Taste is recognized as one of the most evocative senses. The flavors of food play an important role in identity, memory, emotion, desire, and aversion, as well as social, religious and other occasions. Yet despite its fundamental role, taste is often mysteriously absent from discussions about food. Now in its second edition, The Taste Culture Reader examines the sensuous dimensions of eating and drinking and highlights the centrality of taste in human experience. Combining both classic and contemporary sources from anthropology, philosophy, sociology, history, science, and beyond, the book features excerpts from texts by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Pierre Bourdieu, Brillat-Savarin, Marcel Proust, Sidney Mintz, and M.F.K. Fisher as well as original essays by authors such as David Sutton, Lisa Heldke, David Howes, Constance Classen, and Amy Trubek. This edition has been revised substantially throughout to include the latest scholarship on the senses and features new introductions from the editor as well as 10 new chapters. The perfect introduction to the study of taste, this is essential reading for students in food studies, anthropology, sensory studies, philosophy, and culinary arts.

Investigating the efforts of the Kichwa of Tena, Ecuador to reverse language shift to Spanish, this book examines the ways in which indigenous language can be revitalized and how creative bilingual forms of discourse can reshape the identities and futures of local populations. Based on deep ethnographic fieldwork among urban, periurban, and rural indigenous Kichwa communities, Michael Wroblewski explores adaptations to culture contact, language revitalization, and political mobilization through discourse. Expanding the ethnographic picture of native Amazonians and their traditional discourse practices, this book focuses attention on Kichwas' diverse engagements with rural and urban ways of living, local and global ways of speaking, and indigenous and dominant intellectual traditions. Wroblewski reveals the composite nature of indigenous words and worlds through conversational interviews, oral history narratives, political speechmaking, and urban performance media, showing how discourse is a critical focal point for studying cultural adaptation. Highlighting how Kichwas assert autonomy through creative forms of self-representation, Remaking Kichwa moves the study of indigenous language into the globalized era and offers innovative reconsiderations of indigeneity, discourse, and identity.

In Modeling Entradas, Clay Mathers brings together leading archaeologists working across the American South to offer a comprehensive, comparative analysis of Spanish entrada assemblages. These expeditions into the interior of the North American continent were among the first contacts between New- and Old-World communities, and the study of how they were organized and the routes they took-based on the artifacts they left behind-illuminates much about the sixteenth-century indigenous world and the colonizing efforts of Spain. Focusing on the entradas of conquistadors Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, Hernando de Soto, Tristan de Luna y Arellano, and Juan Pardo, contributors offer insights from recently discovered sites including encampments, battlefields, and shipwrecks. Using the latest interpretive perspectives, they turn the narrative of conquest from a simple story of domination to one of happenstance, circumstance, and interactions between competing social, political, and cultural worlds. These essays delve into the dynamic relationships between Native Americans and Europeans in a variety of contexts including exchange, disease, conflict, and material production.This volume offers valuable models for evaluating, synthesizing, and comparing early expeditions, showing how object-oriented and site-focused analyses connect to the anthropological dimensions of early contact, patterns of regional settlement, and broader historical trajectories such as globalization. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

The most exciting thing about anthropology is that it enables the student to become acquainted with people of different cultures. The Tapestry of Culture provides the student with the basic concepts necessary to understand these different cultures while showing that cultural variations occur within certain limits. Though the forces of globalization have caused cultures of the world around us to become increasingly similar, the book shows that people nevertheless cling to ethnic identities, and their cultural distinctiveness. The tenth edition of this popular textbook incorporates new material throughout, such as ethnographic examples in every chapter; strengthened discussions of gender, transnationalism, and globalization; and more. To enhance the experience of both instructors and students, the tenth edition is accompanied by a learning package that includes an instructor's manual with outlines, key terms, discussion questions, lists of films and other resources, and more; a test bank; and a companion website.

How would our understanding of museums change if we used the Vintage Wireless Museum or the Museum of Witchcraft as examples - rather than the British Museum or the Louvre? Although there are thousands of small, independent, single-subject museums in the UK, Europe and North America, the field of museum studies remains focused almost exclusively on major institutions. In this ground-breaking new book, Fiona Candlin reveals how micromuseums challenge preconceived ideas about what museums are and how they operate. Based on extensive fieldwork and analysis of more than fifty micromuseums, she shows how they offer dramatically different models of curation, interpretation and visitor experience, and how their analysis generates new perspectives on subjects such as display, objects, collections, architecture, and the public sphere. The first-ever book dedicated to the subject, Micromuseology provides a platform for radically rethinking key debates within museum studies. Destined to transform the field, it is essential reading for students and researchers in museum studies, anthropology, material culture studies, and visual culture.

