We are delighted to inform you that we will be attending the 115th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association being held November 16-20, 2016, in Minneapolis, MN. Please stop by Booth #712 to browse our selection of books at discounted prices and pick up free journals samples.
We are especially excited to invite you to join us on Friday November 18th at 3:30pm in the exhibit hall for a wine reception to celebrate some of our newly published titles. We hope to see you there!
If you are unable to attend the conference, we would like to extend a special discount offer. For the next 30 days, receive a 25% discount on all Anthropology titles. Visit our website and use discount code AAA16 at checkout.
For more information on New and Forthcoming titles please check out brand new interactive online Anthropology & Sociology 2017 Catalog.
Below is a preview of some of our newest releases on display.
Paperback Original
TREES, KNOTS, AND OUTRIGGERS
Environmental Knowledge in the Northeast Kula Ring
Frederick H. Damon
Volume 21, Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology
This book is accompanied by a large online repository of images
Trees, Knots and Outriggers (Kaynen Muyuw) is the culmination of twenty-five years of work by Frederick H. Damon and his attention to cultural adaptations to the environment in Melanesia. Damon details the intricacies of indigenous knowledge and practice in his sweeping synthesis of symbolic and structuralist anthropology with recent developments in historical ecology. This book is a long conversation between the author’s many Papua New Guinea informants, teachers and friends, and scientists in Australia, Europe and the United States, in which a spirit of adventure and discovery is palpable.
Read Introduction
Paperback Original
HONOUR AND VIOLENCE
Gender, Power and Law in Southern Pakistan
Nafisa Shah
Volume 39, New Directions in Anthropology
The practice of karo kari allows family, especially fathers, brothers and sons, to take the lives of their daughters, sisters and mothers if they are accused of adultery. This volume examines the central position of karo kari in the social, political and juridical structures in Upper Sindh, Pakistan. Drawing connections between local contests over marriage and resources, Nafisa Shah unearths deep historical processes and power relations. In particular, she explores how the state justice system and informal mediations inform each other in state responses to karo kari, and how modern law is implicated in this seemingly ancient cultural practice.
Read Introduction: Honour Violence, Law and Power in Upper Sindh
Paperback Original
AMERICA OBSERVED
On an International Anthropology of the U.S.
Edited by Virginia Dominguez and Jasmin Habib
Afterword by Jane C. Desmond
There is surprisingly little fieldwork done on the United States by anthropologists from abroad. America Observed fills that gap by bringing into greater focus empirical as well as theoretical implications of this phenomenon. Edited by Virginia Dominguez and Jasmin Habib, the essays collected here offer a critique of such an absence, exploring its likely reasons while also illustrating the advantages of studying fieldwork-based anthropological projects conducted by colleagues from outside the U.S. This volume contains an introduction written by the editors and fieldwork-based essays written by Helena Wulff, Jasmin Habib, Limor Darash, Ulf Hannerz, and Moshe Shokeid, and reflections on the broad issue written by Geoffrey White, Keiko Ikeda, and Jane Desmond. Suitable for introductory and mid-level anthropology courses, America Observed will also be useful for American Studies courses both in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Paperback Original
VIOLENT BECOMINGS
State Formation, Sociality, and Power in Mozambique
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen
Volume 4, Ethnography, Theory, Experiment
Violent Becomings: State Formation, Sociality, and Power in Mozambique by Bjørn Enge Bertelsen is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
This edition is supported by the University of Bergen. full text
Violent Becomings conceptualizes the Mozambican state not as the bureaucratically ordered polity of the nation-state, but as a continuously emergent and violently challenged mode of ordering. In doing so, this book addresses the question of why colonial and postcolonial state formation has involved violent articulations with so-called ‘traditional’ forms of sociality. The scope and dynamic nature of such violent becomings is explored through an array of contexts that include colonial regimes of forced labor and pacification, liberation war struggles and civil war, the social engineering of the post-independence state, and the popular appropriation of sovereign violence in riots and lynchings.
