Few writers have asked how the notion of an Irish-American ethnic identity in contemporary America can be reconciled with five, six, or seven generations of intermarriage and assimilation over the last century and a half. This study, based on interviews with 500 people of Irish ancestry, aims to discover in what senses the present-day descendants of nineteenth-century Irish immigrants possess distinctive social practices and ways of seeing the world.

Spencer presents the definitive study of the ways of life of the cattle-herding peoples of East Africa, drawing on many years of research. This region has offered a prime example of a traditional culture resisting the inevitability of change; it provides the best-known and most extensive instance both of cattle-pastoralist society and of social organization based primarily on age. The Pastoral Continuum examines the richness and resilience of the culture of these peoples, illuminates the role of indigenous practices and institutions in adaptation and survival, and offers a unique view of the...

In this book the late Jeffrey Clark subjects the history of colonialism among the Wiru of Papua New Guinea to a fresh and subtle examination. Colonized and colonizers alike are the focus of an analysis that draws upon theories of culture, temporality, discursive representation, and anthropology in the postcolonial era.

This book is an anthropological case study of the little-known "Bushman" of Northern Namibia. They are still a gathering people, not only living on mangetti (nuts) and other wild foods but also on the by-products of the cattle industry on the mangetti farms. Through direct interaction during long-term field research, this book vividly conveys the conditions in which the "Bushman" actually live today.

In 1925, the influential Dutch anthropologist W. H. Rassers questioned the relationship of myth to ritual, taking as his case study the Javanese myth of the birth of the man-eating demon Kala. This myth, and its re-enactment, shed light on the social morphology and became immediately the subject of debate among students of Javanese culture. In this enticing work, Stephen C. Headley translates and studies ritual and myth in their variant forms, expanding upon Rassers' general proposition that the movement from cosmogony to exorcism discovers fundamental social forms that circulate values in...

In this book, the authors provide an accurate description of the phonological system of Portuguese, comparing the main phenomena of the two most widely extended varieties of the language within the light of current phonological theories. This book's importance and interest lie in the unique characteristics that give Portuguese a special place among the Romance languages.

This book is an ethnography of the native people of the Bajo Urubamba river in Peruvian Amazonia. Gow attempts to account for the fact that the people of this region appear to be very acculturated when compared to better-known indigenous Amazonian peoples. He argues that when native people's claims are viewed from the perspective of their own values, and in the context of their creation of life through the productive transformation of the forest and the commodity economy, they can be seen to form a coherent part of kinship. Historical change is thus revealed as interior to the ongoing...

Long-term migration is one of the most important factors in the formation of cultural identities in the modern world. Katy Gardner looks at the 'sending' communities (neglected by academic research) and covers major aspects of Bangladeshi life (land, family structure, marriage, and religion) to show how out-migration has become a central economic and social resource--the route to social, as well as physical, mobility, transforming those who gain access to it. At the heart of this important text is a presentation of the dynamic nature of migration and the possibility of self-transformation it...

Humphrey and Laidlaw present a new and radical general theory of ritual by drawing on an ethnographically rich account of the ritual worship of the Jains of western India. Ritual, they argue, is not a logically separate type of activity, but rather a quality that can be attributed to a wide range of everyday activities. In exploring the issue of what is distinctive about actions which are ritualized, this book makes an ambitious and controversial contribution to social and religious anthropology.

Layton's study of continuity and change in rural France and his comparisons with other European regions, make possible a reinterpretation of the eighteenth-century enclosures in England. Here, he presents an engaging dialog between ethnography and social history, suggesting a revision of the theories of Marx, Giddens, and Bourdieu.