Houses in the Rainforest : Ethnicity and Inequality Among Farmers and Foragers in Central Africa

Grinker, Roy Richard
Berkeley : University of California Press, 1994

"This is the first ethnographic study of the farmers and foragers of northeastern Zaire since Colin Turnbull's classic works of the 1960s. Roy Richard Grinker lived for nearly two years among the Lese farmers and their long-term partners, the Efe (Pygmies), learned their languages, and gained unique insights into their complex social relations and ethnic identities. By showing how political organization is structured by ethnic and gender relations in the Lese house, Grinker challenges previous views of the Lese and Efe and other farmer-forager societies, as well as the conventional anthropological boundary between domestic and political contexts."Publisher description

Frontiers and Ghettos : State Violence in Serbia and Israel

Ron, James
Berkeley :  University of California Press, 2003

"James Ron uses controversial comparisons between Serbia and Israel to present a novel theory of state violence. Formerly a research consultant to Human Rights Watch and the International Red Cross, Ron witnessed remarkably different patterns of state coercion. Frontiers and Ghettos presents an institutional approach to state violence, drawing on Ron's field research in the Middle East, Balkans, Chechnya, Turkey, and Africa, as well as dozens of rare interviews with military veterans, officials, and political activists on all sides. Studying violence from the ground up, the book develops an exciting new framework for analyzing today's nationalist wars."Publisher description

The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa

Vail, Leroy, editor
Berkeley : Currey University of California Press, 1989

"Despite a quarter century of "nation building," most African states are still driven by ethnic particularism - commonly known as "tribalism." The stubborn persistence of tribal ideologies despite the profound changes associated with modernization has puzzled scholars and African leaders alike. The bloody hostilities between the tribally-oriented Zulu Inkhata movement and supporters of the African National Congress are but the most recent example of tribalism's tenacity. The studies in this volume offer a new historical model for the growth and endurance of such ideologies in southern Africa."Publisher description

Learning from Experience : Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles

Moya, Paula M. L.
 Berkeley : University of California Press, 2002

"In Learning from Experience, Paula Moya offers an alternative to some influential philosophical assumptions about identity and experience in contemporary literary theory. This book provides eloquent analyses of such postmodernist feminists as Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, Norma Alarcón, and Chela Sandoval. It advances realist proposals for multicultural education and offers an understanding of the interpretive power of Chicana feminists. Learning from Experience enlarges our concept of identity and offers new ways to situate aspects of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation in discursive and sociopolitical contexts."Publisher description

Livelihood and Resistance : Peasants and the Politics of Land in Peru

Smith, Gavin
Berkeley : University of California Press, 1989

"Though this study addresses general questions of how peasants make a living and how they engage in political resistance, it focuses on one group of people to make its argument : the people of Huasicancha."Gavin Smith

Mirages of Transition : the Peruvian Altiplano, 1780-1930

Jacobsen, Nils
 Berkeley :  University of California Press, 1993

"This case study of the Peruvian altiplano, combines economic and social analysis with cultural and institutional history. Nils Jacobsen challenges the prevailing view that the rural Andes underwent a successful transition to capitalism between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He argues that although the political, economic, and administrative structures of colonialism were gradually dismantled by the region's advancing market economy, colonial modes of constructing power and social identity have lingered on even to this day."Publisher's Description

Beyond the Stream : Islam and Society in a West African Town

Launay, Robert
Berkeley :  University of California Press, 1992

"Robert Launay has been observing the changing religious practices of the Dyula, a Muslim community in West Africa, for more than a decade. In Beyond the Stream , he examines the ways in which this religious and ethnic minority group living on the fringes of the Muslim world maintains its ties to the universal Islamic tradition while adapting everyday religious practices to the local context."Publisher's Description

Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society

Watson, Rubie S., and Patricia Buckley Ebrey, editors
Berkeley :  University of California Press, 1991

