"Conceiving Persons" is an international exploration of the symbolism of reproduction. The emphasis is on the core metaphors and practices of human sexual and social reproduction in their personal, societal, and cosmological contexts. The roles of a range of substances-blood, semen, milk, and food-and their specific parts in the creation of the character of fetus and infant are assessed. Particular attention is paid to the construction of gender and its implications. Case studies are drawn from European peasant societies and from communities in Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.

In his vivid, lively account of how Greek Cypriot villagers coped with a thirty-year displacement, Peter Loizos follows a group of people whom he encountered as prosperous farmers in 1968, yet found as disoriented refugees when revisiting in 1975. By providing a forty year in-depth perspective unusual in the social sciences, this study yields unconventional insights into the deeper meanings of displacement. It focuses on reconstruction of livelihoods, conservation of family, community, social capital, health (both physical and mental), religious and political perceptions. The author argues for a closer collaboration between anthropology and the life sciences, particularly medicine and social epidemiology, but suggests that qualitative life-history data have an important role to play in the understanding of how people cope with collective stress.

This volume provides an international analysis of the core metaphors and practices of human sexual and social reproduction in their personal, social and cosmological contexts.

In his vivid, lively account of how Greek Cypriot villagers coped with a thirty-year displacement, Peter Loizos follows a group of people whom he encountered as prosperous farmers in 1968, yet found as disoriented refugees when revisiting in 1975. By providing a forty year in-depth perspective unusual in the social sciences, this study yields unconventional insights into the deeper meanings of displacement. It focuses on reconstruction of livelihoods, conservation of family, community, social capital, health (both physical and mental), religious and political perceptions. The author argues for a closer collaboration between anthropology and the life sciences, particularly medicine and social epidemiology, but suggests that qualitative life-history data have an important role to play in the understanding of how people cope with collective stress.

Development workers often need to carry out specific research in order to obtain answers to specific questions about projects and programmes. Choosing Research Methods discusses the various ways in which such research can be carried out and how to select the most appropriate method for particular circumstances. The advantages and disadvantages of a wide range of research methods are assessed, and guidance given on how to decide exactly what information is necessary and how to obtain it, given the resources of time, personnel, and money available. Illustrated with actual examples from the experience of Oxfam and other development agencies, the book is an attempt to demystify research and to explain how it can be effectively incorporated into the development project cycle, even in small-scale, low-cost development programmes. A companion volume to Social Survey Methods, this book considers the broader theoretical issues behind social research and explains and evaluates the different methods of collection in use.

In this collection leading anthropologists provide a comprehensive yet highly nuanced view of what it means to be a Greek man or woman, married or unmarried, functioning within a complex society based on kinship ties. Exploring the ways in which sexual identity is constructed, these authors discuss, for example, how going out for coffee embodies dominant ideas about female sexuality, moral virtue, and autonomy; why men in a Lesbos village maintain elaborate friendships with nonfamily members while the women do not; why young housewives often participate in conflict-resolution rituals; and how the dominant role of mature married householders is challenged by unmarried persons who emphasize spontaneity and personal autonomy. This collection demonstrates that kinship and gender identities in Greece are not unitary and fixed: kinship is organized in several highly specific forms, and gender identities are plural, competing, antagonistic, and are continually being redefined by contexts and social change.

In the first coprehensive introduction to the nature and development of ethnographic film, Peter Loizos reviews fifty of the most important films made between 1955 and 1985. Going beyond programmatic statements, he analyzes the films themselves, identifying and discussing their contributions to ethnographic documentation.
Loizos begins by reviewing works of John Marshall and Timothy Asch in the 1950s and moves through those of Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner, and many more recent filmmakers. He reveals a steady course of innovations along four dimensions: production technology, subject matter, strategies of argument, and ethnographic authentication. His analyses of individual films address questions of realism, authenticity, genre, authorial and subjective voice, and representation of the films' creators as well as their subjects.
"Innovation in Ethnographic Film," as a systematic and iluminating review of developments in ethnographic film, will be an important resource for the growing number of anthropologists and other scholars who use such films as tools for research and teaching.

In August 1974 most of the inhabitants of Argaki, a prosperous Cypriot village, fled from their homes in the face of an advancing army. In a matter of days they had become war refugees. This book is an account of their experiences before, during and after their flight from their village. Peter Loizos had made an anthropological study of Argaki before 1974 and is also related to some of its families. This has enabled him to combine the methods and approaches of an anthropologist with the personal insight of a family member and his account of the villagers' experiences is moving, vivid and sympathetic. No anthropologist has ever previously recorded so poignantly the experiences of the victims of war; this compassionate and sensitive book will be of compelling interest to all readers concerned about the aftermath of war and the problems of refugees.

In the first coprehensive introduction to the nature and development of ethnographic film, Peter Loizos reviews fifty of the most important films made between 1955 and 1985. Going beyond programmatic statements, he analyzes the films themselves, identifying and discussing their contributions to ethnographic documentation.
Loizos begins by reviewing works of John Marshall and Timothy Asch in the 1950s and moves through those of Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner, and many more recent filmmakers. He reveals a steady course of innovations along four dimensions: production technology, subject matter, strategies of argument, and ethnographic authentication. His analyses of individual films address questions of realism, authenticity, genre, authorial and subjective voice, and representation of the films' creators as well as their subjects.
"Innovation in Ethnographic Film," as a systematic and iluminating review of developments in ethnographic film, will be an important resource for the growing number of anthropologists and other scholars who use such films as tools for research and teaching.