DEADLY CONTRADICTIONS
The New American Empire and Global Warring
Stephen P. Reyna
“This is an amazing book, a page-turner, a true game-changer, one of those grand oeuvres that an academic discipline produces once a decade at best.” · Patrick Neveling, Cultural Anthropology, Utrecht University
As US imperialism continues to dictate foreign policy, Deadly Contradictions is a compelling account of the American empire. Stephen P. Reyna argues that contemporary forms of violence exercised by American elites in the colonies, client state, and regions of interest have deferred imperial problems, but not without raising their own set of deadly contradictions. This book can be read many ways: as a polemic against geopolitics, as a classic social anthropological text, or as a seminal analysis of twenty-four US global wars during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras.
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THE ANTHROPOLOGIST AS WRITER
Genres and Contexts in the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Helena Wulff
Writing is crucial to anthropology, but which genres are anthropologists expected to master in the 21st century? This book explores how anthropological writing shapes the intellectual content of the discipline and academic careers. First, chapters identify the different writing genres and contexts anthropologists actually engage with. Second, this book argues for the usefulness and necessity of taking seriously the idea of writing as a craft and of writing across and within genres in new ways. Although academic writing is an anthropologist’s primary genre, they also write in many others, from drafting administrative texts and filing reports to composing ethnographically inspired journalism and fiction.
Read Introducing the Anthropologist as Writer: Across and Within Genres
Paperback Original
WAR MAGIC
Religion, Sorcery, and Performance
Edited by D. S. Farrer
This compelling volume explores how war magic and warrior religion unleash the power of the gods, demons, ghosts, and the dead. Documenting war magic and warrior religion as they are performed in diverse cultures and across historical time periods, this volume foregrounds embodiment, practice, and performance in anthropological approaches to magic, sorcery, shamanism, and religion. The authors go beyond what magic ‘represents’ to consider what magic does. From Chinese exorcists, Javanese spirit siblings, and black magic in Sumatra to Tamil Tiger suicide bombers, Chamorro spiritual re-enchantment, tantric Buddhist war magic, and Yanomami dark shamans, religion and magic are re-evaluated not just from the practitioner’s perspective but through the victim’s lived experience. These original investigations reveal a nuanced approach to understanding social action, innovation, and the revitalization of tradition in colonial and post-colonial societies undergoing rapid social transformation.
Read Introduction: War Magic: Religion, Sorcery, and Performance
HUNTERS, GATHERERS, AND PRACTITIONERS OF POWERLESSNESS
An Ethnography of the Degraded in Postsocialist Poland
Tomasz Rakowski
Translated from Polish by Søren Gauger
Foreword by Jan Kubik
Volume 6, European Anthropology in Translation
The socio-economic transformations of the 1990s have forced many people in Poland into impoverishment. Hunters, Gatherers, and Practitioners of Powerlessness gives a dramatic account of life after this degradation, tracking the experiences of unemployed miners, scrap collectors, and poverty-stricken village residents. Contrary to the images of passivity, resignation, and helplessness that have become powerful tropes in Polish journalism and academic writing, Tomasz Rakowski traces the ways in which people actively reconfigure their lives. As it turns out, the initial sense of degradation and helplessness often gives way to images of resourcefulness that reveal unusual hunting-and-gathering skills.
Read Introduction: The Anthropologist as a Poverty Inspector
The Online World of Surrogacy
Zsuzsa Berend
Volume 35, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives
Zsuzsa Berend presents a methodologically innovative ethnography of SurroMomsOnline.com, the largest surrogacy support website in the United States. Surrogates’ views emerge from the stories, debates, and discussions that unfold online. The Online World of Surrogacy documents these collective meaning-making practices and explores their practical, emotional, and moral implications. In doing so, the book works through themes of interest across the social sciences, including definitions of parenthood, the symbolic role of money, reproductive loss, altruism, and the moral valuation of relationships.
