- Table View
- List View
Glimpses of Hope: The Rise of Industrial Labor at the Urban Margins of Nepal (Dislocations #32)
by Michael HoffmannOver the last decade, Nepal has witnessed significant urban growth and an expanding urban middle class. Glimpses of Hope tells the story of the people who enable some of the middle-class consumer practices in urban Nepal. The book focuses on workers in areas such as modern food-processing, water-bottling, housebuilding, and sand-mining industries and explores how workers see such forms of work, where union organization can help, and how work opportunities emerge along lines of gender and ethnicity. Although global labor relations have been mostly in decline for decades, this ethnography offers insights and glimpses of hope in terms of labor dynamics and the opportunities various jobs may afford.
The Global Age-Friendly Community Movement: A Critical Appraisal (Life Course, Culture and Aging: Global Transformations #5)
by Philip B. StaffordThe age-friendly community movement is a global phenomenon, currently growing with the support of the WHO and multiple international and national organizations in the field of aging. Drawing on an extensive collection of international case studies, this volume provides an introduction to the movement. The contributors – both researchers and practitioners – touch on a number of current tensions and issues in the movement and offer a wide-ranging set of recommendations for advancing age-friendly community development. The book concludes with a call for a radical transformation of a medical and lifestyle model of aging into a relational model of health and social/individual wellbeing.
Global Fluids: The Cultural Politics of Reproductive Waste and Value (Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives #39)
by Charlotte KroløkkeIn the fertility and cosmetics industries, women’s body products – such as urine, eggs, and placentas – have moved from being seen as waste to becoming valuable ingredients. Taking a sociological and anthropological perspective, the author focuses in particular on the role that countries like Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, and Japan play in the reproductive products industry, and discusses the moral limits of the cultural and rhetorical trajectories that turn women’s body products into internationally mobile substances.
Globalized Fatherhood
by Marcia C. Inhorn José-Alberto Navarro Wendy ChavkinUsing an entirely new conceptual vocabulary through which to understand men's experiences and expectations at the dawn of the twenty-first century, this path-breaking volume focuses on fatherhood around the globe, including transformations in fathering, fatherhood, and family life. It includes new work by anthropologists, sociologists, and cultural geographers, working in settings from Peru to India to Vietnam. Each chapter suggests that men are responding to globalization as fathers in creative and unprecedented ways, not only in the West, but also in numerous global locations.
A Goddess in Motion: Visual Creativity in the Cult of MarÃa Lionza (New Directions in Anthropology #42)
by Roger CanalsThe current practice of the cult of María Lionza is one of the most important and yet unexplored religious practices in Venezuela. Based on long-term fieldwork, this book explores the role of images and visual culture within the cult. By adopting a relational approach, A Goddess in Motion shows how the innumerable images of this goddess-represented as an Indian, white or mestizo woman-move constantly from objects to bodies, from bodies to dreams, and from the religion domain to the art world. In short, this book is a fascinating study that sheds light on the role of visual creativity in contemporary religious manifestations.
Godless Intellectuals?: The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented (Berghahn Ser.)
by Alexander Tristan RileyThe Durkheimians have traditionally been understood as positivist, secular thinkers, fully within the Enlightenment project of limitless reason and progress. In a radical revision of this view, this book persuasively argues that the core members of the Durkheimian circle (Durkheim himself, Marcel Mauss, Henri Hubert and Robert Hertz) are significantly more complicated than this. Through his extensive analysis of large volumes of correspondence as well as historical and macro-sociological mappings of the intellectual and social worlds in which the Durkheimian project emerged, the author shows the Durkheimian project to have constituted a quasi-religious quest in ways much deeper than most interpreters have thought. Their fascination, both personal and intellectual, with the sacred is the basis on which the author reconstructs some important components of modern French intellectual history, connecting Durkheimian thought to key representatives of French poststructuralism and postmodernism: Bataille, Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, and Deleuze.
Grazing Communities: Pastoralism on the Move and Biocultural Heritage Frictions (Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology #29)
by Letizia BindiPastoralism is a diffused and ancient form of human subsistence and probably one of the most studied by anthropologists at the crossroads between continuities and transformations. The present critical discourse on sustainable and responsible development implies a change of practices, a huge socio-economic transformation, and the return of new shepherds and herders in different European regions. Transhumance and extensive breeding are revitalized as a potential resource for inner and rural areas of Europe against depopulation and as an efficient form of farming deeply influencing landscape and functioning as a perfect eco-system service. This book is an occasion to reconsider grazing communities’ frictions in the new global heritage scenario.
Hairy Hippies and Bloody Butchers: The Greenpeace Anti-Whaling Campaign in Norway
by Juliane RieseIn the popular imagination, no issue has been more closely linked with the environmental group Greenpeace than whaling. Opposition to commercial whaling has inspired many of the organization's most dramatic and high-profile "direct actions"-as well as some of its most notable failures. This book provides an inside look at one such instance: Greenpeace's decades-long campaign against the Norwegian whaling industry. Combining historical narrative with systems-theory analysis, author Juliane Riese shows how the organization's self-presentation as a David pitted against whale-butchering Goliaths was turned on its head. She recounts how opponents successfully discredited the campaign while Greenpeace struggled with internal disagreements and other organizational challenges, providing valuable lessons for other protest movements.
