This book by eminent author Jasbir Jain explores the many ways the diaspora remembers and reflects upon the lost homeland, and their relationship with their own ancestry, history of the homeland, culture and the current political conflicts. Amongst the questions this book asks is, 'how does the diaspora relate to their home, and what is the homeland's relationship to the diaspora as representatives of the contemporary homeland in another country?'. The last is an interesting point of discussion since the 'present' of the homeland and of the diaspora cannot be equated. The transformations that new locations have brought about as migrants have travelled through time and interacted with the politics of their settled lands---Africa, Fiji, the Caribbean Islands, the UK, the US, Canada, as well as the countries created out of British India, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh---have altered their affiliations and perspectives. This book gathers multiple dispersions of emigrant writers and artistes from South Asia across time and space to the various homelands they relate to now. The word 'write' is used in its multiplicity to refer to creative expression, as an inscription, as connectivity, and remembrance. Writing is also a representation and carries its own baggage of poetics and aesthetics, categories which need to be problematised vis-a-vis the writer and his/her emotional location.

As children wrestle with culture through their games, recess itself has become a battleground for the control of children's time. Based on dozens of interviews and the observation of over a thousand children in a racially integrated, working-class public school, "Recess Battles" is a moving reflection of urban childhood at the turn of the millennium. The book debunks myths about recess violence and challenges the notion that schoolyard play is a waste of time. The author videotaped and recorded children of the Mill School in Philadelphia from 1991 to 2004 and asked them to offer comments as they watched themselves at play. These sessions in "Recess Battles" raise questions about adult power and the changing frames of class, race, ethnicity, and gender. The grown-ups' clear misunderstanding of the complexity of children's play is contrasted with the richness of the children's folk traditions.

"Recess Battles" is an ethnographic study of lighthearted games, a celebratory presentation of children's folklore and its conflicts, and a philosophical text concerning the ironies of everyday childhood. Rooted in video micro-ethnography and the traditions of theorists such as Bourdieu, Willis, and Bateson, "Recess Battles" is written for a lay audience with extensive academic footnotes. International scholar Dr. Brian Sutton-Smith contributes a foreword, and the children themselves illustrate the text with black and white paintings.

This book focuses on mythos and voice in the Odyssey, to illuminate its characters' journeys from social displacement through discovery and recovery. Mythos and Voice approaches the Odyssey as a narrative of displacement - a narrative that maps the social displacement of its characters, explores the cognitive consequences of that displacement, and embodies the variable strategies by which those characters learn to resolve their displacement. It is a narrative that also employs and elaborates the characters' own narratives of displacement as genres enabling them to resist externally imposed definitions of their situations and to redefine and ultimately reclaim their own place in the world, not as it was before their displacement, but as it must be, given the new post-heroic world in which they now live. The focus on mythos and voice enables readers to approach the study of learning and the acquisition of personal agency in the context of a hazardous world - the cultural world that Odysseus navigates in Homer's epic poem. With this focus, the author examines interactive processes of human learning in a specific cultural context - the epic universe of Homeric narrative. By ethnographically examining the learning contexts portrayed in Homer's epic, Mythos and Voice elucidates an Archaic Greek view of human learning through examples that show how the author(s) of the Odyssey envisioned and dramatized displacement, learning and agency in the epic work. The book focuses on aspects of Homeric cognition as they cumulatively develop among key characters within the Odyssey's inventive narrative structure. In this way, Mythos and Voice describes a culturally specific "theory" of learning and development - a perspective that proved compelling in the pre-classical and classical Greek world, even as it does to readers now.

