Guinea pigs have been reared and eaten by indigenous people in the Andes since ancient times, and it seemed rational to development planners to 'modernize' their production. When these development projects ran into trouble, a team of anthropologists was invited to study the reasons for this lack of success. This intriguing book is the product of that study.What the author shows is that guinea pigs have a meaning in the social and ritual life of Ecuadorian peasants which is far from mundane. Rejecting the attempts of some anthropologists to reduce the production of guinea pigs and the festive life of the Andean community to a quest for protein, he explores the full complex of social and cultural practices which centre on this animal, and uses his study of its role within Andean culture to provide telling insights into how that culture itself is constituted -- its values, beliefs and attitudes. By working in a variety of communities with different ecological and ethnographic characteristics, the author has made a major contribution to ethnographic accounts of Ecuador and to the more general study of ritual, consumption and indigenous knowledge. He points us, in particular, towards the importance of the knowledge of women, who are those principally responsible for the care of an animal which is prized for its role in healing and central to Andean sociality. The book not only presents us with a colourful description of the range of cultural practices surrounding the guinea pig, ranging from the way the animals are reared, through a rich and complex cuisine, to their role in ritual life, but also highlights the way the gender dimension is central to understanding resistances to 'modernization' and the power of 'experts'.

Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return examines contemporary migration in the context of a Roman Catholic Church eager to both comprehend and act upon the movements of peoples. Combining extensive fieldwork with lay and religious Latin American migrants in Rome and analysis of the Catholic Church's historical desires and anxieties around conversion since the period of colonization, Napolitano sketches the dynamics of a return to a faith's putative center. Against a Eurocentric notion of Catholic identity, Napolitano shows how the Americas reorient Europe. Napolitano examines both popular and institutional Catholicism in the celebrations of the Virgin of Guadalupe and El Senor de los Milagros, papal encyclicals, the Latin American Catholic Mission, and the order of the Legionaries of Christ. Tracing the affective contours of documented and undocumented immigrants' experiences and the Church's multiple postures toward transnational migration, she shows how different ways of being Catholic inform constructions of gender, labor, and sexuality whose fault lines intersect across contemporary Europe.

Aimed at a wide audience of readers, The Anthropology of Catholicism is the first companion guide to this burgeoning field within the anthropology of Christianity. Bringing to light Catholicism's long but comparatively ignored presence within the discipline of anthropology, this book introduces readers to key studies in the field, as well as to current analyses on the present and possible futures of Catholicism globally. It provides both ethnographic material and theoretical reflections on Catholicism around the world, demonstrating how a revised anthropology of Catholicism can generate new insights and analytical frameworks that will impact anthropology as well as other disciplines.

Aimed at a wide audience of readers, the Anthropology of Catholicism is the first companion guide to this burgeoning field within the anthropology of Christianity. Bringing to light Catholicism's long but comparatively ignored presence within the discipline of anthropology, the book introduces readers to key studies in the field, as well as to current analyses on the present and possible futures of Catholicism globally. This reader provides both ethnographic material and theoretical reflections on Catholicism around the world, demonstrating how a revised anthropology of Catholicism can generate new insights and analytical frameworks that will impact anthropology as well as other disciplines.

We are living in the "Age of Migration" and migration has a profound impact on all aspects of society and on religious institutions. While there is significant research on migration in the social sciences, little study has been done to understand the impact of migration on Christianity. This book investigates this important topic and the ramifications for Christian theology and ethics. It begins with anthropological and sociological perspectives on the mutual impact between migration and Christianity, followed by a re-reading of certain events in the Hebrew Scripture, the New Testament, and Church history to highlight the central role of migration in the formation of Israel and Christianity. Then follow attempts to reinterpret in the light of migration the basic Christian beliefs regarding God, Christ, and church. The next part studies how migration raises new issues for Christian ethics such as human dignity and human rights, state rights, social justice and solidarity, and ecological justice. The last part explores what is known as "Practical Theology" by examining the implications of migration for issues such as liturgy and worship, spirituality, architecture, and education.

"Standing on the shoulders of previous ethnographers of everyday life in different Mexicos, Napolitano sees yet farther into the interstices and intricacies of the quotidian, its social forms, and how it is experienced and expressed. Just as a glass prism refracts white light into a spectrum of gradated colors, so is this book a dazzling refraction of a wide spectrum of feelings, identities, and social forms in a neighborhood situated between tradition and modernity, between rural and urban, and between poverty and affluence."--Michael Kearney, author of "Reconceptualizing the Peasantry: Anthropology in Global Perspective

"The ethnographic result of Napolitano's work is splendid-it gives one the fascinating sensation of zooming back and forth between intimate real time conversations with the people of Polanco and a wide angle view of the city and the region through recent history."--Chris Kiefer, author of "Health Work with the Poor

"Throughout this theoretically adept ethnography, Valentina Napolitano explores the embodied experiences of women and men to highlight their humanity. Covering topics as diverse as Christian Base Communities and alternative medicine, migration, and growing up female in Guadalajara, "Migration, Mujercitas, and Medicine Men provides insights and analysis sure to provoke discussion in medical anthropology and Latin American studies."--Matthew C. Gutmann, author of "The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in Contemporary Mexico.

"By providing rich detail on an 'ordinary' rather than an 'exotic' community in suburban Guadalajara, Napolitano offers a telling analysis of the transformative impact of urbanization, internal and international migration,social movement mobilization, and Liberation Theology on the formation of women's identity at different life stages."--Judith Adler Hellman, author of "Mexican Lives

"Richly textured, enlivened, and analytically elegant, Napolitano's ethnography of the cultural politics of belonging in Guadalajara weaves a nuanced portrait of vernacular modernities out of migrant routes rather than essentialist roots. Focusing on cultural practices that are at once ensouled and embodied, she fuses phenomenology and political economy to map the materiality of affect shaping daily lives. Napolitano offers resources of hope--both for an analytics of emergence enacted through critical ethnography and for the situated struggles of subalterns whose structures of feeling she so vividly renders."--Donald S. Moore, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley

We are living in the "Age of Migration" and migration has a profound impact on all aspects of society and on religious institutions. While there is significant research on migration in the social sciences, little study has been done to understand the impact of migration on Christianity. This book investigates this important topic and the ramifications for Christian theology and ethics. It begins with anthropological and sociological perspectives on the mutual impact between migration and Christianity, followed by a re-reading of certain events in the Hebrew Scripture, the New Testament, and Church history to highlight the central role of migration in the formation of Israel and Christianity. Then follow attempts to reinterpret in the light of migration the basic Christian beliefs regarding God, Christ, and church. The next part studies how migration raises new issues for Christian ethics such as human dignity and human rights, state rights, social justice and solidarity, and ecological justice. The last part explores what is known as "Practical Theology" by examining the implications of migration for issues such as liturgy and worship, spirituality, architecture, and education.