Debates about the Black Atlantic have alerted us to an experience of modernization that diverges from the dominant Western narratives of globalization and technological progress. This outstanding volume expands the concept of the Black Atlantic by reaching beyond the usual African-American focus of the field, presenting fresh perspectives on postcolonial experiences of technology and modernization. A team of renowned contributors come together in this volume in order to:

• redefine and expand ideas of Black Atlantic
• challenge unified concepts of modernization from a postcolonial perspective
• question fashionable concepts of the transnational by returning to the local and the national
• offer new approaches to cross-cultural mechanisms of exchange
• explore utopian uses of technology in the postcolonial sphere.

Exploring a variety of national, diasporan and transnational counternarratives to Western modernization, Beyond the Black Atlantic makes a valuable contribution to the fields of postcolonial, literary and cultural studies."

Ethos and Identity asks the ever-puzzling question: What is ethnicity and how is it to be explained? In a new introduction to this work, Athena Leoussi describes Epstein's response to this challenging age-old query, and demonstrates why this classic volume is of continuing importance.

Originally published thirty years ago, Ethos and Identity still fascinates the twenty-first century reader. Epstein's volume explains ethnic revivals of the past century, while the new introduction discusses those that occurred after the book's original publication, such as during the collapse of the communist Eastern bloc in the 1990s. Epstein offers insight into other ethnic reawakenings, such as that experienced during the late 1960s and early 1970s after the collapse of post-colonial east Asia. Prior to this, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, following World War II and the establishment of the United Nations, it was expected that ethnic identifications would be superseded by a more modern, universalistic, rational, civic- or class-based form. This did not occur. Instead, as nations collapsed and were reborn in new forms, people continued to identify with their ethnicity in describing themselves, even when their countries, at least as they knew them, no longer existed. In short, people and their cultures live on long after political and national boundaries have disappeared and been redrawn. Epstein's decisive contribution to the understanding of ethnicity proposes a "social anthropology of affect." People incorporate the social structure of ethnicity into the makeup of their personality and, thus, self-identification.

Ethos and Identity is sure to interest students of anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, psychology, and ethnicity.

A. L. Epstein, anthropologist, professor, and writer, held research fellowships and appointments at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Lansaka, Northern Rhodesia, the University of Manchester, the Australian National University in Canberra, the University of Sussex, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies in Wessenaar.

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.

The number of poor people in China is huge, despite recent economic advances. The minorities in China constitute less than ten per cent of the entire population, yet they represent forty to fifty per cent of the absolute poor. This compelling book investigates the problem of poverty and inequality in among Chinese ethnic, focusing in particular on two important questions: Have the minorities shared the fruits of spectacular economic growth in China during the past two decades? Is their backwardness due to ethnic and cultural factors or to extremely low incomes?
The authors examine the different factors explaining poverty, the relationship between poverty and ethnicity, poverty indicators that permit a comparison between minorities and non-minorities (or the Han majority), economic and demographic characteristics of minorities and their educational, occupational and gender profiles. They considers whether special measures in favor of minorities introduced by the Chinese Government have contributedto an improvement in their standard of living. International comparisons are made with other developing countries such as India, which also has substantial ethnic minorities and similar preferential policies.
"Poverty and Inequality among Chinese Minorities" gives new research findings and new thinking on a highly topical issue in Chinese development economics, which fills a gap in the existing economic literature.

"Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography" explores some of the latest developments in the literary and cultural practices of Canadians of Asian heritage. While earlier work by ethnic, multicultural, or minority writers in Canada was often concerned with immigration, the moment of arrival, issues of assimilation, and conflicts between generations, literary and cultural production in the new millennium no longer focuses solely on the conflict between the Old World and the New or the clashes between culture of origin and adopted culture. No longer are minority authors identifying simply with their ethnic or racial cultural background in opposition to dominant culture.

The essays in this collection explore ways in which Asian Canadian authors (such as Larissa Lai, Shani Mootoo, Fred Wah, Hiromi Goto, Suniti Namjoshi, and Ying Chen) and artists (such as Ken Lum, Paul Wong, and Laiwan) have gone beyond what Francoise Lionnet calls autoethnography, or ethnographic autobiography. They demonstrate the ways representations of race and ethnicity, particularly in works by Asian Canadians in the last decade, have changedhave become more playful, untraditional, aesthetically and ideologically transgressive, and exciting.