Read Introduction
New Series from Berghahn
Volume 1, Worlds in Motion
KEYWORDS OF MOBILITY
Critical Engagements
Edited by Noel B. Salazar and Kiran Jayaram
Scholars from various disciplines have used key concepts to grasp mobilities, but as of yet, a working vocabulary of these has not been fully developed. Given this context and inspired in part by Raymond Williams’ Keywords (1976), this edited volume presents contributions that critically analyze mobility-related keywords: capital, cosmopolitanism, freedom, gender, immobility, infrastructure, motility, and regime. Each chapter provides an historical context, a critical analysis of how the keyword has been used in relation to mobility, and a conclusion that proposes future usage or research.
Read Introduction: Keywords of Mobility: A Critical Introduction
Volume 1, Studies in the Circumpolar North
LEAVING FOOTPRINTS IN THE TAIGA
Luck, Spirits and Ambivalence among the Siberian Orochen Reindeer Herders and Hunters
Donatas Brandišauskas
Nowhere have recent environmental and social changes been more pronounced than in post-Soviet Siberia. Donatas Brandišauskas probes the strategies that Orochen reindeer herders of southeastern Siberia have developed to navigate these changes. “Catching luck” is one such strategy that plays a central role in Orochen cosmology — luck implies a vernacular theory of causality based on active interactions of humans, non-humans, material objects, and places. Brandišauskas describes in rich details the skills, knowledge, ritual practices, storytelling, and movements that enable the Orochen to “catch luck” (or not, sometimes), to navigate times of change and upheaval.
Read Introduction: Luck, Spirits and Places
Volume 1, Catastrophes in Context
Paperback Original
CONTEXTUALIZING DISASTER
Edited by Gregory V. Button and Mark Schuller
Contextualizing Disaster offers a comparative analysis of six recent “highly visible” disasters and several slow-burning, “hidden,” crises that include typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes, chemical spills, and the unfolding consequences of rising seas and climate change. The book argues that, while disasters are increasingly represented by the media as unique, exceptional, newsworthy events, it is a mistake to think of disasters as isolated or discrete occurrences. Rather, building on insights developed by political ecologists, this book makes a compelling argument for understanding disasters as transnational and global phenomena.
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Volume 2, Higher Education in Critical Perspective: Practices and Policies
CREATING A NEW PUBLIC UNIVERSITY AND REVIVING DEMOCRACY
Action Research in Higher Education
Morten Levin and Davydd J. Greenwood
Public universities are in crisis, waning in their role as central institutions within democratic societies. Denunciations are abundant, but analyses of the causes and proposals to re-create public universities are not. Based on extensive experience with Action Research-based organizational change in universities and private sector organizations, Levin and Greenwood analyze the wreckage created by neoliberal academic administrators and policymakers. The authors argue that public universities must be democratically organized to perform their educational and societal functions. The book closes by laying out Action Research processes that can transform public universities back into institutions that promote academic freedom, integrity, and democracy.
Volume 1, The Human Economy
New in Paperback
PEOPLE, MONEY AND POWER IN THE ECONOMIC CRISIS
Perspectives from the Global South
Edited by Keith Hart and John Sharp
“A striking element of the volume is the interdisciplinarity of its textual form. While most of the contributors are in fact sociocultural anthropologists, the appropriation of templates and literary conventions within and across the fields of history, sociology, political economy and geography reflects the seriousness of the authors’ coalition building aspirations.” · Anthropological Forum
Nine case studies — from Southern Africa, South Asia, Brazil, and Atlantic Africa – examine economic life from the perspective of ordinary people in places that are normally marginal to global discourse, covering a range of class positions from the bottom to the top of society. The authors of these case studies examine people’s concrete economic activities and aspirations.
