The Case of the Sexy Jewess by
Amidst the growing forums of kinky Jews, orthodox drag queens, and Jewish geisha girls, we find today's sexy Jewess in a host of reflexive plays with sexed-up self-display. A social phantasm with real legs, she moves boldly between neo-burlesque striptease, comedy television, ballet movies,and progressive porn to construct the 21st Century Jewish American woman through charisma and comic craft, in-your-face antics, and offensive charm. Her image redresses longstanding stereotypes of the hag, the Jewish mother, and Jewish American princess that have demeaned the Jewish woman as overlydemanding, inappropriate, and unattractive across the 20th century, even as Jews assimilated into the American mainstream. But why does "sexy" work to update tropes of the Jewish woman? And how does sex link to humor in order for this update to work? Entangling questions of sexiness to race, gender,and class, The Case of the Sexy Jewess frames an embodied joke-work genre that is most often, but not always meant to be funny. In a contemporary period after the thrusts of assimilation and women's liberation movements, performances usher in new versions of old scripts with ranging consequences. At the core is the recuperative performance of identity through impersonation, and the question of its radical or conservativepotential. Appropriating, re-appropriating, and mis-appropriating identity material within and beyond their midst, Sexy Jewess artists play up the failed logic of representation by mocking identity categories altogether. They act as comic chameleons, morphing between margin and center in countlessnumber of charged caricatures. Embodying ethnic and gender positions as always already on the edge while ever more in the middle, contemporary Jewish female performers extend a comic tradition in new contexts, mobilizing progressive discourses from positions of newfound race and genderprivilege.
Surviving Sexism in Academia by
This edited collection contends that if women are to enter into leadership positions at equal levels with their male colleagues, then sexism in all its forms must be acknowledged, attended to, and actively addressed. This interdisciplinary collection#65533;Surviving Sexism in Academia: Strategies for Feminist Leadership#65533;is part storytelling, part autoethnography, part action plan. The chapters document and analyze everyday sexism in the academy and offer up strategies for survival, ultimately 'lifting the veil" from the good old boys/business-as-usual culture that continues to pervade academia in both visible and less-visible forms, forms that can stifle even the most ambitious women in their careers.
Long night at the Vepsian Museum : the forest folk of Northern Russia and the struggle for cultural survival by 
Environmental Anthropology by
Environmental anthropologists organize the realities of interdependent lands, plants, animals, and human beings; advocate for the neediest among them; and provide guidance for conservation efforts. But can anthropologists¿ studies of small-scale systems contribute to policies that address profoundly interconnected global problems? Townsend explores this question in her concise introduction to environmental anthropology.While maintaining the structure and clarity of previous editions, the third edition has been thoroughly revised to include new research. Newly added are a chapter on the environmental impact of war and recommended readings and films. Townsend begins with a historical overview of the field, illustrating how earlier ideas and approaches help to understand how today¿s populations adapt to their physical and biological environments. She then transitions to a closer look at global environmental issues, including such topics as rapid expansion of the world economic system and inequality, loss of biodiversity and its implications for human health, and injustices of climate change, resource extraction, and toxic waste disposal. The final chapters caution that meaningful change requires social movements and policy changes in addition to individual actions.
The Moral Power of Money by
Looking beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary social interactions, The Moral Power of Money investigates the forces of power and morality at play, particularly among the poor. Drawing on fieldwork in a slum of Buenos Aires, Ariel Wilkis argues that money is a critical symbol used to negotiate not only material possessions, but also the political, economic, class, gender, and generational bonds between people. Through vivid accounts of the stark realities of life in Villa Olimpia, Wilkis highlights the interplay of money, morality, and power. Drawing out the theoretical implications of these stories, he proposes a new concept of moral capital based on different kinds, or "pieces," of money. Each chapter covers a different "piece"--money earned from the informal and illegal economies, money lent through family and market relations, money donated with conditional cash transfers, political money that binds politicians and their supporters, sacrificed money offered to the church, and safeguarded money used to support people facing hardships. This book builds an original theory of the moral sociology of money, providing the tools for understanding the role money plays in social life today.
