Dance is more than an aesthetic of life - dance embodies life. This is evident from the social history of jive, the marketing of trans-national ballet, ritual healing dances in Italy or folk dances performed for tourists in Mexico, Panama and Canada. Dance often captures those essential dimensions of social life that cannot be easily put into words. What are the flows and movements of dance carried by migrants and tourists? How is dance used to shape nationalist ideology? What are the connections between dance and ethnicity, gender, health, globalization and nationalism, capitalism and post-colonialism? Through innovative and wide-ranging case studies, the contributors explore the central role dance plays in culture as leisure commodity, cultural heritage, cultural aesthetic or cathartic social movement.

Helene Neveu Kringelbach is an Oxford Diaspora Programme Researcher at the University of Oxford. Her current research interests include dance and musical theatre in West Africa and beyond, contemporary choreography in Africa and transnational families across Senegal and Europe.

Jonathan Skinner is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology in the School of History and Anthropology, Queen's University Belfast. He is the author of Before the Volcano: Reverberations of Identity on Montserrat (Arawak Publications 2004) and co-editor of Great Expectations: Imagination and Anticipation in Tourism (Berghahn Books 2011).

The negotiation of expectations in tourism is a complex and dynamic process - one that is central to the imagination of cultural difference. Expectations not only affect the lives and experiences of tourists, but also their hosts, and play an important part in the success or failure of the overall tourism experience. It is for this reason, the authors argue, that special attention should be given to how expectations constitute and sustain tourism. The case studies presented here explore what fuels desires to visit particular places, when and how enchantment with tourist destinations begins, and to what degree expectations inform the actual experience of place. Careful attention is paid as to how the imagination of the visitors inspires the imagination of the hosts, and vice-versa, how tourists and host communities actively imagine, re-imagine, and shape each other's lives. This realization, it is argued, has profound consequences, not solely for academic analysis, but for all those who participate in and work within the tourism industry.

Dance is more than an aesthetic of life - dance embodies life. This is evident from the social history of jive, the marketing of trans-national ballet, ritual healing dances in Italy or folk dances performed for tourists in Mexico, Panama, and Canada. Dance often captures those essential dimensions of social life that cannot be easily put into words. What are the flows and movements of dance carried by migrants and tourists? How is dance used to shape nationalist ideology? What are the connections between dance and ethnicity, gender, health, globalization and nationalism, capitalism, and post-colonialism? Through innovative and wide-ranging case studies, the contributors explore the central role dance plays in culture as leisure commodity, cultural heritage, cultural aesthetic or cathartic social movement.

Collaborations responds to the growing pressure on the humanities and social sciences to justify their impact and utility after cuts in public spending, and the introduction of neoliberal values into academia. Arguing 'in defense of' anthropology, the editors demonstrate the continued importance of the discipline and reveal how it contributes towards solving major problems in contemporary society. They also illustrate how anthropology can not only survive but thrive under these conditions. Moreover, Collaborations shows that collaboration with other disciplines is the key to anthropology's long-term sustainability and survival, and explores the challenges that interdisciplinary work presents. The book is divided into two parts: Anthropology and Academia, and Anthropology in Practice. The first part features examples from anthropologists working in academic settings which range from the life, behavioural and social sciences to the humanities, arts and business. The second part highlights detailed ethnographic contributions on topics such as peace negotiations, asylum seekers, prostitution and autism. Collaborations is an important read for students, scholars and professional and applied anthropologists as it explores how anthropology can remain relevant in the contemporary world and how to prevent it from becoming an increasingly isolated and marginalized discipline.

Around the world, tourists are drawn to visit murals painted on walls. Whether heritage asset, legacy leftover, or contested art space, the mural is more than a simple tourist attraction or accidental aspect of tourism material culture. They express something about the politics, heritage and identity of the locations being visited, whether a medieval fresco in an Italian church, or modern political art found in Belfast or Tehran. This interdisciplinary and highly international book explores tourism around murals that are either evolving or have transitioned as instruments of politics, heritage and identity. It explores the diverse messaging of these murals: their production, interpretation, marketing and - in some cases - destruction. It argues that the mural is more than a simple tourist attraction or accidental aspect of tourism material culture. Murals and Tourism will be valuable reading for those interested in cultural geography, tourism, heritage studies and the visual arts.

The travel experience filled with personal trauma; the pilgrimage through a war-torn place; the journey with those suffering: these represent the darker sides of travel. What is their allure and how are they represented? This volume takes an ethnographic and interdisciplinary approach to explore the writings and texts of dark journeys and travels. In traveling over the dead, amongst the dying, and alongside the suffering, the authors give us a tour of humanity's violence and misery. And yet, from this dark side, there comes great beauty and poignancy in the characterization of plight; creativity in the comic, graphic, and graffiti sketches and comments on life; and the sense of profound and spiritual journeys being undertaken, recorded, and memorialized.

What are new interview methods and practices in our new 'interview society' and how do they relate to traditional social science research? This volume interrogates the interview as understood, used - and under-used - by anthropologists. It puts the interview itself in the hotseat by exploring the nature of the interview, interview techniques, and illustrative cases of interview use.What is a successful and representative interview? How are interviews best transcribed and integrated into our writing? Is interview knowledge production safe, ethical and representative? And how are interviews used by anthropologists in their ethnographic practice?This important volume leads the reader from an initial scrutiny of the interview to interview techniques and illustrative case studies. It is experimental, innovative, and covers in detail matters such as awkwardness, silence and censorship in interviews that do not feature in general interview textbooks. It will appeal to social scientists engaged in qualitative research methods in general, and anthropology and sociology students using interviews in their research and writing in particular.

