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897 results in Social and cultural anthropology

Page 1 of 45

Religion, Dissonance, and Systems Theory
  • Comparing Spiritual Traditions
  • Ariel Glucklich
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2025
  • Religious belief systems are often marked by internal dissonance. Mitigating this dissonance can lead to surprising religious phenomena, including blood libels, scapegoating, religious violence, the worship of saints and martyrs, asceticism, austerities, as well as processions, fasting, and clowning. In this study, Ariel Glucklich provides a new approach to understanding how religious actions emerge in the context of belief systems. Providing an innovative psychological and social understanding of the causes that stimulate believers to action, he examines a range of religious phenomena in India, Israel, Austria, Italy, and the United States. Glucklich's new theory enables recognition of the patterns that account for the full complexity of actions inspired by religious beliefs and systems.  His systematic comparison of actions across traditional boundaries offers a novel approach to cause and effect in comparative religion and religious studies more broadly. Glucklich's book also generates new questions regarding a universal phenomenon that has escaped notice up to now.

Healing and the Invention of Metaphor
  • Toward a Poetics of Illness Experience
  • Laurence J. Kirmayer
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2025
    Print publication:
    30 June 2025
  • It has long been understood that illness is influenced not only by our bodies' physiology, but also language, culture, and meaning. This book, written by renowned cultural psychiatrist Laurence Kirmayer, explores of the influence of metaphor, narrative, and imagination in experiences of suffering and processes of healing across cultures. It emphasizes how metaphor can open a window to the hidden mechanisms of healing driven by meaning and symbolism, myth and imagination. At the same time, it offers a rigorous critical account of the metaphors embedded in the epistemology and practice of contemporary biomedicine, psychiatry, and psychotherapy. In doing so, it exposes the sociomoral and political dimensions of these dominant approaches to understanding and treating illness.

Ethnography of an Interface
  • Self-Tracking, Quantified Self, and the Work of Digital Connections
  • Yuliya Grinberg
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2025
    Print publication:
    31 May 2025
  • Technologists frequently promote self-tracking devices as objective tools. This book argues that such glib and often worrying assertions must be placed in the context of precarious industry dynamics. The author draws on several years of ethnographic fieldwork with developers of self-tracking applications and wearable devices in New York City's Silicon Alley and with technologists who participate in the international forum called the Quantified Self to illuminate the professional compromises that shape digital technology and the gap between the tech sector's public claims and its interior processes. By reconciling the business conventions, compromises, shifting labor practices, and growing employment insecurity that power the self-tracking market with device makers' often simplistic promotional claims, the book offers an understanding of the impact that technologists exert on digital discourse, on the tools they make, and on the data that these gadgets put out into the world.

Visceral Politics
  • Imaginaries of Power in South India
  • Indira Arumugam
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • How can a brutal murder influence a person's duty to their god? What do the bold actions of crows entering homes say about family relationships? How does meat reflect political beliefs? And what does the disappearance of gods, once roaming the earth and meeting their followers, tell us about the political changes happening in the world? This book studies the body of politics, revealing the deep connections and unseen forces that hold it together. It illustrates how power, political dynamics, and beliefs come to life through the actions of families, the land they inhabit, and the animals they sacrifice. The book pulls apart the messy, vital, and often mysterious aspects of human existence, examining the politics that shapes people. Along the way, it reveals how ordinary people, in their daily lives, also come to understand and challenge the systems of power around them.

Beings and Beasts
  • Human-Animal Relations at the Margins
  • Edited by Ambika Aiyadurai, Prashant Ingole
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2025
    Print publication:
    30 June 2025
  • While, a lot has been written about the need to 'decolonize' animal studies and wildlife conservation, there is no discussion or attempt to 'de-brahminize' animal studies and conservation science in India. Similarly, some animals and birds are positioned as superior in the Brahmanical social order, others seem to be subordinated and are associated with certain 'inferior' caste groups. Beings and Beasts discusses the relations between humans and animals of marginalized societies, especially of Dalits and Tribals. It analyses the various ways of perceiving the 'conjoint' living and examines it from multiple perspectives and disciplinary lenses.

