Anthropology, Culture and Society
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Audit Culture
How Indicators and Rankings are Reshaping the World
by Cris Shore
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
'A new and compelling argument for why so many institutions continue to be spellbound by rankings and metrics – despite the cultural carnage they cause. How can we halt this "death by audit"? The authors develop a radical agenda that will strike fear into number-loving technocrats around the world' Peter Fleming, author of Dark Academia: How Universities Die
'A powerful and definitive critical diagnosis of the effects of audit culture on individuals, organisations and society. Essential reading' Michael Power, Professor, LSE
'A visionary book' Marilyn Strathern, Emeritus Professor, University of Cambridge
All aspects of our work and private lives are increasingly measured and managed. But how has this 'audit culture' arisen and what kind of a world is it producing? Cris Shore and Susan Wright provide a timely account of the rise of the new industries of accounting, enumeration and ranking from an anthropological perspective. Audit Culture is the first book to systematically document and analyse these phenomena and their implications for democracy.
The book explores how audit culture operates across a wide range of fields, including health, higher education, NGOs, finance, the automobile industry and the military. The authors build a powerful critique of contemporary public sector management in an age of neoliberal market-making, privatisation and outsourcing. They conclude by offering ideas about how to reverse its damaging effects on communities, and restore the democratic accountability that audit culture is systematically undermining.
Cris Shore is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Central European University. One of his recent publications is The Shapeshifting Crown. Susan Wright is Professor of Educational Anthropology at Aarhus University, Denmark. One of her recent books is Enacting the University. Together they are co-editors of the Stanford Anthropology of Policy book series.
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As if Already Free
Anthropology and Activism After David Graeber
by Various Authors
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
"Contains precious insights into what made David Graeber the most innovative social thinker of our time, and why the legacy of his ideas will inspire projects of emancipation for generations" – David Wengrow, Professor, University College London, co-author with David Graeber of The Dawn of Everything
"A must-read for anyone who believes in the power of academia as activism" – Sophie Chao, University of Sydney
David Graeber (1961–2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist, who left us with new ways to understand humankind. This collection of new writing brings together his insights into one book, showing how deeply his work continues to influence us today.
Graeber's writing resonates with scholars and activists looking to shake things up. The impact of his work is broad in scope, from birth to banking, and he picks open social hierarchy and political power to expose what really makes human society tick.
In today's neoliberal world, we can turn to his legacy to provide a way for us to understand what went wrong, and how to fix it. This collection of writings is both an introduction to his life and works, a guide to his key ideas, and an inspiring example of how people are continuing to use his work today.
Holly High is an Associate Professor at Deakin University, Australia. She has written two books, Fields of Desire and Projectland. Joshua O. Reno is a Professor at Binghamton University, US. A socio-cultural anthropologist, he is the author of Waste Away, Military Waste and co-author of Imagining the Heartland.
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Race and Sex in Latin America
by Peter Wade
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Interracial sexual relations are often a key mythic basis for Latin American national identities, but the importance of this has been under explored.
Peter Wade provides a pioneering overview of the growing literature on race and sex in the region, covering historical aspects and contemporary debates.
He includes both black and indigenous people in the frame, as well as mixed and white people, avoiding the implication that 'race' means 'black-white' relations.
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Home Spaces, Street Styles
Contesting Power and Identity in a South African City
by Leslie J. Bank
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
This book revisits the classic anthropology study - the Xhosa in Town series - based on research in the South African city of East London conducted during the 1950s.
The original studies revealed that there were two opposed responses to urbanisation in East London's African locations, one embracing Westernisation, European values and Christianity and another opposed to it. Leslie Bank returned to the areas of East London studied in the 1950s to assess how social and political changes have transformed these areas, in particular the apartheid reconstruction of the 1960s and 1970s and the struggle for liberation followed by the post-Apartheid period in the 1980s and 1990s.
Bank has added important theoretical insights to this rich ethnography, and forged strong links with issues that transcend the particularities of his urban study.
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Anthropology of the Self
The Individual in Cultural Perspective
by Brian Morris
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Western society is individualised; we feel at ease talking about individuals and we study individual behaviour through psychology and psychoanalysis. Yet anthropology teaches us that an individual approach is only one of many ways of looking at ourselves.
In this wide-ranging text Morris explores the origins, doctrines and conceptions of the self in Western, Asian and African societies passing though Greek philosophy, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confuscism, Tao and African philosophy and ending with contemporary feminism.
Scholarly and written in a lucid style, free of jargon, this work is written from an anthropological perspective with an interdisciplinary approach. Morris emphasises the varying conceptions of the self found cross-culturally and contrasts these with the conceptions found in the Western intellectual traditions.
