Countering Colonization : native American women and Great Lakes missions, 1630–1900

Devens, Carol

Berkeley  :  University of California Press,  1992

"With Countering Colonization , Carol Devens offers a revisionary history of Native American women. From the time of early Jesuit missionaries to the late nineteenth century, Devens brings Ojibwa, Cree, and Montagnais-Naskapi women of the Upper Great Lakes region to the fore. Devens demonstrates that gender conflicts in Native American communities, which anthropologists considered to be "aboriginal," resulted in large part from women's and men's divergence over the acceptance of missionaries and their message.This book's perspective is unique in its focus on Native American women who acted to preserve their culture."publisher description

Indian Traffic : identities in question in colonial and postcolonial India

Roy, Parama

Berkeley : University of California Press, 1998

"The continual, unpredictable, and often violent "traffic" between identities in colonial and postcolonial India is the focus of Parama Roy's stimulating and original book. Mimicry has been commonly recognized as an important colonial model of bourgeois/elite subject formation, and Roy examines its place in the exchanges between South Asian and British, Hindu and Muslim, female and male, and subaltern and elite actors. Indian Traffic demonstrates that questions of originality and impersonation are in the forefront of both the colonial and the nationalist discourses of South Asia and are central to the conceptual identity of South Asian postcolonial theory itself. "Publisher description

History and Tradition in Melanesian Anthropology

Carrier, James G.

Berkeley : University of California Press, 1992

"Melanesian societies, like village societies in many parts of the world, are frequently portrayed as existing in a timeless, traditional present. These seven original essays offer an alternative view, one showing that historical evidence can and must inform our understanding of contemporary cultures."Publisher description

The Possessed and the Dispossessed : spirits, Identity, and Power in a Madagascar Migrant Town

Sharp, Lesley A.

Berkeley : University of California Press, 1993

"This finely drawn portrait of a complex, polycultural urban community in Madagascar emphasizes the role of spirit medium healers, a group heretofore seen as having little power. These women, Leslie Sharp argues, are far from powerless among the peasants and migrant laborers who work the land in this plantation economy."Publisher description

Ngoma : discourses of healing in Central and Southern Africa

Janzen, John M.

Berkeley : University of California Press, 1992

"Ngoma , in Bantu, means drum, song, performance, and healing cult or association. A widespread form of ritual healing in Central and Southern Africa, ngoma is fully investigated here for the first time and interpreted in a contemporary context. John Janzen's daring study incorporates drumming and spirit possession into a broader, institutional profile that emphasizes the varieties of knowledge and social forms and also the common elements of "doing ngoma ."Publisher description

The Heart of the Pearl Shell : the mythological dimension of Foi sociality

Weiner, James F.

 Berkeley : University of California Press, 1988

"For the Foi people who live on the edge of the central highlands of Papua New Guinea, the flow of pearl shells is the "heart" of their social life. The pearl shell is the exchange item that mediates the creation of their most important sexual and social roles."Publisher description

Reason and Passion : representations of gender in a Malay society

Peletz, Michael G.

Berkeley : University of California Press, 1996

"This book provides a historical and ethnographic examination of gender relations in Malay society, in particular in the well-known state of Negeri Sembilan, famous for its unusual mixture of Islam and matrilineal descent. Peletz analyzes the diverse ways in which the evocative, heavily gendered symbols of "reason" and "passion" are deployed by Malay Muslims. Unlike many studies of gender, this book elucidates the cultural and political processes implicated in the constitution of both feminine and masculine identity. It also scrutinizes the relationship between gender and kinship and weighs the role of ideology in everyday life."publisher description

Discrepant Dislocations : feminism, theory, and postcolonial histories

John, Mary E.

Berkeley : University of California Press, 1996

"Mary E. John investigates the metaphor of dislocation within and across two specific "locations" - the United States and India - in this epistemological inquiry into the production of theory in general and the grounds of feminist ethnography in particular. She probes a set of distinct but related themes: the lines of tension marking U.S. feminism, especially as foregrounded by women of color; the inescapable complexities of feminist theory and practice in India; and the traffic - in theory, feminists, and women - between the two contexts. Emphasizing the discrepancies in the dislocations articulated by feminists unequally affected by the West and its power, John explores issues of displacement and otherness in contemporary culture." Publisher description

La possession et ses aspects théâtraux chez les Éthiopiens de Gondar

Leiris, Michel

Paris: Librairie Plon, 1958

Chapitre I. Culte des Zâr et chamanisme
Chapitre II. Possession, divertissement et esthétique
Chapitre III. Le Zâr comme symbole d'une manière d'être et promoteur d'une action
Chapitre IV. Conscience et inconscience chez les protagonistes des scènes de possession
Chapitre V. Théâtre joué et théâtre vécu dans le culte des Zâr

Between Marriage and the Market : Intimate Politics and Survival in Cairo

Hoodfar, Homa

Berkeley : University of California Press, 1997

"Homa Hoodfar ethnography provides a rare glimpse into the daily life of Arab Muslim families. Focusing on the impact of economic liberalization policies from 1983 to 1993, she shows the crucial role of the household in survival strategies among low-income Egyptians."Publisher'description

Background to discovery : Pacific exploration from Dampier to Cook

Howse, Derek, ed.

