In this political essay, Ivan Illich calls for the right to useful unemployment: a positive, constructive, and even optimistic concept dealing with that activity by which people are useful to themselves and others outside the production of commodities for the market.
The starkly different ways that American and French online news companies respond to audience analytics and what this means for the future of newsWhen the news moved online, journalists suddenly learned what their audiences actually liked, through algorithmic technologies that scrutinize web traffic and activity.
How the booming Islamic finance industry became an ultramodern hybrid of religion and marketsIn just fifty years, Islamic finance has grown from a tiny experiment operated from a Volkswagen van to a thriving global industry worth more than the entire financial sector of India, South America, or Eastern Europe.
A bold and revolutionary perspective on the science and cultural history of menstruationMenstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, yet it remains largely misunderstood.
How Brazil's long history of racism and authoritarian politics has led to the country's present crises and epidemic of violenceBrazil has long nurtured a cherished national myth, one of a tolerant, peaceful, and racially harmonious society.
This third volume of Princeton Readings in Religions demonstrates that the "e;three religions"e; of China--Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism (with a fourth, folk religion, sometimes added)--are not mutually exclusive: they overlap and interact with each other in a rich variety of ways.
An inside view of the experimental practices of cognitive psychology-and their influence on the addictive nature of social mediaExperimental cognitive psychology research is a hidden force in our online lives.
In this first book-length treatment of Maya intellectuals in national and community affairs in Guatemala, Kay Warren presents an ethnographic account of Pan-Maya cultural activism through the voices, writings, and actions of its participants.
How evangelical churches in the United States convert migrant distress into positive religious devotionWhy do migrants become more deeply evangelical in the United States and how does this religious identity alter their self-understanding?
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer combines extensive field research with historical inquiry to produce a dramatic study of a minority people in Russia, the Khanty (Ostiak) of Northwest Siberia.
The intellectual radicalism of the 1960s spawned a new set of questions about the role and nature of "e;the political"e; in social life, questions that have since revolutionized nearly every field of thought, from literary criticism through anthropology to the philosophy of science.
Douglas Holmes develops the concept of peasant-worker society to analyze a kind of social formation that has until now gone largely unrecognized and unstudied.
A mesmerizing trip across America to investigate the changing face of death in contemporary lifeDeath in the United States is undergoing a quiet revolution.
Spanish villagers tell many folktales that describe in metaphorical language the struggles of young men and women as they emerge from their parental families and join in love.
In this study a social and cultural anthropologist and a specialist in the study of religion pool their talents to examine recent changes in popular religion in Sri Lanka.
A compelling account of how a group of Hasidic Jews established its own local government on American soilSettled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish historybut many precedents among religious communities in the United States.
This tripartite study of the monkey metaphor, the monkey performance, and the 'special status' people traces changes in Japanese culture from the eighth century to the present.
In this rich account of a Muslim society in highland Sumatra, Indonesia, John Bowen describes how men and women debate among themselves ideas of what Islam is and should be--as it pertains to all areas of their lives, from work to worship.
Suitably Modern traces the growth of a new middle class in Kathmandu as urban Nepalis harness the modern cultural resources of mass media and consumer goods to build modern identities and pioneer a new sociocultural space in one of the world's "e;least developed countries.
This compelling text and dramatic photographic essay convey the emotional power of the death rituals of a small Greek village--the funeral, the singing of laments, the distribution of food, the daily visits to the graves, and especially the rite of exhumation.
A compelling history of the German ethnologists who were inspired by Prussian polymath and explorer Alexander von HumboldtThe Berlin Ethnological Museum is one of the world's largest and most important anthropological museums, housing more than a half million objects collected from around the globe.
Bioprospecting--the exchange of plants for corporate promises of royalties or community development assistance--has been lauded as a way to develop new medicines while offering southern nations and indigenous communities an incentive to preserve their rich biodiversity.
An illuminating account of cultural resilience in JavaFive centuries after the fall of its last Hindu Buddhist kingdom, Java retains only one small population that preserves a non-Islamic priestly tradition descended from early Hindu clergy.
How the financial pressures of paying for college affect the lives and well-being of middle-class familiesThe struggle to pay for college is a defining feature of middle-class life in America.
A riveting account of how a popularly elected leader has steered the world's largest democracy toward authoritarianism and intoleranceOver the past two decades, thanks to Narendra Modi, Hindu nationalism has been coupled with a form of national-populism that has ensured its success at the polls, first in Gujarat and then in India at large.
As collective violence erupts in many regions throughout the world, we often hear media reports that link the outbreaks to age-old ethnic or religious hostilities, thereby freeing the state, its agents, and its political elites from responsibility.
The first modern scholarly synthesis of animal domesticationAcross the globe and at different times in the past millennia, the evolutionary history of domesticated animals has been greatly affected by the myriad, complex, and diverse interactions humans have had with the animals closest to them.
In this richly detailed, sensitive ethnographic work, Sally Cole takes as her starting point the firsthand accounts of five differently situated Portuguese women, who describe their lives in a rural fishing community on the north coast of Portugal.
An in-depth look at how mortuary cultures and issues of death and the dead in Africa have developed over four centuriesIn My Time of Dying is the first detailed history of death and the dead in Africa south of the Sahara.
A classic twentieth-century work in the anthropology of CatholicismPerson and God in a Spanish Valley is a moving portrait of how individuals and communities in a remote, mountainous valley of northern Spain relate to the divine.
Producing Culture and Capital is a major theoretical contribution to the anthropological literature on capitalism, as well as a rich case study of kinship and gender relations in northern Italy.
Winner of the Margaret Mead AwardA classic, moving study of terminally ill children that emphasizes their agency and shows how we can relate to dying children more honestly"e;The death of a child,"e; writes Myra Bluebond-Langner, "e;poignantly underlines the impact of social and cultural factors on the way that we die and the way that we permit others to die.
A Space on the Side of the Road vividly evokes an "e;other"e; America that survives precariously among the ruins of the West Virginia coal camps and "e;hollers.
An intimate and moving portrait of daily life in New York's oldest institution of traditional rabbinic learningNew York City's Lower East Side has witnessed a severe decline in its Jewish population in recent decades, yet every morning in the big room of the city's oldest yeshiva, students still gather to study the Talmud beneath the great arched windows facing out onto East Broadway.
A revealing look at Jewish men and women who secretly explore the outside world, in person and online, while remaining in their ultra-Orthodox religious communities What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of life you had ever known?
