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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > Social & cultural anthropology
Lewis Island in Lambertville, New Jersey, is the site of the Lewis
Fishery, the last haul seine American shad fishery on the nontidal
Delaware River. The Lewis family has fished in the same spot since
1888 and operated the fishery through five generations. The
extended Lewis family, its fishery's crew, and the Lambertville
community connect with people throughout the region, including
environmentalists concerned about the river. It was a Lewis who
raised the alarm and helped resurrect a polluted river and its
biosphere. While this once exclusively masculine activity is
central to the tiny island, today men, women, and children fish,
living out a sense of place, belonging, and sustainability. In
Another Haul: Narrative Stewardship and Cultural Sustainability at
the Lewis Family Fishery, author Charlie Groth highlights the
traditional, vernacular, and everyday cultural expressions of the
family and crew to understand how community, culture, and the
environment intersect. Groth argues there is a system of narrative
here that combines verbal activities and everyday activities. On
the basis of over two decades of participation and observation,
interviews, surveys, and a wide variety of published sources, Groth
identifies a phenomenon she calls ""narrative stewardship."" This
narrative system, emphasizing place, community, and commitment, in
turn, encourages environmental and cultural stewardship, tradition,
and community. Intricate and embedded, the system appears
invisible, but careful study unpacks and untangles how people,
often unconsciously, foster sustainability. Though an ethnography
of an occupation, the volume encourages readers to consider what
arises as special about all cultures and what needs to be seen and
preserved.
This is an analysis of 166 original and previously unpublished
documents dating from the very first mention of a Gypsy in 1401 up
to the year 1765. These documents range from royal decrees thru
lawsuits to entries in municipal records. Some were written in
Polish but many are in Latin, German or Ruthenian. They tell the
story of not only the Gypsies living in Poland, but also of those
who now live in Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine. Though
Poland has not traditionally had a large Roma population, the
author leads the reader through an eventful history of a people
living on the margins of contemporary Europe. The historic
documents illustrate a marked contrast to present stereotypes and
popular media images and shows how the position of Roma/Gypsies
shifted gradually from respected, wealthy and partly settled
citizens of the early modern times, towards criminalized vagrants
of the 18th century. This is a careful interpretation and
re-interpretation of documents pertaining to the Roma's past that
will provide an enlightening historical perspective towards the
re-evaluation and self-definition of the Romani people in
contemporary Europe.
Anthropologist Diane E. King has written about everyday life in the
Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which covers much of the area long known
as Iraqi Kurdistan. Following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's
Ba'thist Iraqi government by the United States and its allies in
2003, Kurdistan became a recognized part of the federal Iraqi
system. The Region is now integrated through technology, media, and
migration to the rest of the world. Focusing on household life in
Kurdistan's towns and villages, King explores the ways that
residents connect socially, particularly through patron-client
relationships and as people belonging to gendered categories. She
emphasizes that patrilineages (male ancestral lines) seem well
adapted to the Middle Eastern modern stage and viceversa. The idea
of patrilineal descent influences the meaning of refuge-seeking and
migration as well as how identity and place are understood, how
women and men interact, and how "politicking" is conducted. In the
new Kurdistan, old values may be maintained, reformulated, or
questioned. King offers a sensitive interpretation of the
challenges resulting from the intersection of tradition with
modernity. Honor killings still occur when males believe their
female relatives have dishonored their families, and female genital
cutting endures. Yet, this is a region where modern technology has
spread and seemingly everyone has a mobile phone. Households may
have a startling combination of illiterate older women and educated
young women. New ideas about citizenship coexist with older forms
of patronage. King is one of the very few scholars who conducted
research in Iraq under extremely difficult conditions during the
Saddam Hussein regime. How she was able to work in the midst of
danger and in the wake of genocide is woven throughout the stories
she tells. Kurdistan on the Global Stage serves as a lesson in
field research as well as a valuable ethnography.
