Anthropology

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Anthropology (32)

Anthropology
Asian Studies

Humans, Dogs and Other Beings: Myths, Stories, and History in the Land of Genghis Khan

Baasanjav Terbish

Step into the windswept steppes of Mongolia and explore a world where humans and animals have coexisted for centuries in a delicate, profound dance. This groundbreaking book examines the complex relationships between the Mongols and four animals—dogs, marmots, cats, and camels—shedding light on a nomadic culture that is deeply intertwined with its natural environment. Drawing from rich ethnographic accounts, historical records, and personal memoir, the author, of Mongol origin, offers a vivid narrative that intertwines cultural insights with intimate reflections.

Anthropology
Environmental Studies
Politics and Sociology
Science: Applied Science

The Field Guide to Mixing Social and Biophysical Methods in Environmental Research

Rebecca Lave
Stuart Lane

Despite ongoing debates about its origins, the Anthropocene—a new epoch characterized by significant human impact on the Earth's geology and ecosystems—is widely acknowledged. Our environment is increasingly a product of interacting biophysical and social forces, shaped by climate change, colonial legacies, gender norms, hydrological processes, and more. Understanding these intricate interactions requires a mixed-methods approach that combines qualitative and quantitative, biophysical and social research.

Anthropology
History
Politics and Sociology

Urban Heritage and Sustainability in the Age of Globalisation

Lilia Makhloufi

This book offers a deep exploration of architectural and urban heritage, using interdisciplinary and intercultural approaches to assess how historical, social, economic and political factors have impacted heritage development and its sustainability. It sheds light on the stakes of heritage conservation, management and maintenance in today’s globalised world.

Anthropology
Politics and Sociology
Science: History of Science

The Diagrammatics of ‘Race’: Visualizing Human Relatedness in the History of Physical, Evolutionary, and Genetic Anthropology, ca. 1770-2020

Marianne Sommer

This is the first book that engages with the history of diagrams in physical, evolutionary, and genetic anthropology. Since their establishment as scientific tools for classification in the eighteenth century, diagrams have been used to determine but also to deny kinship between human groups. In nineteenth-century craniometry, they were omnipresent in attempts to standardize measurements on skulls for hierarchical categorization. In particular the ’human family tree’ was central for evolutionary understandings of human diversity, being used on both sides of debates about whether humans constitute different species well into the twentieth century. With recent advances in (ancient) DNA analyses, the tree diagram has become more contested than ever―does human relatedness take the shape of a network? Are human individual genomes mosaics made up of different ancestries? Sommer examines the epistemic and political role of these visual representations in the history of ‘race’ as an anthropological category. How do such diagrams relate to imperial and (post-)colonial practices and ideologies but also to liberal and humanist concerns?

Anthropology
History
Politics and Sociology

Tangible and Intangible Heritage in the Age of Globalisation

Lilia Makhloufi

Tangible and Intangible Heritage in the Age of Globalisation offers a rich collection of perspectives on the complex interplay between tangible and intangible heritage. These essays illustrate the need to redefine heritage as an interdisciplinary and intercultural concept. They interrogate heritage paradigms while also providing concrete recommendations to promote the preservation of physical heritage spaces, and the cultural practices and social relationships that depend on them.

Anthropology
Asian Studies
Folklore and Ethnology
Linguistics
Literature

Shépa: The Tibetan Oral Tradition in Choné

Bendi Tso
Marnyi Gyatso
Naljor Tsering
Mark Turin
Members of the Choné Tibetan Community

This book contains a unique collection of Tibetan oral narrations and songs known as Shépa, as these have been performed, recorded and shared between generations of Choné Tibetans from Amdo living in the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Presented in trilingual format — in Tibetan, Chinese and English — the book reflects a sustained collaboration with and between members of the local community, including narrators, monks, and scholars, calling attention to the diversity inherent in all oral traditions, and the mutability of Shépa in particular.

African Studies
Anthropology
Folklore and Ethnology
Literature
Other languages

Folktales of Mayotte, an African Island

Lee Haring

The book uncovers the versatility and literary skills of oral narrators in a small African island. Relying on the researches of three French ethnographers who interviewed storytellers in the 1970s-80s, Lee Haring shows a once-colonised people using verbal art to preserve ancient values in the postcolonial world, when the island of Mayotte was transforming itself from a neglected colony to an overseas department of France.

