Title: The short, swift time of gods on earth: the Hohokam chronicles 
Author: Bahr, Donald M
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Anthropology | Anthropology | Folklore and Mythology
Publisher's Description: In the spring of 1935, at Snaketown, Arizona, two Pima Indians recounted and translated their entire traditional creation narrative. Juan Smith, reputedly the last tribesman with extensive knowledge of the Pima version of this story, spoke and sang while William Smith Allison translated into English and Julian Hayden, an archaeologist, recorded Allison's words verbatim. The resulting document, the "Hohokam Chronicles," is the most complete natively articulated Pima creation narrative ever written and a rare example of a single-narrator myth.Now this extraordinary work, composed of thirty-six separate stories, is presented in its entirety for the first time. Beautifully expressed, the narrative constitutes a kind of scripture for a native church, beginning with the creation of the universe out of the void and ending with the establishment in the sixteenth century of present-day villages. Central to the story is the murder/resurrection of a god-man, Siuuhu, who summoned the Pimas and Papagos (Tohono O'odham) as his army of vengeance and brought about the conquest of his murderers, the ancient Hohokam.Donald Bahr extensively annotates the text and supplements it with other Pima-Papago versions of similar stories. Important as a social and historic document, this book adds immeasurably to the growing body of Native American literature and to our knowledge of the development of Pima-Papago culture.   [brief]
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Title: The heart of the pearl shell: the mythological dimension of Foi sociality 
Author: Weiner, James F
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: Anthropology
Publisher's Description: For the Foi people who live on the edge of the central highlands of Papua New Guinea, the flow of pearl shells is the "heart" of their social life. The pearl shell is the exchange item that mediates the creation of their most important sexual and social roles. The Heart of the Pearl Shell analyzes a number of myths of the Foi people, elegantly bringing together significant ethnographic materials in a way that has important implications for the development of social theory in anthropology and in Melanesian studies. Scholars of semiotic-symbolic anthropology and of comparative religion will also share the author's interest in the meaning and role of mythology in Foi culture.Instead of relying on orthodox methods of Freudian or structuralist interpretation, James Weiner assumes there is a dialectical relationship between the images of Foi myth and the images of the Foi's social world. He demonstrates how each set of these images is dependent upon the other for its creation. This innovative study locates Foi social meaning in the re-creation and attempted solution of the moral dilemmas that are crystallized in mythology and other poetic usages.   [brief]
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Title: Grateful prey: Rock Cree human-animal relationships 
Author: Brightman, Robert Alain 1950-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Anthropology | Anthropology | United States History | Religion
Publisher's Description: The interaction between religious beliefs and hunting practices among the Asiniskawidiniwak or Rock Crees of northern Manitoba is the focus of Robert Brightman's detailed study. This foraging society, he says, bases aspects of its hunting and trapping largely on what we call "religious" conceptions.Seeking an ideology, however, that incorporates Cree beliefs about human-animal differences and the relationships that should exist between them as hunter and prey, Brightman finds these beliefs to be disordered and unstable rather than systematic. Animals are represented as simultaneously more and less powerful than humans. The hunter-prey relationship is talked about as both collaborative and adversarial. Exploring the influence of these religious representations on technical aspects of subsistence historically, Brightman finds that Crees' attitudes and actions toward animals were, and are, relatively arbitrary with respect to biological and environmental forces. Anthropologists will see in his well-researched discussion a challenge to prevailing ecological and Marxist approaches to foraging societies.   [brief]
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Title: Perspectives on the Yi of Southwest China 
Author: Harrell, Stevan
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Anthropology | China | Ethnic Studies | Sociology
Publisher's Description: Nearly seven million Yi people live in Southwest China, but most educated people outside China have never heard of them. This book, the first scholarly study in a Western language on the Yi in four decades, brings this little-known part of the world to life. Perspectives on the Yi of Southwest China is a remarkable collection of work by both Yi and foreign scholars describing their history, traditional society, and recent social changes. In addition to being valuable as an ethnographic study, this book is also an experiment in communication among three discourses: the cosmopolitan disciplines of history and the social sciences, the Chinese discourse of ethnology and ethnohistory, and the Yi folk discourse of genealogy and ritual. This book uses the case of the Yi to conduct an international conversation across formerly isolated disciplines.   [brief]
