Ibn Khaldun’s theory of history, economics, and group cohesion has influenced thinkers far beyond his North African homeland. His holistic approach foreshadowed modern social science, blending direct observation with cultural interpretation. A vital precursor to contemporary anthropology, his insights on solidarity, religion, and society remain relevant today.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology

This volume is dedicated to the New Zealander ethnographer Elsdon Best (1856-1931) who is a key figure in the history of anthropology due to his involuntary triggering of a fundamental and long-lasting anthropological debate on the Māori concept of hau.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology

The critique of twentieth-century American anthropology often portrays anthropologists of the past as servants of colonialism who “extracted” information from indigenous peoples and published works causing them harm. This volume presents powerful refutations of these damaging myths.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology Colonial History

This handy, concise biography describes the life and intellectual contribution of Max Gluckman (1911-75) who was one the most significant social anthropologists of the twentieth century.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology

Using previously overlooked, primary sources Ciarán Walsh argues that Haddon, the grandson of anti-slavery activists, set out to revolutionize anthropology in the 1890s in association with a network of anarcho-utopian activists and philosophers. His book regards most of what has been written about Haddon in the past as a form of disciplinary folklore shaped by a theory of scientific revolutions.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology

This handy, concise biography covers the life of Mary Douglas, one of the most important anthropologists of the second half of the 20th century. It offers an introduction to how her distinctive approach developed across a long and productive career and how it applies to current pressing issues of social conflict and planetary survival.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology

Looking at encounters that can puncture or jolt us, this volume uses art as a lens through which to register and understand exceptional experiences. The volume also includes the fieldworker’s experience of unexpected events that can lead to key understandings, as well as revelatory moments that happen during artistic creation and while looking at art.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)

Bringing together the voices of nine individuals from an archive of over 200 in-depth interviews with transnational migrants and refugees across five European countries, Finding Home in Europe critically engages with how home is experienced by those who move.

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Theory and Methodology

Drawing on his research in five Latin American countries, Steve Gudeman describes his anthropological fieldwork, bringing to life the excitement of gaining an understanding of the practices and ideas of others as well as the frustrations. He weaves into the text some of his findings as well as reflections on his own background that led to better fieldwork but also led him astray.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology Political and Economic Anthropology

Presenting 60 theoretical ideas, David Zeitlyn asks, ‘How to write about anthropological theory without making a specific theoretical argument?’ and ‘Is it possible to practice anthropology without arguing for a single specific approach?’ To answer, he gives a series of mini-essays about an eclectic collection of theoretical concepts that over many years he has found helpful.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology

Arising from the need to go beyond the semiotic, cognitive, epistemic and symbolic reading of diagrams, this book looks at what diagrams are capable of in scholarly work. Rather than attempting to define what diagrams are, and what their dietic capacity might be, contributions to this volume draw together the work diagrams do in the development of theories.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Whether invented, discovered, implicit, or directly addressed, relations remain the main focus of most anthropological inquiries. These relations, once conceptualized in ethnographic fieldwork as self-evident connections between discrete social units, have been increasingly explored through local ontological theories. This collected volume explores how ethnographies of indigenous South America have helped to inspire this analytic shift.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

The book Profiles of Anthropological Praxis is something of a sequel to Anthropological Praxis: Translating Knowledge into Action, published in 1987 (Westview Press).  As a casebook of anthropological projects, the new version shares a fascinating breadth of award-winning projects undertaken by applied anthropologists to address the needs of an array of stakeholders and situations.

Subjects: Applied Anthropology Theory and Methodology

The Social Origins of Thought explores the Durkheim School’s ambitious critique of philosophical interpretations of the genesis and constitution of the categories of thought. With contributions from philosophy, sociology, anthropology, media studies, and sinology, this volume illustrates the interdisciplinarity and intellectual rigor of the “category project”.

Subjects: Sociology Theory and Methodology

Hope and Insufficiency seeks to question the histories, assumptions, intentions, and enactments that has led to the ubiquity of capacity building as an anthropological concept, thereby developing a much-needed critical purchase on its persuasive power.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology (General)

The first edition of All Tomorrow’s Cultures explored the legacy of futures-thinking in anthropology and marked the beginning of a resurgence of interest in anthropological futures.  The new edition has been updated to reflect some of the outpouring of work since then, particularly in science and technology studies and in anthropological analyses of indigenous futures.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Tim Ingold has raised many questions which are crucial for anthropology as a discipline, such as whether ethnography is central to the subject, and how imagination, reality and truth are joined in anthropological enterprises. His interventions have impacted anthropologists and scholars at large. This volume contributes to the debate about the interrelationships between ethnography and anthropology and takes it to a new plane.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Reigniting a tradition of learning by experience, Search After Method is a plea for more lively forms of anthropology. The chapters relate the contributor’s first experiences of working in the field and use their experiences to link their work to the discipline of Anthropology, along with other broader fieldwork questions.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

French sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu’s relevance for studies of spatiality and mobility has received less attention than other aspects of his work.  Here, Deborah Reed-Danahay argues that the concept of social space, central to Bourdieu’s ideas, addresses the structured inequalities that prevail in spatial choices and practices.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Mobility Studies Sociology

Over time, the role of nature in anthropology has evolved from being a mere backdrop for social and cultural diversity to being viewed as an integral part of the ontological entanglement of human and nonhuman agents. This transformation of the role of nature offers important insight into the relationships between diverse anthropological traditions.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Michael Jackson’s response to our beleaguered age is to ask what forms of speech and action are called for in ‘dark times’. He argues that experiences that fall outside the concepts and categories we habitually deploy in rendering life manageable and intelligible have both critical and redemptive power.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Exploring the anthropology of evil as an empirical human phenomenon, this volume attempts to show the usefulness of treating evil as a descriptive reality where concepts such as violence, criminality, and hatred fall short of capturing the darkest side of human existence.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology Anthropology of Religion

Does populism indicate a radical crisis in Western democratic political systems? Is it a revolt by those who feel they have too little voice in the affairs of state or are otherwise marginalized or oppressed? Or are populist movements part of the democratic process?

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology

Contemplating Historical Consciousness draws on three decades of applied research to tease out what has been learned from the field. Leading scholars from around the world reflect on their practice as historians, ethnographers, social scientists and demographers in order to explore the possibilities and limitations of research into historical consciousness.

Subjects: History (General) Theory and Methodology

Who do ‘we’ anthropologists think ‘we’ are? Drawing together reflections and ethnographic case studies, this volume explores how the anthropological ‘we’ has been construed, transformed and deployed across history and the global anthropological landscape. It interrogates how these constructions have influenced the discipline, and opens spaces in which they might be reimagined.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology

Grounded in a series of diverse ethnographic projects in Africa, America and Europe, Experimental Collaborations attempts to expand our ethnographic repertoire of fieldwork devices. The titular concept signals a descriptive account of certain forms of ethnographic engagement, and a research and pedagogic program to intervene in current forms of ethnographic practice and learning.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology

A development in anthropological theory, characterized as the 'moral turn', is gaining popularity and should be carefully considered. In examining the context, arguments, and discourse that surrounds this trend, this volume aims to reconceptualise the discipline of anthropology in a radically critical way.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

This book is a contribution to the anthropology of Italy and of Europe as an ethnography of queer activism in Bologna; and, at the same time, it is an intervention in a set of ongoing theoretical debates in anthropology surrounding the perennial problem of the relationship between ethnographic data and anthropological analysis. It combines discussions of identity and difference, ethics, the fieldwork setting, and anthropology’s turn to ontology.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality

Analyzing the workings of boundary maintenance in the areas of anthropology, energy, gender, and law, Nader contrasts dominant trends in academia with work that pushes the boundaries of acceptable methods and theories. Although the selections illustrate the history of one anthropologist’s work over half a century, the wider intent is to label a field as contrarian to reveal unwritten rules that sometimes hinder transformative thinking.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

“Indigeneity” has become a prominent yet contested concept in national and international politics, as well as within the social sciences. This edited volume draws from authors representing different disciplines and perspectives, aiming to convey a theoretical and empirical overview of indigeneity in order to investigate the concept’s scientific and political potential.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology (General)

By assessing the diversity of European intellectual histories within sociocultural anthropology, this volume aims to sketch its intellectual and institutional portrait. It will be a useful reading for the students of anthropology, ethnology, history and philosophy of science, research and science policy makers.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology Colonial History

This valuable book introduces Mary Douglas’s theories, and outlines the ways in which her work is of continuing importance for the future of the social sciences. The authors effectively demonstrate how Douglas laid out the agenda for revitalizing social science by reworking Durkheim’s legacy for today, and reviews the growing body of research across the social sciences which has used, tested or developed her approach.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

The Middle Ages have always held a uniquely important place in the Western imagination. This book gives an eye-opening account of the ways various political and intellectual projects have appropriated the medieval past for their own ends, grounded in an analysis of contemporary struggles over power and identity in the Eastern Alps.

Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern Theory and Methodology Archaeology

Marilyn Strathern is among the most creative and celebrated contemporary anthropologists, and her work draws interest from across the humanities and social sciences. With a comprehensive introduction and a newly translated interview, Redescribing Relations brings some of Strathern’s most committed and renowned readers into conversations in her honour.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Research into mobility is an exciting challenge for the social sciences that raises novel socio-cultural, ethical, and methodological questions. Speaking beyond disciplinary boundaries to the challenges of engaging with a world on the move, Methodologies of Mobility traces innovative strategies for designing, applying and reflecting on methodologies of mobility.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Mobility Studies Theory and Methodology

Starry Nights formulates something of an un-canon: it critiques postmodernism while devising its own strategy for conducting research. It envisions a 'big tent' anthropology that is vast in scope, addressing social, cultural and biological domains by developing a scientific realism for analyzing different fields, a structure for unifying them, and a critical attitude for improving them.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Against the backdrop of a discipline focused on difference, Christoph Antweiler reasserts the importance of cross-cultural commonalities -- phenomena that occur regularly in all known human societies -- for anthropological research and for life and co-existence beyond the academy.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Reflexivity is fundamental to human social life. This volume analyzes reflexivity on two analytical planes. On one is the role reflexivity plays in human life and the study of it. The other plane is anthropo-philosophical, which maintains that reflexivity definitively distinguishes the being and becoming of the human.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Writing is crucial to anthropology, but which genres are anthropologists expected to master in the 21st century? Although academic writing is an anthropologist’s primary genre, they also write in many others, from drafting administrative texts and filing reports to composing ethnographically inspired journalism and fiction. This book explores how writing shapes anthropologists and their discipline.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Despite numerous conceptual facelifts, definitions and demarcations of ‘the field’ have remained fundamentally anchored in tropes of spatiality with the association between field and fieldworker characterized by distances in space. This collection serves a fresh invitation to a temporally oriented ethnography by radically rethinking the notion of the field in terms of time rather than space.

Subjects: Applied Anthropology Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General) Sociology

Non-knowledge should not be simply regarded as the opposite of knowledge, but as complementary to it: each derives its character and meaning from the other and from their interaction. This volume’s ethnographic analyses provide a theoretical frame through which to consider the production and reproduction of ignorance, non-knowledge, and secrecy.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

By emphasizing the texture of political action, this volume explores political culture, especially the catastrophic dimension of the global social order emerging in the twenty-first century. An array of case studies provide an account of how change is experienced, negotiated, and resisted in specific settings that define a society’s capacity for political action.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

What is existential anthropology, and how would you define it? Contributing anthropologists join editors Michael Jackson and Albert Piette in answering these questions and exploring how various approaches to the human condition might be brought together on the levels of method and of theory.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

The interview creates a context of interaction with a particular authenticity to experience. Contributors explore how the interview is experienced as a particular kind of knowing within which personal, biographic, and social norms are explored and interrogated, providing direction and awareness for future encounters.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Thinking Through Sociality combines a review of older, classical theories of sociality with more recent theoretical innovations across a wide range of topics. Contributors focus on key concepts of sociality — disjuncture, field, social space, sociability, organizations and network — and how these can be used to think through ethnographic situations.

Subject: Theory and Methodology

The present book is a workroom in which anthropologists and philosophers have begun a dialogue on trust and hope. The interdisciplinary efforts of the contributors demonstrate how the collaboration of anthropologists and philosophers can result in new and challenging ways of thinking about trust and hope.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology

Anthropologists are realizing that nostalgia constitutes a fascinating object of study for exploring contemporary issues of identity, politics and history making. Contributors to this volume explore nostalgic narratives and practices in the fields of heritage and tourism, exile and diasporas, postcolonialism and postsocialism, business and economic exchange, social, ecological and religious movements, and nation building.
 

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Heritage Studies Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Archaeology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Applied Anthropology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Political and Economic Anthropology

Subjects: Sociology Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Applied Anthropology Sociology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Media Studies Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Political and Economic Anthropology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subjects: Sociology Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Political and Economic Anthropology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Sociology Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology History (General)

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology of Religion

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Political and Economic Anthropology

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Theory and Methodology Development Studies Sociology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Peace and Conflict Studies

Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subjects: Sociology Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Medical Anthropology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Gender Studies and Sexuality

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Urban Studies Sociology

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Development Studies Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology History: 20th Century to Present

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Sociology Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Applied Anthropology

Subjects: Food & Nutrition Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General) Sociology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Media Studies

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subjects: Educational Studies Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology of Religion

Subjects: Sociology Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Sociology Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Travel and Tourism Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Museum Studies Theory and Methodology Colonial History Heritage Studies

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Applied Anthropology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Sociology Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology of Religion

Subjects: Theory and Methodology

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Gender Studies and Sexuality Development Studies Theory and Methodology

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Development Studies Theory and Methodology