Anthropology
Education
Politics and Sociology

Play in a Covid Frame: Everyday Pandemic Creativity in a Time of Isolation

Anna Beresin
Julia Bishop

During the international coronavirus lockdowns of 2020–2021, millions of children, youth, and adults found their usual play areas out of bounds and their friends out of reach. How did the pandemic restrict everyday play and how did the pandemic offer new spaces and new content? This unique collection of essays documents the ways in which communities around the world harnessed play within the limiting frame of Covid-19.

Anthropology
Politics and Sociology

Anthropology of Transformation: From Europe to Asia and Back

Juraj Buzalka
Agnieszka Pasieka

This collection of essays is the result of the joint efforts of colleagues and students of the leading social anthropology and post-socialism theorist, Professor Chris Hann. With the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 2019 as their catalyst, the authors reflect upon Chris Hann’s lifelong fieldwork in the discipline, spanning regions as diverse as East Central Europe, Turkey, and the Chinese north-west.

Anthropology
Politics and Sociology

Human Cultures through the Scientific Lens: Essays in Evolutionary Cognitive Anthropology

Pascal Boyer

This volume brings together a collection of seven articles previously published by the author, with a new introduction reframing the articles in the context of past and present questions in anthropology, psychology and human evolution. It promotes the perspective of ‘integrated’ social science, in which social science questions are addressed in a deliberately eclectic manner, combining results and models from evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, economics, anthropology and history.

Anthropology
Environmental Studies

Right Research: Modelling Sustainable Research Practices in the Anthropocene

Chelsea Miya
Oliver Rossier
Geoffrey Rockwell

The essays in this volume critically examine scholarly research practices in the age of the Anthropocene, and ask what accountability educators and researchers have in ‘righting’ their relationship to the environment.

Anthropology
Environmental Studies
Politics and Sociology

Living Earth Community: Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing

Sam Mickey
Mary Evelyn Tucker
John Grim

Living Earth Community: Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing is a celebration of the diversity of ways in which humans can relate to the world around them, and an invitation to its readers to partake in planetary coexistence. Innovative, informative, and highly accessible, this interdisciplinary anthology of essays brings together scholars, writers and educators across the sciences and humanities, in a collaborative effort to illuminate the different ways of being in the world and the different kinds of knowledge they entail – from the ecological knowledge of Indigenous communities, to the scientific knowledge of a biologist and the embodied knowledge communicated through storytelling.

Anthropology
Politics and Sociology

Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North

Joachim Otto Habeck

Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North breaks new ground by exploring the concept of lifestyle from a distinctly anthropological perspective. Showcasing the collective work of ten experienced scholars in the field, the book goes beyond concepts of tradition that have often been the focus of previous research, to explain how political, economic and technological changes in Russia have created a wide range of new possibilities and constraints in the pursuit of different ways of life.

Anthropology
Linguistics

The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya

Selma K. Sonntag
Mark Turin

This highly original and timely collection brings together case studies from salient areas of the Himalayan region to explore the politics of language contact. Promoting a linguistically and historically grounded perspective, The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya offers nuanced insights into language and its relation to power in this geopolitically complex region.

Anthropology
European Studies
European Studies: Eastern European Studies

Life Histories of Etnos Theory in Russia and Beyond

David G. Anderson
Dmitry V Arzyutov
Sergei S. Alymov

Life Histories of Etnos Theory in Russia and Beyond makes a powerful argument for reconsidering the importance of etnos in our understanding of ethnicity and national identity across Eurasia. The collection brings to life a rich archive of previously unpublished letters, fieldnotes, and photographic collections of the theory’s early proponents.

Anthropology
Asian Studies
Literature
Other languages

Tales of Darkness and Light: Soso Tham's The Old Days of the Khasis

Soso Tham
Janet Hujon

Poet of landscape, myth and memory, Soso Tham paid rich and poignant tribute to his tribe in his masterpiece The Old Days of the Khasis. Janet Hujon’s vibrant new translation presents the English reader with Tham’s long poem, which keeps a rich cultural tradition of the Khasi people alive through its retelling of old narratives and acts as a cultural signpost for their literary identity.

Anthropology
History
History: International Relations
Politics and Sociology

Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas: Rethinking Translocality Beyond Central Asia and the Caucasus

Manja Stephan-Emmrich
Philipp Schröder

This collection brings together a variety of anthropological, historical and sociological case studies from Central Asia and the Caucasus to examine the concept of translocality. The chapters scrutinize the capacity of translocality to describe, in new ways, the multiple mobilities, exchange practices and globalizing processes that link places, people and institutions in Central Asia and the Caucasus with others in Russia, China and the United Arab Emirates.

