Health inequality is a global issue. This book examines the problem through an in-depth look at a remote Australian Aboriginal community characterized by a degree of premature morbidity and mortality similar to that in other disadvantaged populations. Its synthesis of cognitive anthropology with frameworks drawn from epidemiology, evolutionary theory, and social, psychological and biological sciences illuminates the actions, emotions, and stresses of daily life. While this analysis implicates structures and processes of inequality in the genesis of ill health, its focus remains on the people...

Based on the author's second stage of research on emotions of the matrilineal Moslem Minangkabau of West Sumatra, Indonesia, this book is a continuation of Heider's groundbreaking 1991 book, Landscapes of Emotion . This work demonstrates how situating emotion at the center of an investigation is a powerful ethnographic tool.

Dreams seem the most private territory of experience. Yet Dreaming Culture argues they are a space in which we practice, consider, question, and adapt cultural models of the self, gender, sexuality, relationships, and agency. Through an innovative "dream ethnography" from college students in the northwestern U.S., this book contributes to recent research on dreaming and the brain in psychology and continuing research on dreaming and the self in clinical psychology and psychological anthropology. Dreaming Culture uses critical theory to understand power relations embedded in cultural models, a...

Rapid industrialization, urbanization, and marketization have led to startling social changes in reform-era China. Mindful of the many forms of social theory that relate modernity to individualism, this volume addresses social and cultural change through the lens of psychological anthropology.

Although humans slumber for approximately one third of our lives, sleep itself is vastly understudied. This volume provides a comparative frame through which we can understand the myriad ways in which sleep reflects and embodies culture as contributors examine aspects of sleep in various countries and contexts.

Since the 1950s, the study of early attachment and separation has been dominated by a school of psychology that is Euro-American in its theoretical assumptions. Based on ethnographic studies in a range of locales, this book goes beyond prior efforts to critique attachment theory, providing a cross-cultural basis for understanding human development.

Since the 1950s, the study of early attachment and separation has been dominated by a school of psychology that is Euro-American in its theoretical assumptions. Based on ethnographic studies in a range of locales, this book goes beyond prior efforts to critique attachment theory, providing a cross-cultural basis for understanding human development.

Spirit possession involves the displacement of a human's conscious self by a powerful other who temporarily occupies the human's body. Here, Seligman shows that spirit possession represents a site for understanding fundamental aspects of human experience, especially those involved with interactions among meaning, embodiment, and subjectivity.

Class-based self-perception is a rising issue worldwide. Through observation in kindergartens in Fiji, Brison examines how schools instil these ideas in Suva children. Teachers have different goals depending on the social background of the families while students create friendships through shared experience of toys, gender roles, and mass media.