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Title: Circumstantial deliveries 
Author: Needham, Rodney
Published: University of California Press,  1982
Subjects: Anthropology
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Title: Heroes of the age: moral fault lines on the Afghan frontier 
Author: Edwards, David B
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Anthropology | Middle Eastern History | Middle Eastern Studies | Postcolonial Studies
Publisher's Description: Much of the political turmoil that has occurred in Afghanistan since the Marxist revolution of 1978 has been attributed to the dispute between Soviet-aligned Marxists and the religious extremists inspired by Egyptian and Pakistani brands of "fundamentalist" Islam. In a significant departure from this view, David B. Edwards contends that - though Marxism and radical Islam have undoubtedly played a significant role in the conflict - Afghanistan's troubles derive less from foreign forces and the ideological divisions between groups than they do from the moral incoherence of Afghanistan itself. Seeking the historical and cultural roots of the conflict, Edwards examines the lives of three significant figures of the late nineteenth century - a tribal khan, a Muslim saint, and a prince who became king of the newly created state. He explores the ambiguities and contradictions of these lives and the stories that surround them, arguing that conflicting values within an artificially-created state are at the root of Afghanistan's current instability.Building on this foundation, Edwards examines conflicting narratives of a tribal uprising against the British Raj that broke out in the summer of 1897. Through an analysis of both colonial and native accounts, Edwards investigates the saint's role in this conflict, his relationship to the Afghan state and the tribal groups that followed him, and the larger issue of how Islam traditionally functions as an encompassing framework of political association in frontier society.   [brief]
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Title: Judeo-Spanish ballads from New York 
Author: Benardete, M. J. (Maír José) 1895-
Published: University of California Press,  1982
Subjects: Anthropology | American Literature | Jewish Studies
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Title: Absent lord: ascetics and kings in a Jain ritual culture 
Author: Babb, Lawrence A
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Religion | Asian Studies | Anthropology
Publisher's Description: What does it mean to worship beings that one believes are completely indifferent to, and entirely beyond the reach of, any form of worship whatsoever? How would such a relationship with sacred beings affect the religious life of a community? Using these questions as his point of departure, Lawrence A. Babb explores the ritual culture of image-worshipping Svetambar Jains of the western Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan.Jainism traces its lineages back to the ninth century B.C.E. and is, along with Buddhism, the only surviving example of India's ancient non-Vedic religious traditions. It is known and celebrated for its systematic practice of non-violence and for the intense rigor of the asceticism it promotes. A unique aspect of Babb's study is his linking of the Jain tradition to the social identity of existing Jain communities.Babb concludes by showing that Jain ritual culture can be seen as a variation on pan-Indian ritual patterns. In illuminating this little-known religious tradition, he demonstrates that divine "absence" can be as rich as divine "presence" in its possibilities for informing a religious response to the cosmos.   [brief]
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Title: Tribes of India: the struggle for survival 
Author: Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph von 1909-
Published: University of California Press,  1982
Subjects: Anthropology | Asian Studies
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Title: Healing the infertile family: strengthening your relationship in the search for parenthood 
Author: Becker, Gaylene
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Anthropology | Medical Anthropology | Psychology
Publisher's Description: Unlike most infertility books that focus on medical treatment, Healing the Infertile Family examines the social and emotional problems experienced by couples confronting infertility and suggests how they can be alleviated. In this updated edition, Gay Becker discusses her most recent study of couple . . . [more]
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Title: The wrestler's body: identity and ideology in north India 
Author: Alter, Joseph S
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Anthropology | South Asia
Publisher's Description: The Wrestler's Body tells the story of a way of life organized in terms of physical self-development. While Indian wrestlers are competitive athletes, they are also moral reformers whose conception of self and society is fundamentally somatic. Using the insights of anthropology, Joseph Alter writes an ethnography of the wrestler's physique that elucidates the somatic structure of the wrestler's identity and ideology.Young men in North India may choose to join an akhara, or gymnasium, where they subject themselves to a complex program of physical and moral fitness. Alter's first-hand description of each detail of the wrestler's regimen offers a unique perspective on South Asian culture and society. Wrestlers feel that moral reform of Indian national character is essential and advocate their way of life as an ideology of national health. Everyone is called on to become a wrestler and build collective strength through self-discipline.   [brief]
