The peoples of the world are now facing movement, mixing and displacement on a larger scale than ever before. We are witness to the rise of new forms of ethnic, cultural and religious identity. Those based in the highly developed countries can extend global influence through wealth and sophisticated technology. Anthropology has inherited a tradition of tolerance and cross-cultural understanding: what light can it throw on the new pursuit of truth?
With contributions from leading anthropologists from Germany, the US, Canada, Australia, Malaysia and Britain, "The Pursuit of Certainty" presents a dozen original case studies which explore this theme.
This book demonstrates anthropology's relevance to the contemporary world and its turbulence providing a critical perspective on the new religious movements and current popular orthodoxies about society and culture. Complementing the text-led approaches of history or theology, each chapter offers insights from patient investigative fieldwork, illustrating the way the new ideologies interact with each other and with older ideas in the actual practices of communities.
Apart from anthropologists, this volume will attract special attention from students of comparative religion, as well as from ethnic studies.

Although the world population faces movement, mixing and displacement on a larger scale than ever before, the result has not been a collapse of boundaries but an increase in the rise of new forms of ethnic, cultural and religious identity. Those based in the highly developed countries can extend global influence through wealth and sophisticated technology.
The Pursuit of Certainty presents original case studies which explore the effect anthropology's inherited tradition of tolerance and cross-cultural understanding has on the new pursuits of truth. Several chapters focus on the rise of new certainties while others examine notions of diversity providing a critical perspective on the new religious movements and current popular orthodoxies relating to society and culture.

A homecoming snares a young woman in a dangerous tangle of lies, secrets, and bad blood in this gripping novel by the bestselling author of An Accusation. Running from a bad relationship, journalist Jo Sharpe heads home to Arthurville, the drought-stricken town she turned her back on years earlier. While some things have changed-her relationship with her ailing, crotchety father, her new job at the community newspaper-Jo finds that her return has rekindled the grief and uncertainty she experienced during her childhood following the inexplicable disappearance of her mother and baby sister. Returning to Arthurville has its unexpected pleasures, though, as Jo happily reconnects with old friends and makes a few new ones. But she can't let go of her search for answers to that long-ago mystery. And as she keeps investigating, the splash she's making begins to ripple outward-far beyond the disappearance of her mother and sister. Jo is determined to dig as deep as it takes to get answers. But it's not long before she realises that someone among the familiar faces doesn't want her picking through the debris of the past. And they'll go to any lengths to silence the little bird before she sings the truth.

A compact and useable introduction to the understanding of contemporary Sudan, and a convenient reference work. The Sudan Handbook, based on the Rift Valley Institute's successful Sudan Field Course, is an authoritative and accessible introduction to Sudan, vividly written and edited by leading Sudanese and international specialists. The handbook offers a concise introduction to all aspects of the country, rooted in a broad historical account of the development of the Sudanese state. It consists of eighteen self-contained, cross-referenced chapters, covering essential topics in the geography, history, sociology, culture and politics of the country, written by outstanding Sudanese scholars and recognized international experts. It includes numerous purpose-drawn maps and diagrams,glossaries of key terms, capsule biographies of key figures, a chronology and a bibliography. John Ryle, Rift Valley Institute and Division of Social Sciences, Bard College, USA; Justin Willis, Department of History, Durham University, UK and former Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa; Suliman Baldo, International Center for Transitional Justice, New York, International Crisis Group; Jok Madut Jok, Department of History, LoyolaMarymount University, USA. Published in association with the Rift Valley Institute