Anthropology
Digital Humanities
Material Culture

Remote Capture: Digitising Documentary Heritage in Challenging Locations

Patrick Sutherland
Adam Farquhar
Jody Butterworth
Andrew Pearson

This is a must-read how-to guide if you are planning to embark on a scholarly digitisation project. Tailored to the specifications of the British Library’s EAP (Endangered Archives Programme) projects, it is full of sound, practical advice about planning and carrying out a successful digitisation project in potentially challenging conditions.

Anthropology
Asian Studies
Folklore and Ethnology
Literature
Other languages

Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet: Texts in Mongghul, Chinese, and English

Li Dechun
Gerald Roche

Containing ballads of martial heroism, tales of tragic lovers and visions of the nature of the world, Long Narrative Songs from the Mongghul of Northeast Tibet: Texts in Mongghul, Chinese, and English is a rich repository of songs collected amongst the Mongghul of the Seven Valleys, on the northeast Tibetan Plateau in western China.

Anthropology
History
History: International Relations
Politics and Sociology

Warlike and Peaceful Societies: The Interaction of Genes and Culture

Agner Fog

Are humans violent or peaceful by nature? We are both. In this ambitious and wide-ranging book, Agner Fog presents a ground-breaking new argument that explains the existence of differently organised societies using evolutionary theory. It combines natural sciences and social sciences in a way that is rarely seen.

African Studies
Anthropology
Digital Humanities
Material Culture

Searching for Sharing: Heritage and Multimedia in Africa

Daniela Merolla
Mark Turin

In a world where new technologies are being developed at a dizzying pace, how can we best approach oral genres that represent heritage? Taking an innovative and interdisciplinary approach, this volume explores the idea of sharing as a model to construct and disseminate the knowledge of literary heritage with the people who are represented by and in it.

Anthropology
Science
Science: Applied Science

Behaviour, Development and Evolution

Patrick Bateson

The role of parents in shaping the characters of their children, the causes of violence and crime, and the roots of personal unhappiness are central to humanity. Like so many fundamental questions about human existence, these issues all relate to behavioural development. In this lucid and accessible book, eminent biologist Professor Sir Patrick Bateson suggests that the nature/nurture dichotomy we often use to think about questions of development in both humans and animals is misleading. Instead, he argues that we should pay attention to whole systems, rather than to simple causes, when trying to understand the complexity of development.

Anthropology
European Studies
European Studies: Eastern European Studies
History
Science
Science: History of Science

Measuring the Master Race: Physical Anthropology in Norway 1890-1945

Jon Røyne Kyllingstad

This book investigates the role played by Scandinavian scholars in inventing this so-called superior race, and discusses how this concept put its stamp on Norwegian physical anthropology, prehistory, national identity, and on the Norwegian eugenics movement. It also explores the decline and scientific disputation of these ideas in the 1930s as they came to be associated with the ‘genetic cleansing’ of Nazi Germany. This is the first comprehensive study on Norwegian physical anthropology, and its findings shed new light on current political and scientific debates about race across the globe.

American and Latin American Studies
Anthropology
Archaeology and Religion

God's Babies: Natalism and Bible Interpretation in Modern America

John McKeown

The human population's annual total consumption is not sustainable by one planet. Many observers assume that Christianity is inevitably part of this problem because it promotes "family values" and statistically, in America and elsewhere, has a higher birthrate than nonreligious people. Challenging the assumption that religion normally promotes fecundity, the book finds surprising exceptions among early Christians (with a special focus on Saint Augustine) since they advocated spiritual fecundity in preference to biological fecundity. Finally the book uses a hermeneutic lens derived from Genesis 1, and prioritising the modern problem of biodiversity, to provide ecological interpretations of the Bible's "fruitful" verses.

American and Latin American Studies
Anthropology
Folklore and Ethnology
Literature
Other languages

Stories from Quechan Oral Literature

A.M. Halpern
Amy Miller

This book makes a long-awaited contribution to the oral literature and mythology of the American Southwest, and its format and organization are of special interest. Narratives are presented in the original language and in the storytellers’ own words. Facing-page English translation provides a key to the original Quechan for the benefit of language learners. In presenting not just stories but story complexes, this volume captures the art of storytelling and illuminates the complexity and interconnectedness of an important body of oral literature.

