Books in the Culture, Mind, and Society series

Rapid industrialization, urbanization, and marketization have led to startling social changes in reform-era China. Mindful of the many forms of social theory that relate modernity to individualism, this volume addresses social and cultural change through the lens of psychological anthropology.

This book presents a unique approach to person-centered anthropology, providing a new form of practice theory that incorporates and explains sources of cultural change.

Unlike most earlier studies which approach Chinese patriliny and filial piety as irreducible markers of cultural difference, Sangren argues that Chinese patriliny is better approached as a topic of critical inquiry in its own right.

He also borrows from Lacanian psychoanalysis in discussing how men's dialogue of dual alienation appears in folk theater, in material substitutions-most notably, in the replacement of outrigger canoes by fiberglass boats-as well as in rising sea-levels, and the looming possibility of resettlement.

The contributions to this volume map the surprisingly multifarious circumstances in which trauma is invoked ¿ as an analytical tool, a therapeutic term or as a discursive trope. By doing so, we critically engage the far too often individuating aspects of trauma, as well as the assumption of a universal somatic that is globally applicable to contexts of human suffering. The volume takes the reader on a journey across widely differing terrains: from Norwegian institutions for psychiatric patients to the post-war emergence of speech genres on violence in Mozambique, from Greek and Cameroonian ritual and carnivalesque treatments of historical trauma to national discourses of political assassinations in Argentina, the volume provides an empirically founded anti-dote against claiming a universal ¿empire of traumä (Didier Fassin) or seeing the trauma as successfully defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Instead, the work critically evaluates and engages whether the term¿s dual plasticity and endurance captures, encompasses or challenges legacies and imprints of multiple forms of violence.

Although humans slumber for approximately one third of our lives, sleep itself is vastly understudied. This volume provides a comparative frame through which we can understand the myriad ways in which sleep reflects and embodies culture as contributors examine aspects of sleep in various countries and contexts.

Rapid industrialization, urbanization, and marketization have led to startling social changes in reform-era China. Mindful of the many forms of social theory that relate modernity to individualism, this volume addresses social and cultural change through the lens of psychological anthropology.

unlike approaches to discourse analysis from linguistics, this volume focuses on culture, treating discourse as a medium especially rich in clues for cultural analysis, and hence a window into culture.

Friendship, Love, and Hip Hop investigates how young Black men live and change inside a mental institution in contemporary America. While the youth in Hejtmanek's study face the rigidity of institutionalized life, they also productively maneuver through what the author analyzes as the 'give' - friendship, love, and hip hop - in the system.

unlike approaches to discourse analysis from linguistics, this volume focuses on culture, treating discourse as a medium especially rich in clues for cultural analysis, and hence a window into culture.

The question of ignorance occupies a central place in anthropological theory and practice. Ultimately, The Anthropology of Ignorance asks whether an academic commitment to knowledge can be squared with lived significance of ignorance and how taking it seriously might alter anthropological research practices.

It presents American individualism not as one single homogeneous, stereotypic life-pattern as often claimed to be, but as variable, class-differentiated models of individualism instilled in young children by their parents and preschool teachers in Manhattan and Queens.

Class-based self-perception is a rising issue worldwide. Through observation in kindergartens in Fiji, Brison examines how schools instil these ideas in Suva children. Teachers have different goals depending on the social background of the families while students create friendships through shared experience of toys, gender roles, and mass media.

Since the 1950s, the study of early attachment and separation has been dominated by a school of psychology that is Euro-American in its theoretical assumptions. Based on ethnographic studies in a range of locales, this book goes beyond prior efforts to critique attachment theory, providing a cross-cultural basis for understanding human development.

Since the 1950s, the study of early attachment and separation has been dominated by a school of psychology that is Euro-American in its theoretical assumptions. Based on ethnographic studies in a range of locales, this book goes beyond prior efforts to critique attachment theory, providing a cross-cultural basis for understanding human development.

This edited volume provides a long-overdue synthesis of the current directions in culture theory and represents some of the very best in ongoing research.

The question of ignorance occupies a central place in anthropological theory and practice. Ultimately, The Anthropology of Ignorance asks whether an academic commitment to knowledge can be squared with lived significance of ignorance and how taking it seriously might alter anthropological research practices.

Although humans slumber for approximately one third of our lives, sleep itself is vastly understudied. This volume provides a comparative frame through which we can understand the myriad ways in which sleep reflects and embodies culture as contributors examine aspects of sleep in various countries and contexts.

While this analysis implicates structures and processes of inequality in the genesis of ill health, its focus remains on the people who suffer, grieve, and live with the dilemmas of an intercultural life.

A lively indictment of American culture's pervasive use of the psychotherapeutic metaphor to explain behaviours, a habit that has crossed the Atlantic in recent years, arguing that psychotherapy and excessive individualism has only ensured the continuance of social problems.

This study analyzes American, Vietnamese and Japanese personal values, attempting to understand how it can be ethnographers find large differences in values between cultures, yet empirical surveys find relatively small, almost trivial differences in personal values between cultures.

While Islam has become a controversial topic in the West, a growing number of Westerners find powerful meaning in Islam. Becoming Muslim is an ethnographic study based on in-depth interviews with Swedish and American women who have converted to Islam.

While Islam has become a controversial topic in the West, a growing number of Westerners find powerful meaning in Islam. Becoming Muslim is an ethnographic study based on in-depth interviews with Swedish and American women who have converted to Islam.

Spirit possession involves the displacement of a human's conscious self by a powerful other who temporarily occupies the human's body. Here, Seligman shows that spirit possession represents a site for understanding fundamental aspects of human experience, especially those involved with interactions among meaning, embodiment, and subjectivity.

This edited volume provides a long-overdue synthesis of the current directions in culture theory and represents some of the very best in ongoing research.

So, in 2015, a group of interdisciplinary scholars gathered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for an intellectual experiment: a workshop that joined approaches from psychological anthropology to the South American tradition of Collective Health in order to consider autism within social, historical, and political settings.

This is a book about time, but it is also about much more than time-it is about how the objects we use to think about time shape our thoughts. Because time ties together so many aspects of our lives, this book is able to explore the nexus of objects, cognition, culture, and even biology, and to do so in relationship to globalization.

This unique volume is about how ordinary people construct political meanings, form political emotions and identities, and become involved in or disengaged from political contests.

Taking a novel approach that adapts Freud's theory of the Primal Crime, this book examines a wealth of ethnographic data on the Gimi of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, focusing on women's lives, myths, and rituals.