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Corruption
Anthropological Perspectives
by Various Authors
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Corruption in politics and business is, after war, perhaps the greatest threat to democracy. Academic studies of corruption tend to come from the field of International Relations, analysing systems of formal rules and institutions. This book offers a radically different perspective - it shows how anthropology can throw light on aspects of corruption that remain unexamined in international relations.
The contributors reveal how corruption operates through informal rules, personal connections and the wider social contexts that govern everyday practices. They argue that patterns of corruption are part of the fabric of everyday life - wherever we live - and subsequently they are often endemic in our key institutions.
The book examines corruption across a range of different contexts from transitional societies such as post-Soviet Russia and Romania, to efforts to reform or regulate institutions that are perceived to be potentially corrupt, such as the European Commission. The book also covers the Enron and WorldCom scandals, the mafia in Sicily and the USA, and the world of anti-corruption as represented by NGOs like Transparency International.
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The Rise of Nerd Politics
Digital Activism and Political Change
by John Postill
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
The irruption of WikiLeaks, Anonymous, Snowden and other tech-savvy actors onto the global political stage raises urgent questions about the impact of digital activism on political systems around the world. The Rise of Nerd Politics is an anthropological exploration of the role that such actors play in sparking and managing new processes of political change in the digital age.
Drawing from long-term ethnographic research in Spain and Indonesia - as well as case studies from the United States, Iceland, Tunisia, Taiwan, Brazil and elsewhere - Postill tracks the rise of techno-political 'nerds' as a new class of political brokers with growing influence. The book identifies and explores four domains of 'nerd politics' that have dramatically expanded since 2010: data activism, digital rights, social protest and formal politics.
A lively and engaging intervention at the conjuncture of anthropology, media studies and sociology, The Rise of Nerd Politics offers a pertinent reflection on the future of political change in the digital age.
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The Capability of Places
Methods for Modelling Community Response to Intrusion and Change
by Sandra Wallman
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
How can we assess the ability of a place to respond to challenges like migration, recession and disease? Places which seem similar can respond very differently, and with varying degrees of success, to external threats and to the interventions designed to manage them.
In this magisterial work, drawing on decades of research, Sandra Wallman explores how we can measure and compare the resilience of communities, looking in detail at neighbourhoods in London, Rome and Zambia. Each locale is examined as a system which is more or less open or closed; open systems tend to be more resilient when faced with external challenges.
As well as being a fascinating study in its own right, the book includes detailed accounts of the research methods used, as well as a user-friendly typology for classifying local systems, making it an invaluable tool for students, researchers and policy-makers.
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The Aid Effect
Giving and Governing in International Development
by Various Authors
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Today international development policy is converging around ideas of neoliberal reform, democratisation and poverty reduction. What does this mean for the local and international dimensions of aid relationships?
The Aid Effect demonstrates the fruitfulness of an ethnographic approach to aid, policy reform and global governance. The contributors provide powerful commentary on hidden processes, multiple perspectives or regional interests behind official aid policy discourses. The book raises important questions concerning the systematic social effects of aid relationships, the nature of sovereignty and the state, and the working of power inequalities built through the standardisations of a neoliberal framework.
The contributors take on new challenges to anthropology presented by a 'global aid architecture' which no longer operates through discrete projects but has moved on to sector wide approaches, budgetary support and other macro-level instruments of development; but they remain faithful to the fieldwork methodology that is anthropology's strength and the source of rare insight.
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Power and Its Disguises
Anthropological Perspectives on Politics
by John Gledhill
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
This book explores both the complexities of local situations and the power relations that shape the global order. He shows how historically informed anthropological perspectives can contribute to debates about democratisation by incorporating a 'view from below' and revealing forces that shape power relations behind the formal facade of state institutions.
Examples are drawn from Brazil, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Indonesia, India, Mexico, Peru, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Sri Lanka, amongst others.
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Children of the Welfare State
Civilising Practices in Schools, Childcare and Families
by Laura Gilliam
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
This original ethnographic study looks at how children are 'civilised' within child institutions, such as schools, day care centres and families, under the auspices of the welfare state.
As part of a general discussion on civilising projects and the role of state institutions, the authors focus on Denmark, a country characterised by the extent of time children use in public institutions from an early age. They look at the extraordinary amount of attention and effort put into the process of upbringing by the state, as well as the widespread co-operation in this by parents across the social spectrum.
Taking as its point of departure the sociologist Norbert Elias' concept of civilising, Children of the Welfare State explores the ideals of civilised conduct expressed through institutional upbringing and examine how children of different age, gender, ethnicity and social backgrounds experience and react to these norms and efforts. The analysis demonstrates that welfare state institutions, though characterised by a strong egalitarian ideal, create distinctions between social groups, teach children about moral hierarchies in society and prompts them to identify as more or less civilised citizens of the state.
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Cultivating Development
An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice
by David Mosse
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
What if development agencies and researchers are not driven by policy? Suppose that the things that make for 'good policy' - policy that legitimises and mobilises political support - in reality make it impossible to implement?
