Books in the Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology series

This collection of essays on the themes of social organization, kinship and religion provides an excellent guide for English-speaking scholars to the understanding of French structuralist thought. Upon publication, this was the first time that Luc de Heusch's important book Pourquoi l'epouser? (Editions Gallimard, 1971) had appeared in English.

Anthropologists, in studying other cultures, are often tempted to offer their own explanations of strange customs when they feel that the people involved have not given a good enough reason for these customs. The question how the anthropologist can justify interpretations of customs which go beyond those offered by the people themselves runs through this book.

Examines development of domestic institutions, the family, marriage, conjugal roles, in relation to changes in the mode of productive activity, specifically the change from hoe to plough agriculture. In contrasts Africa, on the one hand, to Asia and Europe, on the other.

World Conqueror and World Renouncer is the first comprehensive and authoritative work on the relationship between Buddhism and the polity (political organization) in Thailand.

This is a study of the effects of 'modernization' on the social and economic world of women in Morocco. By observing social networks, Maher has been able to identify part of what inhibits the development of class consciousness, and what favours a clientistic political structure.

The Bara, or Fish people of the Northwest Amazon form part of a network of intermarrying local communities - each community speaks a different language and marriages must take place between people from different communities with different languages. Here, Jean Jackson discusses Bar* marriage, kinship, spatial organization and other features of their social landscape.

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.

This collection of essays develops a line of thought in anthropology which was opened in the 1960s by the editors (and some of the same contributors) in Honor and Shame: The Values of a Mediterranean Society. The essays, half of them historical and half contemporary, deal with different aspects of honour and grace, and the strategies and transactions by which they can be obtained.

Fenella Cannell's study of everyday life in the lowland Philippines offers a powerful alternative to existing interpretations of the relationship between culture and tradition in the region and beyond. This book addresses not only South-East Asianists, but all those with an interest in the anthropology of religion and post-colonial cultures.

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

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.

Dr Frankel's study of the rapid transformation of traditional medical care among the Huli of New Guinea by Western treatments strikingly combines the methods of social anthropology and epidemiology. The study as a whole integrates material conventionally divided between anthropological and medical texts and powerfully demonstrates the limitations of this traditional separation.

A sophisticated and engaging ethnographic account of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, which investigates situations of friction, conflict and co-operation in a new town near Nazareth. This is a major contribution to our understanding of ethnic tensions between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis.

In this 1996 book, Gerhard Baumann examines the area of Southall, the most densely populated, multi-ethnic ghetto in the London area. This vivid ethnographic account analyses various immigrant groups as they come to terms with one another, and engage in rethinking their identities as well as the meaning of their cultural heritage.

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.

Most anthropological and sociological studies of Buddhism have concentrated on village and rural Buddhism. This is a systematic anthropological study of monastic organization and monk-layman interaction in a purely urban context in the countries where Theravada Buddhism is practised, namely, Burma, Cambodia, Ceylon, Laos and Thailand.

Java is famous for its combination of diverse cultural forms and religious beliefs. Andrew Beatty considers Javanese solutions to the problem of cultural difference, and explores the ways in which Javanese villages make sense of their complex and multi-layered culture. Pantheist mystics, supernaturalists, orthodox Muslims and Hindu converts at once construct contrasting faiths and create a common ground through syncretist ritual. Vividly evoking the religious life of Javanese villagers, its controversies and reconciliations, its humour and irony, its philosophical seriousness, and its formal beauty, Dr Beatty probes beyond the finished surfaces of ritual and cosmology to show the debate and compromise inherent in practical religion. This is the most comprehensive study of Javanese religion since Clifford Geertz's classic study of 1960.

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 collection brings together Emrys Peters' major writings on the Bedouin of Libya.

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.

Pierre Bourdieu, a French anthropologist, develops his theory of symbolic power through a materialistic approach, which he analyses symbolic capital and the different modes of domination. The author draws on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Algeria) to illustrate his theoretical propositions.

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.

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.

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.