Islam is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the West. Myths and stereotypes surround it. This clear and penetrating volume helps readers to make sense of Islam. It offers a penetrating guide to the diversity and richness of contemporary knowledge about Islam and Muslim society. Throughout, the emphasis is upon the value of pluralistic approaches to Islam, rather than condensing complexity with unifying concepts such as Orientalism'. Interdisciplinary in scope and organization, the book cuts through the bewildering and seemingly anarchic diversity of contemporary knowledge about...

--Where and what is Ireland?--What are the identities of the people of Ireland?--How has European Union policy shaped Irish people's lives and interests?This book argues that such questions can be answered only by understanding everyday aspects of Irish culture and identity. Such understanding is acheived by paying close attention to what people in Ireland themselves say about the radical changes in their lives in the context of wider global transformation. As notions of sex, religion, and politics are radically reworked in an Ireland being re-imagined in ways inconceivable just a...

Borders are where wars start, as Primo Levi once wrote. But they are also bridges - that is, sites for ongoing cultural exchange. Anyone studying how nations and states maintain distinct identities while adapting to new ideas and experiences knows that borders provide particularly revealing windows for the analysis of 'self' and 'other'. In representing invisible demarcations between nations and peoples who may have much or very little in common, borders exert a powerful influence and define how people think as well as what they do. Without borders, whether physical or symbolic,...

Borders are where wars start, as Primo Levi once wrote. But they are also bridges - that is, sites for ongoing cultural exchange. Anyone studying how nations and states maintain distinct identities while adapting to new ideas and experiences knows that borders provide particularly revealing windows for the analysis of 'self' and 'other'. In representing invisible demarcations between nations and peoples who may have much or very little in common, borders exert a powerful influence and define how people think as well as what they do. Without borders, whether physical or symbolic,...

Borders are where the state is keen to stress its presence and yet are simultaneously places where that presence is challenged. They are sites of resistance to the state, and at the same time places where the national interest is vigorously maintained. This constant ambiguity generates questions about the dynamics of borderland-state relations, and about how what happens along the border can undermine state policies. Using case studies of national and state relations in borderlands in Europe, this book seeks to understand structures of power.

Thomas M. Wilson is a researcher at...

Sex scholarship has a long history in anthropology, from the studies of voyeuristic Victorian gentlemen ethnographers, to more recent analyses of gay sex, transsexualism, and the newly visible forms of contemporary sexuality in the West. The Anthropology of Sex draws on the comparative field research of anthropologists to examine the relationship between sex as identity, practice and experience. Sexual cultures vary enormously and, while often the topic of tabloid titillation, they are more rarely subjected to strict cultural analysis. The Anthropology of Sex is the first...