This book spans two million years of human evolution and explores the impact of economics on human evolution and natural history. The theory of evolution by natural selection has always relied in part on progress in areas of science outside of biology. By applying economic principles at the borderlines of biology, Haim Ofek shows how some of the outstanding issues in human evolution, such as the increase in human brain size and the expansion of the environmental niche humans occupied, can be answered. He identifies distinct economic forces at work, beginning with the transition from the feed-as-you-go strategy of primates, through hunter-gathering and the domestication of fire to the development of agriculture. This highly readable book will inform and intrigue general readers and those in fields such as evolutionary biology and psychology, economics, and anthropology.

This volume draws together ten important essays which use a variety of approaches and materials to explore the significance of sexuality in Shakespeare's work. Some consider the erotic effect of Shakespeare's language; others are concerned with expressions of desire (male, female, inter-racial, homosexual and heterosexual) in performance as well as text. Many are reprinted from Shakespeare Survey. They are introduced by Ann Thompson's survey of the topic in recent criticism, and conclude with a new essay by Celia Daileader on nudity in Shakespeare films.

This volume draws together ten important essays which use a variety of approaches and materials to explore the significance of sexuality in Shakespeare's work. Some consider the erotic effect of Shakespeare's language; others are concerned with expressions of desire (male, female, inter-racial, homosexual and heterosexual) in performance as well as text. Many are reprinted from Shakespeare Survey. They are introduced by Ann Thompson's survey of the topic in recent criticism, and conclude with a new essay by Celia Daileader on nudity in Shakespeare films.

Katharine Adeney demonstrates that institutional design, rather than the role of religion, is the most important explanatory variable in understanding the different types and intensities of conflict in India and Pakistan. Deploying an innovative methodological approach, Adeney focuses on the rationale behind the creation and different designs of federal and consociational structures in the two countries. Deftly interweaving historical narrative with an analysis of the salient cleavages in both countries, Adeney examines the politics of institutional design and ethnic conflict regulation, as well as the extent to which previous constitutional choices explain current conflicts.

Few historians and fewer lay people know that the first feudal constitution to recognize equality between the burghers and nobles was established in 1150 in Catalunya, sixty-five years before the signing of the Magna Carta in England. In the fifteenth century the Corts of Barcelona (a legislative body) established the principle of a "limited" monarchy obliged to govern according to laws, while guarding a degree of royal power. These facts lie at the foundation of a culture of nonviolent resistance to assimilation that has been used to combat state power in France and Spain ever since.

Through a series of essays concerning human eating seen from the perspective of contemporary biology/medicine and recent research articles, the book explores the links between food and Man's cultural and physical evolution. Each chapter has an introduction summarizing the basic knowledge in the field, discusses the recent research results, and confirms or challenges the established concepts, which opens new aspects and leads to new questions. This book catalyzes discussion between scientists working on one side in food science and on the other side in biological and biomedical research.

Whereas most anthropological research is grounded in social, cultural and biological analysis of the human condition, this volume opens up a different approach: its concerns are the psychic depths of human cultural life-worlds as explored through psycho-analytic practice and/or the psychoanalytically framed ethnographic project. In fact, some contributors here argue that the anthropological interpretation of human existence is not sustainable without psychoanalysis; others take a less extreme radical stance but still maintain that the unconscious matrix of the human psyche and of the intersubjective (social) reality of any given cultural life-world is a vital domain of anthropological and sociological inquiry and understanding. Jadran Mimica lectures in Anthropology at the University of Sydney.

Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research is the essential guide to the theory and practice of conducting ethnographic research in consumer environments. Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny argue that, while the recent explosion in the use of "ethnography" in the corporate world has provided unprecedented opportunities for anthropologists and other qualitative researchers, this popularization too often results in shallow understandings of culture, divorcing ethnography it from its foundations. In response, they reframe the field by re-attaching ethnography to theoretically robust and methodologically rigorous cultural analysis. The engrossing text draws on decades of the authors' own eclectic research-from coffee in Bangkok and boredom in New Zealand to computing in the United States-using methodologies from focus groups and rapid appraisal to semiotics and visual ethnography. Five provocative forewords by leaders in consumer research further push the boundaries of the field and challenge the boundaries of academic and applied work. In addition to reorienting the field for academics and practitioners, this book is an ideal text for students, who are increasingly likely to both study and work in corporate environments.

