One hundred years ago in Brazil the rituals of Candomble were feared as sorcery and persecuted as crime. Its cult objects were fearsome fetishes. Nowadays, they are Afro-Brazilian cultural works of ar
Anthropology has long shied away from examining how human beings may lead happy and fulfilling lives. This book, however, shows that the ethnographic examination of well-being-defined as "the optimal
Against the historical backdrop of successive socialist and post-socialist claims to have completely remade society, the contributors to this volume explore the complex and often paradoxical continui
Anthropologists and allied researchers from Britain and allied countries explore how systems of environmental management are related to the people involved in them and affected by them, within the fra
The large and sudden influx of missionaries into the former Soviet Union after seventy years of militant secularism has been controversial, as the widespread occurrence of conversion lead to anxiety
Forms of group identity play a prominent role in everyday lives and politics in north-east Africa. These volumes provide an interdisciplinary account of the nature and significance of ethnic, religio
Melhuus (social anthropology, U. of Oslo, Norway) et al. assemble 11 chapters drawn from two workshops, "Ethnographic Practice in the Present" and "Ethnography: The Costs of Success?" held at the eigh
Science and technology studies, cultural anthropology and cultural studies deal with the complex relations between material, symbolic, technical and political practices. In a Deleuzian approach these
Latin American cities have always been characterized by a strong tension between what is vaguely described as their formal and informal dimensions. However, despite intrinsic semantic implications, t
Throughout the world, everyday, millions of people eat earth, clay, nasal mucus, and similar substances. Yet food practices like these are strikingly understudied in a sustained, interdisciplinary ma
Not Born a Refugee Woman is an in-depth inquiry into the identity construction of refugee women. It challenges and rethinks current identity concepts, policies, and practices in the context of a globa
Rather than emphasising boundaries and territories by examining the "integration" and "acculturation" of the immigrant or the refugee, this book offers insights into the ideas and practices of indivi
Whaling has become one of the most controversial environmental issues. It is not that all whale species are at the brink of extinction, but that whales have become important symbols to both pro- and
Visual anthropology has proved to offer fruitful methods of research and representation to applied projects of social intervention. Through a series of case studies based on applied visual anthropolog
From a comparative perspective, human life histories are unique and raising offspring is unusually costly: humans have relatively short birth intervals compared to other apes, childhood is long, moth
Just as anthropology has had a significant influence on many other disciplines in recent years, so too have its methods been challenged by new intellectual and technical developments. This series is
Existing critical traditions fail to fully account for the impact of Austrian director, and 2009 Cannes Palm d'Or winner, Michael Haneke's films, situated as they are between intellectual projects and
A fascinating and highly readable account of what it was like to be young and hip, growing up in East Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. Living on the frontline of the Cold War, young people were subject
Since its publication in 1984, CineGraph has become the most authoritative and comprehensive encyclopedia of German film. We are pleased to make a condensed English-language edition of this important
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this important book explores the role of France in the events leading up to the end of the Cold War and German unification. Most accounts concentrate o
The belief in a demographic surplus of unwed women, known as the Frauen?berschua, formed a principal pillar of the first German women's movement and served as a central leitmotif in the debates regar
German migration policy now stands at a major crossroad, caught between a fifty-year history of missed opportunities and serious new challenges. Focusing on these new challenges that German policy ma
The tremendous increase in migrations and diasporas of human groups in the last decades are not only bringing along challenging issues for society, especially related to the economic and political ma
As an important contribution to debates on property theory and the role of law in creating, disputing, defining and refining property rights, this volume provides new theoretical material on property
The overwhelming majority of historical work on the late Habsburg Monarchy has focused primarily on national movements and ethnic conflicts, with the result that too little attention has been devoted
Now that nearly twenty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet bloc there is a need to understand what has taken place since that historic date and where we are at the moment. Bringing tog
There has been a tendency amongst scholars to view Switzerland as a unique case, and comparative scholarship on the radical right has therefore shown little interest in the country. Yet, as the author
Race, ethnicity and nation are all intimately linked to family and kinship, yet these links deserve closer attention than they usually get in social science, above all when family and kinship are cha
The history of postwar German cinema has most often been told as a story of failure, a failure paradoxically epitomized by the remarkable popularity of film throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. Throug
The account of the author’s life, spent between Europe and America, is at the same time an account of his generation, one that came of age between the two World Wars. Recalling not only circumstances
Extensive social science research, particularly by anthropologists, has explored women's reproductive lives, their use of reproductive technologies, and their experiences as mothers and nurturers of
Extensive social science research, particularly by anthropologists, has explored women's reproductive lives, their use of reproductive technologies, and their experiences as mothers and nurturers of
Following the routinization of assisted reproduction in the industrialized world, technologies such as in vitro fertilization, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and DNA-based paternity testing have
Concerned with contemporary notions of personhood and the relationship between persons and places, this book, presents a detailed insight into the Vanua Lavan's engagement with modernity, and examine
Anthropologists have been keenly aware of the tension between cultural relativism and absolute norms, and nowhere has this been more acute than with regards to moral values. Can we study the Other's
Our lives are mostly composed of ordinary reality-the flow of moment-to-moment existence-and yet it has been largely overlooked as a subject in itself for anthropological study. In this work, the aut
Forms of group identity play a prominent role in everyday lives and politics in north-east Africa. These volumes provide an interdisciplinary account of the nature and significance of ethnic, religio
The number of studies discussing the labour relationship under industrial capitalism is overwhelming, but the literature on labor and its concrete, day-to-day shop-floor practices is much less abundan
Around the world, intensifying development and human demands for fresh water are placing unsustainable pressures on finite resources. Countries are waging war over transboundary rivers, and rural and
Adulthood is taken for granted. It connotes the end of childhood, the resolution to the "storm and stress" period of adolescence. This conception is strongly entrenched in the sociology of youth and