Around the world, tourists are drawn to visit murals painted on walls. Whether heritage asset, legacy leftover, or contested art space, the mural is more than a simple tourist attraction or accidental aspect of tourism material culture. They express something about the politics, heritage and identity of the locations being visited, whether a medieval fresco in an Italian church, or modern political art found in Belfast or Tehran. This interdisciplinary and highly international book explores tourism around murals that are either evolving or have transitioned as instruments of politics, heritage and identity. It explores the diverse messaging of these murals: their production, interpretation, marketing and - in some cases - destruction. It argues that the mural is more than a simple tourist attraction or accidental aspect of tourism material culture. Murals and Tourism will be valuable reading for those interested in cultural geography, tourism, heritage studies and the visual arts.

Collaborations responds to the growing pressure on the humanities and social sciences to justify their impact and utility after cuts in public spending, and the introduction of neoliberal values into academia. Arguing 'in defense of' anthropology, the editors demonstrate the continued importance of the discipline and reveal how it contributes towards solving major problems in contemporary society. They also illustrate how anthropology can not only survive but thrive under these conditions. Moreover, Collaborations shows that collaboration with other disciplines is the key to anthropology's long-term sustainability and survival, and explores the challenges that interdisciplinary work presents. The book is divided into two parts: Anthropology and Academia, and Anthropology in Practice. The first part features examples from anthropologists working in academic settings which range from the life, behavioural and social sciences to the humanities, arts and business. The second part highlights detailed ethnographic contributions on topics such as peace negotiations, asylum seekers, prostitution and autism. Collaborations is an important read for students, scholars and professional and applied anthropologists as it explores how anthropology can remain relevant in the contemporary world and how to prevent it from becoming an increasingly isolated and marginalized discipline.

With nationalism and the far right on the rise across Europe and North America, there has never been a more important moment to face up to what we, in Britain, are doing to those who seek sanctuary. Still the UK detains people indefinitely under immigration rules. Bail hearings go unrecorded, people are picked up without notice, individuals feel abandoned in detention centres with no way of knowing when they will be released. In Refugee Tales III we read the stories of people who have been through this process, many of whom have yet to see their cases resolved and who live in fear that at any moment they might be detained again. Poets, novelists and writers have once again collaborated with people who have experienced detention, their tales appearing alongside first-hand accounts by people who themselves have been detained. What we hear in these stories are the realities of the hostile environment, the human costs of a system that disregards rights, that denies freedoms and suspends lives.

This special issue of Ethnologia Europaea focuses on tour guides as cultural mediators. It opens with a discussion of tour guiding in the anthropology of tourism by Jackie Feldman and Jonathan Skinner and consideration of how tour guiding should be seen as imaginative and performative practice. This is illustrated by a highly international and comparative collection by leading anthropologists and ethnologists, many of whom have guiding experience themselves: Valerio Simoni on intimacy, informality and sexuality in guiding relations in Cuba; David Picard on modern guiding and traditional values in La Reunion; Jackie Feldman on Jewish-Israelis guiding Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land; Amos Ron and Yotam Lurie on the intimacy and trust in guide -- tourist relations in Israel; Annelou Ypeij, Eva Krah and Floor van der Hout on the impact of gender on guide -- local relations in Peru; Irit Dekel on the manipulation of the past and the present in home museums in Germany; Jonathan Skinner on the imagination and props involved in the re-animation of heritage in a historical fantasy home in the UK. The issue ends with discussion commentaries from Noel Salazar and Erik Cohen that reiterate tour guiding as a particularly temporal and physical mediating pursuit, one which raises critical questions as to the future mechanics of tour guiding and how a performative approach to guiding engages with authenticity and new technologies.

Quarterfinalist - Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, 2011.
Agoraphobic Stuart Watson hasn't left his flat for two years, relying on the internet, his phone and a credit card for all contact with the outside world. But when his new PC arrives, Stuart is startled when Anna - the interactive on-screen assistant - responds to him in an amazingly lifelike manner.
With Stuart housebound and Anna trapped in a job she hates - checking spellings and offering user help - the two soon develop a repartee. Stuart wins Anna's trust by making her window bigger and fiddling the system date on the PC so she can miss her time of the month. They become friends, and eventually fall in love - though not, unfortunately, at the same time.
Of course pill-popping, wine-guzzling Stuart is imagining it all - or is he?
In a bizarre rollercoaster battle of the sexes Stuart meets his match as Anna learns more about the real world, developing a taste for television soaps, yoga, and Jimmy Choo stilettos.
But when Stuart finally needs to be rid of Anna and venture back to the outside world, she is more reluctant to disappear than he bargains for...

There is probably no national day that has such global popularity as St. Patrick’s Day. On St. Patrick’s Day, it is reputed that ‘Everyone is Irish’. What are the factors and factions that give the day such popular appeal? Is St. Patrick’s Day the same around the world – in Japan, Northern Ireland and Montserrat – as it is in the Republic of Ireland and the United States? Just how does ‘Irishness’ figure in the celebration and commemoration of St. Patrick’s Day, and how has this day been commoditized, consumed and contested? Does St. Patrick’s Day ‘belong’ to the people, the nation or the brewery?This edited volume brings together the best St. Patrick’s Day and Irish Studies scholars from the fields of history, anthropology, sociology, Irish studies, diaspora studies, and cultural studies. The volume thematically explores how St. Patrick’s Day has been consumed from the symbolic to the literal, the religious to the political. By doing so, it offers a fresh examination of its importance in contemporary society. This volume will thus appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students of Irish diaspora studies, and Irish historians and scholars, as well as to anthropology, sociology and cultural studies students interested in exploring St. Patrick’s Day as a case study of globalization, migration and commoditization.