Bøker i Routledge Studies in Anthropology-serien

From the study of crime in sociology or of human security in development studies, to concerns with environmental catastrophe in climate studies and trans-national terrorism in international relations, the growth of security as a matter of academic concern is deemed a sign of our times. But what is security from a cross-cultural perspective? What does it look like from the point of view, not only of those people deemed to be under threat, but also from that of those who are deemed to pose it? Focusing on the multiple and mutually imbricated notions of, and concerns with, time involved in security practices across the globe, this volume brings together a selected group of established and upcoming scholars who conduct ethnographic research in a broad ambit of securitized contexts ¿ from the experience of Palestinian detainees in Israel or forms of popular violence in Bolivia, to efforts to normalise social relations in post-conflict Yugoslavia and ways of imagining threat in contemporary protest movements in Europe ¿ to chart the temporalities of securitization in a multi-polar world.

This book offers a new anthropological understanding of the socio-cosmological and ontological characteristics of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, beyond established theories for Amazonia, the Andes and Mesoamerica. It focuses on a core region that has been largely neglected by comparative anthropology in recent decades.

Youth Culture and Identity in Northern Thailand examines how young people in urban Chiang Mai construct an identity at the intersection of global capitalism, state ideologies and local culture.It explores the impact of rapid urbanisation and modernisation on contemporary Thai youth.

Bringing about a creative dialogue between the anthropologist¿s own experience of magical consciousness and theoretical analysis, this book is a poly-vocal study in which the voices of the neurobiologist, anthropologist as anthropologist, anthropologist as native, and various spirit beings weave an alternative narrative displaying the process of magical thinking.

This volume offers a "southern," Pacific Ocean perspective on the topic of racial hybridity, exploring it through a series of case studies from around the Australo-Pacific region, a region unique as a result of its very particular colonial histories. Focusing on the interaction between "race" and culture, especially in terms of visibility and self-defined identity; and the particular characteristics of political, cultural and social formations in the countries of this region, the book explores the complexity of the lived mixed race experience, the structural forces of particular colonial and post-colonial environments and political regimes, and historical influences on contemporary identities and cultural expressions of mixed-ness.

This volume asks and addresses elusive ontological, epistemological, and methodological questions about meetings. What are meetings? What sort of knowledge, identities, and power relationships are produced, performed, communicated, and legitimized through meetings? How do-and how might-ethnographers study meetings as objects, and how might they best conduct research in meetings as particular elements of their field sites? Through contributions from an international group of ethnographers who have conducted "meeting ethnography" in diverse field sites, this volume offers both theoretical insight and methodological guidance into the study of this most ubiquitous ritual.

This book bridges the gap between recent philosophical discourses on the Other and the necessities of empirical research in cultural anthropology. It introduces the concept of a responsivity to the Other, developed by Bernhard Waldenfels, illustrating its fertility through contributions by eminent scholars from anthropology, psychiatry and literary studies.

After the Crisis: Anthropological Thought, Neoliberalism and the Aftermath offers a thought-provoking examination of the state of contemporary anthropology, identifying key issues that have confronted the discipline in recent years and linking them to neoliberalism, and suggesting how we might do things differently in the future. The first part of the volume considers how anthropology has come to resemble, as a result of the rise of postmodern and poststructural approaches in the field, key elements of neoliberalism and neoclassical economics by rejecting the idea of system in favour of individuals. It also investigates the effect of the economic crisis on funding and support for higher education and addresses the sense that anthropology has ''lost its way'', with uncertainty over the purpose and future of the discipline. The second part of the book explores how the discipline can overcome its difficulties and place itself on a firmer foundation, suggesting ways that we can productively combine the debates of the late twentieth century with a renewed sense that people live their lives not as individuals, but as enmeshed in webs of relationship and obligation.

This volume explores how mechanisms of postindustrial capitalism affect places and people in peripheral regions and de-industrializing cities. While studies of globalization tend to emphasize localities newly connected to global systems, this collection, in contrast, analyzes the disconnection of communities away from the market, presenting a range of ethnographic case studies that scrutinize the framework of this transformative process, analyzing new social formations that are emerging in the voids left behind by the de-industrialization, and introducing a discussion on the potential impacts of the current economic and ecological crises on the hyper-mobile model that has characterized this recent phase of global capitalism and spatially uneven development.

This volume explores cultural, social and economic connections between the Americas and the South Pacific. By approaching the Transpacific Americas as an assemblage or relational space, the book complicates the Euro-American distinction between "centre" and "rim," and provides a comprehensive understanding of recent dynamics and shifting relations across the Pacific.

This is the first collection of ethnographic studies that critiques diagnosis across multiple categories of disease and illness. Smith-Morris¿s Introduction repositions diagnosis within critical studies of global health. The authors question specific diagnoses (e.g., HIV, tuberculosis, and andropause) as well as the structural and epistemological factors behind a disease¿s naming and experience.