This book explores the relevance of classical ideas in the anthropology of time tothe way we understand history, participate in the events around us, and experienceour lives. Time is not just an abstract principle we live by or a local cultural construct: it is shaped, punctuated, organized, and suffered in complex ways by real people negotiating their lives and relations with others. Space may be opened up for politics, violence or revolutionary change within the framework of ceremonial markers of social time: holy days, festivals and carnivals. People create and recreate patterns in the way they imagine the past, present and future at such moments, through material objects, language, symbolic action and bodily experience. The rhythms of social life, including periodic episodes of sacred or special time, interact with 'historical events' in strange ways. They are fundamental not only to the human condition but to the making andremembering of history, as well as to what we recognize as the unexpected or abnormal. The Qualities of Time brings anthropologists and archaeologists together in a new conversation about the 'patterns' of our understanding and experience of time. The authors reflect on how we should interpret evidence about the distant past, andhow far the structuring of social time is a human universal. They also consider whether anthropology itself has been so oriented to the present it has still to develop ways of dealing with temporality. The interactions of time-structures, ceremonials, and specific historical events, including violence inspired by the millennium, are interrogated. The experience of individuals who feel the times are for them 'out of joint' is also examined. By combining socio-cultural, philosophical and historical approaches, thisthought-provoking book moves anthropological debates about time's qualities wellbeyond existing studies.This book explores the relevance of classical ideas in the anthropology of time toth

This book explores the relevance of classical ideas in the anthropology of time tothe way we understand history, participate in the events around us, and experienceour lives. Time is not just an abstract principle we live by or a local cultural construct: it is shaped, punctuated, organized, and suffered in complex ways by real people negotiating their lives and relations with others. Space may be opened up for politics, violence or revolutionary change within the framework of ceremonial markers of social time: holy days, festivals and carnivals. People create and recreate patterns in the way they imagine the past, present and future at such moments, through material objects, language, symbolic action and bodily experience. The rhythms of social life, including periodic episodes of sacred or special time, interact with 'historical events' in strange ways. They are fundamental not only to the human condition but to the making andremembering of history, as well as to what we recognize as the unexpected or abnormal. The Qualities of Time brings anthropologists and archaeologists together in a new conversation about the 'patterns' of our understanding and experience of time. The authors reflect on how we should interpret evidence about the distant past, andhow far the structuring of social time is a human universal. They also consider whether anthropology itself has been so oriented to the present it has still to develop ways of dealing with temporality. The interactions of time-structures, ceremonials, and specific historical events, including violence inspired by the millennium, are interrogated. The experience of individuals who feel the times are for them 'out of joint' is also examined. By combining socio-cultural, philosophical and historical approaches, thisthought-provoking book moves anthropological debates about time's qualities wellbeyond existing studies.This book explores the relevance of classical ideas in the anthropology of time toth

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.

Marcel Mauss, successor of Emile Durkheim and one-time teacher of Claude Levi-Strauss, continues to inspire social scientists across various disciplines. Only selected texts of Mauss's work have been translated into English, but of these, some, as for instance his "Essay on the Gift," have proved of key significance for the development of anthropology internationally. Recently and starting in France, the interest in Mauss's work has increased noticeably as witnessed by several reassessments of its relevance to current social theory. This collection of original essays is the first to introduce the English-language reader to the current re-evaluation of his ideas in continental Europe. Themes include the post-structuralist appraisal of "exchange", the anthropology of the body, practical techniques, gesture systems, the notions of substance, materiality, and the social person. There are fresh insights into comparative politics and history, modern forms of charity, and new readings of some political and historical aspects of Mauss's work that bear on the analysis of regions such as Africa and the Middle East, relatively neglected by the Durkheimian school and by structuralism. This volume is a timely tribute to mark the centenary of Mauss' early work and confirms the continuing relevance of his ideas.

"Each of the essays in this volume deals with various facets of his work, and all of them should be read." . American Anthropologist "This book offers a unique insight into the influence of one of the discipline's most important theorists. James and Allen are thoughtful editors . . . their respect produces the best form of criticism in fourteen essays by British, and other European, anthropologists . . . This is intriguing and stimulating reading . . . Mauss's work receives careful attention in this book which is helpful, incisive, and broadly significant to anthropology." . JRAI Marcel Mauss, successor of Emile Durkheim and one-time teacher of Claude Levi-Strauss, continues to inspire social scientists across various disciplines. Only selected texts of Mauss's work have been translated into English, but of these, some, as for instance his "Essay on the Gift," have proved of key significance for the development of anthropology internationally. Wendy James has taught at the University of Khartoum and has research experience in the Sudan and Ethiopia. She is currently Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. After studying classics and medicine N. J. Allen qualified in Social Anthropology at Oxford, undertaking fieldwork in Nepal. He is currently Reader in the Social Anthropology of South Asia at the University of Oxford.