Bus Station Hustle
  • Transport Work in Urban Ghana
  • Michael Stasik
  • Published online:
    09 February 2025
    Print publication:
    13 February 2025
  • Bus stations are among the most prominent sites of social and economic activity in Africa. Integral to transport, trade, and exchange over distance, they provide livelihoods for large numbers of people. Through a detailed ethnography of one of Ghana's busiest long-distance bus stations, Michael Stasik explores the dialectical relationship between the ways in which people make the station work and how the station shapes popular economic engagement and social life. Drawing on a dual understanding of 'hustle' as a distinct mode of economic activity and organisation, as well as a marker of complex and sometimes bewildering situations, Stasik challenges dominant views of transport work in urban Africa, especially those wedded to generic notions of 'informality'. Bus Station Hustle offers a nuanced anthropological perspective on the hands-on work in and the institutional workings of an infrastructural hub of mobility and exchange. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Love and Violence in Sierra Leone
  • Mediating Intimacy after Conflict
  • Luisa T. Schneider
  • Published online:
    28 January 2025
    Print publication:
    23 January 2025
  • In the decades following the civil war that took place in Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2002, new laws were passed to rebuild the state, and to prevent rape, teenage pregnancy and domestic violence. In this ethnography, Luisa T. Schneider explores the intricate semantic, empirical and socio-legal dynamics of love and violence in post-conflict Sierra Leone, challenging the oversimplification of these phenomena. Schneider underscores the limitations of imposing singular interpretations on love and violence, advocating for a nuanced, phenomenological approach that reveals how state and institutional attempts to regulate violence and loving relationships without considering local lived experience and meaning-making can yield negative consequences. By analysing how love and violence are historically constituted, experienced, and (re)produced across personal, social, legal, and political levels, this book critiques the construction of violence within gendered sexual relationships by development agencies, law makers and politicians, urging them to engage with local knowledge and experience. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis
  • Edited by Helen Kara, Dawn Mannay, Alastair Roy
  • Published by:
    Bristol University Press
    Published online:
    07 January 2025
    Print publication:
    11 September 2024
  • Written by key names in the field, this book opens up the options for creativity and innovation in data analysis while retaining a systematic, rigorous and ethical approach in line with good research practice. Featuring transferable case examples across disciplines, this is the definitive practical guide to creative data analysis.

Youth, Pentecostalism, and Popular Music in Rwanda
  • Andrea Mariko Grant
  • Published online:
    19 December 2024
    Print publication:
    02 January 2025
  • Youth, Pentecostalism, and Popular Music in Rwanda offers fascinating insight into the lived experiences of young people in Rwanda through ethnographic analysis of the ambiguities and ambivalences that have accompanied the country's rapid post-genocide development. Andrea Mariko Grant considers how Pentecostalism and popular music offer urban young people ways to craft themselves and their futures; to imagine alternative ways to 'be' Rwandan and inhabit the city in the post-genocide era. Exploring the idiom of the heart – and efforts to transform it – this book offers a richly nuanced perspective of urban young people's everyday lives, their aspirations and disappointments, at a political moment of both great promise and great constraint. Rather than insist on a resistance-dominance binary, Grant foregrounds the possibilities of agency available to young people, their ability to make 'noise', even when it may lead to devastating consequences.

Job Insecurity and Life Courses
  • Sonia Bertolini, Valentina Goglio, Dirk Hofäcker
  • Published by:
    Bristol University Press
    Published online:
    17 December 2024
    Print publication:
    31 January 2024
  • Drawing from interviews and survey data across the EU and the UK, this in-depth study explores how worker instability is perceived and experienced, and how this 'perception' in turn affects individuals' economic and social situation. Using intersectional analysis, the authors identify groups who are more prone to labour market risks.