"English and Ethnicity" offers a scholarly but accessible exploration of the complex interaction between the English language and the (de) construction of ethnicity. Centered in applied (socio) linguistics, the volume's diverse essays demonstrate that the constructs of both "English" and "ethnicity" are contested sites of identity formation in the English- speaking world. They illustrate that while for some English use indexes ethnicity, for others its usage involves equally significant processes of de-ethnicization. English and Ethnicity enriches our understanding of the contemporary dialogue on heritage languages, language policy, and language maintenance.

What teeth can teach us about the evolution of the human species Whether we realize it or not, we carry in our mouths the legacy of our evolution. Our teeth are like living fossils that can be studied and compared to those of our ancestors to teach us how we became human. In Evolution's Bite, noted paleoanthropologist Peter Ungar brings together for the first time cutting-edge advances in understanding human evolution and climate change with new approaches to uncovering dietary clues from fossil teeth to present a remarkable investigation into the ways that teeth--their shape, chemistry, and wear--reveal how we came to be. Ungar describes how a tooth's "foodprints"--distinctive patterns of microscopic wear and tear--provide telltale details about what an animal actually ate in the past. These clues, combined with groundbreaking research in paleoclimatology, demonstrate how a changing climate altered the food options available to our ancestors, what Ungar calls the biospheric buffet. When diets change, species change, and Ungar traces how diet and an unpredictable climate determined who among our ancestors was winnowed out and who survived, as well as why we transitioned from the role of forager to farmer. By sifting through the evidence--and the scars on our teeth--Ungar makes the important case for what might or might not be the most natural diet for humans. Traveling the four corners of the globe and combining scientific breakthroughs with vivid narrative, Evolution's Bite presents a unique dental perspective on our astonishing human development.

Who are the Native Americans? When and how did they colonize the New World? What proportion of the biological variation in contemporary Amerindian populations was "made in America" and what was brought from Siberia? This book is a unique synthesis of the genetic, archaeological, and demographic evidence concerning the Native peoples of the Americas, using case studies from contemporary Amerindian and Siberian indigenous groups to unravel the mysteries. It culminates in an examination of the devastating collision between European and Native American cultures following Contact, and the legacy of increased incidence of chronic diseases that still accompanies the acculturation of Native peoples today.

Western societies draw crucially on concepts of the 'individual' in constructing their images of the ethnic group and nation and define these in terms of difference. This study explores the implications of these constructs for Western understanding of social order and ethnic conflicts. Comparing them with the forms of cultural identity characteristic of Melanesia as they have developed since pre-colonial times, the author arrives at a surprising conclusion: he argues that these kinds of identities are more properly and adequately viewed as forms of disguised or denied resemblance, and that it is these covert commonalities that give rise to, and prolong, social divisions and conflicts between groups.

In Money: Ethnographic Encounters, anthropologists tell stories of their experiences with money in the field. Through vivid fieldwork accounts, they explore the ways money has influenced their perceptions and understandings of culture. These accounts raise critical questions. How do anthropologists come to know another culture through ordinary yet unexpected experiences with money? How is anthropological knowledge produced through these interactions? Money: Ethnographic Encounters offers students, teachers, and researchers the opportunity to consider the work of anthropology through vigorous narrative. It also includes a guide to further reading for students. With stories of fieldwork in such varied sites as Vietnam, Ghana, China, and Malawi, Money: Ethnographic Encounters is ideal for all students of anthropology.

Written by one of America's leading philosophers, "Race and Social Justice" provides a powerful analysis of the enduring problems of race and social justice in American life. McGary examines African American alienation and exploitations, black reparations, collective responsibility, affirmative action, race and I. Q., police discretion, racial integration and racial separatism, the underclass question, and the logic of interracial coalitions. The volume is marked by its interdisciplinary approach, depending on work in African American history and literature as well as recent work by legal scholars, political scientists, and sociologists who have wrestled with race and racism.

African American philosophers have challenged the position that the African American experience cannot serve as a source of philosophical illumination. Philosophers like Anthony Appiah, Bernard Boxill, Bill Lawson, Michele Moody-Adams, Adrian Piper, and Laurence Thomas have employed traditional analytical methods in their examinations, while others like Leonard Harris, Lewis Gordon, Frank Kirkland, Lucius Outlaw, Cornel West, and Naomi Zack have embraced methodologies that are more characteristic of the Continental and Post Modern methodologies. These authors, each in their own way, have started a dialoge that has now worked its way into the pages of academic journals and onto the programs of philosophy conferences and meetings." Race and Social Justice" joins and extends these discussions, providing essential reading for anyone with an interest in this field of debate and study.