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.

Australian-born journalist Wendy James returns to her homeland and looks at it anew. She travels to all seven states, discovering unique wildlife and natural wonders, and the extraordinary art and heritage of the country's Aboriginal population. But she does not shirk the problems that the 'lucky country' faces.

Clarion Review Dr. James's relevant and useful research on women in leadership roles is thoroughly supported. The Gap: A Scholarly Perspective of Executive Women, by Dr. Wendy James, is a detailed research study that examines how women experience the intersection of career, marriage, and family. This topic is incredibly relevant: as the number of women in leadership roles grows, so too does the interest in understanding the effects of their professional success. Dr. James examines previous research theories (such as spillover theory) and societal patterns (such as the rise of dual-income families), and she examines interviewees' responses through these lenses. Dr. James shares six themes about executive women's lives that were revealed through her research, one being that careers have a positive influence on self, marriage, and children. These themes overturn the "assumption of conflict" that forms the basis for preceding theories-and make the results of the research all the more important. The participant interview transcripts in the appendix are the most engaging part of the text for nonacademic readers. Executive women themselves will find the final chapter, "Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations," most relevant. Melissa Wuske

This book contains real stories and allusions to common fairy tales we know from our childhood. It speaks of dreams, passions, seeking and believing in "living happily ever after." As Freud used common Greek tragedies as themes for basic psychological behaviors, this is based on universally known fairy tales. It addresses relationships, emotions, fears, sex and love in themes that apply to women, regardless of age. The chapters are not the advice one might receive from a neighbor, girlfriend or life coach, although it reads as such, but is based upon years of education and research.

A sequel to The Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia. This new volume examines the major changes effected by the socialist regime from the revolution of 1974 to its overthrow in 1991, and then into the current period which has been marked by moves towards local democracy and political devolution. North America: Ohio U Press; Ethiopia: Addis Ababa U Press

This book completes a trilogy by the anthropologist Wendy James. It is a case study of how the Uduk-speaking people, originally from the Blue Nile region between the 'north' and the 'south' of Sudan, have been caught up in and displaced by a generation of civil war. Some have responded by defending their nation, others by joining the armed resistance of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, and yet others eventually finding security as international refugees in Ethiopia, and even further afield in countries such as the USA. Sudan's peace agreement of 2005 leaves much uncertainty for the future of the whole country, as conflict still rages in Darfur. The Uduk case shows how people who once lived together now try to maintain links across borders and even continents through modern communications, and where possible recreate their 'traditional' forms of story-telling, music, and song.

Adapting Wittgenstein's concept of the human species as 'a ceremonial animal', Wendy James writes vividly and readably. Her new overview advocates a clear line of argument: that the concept of social form is a primary key to anthropology and the human sciences as a whole. Weaving memorable ethnographic examples into her text, James brings together carefully selected historical sources as well as references to current ideas in neighbouring disciplines such as archaeology, paleoanthropology, genetics, art and material culture, ethnomusicology, urban and development studies, politics, economics, psychology, and religious studies. She shows the relevance of anthropology to pressing world issues such as migration, humanitarian politics, the new reproductive technologies, and religious fundamentalism.
Wendy James's engaging style will appeal to specialist and non-specialist alike. The Foreword is written by Michael J. Lambek, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto.