Hierarchy: Persistence and Transformation in Social Formations
by Knut M. Rio Olaf H. SmedalLouis Dumont's concept of hierarchy continues to inspire social scientists. Using it as their starting point, the contributors to this volume introduce both fresh empirical material and new theoretical considerations. On the basis of diverse ethnographic contexts in Oceania, Asia, and the Middle East they challenge some current conceptions of hierarchical formations and reassess former debates - of post-colonial and neo-colonial agendas, ideas of "democratization" and "globalization," and expanding market economies - both with regard to new theoretical issues and the new world situation.
Hierarchy and Value: Comparative Perspectives on Moral Order (Studies in Social Analysis #7)
by Jason Hickel Naomi HaynesGlobalization promised to bring about a golden age of liberal individualism, breaking down hierarchies of kinship, caste, and gender around the world and freeing people to express their true, authentic agency. But in some places globalization has spurred the emergence of new forms of hierarchy—or the reemergence of old forms—as people try to reconstitute an imagined past of stable moral order. This is evident from the Islamic revival in the Middle East to visions of the 1950s family among conservatives in the United States. Why does this happen and how do we make sense of this phenomenon? Why do some communities see hierarchy as desireable? In this book, leading anthropologists draw on insightful ethnographic case studies from around the world to address these trends. Together, they develop a theory of hierarchy that treats it both as a relational form and a framework for organizing ideas about the social good.
Histories of a Radical Book: E. P. Thompson and <em>The Making of the English Working Class</em>
by Antoinette Burton and Stephanie FortadoFor better or worse, E.P. Thompson’s monumental book The Making of the English Working Class has played an essential role in shaping the intellectual lives of generations of readers since its original publication in 1963. This collected volume explores the complex impact of Thompson’s book, both as an intellectual project and material object, relating it to the social and cultural history of the book form itself—an enduring artifact of English history.
Hope and Insufficiency: Capacity Building in Ethnographic Comparison
by Rachel Douglas-Jones Justin ShaffnerA process through which skills, knowledge, and resources are expanded, capacity building, remains a tantalizing and pervasive concept throughout the field of anthropology, though it has received little in the way of critical analysis. By exploring the concept’s role in a variety of different settings including government lexicons, religious organizations, environmental campaigns, biomedical training, and fieldwork from around the globe, Hope and Insufficiency seeks to question the histories, assumptions, intentions, and enactments that have led to the ubiquity of capacity building, thereby developing a much-needed critical purchase on its persuasive power.
Houses Transformed: Anthropological Perspectives on Changing Practices of Dwelling and Building
by Jonathan Alderman Rosalie StolzOver the decades, there has been a world-wide transformation of so-called ‘vernacular houses’. Based on ethnographic accounts from different regions, Houses Transformed investigates the changing practices of building houses in a transnational context. It explores the intersection of house biographies and social change, the politics of housing design, the social fabrication of aspirational houses, the domestication of concrete and the intersection of materiality and ontology as well as the rhetoric of the vernacular. The volume provides new anthropological pathways to understanding the dynamics of dwelling in the 21st century.
How Enemies Are Made
by Günther SchleeIn popular perception cultural differences or ethnic affiliation are factors that cause conflict or political fragmentation although this is not borne out by historical evidence. This book puts forward an alternative conflict theory. The author develops a decision theory which explains the conditions under which differing types of identification are preferred. Group identification is linked to competition for resources like water, territory, oil, political charges, or other advantages. Rivalry for resources can cause conflicts but it does not explain who takes whose side in a conflict situation. This book explores possibilities of reducing violent conflicts and ends with a case study, based on personal experience of the author, of conflict resolution.
How Kinship Systems Change: On the Dialectics of Practice and Classification
by Robert ParkinUsing 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.
How Materials Matter: Design, Innovation and Materiality in the Pacific
by Graeme WereHow does design and innovation shape people’s lives in the Pacific? Focusing on plant materials from the region, How Materials Matter reveals ways in which a variety of people – from craftswomen and scientists to architects and politicians – work with materials to transform worlds. Recognizing the fragile and ephemeral nature of plant fibres, this work delves into how the biophysical properties of certain leaves and their aesthetic appearance are utilized to communicate information and manage different forms of relations. It breaks new ground by situating plant materials at the centre of innovation in a region.
How Materials Matter: Design, Innovation and Materiality in the Pacific
by Graeme WereHow does design and innovation shape people’s lives in the Pacific? Focusing on plant materials from the region, How Materials Matter reveals ways in which a variety of people – from craftswomen and scientists to architects and politicians – work with materials to transform worlds. Recognizing the fragile and ephemeral nature of plant fibres, this work delves into how the biophysical properties of certain leaves and their aesthetic appearance are utilized to communicate information and manage different forms of relations. It breaks new ground by situating plant materials at the centre of innovation in a region.