This international edited collection contributes to knowledge about the geographies of sexualities experienced and imagined in rural spaces. The book draws attention to the heterogeneity of rural contexts and the diversity of meanings about sexualities within and across these spaces. The collection examines four key themes. First, 'Intimacies and Institutions' focuses on how intimate relationships are governed by societal, discursive and institutional structures, and regulated by social, political and legal frames of citizenship and belonging. The chapters present historical and contemporary case studies of the constitution and management of intimate sexual lives and relationships in rural and non-metropolitan spaces. Second, 'Communities' explores how sexual identities are socially-constructed and relationally-performed in rural communities, scrutinizing the complex interplay of belonging and alienation, inclusion and exclusion, for sexual subjects and communities within rural spaces. Analyzing films, literature and interviews, the chapters examine sexuality and community, and "queer" notions of rural family and community. Third, 'Mobilities' examines movement/migration at different scales. Cross-national data provides insights into similarities and differences in rural migration and homemaking for lesbians, gay men and same-sex families. The chapters consider how movement, coming out and memories of time and place inflect home, identity and belonging for rural lesbians and gay men. Fourth, 'Production and Consumption' investigates the commodification of rural sexualities. The chapters interrogate the management of animal bodies and sexualities in industrial agriculture for consumer pleasure and commercial ends; how heterosexuality and sexual relations are transacted in mining communities; and the global commodification of rural masculine sexualities. This book is timely. It provides important new insights about ruralities and sexualities, filling a gap in theoretical and empirical understandings about how sexualities in diverse rural spaces are given meaning. This collection begins the processes of furthering discussion and knowledge about the inherently dynamic and constantly changing nature of the rural and the multiple, varied and complex sexual subjectivities lived through corporeal experiences and virtual and imagined lives.

This volume explores recent developments in the practice of hospitality, as well as the curious, precarious relationship between guests and their hosts. Drawing from personal interactions with an aging innkeeper called Herr Klaus and modern Airbnb hostess Gretchen, Amitai Touval offers a touching and illuminating account of how the rise of Airbnb has forged new standards of generosity, hostility, and accountability. An Anthropological Study of Hospitality is a must-read for anyone who has wondered about the intricate social cues involved in such a seemingly simple exchange.

What is it that police and policing actually do? What are the effects? And how are these effects mediated and experienced by different people at different times and in different contexts? Examining these questions, the contributors in this volume draw attention to the centrality of police and policing to the project of governance and the experience of being human in the contemporary world. They seek to make sense of and counteract the contemporary fetishization of police by problematizing their taken-for-granted existence and understanding their impact on contemporary human life. To this end, this volume provides a preliminary step in the establishment of an anthropology of police and policing.

Volta Redonda is a Brazilian steel town founded in the 1940s by dictator Getulio Vargas on an ex-coffee valley as a powerful symbol of Brazilian modernization. The city's economy, and consequently its citizen's lives, revolves around the Companha Siderurgica Nacional (CSN), the biggest industrial complex in Latin America. Although the glory days of the CSN have long passed, the company still controls life in Volta Redonda today, creating as much dispossession as wealth for the community. Brazilian Steel Town tells the story of the people tied to this ailing giant - of their fears, hopes, and everyday struggles.

"One strength of Carrier's book is the way he charts these debates, showing how they were symptomatic of a wider struggle over national memory. Another great strength of this book is its thorough and informative knowledge of theoretical literature on memory and memorials, a knowledge which Carrier - to his enormous credit - does not simply parade before us but actually applies to the objects of his study...a superb book."- European History Quarterly

" Carrier] argues convincingly that what really matters about these memorials is not so much the finished product as the social and political context in which they were mooted, conceived and built - and the empirical context in which they are subsequently interpreted... Another great strength of this book is its thorough and informative knowledge of theoretical literature on memory and memorials. - European History

"Carrier's analysis of the form and the multidimensional meaning of the monuments is insightful. One of the most important contributions of this book is its argument that sites of memory produce not only social consensus but also dialogue and competition between the victims." - German History

Since 1989, two sites of memory with respect to the deportation and persecution of Jews in France and Germany during the Second World War have received intense public attention: the Velo d'Hiver (Winter Velodrome) in Paris and the Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe or Holocaust Monument in Berlin. Why is this so? Both monuments, the author argues, are unique in the history of memorial projects. Although they are genuine "sites of memory," neither monument celebrates history, but rather serve as platforms for the deliberation, negotiation and promotion of social consensus over the memorial status of war crimes in France and Germany. The debates over these monuments indicate that it is the communication among members of the public via the mass media, rather than qualities inherent in the sites themselves, which transformed these sites into symbols beyond traditional conceptions of heritage and patriotism.