Sacrifice and Violence
  • Reflections from an Ethnography in Nepal
  • Marie Lecomte-Tilouine
  • Published online:
    28 November 2024
    Print publication:
    20 February 2025
  • Violence is at the heart of the sacrifice, despite its denial in the texts. For the participants and observers, it materialises in the exposure of everyone and everything to the 'fountains of blood'. The specificity of this public and holistic violence, orchestrated in Nepal by the highest dignitaries and aimed at the rejuvenation of the cosmic, political and social order, allows us to see sacrifice as the ultimate model of legitimate violence. At the same time, observation reveals its oxymoronic nature through the opposite effect its violence has on its participants. As such, sacrifice is not only the organiser of society, but also the revelator of its internal tensions and fault lines. The book explores the complex aspects of royal ceremonies, their contestation by different groups, and finally the contours of the new legitimacy that sacrifice found during the revolutionary period under its most extreme form of human sacrifice.

Camille Bulcke
  • The Jesuit Devotee of Tulsidas
  • Ravi Dutt Bajpai, Swati Parashar
  • Published online:
    28 November 2024
    Print publication:
    20 February 2025
  • This is the first English biography of the Belgian Jesuit, Padma Bhushan recipient and renowned scholar of Hindi, Awadhi and Sanskrit: Father Camille Bulcke (1909–1982). Father Bulcke came to India when it was still a British colony, found spiritual inspiration in the life and compositions of the great Indian poet Goswami Tulsidas, and emerged as one of the renowned exponents of the Ramkatha (The Story of Rama) and the Hindi language. This book attempts to read and critically examine his life, while also analysing his writings on comparative religious studies. In doing so, it provides a brief overview of the world of Hindi literature and its development in postcolonial India through the contributions of Father Bulcke, and highlights the cultural and religious encounters between the West and the East, Europe and India, Christianity and Hinduism.

A Woman's Job
  • Making Middle Lives in New India
  • Asiya Islam
  • Published online:
    28 November 2024
    Print publication:
    02 January 2025
  • Against the backdrop of rapid socio-economic change in post-1990 India, scholars and policy makers have expressed surprise at the low rate of women's participation in the workforce, particularly in urban areas. A Woman's Job presents a unique urban ethnography of young lower middle class women's lives in Delhi as they weave in and out of service employment, education, and domestic contracts. Urban, educated, and skilled, these young women seek employment in cafes, malls, call centres, and offices in the globalising landscape of Delhi. Their participation in work enables access to 'things', such as, jeans, smartphones, English language, and the metro, that symbolise global modernity. However, caught in a web of gender, class, and caste inequalities, their identification as 'working' women also generates social anxieties. The book shows how women adopt 'middle-ness' as a strategy of life-making at the multiple sites of work, home, and leisure.

An Advanced Guide to Multilingualism

Questioning Migrants
  • Ethnic Nationalism at the Limits of Pakistan
  • Tahir H. Naqvi
  • Published online:
    13 November 2024
    Print publication:
    23 January 2025
  • The Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM), propelled by ethnic violence and led by university students with lower-middle-class backgrounds, transformed the cities of the southern Pakistani province of Sindh into an ethnic majoritarian stronghold at the unlikely height of a military dictatorship. The more novelaspect of the MQM's platform was it demand for the recognition of Muhajirs as a separate, 'oppressed nationality' within Pakistan. Questioning Migrants is a granular historical and ethographic study of the MQM's capacity to think beyond the exlusivism of Muhajir nationalism toward its contingency and toward a more plural and subaltern framing of the universal. It speaks to significant themes in Pakistan Studies: the legacies of Partition, the rise of the martial state, and the dynamics of urbanization and democracy.

