The tradition of intensive fieldwork by a single anthropologist in one area has been challenged by new emphasis on studying historical patterns, wider regions, and global networks. Some anthropologists have started their careers from the new vantage point, amidst a chorus of claims for innovative methodologies. Others have lived through these changes of perspective and are able to reflect on them, while re-evaluating the place of fieldwork within the broader aims of general anthropology. This book explores these transformations of world view and approach as they have been experienced by anthropological colleagues, a number of whom began their work very much in the earlier tradition. They cover experiences of field research in Africa, Papua New Guinea, South America, Central and South Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia, Japan and China. Constant through the chapters is a distinctively qualitative empirical approach, once associated with the village but now being developed in relation to large-scale or dispersed communities.

The tradition of intensive fieldwork by a single anthropologist in one area has been challenged by new emphasis on studying historical patterns, wider regions, and global networks. Some anthropologists have started their careers from the new vantage point, amidst a chorus of claims for innovative methodologies. Others have lived through these changes of perspective and are able to reflect on them, while re-evaluating the place of fieldwork within the broader aims of general anthropology. This book explores these transformations of world view and approach as they have been experienced by anthropological colleagues, a number of whom began their work very much in the earlier tradition. They cover experiences of field research in Africa, Papua New Guinea, South America, Central and South Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia, Japan and China. Constant through the chapters is a distinctively qualitative empirical approach, once associated with the village but now being developed in relation to large-scale or dispersed communities.

Paul Dresch has been working both on Yemeni history and the ethnography of the Arab Gulf. He taught at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, before being appointed Lecturer in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. Wendy James has taught at the Universities of Khartoum, Aarhus, and Bergen, and has research experience in the Sudan and Ethiopia. She has published on the history and anthropology of North East Africa and on general topics in religion and politics. She is currently Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. David Parkin has carried out field research in East Africa since 1962, much of it while at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. Current research interests include Islam, medical anthropology, socio-material prosthesis, and cross-cultural rhetorics. He is the Director of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

Despite their small populations, the Arab states of the Gulf exercise an enormous and wide-reaching influence. But all too often, these states are treated as if their only importance were as pawns in a global strategic board game, and they are simply dealt with as mere models of the intersection of oil, wealth and power. Here, Paul Dresch and James Piscatori bring together a more nuanced picture: exploring how the citizen populations of these states define themselves in a wider context. The Gulf provides extreme examples of the nexus of identities, not only because these polities are so dependent on transnational flows of wealth and its imagery, but because at home the citizen workforce is often outnumbered by migrant labour. Examining the issues such as Gulf-owned transnational media, the role of women in the Kuwaiti state and the way Saudi Arabia manages the yearly influx of pilgrims for the Hajj. Monarchies and Nations is essential reading for all those interested in the society, politics and the future security of the Gulf.

Yemen's modern history is unique and deserves to be better understood. While the borders of most Middle East states were defined by colonial powers after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a single Yemeni state was not formed until 1990. In fact, much of Yemen's twentieth-century history was taken up constructing such a state, forged after years of civil war. The book is augmented by illustrations, maps and a detailed chronology.

Professor Dresch combines ethnography with history to describe the tribal system over the last thousand years, and examines the values the tribal people themselves bring to the contemporary world of nation states. Drawing heavily on local histories and unpublished documents, as well as on three years' field work, he discusses the place of these tribes in the world around them from the tenth century to the twentieth. Beginning and ending with the means by which tribesmen define themselves, he discusses the relation of the major tribes to the area as a whole, to pre-modern Islamic learning, the Zaydi Imamate, and ideas of contemporary statehood. This book will be of interest to readers concerned with the relation of anthropology to history and also to those from other disciplines who are concerned with Arabia past and present. It offers a fresh approach to issues which arise throughout the Middle East.