This revealing book explores the processes of racialization, class and gender, and examines how these processes play out in the everyday lives of white women living in London with young children. Bridget Byrne analyzes the flexibility of racialized discourse in everyday life, whilst simultaneously arguing for a radical deconstruction of the notions of race these discourses create. Byrne focuses on the experience of white mothers and their children, as a key site in the reproduction of class, race and gender subjectivities, offering a compelling account of both the experience of motherhood and ideas of white identity. Byrne's research is unique in its approach of exploring whiteness in the context of practices of mothering. She adopts a broad perspective, and her approach provides a suggestive framework for analyzing the racialization of everyday life. The book's multi-layered analysis shifts expertly from intimate acts to those which engage with local and national discourses in more public spaces. Reconsidering white identities through white experiences of race, White Lives encompasses many disciplines, making valuable reading for those studying sociology, anthropology, race and ethnicity, and cultural studies. Winner of the BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2007

This revealing book explores the processes of racialization, class and gender, and examines how these processes play out in the everyday lives of white women living in London with young children. Bridget Byrne analyzes the flexibility of racialized discourse in everyday life, whilst simultaneously arguing for a radical deconstruction of the notions of race these discourses create. Byrne focuses on the experience of white mothers and their children, as a key site in the reproduction of class, race and gender subjectivities, offering a compelling account of both the experience of motherhood and ideas of white identity. Byrne's research is unique in its approach of exploring whiteness in the context of practices of mothering. She adopts a broad perspective, and her approach provides a suggestive framework for analyzing the racialization of everyday life. The book's multi-layered analysis shifts expertly from intimate acts to those which engage with local and national discourses in more public spaces. Reconsidering white identities through white experiences of race, White Lives encompasses many disciplines, making valuable reading for those studying sociology, anthropology, race and ethnicity, and cultural studies. Winner of the BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2007

"Multiculturalism and Citizenship" investigates the European dimension of multiculturalism and immigration. This book argues that the political theory discourse of multiculturalism and resulting policies in this area assume an interpretation of liberalism that has developed from the American experience, rather than the European, and that this issue must be addressed. Much of the theoretical debate up to now understates the normative power of majority/state nationality, and overlooks the diverse societal and political contexts that may condition multicultural debates in different countries. Most seriously, such debate misses out the central feature of the multicultural challenge in Western Europe today: the assertion of religious-communal, especially Muslim, identities in polities whose self image is secular. This book argues, therefore, that a European theory must focus on different normative and political dilemmas than a North American one and must interrogate the claims for and against secularism.
"Multiculturalism and Citizenship" is truly interdisciplinary in scope (combining sociological, political science and discourse analytical themes) and thus presents a fresh and unique perspective on multiculturalism and citizenship in Western Europe today. It offers a comparative and coherent series of national case studies by a diverse range of leading scholars in the field, which provide a theoretical framework for the volume as a whole.
This is essential reading for advanced undergraduates, researchers and policy makers interested in immigration, multiculturalism, European integration, Islamic studies and ethnicities.

First published in 2006. Who and what are the 'indigenous people'? The question has become highly contentious in India today, where eighty million peoples belonging to the state category of 'scheduled tribes' are attempting to gain international recognition as indigenous people as a part of struggle for recognition and rights in land and resources. This volume interrogates the politics surrounding the category of peoples in India known as 'tribals' or 'adivasis' and more recently 'indigenous peoples'.

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.

The collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe brought widespread fear of a 'tidal wave' of immigrants from the East into Western Europe. Quite apart from the social and political importance, East-West migration also poses a challenge to established theories of migration, as in most cases the migrant flow cannot be categorised as either refugee movement or a labour migration. Indeed much of the trans-border movement is not officially recognised, as many migrants are temporary, commuting, 'tourists' or illegal, and remain invisible to the authorities. This book focuses on Russian migration into Western Europe following the break-up of the Soviet Union. Helen Kopnina explores the concept of 'community' through an examination of the lives of Russian migrants in two major European cities, London and Amsterdam. In both cases Kopnina finds an 'invisible community', inadequately defined in existing literature. Arguing that Russian migrants are highly diverse, both socially and in terms of their views and adaptation strategies, Kopnina uncovers a community divided by mutual antagonisms, prompting many to reject the idea of belonging to a community at all. Based on extensive interviews, this fascinating and unique ethnographic account of the 'new migration' challenges the underlying assumptions of traditional migration studies and post-modern theories. It provides a powerful critique for the study of new migrant groups in Western Europe and the wider process of European identity formation.