The work of top scholars in Visigothic studies... Using all evidence available, the volume addresses the evolution of the Visigoths in early medieval history. CHOICE Indispensable for all scholars of the Visigoths. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW Books on the Visigoths and Visigothic Spain in English are rare, so this is a welcome addition to their ranks... wide-ranging collection (which) has much to offer, not just to Spanish studies but to students of late antiquity in general. CLASSICAL REVIEW Between 376 and 476 the Roman Empire in western Europe was dismantled by aggressive outsiders, barbarians' as the Romans labelled them. Chief among these were the Visigoths, a new force of previously separate Gothic and other groups from south-west France, initially settled by the Romans but subsequently, from the middle of the fifth century, achieving total independence from the failing Roman Empire, and extending their power from the Loire to the Straits of Gibraltar. These studies draw on literary and archaeological evidence to address important questions thrown up by the history of the Visigoths and of the kingdom they generated: the historical processes which led to their initial creation; the emergence of the Visigothic kingdom in the fifth century; and the government, society, culture and economy of the mature' kingdom of the sixth and seventh centuries. A valuable feature of the collection, reflecting the switch of the centre of the Visigothic kingdom from France to Spain from the beginning of the sixth century, is the inclusion, in English, of current Spanish scholarship. Dr PETER HEATHERteaches in the Department of History at University College London.

Modern human beings are socialized to take the existence of ethnic and national identities as given and largely unproblematic. Very few individuals would question the apparent normality of this division into nations and ethnic groups however, the intensity of this widespread feeling hides the degree of its historical novelty. This book explores the ideological and institutional underpinnings, as well as the political implications of this powerful modern belief system. This is achieved through subtle theoretical and thorough empirical analysis, both of which draw critically on the leading approaches in the field.

This original ethnography brings indigenous people's stories into conversations around troubling questions of social justice and environmental care. Deborah Bird Rose lived for two years with the Yarralin community in the Northern Territory's remote Victoria River Valley. Her engagement with the people's stories and their action in the world leads her to this analysis of a multi-centred poetics of life and land. The book speaks to issues that are of immediate and broad concern today: traditional ecological knowledge, kinship between humans and other living things, colonising history, environmental history, and sacred geography. Now in paperback, this award-winning exploration of the Yarralin people is available to a whole new readership. The boldly direct and personal approach will be illuminating and accessible to general readers, while also of great value to experienced anthropologists.

This extraordinary book, published in 2000, explores the feelings of non-Aboriginal Australians as they articulate their sense of belonging to the land. Always acting as a counterpoint is the prior occupation and ownership by Aboriginal people and their spiritual attachment. Peter Read asks the pivotal questions: what is the meaning of places important to non-Aboriginal Australians from which the indigenous people have already been dispossessed? How are contemporary Australians thinking through the problem of knowing that their places of attachment are also the places which Aboriginals loved - and lost? And are the sites of all our deep affections to be contested, articulated, shared, foregone or possessed absolutely? The book cleverly interweaves Read's analysis (and personal quest for belonging) with the voices of poets, musicians, artists, historians, young people, Asian Australians, farmers and seventh generation Australians.

This extraordinary book, published in 2000, explores the feelings of non-Aboriginal Australians as they articulate their sense of belonging to the land. Always acting as a counterpoint is the prior occupation and ownership by Aboriginal people and their spiritual attachment. Peter Read asks the pivotal questions: what is the meaning of places important to non-Aboriginal Australians from which the indigenous people have already been dispossessed? How are contemporary Australians thinking through the problem of knowing that their places of attachment are also the places which Aboriginals loved - and lost? And are the sites of all our deep affections to be contested, articulated, shared, foregone or possessed absolutely? The book cleverly interweaves Read's analysis (and personal quest for belonging) with the voices of poets, musicians, artists, historians, young people, Asian Australians, farmers and seventh generation Australians.

How does one explain the poverty and marginalization of a group that lives in a remarkably successful economy and peaceful society? A native anthropologist, the author provides critical insight into the dynamics of contemporary Mauritian society. In her meticulously researched study of ethnic, gender and racial discrimination in Mauritius, she addresses debates carried out in many developing societies on subaltern identities, ethnicity, poverty and social injustice. The book therefore also offers important empirical material for scholars interested in the wider Indian Ocean region and beyond.

