Recent insights into the nature of representation and power relations have signaled an important shift in perspective on anthropology: from a fieldwork-based "science" of culture to an interpretive activity bound to the discursive and ideological process called "text-making." This collection of essays reflects the ongoing cross-fertilization between literary criticism and anthropology. Focusing on texts written or influenced by anthropologists between 1900 and 1945, the work relates current perspectives on anthropology's discursive nature to the literary period known as "Modernism.". The essays, each demonstrating anthropology's profound influence on this important cultural movement, are organized according to discourse type: from the comparativist text of Frazer, to the ethnographies of Boas, Benedict, Mead, and Hurston, and on to the surrealist experiments of the College de Sociologie. Meanwhile the book's orientation shifts from essays that approach anthropology from the vantage points of literariness and textual power to those that contemplate what bearing the junction of cultural theory and anthropology can have upon present and future social institutions. In addition to the editor, contributors include Vincent Crapanzano, Deborah Gordon, Richard Handler, Arnold Krupat, Francesco Loriggio, Michele Richman, Marty Roth, Marilyn Strathern, Robert Sullivan, John B. Vickery, and Steven Webster. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This comprehensive, engaging guide to applied research distills the expertise of the distinguished ethnographer and methodologist Pertti Pelto over his acclaimed 50-year career. Having written the first major text promoting mixed qualitative and quantitative methods in applied ethnography in the 1970s, Pelto now synthesizes decades of innovation, including examples from around the world that illustrate how specific methods yield immediate results for addressing social problems. Ideal for researchers, students, training programs, and technical assistance projects, this thorough text covers the key topics and skills required: gaining entry, recording and organizing field data, a host of specialized techniques, integrating qualitative and quantitative methods, building and training research teams, rapid assessment and focused ethnographic studies, short- and long-term ethnography, writing up results, non-Western perspectives on research, and more.

Product Description: This classic textbook, now in its fourth edition, offers anthropology students a succinct, clear, and balanced introduction to theoretical developments in the field. The key ideas of 25 major theorists are briefly described and—unique to this textbook—linked to the biographical and fieldwork experiences that helped shape their theories...read more

Product Description: Are reports of the death of conventional fieldwork in anthropology greatly exaggerated? This book takes a critical look at the latest developments and key issues in fieldwork. The nature of 'locality' itself is problematic for both research subjects and fieldworkers, on the grounds that it must now be maintained and represented in relation to widening (and fragmenting) social frames and networks...read more

Product Description: As "visiting strangers," anthropologists find themselves immersed in the essential mysteries of the ethnographic experience: How can an academic drop into a small Nigerian village or a Himalayan hillside and find friendship as well as information? How can people cross language and cultural barriers? Can even the best-intentioned anthropologist bridge the gap between humanistic science and true friendship? These questions outline a multifaceted quandary, but the beauty of ethnography is that it proves that in the field, friendships do form and deepen...read more

Product Description: Transgression is the stock in trade of a certain kind of anthropological sensibility that transforms fieldwork from strict social science to something more engaging. It builds on Koepping's idea that participation transforms perception and investigates how transgressive practices have triggered the re-theorization of conventional forms of thought and life...read more

This book explores major shifts and reorientations in the recent history of American Anthropology, reflecting the author's vision of what anthropology is and what it has the potential to become. The title phrase 'changing fields' can be read in two ways: One meaning refers to how, since the mid-1960s, the larger national and global social, intellectual, and political fields within which American anthropology is situated have profoundly changed. The second meaning refers to how, in response to these changing fields, the author, like many other anthropologists, changed the locations of his fieldwork along with his research problems and theoretical perspectives. The book engages three fundamental intellectual-political challenges that American anthropology is destined to confront (or at its peril, avoid): becoming more self-reflexive, achieving theoretical and methodological holism, and defense of universal human rights.

Since its founding in the nineteenth century, social anthropology has been seen as the study of exotic peoples in faraway places. But today more and more anthropologists are dedicating themselves not just to observing but to understanding and helping solve social problems wherever they occur—in international aid organizations, British TV studios, American hospitals, or racist enclaves in Eastern Europe, for example.In Exotic No More, an initiative of the Royal Anthropological Institute, some of today's most respected anthropologists demonstrate, in clear, unpretentious prose, the tremendous contributions that anthropology can make to contemporary society. They cover issues ranging from fundamentalism to forced migration, child labor to crack dealing, human rights to hunger, ethnicity to environmentalism, intellectual property rights to international capitalisms. But Exotic No More is more than a litany of gloom and doom; the essays also explore topics usually associated with leisure or "high" culture, including the media, visual arts, tourism, and music. Each author uses specific examples from their fieldwork to illustrate their discussions, and 62 photographs enliven the text.Throughout the book, the contributors highlight anthropology's commitment to taking people seriously on their own terms, paying close attention to what they are saying and doing, and trying to understand how they see the world and why. Sometimes this bottom-up perspective makes the strange familiar, but it can also make the familiar strange, exposing the cultural basis of seemingly "natural" behaviors and challenging us to rethink some of our most cherished ideas—about gender, "free" markets, "race," and "refugees," among many others.Contributors:William O. BeemanPhilippe BourgoisJohn ChernoffE. Valentine DanielAlex de WaalJudith EnnewJames FairheadSarah FranklinMichael GilsenanFaye GinsburgAlma GottliebChristopher HannFaye V. HarrisonRichard JenkinsMelissa LeachMargaret LockJeremy MacClancyJonathan MazowerEllen MesserA. David NapierNancy Scheper-HughesJane SchneiderParker ShiptonChristopher B. Steiner (view table of contents)

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Product Description: The state has recently been rediscovered as an object of inquiry by a broad range of scholars. Reflecting the new vitality of the field of political anthropology, States of Imagination draws together the best of this recent critical thinking to explore the postcolonial state...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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: This Second Edition summarizes the state of the art of gender issues in fieldwork both in anthropology and sociology. Warren shows how the researcher's gender affects both the fieldwork relationships and the production of ethnography...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: The nature of anthropological fieldwork changes from generation to generation, reflecting current personal, moral and political issues. This collection addresses the central position of fieldwork in modern social anthropology, examining previous works on the subject and locating a discussion of the nature of fieldwork within the context of current theoretical debates...read more

Addresses current issues and debates in sociology and social anthropology; papers originally presented at a conference.

Product Description: Among the social sciences, anthropology relies most fundamentally on "fieldwork"—the long-term immersion in another way of life as the basis for knowledge. In an era when anthropologists are studying topics that resist geographical localization, this book initiates a long-overdue discussion of the political and epistemological implications of the disciplinary commitment to fieldwork...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: An accessible, balanced undergraduate textbook on anthropological theory. Jerry D. Moore's Visions of Culture presents students with a brief, readable treatment of theoretical developments in the field from the days of Tylor and Morgan through contemporary postmodernists and cultural materialists...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Guides students through the step-by-step procedure of qualitative social research using the dialogical hermeneutic method of analysis. The first undergraduate guide to qualitative ethnographic fieldwork, this book describes a step-by-step procedure called the dialogical hermeneutic method of analysis, including its philosophical basis, practical application, and ethical implications...read more