Rivers of the Anthropocene by
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. This exciting volume presents the work and research of the Rivers of the Anthropocene Network, an international collaborative group of scientists, social scientists, humanists, artists, policy makers, and community organizers working to produce innovative transdisciplinary research on global freshwater systems. In an attempt to bridge disciplinary divides, the essays in this volume address the challenge in studying the intersection of biophysical and human sociocultural systems in the age of the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch of humans' own making. Featuring contributions from authors in a rich diversity of disciplines--from toxicology to archaeology to philosophy--this book is an excellent resource for students and scholars studying both freshwater systems and the Anthropocene.
Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest by
This book pays homage to the counterculture movement through the words and photographs of a select gathering of people who lived it. At its height in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the counterculture movement permeated every region of America as thousands of activists took on the establishment. Although counterculture has often been trivialised as dirty hippies and sex, drugs, and rock n roll, committed activists formed powerful strands of resistance to the political/military/industrial complex. American Indians, Hispanos, Blacks, and Anglos joined in marches and protests -- often at their peril. Veterans of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, communards in northern New Mexico, practitioners of drug-induced mysticism, disciplined seekers of spiritual awakening, back-to-the-landers, defenders of wilderness -- counterculturalists all -- questioned, reframed, and redefined American and global perspectives that remain to this day. The American Southwest became a haven for individuals from both coasts seeking refuge in this vast landscape. Many found an affinity with the native cultures and local inhabitants who were already here. Others joined forces to combat the Vietnam War, racial discrimination, and pillaging of the environment. Still others founded communes based on diverse cultures of practice. Movement leaders organised community events, protests, and spoke for their generation; many used their talents as writers, musicians, artists, and photographers to express their angst and promote change. Jack Loeffler draws from his extensive archive of recorded interviews and transcribed conversations with contemporaries -- among them writers, artists, elders, activists, and scholars -- including Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Edward Abbey, Shonto Begay, Camillus Lopez, Tara Evonne Trudell, Roberta Blackgoat, Richard Grow, Alvin Josephy, David Brower, Dave Foreman, Elinor Ostrom, Fritjof Capra, and Melissa Savage. The book includes personal essays by Yvonne Bond, Peter Coyote, Lisa Law, Peter Rowan, Siddiq Hans von Briesen, Art Kopecky, Bill Steen, Sylvia Rodr#65533;guez, Enrique R. Lamadrid, Levi Romero, the late Rina Swentzell, Gary Paul Nabhan, Meredith Davidson, and Jack Loeffler. It includes photographs by Lisa Law, Seth Roffman, Terrence Moore, and others.
Fictionalizing Anthropology by
What might become of anthropology if it were to suspend its sometime claims to be a social science? What if it were to turn instead to exploring its affinities with art and literature as a mode of engaged creative practice carried forward in a world heterogeneously composed of humans and other than humans? Stuart McLean claims that anthropology stands to learn most from art and literature not as "evidence" to support explanations based on an appeal to social context or history but as modes of engagement with the materiality of expressive media--including language--that always retain the capacity to disrupt or exceed the human projects enacted through them. At once comparative in scope and ethnographically informed, Fictionalizing Anthropology draws on an eclectic range of sources, including ancient Mesopotamian myth, Norse saga literature, Hesiod, Lucretius, Joyce, Artaud, and Lispector, as well as film, multimedia, and performance art, along with the concept of "fabulation" (the making of fictions capable of intervening in and transforming reality) developed in the writings of Bergson and Deleuze. Sharing with proponents of anthropology's recent "ontological turn," McLean insists that experiments with language and form are a performative means of exploring alternative possibilities of collective existence, new ways of being human and other than human, and that such experiments must therefore be indispensable to anthropology's engagement with the contemporary world.
