. As trade with Central Asia ended, social life in Ladakh was irrevocably altered. The author's research combines anthropological, historical, and archaeological methods of investigation, using data from primary documents, ethnographic interviews and participation-observation fieldwork. The result is a cultural history of South and Central Asia, detailing the social lives of historical Ladakhi traders and identifying their community as a cosmopolitan social group. The relationship between the historical narratives and the modern ethnographic context illustrates how social issues in modern communities are related to those of the past. It is demonstrated that this relationship depends on both memories, narratives about the past constructed within present social contexts, and legacies, ways in which the past continues to shape present social interactions. This book will be of particular interest to anthropologists, historians and specialists in South and Central Asian studies, as well as those interested in historical archaeology, science, sociology, political science and economics.

When Communities Assess their AIDS Epidemics is a detailed ethnographic description of the AIDS epidemic in ten U.S. cities and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Employing a rapid ethnographic assessment methodology, cities from the Atlantic to the Pacific have implemented Project RARE (Rapid Assessment, Response, and Evaluation) efforts. These RARE projects examine the moving edge of the AIDS epidemic through descriptions of high-risk sites and identifications of segments of the populations at greatest risk. Utilizing a series of focus groups and street interviews, local field research teams gain an insider's perspective on HIV risk within social contexts. Dr. Benjamin P. Bowser, Dr. Ernest Quimby, and Dr. Merrill Singer have compiled these critical studies that analyze current conditions, challenges, and recommendations encountered by RARE. When Communities Assess their AIDS Epidemics is a powerful and engaging text that will appeal to those interested in public health and anthropology.

This book examines the concept of adaptation in four major fields in the human sciences. Genetic aspects are first considered through an examination of the human genes which have so far been identified as conferring survival value in particular environmental circumstances. The drift versus selection argument is also fully reviewed. The second contribution concerns the physiological changes which occur when individuals move from one environment to another. In the past, most attention has been given to the mechanisms of these changes, but here the focus is on the effects. The third contribution is directed at the analysis of behaviour - especially social behaviour. The application of kin selection and reciprocal attraction theories to humans is explored and the value of these approaches explained, whether the behaviour has a genetic basis or not. The final essay deals with the relevance of the adaptation concept to the social sciences and especially to social anthropology. It demonstrates that an ecological approach to understanding the nature and structure of human societies demands attention to adaptation.Reprinted in paperback for the first time and with a new foreword, this book, which serves as an excellent teaching text, clearly shows how attempts at integration in each of these various fields can benefit the study of human evolution, social structure and organization from all perspectives.

With "race" being discredited as a rallying cry for populist movements because of the atrocities committed in its name during World War II, "culture" has been adopted by right-wing groups instead, but used in the same exclusionary manner as racism was. This volume examines the essentialism, which is implicit in racial theories and reemerges in the ideological use of cultural identity in new rightist movements, and presents case studies from different parts of the world where researchers were confronted with racism and worked out ways of coping with it.

The Arakmbut are an indigenous people who live in the Madre de Dios region of the southeastern Peruvian rain forest. Since their first encounters with missionaries in the 1950s,they have shown resilience and a determination to affirm their identity in the face of many difficulties. During the last fifteen years, Arakmbut survival has been under threat from a goldrush that has attracted hundreds of colonists onto their territories. This trilogy of books traces the ways in which the Arakmbut overcome the dangers that surround them: their mythology and cultural strength; their social flexibility; and their capacity to incorporate non-indigenous concepts and activities into their defence strategies. Each area is punctuated by the constant presence of the invisible spirit, which provides a seamless theme connecting the books to each other. The death of a shaman in 1980 had an enormous spiritual and political consequences for one of the Arakmbut communities, resulting in a shift in its social organization from comparative hierarchy to a more egalitarian system. The author uses this case as an illustration to challenge the idea that indigenous peoples live in fossilized, static worlds. He shows that political activities in conjunction with shamanic communication with the spirit world provide the impetus and context for change. Buy all three volumes for 20% discount

Advances in our ability to analyse information from skeletal remains and subsequent developments in the field of forensic anthropology make it possible to identify more victims of homicides, mass-fatality disasters, and genocide. Summarizing the vast collection of international literature that has developed over the past decade, Forensic Anthropology: 2000 to 2010 explores critical themes fundamental to this evolving topic. A superior supplemental text for any physical anthropology or archaeology class, this volume provides an ideal starting point for advanced exploration and more detailed analysis of select areas. Each chapter presents an overview of the theme under discussion, identifies present trends in research, and suggests areas in which future research could be developed. Topics discussed include: Age determination in juveniles and adults Sex, race, and ancestry determination Stature determination Dental and facial identification Skeletal trauma and bone pathology Taphonomy and comparative osteology Identification from soft tissues Heavily referenced, each chapter contains extensive bibliographies that facilitate further study. The scope of the book's coverage and the careful presentation of meticulous research make it an essential resource for those seeking deeper exploration of this growing field.

