Women around the world are opting out of marriage. Through nuanced ethnographic accounts of the ways that women are moving the needle on marital norms and practices, Opting Out reveals the conditions that make this widespread phenomenon possible in places where marriage has long been obligatory. Each chapter invites readers into the lives of particular women and the changing circumstances in which these lives unfold - sometimes painfully, sometimes humorously, and always unexpectedly. Taken together, the essays in this volume prompt the following questions: Why is marriage so consistently disappointing for women? When the rewards of economic stability and the social status that marriage confers are troubled, does marriage offer women anything compelling at all? Across diverse geographic contexts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this book offers sensitive and powerful portrayals of women as they escape or reshape marriage into a more rewarding arrangement.

Elusive Adulthoods examines why, within the past decade, complaints about an inability to achieve adulthood have been heard around the world. By exploring the changing meaning of adulthood in Botswana, China, Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and the United States, contributors to this volume pose the problem of "What is adulthood?" and examine how the field of anthropology has come to overlook this meaningful stage in its studies. Through these case studies we discover different means of recognizing the achievement of adulthood, such as through negotiated relationships with others, including grown children, and as a form of upward class mobility. We also encounter the difficulties that come from a sense of having missed full adulthood, instead jumping directly into old age in the course of rapid social change, or a reluctance to embrace the stability of adulthood and necessary subordination to job and family. In all cases, the contributors demonstrate how changing political and economic factors form the background for generational experience and understanding of adulthood, which is a major focus of concern for people around the globe as they negotiate changing ways of living.

Elusive Adulthoods examines why, within the past decade, complaints about an inability to achieve adulthood have been heard around the world. By exploring the changing meaning of adulthood in Botswana, China, Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and the United States, contributors to this volume pose the problem of "What is adulthood?" and examine how the field of anthropology has come to overlook this meaningful stage in its studies. Through these case studies we discover different means of recognizing the achievement of adulthood, such as through negotiated relationships with others, including grown children, and as a form of upward class mobility. We also encounter the difficulties that come from a sense of having missed full adulthood, instead jumping directly into old age in the course of rapid social change, or a reluctance to embrace the stability of adulthood and necessary subordination to job and family. In all cases, the contributors demonstrate how changing political and economic factors form the background for generational experience and understanding of adulthood, which is a major focus of concern for people around the globe as they negotiate changing ways of living.

"Solway does an admirable job in her introduction, describing the three intellectual-cum-activist projects which underlie the collection...Its most significant contribution for those already familiar with the San literature lies in expanding the pool of recent analyses of San identity politics, and in documenting the rise and challenges facing the San-owned and San-oriented NGOs... it] is also a good reference source for a broader readership seeing an overview of Lee's intellectual legacy and its trajectories." . Anthropos
The essays assembled in this book exemplify the way political anthropologists address a range of problems that deeply affect people throughout the world. The authors draw their inspiration from the work of Canadian anthropologist Richard B. Lee, and, like him, they are concerned with understanding and acting upon issues of "indigenous rights"; the impact of colonialism, postcolonial state formation, and neoliberalism on local communities and cultures; the process of culture change; what the history and politics of egalitarian societies reveal about issues of "human nature" or "social evolution"; and how peoples in southern Africa are affected by and responding to the most recent crisis in their midst, the spread of AIDS. The authors in this volume discuss the state of a range of contemporary debates in the field that in various ways extend the political, theoretical, and empirical issues that have animated Lee's work. In addition, the book provides readers with important contemporary Kalahari studies, as well as "classic" works on foraging societies.
Jacqueline Solway is associate professor of International Development Studies and Anthropology at Trent University.

"Solway does an admirable job in her introduction, describing the three intellectual-cum-activist projects which underlie the collection...Its most significant contribution for those already familiar with the San literature lies in expanding the pool of recent analyses of San identity politics, and in documenting the rise and challenges facing the San-owned and San-oriented NGOs... it] is also a good reference source for a broader readership seeing an overview of Lee's intellectual legacy and its trajectories." . Anthropos

The essays assembled in this book exemplify the way political anthropologists address a range of problems that deeply affect people throughout the world. The authors draw their inspiration from the work of Canadian anthropologist Richard B. Lee, and, like him, they are concerned with understanding and acting upon issues of "indigenous rights"; the impact of colonialism, postcolonial state formation, and neoliberalism on local communities and cultures; the process of culture change; what the history and politics of egalitarian societies reveal about issues of "human nature" or "social evolution"; and how peoples in southern Africa are affected by and responding to the most recent crisis in their midst, the spread of AIDS. The authors in this volume discuss the state of a range of contemporary debates in the field that in various ways extend the political, theoretical, and empirical issues that have animated Lee's work. In addition, the book provides readers with important contemporary Kalahari studies, as well as "classic" works on foraging societies.

Jacqueline Solway is associate professor of International Development Studies and Anthropology at Trent University.