Books in the LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology series

Explores the links between individuals, families, communities, and the state in China through ritual and myth.

Anthropology seems to shy away from the big, comparative questions that ordinary people in many societies find compelling. This title contains essays that explore birth, death and sexuality, puzzles about the relationship between science and religion, questions about the nature of ritual, work and genocide, and our personal fears and desires.

Presents a study of Anlo, part of the Ewe people divided between Ghana and Togo. This book describes the complex system of landholdings made necessary by the high density of population. Adjustments are made by the exercise of claims through maternal kin, contradicting that patrilineal claims are asserted strongly where there is pressure on land.

From the mid-1500s to December 1999, Macao was the longest-standing site of economic, religious and political contact between the Chinese and European worlds. This book shows that as a rear window on China, Macao provides us with examples of marginality that allow us to study the limits of the systems that characterize the Chinese world.

Through a range of ethnographic case studies focusing on the Portuguese recovery after the economic crisis, this book begins a conversation about the experience of recuperation and repair.

When humans cooperate, what are the social and psychological mechanisms that enable them to do so successfully? Is cooperativeness something natural for humans, built in to our species over the course of evolution, or rather something that depends on cultural learning and social interaction? This book addresses these central questions.

Drawing on a wide range of anthropological case studies, this book focuses on ordinary ethics in contemporary China. The book examines the kinds of moral and ethical issues that emerge (sometimes almost unnoticed) in the flow of everyday life in Chinese communities.