This book offers an in-depth description and analysis of Chinese
coin-like charms, which date back to the second century CE and
which continued to be used until mid 20th century. This work is
unique in that it provides an archaeological and analytical
interpretation of the content of these metallic objects:
inscriptive, pictorial or both. As the component chapters show,
these coin-like objects represent a wealth of Chinese traditional
folk beliefs, including but not limited to family values, social
obligations and religious desires. The book presents a collection
of contributed chapters, gathering a diverse range of perspectives
and expertise from some of the world's leading scholars in the
fields of archaeology, religious studies, art history, language and
museology. The background of the cover image is a page from Guang
jin shi yun fu , a rhyming dictionary first published in the ninth
year of the Kangxi Reign (1652 CE). The metal charm dates back to
the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE), depicting two deities traditionally
believed to possess the majic power of suppressing evil spirits.
The stich-bound book in the foreground is a collection of seal
impressions from the beginning of the 20th century. Its wooden
press board is inscribed da ji xiang by Fang Zhi-bin in the year of
bing yin (1926 CE).
This thought-provoking book is an exploration of the ways religion
and diverse forms of mobility have shaped post-apartheid
Johannesburg, South Africa. It analyses transnational and local
migration in contemporary and historical perspective, along with
movements of commodities, ideas, sounds and colours within the
city. It re-theorizes urban 'super-diversity' as a plurality of
religious, ethnic, national and racial groups but also as the
diverse processes through which religion produces urban space. The
authors argue that while religion facilitates movement, belonging
and aspiration in the city, it is complicit in establishing new
forms of enclosure, moral order and spatial and gendered control.
Multi-authored and interdisciplinary, this edited collection deals
with a wide variety of sites and religions, including Christianity,
Islam, Hinduism and Judaism. Its original reading of post-apartheid
Johannesburg advances global debates around religion, urbanization,
migration and diversity, and will appeal to students and scholars
working in these fields.
This ethnographic study of a mixed-occupancy housing estate near
the centre of London refocuses the scholarly conversation around
social housing in the UK after the 1980 Housing Act. As well as
examining the long-term consequences of 'Right to Buy,' such as
shortages in local authority stock and neighbourhood
gentrification, James Rosbrook-Thompson and Gary Armstrong
investigate the changes wrought on the social fabric of the
individual estate. Drawing on four years of ethnographic fieldwork,
the authors explore the estate's social mix and, more specifically,
the consequences of owner-occupiers, council tenants and private
renters sharing a cramped inner-city neighbourhood. Mixed-Occupancy
Housing in London: A Living Tapestry humanizes the academic
discussion of class, race, and gender in social housing through the
occupants' tales of getting by, getting along and getting out.
This book analyses a unique leisure world that has been built
around a newly emerging phenomenon known as urban exploration; the
art of exploring human-made environments which are generally
abandoned or hidden from sight of the public eye. Drawing on Michel
Foucault's concept of heterotopia, Bingham provides a detailed and
critical investigation of urban exploration as a form of leisure
that is about the coming together of drifting performers who, in
their celebration of 'rebellion' and 'deviance', are determined to
find a sense of meaning and belonging. The research considers the
influence of consumer capitalism on urban explorers, and the wider
social, economic and political context that shapes ideas of
belonging and identity in the twenty-first century. By doing this,
the book analyses urban exploration as an activity that has emerged
in a time when human ideas about culture, individuality and
community have transformed, and 'solid' modernity is gradually
disintegrating around us. This multi and interdisciplinary work
will appeal to people with an interest in 'abnormal' or 'deviant'
leisure, as well as academics from sociology, anthropology, social
geography, leisure studies, cultural studies, sport and recreation
and tourism.
Play & Culture Studies is a bi-annual, peer-reviewed series
published by the Association for the Study of Play. For forty years
The Association for the Anthropological Study of Play (TAASP), now
The Association for the Study of Play (TASP) has served as the
premier professional organization in academia dedicated to
interdisciplinary research and theory construction concerning play.
During that time TASP has promoted the study of play, forged
alliances with various organizations advancing the cause for play,
organized yearly meetings to disseminate play research, and
produced an impressive catalog of play research through a variety
of publications. Volume 13 of the Play and Culture Studies Series
highlights contributions that reflect upon the rich forty-year
history of TASP, that explore current research examining the field
of play, and that advance future directions for play research.