Between Muslim Pīr and Hindu Saint
  • Laldas and the Devotional Culture in North India
  • Mukesh Kumar
  • Published online:
    30 April 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024
  • This book focuses on the shared religious figure of Laldas/Khan, and uncovers fascinating historical and contemporary dimensions of Hindu-Muslim socio-cultural interactions around his shrines. It explores reformist and extremist politics that have influenced shared religious traditions, shedding light on the impact of the reformist ideologies of the Arya Samaj and Tablighi Jamaat on the followers of Laldas. It presents a compelling analysis of how some shared religious practices persist and adapt amidst the pressures of dominant reform movements. The inclusion of marginalised voices, particularly women, adds a poignant and powerful dimension to the narrative. Through its comprehensive and thought-provoking approach, the book provides valuable insights into the continuously evolving religious landscape of north Indian devotional Hinduism and popular Islam. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Narrative Research Now
  • Critical Perspectives on the Promise of Stories
  • Edited by Ashley Barnwell, Signe Ravn
  • Published by:
    Bristol University Press
    Published online:
    28 March 2024
    Print publication:
    01 December 2023
  • Supported by the editors' popular podcast 'Narrative Now', this interdisciplinary volume explores the capacities and limitations of narrative research. It maps out new directions for the field while honouring its legacy.

My Museum, a Museum about Me
  • Curatorial Dreams for the Kraków Ethnographic Museum
  • Edited by Erica Lehrer, Roma Sendyka
  • Published by:
    Jagiellonian University Press
    Published online:
    01 March 2024
    Print publication:
    28 June 2023
  • This book is the result of a scholarly intervention into the space of the Kraków Ethnographic Museum. While reflecting on one specific project, it opens many questions relevant for reformulating our ideas about both the museum and the academy. The project's approach to intellectual deliberation is horizontal, engaging students on equal footing with professors, resulting in a publication that embodies collaborative practice. It is also a unique example of how thought can be manifested in creative action, which itself then produces a new object for critical reflection. It is a true blend of theory and practice; an attempt to embed the university in the broader social world while similarly urging museums to speak directly to the societies about which they teach. The project thus proposes both a new form of research and a new take on the presentation of academic knowledge. Thinking through the museum becomes - as promised - not only a critical view of the institution, but also a meditation on society, its rules, and the identities of its inhabitants.

Spaces of Diversity?
  • Polish Music Festivals in a Changing Society
  • Edited by Karolina Golemo, Marta Kupis
  • Published by:
    Jagiellonian University Press
    Published online:
    01 March 2024
    Print publication:
    23 January 2023
  • Music festivals offer a chance to experience musical and cultural diversity, much needed in a country which, for a long time, had been separated from much of global culture. As such, they also serve as an opportunity to appreciate the musical traditions and productions from different groups, both those originating from foreign lands, and those situated locally, often created by ethnic minorities. The relatively easy-going atmosphere of music festivals and their focus on art allow for circumstances where conflict is not very likely, thus fostering mutual appreciation among people of various walks of life. All of the essays in this volume refer to and aim to answer two fundamental questions: can music festivals serve as spaces of diversity, that is places where people can get to know other cultures and groups of people; and if so, how? Can music festivals also be a factor of socio-cultural changes?

New Trends in the Protection of Cultural and Natural Heritage
  • Edited by Piotr Dobosz, Witold Górny, Adam Kozień, Anna Mazur, Bartosz Mazurek
  • Published by:
    Jagiellonian University Press
    Published online:
    01 March 2024
    Print publication:
    21 April 2023
  • The book entitled New Trends in the Protection of Cultural and Natural Heritage is a collection of twelve scientific articles (chapters) authored by Polish and foreign researchers in the field of cultural heritage protection. Specializing in various scientific disciplines (including legal, architectural, managerial, cultural studies considerations) and at different stages of scientific development, the authors of the individual texts from either a casuistic (case studies) or systemic (studies of normative solutions or development trends) perspective analyze new trends in the protection of cultural and natural heritage.

Page 1 of 45