Most of us work in or for one, but there are surprisingly few sustained analyses of the problems and peculiarities of organizations. Anthropologists are increasingly turning their attention to the study of western organizations, and this timely collection addresses the pleasures and pitfalls of ethnographic research undertaken across a range of organizational contexts. From museums to laboratories, health clinics, and multinational businesses, leading anthropologists discuss their fieldwork experiences, the problems they encountered, and the solutions they came up with.
This book highlights the practical, political and ethical dimensions of research in organizations. Among issues vividly described are the relations between gender and politics in organizational hierarchies. How are sexual politics played out and experienced in health clinics? How does a business manager's personal biography affect the relationships within the organization as a whole? How are language and metaphor used to refigure the way people think about and act in organizations? Institutions often have well-defined procedures for bringing in visitors and guests. When is the anthropologist an insider to the organization, and when an outsider? What ethical issues arise when researchers are caught between observing organizations and participating in their work?
In answering these and other questions the authors consider both the current status and future prospects for organizational ethnography. Comprehensive and varied, the book represents an invaluable aid to anyone interested in the politics and complexities of working life.

Most of us work in or for one, but there are surprisingly few sustained analyses of the problems and peculiarities of organizations. Anthropologists are increasingly turning their attention to the study of western organizations, and this timely collection addresses the pleasures and pitfalls of ethnographic research undertaken across a range of organizational contexts. From museums to laboratories, health clinics, and multinational businesses, leading anthropologists discuss their fieldwork experiences, the problems they encountered, and the solutions they came up with.
This book highlights the practical, political and ethical dimensions of research in organizations. Among issues vividly described are the relations between gender and politics in organizational hierarchies. How are sexual politics played out and experienced in health clinics? How does a business manager's personal biography affect the relationships within the organization as a whole? How are language and metaphor used to refigure the way people think about and act in organizations? Institutions often have well-defined procedures for bringing in visitors and guests. When is the anthropologist an insider to the organization, and when an outsider? What ethical issues arise when researchers are caught between observing organizations and participating in their work?
In answering these and other questions the authors consider both the current status and future prospects for organizational ethnography. Comprehensive and varied, the book represents an invaluable aid to anyone interested in the politics and complexities of working life.

There has been growing concern about "failed states" around the world, and since the massacre of the Royal family in Nepal in 2001 increasing media attention has focused on the decline of the state and the rise of the Maoist rebels in this Himalayan kingdom where so many Westerners have taken trekking vacations. Development was always going to be a problem in Nepal, but few predicted the precipitous collapse of the state in rural areas in the face of the Maoist insurgency beginning in 1996 due, to a large extent, to the failure of the state to deliver promised development and benefits; instead, it became more and more authoritarian, even oppressive. Exploring the complex relationship between a modernizing, developmentalist state and the people it professes to represent, these fascinating and readable accounts of ordinary people's lives depict the various contexts out of which the Maoist insurgency grew.

In more recent times Shah kings claimed also to embody national unity in their own person. Since the 19th century, Nepal has experiences the autocracy of the Ranas, a first experiment with parliamentarianism, guided partyless democracy led by the king, multi-party constitutional monarchy finally reversed by massive street ptotests, a ten year peoplewar launched by the Maoists in 1996 followed by a peace process.

Ernest Gellner (1925-95) has been described as 'one of the last great central European polymath intellectuals'. His last book, first published in 1998, throws light on two leading thinkers of their time. Wittgenstein, arguably the most influential and the most cited philosopher of the twentieth century, is famous for having propounded two radically different philosophical positions. Malinowski, the founder of modern British social anthropology, is usually credited with being the inventor of ethnographic fieldwork, a fundamental research method throughout the social sciences. In a highly original way, Gellner shows how the thought of both men grew from a common background of assumptions - widely shared in the Habsburg Empire of their youth - about human nature, society, and language. Tying together themes which preoccupied him throughout his working life, Gellner epitomizes his belief that philosophy - far from 'leaving everything as it is' - is about important historical, social and personal issues.