By focusing in detail on the unfolding activities of a development project in western India over more than ten years, as it falls under different policy regimes, this book takes a close look at the relationship between policy and practice in development. David Mosse shows how the actions of development workers are shaped by the exigencies of organisations and the need to maintain relationships rather than by policy; but also that development actors work hardest of all to maintain coherent representations of their actions as instances of authorised policy. Raising unfamiliar questions, Mosse provides a rare self-critical reflection on practice, while refusing to endorse current post-modern dismissal of development.
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Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque
A Collaborative Ethnography of War and Peace
by Jonathan Spencer
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Is religion best seen as only a cause of war, or is it a source of comfort for those caught up in conflict? In Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque six senior figures in Anthropology, Sociology, Geography and Development Studies set out to answer this question.
Based on fieldwork conducted in Sri Lanka's most religiously diverse and politically troubled region during the country's civil war (1983-2009), it provides a series of new and provocative arguments about the promise of a religiously based civil society, and the strengths and weaknesses of religious organisations and religious leaders in conflict mediation.
The authors argue that for people trapped in long and violent conflicts, religion ultimately plays a contradictory role, and that its institutions are themselves profoundly affected by war - producing a complex picture in which Catholic priests engage with Buddhist monks and new Muslim leaders, and where Hindu temples and Pentecostal churches offer the promise of healing.
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Ethnicity and Nationalism
Anthropological Perspectives
by Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Is ethnicity a result of cultural differences? Is ethnicity dependent on the practical use and belief in cultural differences? Drawing on a wide-range of classic and recent studies in anthropology and sociology, Thomas Hylland Eriksen examines the relationship between ethnicity, class, gender and nationhood.
Using the question 'What is ethnicity?' as his starting point, Eriksen examines the interplay between ideology and ethnicity, how the Internet impacts understanding of ethnicity, identity politics, and the commercialisation of identity. Through this, he reveals that far from being an immutable property of groups, ethnicity is a dynamic and shifting aspect of social relationships.
A core text for all students of social anthropology and related subjects, Ethnicity and Nationalism has been a leading introduction to the field since its original publication in 1993. This new edition - expanded and thoroughly revised - is indispensable to anyone seriously interested in understanding ethnic phenomena.
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Race, Nature and Culture
An Anthropological Perspective
by Peter Wade
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Since the controversial scientific race theories of the 1930s, anthropologists have generally avoided directly addressing the issue of race, viewing it as a social construct. Challenging this tradition, Peter Wade proposes that anthropologists can in fact play an important role in the study of race.
Wade is critical of contemporary theoretical studies of race formulated within the contexts of colonial history, sociology and cultural studies. Instead he argues for a new direction; one which anthropology is well placed to explore. Taking the study of race beyond Western notions of the individual, Wade argues for new paradigms in social science, in particular in the development of connections between race, sex and gender. An understanding of these issues within an anthropological context, he contends, is vital for defining personhood and identity.
Race is often defined by its reference to biology, 'blood,' genes, nature or essence. Yet these concepts are often left unexamined. Integrating material from the history of science, science studies, and anthropological studies of kinship and new reproductive technologies, as well as from studies of race, Peter Wade explores the meaning of such terms and interrogates the relationship between nature and culture in ideas about race.
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The Anthropology of Security
Perspectives from the Frontline of Policing, Counter-terrorism and Border Control
by Various Authors
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
In a post-Cold War world of political unease and economic crisis, processes of securitisation are transforming nation-states, their citizens and non-citizens in profound ways.
The book shows how contemporary Europe is now home to a vast security industry which uses biometric identification systems, CCTV and quasi-military techniques to police migrants and disadvantaged neighbourhoods. This is the first collection of anthropological studies of security with a particular but not exclusive emphasis on Europe.
The Anthropology of Security draws together studies on the lived experiences of security and policing from the perspective of those most affected in their everyday lives. The anthropological perspectives in this volume stretch from the frontlines of policing and counter-terrorism to border control.
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Negotiating Local Knowledge
Power and Identity in Development
by Various Authors
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
This is an original approach to debates about indigenous knowledge. Concentrating on the political economy of knowledge construction and dissemination, they look at the variety of ways in which development policies are received and constructed, to reveal the ways in which local knowledge are appropriated and recast, either by local elites or by development agencies.
Until now, debates about indigenous knowledge have largely been conducted in terms of agricultural and environmental issues such as bio-piracy and gene patenting. This collection breaks new ground by opening up the theoretical debate to include areas such as post-war traumatic stress counselling, representations of nuclear capability, architecture, mining, and the politics of eco-tourism.
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Border Watch
Cultures of Immigration, Detention and Control
by Alexandra Hall
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Questions over immigration and asylum face almost all Western countries. Should only economically useful immigrants be allowed? What should be done with unwanted or 'illegal' immigrants?
