In this book, a collection of experts investigate the varied forces - from global systems to local beliefs - that lead to civil violence, chaos and, perhaps, a new political order. The State, Identity and Violence explores acts of mass violence occurring within national borders and examines the links such acts have to personal identities and how they challenge the character or very existence of the state. Building upon the anthropological premises of holism and cross-cultural comparison, this volume shows how violent challenges to existing states should be conceptualized as layered problems, with multiple kinds of causes. It not only goes beyond the "ancient hatreds" explanation, but shows the inadequacy of the concept of "ethnic violence" and of theories which treat interests and identities as separate, sometimes opposed variables

In this book, a collection of experts investigate the varied forces - from global systems to local beliefs - that lead to civil violence, chaos and, perhaps, a new political order.
The State, Identity and Violence explores acts of mass violence occurring within national borders and examines the links such acts have to personal identities and how they challenge the character or very existence of the state. Building upon the anthropological premises of holism and cross-cultural comparison, this volume shows how violent challenges to existing states should be conceptualized as layered problems, with multiple kinds of causes. It not only goes beyond the "ancient hatreds" explanation, but shows the inadequacy of the concept of "ethnic violence" and of theories which treat interests and identities as separate, sometimes opposed variables

eBook available with sample pages: 0203218310

When it originally appeared, this groundbreaking ethnography was one of the first works to focus on gender in anthropology. The thirtieth anniversary edition of "Women of the Forest" reconfirms the book's importance for contemporary studies on gender and life in the Amazon. The book covers Yolanda and Robert Murphy's year of fieldwork among the Munduruc? people of Brazil in 1952. The Murphy's ethnographic analysis takes into account the historical, ecological, and cultural setting of the Munduruc?, including the mythology surrounding women, women's work and household life, marriage and child rearing, the effects of social change on the female role, sexual antagonism, and the means by which women compensate for their low social position.

The new foreword -- written collectively by renowned anthropologists who were all students of the Murphys -- is both a tribute to the Murphys and a critical reflection on the continued relevance of their work today.

When it originally appeared, this groundbreaking ethnography was one of the first works to focus on gender in anthropology. The thirtieth anniversary edition of "Women of the Forest" reconfirms the book's importance for contemporary studies on gender and life in the Amazon. The book covers Yolanda and Robert Murphy's year of fieldwork among the Munduruc? people of Brazil in 1952. The Murphy's ethnographic analysis takes into account the historical, ecological, and cultural setting of the Munduruc?, including the mythology surrounding women, women's work and household life, marriage and child rearing, the effects of social change on the female role, sexual antagonism, and the means by which women compensate for their low social position.

The new foreword -- written collectively by renowned anthropologists who were all students of the Murphys -- is both a tribute to the Murphys and a critical reflection on the continued relevance of their work today.

This volume is a unique, multi-authored social history of war from the third millennium B.C.E. to the tenth century C.E. in the Mediterranean, the Near East, and Europe (Egypt, Achaemenid Persia, Greece, the Hellenistic World, the Roman Republic and Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the early Islamic World, and early Medieval Europe), with parallel studies of Mesoamerica (the Maya and Aztecs) and East Asia (ancient China, medieval Japan). The product of a colloquium at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies, this volume offers a broadly based, comparative examination of war and military organization in their complex interactions with social, economic, and political structures as well as cultural practices.

War in the Tribal Zone, the 1991 anthropology of war classic, is back in print with a new Preface by the editors. Their timely and insightful essay examines the occurrence of ethnic conflict and violence in the decade since the idea of the 'tribal zone' originally was formulated. Finding the book's analysis tragically prophetic in identifying the key dynamics that have produced the kinds of conflicts recently witnessed globally-as in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Somalia-the editors consider the political origins and cultural meanings of 'ethnic' violence in our postcolonial world.

Generations of college students know the Yanomami people of the Brazil-Venezuela border country as the preeminent example of "natural" aggression in human society. The reputedly isolated Yanomami have been portrayed as engaging in almost constant warfare over women, status, and revenge. Their behavior has been said to reveal the purely violent side of human nature. In Yanomami Warfare, R. Brian Ferguson shows that the Yanomami, far from living in pristine isolation, have been subject to periodic waves of Western encroachment for the last 350 years. Documenting this history of contact in comprehensive detail, the author debunks the popular misconception of the unacculturated Yanomami while creating a framework for understanding their remarkable history of violence. Ferguson argues persuasively that the Yanomami make war not because Western influence is absent, but because it is present. Examining every recorded instance of warfare among the Yanomami, the author finds strong support for his contention that the intensive and bloody conflicts for which some Yanomami are known are a product of specific historical situations rather than an expression of the indigenous culture. In the Amazon region, as elsewhere, the influence of expanding neighboring state systems has increased the propensity for violence among tribal peoples.