The technological capacity to transform biology - repairing,
reshaping and replacing body parts, chemicals and functions - is
now part of our lives. Humanity is confronted with a variety of
affordable and non-invasive 'enhancement technologies': anti-ageing
medicine, aesthetic surgery, cognitive and sexual enhancers,
lifestyle drugs, prosthetics and hormone supplements. This
collection focuses on why people find these practices so seductive
and provides ethnographic insights into people's motives and
aspirations as they embrace or reject enhancement technologies,
which are closely entangled with negotiations over gender, class,
age, nationality and ethnicity.
Moving, slowing down, or watching others moving allows people to
cross physical, symbolic, and temporal boundaries. Exploring the
imaginative power of liminality that makes this possible, Liminal
Moves looks at the (im)mobilities of three groups of people -
street monkey performers in Japan, adolescents writing about
migrants in Italy, and men accompanying their partners in
Switzerland for work. The book explores how, for these 'travelers',
the interplay of mobility and immobility creates a 'liminal
hotspot': a condition of suspension and ambivalence as they find
themselves caught between places, meanings and times.
Focusing on Greater Khartoum following South Sudanese independence
in 2011, In-Betweenness in Greater Khartoum explores the impact on
society of major political events in areas that are neither urban
nor rural, public nor private. This volume uses these in-between
spaces as a lens to analyze how these events, in combination with
other processes, such as globalization and economic
neo-liberalization, impact communities across the region. Drawing
on original fieldwork and empirical data, the authors uncover the
reshaping of new categories of people that reinforce old
dichotomies and in doing so underscore a common Sudanese identity.
Ethnography in the Raw describes the author's encounters with the
Philippine family into which he has married, his wife's friends and
acquaintances, and their lives in a remote rural village in the
rice basin of Luzon, about 130 miles northeast of Manila. The book
links detailed descriptions of his Philippine family with cultural
practices such as circumcision, marriage and cockfights combined
with theoretical musings on the concepts of sacrifice, social
exchange, patron-client relations, food, and religious symbolism.
It is both anthropological fieldwork 'in the raw,' and an incisive
analysis of contemporary Philippine society and culture.
This is an edited volume that seeks to elaborate new methodologies
and forge new questions in research about Haiti and the Dominican
Republic.
This edited volume provides a long-overdue synthesis of the current
directions in culture theory and represents some of the very best
in ongoing research. Here, culture theory is rendered as a jigsaw
puzzle: the book identifies where current research fits together,
the as yet missing pieces, and the straight edges that frame the
bigger picture. These framing ideas are two: Roy D'Andrade's
concept of lifeworlds-adapted from phenomenology yet groundbreaking
in its own right-and new thinking about internalization, a concept
much used in anthropology but routinely left unpacked. At its
heart, this book is an incisive, insightful collection of
contributions which will surely guide and support those who seek to
further the study of culture.
This book offers a new perspective into the world of international
schools and the lucrative industry that accompanies it. It examines
how the notion of the 'global' becomes a successful commodity, an
important social imaginary and a valuable identity marker for these
communities of privileged migrants and host country nationals. The
author invites the reader on an ethnographic journey through an
international school community located in Germany - illuminating
the central features that define and maintain the sector, including
its emphasis on 'globality', engagement with the concept of 'Third
Culture Kid', and its wider contentious relationship with the
'local'. While much attention is placed on 'global citizenship',
international school communities experience degrees of isolation,
limited mobility, over-protection and dependency on the school
community- impacting their everyday lives, inside and outside the
school. This book is guided by larger questions pertaining to the
education and mobilities of 'migrant' youths and young adults, as
well as the notion of what it means to be 'global' today.
The influential jurist Hans Kelsen 1881-1973] here applies his
concept of the distinction between society and nature. He shows how
primitive man developed his interpretation of nature, through the
laws of retribution and of causality, to a modern concept of nature
and society. He holds that the gradual emancipation of the law of
causality from the principle of retribution is "the emancipation
from a social interpretation of nature. The process shows a
relation between social and natural science which is very important
from the point of view of intellectual history." (Introduction p.
viii) Extensively annotated. Kelsen is known for his theory of pure
positive law, as postulated in General Theory of Law and State,
which is also available in a reprint edition from The Lawbook
Exchange.