Drawing on a combination of perspectives from diverse fields, this volume offers an anthropological study of climate change and the ways in which people attempt to predict its local implications, showing how the processes of knowledge making among lay people and experts are not only comparable but also deeply entangled. Through analysis of predictive practices in a diversity of regions affected by climate change - including coastal India, the Cook Islands, Tibet, and the High Arctic, and various domains of scientific expertise and policy making such as ice core drilling, flood risk modelling, and coastal adaptation - the book shows how all attempts at modelling nature¿s course are deeply social, and how current research in "climate" contributes to a rethinking of nature as a multiplicity of modalities that impact social life.

This volume presents a global range of ethnographic case studies to explore the ways in which - in the context of the restructuring of industrial work, the ongoing financial crisis, and the surge in unemployment and precarious employment - local and global actors engage with complex social processes and devise ideological, political, and economic responses to them. It shows how the reorganization and re-signification of work, notably shifts in the perception and valorization of work, affect domestic and community arrangements and shape the conditions of life of workers and their families.

This interdisciplinary volume explores - through a focus on the Pan Pacific region and the global south - the politics of ethnography and ethnographic practices, including indigenous ethnography and ethnographic writing as cultural production in its own right.

Original empirical essays from across the globe demonstrate how the study of cancer promotes theoretical understandings of the politics and pragmatics of suffering, and offers insights into the meanings of survivorship, risk, charity and care in transnational contexts.

This book explores the global connections between Chilean landscapes and Northern consumers embodied by the Forest Stewardship Council logo, the green seal of approval for certified sustainably-produced "good wood." How do we decide what makes good forestry? What knowledges and values are expressed or silenced when "good" is defined with a market mechanism like certification? Henne''s ethnographic study documents the new forms of labor and the new expectations about sustainability and responsibility that certification generates, in the context of the competing ideas about how to manage a forest - or even what a forest is - that constitute forest certification in Chile. A critical analysis of certification''s practices helps understand the role of ethical trade initiatives in creating sustainable, survivable global futures.

Who exactly is in debt - and what is inside it? Authors from many disciplines come together in this volume to ask about the ways in which debt is shared out, and the constraints implied in it. The dimensions explored are not merely economic, but also political and symbolic - with special attention being paid to the gendered debt that burdens women.

Drawing on the case of HIV/AIDS in Thailand, this book examines how anthropological and other interpretative social science research has been utilized in modeling the AIDS epidemic, and in the design and implementation of interventions. It argues that much social science research has been complicit with the forces that generated the epidemic and with the social control agendas of the state, and that as such it has increased the weight of structural violence bearing upon the afflicted. The book also questions claims of Thai AIDS control success, arguing that these can only be made at the cost of excluding categories such as intravenous drug users, the incarcerated, and homosexuals, who continue to experience extraordinarily high levels of levels of HIV infection. Considered deviant and undeserving, these persons have deliberately been excluded from harm reduction programs. Overall, this work argues for the untapped potential of anthropological research in the health field, a confident anthropology rooted in ethnography and a critical reflexivity. Crucially, it argues that in context of interdisciplinary collaborations, anthropological research must refuse relegation to the status of an adjunct discipline, and must be free epistemologically and methodologically from the universalizing assumptions and practices of biomedicine.

Territoriality is a key concept in how we understand the interaction between governmentality and the ways in which different communites use and dwell upon the land. However, it is also an unexplored area of inquiry - certainly in terms of comparative ethnography scholarship. This volume addresses the concept of territoriality, providing a broad spectrum of ethnographic case studies of spatial governance, shedding light on different forms of spatial organization and on how modern states have interacted with traditional societies' ways of using and managing territory.

The Question of the Gift is the first collection of new interdisciplinary essays on the gift. Bringing together scholars from a variety of fields, including anthropology, literary criticism, economics, philosophy and classics, it provides new paradigms and poses new questions concerning the theory and practice of gift exchange. In addressing these questions, contributors not only challenge the conventions of their fields, but also combine ideas and methods from both the social sciences and humanities to forge innovative ways of confronting this universal phenomenon.

This collection offers the fruits of a stimulating workshop that sought to bridge the fraught relationship which sometimes continues between anthropologists and indigenous/native/aboriginal scholars, despite areas of overlapping interest. Participants from around the world share their views and opinions on subjects ranging from ideas for reconciliation, the question of what might constitute a universal "science," indigenous heritage, postcolonial museology, the boundaries of the term "indigeneity," different senses as ways of knowing, and the very issue of writing as a method of dissemination that divides and excludes readers from different backgrounds. This book represents a landmark step in the process of replacing bridges with more equal patterns of intercultural cooperation and communication.