Read Introduction
Volume 1, Pacific Perspectives: Studies of the European Society for Oceanists
New in Paperback
THE ETHNOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENT
A.M. Hocart and W.H.R. Rivers in Island Melanesia, 1908
Edited by Edvard Hviding and Cato Berg
“[With this] very cohesive set of essays, Hviding and Berg h ave done an excellent job lifting an important expedition out of the archival oblivion where it reposed for the better part of a century. This is an appropriate volume to introduce the new Pacific Perspectives series. As such, this work appeals to readers interested in the histories of anthropology and Pacific worlds.” · Oceania
In 1908, Arthur Maurice Hocart and William Halse Rivers Rivers conducted fieldwork in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in Island Melanesia that served as the turning point in the development of modern anthropology. Contributors to this volume—who have all carried out fieldwork in those Melanesian locations where Hocart and Rivers worked—give a critical examination of the research that took place in 1908, situating those efforts in the broadest possible contexts of colonial history, imperialism, the history of ideas and scholarly practice within and beyond anthropology.
Read Introduction: The Ethnographic Experiment in Island Melanesia
Volume 3, WYSE Series in Social Anthropology
THE STATE WE’RE IN
Reflecting on Democracy’s Troubles
Edited by Joanna Cook, Nicholas J. Long, and Henrietta L. Moore
What makes people lose faith in democratic statecraft? The question seems an urgent one. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, citizens across the world have grown increasingly disillusioned with what was once a cherished ideal. Setting out an original theoretical model that explores the relations between democracy, subjectivity and sociality, and exploring its relevance to countries ranging from Kenya to Peru, The State We’re In is a must-read for all political theorists, scholars of democracy, and readers concerned for the future of the democratic ideal.
Read Introduction: When Democracy ‘Goes Wrong’
Volume 3, Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy
WHEN THINGS BECOME PROPERTY
Land Reform, Authority and Value in Postsocialist Europe and Asia
Thomas Sikor, Stefan Dorondel, Johannes Stahl and Phuc Xuan To
Governments have conferred ownership titles to many citizens throughout the world in an effort to turn things into property. Almost all elements of nature have become the target of property laws, from the classic preoccupation with land to more ephemeral material, such as air and genetic resources. When Things Become Property interrogates the mixed outcomes of conferring ownership by examining postsocialist land and forest reforms in Albania, Romania and Vietnam, and finds that property reforms are no longer, if they ever were, miracle tools available to governments for refashioning economies, politics or environments.
Research Methods for Anthropological Studies of Food and Nutrition Volume I-III
Editors: Janet Chrzan, University of Pennsylvania and John A. Brett, University of Colorado, Denver
Published in Association with the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN) and in Collaboration with Rachel Black and Leslie Carlin
The dramatic increase in all things food in popular and academic fields during the last two decades has generated a diverse and dynamic set of approaches for understanding the complex relationships and interactions that determine how people eat and how diet affects culture. These volumes offer a comprehensive reference for students and established scholars interested in food and nutrition research in Nutritional and Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology, Food Studies and Applied Public Health.
Buy All Three Volumes for 20% Discount
Volume I
FOOD RESEARCH
Nutritional Anthropology and Archaeological Methods
Edited by Janet Chrzan and John A. Brett
Biocultural and archaeological research on food, past and present, often relies on very specific, precise, methods for data collection and analysis. These are presented here in a broad-based review. Individual chapters provide opportunities to think through the adoption of methods by reviewing the history of their use along with a discussion of research conducted using those methods. A case study from the author’s own work is included in each chapter to illustrate why the methods were adopted in that particular case along with abundant additional resources to further develop and explore those methods.
Volume II
FOOD CULTURE
Anthropology, Linguistics and Food Studies
Edited by Janet Chrzan and John A. Brett
This volume offers a comprehensive guide to methods used in the sociocultural, linguistic and historical research of food use. This volume is unique in offering food-related research methods from multiple academic disciplines, and includes methods that bridge disciplines to provide a thorough review of best practices. In each chapter, a case study from the author’s own work is to illustrate why the methods were adopted in that particular case along with abundant additional resources to further develop and explore the methods.