On the Road of the Winds by
The Pacific Ocean covers one-third of the earth's surface and encompasses many thousands of islands that are home to numerous human societies and cultures. Among these indigenous Oceanic cultures are the intrepid Polynesian double-hulled canoe navigators, the atoll dwellers of Micronesia, the statue carvers of remote Easter Island, and the famed traders of Melanesia. Decades of archaeological excavations--combined with allied research in historical linguistics, biological anthropology, and comparative ethnography--have revealed much new information about the long-term history of these societies and cultures. On the Road of the Winds synthesizes the grand sweep of human history in the Pacific Islands, beginning with the movement of early people out from Asia more than 40,000 years ago and tracing the development of myriad indigenous cultures up to the time of European contact in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. This updated edition, enhanced with many new illustrations and an extensive bibliography, synthesizes the latest archaeological, linguistic, and biological discoveries that reveal the vastness of ancient history in the Pacific Islands.
The Archaeological Activities of James Douglas in Sussex Between 1809 And 1819 by
James Douglas (1753-1819) was a polymath, well ahead of his time in both the fields of archaeology and earth-sciences. His examinations of fossils from the London Clay and other geological formations caused him to conclude that the Earth was much older than the 4004 BC allotted to it by his contemporaries. He had come to this conclusion by 1785 and published these findings in that year, long before other researchers in the same field. His Nenia Britannica, published in 1793, reveals a remarkably accurate grasp of the dating of Anglo-Saxon burials, further illuminated by the contents of his common-place book for 1814-16, discovered by the author in a second-hand bookshop. This common-place book, correspondence with his contemporaries, and other sources resulted in the present publication recounting his archaeological and other activities in Sussex during the first two decades of the 19th century.
White Folks by
White Folks explores the experiences and stories of eight white people from a small farming community in northern Wisconsin. It examines how white people learn to be #65533;white#65533; and reveals how white racial identity is dependent on people of color#65533;even in situations where white people have little or no contact with racial others. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Delores, Frank, William, Erin, Robert, Libby, and Stan, as well as on his own experiences growing up in this same rural community, Lensmire creates a portrait of white people that highlights how their relations to people of color and their cultures are seldom simple and are characterized not just by fear and rejection, but also by attraction, envy, and desire. White Folks helps readers recognize the profound ambivalence that has characterized white thinking and feeling in relation to people of color for at least the last two hundred years. There is nothing smooth about the souls of white folks. Current antiracist work is often grounded in a white privilege framework that has proven ineffective #65533; in part because it reduces white people to little more than the embodiment of privilege. Lensmire provides an alternative that confronts the violence at the core of white racial selves that has become increasingly visible in American society and politics, but that also illuminates conflicts and complexities there.
Archaeology by
Epic in scope, yet filled with detail, this illustrated guide takes readers through the whole of our human past. Spanning the dawn of human civilization through the present, it provides a tour of every site of key archaeological importance. From the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux to Tutankhamun's tomb, from the buried city of Pompeii to China's Terracotta Army, all of the world's most iconic sites and discoveries are here. So too are the lesser-known yet equally important finds, such as the recent discoveries of our oldest known human ancestors and of the world's oldest-known temple, G#65533;bekli Tepe in Turkey. A masterful combination of succinct analysis and driving narrative, this book also addresses the questions that inevitably arise as we gradually learn more about the history of our species. Written by an international team of archaeological experts and richly illustrated throughout, Archaeology: The Essential Guide to Our Human Past offers an unparalleled insight into the origins of humankind.
Networked News, Racial Divides by
Against conventional wisdom, pervasive black-white disparities pair with vitriolic public conversation in politically progressive communities throughout America. Networked News, Racial Divides examines obstacles to public dialogues about racial inequality and opportunities for better discourse in mid-sized, liberal cities. The book narrates the challenges faced when talking about race through a series of stories about each community struggling with K-12 education achievement gaps. Media expert Sue Robinson applies Bourdieusian field theory to understand media ecologies and analyze whose voices get heard and whose get left out. She explores how privilege shapes discourse and how identity politics can interfere with deliberation. Drawing on network analysis of community dialogues, interviews with journalists, politicians, activists, and citizens and deep case study of five cities, this reflexive and occasionally narrative book chronicles the institutional, cultural and other problematic realities to amplifying voices of all people while also recommending strategies to move forward and build trust.