In this bold intervention, Alexandra Hall shows that immigration detention centres offer a window onto society's broader attitudes towards immigrants. Despite periodic media scandals, remarkably little has been written about the everyday workings of this system, or about the people responsible for setting immigration policy. Detention, particularly, is a hidden side of border politics, despite its growing international importance as a tool of control and security.
This book also looks at the social life and the relationships between officers and immigrants to explore broad social trends, as well as resistance within the system, and provides rare insights into the treatment of the 'other'.
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Becoming Arab in London
Performativity and the Undoing of Identity
by Ramy M. K. Aly
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
This is the first ethnographic exploration of gender, race and class amongst British born or raised Arabs in London. It takes a critical look at the idea of 'Arab-ness' and the ways in which their ethnicities are created and expressed in the city.
Looking at everyday spaces, encounters and discourses, the book explores the lives of young people and the ways in which they achieve 'Arab-ness'. It uncovers stories of growing up in London, the social codes at Shisha cafes and the sexual politics and ethnic self-portraits which are present in British-Arab men and women.
Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, Becoming Arab in London reveals the need to move away from the notion of identity and towards a performative reading of race, gender and class. What emerges is an innovative contribution to the study of diaspora and difference in contemporary Britain.
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Community, Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Human Commonality
by Vered Amit
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Do notions of community remain central to our sense of who we are, or can we see beyond community closures to a human whole?
This volume explores the nature of contemporary sociality. It focuses on the ethical, organisational and emotional claims and opportunities sought or fashioned for mobilising and evading social collectivities in a world of mobile subjects.
Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport present an examination of the tensions and interactions between everyday forms of fluid fellowship, culturally normative claims to identity, and opportunities for realising a universal humanity.
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A World of Insecurity
Anthropological Perspectives on Human Security
by Various Authors
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Human security is a key element in the measure of well-being, and a hot topic in anthropology and development studies. A World of Insecurity outlines a new approach to the subject.
The contributors expose a contradiction at the heart of conventional accounts of what constitutes human security, namely that without taking non-material considerations such as religion, ethnicity and gender into account, discussions of human security, academically and in practical terms, are incomplete, inconclusive and deeply flawed. A variety of compelling case studies indicate that, in fact, material security alone cannot adequately explain or fully account for human activity in a range of different settings, and exposed to a variety of different threats.
This forceful book will expand and deepen the entire concept of human security, in the process endowing it with political relevance. It is an essential read for students of development studies and anthropology.
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Fredrik Barth
An Intellectual Biography
by Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Fredrik Barth is one of the towering figures of twentieth-century anthropology. This intellectual history traces the development of Barth's ideas and explores the substance of his contributions. In an accessible style, Thomas Hylland Eriksen's biographical study reveals the magic of ethnography to professional anthropologists and non-practitioners alike.
Exploring his six decade career, it follows Barth from early ecological studies in Pakistan, to political studies in Iran, to groundbreaking fieldwork in Norway, New Guinea, Bali and Bhutan. Eriksen argues that Barth's voracious appetite for fieldwork holds the key to understanding his remarkable intellectual development and the insights it produced. The book raises many of the same questions that emerge from Barth's own work - of unity and diversity, of culture and relativism, of art and science.
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On the Game
Women and Sex Work
by Sophie Day
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
***Winner of the Eileen Basker Prize and the Wellcome Medal for Anthropology as Applied to Medical Problems***
On the Game is an ethnographic account of prostitutes and prostitution. Sophie Day has followed the lives of individual women over fifteen years, and her book details their attempts to manage their lives against a backdrop of social disapproval. The period was one of substantial change within the sex industry.
Through the lens of public health, economics, criminalisation and human rights, Day explores how individual sex workers live, in public and in private. This offers a unique perspective on contemporary capitalist society that will be of interest both to a broad range of social scientists.
The author brings a unique perspective to her work -- as both an anthropologist and the founder of the renowned Praed Street Project, set up in 1986, as a referral and support centre for London prostitutes.
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The Will of the Many
How the Alterglobalisation Movement is Changing the Face of Democracy
by Marianne Maeckelbergh
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Never before has the idea of democracy enjoyed the global dominance it holds today, but neoliberalism has left the practice of democracy in deep crisis.
This book argues that the most promising model for global democracy is not coming from traditional political parties or international institutions, but from the global networks of resistance to neoliberal economics, known collectively as the Alter-globalisation movement. Through extensive ethnography of decision-making practices within these movements, Maeckelbergh describes an alternative form of global democracy in the making.
Perfect for activists and students of political anthropology, this powerful and enlightening book offers radical changes.