The purpose of this book is to show that the ethnic groups of ancient Greece, like many ethnic groups throughout the world today, were not ultimately racial, linguistic, religious or cultural, but social groups whose "origins" in extraneous territories were just as often imagined as they were real. This is the first study to treat the subject from a truly interdisciplinary point of view, embracing literature, myth, archaeology, linguistics and social anthropology. It also outlines the history of the study of ethnicity in Greek antiquity.

In this spirited and irreverent critique of Darwin's long hold over our imagination, a distinguished philosopher of science makes the case that, in culture as well as nature, not only the fittest survive: the world is full of the "good enough" that persist too. Why is the genome of a salamander forty times larger than that of a human? Why does the avocado tree produce a million flowers and only a hundred fruits? Why, in short, is there so much waste in nature? In this lively and wide-ranging meditation on the curious accidents and unexpected detours on the path of life, Daniel Milo argues that we ask these questions because we've embraced a faulty conception of how evolution-and human society-really works. Good Enough offers a vigorous critique of the quasi-monopoly that Darwin's concept of natural selection has on our idea of the natural world. Darwinism excels in accounting for the evolution of traits, but it does not explain their excess in size and number. Many traits far exceed the optimal configuration to do the job, and yet the maintenance of this extra baggage does not prevent species from thriving for millions of years. Milo aims to give the messy side of nature its due-to stand up for the wasteful and inefficient organisms that nevertheless survive and multiply. But he does not stop at the border between evolutionary theory and its social consequences. He argues provocatively that the theory of evolution through natural selection has acquired the trappings of an ethical system. Optimization, competitiveness, and innovation have become the watchwords of Western societies, yet their role in human lives-as in the rest of nature-is dangerously overrated. Imperfection is not just good enough: it may at times be essential to survival.

Mitochondrial DNA is one of the most closely explored genetic systems, because it can tell us so much about the human past. This book takes a unique perspective, presenting the disparate strands that must be tied together to exploit this system. From molecular biology to anthropology, statistics to ancient DNA, this first volume of three presents a comprehensive global picture and a critical appraisal of human mitochondrial DNA variation.

With the end of the Cold War and the proliferation of civil wars and "regime changes," the question of nation building has acquired great practical and theoretical urgency. From Eastern Europe to East Timor, Afghanistan and recently Iraq, the United States and its allies have often been accused of shirking their nation-building responsibilities as their attention - and that of the media -- turned to yet another regional crisis. While much has been written about the growing influence of television and the Internet on modern warfare, little is known about the relationship between media and nation building. This book explores, for the first time, this relationship by means of a paradigmatic case of successful nation building: Malaysia. Based on extended fieldwork and historical research, the author follows the diffusion, adoption, and social uses of media among the Iban of Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo and demonstrates the wide-ranging process of nation building that has accompanied the Iban adoption of radio, clocks, print media, and television. In less than four decades, Iban longhouses ('villages under one roof') have become media organizations shaped by the official ideology of Malaysia, a country hastily formed in 1963 by conjoining four disparate territories.

John Postill is a Research Fellow at the University of Bremen. He is currently studying e-government and ethnicity in Malaysia. Trained as an anthropologist at University College London, he has published a range of articles on the anthropology of media, with special reference to Malaysian Borneo.

"Given the lack of information about this population in the Westrn world, the focused materials presented in this book help build a better information base on the diverse practices and beliefs of Iranian outside their homeland." . Choice " This] first full-length study of the Iranian Muslim diaspora in Britain . . . enhances our empirical and theoretical understanding." . The Muslim World Book Review An estimated 75,000 Iranians emigrated to Britain after the 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. They are politically, religiously, socio-economically and ethnically heterogeneous, and have found themselves in the ongoing process of settlement. The aim of this book is to explore facets of this process by examining the ways in which religious traditions and practices have been maintained, negotiated and rejected by Iranians from Muslim backgrounds and how they have served as identity-building vehicles during the course of migration, in relation to the political, economic, and social situation in Iran and Britain. While the ethnographic focus is on Iranians, this book touches on more general questions associated with the process of migration, transnational societies, Diasporas, and religious as well as ethnic minorities. Kathryn Spellman received her MSc. and Ph.D. in Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College, University of London, where she is currently an Honorary Research Fellow. She is a lecturer of sociology at Huron International University in London and Syracuse University (London Campus). Kathryn is also a Visiting Research Fellow in the Centre of Migration Studies Department at the University of Sussex.