Mistrust by
Trust occupies a unique place in contemporary discourse. Seen as both necessary and virtuous, it is variously depicted as enhancing the social fabric, lowering crime rates, increasing happiness, and generating prosperity. It allows for complex political systems, permits human communication, underpins financial instruments and economic institutions, and generally holds society together. Against these overwhelmingly laudable qualities, mistrust often goes unnoticed as a positive social phenomenon, treated as little more than a corrosive absence, a mere negative of trust itself. With this book, Matthew Carey proposes an ethnographic and conceptual exploration of mistrust that raises it up as legitimate stance in its own right. While mistrust can quickly ruin relationships and even dissolve extensive social ties, Carey shows that it might have other values. Drawing on fieldwork in Morocco's High Atlas Mountains as well as comparative material from regions stretching from Eastern Europe to Melanesia, he examines the impact of mistrust on practices of conversation and communication, friendship and society, and politics and cooperation. In doing so, he demonstrates that trust is not the only basis for organizing human society and cooperating with others. The result is a provocative but enlightening work that makes us rethink social issues such as suspicion, doubt, and uncertainty.
Securitized citizens : Canadian Muslims' experiences of race relations and identity formation post-9/11 by 
Mountain Peoples in the Ancient near East
Since Prehistory, communities principally engaged in herding activities have occupied the intermontane valleys and plains of the Zagros (Western Iran). Relations, tensions and cultural exchange between the inhabitants of the mountains and the Mesopotamian plains already occurred during the Bronze Age. These contacts increased in the course of the 1st millennium BCE, as is suggested by Near Eastern and subsequently by Greek and Latin sources which provide us with numerous new names of peoples living in the Zagros. The present volume investigates the social organisation and life style of the peoples of the Zagros Mountains in the 1st millennium BCE and deals with their relationships with the surrounding environment and with the political authorities on the plains. Among these peoples, for example, were the 'fierce' Medes, breeders and purveyors of fine horses, the Manneans, who inhabited a large territory enclosed between the two contending powers of Assyria and Urartu, and the 'warlike' Cosseans, who bravely attempted to resist the attack of Alexander the Great's army. The Southern Zagros Mountains, inhabited by mixed groups of Elamite and Iranian farmers and pastoralists, were also of key importance as the home of the Persians and the core area of their empire. Starting from Fars, the Persians were able to build up the largest empire in the history of the ancient Near East before Alexander. The interdisciplinary approach adopted in this study, which juxtaposes historical records with archaeological, zooarchaeological, palaeobotanical and ethnographic data, provides a new, holistic and multifaceted view on an otherwise little-known topic in ancient history.
Applied Soils and Micromorphology in Archaeology by
Applied Soils and Micromorphology in Archaeology provides the most up-to-date information on soil science and its applications in archaeology. Based on more than three decades of investigations and experiments, the volume demonstrates how description protocols and complimentary methods (SEM/EDS, microprobe, micro-FTIR, bulk soil chemistry, micro- and macrofossils) are used in interpretations. It also focuses on key topics, such as palaeosols, cultivation, and occupation surfaces, and introduces a range of current issues, such as site inundation, climate change, settlement morphology, herding, trackways, industrial processes, funerary features, and site transformation. Structured around important case studies, Applied Soils and Micromorphology in Archaeology is thoroughly-illustrated, with color plates and figures, tables and other ancillary materials on its website (www.cambridge.org/9781107011380); chapter appendices can be accessed separately using the web (www.geoarchaeology.info/asma). This new book will serve as an essential volume for all archaeological inquiry about soil.
