Emrys Peters studied the Bedouin of Libya for more than thirty years. The handful of articles published during his lifetime were widely admired and are still essential reading for anthropologists. He left further significant papers unpublished at his death, and the editors have drawn on these for half of this collection, which brings together his major writings on the Bedouin. These seminal essays are not only of ethnographic interest. All Peters' work is informed by a rigorous theoretical intelligence, and his analysis of power in Bedouin society has fascinated many discerning social...

The Vezo are fishing people of western Madagascar. The identity of the Vezo is not fixed by descent; rather, it is established by what they do. They are people of the sea, distinguished from the farmers around them by their economic specialism. Ethnicity is usually thought to be a consequence of inborn qualities acquired by descent, and Astuti explores the consequences of ascribing ethnic identity with reference to economic activity. Her analysis reveals that only in the cult of the dead does descent become critical, and her argument in this innovative analysis of Vezo kinship is that the...

The thesis of this original and provocative book is that representative government should be understood as a combination of democratic and undemocratic elements. Challenging the conventionally held views on the subject, Professor Manin reminds us that while today representative institutions and democracy appear as virtually indistinguishable, when representative government was first established in Europe and America, it was designed in opposition to democracy proper. The author identifies the essential features of democratic institutions and reviews the history of their application.

Defining lies as statements that are intended to deceive, this book considers the contexts in which people tell lies and explores the consequences. The author looks at societies with distinctive religious and ethical traditions where lying is the norm. He also shows how children acquire the capacity to lie at an early age, and learn when it is appropriate to do so. In conclusion, Professor Barnes argues that people are inclined to tell the truth, for apart from the question of morality, there are pragmatic reasons for doing so.

Professor Jack Goody builds on his own previous work to extend further his highly influential critique of what he sees as the pervasive eurocentric or occidentalist biases of so much western historical writing. Goody also examines the consequent 'theft' by the West of the achievements of other cultures in the invention of (notably) democracy, capitalism, individualism, and love. The Theft of History discusses a number of theorists in detail, including Marx, Weber and Norbert Elias, and engages with critical admiration western historians like Fernand Braudel, Moses Finlay and Perry Anderson....

This important new book investigates how the West attained its current position of economic and social advantage. In an incisive historical analysis, Jack Goody examines when and why Europe (and Anglo-America) started to outstrip all other continents in socio-economic growth. challenges assumptions about long-term European supremacy of a 'cultural' kind, as was a feature of many theories current in social science. He argues that the divergence came with the Industrial Revolution and that the earlier bourgeois revolution of the sixteenth century was but one among many Eurasia-wide expressions...

This pioneering book examines different aspects of the inheritance customs in rural Western Europe in the pre-industrial age.

In this book, the author provides a detailed analysis of kinship, household and family relations in early modern France.

David Lane provides a contextual understanding of Lenin's writings and their relevance to contemporary political action.

A review of the course of English population history from 1066 to the 1980s, with a particular focus on English family forms.