Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Using some of his landmark publications on kinship, along with a new introduction, chapter and conclusion, Robert Parkin discusses here the changes in kinship terminologies and marriage practices, as well as the dialectics between them. The chapters also focus on a suggested trajectory, linking South Asia and Europe and the specific question of the status of Crow-Omaha systems. The collection culminates in the argument that, whereas marriage systems and practices seem infinitely varied when examined from a very close perspective, the terminologies that accompany them are much more restricted.

The work of Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, on India and modern individualism represented certain theoretical advances on the earlier structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss. One such advance is Dumont's idea of hierarchical opposition, which he proposed as a truer representation of indigenous ideologies than Levi-Strauss's binary opposition. In this book the author argues that, although structuralism is often thought to have gone out of fashion, Dumont's greater concern with praxis and agency makes his own version of structuralism more contemporary. The work of his followers and fellow travelers, as well as his own, indicates that hierarchical opposition is capable of taking structuralism in new and more realistic directions, reminding us that it has never been the preserve of Levi-Strauss alone.

Robert Parkin is a social anthropologist who took his doctorate at the University of Oxford in 1984 for a thesis on kinship in South and Southeast Asia. His main theoretical interests are in kinship, religion and identity, and he has conducted research and field enquiries in Orissa (India), Poland, Italy and Brussels."

Studying the German-Polish ethnic relations, this book analyses the people and region through their respective borderlands, migration, official cooperation and unofficial suspicions across the border. The main conclusion is that, while officialdom is generally keen to develop cross-border ties, which ordinary people do take advantage of, the latter tend to be much more sceptical of the potential impact to their lives in what remains an economically depressed area despite cross-border cooperation having been possible for several decades.

South Asia in Transition is an introductory book on the anthropology of South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, suitable for students at all levels and others interested in this topic. It assumes no prior knowledge of either the region or the discipline of anthropology. The book makes extensive use of existing publications to describe how anthropologists have approached the region and what they have said about it. The first group of chapters deals mostly with India and caste, class, tribes, religion, kinship and marriage, gender, the body and personhood, politics and political economy. A second group of chapters deals successively with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.

While in some cases modernity may place traditional forms of expression at a disadvantage, in others, the modern is embraced as a welcome source of new ideas that can be incorporated into tradition in order to change it, while remaining within its own parameters. This is actually likely to help a tradition survive. Maintaining a strong and distinct cultural identity with the help of modernity helps representatives of that identity cope with the modern world more generally. Assimilation to a dominant culture marked as modern, by contrast, is clearly associated with not only the loss of a distinct identity, but also its specific forms of cultural expression. This book explores the interface between modernity and tradition in selected societies in Taiwan, mainland China and Vietnam. The chapters question to what extent traditions are themselves exploiting modernity in creative ways, in the interests of their own further developments.

Outside France, French anthropology is conventionally seen as being dominated by grand theory produced by writers who have done little or no fieldwork themselves, and who may not even count as anthropologists in terms of the institutional structures of French academia. This applies to figures from Durkheim to Derrida, Mauss to Foucault, though there are partial exceptions, such as Levi-Strauss and Bourdieu. It has led to a contrast being made, especially perhaps in the Anglo-Saxon world, between French theory relying on rational inference, and British empiricism based on induction and generally skeptical of theory. While there are contrasts between the two traditions, this is essentially a false view. It is this aspect of French anthropology that this collection addresses, in the belief that the neglect of many of these figures outside France is seriously distorting our view of the French tradition of anthropology overall. At the same time, the collection will provide a positive view of the French tradition of ethnography, stressing its combination of technical competence and the sympathies of its practitioners for its various ethnographic subjects.

Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, was one of the most important figures in post-war French anthropology. He is well-known for his early work on India, which culminated in Homo Hierarchicus (1966; in English 1972, 1980), an anthropological account of the caste system. He later extended this work into a comparison of the values of Indian and western society in works like Essays on Individualism (1986) and German ideology: From France to Germany and Back (1994). He is also known for pioneering work on kinship in south India and more generally (for example Affinity as a Value, 1983). The current volume represents the fruits of this side of his activities and originated in as a series of lectures providing an account of the British and French schools for students.

The book is a translation of Louis Dumont's lectures on kinship, which provide a comprehensive but also idiosyncratic overview of descent theory and alliance theory for students. These two competing theories of kinship, associated respectively with the British and French schools of social anthropology, as well as the theoretical tendencies of functionalism and structuralism, dominated anthropological theory from the 1950s to the 1970s and are of fundamental historical significance. But Dumont's lectures also have stood the test of time and provide an excellent introductory account of kinship for the student. They also reflect his own structuralist sympathies and critical acumen in assessing the work of many of anthropology's great theoretical minds, among which he himself should be numbered.

The work of Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, on India and modern individualism represented certain theoretical advances on the earlier structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss. One such advance is Dumont's idea of hierarchical opposition, which he proposed as a truer representation of indigenous ideologies than Levi-Strauss's binary opposition. In this book the author argues that, although structuralism is often thought to have gone out of fashion, Dumont's greater concern with praxis and agency makes his own version of structuralism more contemporary. The work of his followers and fellow travelers, as well as his own, indicates that hierarchical opposition is capable of taking structuralism in new and more realistic directions, reminding us that it has never been the preserve of Levi-Strauss alone.

South Asia in Transition is an introductory book on the anthropology of South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, suitable for students at all levels and others interested in this topic. It assumes no prior knowledge of either the region of the discipline of anthropology. The book makes extensive use of existing publications to describe how anthropologists have approached the region and what they have said about it. The first set of chapters deal mostly with India, being successively on caste, class, tribes, religion, kinship and marriage, gender, the body and personhood, politics and political economy. The second set of chapters deal successively with Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal.