Title: Showing signs of violence: the cultural politics of a twentieth-century headhunting ritual 
Author: George, Kenneth M 1950-
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology | Southeast Asia
Publisher's Description: Showing Signs of Violence deals with the ceremonies of pangngae, a mock headhunt that lingers stubbornly at the center of political life in a marginal upland community in Sulawesi, Indonesia. No killing takes place in this ritual - no actual heads are taken - but its rhetoric of violence is unmistakable and real.Kenneth M. George vividly details the rites of pangngae, from the headhunters' secret and predatory journey downriver to the week of public festivity that follows their exuberant return. He puts special emphasis on the songs, speeches, and liturgies of the headhunt and shows how this ritual is neither a relic form of primitive violence nor an obsolete discourse on the social horizons of a remote community. In fact, the themes, purposes, and circumstances of pangngae make it the most public and community-defining form of ceremonial violence for this small mountain enclave as it confronts the dilemmas presented by Indonesian modernity and state culture.   [brief]
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Title: Earth's insights: a survey of ecological ethics from the Mediterranean basin to the Australian outback
Author: Callicott, J. Baird
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Philosophy | Anthropology | Ethics | Ecology
Publisher's Description: The environmental crisis is global in scope, yet contemporary environmental ethics is centered predominantly in Western philosophy and religion. Earth's Insights widens the scope of environmental ethics to include the ecological teachings embedded in non-Western worldviews. J. Baird Callicott ranges broadly, exploring the sacred texts of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Zen Buddhism, as well as the oral traditions of Polynesia, North and South America, and Australia. He also documents the attempts of various peoples to put their environmental ethics into practice. Finally, he wrestles with a question of vital importance to all people sharing the fate of this small planet: How can the world's many and diverse environmental philosophies be brought together in a complementary and consistent whole?   [brief]
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Title: Covering immigration: popular images and the politics of the nation
Author: Chavez, Leo R. (Leo Ralph)
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Anthropology | Ethnic Studies | American Studies
Publisher's Description: On October 17, 1994, The Nation ran the headline "The Immigration Wars" on its cover over an illustration showing the western border of the United States with a multitude of people marching toward it. In the foreground, the Statue of Liberty topped by an upside-down American flag is joined by a growling guard dog lunging at a man carrying a pack. The magazine's coverage of emerging anti-immigrant sentiment shows how highly charged the images and texts on popular magazine covers can be. This provocative book gives a cultural history of the immigration issue in the United States since 1965, using popular magazine covers as a fascinating entry into a discussion of our attitudes toward one of the most volatile debates in the nation. Leo Chavez gathers and analyzes over seventy cover images from politically diverse magazines, including Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, The New Republic, The Nation, and American Heritage. He traces the connections between the social, legal, and economic conditions surrounding immigration and the diverse images through which it is portrayed. Covering Immigration suggests that media images not only reflect the national mood but also play a powerful role in shaping national discourse. Drawing on insights from anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, this original and perceptive book raises new questions about the media's influence over the public's increasing fear of immigration.   [brief]
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Title: Pilgrim stories: on and off the road to Santiago
Author: Frey, Nancy Louise 1968-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Religion | Anthropology | Christianity | European History
Publisher's Description: Each year thousands of men and women from more than sixty countries journey by foot and bicycle across northern Spain, following the medieval pilgrimage road known as the Camino de Santiago. Their destination is Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of the apostle James are said to be buried. These modern-day pilgrims and the role of the pilgrimage in their lives are the subject of Nancy Louise Frey's fascinating book.Unlike the religiously-oriented pilgrims who visit Marian shrines such as Lourdes, the modern Road of St. James attracts an ecumenical mix of largely well-educated, urban middle-class participants. Eschewing comfortable methods of travel, they choose physically demanding journeys, some as long as four months, in order to experience nature, enjoy cultural and historical patrimony, renew faith, or cope with personal trauma.Frey's anthropological study focuses on the remarkable reanimation of the Road that has gained momentum since the 1980s. Her intensive fieldwork (including making the pilgrimage several times herself) provides a colorful portrayal of the pilgrimage while revealing a spectrum of hopes, discontents, and desires among its participants, many of whom feel estranged from society. The Camino's physical and mental journey offers them closer community, greater personal knowledge, and links to the past and to nature.But what happens when pilgrims return home? Exploring this crucial question Frey finds that pilgrims often reflect deeply on their lives and some make significant changes: an artistic voice is discovered, a marriage is ended, meaningful work is found. Other pilgrims repeat the pilgrimage or join a pilgrims' association to keep their connection to the Camino alive. And some only remain pilgrims while on the road. In all, Pilgrim Stories is an exceptional prism through which to understand the desires and dissatisfactions of contemporary Western life at the end of the millennium."Feet are touched, discussed, massaged, [and] become signs of a journey well traveled: 'I did it all on foot!' . . . Pilgrims give feet a power and importance not recognized in daily life, as a causeway and direct channel to the road, the past, meaningful relations, nature, and the self."   [brief]