The American lumber industry helped fuel westward expansion and industrial development during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, building logging camps and sawmills-and abandoning them once the trees ran out. In this book, John Franzen surveys archaeological studies of logging sites across the nation, explaining how material evidence found at these locations illustrates key aspects of the American experience during this era. Franzen delves into the technologies used in cutting and processing logs, the environmental impacts of harvesting timber, the daily life of workers and their families, and the social organization of logging communities. He highlights important trends, such as increasing mechanization and standardization, and changes in working and living conditions, especially the food and housing provided by employers. Throughout these studies, which range from Michigan to California, the book provides access to information from unpublished studies not readily available to most researchers. The Archaeology of the Logging Industry also shows that when archaeologists turn their attention to the recent past, the discipline can be relevant to today's ecological crises. By creating awareness of the environmental deterioration caused by industrial-scale logging during what some are calling the Anthropocene, archaeology supports the hope that with adequate time for recovery and better global-scale stewardship, the human use of forests might become sustainable. A volume in the series the American Experience in Archaeological Perspective, edited by Michael S. Nassaney

This newly updated, comprehensive history of South Africa presents the story of our turbulent country in a fresh, readable narrative.

Grippingly retold by leading historians and other scholars under the editorship of Hermann Giliomee, Bernard Mbenga and Bill Nasson, New History of South Africa starts with recent discoveries about the origin of humanity in Africa.

A beautifully illustrated volume that makes the complex South African story, from earliest times right up to present, come alive.

Home cooking is a multibillion-dollar industry that includes cookbooks, kitchen gadgets, high-end appliances, specialty ingredients, and more. Cooking-themed programming flourishes on television, inspiring a wide array of celebrity chef-branded goods even as self-described ""foodies"" seek authenticity by pickling, preserving, and canning foods in their own home kitchens. Despite this, claims that ""no one has time to cook anymore"" are common, lamenting the slow extinction of traditional American home cooking in the twenty-first century. In Look Who's Cooking: The Rhetoric of American Home Cooking Traditions in the Twenty-First Century, author Jennifer Rachel Dutch explores the death of home cooking, revealing how modern changes transformed cooking at home from an odious chore into a concept imbued with deep meanings associated with home, family, and community. Drawing on a wide array of texts-cookbooks, advertising, YouTube videos, and more-Dutch analyzes the many manifestations of traditional cooking in America today. She argues that what is missing from the discourse around home cooking is an understanding of skills and recipes as a form of folklore. Dutch's research reveals that home cooking is a powerful vessel that Americans fill with meaning because it represents both the continuity of the past and adaptability to the present. Home cooking is about much more than what is for dinner; it's about forging a connection to the past, displaying the self in the present, and leaving a lasting legacy for the future.

In gay bars and nightclubs across America, and in gay-oriented magazines and media, the buff, macho, white gay man is exalted as the ideal-the most attractive, the most wanted, and the most emulated type of man. For gay Asian American men, often viewed by their peers as submissive or too 'pretty,' being sidelined in the gay community is only the latest in a long line of racially-motivated offenses they face in the United States.Repeatedly marginalized by both the white-centric queer community that values a hyper-masculine sexuality and a homophobic Asian American community that often privileges masculine heterosexuality, gay Asian American men largely have been silenced and alienated in present-day culture and society. In Geisha of a Different Kind, C. Winter Han travels from West Coast Asian drag shows to the internationally sought-after Thai kathoey, or "ladyboy," to construct a theory of queerness that is inclusive of the race and gender particularities of the gay Asian male experience in the United States. Through ethnographic observation of queer Asian American communities and Asian American drag shows, interviews with gay Asian American men, and a reading of current media and popular culture depictions of Asian Americans, Han argues that gay Asian American men, used to gender privilege within their own communities, must grapple with the idea that, as Asians, they have historically been feminized as a result of Western domination and colonization, and as a result, they are minorities within the gay community, which is itself marginalized within the overall American society. Han also shows that many Asian American gay men can turn their unusual position in the gay and Asian American communities into a positive identity. In their own conception of self, their Asian heritage and sexuality makes these men unique, special, and, in the case of Asian American drag queens, much more able to convey a convincing erotic femininity. Challenging stereotypes about beauty, nativity, and desirability, Geisha of a Different Kind makes a major intervention in the study of race and sexuality in America.

Engaging a current controversy important to archaeologists and indigenous communities, Repatriation and Erasing the Past takes a critical look at laws that mandate the return of human remains from museums and laboratories to ancestral burial grounds. Anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss and attorney James Springer offer scientific and legal perspectives on the way repatriation laws impact research.Weiss discusses how anthropologists draw conclusions about past peoples through their study of skeletons and mummies and argues that continued curation of human remains is important. Springer reviews American Indian law and how it helped to shape laws such as NAGPRA (the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act). He provides detailed analyses of cases including the Kennewick Man and the Havasupai genetics lawsuits. Together, Weiss and Springer offer a thoughtful critique of repatriation-both the ideology and the laws that support it. Repatriation and Erasing the Past is a helpful assessment for scholars and students who wish to understand both sides of the debate.