Governance everywhere is concerned with spatial relationships. Modern states "map" local communities, making them legible for the purposes of control. Ethiopia has gone through several stages of "mapping" in its imperial, revolutionary, and postrevolutionary phases. In 1986 The Southern Marches of Imperial Ethiopia, a cross-disciplinary collection edited by Don Donham and Wendy James, opened up the study of center/periphery relations in the Ethiopian empire until the fall of the monarchy in 1974. This new volume examines similar themes, taking the story forward through the major changes effected by the socialist regime from the revolution of 1974 to its overthrow in 1991, and then into the current period that has been marked by moves toward local democracy and political devolution. Topics include the changing fortunes of new and historic towns and cities, the impact of the Mengistu regime's policies of villagization and resettlement, local aspects of the struggle against Mengistu and its aftermath, and the fate of border regions. Special attention is given to developments since 1991: to new local institutions and forms of autonomy, the links between the international diasporas of Ethiopia and the fortunes of their home areas. The collection draws on the work of established scholars as well as a new generation of Ethiopian and international researchers in the disciplines of anthropology, political science, history, and geography.

Notions of the person and of the foundations of bodily and moral experience lie at the heart of this second ethnographic volume devoted to the Uduk-speaking people of Sudan.

In a new introduction Wendy James explains how the Sudan-Ethiopian borderlands were overrun by war in 1987, and how all the villages described in the original edition were destroyed. Having revisited the Uduk for various UN agencies she is able to provide an indication of the way in which they have since been embroiled in the war, and how the survivors have increasingly embraced Christianity in the course of their exile. She draws on her own reports and publications written since 1988 and to the TV documentary on the Uduk and other refugees which she made with Granada in 1993. Reference is also made to other recently published work on the region and to relevant new emphases in anthropology which focus on displacement, violence, and memory.

This is the long-awaited publication of a set of writings by the British philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R. G. Collingwood on critical, anthropological, and cultural themes only hinted at in his previously available work. At the centre of the book are six chapters of a study of folktale and magic, composed by Collingwood in the mid-1930s and intended for development into a book. Here Collingwood applies the principles of his philosophy of history to problems in the long-term evolution of human society and culture. This is preceded, in Part I, by a range of contextualizing material on such topics as the relations between music and poetry, the nature of language, the value of Jane Austen's novels, the philosophy of art, and the relations between aesthetic theory and artistic practice. Part III of the volume consists of two essays, one on the relationship between art and mechanized civilization, and the second, written in 1931, on the collapse of human values and civilization leading up to the catastrophe of armed conflict. These offer a devastating analysis of the consequences that attend the desertion of liberal principles, indeed of all politics as such, in the ultimate self-annihilation of military conquest. The volume opens with three substantial introductory essays by the editors, authorities in the fields of critical and literary history, social and cultural anthropology, and the philosophy of history and the history of ideas; they provide their explanatory and contextual notes to guide the reader through the texts. The Philosophy of Enchantment brings hitherto unrecognized areas of Collingwood's achievement to light, and demonstrates the broad range of Collingwood's intellectual engagements, their integration, and their relevance to current areas of debate in the fields of philosophy, cultural studies, social and literary history, and anthropology.

This is the long-awaited publication of a set of writings by the British philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R.G. Collingwood on critical, anthropological, and cultural themes only hinted at in his previously available work. At the centre of the book are six chapters of a study of folktale and magic, composed by Collingwood in the mid-1930s and intended for development into a book. Here Collingwood applies the principles of his philosophy of history to problems in the long-term evolution of human society and culture. This is preceded, in Part I, by a range of contextualizing material on such topics as the relations between music and poetry, the nature of language, the value of Jane Austen's novels, the philosophy of art, and the relations between aesthetic theory and artistic practice. Part III of the volume consists of two essays, one on the relationship between art and mechanized civilization, and the second, written in 1931, on the collapse of human values and civilization leading up to the catastrophe of armed conflict. These offer a devastating analysis of the consequences that attend the desertion of liberal principles, indeed of all politics as such, in the ultimate self-annihilation of military conquest. The volume opens with three substantial introductory essays by the editors, authorities in the fields of critical and literary history, social and cultural anthropology, and the philosophy of history and the history of ideas; they provide their explanatory and contextual notes to guide the reader through the texts. The Philosophy of Enchantment brings hitherto unrecognized areas of Collingwood's achievement to light, and demonstrates the broad range of Collingwood's intellectual engagements, their integration, and their relevance to current areas of debate in the fields of philosophy, cultural studies, social and literary history, and anthropology.