All communication involves acts of stance, in which speakers take
up positions vis-a-vis the expressive, referential, interactional
and social implications of their speech. This book brings together
contributions in a new and dynamic current of academic explorations
of stancetaking as a sociolinguistic phenomenon. Drawing on data
from such diverse contexts as advertising, tourism, historical
texts, naturally occurring conversation, classroom interaction and
interviews, leading authors in the field of sociolinguistics in
this volume explore how linguistic stancetaking is implicated in
the representation of self, personal style and acts of stylization,
and self- and other-positioning. The analyses also focus on how
speakers deploy and take up stances vis-a-vis sociolinguistic
variables and the critical role of stance in the processes of
indexicalization: how linguistic forms come to be associated with
social categories and meanings. In doing so, many of the authors
address critical issues of power and social reproduction, examining
how stance is implicated in the production, reproduction and
potential change of social and linguistic hierarchies and
ideologies. This volume maps out the terrain of existing
sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological research on stance,
synthesizes how it relates to existing theoretical orientations,
and identifies a framework for future research.
This book presents new perspectives on Southeast Asia using cases
from a range of ethnic groups, cultures and histories, written by
scholars from different ethnicities, generations, disciplines and
scientific traditions. It examines various research trajectories,
engaging with epistemological debates on the 'global' and 'local',
on 'insiders' and 'outsiders', and the role played by personal
experiences in the collection and analysis of empirical data. The
volume provides subjects for debate rarely addressed in formal
approaches to data gathering and analysis. Rather than grappling
with the usual methodological building blocks of research training,
it focuses on neglected issues in the research experience including
chance, error, coincidence, mishap, dead ends, silence, secrets,
improvisation, remembering, digital challenges and shifting tracks.
Fieldwork and the Self is relevant to academics and researchers
from universities and international organisations who are engaged
in teaching and learning in area studies and social science
research methods. "A rich and compelling set of writings about
fieldwork in, and beyond, Southeast Asia". - Lyn Parker, Emeritus
Professor, University of Western Australia "A must-read for all,
especially emerging scholars on Southeast Asia, and a refreshing
read for critical 'old hands' on the region". - Abdul Rahman
Embong, Emeritus Professor, Institute of Malaysian and
International Studies (IKMAS), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia "An
impressive collection of essays by two academics who have devoted
their academic life to anthropological fieldwork in Southeast
Asia". - Shamsul A.B., Distinguished Professor and UNESCO Chair,
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia "The contributors share an
unquenchable and passionate curiosity for Southeast Asia. They have
survived the uncertainties and disillusionment of their fieldwork
and remained first-grade scholars". - Marie-Sybille de Vienne,
Professor, National Institute for Oriental Languages and
Civilisations, Paris "A penetrating reflection on current social
science research on Southeast Asia". - Hans-Dieter Evers, Professor
Emeritus and Senior Fellow, University of Bonn
This book is one of the first to integrate psychological and
medical anthropology with the methodologies of visual anthropology,
specifically ethnographic film. It discusses and complements the
work presented in Afflictions: Culture and Mental Illness in
Indonesia, the first film series on psychiatric disorders in the
developing world, in order to explore pertinent issues in the
cross-cultural study of mental illness and advocate for the unique
role film can play both in the discipline and in participants'
lives. Through ethnographically rich and self-reflexive discussions
of the films, their production, and their impact, the book at once
provides theoretical and practical guidance, encouragement, and
caveats for students and others who may want to make such films.
Chile's natural beauty, fascinating history, cultural
traditions, and warm people are uniquely evoked in "Culture and
Customs of Chile." Chilean American Castillo-Feliu effectively
conveys how Chile's geography has helped to shape it into a modern,
socially responsible model in Latin America. Students and other
readers will learn how this small country has contributed to the
hemisphere's stature, from a stable political scene to
seafood-inspired cuisine. Chile's lively history forms the backdrop
for a survey of a wealth of social riches. The literary lion Pablo
Neruda, Andean music, and fine wine are just a few of the
highlights found herein.
Because it has been such a model country, except for a troubled
period in the 1970s and 1980s under the dictator Augusto Pinochet,
Chile often stays out of headline news in the United States.
Through chapters on history and people, religion, social customs,
broadcasting and print media, literature, performing arts, and the
arts and architecture, "Culture and Customs of Chile" will
introduce Chile to a wider audience who can appreciate its
understated charms. A chronology and appendix of the Spanish of
Chile are indispensable aids.
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