The Filipino Primitive by
How museums' visual culture contributes to knowledge accumulation Sarita See argues that collections of stolen artifacts form the foundation of American knowledge production. Nowhere can we appreciate more easily the triple forces of knowledge accumulation--capitalist, colonial, and racial--than in the imperial museum, where the objects of accumulation remain materially, visibly preserved. The Filipino Primitive takes Karl Marx's concept of "primitive accumulation," usually conceived of as an economic process for the acquisition of land and the extraction of labor, and argues that we also must understand it as a project of knowledge accumulation. Taking us through the Philippine collections at the University of Michigan Natural History Museum and the Frank Murphy Memorial Museum, also in Michigan, See reveals these exhibits as both allegory and real case of the primitive accumulation that subtends imperial American knowledge, just as the extraction of Filipino labor contributes to American capitalist colonialism. With this understanding of the Filipino foundations of the American drive toward power and knowledge, we can appreciate the value of Filipino American cultural producers like Carlos Bulosan, Stephanie Syjuco, and Ma-Yi Theater Company who have created incisive parodies of this accumulative epistemology, even as they articulate powerful alternative, anti-accumulative social ecologies.
Jah Kingdom by
From its beginnings in 1930s Jamaica, the Rastafarian movement has become a global presence. While the existing studies of the Rastafarian movement have primarily focused on its cultural expression through reggae music, art, and iconography, Monique A. Bedasse argues that repatriation to Africa represents the most important vehicle of Rastafari's international growth. Shifting the scholarship on repatriation from Ethiopia to Tanzania, Bedasse foregrounds Rastafari's enduring connection to black radical politics and establishes Tanzania as a critical site to explore gender, religion, race, citizenship, socialism, and nation. Beyond her engagement with how the Rastafarian idea of Africa translated into a lived reality, she demonstrates how Tanzanian state and nonstate actors not only validated the Rastafarian idea of diaspora but were also crucial to defining the parameters of Pan-Africanism. Based on previously undiscovered oral and written sources from Tanzania, Jamaica, England, the United States, and Trinidad, Bedasse uncovers a vast and varied transnational network--including Julius Nyerere, Michael Manley, and C. L. R James--revealing Rastafari's entrenchment in the making of Pan-Africanism in the postindependence period.
Scythians by
The Scythians were an ancient nomadic people, who lived in the Russian steppe from 900 to 400 BC. They established a rich, nomadic civilization stretching from their homeland in Siberia as far as the Black Sea and the edge of China. Mobility and mastery of local resources were central to their culture and their achievements. Forerunners of the Sarmatians, the Huns, the Turks and the Mongols, the Scythians were feared adversaries and respected neighbours of the Assyrians, the Persians and the Ancient Greeks. Much of what we know about them comes from the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus, as they left no written records of their own. This book offers unique insights into the life and funerary beliefs of the Scythians, whose culture has been remarkably well preserved because of the unique conditions provided by the Siberian permafrost. Also included are many rare and recently discovered finds of personal garments and possessions made from gold, leather, fur and felt, revealing the legacy of one Russia's oldest indigenous civilizations. Drawing on the latest research, this new book will appeal to anyone interested in the ancient world and Russian culture..
Approaches to Ethnography by
Approaches to Ethnography illustrates the various modes of representation and analysis that typify participant observation research. In contrast to the multitude of ethnographic textbooks, handbooks, and readers on the market, this book is neither a "how-to" guide nor a catalogue ofsubstantive themes such as race, community, or space; it also avoids re-hashing epistemological debates, such as grounded theory versus the extended case method. Instead, this volume concisely lays out the predominant analytic lenses that ethnographers use to explain social action - for instance,whether they privilege micro-interaction or social structure, people and places or social processes, internal dispositions or situational contingencies. Each chapter features a prominent ethnographer delineating a distinct approach to the study of everyday life and reflecting on how their approach shapes the way they analyze and represent the field. Taken together, the collection is a practical guide that spells out how different styles ofethnography illuminate different dimensions of everyday social life. As such, Approaches to Ethnography complements and augments - but not duplicate - existing ethnographic methods and logic of inquiry texts for undergraduate and graduate courses on qualitative research methods.