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The Paradox of Svalbard
Climate Change and Globalisation in the Arctic
by Zdenka Sokolíčková
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
'Engaging, rich and nuanced, this book exposes the deep dilemmas facing this Arctic archipelago. A must for anyone with an interest in the challenges of a melting world. Ethnography at its best' Marianne E. Lien, Professor, University of Oslo
'Rich and deeply textured ... Zdenka Sokolíčková demonstrates how the logic of extraction intersects awkwardly with community, environment, geopolitics and sustainability' Klaus Dodds, Professor, Royal Holloway University of London
'Lucidly captures the dilemmas of maintaining community in the world's northernmost settlement, where climate change is particularly evident. Highly recommended!' Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard, Professor, University of Bergen
Longyearbyen in the Arctic is the world's northernmost settlement. Here, climate change is happening fast. It is clearly sensed by the locals; with higher temperatures, more rain and permafrost thaw. At the same time, the town is shifting from state-controlled coal production to tourism, research and development. It is rapidly globalising, with numerous languages spoken, and with cruise ships sounding their horns in the harbour while planes land and take off.
A small town of 2,400 inhabitants on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Longyearbyen provides a unique view into the unmistakable relationship between global capitalism and climate change. The Paradox of Svalbard looks at local and global trends to access a deep understanding of the effects of tourism, immigration and labour on the trajectory of the climate crisis, and what can be done to reverse it.
Zdenka Sokolíčková is a researcher at the University of Hradec Králové, Czechia, and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Her research in Longyearbyen was hosted by the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway.
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Flip-Flop
A Journey Through Globalisation's Backroads
by Caroline Knowles
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
*Shortlisted for the BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed Award for Ethnography 2015*
This book follows the global trail of one of the world's most unremarkable and ubiquitous objects - flip-flops. Through this unique lens, Caroline Knowles takes a ground level view of the lives and places of globalisation's back roads, providing new insights that challenge contemporary accounts of globalisation.
Rather than orderly product chains, the book shows that globalisation along the flip-flop trail is a tangle of unstable, shifting, ad hoc and contingent connections. This book displays both the instabilities of the 'chains' and the complexities, personal topographies and skills with which people navigate these global uncertainties.
Flip-Flop provides new ways of thinking about globalisation from the vantage point of the shifting landscape crossed by a seemingly ordinary and everyday commodity.
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Bearing Witness
Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa
by Fiona C. Ross
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
People who witness acts of terror and violence are often called after the event to bear witness to what they saw. In cases where this violence is inflicted by the state upon its own people, the process of bearing witness is both politically complex and traumatic for the individual involved. Independent trials and commissions have become important mechanisms through which the truth of past violence is sought in democratising states, but to date there has been little close attention to the processes and complexity of the work of such institutions.
Fiona Ross's fascinating study of the process of bearing witness is the first book to examine the gendered dimensions of this topic from an anthropological and ethnographic viewpoint. Taking as a key example the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, Ross explores women's relationships to testimony, particularly the extent to which women avoid talking about or are silent about certain forms of violence and suffering.
Offering a wealth of first hand examples, Ross approaches a more subtle understanding of the achievements and the limitations of testimony as a measure of suffering and recovery generally. Is it, she asks, the panacea it is usually seen as? Or do conventional discourses on human rights, suffering and reconciliation oversimplify an altogether more complex and problematic process?
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Small Places, Large Issues
An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology
by Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
This introduction to social and cultural anthropology has become a modern classic, revealing the rich global variation in social life and culture across the world.
Presenting a clear overview of anthropology, it focuses on central topics such as kinship, ethnicity, ritual and political systems, offering a wealth of examples that demonstrate the enormous scope of anthropology and the importance of a comparative perspective. Unlike other texts on the subject, Small Places, Large Issues incorporates the anthropology of complex modern societies. Using reviews of key works to illustrate his argument, Thomas Hylland Eriksen's lucid and accessible overview remains an established introductory text in anthropology.
This fourth edition is updated throughout and increases the emphasis on the interdependence of human worlds. It incorporates recent debates and controversies, ranging from globalisation and migration research to problems of cultural translation, and discusses the challenges of interdisciplinarity in a lucid way.
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Watershed Politics and Climate Change in Peru
by Astrid B. Stensrud
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
This book travels to the heart of power, inequality and injustice in water politics. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Peru, Astrid B. Stensrud explores the impact of climate change and extractivist neoliberal policies – including Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), a global paradigm that views water as a finite resource in need of management.
Engaging with the many different actors and entities participating in the constitution of the watershed – from engineers, bureaucrats and farmers, to mountains, springs and canals – Stensrud shines light on different yet entangled water practices and water worlds and how both the watershed and our understanding of water itself have changed.
Challenging hegemonic understandings, the book moves beyond conventional perspectives of political ecology and political economy to achieve a decolonial perspective.
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The Gloss of Harmony
The Politics of Policy-Making in Multilateral Organisations
by Various Authors
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
The Gloss of Harmony focuses on agencies of the United Nations, examining the paradox of entrusting relatively powerless and underfunded organisations with the responsibility of tackling some of the essential problems of our time. The book shows how international organisations shape the world in often unexpected and unpredictable ways.