."a timely book that.sets a standard for a new field of study and therefore deserves to be read widely. the volume's] contributions contain fascinating material for further study." . International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter "Steven Brown and Ulrik Volgsten haveput together a valuable collection of essays on a consistently interesting theme. The book constitutes an important resource for the future development of this theme." . Music Perception ."fascinating and challenging.this book, illustrates the diversity, the depth and the potential of the field of the sociology of music. As much as these texts enlighten, they also highlight the vastness of the research yet to be conducted. However, this book is far more than just a compilation of papers presented at a conference, they are relevant discussions to anybody who turns on the radio, purchases or downloads a record or even sings a lullaby." . Leonardo Digital Reviews Since the beginning of human civilization, music has been used as a device to control social behavior, where it has operated as much to promote solidarity within groups as hostility between competing groups. Music is an emotive manipulator that influences attitude, motivation and behavior at many levels and in many contexts. This volume is the first to address the social ramifications of music's behaviorally manipulative effects, its morally questionable uses and control mechanisms, and its economic and artistic regulation through commercialization, thus highlighting not only music's diverse uses at the social level but also the ever-fragile relationship between aesthetics and morality. Steven Brown is a researcher in cognitive neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He received his doctorate at Columbia University in New York, and has done research at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. His research deals with the neural basis of human communication, including the arts. Ulrik Volgsten is a research fellow in the Department of Culture, Aesthetics and Media at Goteborg University in Sweden. He received his doctorate in the Department of Musicology at Stockholm University, and has published papers on both musical and philosophical topics. Volgsten's multidisciplinary research mainly focuses on human communication in different medi

Cultural evolution, much like general evolution, works from the assumption that cultures are descendent from much earlier ancestors. Human culture manifests itself in forms ranging from the small bands of hunters, through intermediate scale complex hunter-gatherers and farmers, to the high density urban settlements and complex polities that characterize much of today s world.

The chapters in the volume examine the dynamic interaction between the micro- and macro-scales of cultural evolution, developing a theoretical approach to the archaeological record that has been termed evolutionary processual archaeology. The contributions in this volume integrate positive elements of both evolutionary and processualist schools of thought. The approach, as explicated by the contributors in this work, offers novel insights into topics that include the emergence, stasis, collapse and extinction of cultural patterns, and development of social inequalities. Consequently, these contributions form a stepping off point for a significant new range of cultural evolutionary studies."

Devil worship, black magic, and witchcraft have long captivated anthropologists as well as the general public. In this volume, Jean La Fontaine explores the intersection of expert and lay understandings of evil and the cultural forms that evil assumes. The chapters touch on public scares about devil-worship, misconceptions about human sacrifice and the use of body parts in healing practices, and mistaken accusations of children practicing witchcraft. Together, these cases demonstrate that comparison is a powerful method of cultural understanding, but warns of the dangers and mistaken conclusions that untrained ideas about other ways of life can lead to.

Drawing on ethnographic research in the village of Canhane, which is host to the first community tourism project in Mozambique, The Good Holiday explores the confluence of two powerful industries: tourism and development, and explains when, how and why tourism becomes development and development, tourism. The volume further explores the social and material consequences of this merging, presenting the confluence of tourism and development as a major vehicle for the exercise of ethics, and non-state governance in contemporary life.