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Title: History and tradition in Melanesian anthropology 
Author: Carrier, James G
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Anthropology | East Asia Other
Publisher's Description: Melanesian societies, like village societies in many parts of the world, are frequently portrayed as existing in a timeless, traditional present. These seven original essays offer an alternative view, one showing that historical evidence can and must inform our understanding of contemporary cultures.This collection brings together anthropologists and historians who maintain that the "timeless-traditionalism" approach of anthropology is inadequate. Life in the existing societies of Melanesia cannot be understood, they say, without examining how these societies are shaped by Western influences. The historical perspective that acknowledges ongoing political, economic, and social change results in less stereotypical descriptions of these traditional cultures. Historians and anthropologists of Melanesia and the Pacific will find here original and enlightening work that is sure to influence the theoretical orientation of Melanesian anthropology.   [brief]
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Title: Native and newcomer: making and remaking a Japanese city 
Author: Robertson, Jennifer Ellen
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Anthropology | Japan | Asian History | Urban Studies | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: This expertly crafted ethnography examines the ways in which native and new citizens of Kodaira, a Tokyo suburb, have both remade the past and imagined the future of their city in a quest for an "authentic" Japanese community.
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Title: When we began there were witchmen: an oral history from Mount Kenya 
Author: Fadiman, Jeffrey
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: History | Anthropology | African Studies | African History
Publisher's Description: This is the history of the Meru people of Mount Kenya, based on their own traditions, from the earliest times through the colonial period. Many of these tales have been ritually passed down through no fewer than nineteen generations; others were remembered by those personally involved. Jeffrey Fadiman gathered them in interviews with more than 100 of the Meru's oldest men and women.The traditions touch on every era of the Meru past. They include narrations, songs, chants, and riddles. They tell of a mysterious origin, past enslavement, despairing flight, mountain warriorhood, British conquest, and the fight for freedom. The Meru elders spoke most often of urogi, or witchcraft, the incantations, rituals, and potions used to deal with the supernatural aspects of Meru life. As their society evolved, so did their urogi , developing a history of its own as practitioners in every generation sought to cope with the challenges of slavery, migration, war, colonialism, and Christianity.Fadiman has crafted the tales into a compelling narrative, passing on in his turn the stories he was given. This is African history from African perspectives that stretch back over 300 years.   [brief]
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Title: Language, charisma, and creativity: the ritual life of a religious movement 
Author: Csordas, Thomas J
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Anthropology | Christianity
Publisher's Description: Thomas Csordas's eloquent analysis of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, part of the contemporary cultural and media phenomenon known as conservative Christianity, embraces one of the primary tasks of anthropology: to stimulate critical reflection by making the exotic seem familiar and the familiar appear strange. This story, unlike an ethnography of a little-known tribal society, is about people who are quite like everybody else but at the same time inhabit a substantially different phenomenological world.Csordas has observed and studied Charismatic groups throughout the United States. He begins with an introduction to the Charismatic Renewal and a history of its development during the roughly thirty years of its existence. He describes the movement's internal diversity as well as its international extent, emphasizing Charismatic identity and the transformation of space and time in Charismatic daily life. Language, Charisma, and Creativity extends and builds on the ideas of self-transformation that Csordas introduced in his earlier book on Charismatic healing. This work makes an original, important contribution to anthropology, studies of religion and ritual, linguistic-semiotic and rhetorical studies, the multidisciplinary study of social movements, and American studies.   [brief]
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Title: Mirages of transition: the Peruvian altiplano, 1780-1930 
Author: Jacobsen, Nils 1948-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: History | Anthropology | Latin American History | Latin American Studies
