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In writings about travel, the Balkans appear most often as a place travelled to. Western accounts of the Balkans revel in the different and the exotic, the violent and the primitive traits that serve (according to many commentators) as a foil to self-congratulatory defi nitions of the West as modern, progressive and rational.

Places the practices of racism at the center of analysis of so-called post-racist or multi-cultural nation-states. This volume treats racism and its related concepts of race, identity, culture, and naturalizing symbols of blood to highlight the manner in which governing institutions use nationalist precepts to create "races."

Following the detection of the first HIV infections in the early 1980s, by the 1990s Thailand was routinely depicted as having the world's fastest moving HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, by the early 2000's the bulk of scholarly and medical AIDS literature portrayed the epidemic as being largely under control, and claimed that Thai AIDS prevention efforts during the 1990s had been successful. Based on long-term ethnographic research conducted in Northern Thailand this book makes an in-depth study of the social construction of Thailand's HIV/AIDS epidemic over this period. In addition to his own field research the author draws on an extensive corpus of English and Thai language social science and medical HIV/AIDS literature to examine the modeling of Thailand's AIDS epidemic, and addresses concepts and issues such as risk groups, risk behaviour, alcohol use, gender and class, masculinity, the scapegoating of female prostitutes and men in the underclass, the reporting of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Thailand's indigenous Thai language media, and sexual activity amongst Thai youth. The analysis demonstrates the contribution of anthropology as an interpretative social science, and the use of anthropological theory and research methods, to finding alternative ways of framing the problems of Thai AIDS and of posing new questions that will lead to more effective points of intervention. It emphasises the necessity for critically reflexive approaches that question the 'taken for granted' and demonstrates how qualitative research techniques guided by social theory have the potential to take account of local meanings in complex social contexts where traditional values and cultural practices are rapidly transforming due to economic and social change. The book offers a sustained and powerful criticism of the limitations of the normative model of the Thai AIDS epidemic and, in its aim of promoting critically reflexive AIDS research techniques in order to produce a better understanding of issues 'on the ground' and hence better health policy and more effective AIDS interventions, speaks not only to the Thai AIDS epidemic but to AIDS epidemics throughout Southeast Asia and elsewhere. This is the only English language study of Thailand's HIV/AIDS epidemic to draw on long-term qualitative research in Northern Thailand as well as on a broad range of Thai (and some Khmer language) materials. Its contextualised and subtly nuanced analysis of the AIDS epidemic and of the impact of AIDS control initiatives, in concert with the theoretical and methodological contributions it makes to AIDS research and policy and behavioural interventions, makes it a timely publication of vital interest to scholars in the social sciences, as well as to the members of non-governmental organisations and international organisations working in the HIV/AIDS, health and development fields.

Through an examination of election campaign propaganda and various public relations campaigns, reflecting new electioneering techniques borrowed from the United States, this work explores how conservative political and economic groups sought to construct and sell a political meaning of the Social Market Economy and the Economic Miracle in West Germany during the 1950s.The political meaning of economics contributed to conservative electoral success, constructed a new belief in the free market economy within West German society, and provided legitimacy and political stability for the new Federal Republic of Germany.

The myriad debates on restitution and memory, which have been going on in Europe for decades, indicate that World War II never ended, paradoxically re-invoked by the events of 1989/90 and the expansion of Europe to the east in the aftermath of the collapse of communism and economic globalization. This book offers an assessment of this problem.

Presents the life-worlds and personal experiences of workers and employees in three enterprises in East Berlin at the moment of political and economic upheaval. This book sets out in 1989 at the moment of the fall of the Berlin Wall, witnessing the confrontations with the market economy and examining the reinterpretations of the socialist past.

There has been growing concern about "failed states", and since the massacre of the Royal family in Nepal in 2001, increasing media attention has focused on the decline of the state and the rise of the Maoist rebels. This book explores the complex relationship between a modernizing, developmentalist state and the people it professes to represent.

Looks at the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America. This book contains case studies, which analyse the formation of a public sphere, the visual politics of avant-garde art, the impact of mass society on political iconography, and the consolidation and crisis of territory as a key icon of the state.

Hitler, a failed painter, had retained his youthful passion for art, architecture, and Wagnerian music throughout his life. This book explores Hitler and his followers belief that art and culture were expressions of race, and that "Aryans" alone were capable of creating true art and preserving true German culture.

Providing a comprehensive spectrum of case studies in relevant contexts, this volume raises the issue of the rehabilitation of vision and contextualizes vision in the contemporary debate on the construction of local knowledge versus the hegemony of the socio-technical network. It gives practical examples that are useful to undergraduate students.

Using case studies, focusing on nation and nationalism, military and war, colonialism, politics and protest, class and citizenship, religion, Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, the Holocaust, and the body and sexuality, this work demonstrates the power of the gender perspective to challenge existing interpretations and rewrite mainstream arguments.

Offers fresh perspectives on key debates surrounding Germany's descent into and emergence from the Nazi catastrophe. This book explores relations between society, economy and international policy, and provides fresh insights into the complex continuities and discontinuities of modern German history.

Explores a diversity of circumstances and motives towards contemporary mobility, ranging from expatriates to peripatetic professionals to middle class migrants in search of extended educational and career opportunities to people seeking self-development through travel.

Addresses questions of how to deal with internal issues of social inequality and cultural diversity and, at the same time, how to build a shared civility among their different national, ethnic, religious and social groups.