Quick Ethnography (QE) is an easy-to-read guide to the rapid collection of high quality ethnographic data for use in research, policy analysis, and decision-making. It addresses the needs of social scientists grappling with complex cultural social interactions and cultural change occurring in communities around the globe by offering a comprehensive, integrated multi-method approach that will increase research productivity. Handwerker provides step-by-step procedures for producing lots of data very quickly, outlining how ethnographers must control field preparation, data collection, and methods of data analysis. The rigorous QE approach allows greater precision and subtlety of ethnographic description and explanation that is not always possible in applied contract work (known as Rapid Assessment Procedures). The author, an anthropologist who has been teaching and consulting on fieldwork methods for over 25 years, includes extensive examples of research design and management that are valuable for the novice as well as for experienced researchers in all social science disciplines. Visit the author's web site.

With "race" being discredited as a rallying cry for populist movements because of the atrocities committed in its name during World War II, "culture" has been adopted by right-wing groups instead, but used in the same exclusionary manner as racism was. This volume examines the essentialism, which is implicit in racial theories and reemerges in the ideological use of cultural identity in new rightist movements, and presents case studies from different parts of the world where researchers were confronted with racism and worked out ways of coping with it.

Whiteness is a collection of outstanding essays that employs a range of approaches to understanding whiteness a communication phenomenon. Contributors use analyses of media representations, social scientific data, poststructuralist theoretical discussions, and post-colonial critiques of whiteness. Included as well are discussions of some of the ways whiteness is enacted through commemorations, white antiracist rhetoric, pedagogy, and personal narratives that highlight the cultural politics of whiteness. Thomas K. Nakayama and Judith N. Martin conclude with specific claims out white identity and about the ways multi-methodological approaches to communication offer new insights into research. Both timely and intriguing, this collection of articles will further our understanding of intercultural communication.

Designed to provoke controversy, the papers in this volume concentrate on two main themes: the study of myth and totemism. Starting with an English translation of La Geste d'Asdiwal, which is widely considered to be the most brilliant of all of Levi-Strauss's shorter expositions of his technique of myth analysis, the volume also contains criticism of this essay. The second part of the volume discusses how far Levi-Strauss's treatment of totemism as a system of category formation can be correlated with the facts that an ethnographer encounters in the field. First published in 1967.

What is it like to have lived with bulimia for most of your life? To have a mother who is retarded? To fight a health insurance company in order to survive breast cancer? Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner have assembled innovative pieces which tackle these and other difficult questions, enlarging the space to practice ethnographic writing as the stories are told through memoirs, poetry, photography, and other creative forms usually associated with the arts. The authors demonstrate how ethnographic data can be converted into memorable experiences that readers can use in the classroom and everyday life.

Postmodernism is often presented as a theory of liberation that promotes pluralism and gives representation to the marginalized peoples of the non-West and Other cultures. This book offers an examination of postmodernism from a non-Western perspective. It argues that the claims of postmodernism are a sham. By making a systematic assessment of the main spheres of postmodernism - from philosophy, art and architecture to film, television, pop music and consumer lifestyles and new age religions - it sets out to reveal that, contrary to commonly-held notions, postmodernism in fact operates to further marginalize the non-West and confound its aspirations. In this outspoken testimony it is asserted that, while there is superficial reference to the Other, the people of the non-West are actually redundant in the postmodern present and irrelevent to its future. The book offers ways in which the non-West can counter the postmodern assault and survive with their histories, identities and cultures intact.

Dwellers of Memory is an ethnographic study of how urban youth in Colombia came to be at the intersection of multiple forms of political, drug-related, and territorial violence in a country undergoing forty years of internal armed conflict. It examines the ways in which youth in the city of Medellin reconfigure their lives and, cultural worlds in the face of widespread violence. This violence has transgressed familiar boundaries and destroyed basic social supports and networks of trust. This volume attempts to map and understand its patterns and flows.

