Books in the WYSE Series in Social Anthropology series

Written by eleven leading anthropologists from around the world, this volume extends the insights of Fredrik Barth, one of the most important anthropologists of the twentieth century, to push even further at the frontiers of anthropology.

The notion of "sociality" is now widely used within the social sciences and humanities. However, what is meant by the term varies radically, and the contributors here, through compelling and wide ranging essays, identify the strengths and weaknesses of current definitions and their deployment in the social sciences.

What happens when people "achieve"? Why do reactions to "achievement" vary so profoundly? And how might an anthropological study of achievement and its consequences allow us to develop a more nuanced model of the motivated agency that operates in the social world? These questions lie at the heart of this volume.

The notion of 'sociality' is now widely used within the social sciences and humanities. However, what is meant by the term varies radically, and the contributors here, through compelling and wide ranging essays, identify the strengths and weaknesses of current definitions and their deployment in the social sciences.

This book is a contribution to the anthropology of Italy and of Europe as an ethnography of queer activism in Bologna; and, at the same time, it is an intervention in a set of ongoing theoretical debates in anthropology surrounding the perennial problem of the relationship between ethnographic data and anthropological analysis.

Written by eleven leading anthropologists from around the world, this volume extends the insights of Fredrik Barth, one of the most important anthropologists of the twentieth century, to push even further at the frontiers of anthropology.

Becoming Vaishnava in an Ideal Vedic City centers on a growing multinational community of ISKCON devotees in Mayapur, West Bengal. Paying particular attention to devotees' failure to consistently live up to ISKCON's ideals, and the ongoing struggle to realize the utopian vision of an `ideal Vedic city'.

This volume explores the indeterminacy left behind by conventional understandings of progress and shows how totalizing forward movement may be resisted by fragments, open-endedness, and the possibility of going nowhere at all.