This rich ethnography analyzes coastal protection as a sociomaterial practice. Coastal protection, Friederike Gesing argues, co-produces natural and cultural orders. In the context of the Aotearoa New Zealand coast, the book follows the emergence of a new sociotechnical imaginary: coastal management working "with nature" - and not against it. Analysis of a seawall controversy and different coastal protection projects shows how "soft" protection slowly takes hold. Dune restoration volunteers, coastal management experts, surfer-scientists, and Maori conservationists engage in different...

Migration, networks, skills: these keywords not only denote three popular and important fields of current investigation in social sciences and cultural studies, they also mark the wide range of interests of cultural and social anthropologist Waltraud Kokot, who is to be honored in this Festschrift. Internationally distinguished scholars from five European countries and various academic disciplines present their most recent research findings on topics such as diaspora and migration studies, urban anthropology, tolerance, and the anthropology of crafts, all of which are connected by the common...

The book provides unique insights into the culture of computer-mediated hospitality and how this has begun to transform contemporary tourism and travel practice. Focusing on Couchsurfing.org, one of the largest online hospitality communities worldwide, the authors explore how social relations, intimacy and trust are built in the online environment and then extended into the offline contexts of actual tourism and travel. Being active couchsurfers themselves, the authors scrutinise the candid claim by much of the online hospitality community that couchsurfing creates a better world. The book is...

Spatial and identity research operates with differentiations and relations that are particularly useful for examining border regions in which social and geopolitical demarcations diverge. The authors of this volume investigate spatial and identity constructions in crossborder contexts as they appear in everyday, institutional, and media practices. The results are discussed with a keen eye for obliquely aligned spaces and identities linked to governmental issues of standardization and subjectivation. Research is based on empirical surveys conducted in Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

Focusing on particularly conflict-prone parts of Asia, the contributors to this book analyze the dynamics of everyday conflicts from the perspectives of the actors involved. They pay particular attention to aspects like mobilization, exclusion, segregation, the role of institutions, and the construction of antagonistic identities. The book gathers case studies based on long-term fieldwork from conflicts in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kashmir.

Mobility is a byword of late modernity that suggests an increasingly unrestrained and interconnected world of individual opportunities. However, as privileges enable some to live in a seemingly borderless world, others remain excluded and marginalized. Boundaries are created, modified, and consolidated, particularly in times of hypermobility. Evidently mobility is closely tied to immobility. This volume features ethnographic research that challenges the concept of mobility from the perspective of social inequality and global hierarchies.

How is transnational cooperation conducted in practice in the East African country of Rwanda, and how is it organized? Can the worlds of development aid and private business be compared? In this ethnography, Robin Pohl identifies the organizational patterns used by Rwandan, European, and Indian partners. Different types of agencies, companies, or projects each relate foreign activities differently to their local environment. The effects of potential divisions at the global level turn into assets or liabilities on the operative level of transboundary cooperations, depending on their context.

The global economic and financial crisis has had a severe impact on southern European economies and stimulated growing numbers of mainly young migrants heading north, nurturing the fear of brain drain back home. This volume compiles recent research on European south-north migration, addressing migration processes and practices, the management of migration by institutions, and relevant public debates. It thereby delivers an important contribution to the understanding of the durability and context of recent European south-north migration and their consequences for European economies, politics,...

Jeanne Feaux de la Croix maps three iconic places as part of Central Asians' "moral geographies" and examines their role in navigating socialist, neo-liberal, and neo-Islamic life models. Dams provide most of Kyrgyzstan's electricity, but are also at the heart of regional water disputes that threaten an already shrinking Aral Sea. Mountain pastures cover much of Central Asia's heartland and offer a livelihood and refuge, even to urban citizens. Pilgrimage sites have recovered from official Soviet oblivion and act as cherished scenes of decision-making. Examining how iconic places, work, and...

Caste hierarchy has frequently been singled out as the overriding principle of Indian society. This book examines its significance among the highly-educated middle class in the Tamil town of Madurai. As part of their distinctive status as educated persons, young graduates form egalitarian constellations--thus, or so it would seem, subverting the boundaries inscribed by caste hierarchy. Stephanie Stocker explores how these friendships are maintained in wider social contexts, finding that the actors engage in supportive networks throughout career and marriage events. Instead of assuming these...