Almost forty years after the publication of Hobsbawm and Ranger's The Invention of Tradition, the subject of invented traditions-cultural and historical practices that claim a continuity with a distant past but which are in fact of relatively recent origin-is still relevant, important, and highly contentious. Invented Traditions in North and South Korea examines the ways in which compressed modernity, Cold War conflict, and ideological opposition has impacted the revival of traditional forms in both Koreas. The volume is divided thematically into sections covering: (1) history, religions, (2) language, (3) music, food, crafts, and finally, (4) space. It includes chapters on pseudo-histories, new religions, linguistic politeness, literary Chinese, p'ansori, heritage, North Korean food, architecture, and the invention of children's pilgrimages in the DPRK. As the first comparative study of invented traditions in North and South Korea, the book takes the reader on a journey through Korea's epic twentieth century, examining the revival of culture in the context of colonialism, decolonization, national division, dictatorship, and modernization. The book investigates what it describes as "monumental" invented traditions formulated to maintain order, loyalty, and national identity during periods of political upheaval as well as cultural revivals less explicitly connected to political power. Invented Traditions in North and South Korea demonstrates that invented traditions can teach us a great deal about the twentieth-century political and cultural trajectories of the two Koreas. With contributions from historians, sociologists, folklorists, scholars of performance, and anthropologists, this volume will prove invaluable to Koreanists, as well as teachers and students of Korean and Asian studies undergraduate courses.

This book describes Reformed ecclesiology through the lived faith of the Filipino American Christian diaspora. It proposes a contextual, constructive ecclesiology by engaging with the Presbyterian/Reformed theological tradition's understanding of the ascension of Jesus Christ with the Old Testament book of Habakkuk as a conversation partner.

Spirit possession involves the displacement of a human's conscious self by a powerful other who temporarily occupies the human's body. Here, Seligman shows that spirit possession represents a site for understanding fundamental aspects of human experience, especially those involved with interactions among meaning, embodiment, and subjectivity.

This book aims to deconstruct ethnography to alert systems designers, and other stakeholders, to the issues presented by new approaches that move beyond the studies of 'work' and 'work practice' within the social sciences (in particular anthropology and sociology). The theoretical and methodological apparatus of the social sciences distort the social and cultural world as lived in and understood by ordinary members, whose common-sense understandings shape the actual milieu into which systems are placed and used. In Deconstructing Ethnography the authors show how 'new' calls are returning systems design to 'old' and problematic ways of understanding the social. They argue that systems design can be appropriately grounded in the social through the ordinary methods that members use to order their actions and interactions. This work is written for post-graduate students and researchers alike, as well as design practitioners who have an interest in bringing the social to bear on design in a systematic rather than a piecemeal way. This is not a 'how to' book, but instead elaborates the foundations upon which the social can be systematically built into the design of ubiquitous and interactive systems.

The evolution of the human species has always been closely tied to the relationship between biology and culture, and the human condition is rooted in this fascinating intersection. Sport, games, and competition serve as a nexus for humanity's innate fixation on movement and social activity, and these activities have served throughout history to encourage the proliferation of human culture for any number of exclusive or inclusive motivations: money, fame, health, spirituality, or social and cultural solidarity. The study of anthropology, as presented in Anthropology of Sport and Human Movement, provides a scope that offers a critical and discerning perspective on the complex calculus involving human biological and cultural variation that produces human movement and performance. Each chapter of this compelling collection resonates with the theme of a tightly woven relationship of biology and culture, of evolutionary implications and contemporary biological and cultural expression.

To open this volume Jean Comaroff, one of the most important voices in the anthropology of religion over the past 30 years, reflects on the development of her thought on religion, the colony and the postcolony, in terms both personal and scholarly. Her work and interests echo in this volume through subsequent discussions of community, politics and morality in the Occupy movement in London; religion and diaspora; the cultural logics behind Afro-Brazilian cults; and the 'anthropology of missions' on both sides of the Atlantic. Other contributions explore an almost forgotten tradition of cosmological studies; hyperbole and sacredness in the dramatic case studies of 9/11 and the Holocaust; and the somewhat counterintuitive links between religion and sport. This volume's debate section considers the place and role of religion in revolutionary contexts, from 'Tahrir politics' to the Tamil conflict, from the implicit historicity and structure of jihadism to the conflation of international political developments and religious movements. The volume is rounded out by discussions of Manuel Vazquez's Beyond Belief, a book that picks up longstanding debates concerning practice, belief, materiality and cognition; a teaching section; and an extensive set of book reviews.

