General

Tango and the Dancing Body in Istanbul explores the expansion of social Argentine tango dancing among Muslim actors in Turkey, pioneered in Istanbul despite the conservative rule of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) and Tayyip Erdogan.In this book,...

The first account of one of the world's most pressing humanitarian catastrophes.This eye-opening book reveals how China has used the US-led Global War on Terror as cover for its increasingly brutal suppression of the Uyghur people. China's actions, it...

Reveals the change in Western man's conception and acceptance of death as evidenced in customs, literature, and art since medieval times.About the AuthorPhilippe Aries (1914-1984) was a French historian best known for his book Centuries of Childhood, the...

From the Callanish stones and the great ritual monuments of the Neolithic, the broch towers and the wheelhouses of the Iron Age, through to the arrival of the Norse and the Lords of the Isles, this book explores the history of human settlement and...

There had always been music along the banks of the Congo River-lutes and drums, the myriad instruments handed down from ancestors. But when Joseph Kabasele and his African Jazz went chop for chop with O.K. Jazz and Bantous de la Capitale, music in Africa...

Social anthropology was at the forefront of debates about culture, society, and economic development in the British Empire. This book explores the discipline's rise in the interwar period, crisis amid decolonization, and ironic reemergence in the postwar...

The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, which was unknown to the Western world until its first publication in 1954, speaks to the quintessence of the Supreme Path, or Mahayana, and fully reveals the yogic method of attaining Enlightenment. Such...

Since its founding in 1964, the United Republic of Tanzania has used music, dance, and other cultural productions as ways of imagining and legitimizing the new nation. Focusing on the politics surrounding Swahili musical performance, Kelly Askew...

The theme of reflexivity has come to be central to social analysis. In this book three prominent social thinkers discuss the implications of "reflexive modernization" for social and cultural theory today. Ulrich Beck's vision of the "risk society" has...

Western philosophy has long held scientific rationalism in a place of honour. Reason, that particularly exalted human quality, has become steadily distanced from the metaphysical aspects of existence, such as spirit, faith, and intuition.In Tsawalk,...

Mainstream science has long dismissed astrology as a form of primitive superstition, despite or perhaps even because of its huge popular interest. From daily horoscopes to in-depth and personalized star forecasts, astrology, for many, plays a crucial...

There was a time when humanity looked in the mirror and saw something precious, worth protecting and fighting for--indeed, worth liberating. But now we are beset on all sides by propaganda promoting a radically different viewpoint. According to this...

Haitian Vodou breaks away from European and American heuristic models for understanding a religio-philosophical system such as Vodou in order to form new approaches with an African ethos. The contributors to this volume, all Haitians, examine the...

The migration crisis of recent years has elicited a double response: on the one hand, many states have responded by tightening border controls, in an attempt to restrict population movements, while on the other hand many citizens have responded by...

The extraordinary sixty-thousand-year history of how the Pacific islands were settled. 'Takes readers on a narrative odyssey' Wall Street Journal, Books of the Year 'Highlights a dizzying burst of new research' The Economist 'A refreshing...

"The book is clearly written for the general reader and includes many descriptions of trance experiences. It may serve as a good introduction to the nature and appeal of the shamanic revival in modern Western cultures." -Theological Book Review" . . . a...

In "Nightwork", Anne Allison opens a window onto Japanese corporate culture and gender identities. Allison performed the ritualized tasks of a hostess in one of Tokyo's many "hostess clubs": pouring drinks, lighting cigarettes, and making flattering or...

This book takes what is often referred to as the "supernatural" to be normal natural phenomena that are closely linked to the neurobiology of the human species. Reflecting the neurocultural and biocultural perspective, the chapters cover phenomena such...

Books, audiotapes, and classes about yoga are today as familiar as they are widespread, but we in the West have only recently become engaged in the meditative doctrines of the East--only in the last 70 or 80 years, in fact. In the early part of the 20th...

