For two centuries the linen industry provided the economic warp for the fabric of social life in Ulster. Until now, the central importance of the linen industry to key themes in Irish history and society has received little scholarly attention. In an unprecedented, multifaceted collection, The Warp of Ulster's Past gathers top scholars from the fields of history, sociology, and anthropology to put forth their perspectives on various themes and issues connected to this single industry. Exploring the relationships between the linen industry and capitalist development, economic class, social life, and religious and gender stratification, the essays combine to offer a truly comprehensive look at Irish history. A unique and engaging book of reference, The Warp of Ulster's Past moves beyond rigid disciplinary boundaries and reveals how deeply linen shaped Ulster's heritage.

Even though teenaged girl Jackie Mitchell once struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, women are still striking out on the hardball diamond. This book builds on recently published histories of women as amateur and professional players, umpires, sports commentators and fans to analyze the cultural and historical contexts for excluding females from America's past time. Drawing on anthropological and feminist perspectives, the book examines the ways that constructions of women's bodies and normative social roles have pushed them toward softball instead of baseball. Sportswriter accounts, ""Title IX"" sex-discrimination suits, and interviews with players explore the obstacles and the social isolation of females who join all-male baseball teams, while also discussing policies that inhibit the practice.

This volume of interdisciplinary essays reflects current contributions to literary anthropology. It showcases the myriad ways that anthropologists bring their disciplinary perspectives, theories, concepts and pedagogical strategies to interpreting fiction and travel writing written in the past and present. The authors integrate insights from the reflexive deconstructive turn in anthropology and from critical Marxist and feminist approaches that ground interpretation in the political, economic, and social constraints and experiences of everyday life. The contributors share the view that fiction, like all artistic expression, is rooted in specific historical and cultural contexts. It therefore provides a rich source of information about societies and time periods in the present and about those that cannot be investigated through traditional ethnographic methods. Literature, like all artistic expression, stimulates a critical imagination by allowing readers to take a fresh look at their own society and culture.

In Social Memory and History, a group of anthropologists, sociologists, social linguists, gerontologists, and historians explore the ways in which memory reconstructs the past and constructs the present. A substantial introduction by the editors outlines the key issues in the understanding of social memory: its nature and process, its personal and political implications, the crisis in memory, and the relationship between social and individual memory. Ten cross-cultural case studies-groups ranging from Kiowa songsters, Burgundian farmers, elderly Phildelaphia whites, Chilean political activists, American immigrants to Israel, and Irish working class women-then explore how social memory transmits culture or contests it at the individual, community, and national levels in both tangible and symbolic spheres.

This volume of interdisciplinary essays reflect current contributions to literary anthropology. Novel Approaches to Anthropology: Contributions to Literary Anthropology showcases the myriad ways that anthropologists bring their disciplinary perspectives, theories, concepts, and pedagogical strategies to interpreting fiction and travel writing written in the past and present. The authors integrate insights from the reflexive deconstructive turn in anthropology and from critical Marxist and feminist approaches that ground interpretation in the political, economic, and social constraints and experiences of everyday life. The contributors share the view that fiction, like all artistic expression, is rooted in specific historical and cultural contexts. Literature, like all artistic expression, stimulates a critical imagination by allowing readers to take a fresh look at their own society and culture.