There is a widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be. We hear constant laments that we live too fast, that time is scarce, and that the pace of everyday life is spiraling out of our control. The iconic image that abounds is that of the frenetic, technologically tethered, iPhone/iPad-addicted citizen. Yet weren't modern machines supposed to save, and thereby free up, time? The purpose of this book is to bring a much-needed sociological perspective to bear on speed: it examines how speed and acceleration came to signify the zeitgeist, and explores the political implications of this. Among the major questions addressed are: when did acceleration become the primary rationale for technological innovation and the key measure of social progress? Is acceleration occurring across all sectors of society and all aspects of life, or are some groups able to mobilise speed as a resource while others are marginalised and excluded? Does the growing centrality of technological mediations (of both information and communication) produce slower as well as faster times, waiting as well as 'busyness', stasis as well as mobility? To what extent is the contemporary imperative of speed as much a cultural artefact as a material one? To make sense of everyday life in the twenty-first century, we must begin by interrogating the social dynamics of speed. This book shows how time is a collective accomplishment, and that temporality is experienced very differently by diverse groups of people, especially between the affluent and those who service them.

In rural Mexico, people often say that Alzheimer's does not exist. ""People do not have Alzheimer's because they don't need to worry,"" said one Oaxacan, explaining that locals lack the stresses that people face ""over there"" - that is, in the modern world. Alzheimer's and related dementias carry a stigma. In contrast to the way elders are revered for remembering local traditions, dementia symbolizes how modern families have forgotten the communal values that bring them together. In Caring for the People of the Clouds, psychologist Jonathan Yahalom provides an emotionally evocative, story-rich analysis of family caregiving for Oaxacan elders living with dementia. Based on his extensive research in a Zapotec community, Yahalom presents the conflicted experience of providing care in a setting where illness is steeped in stigma and locals are concerned about social cohesion. Traditionally, the Zapotec, or ""people of the clouds,"" respected their elders and venerated their ancestors. Dementia reveals the difficulty of upholding those ideals today. Yahalom looks at how dementia is understood in a medically pluralist landscape, how it is treated in a setting marked by social tension, and how caregivers endure challenges among their families and the broader community. Yahalom argues that caregiving involves more than just a response to human dependency; it is central to regenerating local values and family relationships threatened by broader social change. In so doing, the author bridges concepts in mental health with theory from medical anthropology. Unique in its interdisciplinary approach, this book advances theory pertaining to cross-cultural psychology and develops anthropological insights about how aging, dementia, and caregiving disclose the intimacies of family life in Oaxaca.

This leading team of scholars presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users. The authors refer to this network of interlinked changes as the new conditions surrounding small languages (Sami, Corsican, Irish and Welsh) in peripheral sites. Starting from the conviction that peripheral sites can and should inform the sociolinguistics of globalisation, the book explores how new modes of reflexivity, more transactional frames for authenticity, commodification of peripheral resources, and boundary-transgression with humour, all carry forward change. These types of change articulate a blurring of binary oppositions between centre and periphery, old and new, and standard and non-standard. Such research is particularly urgent in multilingual small language contexts, where different conceptualisations of language(s), boundaries, and speakers impact on individuals' social, cultural, and economic capital, and opportunities.

This book argues that neither theories of secularisation nor theories of lived religion offer satisfactory accounts of religion and social change. Drawing from Deleuze and Gauttari's idea of the assemblage, Paul-Francois Tremlett outlines an alternative. Informed by classical and contemporary theories of religion as well as empirical case studies and ethnography conducted in Manila and London, this book re-frames religion as spatially organised flows. Foregrounding the agency of hon-human actors, it offers a compelling and original account of religion and social change.

The most famous long-distance hiking trail in North America, the 2,181-mile Appalachian Trail - the longest hiking-only footpath in the world - runs along the Appalachian mountain range from Georgia to Maine. Every year about 2,000 individuals attempt to ""thru-hike"" the entire trail, a feat equivalent to hiking Mount Everest sixteen times. In Walking on the Wild Side, sociologist Kristi M. Fondren traces the stories of forty-six men and women who, for their own personal reasons, set out to conquer America's most well known, and arguably most social, long-distance hiking trail. In this fascinating in-depth study, Fondren shows how, once out on the trail, this unique subculture of hikers lives mostly in isolation, with their own way of acting, talking, and thinking; their own vocabulary; their own activities and interests; and their own conception of what is significant in life. They tend to be self-disciplined, have an unwavering trust in complete strangers, embrace a life of poverty, and reject modern-day institutions. The volume illuminates the intense social intimacy and bonding that forms among long-distance hikers as they collectively construct a long-distance hiker identity. Fondren describes how long-distance hikers develop a trail persona, underscoring how important a sense of place can be to our identity, and to our sense of who we are. Indeed, the author adds a new dimension to our understanding of the nature of identity in general. Anyone who has hiked - or has ever dreamed of hiking - the Appalachian Trail will find this volume fascinating. Walking on the Wild Side captures a community for whom the trail is a sacred place, a place to which they have become attached, socially, emotionally, and spiritually.

Biosocial Synchrony on Sumba: Multispecies Relationships and Environmental Variations in Indonesia examines biosocial change in the Austronesian community of the Kodi by examining multispecies interactions between select biota and abiota. Cynthia T. Fowler describes how the Kodi people coordinate their mundane and ritual practices with polychaetes and celestial bodies, and how this synchrony encourages and is encouraged by social and ecological variations. Fowler grounds her anthropogenic environmental research with information from geospatial science, marine ecology, astronomy, physics, and astrophysics.