Volume III
FOOD HEALTH
Nutrition, Technology, and Public Health
Edited by Janet Chrzan and John A. Brett
Nutritional Anthropology and public health research and programming have employed similar methodologies for decades; many anthropologists are public health practitioners while many public health practitioners have been trained as medical or biological anthropologists. Recognizing such professional connections, this volume provides in-depth analysis and comprehensive review of methods necessary to design, plan, implement and analyze public health programming using anthropological best practices. To illustrates the rationale for use of particular methods, each chapter elaborates a case study from the author’s own work, showing why particular methods were adopted in each case.
New in Paperback
Nighttime Breastfeeding
An American Cultural Dilemma
Cecília Tomori
Volume 26, Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality: Social and Cultural Perspectives
“This work will be useful for medical anthropologists and professionals at all levels of reproductive health care and family medicine. It offers important ethnographic analysis relevant to feminist anthropology, women’s and gender studies, and cross-cultural and bio-evolutionary perspectives on kinship and family.” · Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Through careful ethnographic study of the dilemmas raised by nighttime breastfeeding, and their examination in the context of anthropological, historical, and feminist studies, this volume unravels the cultural tensions that underlie these difficulties.
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The State and the Grassroots
Immigrant Transnational Organizations in Four Continents
Edited by Alejandro Portes and Patricia Fernández-Kelly
“This impressive book… offers a very easy introduction and overview of the topic. It is, therefore, recommended not only to specialists with prior knowledge but to all interested in the topic. What makes this book special is the presentation and inclusion of the first completed, comprehensive studies of various migration groups in the US… [It] provides exhaustive documentation of how transnational immigrant organizations emerge and interact with home and host countries, presenting immigrants as vital agents of development. There is no doubt that [this volume) should be purchased by all university libraries and that it can enlighten readers in a domain in urgent need of attention.” · European Planning Studies
The book outlines the principal positions in the migration and development debate and discusses the concept of transnationalism as a means of resolving these controversies.
Read Introduction: Immigration, Transnationalism, and Development: The State of the Question
Durkheim in Dialogue
A Centenary Celebration of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Edited by Sondra L. Hausner
Volume 27, Methodology & History in Anthropology
“This volume is a timely contribution in rethinking the socially immanent dimensions of religion in contemporary times and I would recommend it to any student or scholar studying religion and its various relationships with both classical and contemporary anthropology.” · Social Anthropology
A dialogue between theory and ethnography, this book shows how Durkheimian sociology has become a mainstay of social thought and theory, pointing to multiple ways in which Durkheim¹s work on religion remains relevant to our thinking about culture.
Read Introduction: Durkheim in Disciplinary Dialogue
Talking Stones
The Politics of Memorialization in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland
Elisabetta Viggiani
Foreword by Hastings Donnan
“Viggiani’s text is a thorough examination of many of the iconic artefacts of a forty-year-long conflict that has shaped the politics and memories of generations of people from all sides of The Troubles. In addition to her text, she has developed an extensive website which more fully examines the quantitative data she has collected… her work will not only add to the compendium of extant work but expand our existing knowledge on memorialization in areas of conflict and recovery.” · Journal of Anthropological Research
This book examines how collective memory and material culture are used to support present political and ideological needs in contemporary society. Using the memorialization of the Troubles in contemporary Northern Ireland as a case study, this book investigates how non-state, often proscribed, organizations have filled a societal vacuum in the creation of public memorials.
Additional images and information available from Elisabetta Viggiani’s website
Read Introduction: Memorials as Silent Extras or Scripted Actors?
Berghahn Journals
Social AnalysisSocial Analysis is now under the editorship of Martin Holbraad.
Social Analysis is an international peer-reviewed journal devoted to exploring the analytical potentials of anthropological research.
Current Issue:
Volume 60, Issue 3
Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
Anthropological Journal of European Cultures engages with current debates and innovative research agendas addressing the social and cultural transformations of contemporary European societies.