Monkey Trouble by
According to scholars of the nonhuman turn, the scandal of theory lies in its failure to decenter the human. The real scandal, however, is that we keep trying. The human has become a conspicuous blind spot for many theorists seeking to extend hospitality to animals, plants, and even insentient things. The displacement of the human is essential and urgent, yet given the humanist presumption that animals lack a number of allegedly unique human capacities, such as language, reason, and awareness of mortality, we ought to remain cautious about laying claim to any power to eradicate anthropocentrism altogether. Such a power risks becoming yet another self-accredited capacity thanks to which the human reaffirms its sovereignty through its supposed erasure. Monkey Trouble argues that the turn toward immanence in contemporary posthumanism promotes a cosmocracy that absolves one from engaging in those discriminatory decisions that condition hospitality as such. Engaging with recent theoretical developments in speculative realism and object-oriented ontology, as well as ape and parrot language studies, the book offers close readings of literary works by J.M. Coetzee, Charles Chesnutt, and Walt Whitman and films by Alfonso Cuar#65533;n and Lars von Trier. Anthropocentrism, Peterson argues, cannot be displaced through a logic of reversal that elevates immanence above transcendence, horizontality over verticality. This decentering must cultivate instead a human/nonhuman relationality that affirms the immanent transcendency spawned by our phantasmatic humanness.
Contraceptive Diplomacy by
A transpacific history of clashing imperial ambitions, Contraceptive Diplomacy turns to the history of the birth control movement in the United States and Japan to interpret the struggle for hegemony in the Pacific through the lens of transnational feminism. As the birth control movement spread beyond national and racial borders, it shed its radical bearings and was pressed into the service of larger ideological debates around fertility rates and overpopulation, global competitiveness, and eugenics. By the time of the Cold War, a transnational coalition for women's sexual liberation had been handed over to imperial machinations, enabling state-sponsored population control projects that effectively disempowered women and deprived them of reproductive freedom. In this book, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci follows the relationship between two iconic birth control activists, Margaret Sanger in the United States and Ishimoto Shizue in Japan, as well as other intellectuals and policymakers in both countries who supported their campaigns, to make sense of the complex transnational exchanges occurring around contraception. The birth control movement facilitated U.S. expansionism, exceptionalism, and anti-communist policy and was welcomed in Japan as a hallmark of modernity. By telling the story of reproductive politics in a transnational context, Takeuchi-Demirci draws connections between birth control activism and the history of eugenics, racism, and imperialism.
But It's So Silly by
How are ideas of play shaped by culture? What is imagination, or creativity, and where does poetry fit into this mix? For the past decade, award-winning children's author JonArno Lawson has been collecting children's poetry, lap rhymes, finger games and stories of how people interact with young children across the world, drawn to each culture's unique approach. In this wide-ranging collection we learn of language play from Malta, round games from Jamaica, Yiddish hand rhymes, and of the wonderful and complex ways these are all passed down through generations. Along the way Lawson looks at the implications for how North American society approaches childhood and what we might gain from looking at things differently.
Mental Health in China by
China's massive economic restructuring in recent decades has generated alarming incidences of mental disorder affecting over one hundred million people. This timely book provides an anthropological analysis of mental health in China through an exploration of psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychosocial practices, and the role of the State. The book offers a critical study of new characteristics and unique practices of Chinese psychology and cultural tradition, highlighting the embodied, holistic, heart-based approach to mental health. Drawing together voices from her own research and a broad range of theory, Jie Yang addresses the mental health of a diverse array of people, including members of China's elite, the middle class and underprivileged groups. She argues that the Chinese government aligns psychology with the imperatives and interests of state and market, mobilizing concepts of mental illness to resolve social, moral, economic, and political disorders while legitimating the continued rule of the party through psychological care and permissive empathy. This thoughtful analysis will appeal to those across the social sciences and humanities interested in well-being in China and the intersection of society, politics, culture, and mental health.
