Around the world, intensifying development and human demands for fresh water are placing unsustainable pressures on finite resources. Countries are waging war over transboundary rivers, and rural and urban communities are increasingly divided as irrigation demands compete with domestic desires. Marginal groups are losing access to water as powerful elites protect their own interests, and entire ecosystems are being severely degraded. These problems are particularly evident in Australia, with its industrialised economy and arid climate. Yet there have been relatively few attempts to examine...

What is Anthropology? Why should you study it? What will you learn? And what can you do with it? What Anthropologists Do answers all these questions. And more.

Anthropology is an astonishingly diverse and engaged field of study that seeks to understand human social behavior. What Anthropologists Do presents a lively introduction to the ways in which anthropology's unique research methods and cutting edge thinking contribute to a very wide range of activities: environmental issues, aid and development, advocacy, human rights, social policy, the creative arts, museums,...

In a world of finite resources, expanding populations, and widening structural inequalities, the ownership of things is increasingly contested. Not only are the commons being rapidly enclosed and privatised, but the very idea of what can be owned is expanding, generating conflicts over the ownership of resources, ideas, culture, people, and even parts of people. Understanding processes of ownership and appropriation is not only central to anthropological theorising but also has major practical applications, for policy, legislative development and conflict resolution. Ownership and...