The authors of this collection look not only at the official objectives and unintended consequences of international governance but also at how international organisations involve collective and individual actors in policy making, absorb critique, attempt to neutralise political conflict and create new political fields with local actors and national governments.
The Gloss of Harmony identifies the micro-social processes and complexities within multilateral organisations which have, up to now, been largely invisible. This book will have wide appeal not only to students and academics in anthropology, business studies and sociology but also to all practitioners concerned with international governance.
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Rubbish Belongs to the Poor
Hygienic Enclosure and the Waste Commons
by Patrick O'Hare
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Rubbish. Waste. Trash. Whatever term you choose to describe the things we throw away, the connotations are the same; of something dirty, useless and incontrovertibly 'bad'. But does such a dismissive rendering mask a more nuanced reality?
In Rubbish Belongs to the Poor, Patrick O'Hare journeys to the heart of Uruguay's waste disposal system in order to reconceptualize rubbish as a 21st century commons, at risk of enclosure. On a giant landfill site outside the capital Montevideo we meet the book's central protagonists, the 'classifiers': waste-pickers who recover and recycle materials in and around its fenced but porous perimeter. Here the struggle of classifiers against the enclosure of the landfill, justified on the grounds of hygiene, is brought into dialogue with other historical and contemporary enclosures - from urban privatizations to rural evictions - to shed light on the nature of contemporary forms of capitalist dispossession.
Supplementing this rich ethnography with the author's own insights from dumpster diving in the UK, the book analyses capitalism's relations with its material surpluses and what these tell us about its expansionary logics, limits and liminal spaces. Rubbish Belongs to the Poor ultimately proposes a fundamental rethinking of the links between waste, capitalism and dignified work.
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What is Anthropology?
by Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Leading anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen shows how anthropology is a revolutionary way of thinking about the human world. Perfect for students, but also for those who have never encountered anthropology before, this book explores the key issues in an exciting and innovative way.
Lucid and accessible, What is Anthropology? draws examples from current affairs as well as previous anthropological studies. He looks at the history of anthropology, its unique research methods and some of its central concepts, such as society, culture and translation.
This second edition contains a new introduction, as well as updates throughout. New content includes discussions about Brexit, the rise of the populist Right in Europe, the anthropology of climate change and social media. What is Anthropology? shows in persuasive ways why anthropology is a fundamental intellectual discipline, perhaps more so in the 21st century than ever before.
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Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production
by Maruska Svasek
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
This book provides an introduction to anthropological perspectives on art.
Svasek defines art as a social process. We study not only the artefacts themselves and the values attributed to them, but also the process of production and its wider context.
Providing a critical overview of various anthropological theories of art, Svasek offers a new perspective which centres on the analysis of commoditisation, aestheticisation and object agency. She explores the process of collecting and exhibiting art works and how this relates to art's production, distribution and consumption in an increasingly global market.
The book outlines the significance of art and aesthetics in everyday life, and examines the shifting boundaries between art and other categories such as kitsch, souvenirs, propaganda and pornography.
Finally, Svasek argues for an anthropological perspective that links the production and consumption of artefacts to political, religious and other cultural processes.
Ideal as a teaching text, this book gives a detailed overview of themes that are central to the fields of art history, art sociology and cultural studies.
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Anthropology and Development
Challenges for the Twenty-First Century
by Katy Gardner
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Western aid is in decline. Non-traditional development actors from the developing countries and elsewhere are in the ascendant. A new set of global economic and political processes are shaping the twenty-first century.
This book engages with nearly two decades of continuity and change in the development industry. In particular, it argues that while the world of international development has expanded since the 1990s, it has become more rigidly technocratic. The authors insist on a focus upon the core anthropological issues surrounding poverty and inequality, and thus sharply criticise what are perceived as problems in the field.
Anthropology and Development is a completely rewritten edition of the best-selling and critically acclaimed Anthropology, Development and the Post-Modern Challenge (1996). It serves as both an innovative reformulation of the field, as well as a textbook for many undergraduate and graduate courses at leading international universities.
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Landscape, Memory and History
Anthropological Perspectives
by Various Authors
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
How do people perceive the land around them, and how is that perception changed by history? This book explores this question from an anthropological angle, assessing the connections between place, space, identity, nationalism, history and memory in a variety of different settings around the world. Taking historical change and memory as key themes, it is a broad study that will appeal to a readership across the social sciences.
Contributors from North America, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Europe explore a wide variety of case studies that includes seascapes in Jamaica; the Solomon Islands; the forests of Madagascar; Aboriginal and European notions of landscape in Australia; place and identity in 19th century maps and the bogs of Ireland; contemporary concerns over changing landscapes in Papua New Guinea; and representations of landscape and history in the poetry of the Scottish Borders.