Traversing visible and invisible realms, A Time of Lost Gods attends to profound rereadings of politics, religion, and madness in the cosmic accounts of spirit mediumship. Drawing on research across a temple, a psychiatric unit, and the home altars of...

Learn to document the technology that makes the world go Technical Writing For Dummies is a master class on how to build a career writing user manuals, e-learning, streaming, simulations, and more. It even zooms into the metaverse. Whether you're new to...

Praise for the first edition:'No one seriously interested in youth mass culture or style can afford to ignore this work.' - Stanley Cohen, The Times Higher Education Supplement 'The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies deserves our gratitude for...

Terry Eagleton's book, in this vital new series from Blackwell, focuses on discriminating different meanings of culture, as a way of introducing to the general reader the contemporary debates around it.About the AuthorTerry Eagleton is Professor of...

Kenneth Burke's innovative use of dramatism and dialectical method have made him a powerful critical force in an extraordinary variety of disciplines-education, philosophy, history, psychology, religion, and others. While most widely acclaimed as a...

In Territories of Difference, Arturo Escobar, author of the widely debated book Encountering Development, analyzes the politics of difference enacted by specific place-based ethnic and environmental movements in the context of neoliberal globalization...

Coinage - it is one of the most successful and consistent technologies ever invented. Nothing else we still use in everyday life has a history quite like it. Look around at all the things that would bewilder a Greek, Roman, or Renaissance ancestor; then,...

The authors argue in this book that social theory can usefully be conceived in terms of four broad paradigms, based upon different sets of meta-theoretical assumptions with regard to the nature of social science and the nature of society. The four...

For the majority of Americans, hard times have long been a way of life. Some work multiple low-wage jobs, others face the squeeze of stagnant wages and rising costs of living. Sociologist Celine-Marie Pascale talked with people across Appalachia, at the...

An anthropologist looks at our modern world - and shows how we can build a better, more connected one Increasingly, we are coming to see difference, whether in the form of conflicting values or growing ethnic diversity, as an existential threat...

"Brute." "Cockroach." "Lice." "Vermin." People often regard members of their own kind as less than human, and use terms like these for those whom they wish to harm, enslave, or exterminate. Dehumanization has made atrocities like the Holocaust, the...

This book is an introduction to theory in archaeology - but with a difference. Archaeological Situations avoids talking about theory as if it was something you apply but rather as something embedded in archaeological practice from the start.Rather than...

With material on changing occupational structures and business enterprises of the future, together with questions, case study and project material at the end of each chapter, Sociology for Business will be the most comprehensive and well organized book...

Since the late 1980s the dominant theory of human origins has been that a 'cognitive revolution' (C.50,000 years ago) led to the advent of our species, Homo sapiens. As a result of this revolution our species spread and eventually replaced all existing...

The Elephant Man is a 138-page softcover book whose first edition inspired the movie and the Tony Award-winning play by the same name. This fascinating story, which has touched the hearts of readers throughout the world for over a century, is now...

Living Color is the first book to investigate the social history of skin color from prehistory to the present, showing how our body's most visible feature influences our social interactions in profound and complex ways. Nina Jablonski begins this...

*Part of the 5-Volume Set 2022 Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal Winner: Ecology & Environment and Special Honors as Best of Anthology Volume 5 of the Kinship series revolves around the question of practice: What are the practical, everyday, and lifelong...

Highly innovative and theoretically incisive, Two Lenins is the first book-length anthropological examination of how social reality can be organized around different yet concurrent ideas of time. Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov grounds his theoretical exploration...

In this book, France's leading medical anthropologist takes on one of the most tragic stories of the global AIDS crisis - the failure of the ANC government to stem the tide of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Didier Fassin traces the deep roots of the...

This volume assumes no prior knowledge of Sociology. For students who have never studied Sociology before, it will give an idea of what to expect. For students already studying Sociology at school or college, it will provide a concise but comprehensive...

Nearly half of the world's eight million Palestinians are registered refugees, having faced partition and exile. Landscape of Hope and Despair examines this refugee experience in Lebanon through the medium of spatial practices and identity, set against...