A Human Garden: French Policy and the Transatlantic Legacies of Eugenic Experimentation (Berghahn Monographs in French Studies #16)
by Paul-André RosentalWell into the 1980s, Strasbourg, France, was the site of a curious and little-noted experiment: Ungemach, a garden city dating back to the high days of eugenic experimentation that offered luxury living to couples who were deemed biologically fit and committed to contractual childbearing targets. Supported by public authorities, Ungemach aimed to accelerate human evolution by increasing procreation among eugenically selected parents. In this fascinating history, Paul-André Rosental gives an account of Ungemach’s origins and its perplexing longevity. He casts a troubling light on the influence that eugenics continues to exert—even decades after being discredited as a pseudoscience—in realms as diverse as developmental psychology, postwar policymaking, and liberal-democratic ideals of personal fulfilment.
Images Of Power And The Power Of Images
by Judith KapfererReal places and events are constructed and used to symbolize abstract formulations of power and authority in politics, corporate practice, the arts, religion, and community. By analyzing the aesthetics of public space in contexts both mundane and remarkable, the contributors examine the social relationship between public and private activities that impart meaning to groups of people beyond their individual or local circumstances. From a range of perspectives--anthropological, sociological, and socio-cultural--the contributors discuss road-making in Peru, mass housing in Britain, an unsettling traveling exhibition, and an art fair in London; we explore the meaning of walls in Jerusalem, a Zen garden in Japan, and religious themes in Europe and India. Literally and figuratively, these situations influence the ways in which ordinary people interpret their everyday worlds. By deconstructing the taken for- granted definitions of social value (democracy, equality, individualism, fortune), the authors reveal the ideological role of imagery and imagination in a globalized political context.
In-Betweenness in Greater Khartoum: Spaces, Temporalities, and Identities from Separation to Revolution (Space and Place #20)
by Alice Franck, Barbara Casciarri Idris Salim El-HassanFocusing on Greater Khartoum following South Sudanese independence in 2011, In-Betweenness in Greater Khartoum explores the impact on society of major political events in areas that are neither urban nor rural, public nor private. This volume uses these in-between spaces as a lens to analyze how these events, in combination with other processes, such as globalization and economic neo-liberalization, impact communities across the region. Drawing on original fieldwork and empirical data, the authors uncover the reshaping of new categories of people that reinforce old dichotomies and in doing so underscore a common Sudanese identity.
In Pursuit of Belonging: Forging an Ethical Life in European-Turkish Spaces (Anthropology of Europe #4)
by Susan Beth RottmannBelonging is a not a state that we achieve, but a struggle that we wage. The struggle for belonging is more difficult if one is returning to a homeland after many years abroad. In Pursuit of Belonging is an ethnography of Turkish migrants’ struggle for understanding, intimacy and appreciation when they return from Germany to their Turkish homeland. Drawing on an established tradition of life story writing in anthropology, Rottmann conveys the struggle to forge an ethical life by relating the experiences of a second-generation German-Turkish woman named Leyla.
In the Best Interests of the Child: Loss and Suffering in Adoption Proceedings
by Mili MassMarshalling her experience as an expert witness in court proceedings on non-consensual, confidential adoption in Israel, Mass describes legal proceedings following the Israeli state petition that declares children eligible for adoption because of alleged parental incapability, and explores the politics of state intervention in the parent/child relationship. The selected case studies present the testimonies of the children, the parents, the designated adoptive parents, and the state’s representatives, as well as the author’s own testimony.
In the Meantime: Toward an Anthropology of the Possible
by Adeline Masquelier Deborah DurhamThe “meantime” represents the gap between what is past and the unknown future. When considered as waiting, the meantime is defined as a period of suspension to be endured. By contrast, the contributors of this volume understand it as a space of “the possible” where calculation coexists with uncertainty, promises with disappointment, and imminence with deferral. Attending to the temporalities of emerging rather than settled facts, they put the stress on the temporal tactics, social commitments, material connections, dispositional orientations, and affective circuits that emerge in the meantime even in the most desperate times.
Indeterminacy: Waste, Value, and the Imagination (WYSE Series in Social Anthropology #7)
by Catherine Alexander Andrew SanchezWhat happens to people, places and objects that do not fit the ordering regimes and progressive narratives of modernity? Conventional understandings imply that progress leaves such things behind, and excludes them as though they were valueless waste. This volume uses the concept of indeterminacy to explore how conditions of exclusion and abandonment may give rise to new values, as well as to states of despair and alienation. Drawing upon ethnographic research about a wide variety of contexts, the chapters here explore how indeterminacy is created and experienced in relationship to projects of classification and progress.
Indigeneity on the Move: Varying Manifestations of a Contested Concept
by Eva Gerharz Nasir Uddin Pradeep Chakkarath“Indigeneity” has become a prominent yet contested concept in national and international politics, as well as within the social sciences. This edited volume draws from authors representing different disciplines and perspectives, exploring the dependence of indigeneity on varying sociopolitical contexts, actors, and discourses with the ultimate goal of investigating the concept’s scientific and political potential.