In this innovative study, David Parkin shows how indigenous African rites and beliefs may be reworked to accommodate a variety of economic systems, new spatial and ecological relations among communities, and the locally variable influences of Islam and Christianity. The Giriama people of Kenya include pastoralists living in the hinterland; farmers, who work land closer to the coast; and migrants, who earn money as laborers or fisherman on the coast itself. Wherever they live, they revere an ancient and formerly fortified capital, located in the pastoralist hinterland, which few of them ever...

Roy Ellen has studied the Nuaulu people of eastern Indonesia for more than twenty years. He is a major figure in ethnobiology, the branch of anthropology that examines the social and cultural transformation of biological knowledge. The present study looks at the Nuaulu classificatory system of animal knowledge: the relationship between animal words and animal categories, how these categories are constructed, and the language of classification. The author relies on rich and fascinating data to show that all classifications reflect an interaction among culture, cognitive processes, and the...

Tuareg women are sometimes possessed by spirits called 'the people of solitude', from which they are released by an evening ritual. Susan Rasmussen analyses symbolism and aesthetic values, provides case studies, and reviews what local people think about the meaning of possession.

The Earth People of Trinidad draw on Yoruba sources to assert the particular power of female creativity. This first new Caribbean religion since Rastafari is led by a woman, Mother Earth, whose ideas emerged from her experience of a cerebral disease. The author, Roland Littlewood, who is both a psychiatrist and a social anthropologist, offers a nonreductionist view on the relationship between pathology and creativity, between the natural and the human sciences.

Based on field research in eastern Finland not far from the Russian border, this book is an account of the main features of rural society in the area. It pays detailed attention to the adaptability of farming families in a rapidly changing world. Subjects treated include marriage and the family, work and mechanization, succession to farms, and the paradoxical combination of fierce individualism and cooperation. Two major themes of the book are the relation between law and custom, which is not always what it seems on the surface, and the complex interlocking of farm, family, and the wider...

Among the people of Avatip, a community in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, the most prestigious and valued forms of wealth are personal names. In this intriguing study, Simon Harrison analyzes the significance of names in the context of Avatip ritual, cosmology, and concepts of the person, and shows how the Avatip system of names parallels the gift-exchange systems of many other Melanesian societies. In ritualized debates, which form the arena of Avatip political life, rival leaders and the groups they represent struggle in oratorical contests for the possession of strategic names, and...

This study of religious change and cultural fragmentation in contemporary Sri Lanka focuses on a series of new Catholic shrines that attract hundreds of pilgrims. Their fame is based, among other things, on their efficacy as centers for demonic exorcism, alleviating suffering and helping people to find jobs. The author looks at the rise of these shrines in relation to the historical experience of the Catholic community in Sri Lanka, rather than in terms of narrowly defined religious criteria. Central to this broader nonreligious context is the role of power and especially the impact of post...

Children in the Taiwanese fishing community of Angang have their attention drawn, consciously and unconsciously, to various forms of identification through their participation in schooling, family life and popular religion. They read texts about 'virtuous mothers', share 'meaningful foods' with other villagers, visit the altars of 'divining children' and participate in 'dangerous' god-strengthening rituals. In particular they learn about the family-based cycle of reciprocity, and the tension between this and commitment to the nation. Charles Stafford's study of childhood in this community...

Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to transcend the dichotomies which have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world. The author draws on...

The Baruya are a tribal society in highlands Papua New Guinea, with whom Western contact was first made in 1951. During the last twenty years, Maurice Godelier has spent many long periods of time living among this people, and in this book he presents a detailed account of their lives and their forms of social organization. The focus of the book is on inequality and power in this classless society. Godelier discusses both the power that certain men (the Great men) have over others through their control of war, shamanism, hunting, and rites of initiation, as well as the extraordinary power and...