Books published by AltaMira Press

Ramadan brings together essays to explain the history of Islamic law and its role in the contemporary world.

This book examines the most common reasons that foundation managers fail, and details the steps they must take in order to succeed. In overcoming the seven vexing challenges and strategizing the seven inescapable trade-offs, foundation managers can learn to maximize their positive social impact and avoid unintended lousy results.

Offers an introduction to the issues faced every day in archaeological practice. This volume covers looting, reburial and repatriation, relations with native peoples, and professional conduct.

A former Hollywood screenwriter and producer (Zulu Dawn) recounts his experiences and relates them to communication and cultural theory.

Examines how food systems are changing around the globe. This book offers a cultural perspective and provides ethnographic data on markets, industrial production, and food economies. It is suitable for professionals in economic and environmental anthropology: economic development, agricultural economics, consumer behavior and nutritional sciences.

Including reflections on teaching oral history, this book offers suggestions for educators seeking to create curricula, engage students, gather community support, and meet educational standards.

Evaluates children's books about Native Americans written between the early 1900s and 2003, accompanied by stories, essays and poems from its contributors. The authors critique some 600 books by more than 500 authors, arranging titles A to Z and covering pre-school, and K-12 levels.

Challenges the routine ways in which anthropologists have thought about the complexity and quantity of their materials, focusing on a problem normally thought of as commonplace; that of scale and proportion. This book reveals unexpected replications in modes of thought and in the presentation of ambiguous images.

Thriving in the Knowledge age provides an entirely new way of envisioning the business model for your cultural institution.

A demonstration of how religion and religious belief can emerge using computer simulations

Examines stories of Gypsy lives against the framework of social theories that illustrate how identity arises out of the cultural complexity of individual biographies, families, and communities. This book offers stories of people and how they are made, their social force, and what they collectively create.

A group of distinguished environmentalists offer an in-depth analysis of and call to advocacy for community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. They review the emergence of this transnational movement and how it has forged links between environmental management and social justice agendas.

This book provides a description, based upon research evidence from the Near East and elsewhere, of changes in climate and how they affected social and political developments. It includes three major case studies of the Neolithic, Early Bronze, and Roman/Byzantine periods.

Scholarly work that attempts to match linguistic and archaeological evidence in precolonial Africa

Charts the role cotton has played in commercial, community, and labor settings. This book focuses on the details of how people made, exchanged, and wore cotton cloth from before industrialization in Europe to the twentieth century.

Addresses the interaction between archaeology and nationalist, political, and commercial policies. This book is suitable for archaeologists, applied anthropologists, tourism and economic development specialists, and historic preservationists alike, as well as others with an interest in the preservation of archaeological sites as historic locales.

Applies a gender lens to the multiple systems of oppression that have shaped the lives of African American women and men. This book is suitable for students and instructors of African American Studies, Gender Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Marriage and Family, and Social Work.

Demonstrates the importance of contemporary learning theory and educational research to the development of effective programs in both formal and informal history and archeology education. This book includes chapters that cover teaching and history education theory.

Jewish Responses to Persecution: 1941-1942, Volume III sheds light on the personal and public lives of Jews during a period when Hitler's triumph in Europe seemed assured, and the mass murder of millions had begun in earnest. The primary source material presented here makes this volume an essential research tool and curriculum companion.

From the Galapagos to the depths of Patagonia and up along the stark desert coast of Chile, Listening to Sea Lions empathic ethnography carries the reader directly into the heart of the ocean world of Latino coastal people. Sea lions are the fellow denizens in nature who share the perpetual changes and are seen as metaphoric selves. Meltzoff uses storytelling rather than explicit theory to help explain local struggles and survival strategies wrought by extreme El Niño events and shifting political climates. Embedded within the six multi-sited ethnographies are global themes in coastal communities, from boom-and-bust fisheries to the rivalries among fisheries, tourism, conservation interests. The overall picture is sea-change and impermanence as a local way of life by the ocean.

Interpretation helps the public understand our purpose and mission. In this book, we tackle how to orient your organization to be effective interpreters of what you collect; how to tell engaging stories; and how to address difficult issues you may have avoided. We provide a primer in historical research for the non-historian and the do-it-yourself basics for creating good exhibits, tours, and programs on a small museum budget.

Museums exist to serve their audiences. This book describes how you can better relate to your audience, looking at how small museums are engaging with and advocating for their communities. We address marketing and public relations, visitor services, accessibility, and easy ways to find out what your audience members think about and want from you.

A characteristic of all sustainable museums is long-term financial stability. In this book, we explore how to transparently and accurately account for the financial resources you have and then provide a template for fundraising more dollars to sustain your small museum. We address grant applications and legal issues as they pertain to financial management, human resources, and other topics in the Toolkit.

A fascinating analysis of the world's scavengers as performing an important economic role in the production and consumption of food.

A history of wicca and neopaganism in the United States focusing on the post-WW II period.

Volume II begins with Kristallnacht in 1938 and continues through Jewish flight out of Germany, the onset of World War II, the forced relocation of the Jews of Europe to the East, and the formation of Jewish ghettos, particularly in Poland.

A text outlining the study of family abuse and violence.

What is it like to have lived with bulimia for most of your life? To have a mother who is retarded? To fight a health insurance company in order to survive breast cancer? This title tackles questions such as these. It demonstrates how ethnographic data can be converted into memorable experiences that readers can use in the classroom.