This volume illuminates human lifeways in the northern Maya lowlands prior to the rise of Chich#65533;n Itz#65533;. This period and area have been poorly understood on their own terms, obscured by scholarly focus on the central lowland Maya kingdoms. Before Kukulk#65533;n is anchored in three decades of interdisciplinary research at the Classic Maya capital of Yaxun#65533;, located at a contentious crossroads of the northern Maya lowlands. Using bioarchaeology, mortuary archaeology, and culturally sensitive mainstream archaeology, the authors create an in-depth regional understanding while also laying out broader ways of learning about the Maya past. Part 1 examines ancient lifeways among the Maya at Yaxun#65533;, while part 2 explores different meanings of dying and cycling at the settlement and beyond: ancestral practices, royal entombment and desecration, and human sacrifice. The authors close with a discussion of the last years of occupation at Yaxun#65533; and the role of Chich#65533;n Itz#65533; in the abandonment of this urban center. Before Kukulk#65533;n provides a cohesive synthesis of the evolving roles and collective identities of locals and foreigners at the settlement and their involvement in the region's trajectory. Theoretically informed and contextualized discussions offer unique glimpses of everyday life and death in the socially fluid Maya city. These findings, in conjunction with other documented series of skeletal remains from this region, provide a nuanced picture of the social and biocultural dynamics that operated successfully for centuries before the arrival of the Itz#65533;.
Stone Vessels in the near East During the Iron Age and the Persian Period by
This book focuses on the characteristics and the development of the stone vessel industry in the Near East during the Iron Age and the Persian period (c. 1200 - 330 BCE). Three main aspects of this industry are investigated. First, the technology behind the manufacture of stone vessels, the tools and techniques, and how these changed across time. Second, the mechanisms of exchange of stone vessels and how these were affected by the changing political landscape through time. Third, the consumption patterns of stone vessels in both elite and non-elite contexts, and how these patterns changed through time. The aim is to evaluate how the formation of new regional states, occurred in the Iron Age I-II, and their subsequent inclusion within large-scale empires, in the Iron Age III and Persian period, transformed the Near Eastern societies by exploring how the stone vessel industry was affected by these transformations. For the period and area under analysis, such a comprehensive study of stone vessels, covering a wide area and connecting this industry to the broader socioeconomic and political landscapes, has never been attempted before.
Sensing the World by
Sensing the World: An Anthropology of the Senses is a highly original and comprehensive overview of the anthropology and sociology of the body and the senses. Discussing each sense in turn - seeing, hearing, touch, smell, and taste - Le Breton has written a truly monumental work, vast in scope and deeply engaging in style. Among other pioneering moves, he gives equal attention to light and darkness, sound and silence, and his disputation of taste explores aspects of disgust and revulsion. Part phenomenological, part historical, this is above all a cultural account of perception, which returns the body and the senses to the center of social life. Le Breton is the leading authority on the anthropology of the body and the senses in French academia. With a repute comparable to the late Pierre Bourdieu, his 30+ books have been translated into numerous languages. This is the first of his works to be made available in English. This sensuously nuanced translation of La Saveur du monde is accompanied by a spicy preface from series editor David Howes, who introduces Le Breton's work to an English-speaking audience and highlights its implications for the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and the cross-disciplinary field of sensory studies.
Empire and Religion by
This volume explores the nature of religious change in the Greek-speaking cities of the Roman Empire. Emphasis is put on those developments that apparently were not the direct result of Roman actions: the intensification of idiosyncratically Greek features in the religious life of the cities (Heller, Muniz, Camia); the active role of a new kind of Hellenism in the design of imperial religious policies (Gordillo, Galimberti, Rosillo-Lopez); or the locally different responses to central religious initiatives, and the influence of those local responses in other imperial contexts (Cortes, Melfi, Lozano, Rizakis). All the chapters try to suggest that religion in the Greek cities of the empire was both conservative and innovative, and that the 'Roman factor' helps to explain this apparent paradox.