Books in the Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology series

Stephen Headley translates and studies a Javanese ritual and myth, the birth of the man-eating demon, Kala. He shows that this genesis myth, with its movement from cosmogony to exorcism, constitutes the basis of networks of circulating values in contemporary Javanese society.

An analysis of person, time, and identity among the Karawari speakers of the Ambonwari village in Papua New Guinea. It examines everyday practices, social institutions, kinship, myths, spirit things, rituals and dances, and offers a theoretical approach to the study of Melanesian cultures.

Sea Hunters of Indonesia is a comprehensive study of the culture, economy, and history of Lamalera, a traditional whaling and textile-producing community in Indonesia, now becoming a major tourist attraction. R.H. Barnes offers a richly detailed and beautifully illustrated view of unique ways of life that are now under threat.

Drawing upon a detailed study of Jainism in the city of Jaipur, India, this study shows how renunciation and asceticism play a central role in the life of a thriving business community, and how world-renunciation combines for Jain families with the pursuit of wordly happiness.

This collective study of the urban civilization of the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, is the most complete and approachable account yet of a regional caste system. All the major Newari viewpoints are covered: low castes as well as high, artisans as well as priests, Buddhist as well as Hindu, rural as well as urban.

Using case-studies from various non-Western societies, this text explores the connection between art, anthropology and aesthetics. It should interest those concerned with the anthropology of art or material culture, or in the theory of art or aesthetics.

Although the Jains have a religious history spanning two-and-a-half millennia Western scholars have shown little interest in them until recently. Drawing on fieldwork conducted among Jains in Gujarat State, India and Leicester, England, Marcus Banks aims to provide an understanding of contemporary Jain identity through an examination of their organizations.

This study of the effect of social engineering in Inner Mongolia since the Chinese communists took control illuminates the transformations and continuities of life in pastoral Mongolian society and suggests an indigenous mechanism that has helped to shape the pastoral nomadic sociopolitical order.

Offers a study of a serious illness in a New Guinea village. This book records the failure of local treatments and Western medicine, and of a communal ritual to bring a spirit to heal a man; it also shows how cultural beliefs and assumptions may influence events. It focuses on how those closely involved maintained their hope and beliefs.

This is an ethnography of Bacup in the north-west of England. It dwells on the way the past features in talk about the place and each other, questioning the claim that such a preoccupation is due to nostalgia. It also makes connections across domains and argues that kinship is resonant in each.

This is an anthropological study of the Icelandic world. It explores the features of Icelandic society, culture, tradition and ideology in the 20th century.

Located in the world of a former collective farm in Estonia, Sigrid Rausing's book describes the changing identity of the Swedish speaking minority in Estonia under pre-Soviet and Soviet rule, its new post-Soviet dependence on Sweden, and its current attempt to restore a Swedish cultural identity.

Focuses on the seamy side of market economy in Lithuania and shows how a 'market' becomes established by people, sacrifices, and contestation. It pictures the hardship of entrepreneurs creating market economies by travelling to buy merchandise for resale, and shows how their ideas slowly develop into established routines in a stable market.

This text charts how Turkish people, both individually and collectively, attempt to personalize the impersonality of the state. The narratives and metaphors used in these constructions draw on resources close to hand such as the organization of the factory and the family structure.

This book combines the insights of history and anthropology with innovative techniques such as computer simulation to investigate the relationships between politics, kinship, and marriage in the late-medieval city-state of Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik). At its heart is a reconsideration of `office' and the ways in which ties of kinship and marriage were mobilized to build electoral success.

In this book the late Jeffrey Clark subjects the history of colonialism among the Wiru of Papua New Guinea to a fresh and subtle examination. Colonized and colonizers alike are the focus of an analysis that draws upon theories of culture, temporality, discursive representation, and anthropology in the postcolonial era.

Long-term migration is one of the most important factors in the formation of cultural identities in the modern world. This study covers major aspects of Bangladeshi life to show how migration has become a central economic and social resource in the community.

The Arabesk Debate describes the way in which Turkish musicians discuss, dispute, and attribute meaning to their music. Martin Stokes examines the debate over 'Arabesk', a musical genre popular throughout Turkey. His book is an ethnographic study of urban music-making in Istanbul, focusing on the activities of professional musicians and their audiences in the city.

This ethnography of the native people of the Bajo Urubamba river in Peruvian Amazonia addresses the wider issue of historical change in Amazonia and the political problems caused for indigenous people by modern development.

In this text, the author offers a very personal investigation of the nature of kinship in Malaysia, based upon her own experience of life as a foster daughter in a family on the island of Langkawi.

The authors demonstrate that the language, techniques, and theorems of graph theory provide the essential basis for the description, quantification, simulation, enumeration, and notation of the great variety of exchange forms actually found in Oceanic societies.

This study aims to discover in what senses and in what degrees the present-day descendants of 19th-century Irish immigrants have distinctive social practices and ways of seeing the world. It raises questions about the social conditions in which ideas of Irishness have been created and re-created.

The millenarian cult of Pomio Kivung in Papua New Guinea looks forward to the establishment of a period of supernatural bliss, heralded by the return of ancestors bearing "cargo". Drawing on this belief, this study develops an original theory of modes of religiosity.

Layton's study of continuity and change in rural France, and his comparisons with other European regions, make possible a reinterpretation of the eighteenth-century enclosures in England. He presents a dialogue between ethnography and social history, and suggests a revision of the theories of Marx, Giddens, and Bourdieu.

A first-hand account of a reindeer-herding collective in the remote Taimyr peninsula of Siberia, providing information on the historical and political dynamics of northern Asia. The text also traces the changes caused in the region by the formation of, and the break-up of, the Soviet Union.

Living on Mangetti is an anthropological case study of the little-known Hai||om 'Bushmen' of Northern Namibia. The book is a result of direct interaction during long-term field research and vividly conveys how and under what conditions the 'Bushmen' actually live today.

Shamans and Elders is a ground-breaking study of Mongolian shamanism and society, past and present. Lavishly illustrated and containing a wealth of new information, it presents a fresh understanding of the widespread phenomenon of shamanism. Caroline Humphrey and Urgunge Onon offer much-needed insight on a little-known world, and point the way to a new method of doing anthropology.

This book presents a new and radical general theory of ritual by drawing on an ethnographically rich account of the ritual worship of the Jains of western India. The authors argue that ritual is not a logically separate type of activity, but rather a quality that can be attributed to a much wider range of everyday activity than is usually supposed.

Society in the Keo region of the Indonesian island of Flores reveals a pervasive pairing of villages, clans, and other groups. This study - deriving from fieldwork conducted by the author over 15 years - analyzes a form of society known as morphological dualism, or dual organization.

This volume offers anthropological perspectives on landscape, a topic of emerging interest for anthropologists, geographers, art historians and archaeologists. It proposes that landscape be conceptualized as a cultural process situated between "place" and "space".