The author explores how Medellin's youth locate themselves and make, sense of violence through contradictory and shifting memory practices. The violence has not completely taken over their cultural worlds or their subjectivities. Practices of remembering and forgetting are key methods by which these youth rework their identities and make sense of the impact of violence on their lives. While the experience of violence is rooted in urban space and urban youth, the memory dwellers use a sense of place, oral histories of death, and narratives of fear as survival strategies for inhabiting violent neighborhoods. The book also examines fissures in memory, the contradictory constructions of young people's subjective selves, and practices of gendered violence and terror. All have and continue to pose risks to the historical memory and cultural survival of the residents of Medellin.

Dwellers of Memory offers an alternative ethnographic approach to the study of memory and violence, one that calls into question whether the, role of the ethnographer of violence is to be a mere witness of terror, or to oppose it by writing against it. It will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, and students of, ethnography.

This compelling ethnographic study describes how two groups of Romanian industrial workers have fared since the end of socialism. Once labor's elite, the celebrated coal miners of the Jiu Valley and the chemical workers of the Fagaras region had many social privileges and often derived genuine satisfaction from their work. Today, they are a rarely noted casualty of postsocialist transformations. Fear, distance, and alienation are the physical manifestations of stress experienced due to their precarious job status, declining health, and loss of a social safety net. Kideckel traces these issues in the context of labor, political relationships, domestic and community life, gender identities, and health. Drawing on more than three decades of fieldwork, he presents many narratives from select individuals, in their own words, providing a poignant and illuminating perspective on the everyday lives of ordinary people.

Drawing upon anthropological studies that document culturally specific ways of perceiving ethic Others in Greece and Cyprus, this book explores the cultural boundaries of the categories Greek and Turk, and compares views on what it means to be one of these ethnic groups or both. The contributors examine the opinions of diverse social groups, such as ordinary middle-class citizens, intellectuals, army officers, children, villagers, refugees from Asia Minor, and Greek-and-Turkisj-Cypriots. They also investigate the local attitudes to international politics and highlight the contextual as opposed to immutable and essentialist meaning of evaluations about nations, such as Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, and their citizens.

When Greeks think about Turks carefully unpacks the cultural meaning of popular metaphors, stereotypes and versions of history as these are articulated in the context of discussions about the Turks in Greece. It sets the template for understanding how local perceptions of resemblance and difference provide a conceptual framework for defining and negotiating ethnic identity at the local, national and international level. It sheds valuable light on the politics of identity-making and the constitution of nationalism in Greece and Cyprus.

This book was previously published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.

What need is there for kinship? What good is it anyway? The questions are as old as anthropology itself, but few answers have been enduringly persuasive. Kinship systems can contribute to our enslavement, but more often they permit, channel, and facilitate our relations with others and our further fashioning of ourselves--as kin but also as subjects of other kinds. When they do, they are among the matrices of our lives as ethical beings. Each contributor to this innovative book treats his or her own alterity as the touchstone of the exploration of an ethnographically and historically specific ethics of kinship. Together, the chapters reveal the irreducible complexity of the entanglement of the subject of kinship with the subject of nation, class, ethnicity, gender, desire. The chapters speak eloquently to the sometimes liberating stories that we cannot help but keep telling about our kin and ourselves.

Modern treatments of Rome have projected in highly emotive terms the perceived problems, or the aspirations, of the present: "race-mixture" has been blamed for the collapse of the Roman empire; more recently, Rome and Roman society have been depicted as "multicultural." Moving beyond these and beyond more traditional, juridical approaches to Roman identity, Emma Dench focuses on ancient modes of thinking about selves and relationships with other peoples, including descent-myths, history, and ethnographies. She explores the relative importance of sometimes closely interconnected categories of blood descent, language, culture and clothes, and territoriality. Rome's creation of a distinctive imperial shape is understood in the context of the broader ancient Mediterranean world within which the Romans self-consciously situated themselves, and whose modes of thought they appropriated and transformed.

Just who are 'the Malays'? This provocative study poses the question and considers how and why the answers have changed over time, and from one region to another. Anthony Milner develops a sustained argument about ethnicity and identity in an historical, 'Malay' context. "The Malays" is a comprehensive examination of the origins and development of Malay identity, ethnicity, and consciousness over the past five centuries.
Covers the political, economic, and cultural development of the Malays
Explores the Malay presence in Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and South Africa, as well as the modern Malay show-state of Malaysia
Offers diplomatic speculation about ways Malay ethnicity will develop and be challenged in the future

Despite their small area, the southern islands of Japan can be seen as stepping stones towards a more nuanced view of cultural osmosis between Japan and the outside world. This book presents an ethnographic portrayal of the people of the Southern Ryukyu Islands and their world. In particular it explores the mind of the islanders, their relationship with the natural world, their social relationships, and the rituals which represent and give expression to these relationships.

