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.

Now in its third edition, this textbook serves to frame understandings of health, health-related behavior, and health care in light of social and health inequality as well as structural violence. It also examines how the exercise of power in the health arena and in society overall impacts human health and well-being. Medical Anthropology and the World System: Critical Perspectives, Third Edition includes updated and expanded information on medical anthropology, resulting in an even more comprehensive resource for undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers worldwide. As in the previous versions of this text, the authors provide insights from the perspective of critical medical anthropology, a well-established theoretical viewpoint from which faculty, researchers, and students study medical anthropology. It addresses the nature and scope of medical anthropology; the biosocial and political ecological origins of disease, health inequities, and social suffering; and the nature of medical systems in indigenous and pre-capitalist state societies and modern societies. The third edition also includes new material on the relationship between climate change and health. Finally, this textbook explores health praxis and the struggle for a healthy world.

This volume offers a comprehensive guide to methods used in the sociocultural, linguistic and historical research of food use. This volume is unique in offering food-related research methods from multiple academic disciplines, and includes methods that bridge disciplines to provide a thorough review of best practices. In each chapter, a case study from the author's own work is to illustrate why the methods were adopted in that particular case along with abundant additional resources to further develop and explore the methods.

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).

Everyday practice of religion is complex in its nature, ambivalent and at times contradictory. The task of an anthropology of religious practice is therefore precisely to see how people navigate and make sense of that complexity, and what the significance of religious beliefs and practices in a given setting can be. Rather than putting everyday practice and normative doctrine on different analytical planes, the authors argue that the articulation of religious doctrine is also an everyday practice and must be understood as such.

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.

Designed for both academic and lay audiences, this book identifies the characteristics of ritual and, via multiple examples, details how ritual works on the human body and brain to produce its often profound effects. These include enhancing courage, effecting healing, and generating group cohesion by enacting cultural-or individual-beliefs and values. It also shows what happens when ritual fails.

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 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.

This is an edited volume that seeks to elaborate new methodologies and forge new questions in research about Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Operators of assisted living facilities interpret aging in place very differently than residents do. This difference in interpretation must be taken into account by regulators, policymakers, and operators so that they may reconsider assisted living's place along the traditional continuum of care.

With the growing number of assisted living facilities opening across the United States, it is essential for scholars and practitioners to understand residents' experiences in these environments. The author examines the ideals versus the realities of assisted living and the aging in place/continuum of care debate surrounding assisted living.

While the author presents the results of a detailed, comprehensive anthropological study, she also addresses policy issues which are of concern on the national level. The book combines academic and applied approaches to create an ethnographic fieldwork investigation relevant to housing and health care policies for the elderly in the United States.

Africa in Europe, in two volumes, meticulously documents Europe's African presence from antiquity to the present. It incorporates findings from areas of study as diverse as physical anthropology, linguistics, social history, social theory, international relations, migrational studies, and globalization. In contrast to most other works focusing on Eurafrican relationships that largely revolve around Atlantic and trans-Atlantic developments since the Age of Global Exploration, this work has a much broader perspective which takes account of human evolution, the history of religion, Judaic studies, Byzantine studies, the history of Islam, and Western intellectual history including social theory. While the issue of racism in its variant manifestations receives thorough treatment, African in Europe is also about human connections across fluid boundaries that are ancient as well as those that date to the Age of Exploration, the Age of Revolution, and continue until the present. Hence, it brings new clarity to our understanding of such processes as acculturation and assimilation while deepening our understanding of interrelationships among racism, violence, and social identities. This work is full of new insights, fresh interpretations, and highly nuanced analyses relevant to our thinking about territoriality, citizenship, migration, and frontiers in a world that is increasingly globalized. The author moves across boundaries of time and space in ways that result in an encyclopedic work that is an integrated and programmatic whole as well as one in which each chapter is a complete module of scholarship that is self-contained.

This is a thoroughly updated and revised edition of a popular classic of modern anthropology. The authors provide summaries of 'Enlightenment', 'Romantic' and 'Victorian' anthropology, from the cultural theories of Morgan and Taylor to the often neglected contributions of German scholars. The ambiguous relationship between anthropology and national cultures is also considered. The book provides an unparalleled account of theoretical developments in anthropology from the 1920s to the present, including functionalism, structuralism, hermeneutics, neo-Marxism and discourse analysis. There are brief biographies of major anthropologists and coverage of key debates including totemism, kinship and globalisation. This essential text on anthropology is highly engaging, authoritative and suitable for students at all levels.

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 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.

Are crime rates rising or falling around the world? Are specific types of crime more prevalent in some cultures than others? Do different cultures vary greatly in their attitudes toward crime prevention? Students will find answers to these and similar questions in this unique resource of 15 case studies exploring the problems of crime and crime control in different countries, ranging from Germany to Ghana, to around the world. Cross-cultural comparisons examine the history, the public perceptions, contemporary problems, and the future of crime and crime control in each country. The comparisons also provide readers with the opportunity to discover both the many differences and the many similarities that exist among the different cultures in their rates of crime, forms of prevention, and attitudes toward it.

Each of the 15 chapters opens with a brief overview, which includes the type of government and the living environment of the country to introduce readers to the population. The countries were chosen to represent every region of the world and to provide as broad a picture as possible when exploring the issues presented by the problem of crime and different cultures' efforts to control it. The user-friendly format of the volume, with each chapter following the same outline, makes it easy for readers to compare specific aspects among the 15 cultures. These different views of the crime problem around the world and what it means to different people will help students to understand it in a broad sense as a social issue that affects all of humanity.

Despite economic growth in Kazakhstan, more than 80 per cent of Kazakhstan's ethnic Germans have emigrated to Germany to date. Disappointing experiences of the migrants, along with other aspects of life in Germany, have been transmitted through transnational networks to ethnic Germans still living in Kazakhstan. Consequently, Germans in Kazakhstan today feel more alienated than ever from their 'historic homeland'. This book explores the interplay of those memories, social networks and state policies, which play a role in the 'construction' of a Kazakhstani German identity.

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 outlines the history and developments of interactionist social thought through a consideration of its key figures. Arranged chronologically, each chapter illustrates the impact that individual sociologists working within an interactionism framework have had on interactionism as perspective and on the discipline of sociology as such. It presents analyses of interactionist theorists from Georg Simmel through to Herbert Bulmer and Erving Goffman and onto the more recent contributions of Arlie R. Hochschild and Gary Alan Fine. Through an engagement with the latest scholarship this work shows that in a discipline often focused on macrosocial developments and large-scale structures, the interactionist perspective which privileges the study of human interaction has continued relevance. The broad scope of this book will make it an invaluable resource for scholars and students of sociology, social theory, cultural studies, media studies, social psychology, criminology and anthropology.