Bøger i Anthropology, Culture and Society serien

Youth and the State in Hungary takes as its focus the nature of Hungary's youth movements over the last seventy years. In a detailed ethnographic study, Laszlo Kurti examines the lives of youth workers in the Csepel district of Budapest in the context of the wider political and economic transformations witnessed during the twentieth century.*BR**BR*Kurti follows State-Youth relations from the inter-war capitalism that made peasants into workers, through the post war state socialism - 'Stalinism' and after - to the reintroduction of capitalism in 1990. This time frame allows an exploration of the transformations and dilemmas of youth, class, gender and ethnicity as they develop across time. *BR**BR*In the course of this study two main themes emerge: the reproduction of class in youth culture across shifting socio-economic conditions; and the mobilisation of youth movements in resistance to the state. Youth and the State in Hungary challenges the orthodox equation of youth and resistance by arguing that youth mobilisation has, in fact, served the interests of the state. Nevertheless there remains a genuine space for resistance and contestation in the reproduction of youth culture.

***Winner of the Eileen Basker Prize and the Wellcome Medal for Anthropology as Applied to Medical Problems****BR**BR*On the Game is an ethnographic account of prostitutes and prostitution. Sophie Day has followed the lives of individual women over fifteen years, and her book details their attempts to manage their lives against a backdrop of social disapproval. The period was one of substantial change within the sex industry.*BR**BR*Through the lens of public health, economics, criminalisation and human rights, Day explores how individual sex workers live, in public and in private. This offers a unique perspective on contemporary capitalist society that will be of interest both to a broad range of social scientists.*BR**BR*The author brings a unique perspective to her work -- as both an anthropologist and the founder of the renowned Praed Street Project, set up in 1986, as a referral and support centre for London prostitutes.

The Izhavas are an ex-untouchable community in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Politically and economically weak, stigmatised as 'toddy tappers' and 'devil dancers', and considered unapproachable by clean caste Hindus, a century ago Izhavas were associated with other manual-labouring untouchable castes. In recent decades they have sought to improve their position by accumulating economic, symbolic and cultural capital through employment, religion, politics, migration, marriage, education and have tried to assert their right to mobility, often in the face of opposition from their high status Christian and Nayar neighbours. *BR**BR*This study examines how Izhavas, through repudiation of their nineteenth-century identity and search for mobility, have come into complex relationships with modernity, colonialism and globalisation. Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella highlight the complexities and contradictions of modern identity, both locally and globally. The authors' approach builds upon and goes beyond a south Asian focus, showing how the Izhavas represent the rise of formerly stigmatised groups who remain at the same time trapped by stereotype and material disadvantage. Absolute mobility, they argue, has not led to relative mobility within a society which remains stratified and prone to new forms of social exclusion.

Political movements across the world have such diverse characteristics and aims that it is difficult to examine them as a collective group. Movements that are class-based are usually portrayed as formed by economic categories of people driven by material interests. By contrast the study of ethnic or nationalist movements has concentrated on the complexities of identity formation within culturally defined groups driven by strong passions. *BR**BR*Jeff Pratt argues for the need to set up a new analytical framework that extends the study of identity formation, and the ethnographic analysis of economic and social processes, to all political movements. Setting up a new analytical framework, he argues that political processes involve two linked components: a 'discourse' (an identity narrative which positions us within social history) and a 'movement' (the process of organisation whereby local social divisions are transformed by their incorporation into a wider movement). *BR**BR*He illustrates his arguments with a vivid mix of case studies from across the last century including Basque nationalism, Andalusian anarchism, Italian communism, the break-up of Yugoslavia, to the 'newer' political movements in Europe, in French Occitania and the Italian Lega Nord.

In this study of prostitution, Lorraine Nencel interrogates the ways in which sexuality, gender and illicit behaviour have been constructed (and deconstructed) over the years. *BR**BR*This is a richly detailed ethnographic account that interweaves narrative with theory. Nencel deals with issues such as AIDS, machismo and the regulation of the sex trade. She analyses the question of whether sex workers are victims or agents of control. In challenging conventional approaches to the study of sex workers and prostitution, Nencel has produced an original and provocative new study that is likely to provoke further discussion and debate.