American and Latin American Studies
Anthropology
Other languages

Xiipúktan (First of All): Three Views of the Origins of the Quechan People

George Bryant
Amy Miller

Creation myths form the backdrop against which much of the Quechan tribe’s oral literature may be understood. At one time there were almost as many versions of the Quechan creation story as there were Quechan families. Now few people remember them. This volume, presented in the Quechan language with facing-column translation, provides three views of the origins of the Quechan people. This collection is for the Quechan people and will also interest linguists, anthropologists, oral literature specialists, and anyone curious about Native American culture.

African Studies
Anthropology
Folklore and Ethnology
Literature
Other languages

How to Read a Folktale: The 'Ibonia' Epic from Madagascar

Lee Haring

This book offers an English translation of Ibonia, a spellbinding tale of old Madagascar. Recorded when the Malagasy people were first experiencing European contact, Ibonia proclaims the power of the ancestors against the foreigner. Its fairytale elements link it with European folktales, but the story is nonetheless very much a product of Madagascar. Inflating the folktale form to epic proportions, it combines African-style praise poetry with Indonesian-style riddles and poems. Through Ibonia, Lee Haring expertly helps readers to understand the very nature of folktales, connecting this exotic narrative with fundamental questions not only of anthropology but also of literary criticism.

African Studies
Anthropology
Folklore and Ethnology
Literature
Other languages

Storytelling in Northern Zambia: Theory, Method, Practice and Other Necessary Fictions

Robert Cancel

A collection and analysis of the oral narrative traditions of northern Zambia, this innovative book integrates audio and video recordings into the text. Robert Cancel’s critical interpretation, meanwhile, makes his work a much-needed addition to the slender corpus of African folklore studies dealing with storytelling performance. Cancel threads his way between the complex demands of African fieldwork studies, folklore theory, narrative modes, reflexive description and documentation, and brings to the reader a vivid, varied and instructive array of performances. His study tells us not only about storytelling but sheds light on the study of oral literatures throughout Africa and beyond.

Anthropology
Asian Studies

Feeding the City: Work and Food Culture of the Mumbai Dabbawalas

Sara Roncaglia
Angela Arnone

Every day in Mumbai 5,000 dabbawalas distribute 200,000 home-cooked lunchboxes across the city. Giving employment and status to thousands of largely illiterate villagers, this co-operative provides one of the most efficient delivery networks in the world. This book is an ethnographic study of the fascinating inner workings of Mumbai’s dabbawalas. Sara Roncaglia explains how they cater to the dietary requirements of a diverse and increasingly global city, where food preparation and consumption is pervaded with religious and cultural significance. Developing the idea of ‘gastrosemantics’, Roncaglia’s study helps us to rethink our relationship to food at a local and global level.

African Studies
Anthropology
Folklore and Ethnology
Literature
Other languages

Oral Literature in Africa

Ruth Finnegan

Ruth Finnegan’s Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan’s ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, ‘drum language’ and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa.

Anthropology
Asian Studies
Folklore and Ethnology
History
History: International Relations
Politics and Sociology

Frontier Encounters: Knowledge and Practice at the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian Border

Franck Billé
Grégory Delaplace
Caroline Humphrey

China, Russia and Mongolia share thousands of miles of border, but their traditions, languages and worldviews are remarkably different. Presenting varied perspectives on how the borders between these unique countries are enacted, produced and crossed, this book illuminates global uncertainties: China’s search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia’s fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious economic independence of Mongolia as its neighbours negotiate to extract its plentiful resources. Bringing together anthropologists, sociologists and economists, this timely collection of essays offers new perspectives on an area that is currently of enormous economic, strategic and geo-political relevance.

Anthropology
Linguistics

Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation

Ruth Finnegan

This book combines a down-to-earth account of contemporary quoting with an examination of its comparative and historical background. Drawing from anthropology, cultural history, folklore, cultural studies, sociolinguistics, literary studies and the ethnography of speaking, Ruth Finnegan’s fascinating study sets our present conventions in cross-cultural and historical perspective. She traces the curious history of quotation marks, examines the long tradition of quotation collections, and explores the uses of quotation in literary, visual and oral traditions. By tracking the changing definitions and control of quoting over the millennia, Finnegan sheds new light on ideas such as ‘imitation’, ‘allusion’, ‘authorship’, ‘originality’ and ‘plagiarism’.