Books in the Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology series

The central actors in this book are some reclusive forest-dwelling ascetic meditation masters who have been acclaimed as 'saints' in contemporary Thailand. These saints originally pursued their salvation quest among the isolated villages of the country's periphery, but once recognized as holy men endowed with charisma, they became the radiating centres of a country-wide cult of amulets.

In this book, Peter Riviere employs a comparative perspective to reveal that Guianan societies, generally characterized as socially fluid and amorphous, are in fact much more highly structured than they first appear, and he identifies certain common patterns of social organization that result from sets of individual choices and relationships.

This 1991 study deals with a specific set of institutions in nineteenth-century Athens. Relying on matrimonial contracts, travellers' accounts, memoirs and popular literature, the author shows how the distinctive forms of marriage, kinship and property transmission evolved in Athens in the nineteenth century, became a feature of Greek society, and continued into the twentieth century.

This is a study of family farming in eastern Finland. It looks at the connections between farm and family, and considers the significance of mechanization and other modern developments for the persistence of the family as a farming unit. Here, and in other contexts, the author draws attention to the adaptability of families in a changing world.

Jeffrey Cole's ground breaking study examines the complex attitudes of Sicily's rich and poor towards immigrants. He analyses the everyday responses of Italians to issues of race and nationalism, and provides a valuable guide to one of the most hotly contested debates in Western Europe.

A reassessment of ethnographic material from south coast New Guinea, covering a range of topics including sexuality, social inequality, the status of women, religion, politics and violence.

An innovative study of the Nuaulu classificatory system of animal knowledge. It demonstrates how the classification system reflects an interaction between culture, cognitive processes and the material world.

Professor Holy shows that the customary rituals and practices among the Berti of Northern Darfur (Sudan) constitute an integral part of their religious system. An ethnographic study of ritual, belief and gender in an African society, this work also makes a significant contribution to current anthropological discussion of the interpretation and meaning of rituals and symbols.

Numbers are an important feature of almost all known cultures. This detailed anthropological study examines how people from a wide range of cultures and historical backgrounds use and understand numbers. By looking at the logical, linguistical and psychological implications, the author analyses how numbers operate within different contexts.

This is an ethnographic investigation into the meaning of German selfhood during the Cold War. Borneman shows how ideas of kin, state, and nation were constructed through processes of mirror imaging and misrecognition. Using linguistics and narrative analysis he compares the autobiographies of two generations of Berlin's residents with the official versions prescribed by the two German states.

The author documents the Achuar Indians of the Upper Amazon knowledge of the environment, and explains how it is interwoven with cosmological ideas that endow nature with the characteristics of society.

The Earth People draw on West African traditions and assert the particular power of female creativity. Their leader is Mother Earth, whose faith emerged following a cerebral disease. This 1993 account of a new West Indian religion examines how social patterns may emerge from radical personal experiences.

In this innovative study, David Parkin shows how indigenous African rites and beliefs may be reworked to accommodate a variety of economic systems, new spatial and ecological relations between communities, and the locally variable influences of Islam and Christianity.

This is a detailed study of marriage among the Maduzai, a tribal society in Afghan Turkistan. Nancy Tapper presents both male and female perspectives, and includes detailed case studies and historical and statistical material.

Italo Pardo has produced a thoughtful and original account of the moral life of Naples, showing how ethical issues are addressed in everyday life. One of the very few ethnographic studies of a European city, Managing Existence in Naples questions old assumptions and raises fresh issues in the field of urban studies.

This study provides fresh and vital insights into the long struggle of modern Egypt to define its identity. Walter Armbrust examines Egyptian television, music, cinema, and the press, revealing the tensions between conservative nationalist imagery and a modernist ethic.

This 1995 book describes learning and the process of childhood in Angang, a fishing community in south-eastern Taiwan, and the ways in which children learn, consciously and unconsciously, about forms of identification both as children within the family and as citizens of the nation.

Recalling life in a single household occupied by several Jewish and Muslim families, in the generation before Algerian independence, Joelle Bahloul's informants build up a micro-history of a period which came to an end in the early 1960s.

Tuareg women are sometimes possessed by spirits called 'the people of solitude', from which they are released by an evening ritual. In her analysis of this tolerated but unofficial cult, Susan Rasmussen analyses symbolism and aesthetic values, provides case studies, and reviews what local people think about the meaning of possession.

The subject of Vassos Argyrou's study is modernisation, as reflected in the changing nature of wedding celebrations in Cyprus over two generations. He argues that modernisation is not a process that makes a society 'modern', but a legitimising discourse.

Godelier discusses both the power that certain men (the Great men) have over others through their control of war, shamanism, hunting, and rites of initiation, as well as the extraordinary power and domination that men in general exert over women.

In an ethnographic study of a remote community in the Auvergne, Dr Reed-Danahay challenges conventional views about the French school system and demonstrates how parents subvert and resist the ideological messages of the teachers. This book offers fresh insights into the ways in which French culture is transmitted to the coming generation.

This book is about the construction of cultural identity through narratives of shared history. It presents an anthropological study of processes of identity formation in a Solomon Islands society deeply affected by colonisation and Christianization.

This landmark study of family relations in a village in southern Germany is the product of deep reflection on anthropological approaches to historical problems.

In this book, Maia Green explores contemporary Catholic practice in a rural community of Southern Tanzania, and discusses how Christianity has come to have widespread acceptance in Southern Tanzania in the historical context of colonial mission. It will appeal to scholars and students of anthropology, sociology and African studies.

Tradition as Truth and Communication deals particularly with oral communication and focuses on the privileged role of licensed speakers and the ritual contexts in which certain aspects of tradition are characteristically transmitted. Drawing on cognitive psychology, Dr Boyer proposes a set of general hypotheses to be tested by ethnographic field research.

The theme of this book is the analysis of the changes that have occurred in the kinship patterns of the Toka of South Zambia as a result of a shift in their form of production from hoe agriculture to ox-drawn ploughing.

This book argues that religion can and must be reconciled with science. It is both a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance and a detailed study of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and therefore central in the making of humanity's adaptation.

Ethnicity is usually thought to be a consequence of inborn qualities acquired by descent, but in this innovative study of the Vezo, who are fishing people of Madagascar, Rita Astuti explores the consequences of ascribing ethnic identity with reference to economic activity.

A detailed study of the Khoisan, the cluster of southern African peoples which include the Bushmen, the Khoekho and the Damara.