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Title: Childbirth and authoritative knowledge: cross-cultural perspectives
Author: Davis-Floyd, Robbie
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Anthropology | Women's Studies | Medicine
Publisher's Description: This benchmark collection of cross-cultural essays on reproduction and childbirth extends and enriches the work of Brigitte Jordan, who helped generate and define the field of the anthropology of birth. The authors' focus on authoritative knowledge - the knowledge that counts, on the basis of which decisions are made and actions taken - highlights the vast differences between birthing systems that give authority of knowing to women and their communities and those that invest it in experts and machines. Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge offers first-hand ethnographic research conducted by anthropologists in sixteen different societies and cultures and includes the interdisciplinary perspectives of a social psychologist, a sociologist, an epidemiologist, a staff member of the World Health Organization, and a community midwife. Exciting directions for further research as well as pressing needs for policy guidance emerge from these illuminating explorations of authoritative knowledge about birth. This book is certain to follow Jordan's Birth in Four Cultures as the definitive volume in a rapidly expanding field.   [brief]
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Title: Wagering the land: ritual, capital, and environmental degradation in the Cordillera of northern Luzon, 1900-1986 
Author: Lewis, Martin W
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Geography | Anthropology | Asian Studies
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Title: Sherpas: reflections on change in Himalayan Nepal
Author: Fisher, James F
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology | South Asia
Publisher's Description: James Fisher combines the strengths of technical anthropology, literary memoir, and striking photography in this telling study of rapid social change in Himalayan Nepal. The author first visited the Sherpas of Nepal when he accompanied Sir Edmund Hilary on the Himalayan Schoolhouse Expedition of 1964. Returning to the Everest region several times during the 1970s and 1980s, he discovered that the construction of the schools had far less impact than one of the by-products of their building: a short-take-off-and-landing airstrip. By reducing the time it took to travel between Kathmandu and the Everest region from a hike of several days to a 45-minute flight, the airstrip made a rapid increase in tourism possible. Beginning with his impressions of Sherpa society in pre-tourist days, Fisher traces the trajectory of contemporary Sherpa society reeling under the impact of modern education and mass tourism, and assesses the Sherpa's concerns for their future and how they believe these problems should be and eventually will be resolved.   [brief]
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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: Divine passions: the social construction of emotion in India 
Author: Lynch, Owen M 1931-
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Anthropology | South Asia | History
Publisher's Description: Naked holy men denying sexuality and feeling; elderly people basking in the warmth and security provided by devoted and attentive family members; fastidious priests concerned solely with rules of purity and minutiae of ritual practice; puritanical moralists concealing women and sexuality behind purdah's veils - these are familiar Western stereotypes of India. The essays in Divine Passions , however, paint other, more colorful and emotionally alive pictures of India: ecstatic religious devotees rolling in temple dust; gray-haired elders worrying about neglect and mistreatment by family members; priests pursuing a lusty, carefree ideal of the good life; and jokers reviling one another with bawdy, sexual insults at marriages.Drawing on rich ethnographic data from emotion-charged scenarios, these essays question Western academic theories of emotion, particularly those that reduce emotions to physiological sensations or to an individual's private feelings. Presenting an alternative view of emotions as culturally constructed and morally evaluative concepts grounded in the bodily self, the contributors to Divine Passions help dispel some of the West's persistent misconceptions of Indian emotional experience. Moreover, the edition as a whole argues for a new and different understanding of India based on field research and an understanding of the devotional (bhakti) tradition.   [brief]
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Title: Violence workers: police torturers and murderers reconstruct Brazilian atrocities
Author: Huggins, Martha Knisely 1944-
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Anthropology | Latin American Studies | Sociology
