Social science / Anthropology

Shanghai Gone: Domicide and Defiance in a Chinese Megacity

by Qin Shao

Shanghai has been demolished and rebuilt into a gleaming megacity in recent decades, but that transformation has come at a grave human cost. This compelling book is the first to apply the concept of domicide—the...

Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca

by Arthur A. Joyce

Encapsulating two decades of research, Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca is the first major treatment of the lower Río Verde region of Oaxaca, investigating its social, political, and ecological...

Making War at Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community

by Kenneth T. MacLeish

Making War at Fort Hood offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it. Kenneth MacLeish conducted a year of intensive fieldwork among soldiers and their...

Street Sex Workers' Discourse: Realizing Material Change Through Agential Choice

by Jill McCracken

Incorporating the voices and insights of street sex workers through personal interviews, this monograph argues that the material conditions of many street workers - the physical environments they live in and...

Places in Mind: Public Archaeology as Applied Anthropology

by Paul A. Shackel & Erve J. Chambers

This edited volume provides a cross-section of the cutting-edge ways in which archaeologists are developing new approaches to their work with communities and other stakeholder groups who have special interest...

Nyansapo (the Wisdom Knot): Toward an African Philosophy of Education

by Kwadwo A. Okrah

This study examines the issues of indigenous philosophies, which are embedded in different aspects of socialization process among the Akan of Ghana. The research explores the possibility of forging a new future...

Place and Spirit in Taiwan: Tudi Gong in the Stories, Strategies and Memories of Everyday Life

by Alessandro Dell'Orto

Based on field-work in Taiwan, this book examines the ancient, indigenous religious cult of Tudi Gong both as a religio-social phenomenon and as an appropriate medium for exploring and analysing the social changes...

A Passage to Anthropology: Between Experience and Theory

by Kirsten Hastrup

The postmodernist critique of Objectivism, Realism and Essentialism has somewhat shattered the foundations of anthropology, seriously questioning the legitimacy of studying others. By confronting the critique...

The Sexual Lives of Savages: [1932/1952]

by Malinowski

This volume provides an ethnographic account of courtship, marriage and family life among the people of the Trobriand Islands.

Risk and Acceptability

by Mary Douglas

First published in 1985, Mary Douglas intended Risk and Acceptability as a review of the existing literature on the state of risk theory. Unsatisfied with the current studies of risk, which she found to be flawed...

The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism

by Edmund Leach

Designed to provoke controversy, the papers in this volume concentrate on two main themes: the study of myth and totemism. Starting with an English translation of La Geste d'Asdiwal, which is widely considered...

Malinowski Amongst the Magi: The Natives of Mailu [1915/1988]

by Malinowski

A reissue of Malinowski's first field monograph, containing historical and theoretical material. This edition includes a major essay by Michael Young who draws on Malinowski's diary, unpublished notebooks and...

The Father in Primitive Psychology and Myth in Primitive Psychology: [1927]

by Malinowski

This volume investigates ideas, beliefs and sentiments in relation to social organization.

Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations

by Mary Douglas

Historians as well as anthropologists have contributed to this volume of studies on aspects of witchcraft in a variety of cultures and periods from Tudor England to twentieth-century Africa and New Guinea.

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Dictionary of Symbols

by J. C. Cirlot

The unvarying essential meanings of around 1,000 symbols and symbolic themes commonly found in the art, literature and thought of all cultures through the ages are clarified.

Fieldwork and Footnotes: Studies in the History of European Anthropology

by Arturo Alvarez Roldan & Han Vermeulen

The history of anthropology has great relevance for current debates within the discipline, offering a foundation from which the professionalisation of anthropology can evolve. The authors explore key issues...

Social Experience and Anthropological Knowledge

by Kirsten Hastrup & Peter Hervik

Anthropology poses an explicit challenge to standard notions of scientific knowledge. It claims to produce genuine insights into the workings of culture in general on the basis of individual social experience...

Food, Health and Identity

by Pat Caplan

By addressing the issue of food and eating in Britain today this collection considers the ways in which food habits are changing and shows how social and personal identities and perceptions of health risk influence...

Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts

by Nigel Rapport & Joanna Overing

Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts is the ideal introduction to this discipline, defining and discussing its central terms with clarity and authority. Among the concepts explored are:

• Cybernetics...

Global Culture/Individual Identity: Searching for Home in the Cultural Supermarket

by Gordon Mathews

Most people still think of themselves as belonging to a particular culture. Yet today, many of us who live in affluent societies choose aspects of our lives from a global cultural supermarket, whether in terms...