Current Issue:
Volume 25, Issue 1: Literature and Anthropology
Anthropology in ActionAnthropology in Action is a peer-reviewed journal publishing articles, commentaries, research reports, and book reviews in applied anthropology.
Current Issue:
Volume 23, Issue 2 Towards Communities of Practice in Global Sustainability, Part Two
Anthropology of the Middle East
Anthropology of the Middle East is a peer-reviewed journal provides a forum for scholarly exchange between anthropologists and other social scientists working in and on the Middle East.
Current Issue:
Volume 10, Issue 2 Transnationalism and Transgenerationalism in the Middle East and Its Diaspora
Boyhood Studies is a peer-reviewed journal providing a forum for the discussion of boyhood, young masculinities, and boys’ lives by exploring the full scale of intricacies, challenges, and legacies that inform male and masculine developments.
Current Issue:
Volume 9, Issue 2
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology is a peer-reviewed journal providing a forum for the discussion of boyhood, young masculinities, and boys’ lives by exploring the full scale of intricacies, challenges, and legacies that inform male and masculine developments.
Current Issue:
Volume 34, Issue 2 Everyday Diplomacy: Insights from Ethnography
Conflict & Society
Conflict and Society expands the field of conflict studies by using ethnographic inquiry to establish new fields of research and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Current Issue:
Volume 2, Issue 1
Durkheimian Studies / Études Durkheimiennes
Durkheimian Studies expands the field of conflict studies by using ethnographic inquiry to establish new fields of research and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Current Issue:
Volume 21, Issue 1
Environment and Society
Environment and Society publishes critical reviews of the latest research literature on environmental studies, including subjects of theoretical, methodological, substantive, and applied significance.
Current Issue:
Volume 7, Issue 1: Plants and People
Focaal
Focaal is a peer-reviewed journal advocating an approach that rests in the simultaneity of ethnography, processual analysis, local insights, and global vision.
Current Issue:
Volume 2016, Issue 76: Adivasi and Dalit political pathways in India
Girlhood StudiesGirlhood Studies is a peer-reviewed journal providing a forum for the critical discussion of girlhood from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
Current Issue:
Volume 9, Issue 2
JourneysJourneys is an interdisciplinary journal that explores travel as a practice and travel writing as a genre, reflecting the rich diversity of travel and journeys as social and cultural practices as well as their significance as metaphorical processes.
Current Issue:
Volume 17, Issue 1
Learning and TeachingLearning and Teaching is a peer-reviewed journal that uses the social sciences to reflect critically on learning and teaching in the changing context of higher education.
Current Issue:
Volume 9, Issue 2: Digital Media and Contested Visions of Education
Museum WorldsMuseum Worlds is a multidisciplinary, refereed, annual journal that publishes work that significantly advances knowledge of global trends, case studies, and theory relevant to museum practice and scholarship around the world.
Current Issue:
Volume 3
Nature and CultureNature and Culture is a forum for the international community of scholars and practitioners to present, discuss, and evaluate critical issues and themes related to the historical and contemporary relationships that societies, civilizations, empires, regions, nation-states have with Nature.
Current Issue:
Volume 11, Issue 3: Socialities of Nature Beyond Utopia
Regions and CohesionRegions and Cohesion is a needed platform for academics and practitioners alike to disseminate both empirical research and normative analysis of topics related to human and environmental security, social cohesion, and governance.
Current Issue:
Volume 6, Issue 2 Women, Peace and Development
Religion and SocietyReligion and Society responds to the need for a rigorous, in-depth review of current work in the expanding sub-discipline of the anthropology of religion.
Current Issue:
Volume 7
SibiricaSibirica is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal covering all aspects of the region and relations to neighboring areas, such as Central Asia, East Asia, and North America.
Current Issue:
Volume 15, Issue 2
TransfersTransfers is a peer-reviewed journal publishing cutting-edge research on the processes, structures and consequences of the movement of people, resources, and commodities.
Current Issue:
Volume 6, Issue 3