Based on extensive original research, including participant observation, the book allows the authentic voices of the Ryukyu Island worlds to speak for themselves as well as setting the work in the wider context of anthropology, Japanese Studies and Pacific Island studies.

Ethnographies Revisited provides first-hand accounts of how leading qualitative researchers crafted key theoretical concepts found in their major book-length ethnographies. Great ethnographic research lies not in the rigid execution of prescribed methodological procedures, but on the unrelenting cultivation of theoretical ideas. These contributors focus squarely on this neglected topic, providing reflexive accounts of how research decisions were made in light of emerging theoretical questions.

The continuous generation of creative concepts is arguably the most important skill in developing powerful results in field research, since the originality of the ideas produced is how the study is ultimately judged. Yet, this topic is often taken for granted, treated rigidly and artificially, or is entirely absent from existing qualitative research manuals. In contrast, this volume offers candid insights of how leading ethnographers generated their initial questions, chose their research sites, made theoretical and methodological adjustments, and oriented their research to maximize the conceptual payoff, leading to such successful research contributions. This provides a fresh approach to the topic of qualitative research, by linking practical decisions in the field to the dynamic features of theory in the making, told through the first-hand experiences of some of the best ethnographers in our field.

Duane Champagne has assembled a volume of top scholarship reflecting the complexity and diversity of Native American cultural life. Introductions to each topical section provide background and integrated analyses of the issues at hand. The informative and critical studies that follow offer experiences and perspectives from a variety of Native settings. Topics include identity, gender, the powwow, mass media, health and environmental issues. This book and its companion volume, Contemporary Native American Political Issues, edited by Troy R. Johnson, are ideal teaching tools for instructors in Native American studies, ethnic studies, and anthropology, and important resources for anyone working in or with Native communities.

Ethnographies Revisited provides first-hand accounts of how leading qualitative researchers crafted key theoretical concepts found in their major book-length ethnographies. Great ethnographic research lies not in the rigid execution of prescribed methodological procedures, but on the unrelenting cultivation of theoretical ideas. These contributors focus squarely on this neglected topic, providing reflexive accounts of how research decisions were made in light of emerging theoretical questions.

The continuous generation of creative concepts is arguably the most important skill in developing powerful results in field research, since the originality of the ideas produced is how the study is ultimately judged. Yet, this topic is often taken for granted, treated rigidly and artificially, or is entirely absent from existing qualitative research manuals. In contrast, this volume offers candid insights of how leading ethnographers generated their initial questions, chose their research sites, made theoretical and methodological adjustments, and oriented their research to maximize the conceptual payoff, leading to such successful research contributions. This provides a fresh approach to the topic of qualitative research, by linking practical decisions in the field to the dynamic features of theory in the making, told through the first-hand experiences of some of the best ethnographers in our field.

This important volume rethinks the conventional parameters of Middle East studies through attention to popular cultural forms, producers, and communities of consumers. The volume has a broad historical scope, ranging from the late Ottoman period to the second Palestinian uprising, with a focus on cultural forms and processes in Israel, Palestine, and the refugee camps of the Arab Middle East. The contributors consider how Palestinian and Israeli popular culture influences and is influenced by political, economic, social, and historical processes in the region. At the same time, they follow the circulation of Palestinian and Israeli cultural commodities and imaginations across borders and checkpoints and within the global marketplace.The volume is interdisciplinary, including the work of anthropologists, historians, sociologists, political scientists, ethnomusicologists, and Americanist and literary studies scholars. Contributors examine popular music of the Palestinian resistance, ethno-racial "passing" in Israeli cinema, Arab-Jewish rock, Euro-Israeli tourism to the Arab Middle East, Internet communities in the Palestinian diaspora, cafe culture in early-twentieth-century Jerusalem, and more. Together, they suggest new ways of conceptualizing Palestinian and Israeli political culture. Contributors. Livia Alexander, Carol Bardenstein, Elliott Colla, Amy Horowitz, Laleh Khalili, Mary Layoun, Mark LeVine, Joseph Massad, Melani McAlister, Ilan Pappe, Rebecca L. Stein, Ted Swedenburg, Salim Tamari

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book describes and analyzes migration of individuals from San Cosme Mazatecochco in central Mexico to a new United States community in New Jersey. Based on four decades of anthropological research in Mazatecochco and among migrants in New Jersey Rothstein traces the causes and consequences of migration and who returned home, why, and how return migrants reintegrated back into their homeland.