Product Description: The tradition of intensive fieldwork by a single anthropologist in one area has been challenged by new emphasis on studying historical patterns, wider regions, and global networks. Some anthropologists have started their careers from the new vantage point, amidst a chorus of claims for innovative methodologies...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In its attempt to squash the influence of animism and pantheism or polytheism and to promote the idea of the One and Only Absolute God, Islam has come up against a tendency within itself to incorporate certain local religious traditions and practices...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

The line between what is regarded by people as "traditional" and "modern" is constantly being altered by new configurations of power. These essays examine the ways in which such changes are both communicated and created through cultural performances in diverse ethnographic settings. Examples are drawn from a wide range of forms and expressions: divinatory sequences, spirit possession rites, state ceremonials, village feasts, pilgrimages, language-use and craft specialisms. It was Abner Cohen, to whom this volume is dedicated, who first suggested that a dialectical relationship existed between power and symbolism. This concept, as developed in his seminal work, has since become a growing area of study as reflected in this important collection. By questioning some of the directions, the authors make a major interdisciplinary contribution to the study of cultural performance as a key factor in power relationships. The principal stage is Africa, but comparative ethnographic data are drawn from Ireland, Italy, South Asia, and the United Kingdom. David Parkin is Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

Product Description: This well-known, theoretically informed ethnography continues to offer a valuable examination of economic development among the Giriama of Kenya. In a society in which an ideal of contingent and conspicuous expenditure is followed by all, individual enterprising farmers struggle with the dilemma of subscribing to the common custom while satisfying their own goals of expanding and diversifying their economic enterprises...read more

Product Description: Taking a unique anthropological apprach, Bush Base: Forest Farm explores the management of resources in third would development programmes. The contributors, all distinguished anthropologists with practical experience of development projects, focus on the role of human cultural imagination in the use of environmental resources...read more