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The Trouble With Community
Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity
by Vered Amit
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Community' is one of social science's longest-standing concepts. The assumption of much social science has been that humans belong in communities, as social and cultural beings.
The trouble with 'community' is that this is not necessarily so; the personal social networks of individuals' actual experience crosscut collective categories, situations and institutions. Communities can prove unviable or imprisoning; the reality of community life and identity can often be very different from the ideology and the ideal.
In this book, the authors draw on their ethnographic experiences to reappraise the concept and the reality of 'community', in the light of globalisation, religious fundamentalism, identity politics, and renascent localisms. How might anthropology better apprehend social identities which are intrinsically plural, transgressive and ironic? What has anthropology to say about the way in which civil society might hope to accommodate the ongoing construction and the rightful expression of such migrant identities?
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In Foreign Fields
The Politics and Experiences of Transnational Sport Migration
by Thomas F. Carter
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
This book examines the lives, decisions and challenges faced by transnational sport migrants - those professionals working in the sports industry who cross borders as part of their professional lives.
Despite a great deal of romance surrounding international celebrity athletes, the vast majority of transnational sport migrants - players, journalists, coaches, administrators and medical personnel - toil far away from the limelight. Thomas F. Carter traces their lives, routes and experiences, documenting their travels and travails.
He argues that far from the ease of mobility that celebrity sports stars enjoy, the vast majority of transnational sports migrants make huge sacrifices and labour under political restrictions, often enforced by sport's governing bodies.
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Base Encounters
The US Armed Forces in South Korea
by Elisabeth Schober
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Base Encounters explores the social friction that US bases have caused in South Korea, where the entertainment districts next to American military installations have come under much scrutiny.
The Korean peninsula is one of the most heavily militarised regions in the world and the conflict between the North and South is continually exacerbated by the presence of nearly 30,000 US soldiers in the area. Crimes committed in GI entertainment areas have been amplified by an outraged public as both a symbol for, and a symptom of, the uneven relationship between the United States and the small East Asian nation.
Elisabeth Schober's ethnographic history scrutinises these controversial zones in and near Seoul. Sharing the lives of soldiers, female entertainers and anti-base activists, she gives a comprehensive introduction to the social, economic and political factors that have contributed to the tensions over US bases in South Korea.
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Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship
by Ladislav Holy
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
This authoritative introductory text takes into account the changes in the conceptualisation of kinship brought about by new reproductive technologies and the growing interest in culturally specific notions of personhood and gender.
Holy considers the extent to which Western assumptions have guided anthropological study of kinship in the past. In the process, he reveals a growing sensitivity on the part of anthropologists to individual ideas of personhood and gender, and encourages further critical reflection on cultural bias in approaches to the subject.
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Globalisation
Studies in Anthropology
by Various Authors
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Globalisation has had a massive impact on the teaching and practice of anthropology. This book addresses the methodological problems that these changes have wrought.
The essays show how the focus has shifted from traditional studies of specific sites, towards the movements and shifts associated with increasing migration and population flows - the result of living in an increasingly globalised world.
Written by a range of distinguished anthropologists, it offers innovative new approaches to the discipline in the light of these changes, making it indispensable as a teaching text, at higher levels, and as mandatory reading for practitioners and researchers in a wide range of merging disciplines.
Topics explored include the methodology of studying on the internet; global and spatial identities in the Caribbean; shifting boundaries in coastal communities; the anthropology of political life; issues of law and the flow of human substances; and the diffusion of moral values created by globalisation.
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State Formation
by Various Authors
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
What is the 'state' and how can we best study it? This book investigates new ways of analysing the state.
The contributors argue that the state is not a fixed and definite object. Our perceptions of it are constantly changing, and differ from person to person. What is your idea of the state if you are a refugee? Or if you are living in post-aparteid South Africa? Our perceptions are formed and sustained by evolving discourses and techniques -- these come from institutions such as government, but are also made by communities and individuals.
The contributors examine how state structures are viewed from the inside, by official state bodies, composed of bureaucrats and politicians; and how these state manifestations are supported, reproduced or transformed at a local level. An outline of theoretical approaches is followed by nine case studies ranging from South Africa to Peru to Norway.
With a good range of contributors including Cris Shore, Clifton Crais, Ana Alonso and Bruce Kapferer, this is a comprehensive critical analysis of anthropological approaches to the study of state formation.
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Ground Down by Growth
Tribe, Caste, Class and Inequality in 21st Century India
by Alpa Shah
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Why has India's astonishing economic growth not reached the people at the bottom of its social and economic hierarchy? Travelling the length and breadth of the subcontinent, this book shows how India's 'untouchables' and 'tribals' fit into the global economy.