Some semi-public, exclusive male settings, most noticeably in the military, encourage the production of intimacy and desire. Yet whereas in most instances this desire is displaced through humor and aggressive gestures, it becomes acknowledged and outright declared once associated with sites of heroic death. In his provocative study of interrelations between friendship in everyday life and national sentiments in Israel, the author follows selected stories of friendship ranging over early childhood, school, the workplace, and some unique war experiences. He explores the symbolism of friendship in rituals for the fallen soldiers, the commemoration of Prime Minister Yzhak Rabin, and the national infatuation with recovering bodies of missing soldiers. He concludes that the Israeli case offers an extreme instance of a much broader cultural phenomenon: declaring the friendship for the dead epitomizes the political "e;blood pact"e; between men, taking precedence over the traditional blood ties of kinship and heterosexual unions. The book underscores nationalism as a homosocial-based emotion of commemorative desire.

By the early twenty-first century neo-nationalist forces have established themselves in a number of the world's large regions and subcontinents. Prompted by a near-simultaneous rise to political influence of apparently similar parties across Western Europe, this collection offers a range of European case studies with selected global examples.

Indigenous museums and cultural centres have sprung up across the developing world, and particularly in the Southwest Pacific. This book examines how museums have evolved particularly in the non-western world to incorporate the present and the future in the display of culture.

In neo-liberal political and economic climate, it is suggested that a state stands in opposition to an autonomous civil society. This book offers insights into the dynamics of state and civil society relations, against trends of undermining the importance of the welfare state, and presents autonomous civic participation as the only way forward.

Although Spain is an important member of the EU, relatively little is known about its economy and its interrelationship with political forces. This book analyzes its ever-changing relationship throughout the 20th century with its various upheavals, such as the crisis of the democratic republic and the civil war in the 1930s.

Since the late nineteen sixties, transnational adoption has emerged as a global phenomenon. Due to a sharp decline in infants being made available for adoption locally, involuntarily childless couples in Western Europe and North America who wish to create a family, have to look to look to countries in the poor South and Eastern Europe. The purpose of this book is to locate transnational adoption within a broad context of contemporary Western life, especially values concerning family, children and meaningful relatedness, and to explore the many ambiguities and paradoxes that the practice entails. Based on empirical research from Norway, the author identifies three main themes for analysis: Firstly, by focusing on the perceived relationship between biology and sociality, she examines how notions of child, childhood and significant relatedness vary across time and space. She argues that through a process of kinning, persons are made into kin. In the case of adoption, kinning overcomes a dominant cultural emphasis placed upon biological connectedness. Secondly, it is a study of the rise of expert knowledge in the understanding of 'the best interest of the child', and how the part played by the 'psycho.technocrats' effects national and international policy and practice of transnational adoption. Thirdly, it shows how transnational adoption both depends upon and helps to foster the globalisation of Western rationality and morality. The book is an original contribution to the anthropological study of kinship and globalisation.

Considers the cultural power of magic, from early Christianity and the ancient Mediterranean to the film career of Buffalo Bill, focusing on topics such as Surrealism, France in the classical age, alchemy, and American fundamentalism. This book ranges from theory to practice, from demonology to exoticism, and from the magic of memory to stage.

Explores the reasons behind the introduction of part-time work in West Germany and shows how it took root in factories, government authorities and offices. This book covers the period from early 1950s, a time of optimism during the first postwar economic upswing, to 1969, the culmination of the legislative institutionalization of part-time work.

The configurations of global, imperial, and state power relate to formations of oligarchic control. The nation-state, as the essays in this forum show, gives way to a political-economic formation that has multiple state-like effects, and is able to act in ways systemic with deterritorializing global processes.

Too often, anthropological accounts of ritual leave readers with the impression that rituals are "meaningful events." But what happens when rituals fail? Drawing on research in the anthropology of Christianity from around the globe, this book suggests that in order to analyze meaning productively, we need to consider its limits.

A tribute to Jean-Paul Sartre, this volume aims to enhance Sartre scholarship in the English-speaking world. It reflects the depth of Sartre's wide-ranging engagement with the political and cultural issues of his time. It is useful for Sartre scholars, and those who have an interest in modern philosophy, politics, psychology, and literature.

On the surface, naming is simply a way to classify people and their environments. The premise of this study is that it is much more - a form of social control, a political activity, a key to identity maintenance and transformation. Governments legislate and regulate naming; people fight to take, keep, or change their names. A name change can indicate subjugation or liberation, depending on the circumstances. But it always signifies a change in power relations. Since the late 1970s, the author has looked at naming and renaming, cross-culturally and internationally, with particular attention to the effects of colonisation and liberation. The experience of Inuit in Canada is an example of both. Colonisation is only part of the Nunavut experience. Contrary to the dire predictions of cultural genocide theorists, Inuit culture - particularly traditional naming - has remained extremely strong, and is in the midst of a renaissance. Here is a ground-breaking study by the founder of the discipline of political onomastics.

Contrary to the negative assessments of the social order that have become prevalent in the media since 9/11, this collection of essays focuses on the enormous social creativity being invested as collective identities are reconfigured. It emphasizes on the reformulation of ethnic and gender relationships and identities in public life.

Using Nietzsche's categories of monumentalist, antiquarian, and critical history, this book examines the historical and theoretical contexts of the collapse of the GDR in 1989. It also looks at the positive and negative legacies of the GDR for the PDS (the successor party to the East German Communists).

Focusing on the growth of racism in large cities and urban areas, this volume represents views by scholars from around the world, who work in different social sciences. It shows that labour politics, cultural selectionism, separate education for minorities and majorities and other projects point in the direction of more exclusion and racism.

Migration and multiculturalism are hotly discussed in public debates across Europe. Whereas ethnographic research has begun to examine the Right in this context, the Left remains largely unexplored. This book provides fresh perspectives on how the contemporary Left "frames" these issues in practice and how such framing has changed.