Publisher's Description: Of the twenty-three Brazilian policemen interviewed in depth for this landmark study, fourteen were direct perpetrators of torture and murder during the three decades that included the 1964-1985 military regime. These "violence workers" and the other group of "atrocity facilitators" who had not, or claimed they had not, participated directly in the violence, help answer questions that haunt today's world: Why and how are ordinary men transformed into state torturers and murderers? How do atrocity perpetrators explain and justify their violence? What is the impact of their murderous deeds - on them, on their victims, and on society? What memories of their atrocities do they admit and which become public history?   [brief]
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Title: Gender in Amazonia and Melanesia: an exploration of the comparative method 
Author: Gregor, Thomas
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Anthropology | Gender Studies | Geography
Publisher's Description: One of the great riddles of cultural history is the remarkable parallel that exists between the peoples of Amazonia and those of Melanesia. Although the two regions are separated by half a world in distance and at least 40,000 years of history, their cultures nonetheless reveal striking similarities in the areas of sex and gender. In both Amazonia and Melanesia, male-female differences infuse social organization and self-conception. They are the core of religion, symbolism, and cosmology, and they permeate ideas about body imagery, procreation, growth, men's cults, and rituals of initiation. The contributors to this innovative volume illuminate the various ways in which sex and gender are elaborated, obsessed over, and internalized, shaping subjective experiences common to entire cultural regions, and beyond. Through comparison of the life ways of Melanesia and Amazonia the authors expand the study of gender, as well as the comparative method in anthropology, in new and rewarding directions.   [brief]
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Title: History, power, ideology: central issues in Marxism and anthropology
Author: Donham, Donald L. (Donald Lewis)
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Anthropology | Social Theory | African Studies
Publisher's Description: Is Marxism a reflection of the conceptual system it fights against, rather than a truly comprehensive approach to human history? Drawing on recent work in anthropology, history, and philosophy, Donald Donham confronts this problem in analyzing a radically different social order: the former Maale kingdom of southern Ethiopia."Every once in a while there appears a book that . . . opens up new ways of inquiring into the ways of the world. Donald Donham has written such a book. The style is quiet and judicious, but the effect is stunning. . . . In putting inherited partisan approaches to the test of explaining the realities of Maale society and culture, Donham enriches anthropology and imparts new vigor to the analytical Marxian traditions. History, Power, Ideology embodies a major accomplishment." - From the Foreword   [brief]
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Title: Fighting women: anger and aggression in Aboriginal Australia 
Author: Burbank, Victoria Katherine
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Anthropology | Women's Studies | Psychology
Publisher's Description: Fighting is common among contemporary Aboriginal women in Mangrove, Australia - women fight with men and with other women. Victoria Burbank's depiction of these women offers a powerful new perspective that can be applied to domestic violence in Western settings.Noting that Aboriginal women not only talk without shame about their emotions of anger but also express them in acts of aggression and defense, Burbank emphasizes the positive social and cultural implications of women's refusal to be victims. She explores questions of hierarchy and the expression of emotions, as well as women's roles in domestic violence. Human aggression can be experienced and expressed in different ways, she says, and is not necessarily always "wrong." Timely and controversial, Fighting Women will stimulate discussion of aggression and gender relations and will enlarge the debate on the victimization of women and children everywhere.   [brief]
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Title: Death ritual in late imperial and modern China
Author: Watson, James L
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: History | China | Anthropology | Asian History
Publisher's Description: During the late imperial era (1500-1911), China, though divided by ethnic, linguistic, and regional differences at least as great as those prevailing in Europe, enjoyed a remarkable solidarity. What held Chinese society together for so many centuries? Some scholars have pointed to the institutional control over the written word as instrumental in promoting cultural homogenization; others, the manipulation of the performing arts. This volume, comprised of essays by both anthropologists and historians, furthers this important discussion by examining the role of death rituals in the unification of Chinese culture.   [brief]
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Title: The fractured community: landscapes of power and gender in rural Zambia 
Author: Crehan, Kate A. F
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Anthropology | African Studies | Gender Studies