"The research of ten scholars presented here provides a new vision of marriage in Chinese history, exploring the complex interplay between marriage and the social, political, economic, and gender inequalities that have so characterized Chinese society."Publisher's Description

White Saris and Sweet Mangoes : Aging, Gender, and Body in North India

Lamb, Sarah
Berkeley :  University of California Press, 2000

"This ethnography explores beliefs and practices surrounding aging in a rural Bengali village. Sarah Lamb focuses on how villagers' visions of aging are tied to the making and unmaking of gendered selves and social relations over a lifetime. Lamb contributes to contemporary theories of gender, the body, and culture, which have been hampered, the book argues, by a static focus on youth."Publisher's Description

Claiming the High Ground : Sherpas, Subsistence, and Environmental Change in the Highest Himalaya

Stevens, Stanley F.
Berkeley :  University of California Press, 1993

"Stanley Stevens brings a new historical perspective to his study of a subsistence society in ever-increasing contact with the outside world. Stevens's innovative use of oral history and cultural ecology suggests that tourism is not the watershed circumstance many have considered it to be. He documents the Sherpas' ingenious adaptation to high-altitude conditions, their past and present agricultural, pastoral, trade, and forest management practices, and their own perspectives on the environmental history of their homeland."Publisher's Description

Socialization as Cultural Communication : Development of a Theme in the Work of Margaret Mead

Schwartz, Theodore, editor
Berkeley :  University of California Press,1976

"This book develops but one central theme from Margaret Mead's work—the processes of cultural transmission. In keeping with the interdisciplinary focus of Ethos and with the interdisciplinary relevance of Margaret Mead's work, scholars of diverse fields—anthropology, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, and primatology—were invited to contribute articles on suggested topics related to the theme of socialization as cultural communication." Theodore Schwartz

Circumstantial Deliveries

Needham, Rodney
Berkeley : University of California Press, 1981

"The essays that follow have a common character in that they all implicate what I take to be central notions in the comparative interpretation of human experience. It is not by way of collateral lapses that these matters recur in one essay after another. Their intrinsic importance, rather, is displayed by the very fact that disquisitions on various topics should converge, as the examination probes deeper, on a common set of concerns."The author

The short, swift time of gods on earth : the Hohokam chronicles

Bahr, Donald M.
University of California Press,  1994


"In the spring of 1935, at Snaketown, Arizona, two Pima Indians recounted and translated their entire traditional creation narrative. Juan Smith, reputedly the last tribesman with extensive knowledge of the Pima version of this story, spoke and sang while William Smith Allison translated into English and Julian Hayden, an archaeologist, recorded Allison's words verbatim."Publisher's Description

Speaking with Vampires : rumor and History in Colonial Africa

White, Luise
Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2000


"During the colonial period, Africans told each other terrifying rumors that Africans who worked for white colonists captured unwary residents and took their blood. In addition to presenting stories that Africans told to describe colonial power, the book presents an epistemological inquiry into the nature of historical truth and memory, and into their relationship to the writing of history."Publisher's Description

Masks of the spirit : Image and Metaphor in Mesoamerica

Markman, Roberta H., and Peter T. Markman
Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1989

"Roberta Markman and Peter Markman perceive the Mesoamerican mask as a metaphor and agent of transformation, mirroring in its relationship with its wearer the unity of the "underlying life force and the natural world it forms and sustains." Examples of the mask's symbolism are drawn from pre-Columbian images of the rain god, modern folkways, and contemporary art."Publisher's Description

A journey in Southern Siberia

Curtin, Jeremiah
Boston : Little Brown and Company, 1909

"Jeremiah Curtin, writer, polyglot, ethnographer and folklorist, travelled in 1900 to central Siberia to study the religion and folklore of the Buryat people."Publisher's Description

Kinship with Strangers: Adoption and Interpretations of Kinship in American Culture

Modell, Judith S.
Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1994

This book is about the particular kind of kinship American adoption is .Publisher's Description