A selection of books published by members of department
Action Research
Davydd J. Greenwood (Editor)
This book includes theoretical and historical overviews of action research, reflections on the writing process, narratives about the design and difficult internal processes of ACRES, and a selection of the participants’ writings.
Bodies, Politics, and African Healing
Stacey Langwick
This ethnography investigates the practices of healers in Tanzania who confront the most intractable illnesses in the region, including AIDS and malaria. Transcending the dualisms between tradition and science, culture and nature, belief and knowledge, Langwick tells a new story about the materiality of healing and postcolonial politics.
Cage of Freedom
Andrew C. Willford
Andrew C. Willford shows how contemporary Tamil Hindu subjectivity in Malaysia has a distinct historical trajectory, and argues that the figure of the “Indian” (Tamil) is one of the missing keys in understanding a broader pattern of ethnic relations and nationalism in this country.
Callaloo or Tossed Salad?
Viranjini Munasinghe
Callaloo or Tossed Salad? is a historical and ethnographic case study of the politics of cultural struggle between two traditionally subordinate ancestral groups in Trinidad, those claiming African and Indian descent. Viranjini Munasinghe argues that East Indians in Trinidad seek to become a legitimate part of the nation by redefining what it means to be Trinidadian, not by changing what it means to be Indian.
Celebrating a Century of the American Anthropological Association
Frederic W. Gleach (Editor)
This volume contains the memorable stories of the seventy-seven men and women who have led the AAA during the past century, cumulatively reflecting the trends in interpretive thought and fieldwork methodology that have emerged during the past ten decades.
Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge
Annelise Riles (Editor)
Capping off a generation of reflection and critique about the promises and pitfalls of ethnographic methods, the contributors explore how ethnographers conceive, grasp, appreciate, and see patterns, demonstrating that the core of the ethnographic method now lies in the way ethnographers respond to, and increasingly share the professional passions and problems of, their subjects.
Finding Cholita
Billie Jean Isbell
Finding Cholita is a fictionalized ethnography of the Ayacucho region of Peru covering a thirty-year period beginning in the 1970s. It is a story of human tragedy resulting from the region's long history of discrimination, class oppression, and the rise and fall of the communist organization Shining Path.
If Each Come Halfway
Kathryn S. March
March shows the process by which she and Tamang women reached across their cultural differences to find common ground. March allows the women's own words to paint a vivid portrait of their highland home. Each book includes a CD of traditional songs not recorded elsewhere.
Introduction to Action Research
Davydd J. Greenwood
Focusing on how it is possible to combine practical problem solving with generating new theoretical insights, authors Davydd J. Greenwood and Morten Levin combine a thorough discussion of the epistemological foundations of action research with a broad overview of major contemporary trends in the field.
![[Knowing Nature]](/departments/anthro/manage/images/9780226301419.jpeg)
Knowing Nature: Conversations at the Intersection of Political Ecology and Science Studies
Paul Nadasdy
This edited collection of essays brings together political ecologists and science studies scholars to showcase how this intellectual mingling creates a lively and more robust ecological framework for the study of environmental politics.
Medicalizing Ethnicity
Vilma Santiago-Irizarry
Medicalizing Ethnicity shows how commendable intentions can produce unintended consequences. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in three bilingual, bicultural psychiatric programs for Latino patients New York City, Santiago-Irizarry shows how the introduction of "cultural sensitivity" led doctors to construct essentialized, composite versions of Latino ethnicity in their drive to treat mental illness with sensitivity.
Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia
Frederic W. Gleach
Frederic W. Gleach offers the most balanced and complete accounting of the early years of the Jamestown colony to date. When English colonists established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown in 1607, they confronted a powerful and growing Native chiefdom consisting of over thirty tribes under one paramount chief, Powhatan. For the next half-century, a portion of the Middle Atlantic coastal plain became a charged and often violent meeting ground between two very different worlds.
Social Zooarchaeology: Humans and Animals in Prehistory
Nerissa Russell
Rather than focusing on the role of animals in the human diet and subsistence economy, Russell uses evidence derived from not zooarchaeology, ethnography, history and classical studies, to explore the range of human-animal relationships in early societies.
The Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies
Adam T. Smith
This volume provides the first encompassing report on the ongoing studies of Project ArAGATS, detailing the general context of contemporary archaeological research in the South Caucasus as well as the specific context of our regional investigations in the Tsaghkahovit Plain of central Armenia. The book opens with detailed examinations of the history of archaeology in the South Caucasus, the theoretical problems that currently orient archaeological research, and a comprehensive reevaluation of the material bases for regional chronology and periodization.
The Method of Hope
Hirokazu Miyazaki
The Method of Hope examines the relationship between hope and knowledge by investigating how hope is produced in various forms of knowledge—Fijian, philosophical, anthropological. The book discusses the hope entailed in a wide range of Fijian knowledge practices such as archival research, gift giving, Christian church rituals, and business practices, and compares it with the concept of hope in the work of philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and Richard Rorty.
The Network Inside Out
Annelise Riles
"Networks" and other artifacts of institutional life, such as documents, funding proposals, newsletters, and organizational charts, are such ubiquitous aspects of the information age that they go unnoticed to most observers of late modern society. In this new kind of work in the ethnography of legality, Annelise Riles takes a sophisticated theoretical approach to the aesthetics of such artifacts by analyzing the experiences of a group of Fijian bureaucrats and activists preparing for and participating in the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.
The Seneca Restoration, 1715-1754: An Iroquois Local Political Economy
Kurt A. Jordan
Combining archaeological and documentary data, this book assesses Seneca Iroquois autonomy and sustainability in an era of intense colonial pressures. Jordan reconstructs Seneca community life in detail, demonstrating that many developments scholars formerly interpreted as evidence for cultural decline were instead beneficial innovations that lessened the burdens of everyday labor.
The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon, The Death of Teddy's Bear, and the Sovereign Exception of Guantánamo
Magnus Fiskesjö
Each Thanksgiving, the president of the United States symbolically pardons one turkey from the fate of serving as a holiday dinner. In this pamphlet, anthropologist Magnus Fiskesjö uncovers the hidden horrors of such rituals connected with the power of pardon, from the annual turkey to the pardoning of the original Teddy Bear. It is through these ritualized and perpetually remembered acts of mercy, Fiskesjö contends, that we might come to understand the exceptional—and troubling—status of the "War on Terror" prisoners being held by the United States at Guantánamo Bay.
The World of the Ancient Maya
John S. Henderson
The World of the Ancient Maya has is as an extraordinarily accomplished—comprehensive, elegantly written, and concise—introduction to the rich Maya culture.
They Make Themselves
Jane Fajans
In this work, Jane Fajans argues that the Baining of Papua New Guinea define themselves not through intricate cosmologies or social networks, but through the meanings generated by their own productive and reproductive work.
Unrewarding Wealth
Davydd J. Greenwood
Davydd Greenwood carefully examines the relationships between workers of economic gain and the institutional and cultural aspects of human behaviour in a Spanish Basque town where the farmers changed their subsistence farms into highly profitable commercial enterprises in response to demand created by tourism and industrialisation.