This superb historical and ethnographic study of the political economy of the Vega Baja region of Spain, one of the European Union's "Regional Economies," takes up the difficult question of how to understand the growing alienation ordinary working people feel in the face of globalization. Combining rich oral histories with a sophisticated and nuanced structural understanding of changing political economies, the authors examine the growing divide between government and its citizens in a region that has in the last four decades been transformed from a primarily agricultural economy to a...

The past decade has witnessed the phenomenal rise of cultural studies on both sides of the Atlantic. This text asks whether the very success of this comparatively new field of academic enquiry stands as a tribute to anthropology, or whether the success of cultural studies is evidence of anthropology's fragmentation and decline. Amidst fears that anthropology is being eclipsed, this collection of essays asks what kinds of relationships are feasible between anthropology and cultural studies, and how they might develop in the future. Is there scope for fruitful dialogue and, if so, on whose...

Throughout history and in every geographical location, the rise and fall of industry, which impact the fate of large populations, are tied to the development and cultural entanglement of particular models that are articulated with political power. Models are understood as knowledge devices - expert, theoretical, practical and commonsense - that are embedded in cultural and social environments and designed through struggles at various scales.

This book results from the collaboration of an interdisciplinary team bringing together specialists in anthropology, geography, sociology,...

This volume presents a global range of ethnographic case studies to explore the ways in which - in the context of the restructuring of industrial work, the ongoing financial crisis, and the surge in unemployment and precarious employment - local and global actors engage with complex social processes and devise ideological, political, and economic responses to them. It shows how the reorganization and re-signification of work, notably shifts in the perception and valorization of work, affect domestic and community arrangements and shape the conditions of life of workers and their families.