 Berkeley : University of California Press, 1990

"Background to Discovery recounts the great voyages of discovery, from Dampier to Cook, that excited such fervent political and popular interest in eighteenth-century Europe. Perhaps this book's greatest strength lies in its remarkable synthesis of both the achievements of European maritime exploration and the political, economic, and scientific motives behind it."Publisher's description

Totemism and exogamy : a treatise on certain early forms of superstition and society

Frazer, James George

London : MacMillan, 1910

Volume 1 

Volume 2 

Volume 3 

Volume 4 

Grateful Prey : Rock Cree Human-Animal Relationships

Brightman, Robert
Berkeley : University of California Press,  1993

"The interaction between religious beliefs and hunting practices among the Asiniskawidiniwak or Rock Crees of northern Manitoba is the focus of Robert Brightman's detailed study. This foraging society, he says, bases aspects of its hunting and trapping largely on what we call "religious" conceptions. Seeking an ideology, however, that incorporates Cree beliefs about human-animal differences and the relationships that should exist between them as hunter and prey, Brightman finds these beliefs to be disordered and unstable rather than systematic. Animals are represented as simultaneously more and less powerful than humans. The hunter-prey relationship is talked about as both collaborative and adversarial."Publisher's Description

The migration of symbols

Goblet d'Alviella, Eugène


London : Constable and Co, 1894


This is a study of the migration and mutation of symbols by a late 19th century Belgian lawyer and scholar, Count Goblet d'Alviella (b. 1846, d. 1925). Originally published in 1891 in French, this book covers a huge web of interchangeable symbols, which are found over a wide range of cultures through the Near East, India, Europe, and further abroad, notably in Mesoamerica.

The native tribes of Central Australia

Spencer, Baldwin and Gillen, F. J.

London : MacMillan,  1899

This anthropological study of the central Australian tribes is one of the primary sources for information on these cultures. Based on first-hand scholarly study just prior to the twentieth century, Spencer and Gillen describe their complex rituals and belief systems, including initiation ceremonies, kinship, mythology and material culture.

Tsimshian mythology

Boas, Franz

Washington : Government Printing Office, 1916

Thirty-first annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909-1910

Tsimshian texts

Boas, Franz

Washington : Government Printing Office, 1902

Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology. Bulletin 27

The Spiritual Quest : transcendence in Myth, Religion, and Science

Torrance, Robert M.
Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1994


"Robert Torrance argues that the spiritual quest is rooted in our biological, psychological, linguistic, and social nature. Shaman and scientist, medium, prophet and philosopher, all venture forth in quest of visionary truths to transform and renew the world. Instead, he presents the full diversity of the quest in the myths and religious practices of tribal peoples throughout the world. In theorizing about the quest, Torrance draws on thinkers as diverse as Bergson and Piaget, van Gennep and Turner, Pierce and Popper, Freud, Darwin, and Chomsky."Publisher's Description

Showing Signs of Violence : The Cultural Politics of a Twentieth-Century Headhunting Ritual

George, Kenneth M.
Berkeley : University of California Press, 1996

"Showing Signs of Violence deals with the ceremonies of pangngae, a mock headhunt that lingers stubbornly at the center of political life in a marginal upland community in Sulawesi, Indonesia. No killing takes place in this ritual - no actual heads are taken - but its rhetoric of violence is unmistakable and real .Kenneth M. George vividly details the rites of pangngae, from the headhunters' secret and predatory journey downriver to the week of public festivity that follows their exuberant return. He puts special emphasis on the songs, speeches, and liturgies of the headhunt. "Publisher's Description

The Fractured Community : Landscapes of Power and Gender in Rural Zambia

Crehan, Kate
Berkeley :  University of California Press, 1997

"This study examines the lives of the women and men living in two small rural communities in Zambia on the eve of the collapse of the one-party state in the 1980s. Moving beyond the limits of traditional ethnography, Kate Crehan traces the often complex ways in which local, day-to-day realities are linked to wider economic, political, imaginative structures of power beyond northwestern Zambia.Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Crehan examines economics and gender, politics and kin relations, state and local relations, and witchcraft."Publisher description