On summer nights on downtown Los Angeles's Bunker Hill, Grand Performances presents free public concerts for the people of the city. A hip hop orchestra, a mariachi musician, an Afropop singer, and a Chinese modern dance company are just a few examples of the eclectic range of artists employed to reflect the diversity of LA itself. At these concerts, shared experiences of listening and dancing to the music become sites for the recognition of some of the general aspirations for the performances, for Los Angeles, and for contemporary public life.

In "Sound, Space, and the City," Marina...

Global Downtowns reconsiders one of the defining features of urban life--the energy and exuberance that characterize downtown areas--within a framework of contemporary globalization and change. It analyzes the iconic centers of global cities through individual case studies from Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the United States, considering issues of function, population, imagery, and growth. Contributors to the volume use ethnographic and cultural analysis to identify downtowns as products of the activities of planners, power elites, and consumers and as zones of conflict...

A comprehensive introduction to the anthropology of the arts, this is the first textbook to go beyond visual art to cover the arts more broadly. Drawing together media such as painting, sound, performance, video, and film, it presents a clear overview of the cross-cultural human experience of art.

Introducing students to the basics as well as the latest scholarship, the book features:
- 45 chapters which combine classic texts from anthropologists such as Pierre Bourdieu, Claude Levi-Strauss, Margaret Mead, Bronislaw Malinowski, Alfred Gell, Franz Boas, and Mary Douglas with...

A comprehensive introduction to the anthropology of the arts, this is the first textbook to go beyond visual art to cover the arts more broadly. Drawing together media such as painting, sound, performance, video, and film, it presents a clear overview of the cross-cultural human experience of art.

Introducing students to the basics as well as the latest scholarship, the book features:
- 45 chapters which combine classic texts from anthropologists such as Pierre Bourdieu, Claude Levi-Strauss, Margaret Mead, Bronislaw Malinowski, Alfred Gell, Franz Boas, and Mary Douglas with...

Building on the lively exchange between anthropology and art that has emerged in recent years, Between Matter and Method makes a bold and creative contribution to this rapidly growing field. Taking an expansive approach to the arts, it finds commonalities in approaches that engage with visual artifacts, sound, performance, improvisation, literature, dance, theater, and design. The book questions current disciplinary boundaries and offers a new model for the interdisciplinary encounter between art and anthropology.

Gretchen Bakke and Marina Peterson have gathered the work of...

Building on the lively exchange between anthropology and art that has emerged in recent years, Between Matter and Method makes a bold and creative contribution to this rapidly growing field. Taking an expansive approach to the arts, it finds commonalities in approaches that engage with visual artifacts, sound, performance, improvisation, literature, dance, theater, and design. The book questions current disciplinary boundaries and offers a new model for the interdisciplinary encounter between art and anthropology.

Gretchen Bakke and Marina Peterson have gathered the work of...