Publisher's Description: This case study of the Peruvian altiplano, the vast high-altitude plains surrounding Lake Titicaca, combines economic and social analysis with cultural and institutional history. Nils Jacobsen challenges the prevailing view that the rural Andes underwent a successful transition to capitalism between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He argues that although the political, economic, and administrative structures of colonialism were gradually dismantled by the region's advancing market economy, colonial modes of constructing power and social identity have lingered on even to this day.The result of painstaking research in remote rural archives, some of them now made inaccessible by the Shining Path, Mirages of Transition will become the definitive work on the Peruvian highlands.   [brief]
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Title: Socialization as cultural communication: development of a theme in the work of Margaret Mead 
Author: Schwartz, Theodore
Published: University of California Press,  1980
Subjects: Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology
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Title: Ceremonial costumes of the Pueblo Indians: their evolution, fabrication, and significance in the prayer drama 
Author: Roediger, Virginia More
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology | Dance | Art
Publisher's Description: When the University of California Press first published Roediger's Ceremonial Costumes of the Pueblo Indians in 1941, it was immediately hailed as both a beautiful book and the most comprehensive description ever of the making and meaning of the Pueblo costumes of New Mexico and Arizona. It has been widely acknowledged as a classic and eagerly sought after in antiquarian bookstores.Exactly fifty years after its original publication, here is the book back in print, with a new introduction by the renowned anthropologist Fred Eggan. Roediger's vivid paintings are reproduced once more in full color, capturing the beauty and drama of the Pueblo ceremonies - the turquoise dance moccasins, the tableted headdress of the Zuni corn maidens, the bright-blanketed Kachina maiden, and the buffalo, brilliant eagle, and horned deer costumes.It was Roediger who first viewed the ceremony and ritual of the Pueblo peoples as dramatic performance, a view that has gained great currency since. As a student of drama at Yale University she was fascinated by the intensely theatrical dimension to Pueblo worship, and it is this original perspective that informs and illuminates her study.After a brief survey of the history, location, and life of the Pueblo peoples, Roediger embarks on a thorough analysis of the materials used in the Pueblo costumes. She explains both their symbolic significance and their manufacture - from the weaving of cloth and the tanning of leather to the preparation of birds' feathers, evergreens, paints, and dyes. She then provides a meticulous description of the costumed dancer - body paint, garments, ornaments, accessories, and dance properties such as rattles, headdresses, and masks.In her final section, Roediger explores the relation of the costumes to the prayer dramas, particularly to the reverential, solemn, ecstatic public dance with which these climax. Vivid details emerge here about such rituals as the animal dances from the Rio Grande region and the Rain Dance of the Zuni.Fifty years after its original publication, Virginia Roediger's book remains the most comprehensive study of the ceremonial costumes of the Pueblo peoples. A book of great visual appeal and unrivaled detail, it will be welcomed back by scholars and general readers alike.   [brief]
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Title: A simple matter of salt: an ethnography of nutritional deficiency in Spain 
Author: Fernandez, Renate Lellep
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Anthropology | Medical Anthropology
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Title: Putting Islam to work: education, politics, and religious transformation in Egypt 
Author: Starrett, Gregory 1961-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Middle Eastern Studies | Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology | Education | Religion | Islam | Politics
Publisher's Description: The development of mass education and the mass media have transformed the Islamic tradition in contemporary Egypt and the wider Muslim world. In Putting Islam to Work , Gregory Starrett focuses on the historical interplay of power and public culture, showing how these new forms of communication and a growing state interest in religious instruction have changed the way the Islamic tradition is reproduced.During the twentieth century new styles of religious education, based not on the recitation of sacred texts but on moral indoctrination, have been harnessed for use in economic, political, and social development programs. More recently they have become part of the Egyptian government's strategy for combating Islamist political opposition. But in the course of this struggle, the western-style educational techniques that were adopted to generate political stability have instead resulted in a rapid Islamization of public space, the undermining of traditional religious authority structures, and a crisis of political legitimacy. Using historical, textual, and ethnographic evidence, Gregory Starrett demonstrates that today's Islamic resurgence is rooted in new ways of thinking about Islam that are based in the market, the media, and the school.   [brief]
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