Many families leave their children for years to be looked after by young people about whom they know next to nothing, from places they have barely heard of. Who are these au pairs, why do they come and what is their experience of this arrangement? Do they, for their part, find that they are treated as one of the family, and would they even want to be? After a year of careful research, this book shows how most of our assumptions and expectations about au pairs are wrong.
This is the first book devoted to the lives of au pairs, their leisure as well as their work time. We see this...
Many families leave their children for years to be looked after by young people about whom they know next to nothing, from places they have barely hea...
Facebook is now used by nearly 500 million people throughout the world, many of whom spend several hours a day on this site. This book examines in detail how Facebook transforms the lives of particular individuals, but it also presents a general theory of Facebook as culture and considers the likely consequences of social networking in the future.
Facebook is now used by nearly 500 million people throughout the world, many of whom spend several hours a day on this site. This book examines in det...
How do parents and children care for each other when they are separated because of migration? The way in which transnational families maintain long-distance relationships has been revolutionised by the emergence of new media such as email, instant messaging, social networking sites, webcam and texting. A migrant mother can now call and text her left-behind children several times a day, peruse social networking sites and leave the webcam for 12 hours achieving a sense of co-presence. Drawing on a long-term ethnographic study of prolonged separation between migrant mothers and their children...
How do parents and children care for each other when they are separated because of migration? The way in which transnational families maintain long-di...
This fresh and accessible ethnography offers a new vision of how society might cohere, in the face of on-going global displacement, dislocation, and migration. Drawing from intensive fieldwork in a highly diverse North London neighborhood, Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward focus on an everyday itemblue jeansto learn what one simple article of clothing can tell us about our individual and social lives and challenging, by extension, the foundational anthropological presumption of the normative. Miller and Woodward argue that blue jeans do not always represent social and cultural difference,...
This fresh and accessible ethnography offers a new vision of how society might cohere, in the face of on-going global displacement, dislocation, and m...
A Theory of Shopping offers a highly original perspective on one of our most basic everyday activities - shopping. We commonly assume that shopping is primarily concerned with individuals and materialism. But Miller rejects this assumption and follows the surprising route of analysing shopping by means of an analogy with anthropological studies of sacrificial ritual. He argues that the act of purchasing goods is almost always linked to other social relations, and most especially those based on love and care.
The ethnographic sections of the book are based on a year's study of...
A Theory of Shopping offers a highly original perspective on one of our most basic everyday activities - shopping. We commonly assume that shopping is...
The diversity of contemporary London is extraordinary, and begs to be better understood. Never before have so many people from such diverse backgrounds been free to mix and not to mix in close proximity to each other. But increasingly people's lives take place behind the closed doors of private houses. How can we gain an insight into what those lives are like today? Not television characters, not celebrities, but real people. How could one ever come to know perfect strangers? Danny Miller attempts to achieve this goal in this brilliant expose of a street in modern London. He leads us...
The diversity of contemporary London is extraordinary, and begs to be better understood. Never before have so many people from such diverse background...
Many families leave their children for years to be looked after by young people about whom they know next to nothing, from places they have barely heard of. Who are these au pairs, why do they come and what is their experience of this arrangement? Do they, for their part, find that they are treated as one of the family, and would they even want to be? After a year of careful research, this book shows how most of our assumptions and expectations about au pairs are wrong.
This is the first book devoted to the lives of au pairs, their leisure as well as their work time. We see this...
Many families leave their children for years to be looked after by young people about whom they know next to nothing, from places they have barely hea...
This is a highly original book about Facebook D now one of the most-visited sites on the web. Facebook is now used by nearly 500 million people throughout the world, many of whom spend several hours a day on this site. Tales from Facebook explores the ways in which people use Facebook in their everyday lives.
This is a highly original book about Facebook D now one of the most-visited sites on the web. Facebook is now used by nearly 500 million people throug...
Throughout history and across social and cultural contexts, most systems of belief--whether religious or secular--have ascribed wisdom to those who see reality as that which transcends the merely material. Yet, as the studies collected here show, the immaterial is not easily separated from the material. Humans are defined, to an extraordinary degree, by their expressions of immaterial ideals through material forms. The essays in Materiality explore varied manifestations of materiality from ancient times to the present. In assessing the fundamental role of materiality in shaping...
Throughout history and across social and cultural contexts, most systems of belief--whether religious or secular--have ascribed wisdom to those who se...
This highly original anthropological study demonstrates how methods of social analysis can be applied to the individual, while remaining entirely distinct from psychology and other perspectives on the person.
Contributors draw on approaches from material culture to create fascinating portraits of individuals and offer analytical insights that convey ethnographic encounters with extraordinary people from the world over.
Exploring relationships to places and spaces such as social networking sites, to persons such as parents, to ethical concerns such as fairness and to ideas...
This highly original anthropological study demonstrates how methods of social analysis can be applied to the individual, while remaining entirely d...