India's Dalit and Adivasi communities make up a staggering one in twenty-five people across the globe and yet they remain amongst the most oppressed. Conceived in dialogue with economists, Ground Down by Growth reveals the impact of global capitalism on their lives. It shows how capitalism entrenches, rather than erases, social difference and has transformed traditional forms of identity-based discrimination into new mechanisms of exploitation and oppression.
Through studies of the working poor, migrant labour and the conjugated oppression of caste, tribe, region, gender and class relations, the social inequalities generated by capitalism are exposed.
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Cultures of Fear
A Critical Reader
by Various Authors
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
This collection of essays explores the formation and normalisation of fear in the context of war and terrorism.
Freedom from fear is a universal right and fundamental for human well-being. People often look to governments, humanitarian agencies, and other institutions to further this aim. However, this book shows that these organisations often use the same logic of fear to monitor, control, and contain human beings in zones of violence.
This is an excellent interdisciplinary reader for students of anthropology, sociology and politics. Contributors include Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, Jean Baudrillard, Catharine MacKinnon, Neil Smith, Cynthia Enloe, David L. Altheide, Cynthia Cockburn and Carolyn Nordstrum.
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Caring Cash
Free Money and the Ethics of Solidarity in Kenya
by Tom Neumark
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
The idea of giving cash, no-strings-attached, to the poor has become popular in the 21st century. While hardly a radical form of global redistribution, these cash grants, often known as unconditional cash transfers, claim to offer a new type of care that is less paternalistic than other forms of assistance.
“Caring Cash” explores the caring practices that these grant experiments produced in the Nairobi ghetto of Korogocho. After receiving the grants, people there did not only look after themselves and their family, friends, lovers, clients and patrons, but also maintained the bonds that held them all together.
Putting his interlocutors' lives in conversation with ideas around care, ethics and economies, Tom Neumark argues that for those in the ghetto, caring for relationships is as important as the care that takes place within relationships. Seeing care in this way reveals the importance of managing one's proximity, distance and detachment to others, and raises questions about the disquieting decisions that allow people to live together amidst violence and poverty.
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Dream Zones
Anticipating Capitalism and Development in India
by Jamie Cross
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Dream Zones explores the dreamed of and desired futures that constitute, sustain and disrupt capitalism in contemporary India.
Drawing on five years of research in and around India's Special Economic Zones (SEZs), the book follows the stories of regional politicians, corporate executives, rural farmers, industrial workers and social activists to show how the pursuit of growth, profit and development shapes the politics of industrialisation and liberalisation.
This book offers a timely reminder that the global economy is shaped by sentiment as much as reason and that un-realised expectations are the grounds on which new hopes for the future are sown.
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Food for Change
The Politics and Values of Social Movements
by Jeff Pratt
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Concern about our food system is growing, from the costs of industrial farming to the dominant role of supermarkets and recurring scandals about the origins and content of what we eat.
Food for Change documents the way alternative food movements respond to these concerns by trying to create more closed economic circuits within which people know where, how, and by whom their food is produced.
Jeff Pratt, Peter Luetchford and other contributors explore the key political and economic questions of food through the everyday experience and vivid insights of farmers and consumers, using fieldwork from case studies in four European countries: France, Spain, Italy and England. Food for Change is an insightful consideration of connections between food and wider economic relations and draws on a rich vein of anthropological writing on the topic.
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Vicious Games
Capitalism and Gambling
by Rebecca Cassidy
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
Gambling is everywhere, on our TVs and phones, on billboards on our streets, and emblazoned across the chests of idolised sports stars. Why has gambling suddenly expanded? How was it transformed from a criminal activity to a respectable business run by multinational corporations listed on international stock markets? And who are the winners and losers created by this transformation?
Vicious Games is based on field research with the people who produce, shape and consume gambling. Rebecca Cassidy explores the gambling industry's affinity with capitalism and the free market and how the UK has led the way in exporting 'light touch' regulation and 'responsible gambling' around the world. She reveals how the industry extracts wealth from some of our poorest communities, and examines the adverse health effects on those battling gambling addiction.
The gambling industry has become increasingly profitable and influential, emboldened by thirty years of supportive government policies and boosted by unnatural profits. Through an anthropological excavation, Vicious Games opens up this process, with the intention of creating alternative, more equitable futures.
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Humans and Other Animals
Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions
by Samantha Hurn
Part of the Anthropology, Culture and Society series
What are our attitudes towards other animals, and how does this affect our humanity?
This work of anthrozoology explores the myriad and evolving ways in which humans and animals interact, the divergent cultural constructions of humanity and animality found around the world, and individual experiences of other animals.
This book looks at case studies covering blood sports (such as hunting, fishing and bull fighting), pet keeping and 'petishism', eco-tourism and wildlife conservation, working animals and animals as food. It addresses the idea of animal exploitation raised by the animal rights movements, as well as the anthropological implications of changing attitudes towards animal personhood, and the rise of a posthumanist philosophy in the social sciences more generally.