The political and legislative changes which took place in South Africa during the 1990s, with the dissolution of apartheid, created a unique set of social conditions. As official policies of segregation were abolished, people of both black and white racial groups began to experience new forms of social contact and intimacy. By examining these emerging processes of intergroup contact in South Africa, and evaluating related evidence from the US, Racial Encounter offers a social psychological account of desegregation. It begins with a critical analysis of the traditional theories and research models used to understand desegregation: the contact hypothesis and race attitude theory. It then analyzes every day discourse about desegregation in South Africa, showing how discourse shapes individuals' conception and management of their changing relationships and acts as a site of ideological resistance to social change. The connection between place, identity and re-creation of racial boundaries emerge as a central theme of this analysis. This book will be of interest to social psychologists, students of intergroup relations and all those interested in post-apartheid South Africa.

This new study powerfully asserts the pivotal importance of the interplay between language and ethnicity, which is often underestimated as a component for political stability.

These leading scholars present five key case studies of South Africa, Algeria, Canada, Latvia and Senegal. All five countries are multilingual nations where language has been a central political issue that has challenged their unity and stability.

These studies are underpinned by two general, comparative and theoretical discussions, which analyse how scholars consider social class and economic factors to be the primary sources for political cohesion or of malcontent with the system and the new avenues opened by a focus on issues of langauge.

This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of linguistics, language, politics and sociology.

This is a special issue of the leading journal Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

How long can a traditional religion survive the impact of world religions, state hegemony, and globalization? The 'Karamoja problem' is one that has perplexed colonial and independent governments alike. Now Karamojong notoriety for armed cattle raiding has attracted the attention of the UN and USAID since the proliferation of small arms in the pastoralist belt across Africa from Sudan to stateless Somalia is deemed a threat to world security. The consequences are ethnocidal, but what makes African peoples stand out against state and global governance? The traditional African religion of the Karamojong, despite the multiple external influences of the twentieth century and earlier, has remained at the heart of their culture as it has changed through time. Drawing on oral accounts and the language itself, as well as his extensive experience of living and working in the region, Knighton avoids Western perspectivism to highlight the successful reassertion of African beliefs and values over repeated attempts by interventionists to replace or subvert them. Knighton argues that the religious aspect of Karamojong culture, with its persistent faith dimension, is one of the key factors that have enabled them to maintain their amazing degree of religious, political, and military autonomy in the postmodern world. Using historical and anthropological approaches, the real continuities within the culture and the reasons for mysterious vitality of Karamojong religion are explored.

The Valley Bisa people inhabit the Luangwa Valley in central Zambia. Among them, the hunter, who tracks such large game as the lion, elephant, and buffalo, commands great respect and esteem from the other members of the lineage who traditionally rely on him for their subsistence and protection. Although the social organization and technology of the Bisa people have undergone tremendous change in the last one hundred years, the role of hunter retains its social importance, and the legitimizing hunting rituals have their roots in local history.
Drawing on data collected during his fieldwork among the Bisa continuing since the 1960s, Stuart Marks describes the changes that have occurred in hunting patterns, the sociological variables that govern an individual's decision to become a hunter, and the common cosmological convictions that hunters bring to their profession. Available for the first time in paperback, the new introduction and afterword to this edition reflect on methodological and ideological changes in the anthropological study of African peoples as well as updating the circumstances of the Bisa people since the book's first appearance in 1976.
Through the interventions of the larger national society the Bisa have lost much of their land and access to important portions of their resources while experiencing repression in their struggles to maintain livelihoods with what local assets are left. Nevertheless, Marks notes that they face their hardships with tolerance, integrity, persistence, and humility.
The general reader, as well as prehistorians and anthropologists concerned with human evolution and hunting societies, will find this volume useful. It will also be of interest to wildlife managers and ecologists.
Stuart A. Marks is actively involved in conservation and development work at the local, national, and international levels. Currently he is an independent scholar and consultant and was a Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1997 to 2002. He is the author of the award winning "Southern Hunting in Black and White: Nature, History, and Ritual in a Carolina Community," "The Imperial Lion: Human Dimensions to Wildlife Management in Central Africa," and a forthcoming volume, "Wild Animals and Rural African Livelihoods."

Questions of public and private morality, values and choices have become important areas of collective discussion. A key feature of this book is that it takes an ethnographic rather than a philosophical or speculative approach to moral debates. This study examines the contemporary explosion of ethical discourse in the public domain and the growing importance of moral rhetoric as an aspect of social relations.