How can the irrational force of charisma co-exist within rationalized religious institutions? To answer this question, this book provides the first comparative anthropological explorations of charisma as it occurs among Charismatic Catholics, Evangelical Protestants, Sufis, Hassidic Jews, Buddhist cultists, and Native American shamans in locations ranging from Massachusetts to Syria; from Taiwan to the Dominican Republic; from Angola to the jungles of Paraguay, from Rome to Brooklyn. These cases reveal how various religious traditions incorporate ecstatic charismatic experiences within their overarching organizational systems, and so provide new insight into the nature of religion today.

In this provocative book, Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba examines untamed feminine divinities from around the world. Although distant geographically, these divine figures are surprisingly similar-representing concepts of liminality, outsiderhood, and structural inferiority, embodied in the divine feminine. These strong, independent, unrestrained figures are connected to the periphery and to magical powers, including power over sexuality, transformation, and death. Oleszkiewicz-Peralba offers a study of the origin and worship of four feminine deities across cultures and continents: the Slavic Baba Yaga, the Hindu Kali, the Brazilian Pombagira, and the Mexican Santa Muerte. Although these divinities have often been marginalized through dismissal, demonization, and dulcification, they continue to be extremely attractive, as they empower their devotees confronting them with the ultimate reality of transience and death. Oleszkiewicz-Peralba examines how these sacred icons have been adapted and transformed across time and place.

Most discussions of oral history method are rooted in abstract ideas about what interviewing should be and should achieve. However, interviews are ultimately personal interactions between human beings, and as such they rarely conform to a methodological ideal. Nonetheless, oral history's complex, capricious nature is rarely addressed by its practitioners when they share their work with the world. The struggles and negotiations interviewers face while conducting interviews - ethical, political, personal - either go unacknowledged or are discussed only with trusted colleagues in informal settings. This groundbreaking collection shows that a full account of oral history methodology must include honest and rigorous analyses of actual practice, allowing us to embrace the uncertainties and remarkable opportunities that define a human-centered methodology. Here, fourteen practitioners draw connections between vastly different areas of study, including Holocaust memories, work with Aboriginal communities, Islamic studies, immigration, and conflict studies. All are united by the shared experience of encountering complex individuals with messy, difficult, and ultimately illuminating stories to tell.

This ground-breaking collection introduces readers to the fascinating research field of political anthropology. The chapters engage in major theoretical and methodological debates to provide interpretive frames, analytical tools and ethnographic illustrations for culturally based interpretations of political phenomena, revealing the intersection between anthropology, culture, politics and international relations. Theoretical tools such as liminality, sacrifice, mimesis, ethics, trickster and interpretation of meaning provide understanding of key challenges in a globalised world. These include war zones, revolutions, migration, securitization, territorial borders, climate change and ethno-religious violence. The contributing authors focus on the ethnographies of power, political culture and forms of cultural intimacy in informal networks. Using self-critical and reflexive approaches, they show that disciplinary boundaries have been reshaped by changing meanings of power, including reconfigurations of state and sovereignty. With reflections on the potential and limits of political anthropology, this Handbook explores the art of understanding human interaction within political frameworks in a globalising world. Offering a unique reference resource in the area with exceptional cross-disciplinary research, this Handbook will suit political, social and cultural anthropologists as well as scholars in comparative political analysis and social theory. Students and researchers of politics, anthropology and international relations will also benefit from the key methodological tools explaining the challenges and consequences of globalisation. Contributors include: S. Coleman, J.-P. Daloz, G. de Anna, H. Donnan, T.H. Eriksen, R. Farneti, M. Fog Olwig, J. Gledhill, J. Gould, S. Haugbolle, A. Horvath, C. Illies, J. Kubik, N. Long, M. Malksoo, K. Martin, M. Moodie, M. Nuijten, P. Rabinow, M. Rasaratnam, P. Raman, E. Ranta, A. Sanchez, D. Sausdal, A. Stavrianakis, F. Stepputat, A. Szakolczai, B. Thomassen, H. Vigh, H. Wydra