Publisher's Description: This study examines the lives of the women and men living in two small rural communities in Zambia on the eve of the collapse of the one-party state in the 1980s. Moving beyond the limits of traditional ethnography, Kate Crehan traces the often complex ways in which local, day-to-day realities are linked to wider economic, political, imaginative structures of power beyond northwestern Zambia.Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Crehan examines economics and gender, politics and kin relations, state and local relations, and witchcraft. Situating her data within a sophisticated yet accessible theoretical framework, she uncovers the power relations that have shaped and defined these communities. Among Crehan's theoretical contributions is a deft argument for the use of Antonio Gramsci's notion of hegemony to analyze ordinary life.This examination of a marginalized, rural society throws unexpected light on some of the concrete realities of capitalism in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. It also provides inspiring examples of how complicated theoretical viewpoints can be translated - without simplification - into clear starting points for research.   [brief]
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Title: Fanshen: a documentary of revolution in a Chinese village
Author: Hinton, William
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: History | China | Anthropology | Asian History
Publisher's Description: More than thirty years after its initial publication, William Hinton's Fanshen continues to be the essential source for those fascinated with China's continual process of rural reform and social change. This edition will appeal to anyone interested in understanding China's complex social processes, . . . [more]
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Title: Japanese workers in protest: an ethnography of consciousness and experience 
Author: Turner, Christena L 1949-
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology | Japan | Sociology
Publisher's Description: This first ethnographic study of factory workers engaged in radical labor protest gives a voice to a segment of the Japanese population that has been previously marginalized. These blue-collar workers, involved in prolonged labor disputes, tell their own story as they struggle to make sense of their lives and their culture during a time of conflict and instability. What emerges is a sensitive portrait of how workers grapple with a slowed economy and the contradictions of Japanese industry in the late postwar era. The ways that they think and feel about accommodation, resistance, and protest raise essential questions about the transformation of labor practices and limits of worker cooperation and compliance.   [brief]
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Title: Tropical forests and the human spirit: journeys to the brink of hope
Author: Stone, Roger D
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: EcologyEvolutionEnvironment | Ecology | Conservation | Anthropology
Publisher's Description: Tropical forests are vanishing at an alarming rate. This book, based on extensive international field research, highlights one solution for preserving this precious resource: empowering local people who depend on the forest for survival. Synthesizing a vast amount of information that has never been brought together in one place, Roger D. Stone and Claudia D'Andrea provide a clearly written and energizing tour of global efforts to empower community-based forest stewards. Along the way, they show the fundamental importance of tropical forest ecosystems and deepen our sense of urgency to save them for the benefit of billions of rural people in tropical and subtropical regions as well as for countless species of plants and animals. In their travels to research this book, the authors saw many remarkable examples of how proficient even the poorest local people can be in stabilizing and recovering formerly destitute forests. With engagingly written case studies from Thailand's Golden Triangle to Mindanao in the Philippines, from Indonesia, India, and Africa to Brazil, Mexico, and Central America, they introduce us to the communities and the individuals, the governments, the loggers, the agencies, and the local groups who vie for forest resources. Contrasting community-based efforts and traditional forest management with government and donor efforts, they discuss the many reasons why international institutions and national governments have been unable and unwilling to stem the accelerating loss of tropical forestland. This book argues we are paying a terrible price--politically, economically, and environmentally--for allowing tropical forests to be stripped. Community-based forestry is no panacea, but this book clearly shows its effectiveness as a management technique.   [brief]
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Title: In the midst of life: affect and ideation in the world of the Tolai
Author: Epstein, A. L. (Arnold Leonard)
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Anthropology | Asian Studies | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: The Tolai are among the most distinctive of Papua New Guinea's indigenous peoples. For all their success in the pursuit of modernity, the Tolai remain traditional in their attitudes toward death, the cultural elaboration of which colors almost every aspect of their existence.In his new book, A. L. Epstein develops an emotional profile of the Tolai, contending that societies are distinguished as much by the shape of their emotional life as they are by their social arrangements and cultural styles. Epstein describes a wide range of mourning ceremonies and other more and less public occasions. By investigating not only the words that stand for emotions but also the way affect enters into and informs people's conduct, he charts a new course for ethnography that seeks to integrate the study of the emotions into anthropological analysis.   [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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