The book examines the process of national identity formation. It argues that identity, whether of a small community, a nation, an ethnic group, or a religious community, requires an Other against whom it becomes meaningful. In other words, identity develops via difference from Others against whom our sense of self becomes meaningful. This thesis emerges out of the synthesis the study develops from the from the various modern and poststructuralist theories of identity and nationalism.

In 1884 a community of Brazilians was "discovered" by the Western world. The Ecology of Power examines these indigenous people from the Upper Xingu region, a group who even today are one of the strongest examples of long-term cultural continuity. Drawing upon written and oral history, ethnography, and archaeology, Heckenberger addresses the difficult issues facing anthropologists today as they "uncover" the muted voices of indigenous peoples and provides a fascinating portrait of a unique community of people who have in a way become living cultural artifacts.

In 1884 a community of Brazilians was "discovered" by the Western world. The Ecology of Power examines these indigenous people from the Upper Xingu region, a group who even today are one of the strongest examples of long-term cultural continuity. Drawing upon written and oral history, ethnography, and archaeology, Heckenberger addresses the difficult issues facing anthropologists today as they "uncover" the muted voices of indigenous peoples and provides a fascinating portrait of a unique community of people who have in a way become living cultural artifacts.

Ethnic Violence and the Societal Security Dilemma explores how the phenomenon of ethnic violence can be understood as a form of security dilemma by shifting the focus of the concept away from its traditional concern with state sovereignty to that of identity instead. The book is divided into theoretical and empirical chapters, beginning with the categorisation by the author of the security dilemma concept into 'tight', 'regular' and 'loose' formulations, and its combination with the Copenhagen School's notion of societal security. This reconceptualisation of the traditional security dilemma then provides a framework capable of explaining conflictual dynamics between ethnic groups and how some cases can be resolved without recourse to outright war. It includes case studies on: Ethnic violence between Serbs and Croats in the Krajina region of Croatia, August 1990 Ethnic violence between Hungarian and Romanians in the Transylvania region of Romania, August 1990. This book will interest students and researchers of ethnic violence and the security dilemma.

While 'social inclusion' and 'cultural diversity' circulate frenetically as buzzwords, are we really ready to accept that ideas about 'race' and 'ethnicity', rather than being a peripheral concern, are at the core of how a nation's heritage is represented and imagined? This book interrogates just whose past gets to count as part of 'British heritage'. Bringing together a wide range of contributors, including academics, practitioners, policy makers and curators, it examines how many different of types of heritage - from football to stately homes, experience attractions to education - deal with the complex legacies of the idea of 'race'. Whether exploring the fallout of colonialism, the domination of 'England' over the other three nations, holocaust memorials, or the way British heritage is negotiated overseas, a recurring theme of this book is the need to accept that Britain has always been a place of shifting ethnicities, shaped by waves of migration, diaspora and globalization. Analyzing both theory and practice, this book is concerned with understanding the processes through which changes to heritage happens, and with exploring problems and possibilities for the future.

Probationary Americans examines contemporary immigration rules and how they affect the make-up of immigrant communities. The authors' key argument is that immigration policies place race and class as important criteria for gaining entry to the United States, and in doing so, alter the makeup of America's immigrant communities.

The Muslim states that have come into being from the ruins of the Soviet Union, and the Muslim areas of Russia, are striving to carve out a future for themselves in the face of new realities. In addition to international constraints, they find themselves caught between two complex legacies: on the one hand, that of Russian and Soviet periods--colonialism, russification, de-islamicization, centralization and communism; on the other, that of the period prior to the Russian conquest--localism, tribalism and Islam.
The interaction and contradictions within each category, and between them, form the essence of the struggle to formulate new identities. The problems this book describes reflect these legacies in a wide range of fields. They indicate the anomalies that were created by the inconsistencies in Soviet imperialism vis-a-vis its Muslim subject nations, and the injustice and distortions resulting from policies which emanated from a remote and insensitive center.

The concept of diaspora has evolved to include new meanings relating to global deterritorialization, transnational migration and cultural hybridity. In many cases it has come to replace minority, ethnic group and immigrant as a label of self reference and this development has introduced new perspectives on global networks and local identities. This study rejects the idea that locality has lost its meaning and argues that diaspora and locality are interrelated. The authors discuss the key concepts and theory, focusing on religion, the appropriation of space and place in history and the present. It features case histories on the Caribbean, Irish, Irish-American, Armenian, African and Greek diasporas.