This is an extraordinary account of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the modern world. A powerful ethnographic study of witch-hunting in 1980s South Africa - a period of rapid social change - this book demonstrates the extent to which witchcraft must be seen, not as a residue of 'traditional' culture but as part of a complex social drama which is deeply embedded in contemporary political and economic processes. *BR**BR*Isak Niehaus provides the context for this fascinating study of witchcraft practices. He shows how witchcraft was politicised against the backdrop of the apartheid state, the liberation struggle and the establishment of the first post-apartheid regime, which all affected conceptions of witchcraft. Niehaus demonstrates how the ANC and other political groups used witchcraft beliefs to further their own agenda. He explores the increasingly conservative role of the chiefs and the Christian church. In the process, he reveals the fraught nature of intergenerational and gender relations. *BR**BR*The result is a truly insightful and theoretically engaged account of a much-studied but frequently misunderstood practice.

Since the controversial scientific race theories of the 1930s, anthropologists have generally avoided directly addressing the issue of race, viewing it as a social construct. Challenging this tradition, Peter Wade proposes that anthropologists can in fact play an important role in the study of race.*BR**BR*Wade is critical of contemporary theoretical studies of race formulated within the contexts of colonial history, sociology and cultural studies. Instead he argues for a new direction; one which anthropology is well placed to explore. Taking the study of race beyond Western notions of the individual, Wade argues for new paradigms in social science, in particular in the development of connections between race, sex and gender. An understanding of these issues within an anthropological context, he contends, is vital for defining personhood and identity. *BR**BR*Race is often defined by its reference to biology, 'blood,' genes, nature or essence. Yet these concepts are often left unexamined. Integrating material from the history of science, science studies, and anthropological studies of kinship and new reproductive technologies, as well as from studies of race, Peter Wade explores the meaning of such terms and interrogates the relationship between nature and culture in ideas about race.

This study of the Tamil diaspora is one of the first full ethnographic studies of a postcolonial migrant community, and a major contribution to the study of migration, globalisation, identity politics and 'long distance' nationalism from an anthropological perspective.*BR**BR*Fuglerud's study traces the history of Tamil migration, from the arrival of the economic migrants of the 1960s to the 'asylum seekers' of the mid 1980s onwards. He draws unnerving parallels between the status of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka, as a beleaguered and persecuted minority waging a war of liberation, and as a displaced, marginalised and excluded refugee community. *BR**BR*Fuglerud argues that, in the process of displacement, particular aspects of Tamil culture - marriage, dowry, chastity and ritual - acquire a heightened significance. He examines the contradictions and inconsistencies which characterise the Tamil refugee communities, and the success of revolutionary Tamil nationalism in exile, highlighting the transnational nature of identity politics.

In the first major study of the Protestant Loyalist Orange Order in Northern Ireland, Dominic Bryan provides a detailed ethnographic and historical study of Orange Order parades. *BR**BR*He looks at the development of the parades, the history of disputes over the parades, the structure and politics of the Orange Order, the organisation of loyalist bands, the role of social class in Unionist politics - and the anthropology of ritual itself.

These are the debates over indigenous knowledge

Explores the contemporary repercussions of the Macedonian Question, which has long been at the heart of Balkan politics.

A comparative ethnography of the responses on the ground to austerity policies in Southern Europe

A non-Eurocentric, interdisciplinary collection arguing that boundaries and borders are best understood as overlapping categories.

A non-Eurocentric, interdisciplinary collection arguing that boundaries and borders are best understood as overlapping categories.

A global anthropology of technology and politics, from WikiLeaks to Podemos.

An innovative perspective on the relationship between religion, civil society and development through the prism of faith-based NGOs in West Africa

An edited collection which contains unusual and global case studies providing a Marxist analysis of the commodification of life

A pioneering analysis of doing ethnographic fieldwork in different types of complex organisations.

A collection of anthropological studies which reveals the vast, overwhelming presence of security systems across modern Europe.

A pioneering contribution to the emergent anthropology of human security that brings classic concerns of the field into the 21st century.

Chomsky, Zizek, Sontag and other scholars show how governments exploit people's fear for political gain

Chomsky, Zizek, Sontag and other scholars show how governments exploit people's fear for political gain

The book explores what characterises a 'good life' and how this idea has been affected by globalisation and neoliberalism.

Examines the influence of McCarthyism and the CIA on anthropology in the cold war era.

Why the concept of individuality is important to people

Why the concept of individuality is important to people

What is the state and how can we best study it?

What is the state and how can we best study it?

A critical account of the politics of aid-giving.

A critical account of the politics of aid-giving.