The lives of kings poets authors criminals and celebrities are a perpetual fascination in the media and popular culture and for decades anthropologists and other scientists have participated in post-mortem dissections of the lives of historical figures. In this fi... Lees meer.

This account of an East African religion as it was during the 1950s discusses a variety of issues in the study of religion within the context of case materials and other field data. The Taita people of southern Kenya called their religion Butasi after its central act w... Lees meer.

An innovative study of the Nuaulu classificatory system of animal knowledge. It demonstrates how the classification system reflects an interaction between culture cognitive processes and the material world. Ethnobiology is concerned with the social and cultural tra... Lees meer.

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 analyses the significance of names in the context of Avatip ritual cosmology an... Lees meer.

A full understanding of human action requires an understanding of what motivates people to do what they do. For too many years studies of motivation and of culture have drawn from different theoretical paradigms. Typically human motivation has been modelled on animal b... Lees meer.

Among the Tuareg people in the Air Mountain region of Niger women are sometimes possessed by spirits called the people of solitude . The evening curing rituals of the possessed featuring drumming and song take place before an audience of young men and women who jok... Lees meer.

Some of the most interesting ethnographies of experience are concerned to highlight the indeterminate nature of life. Questioning Misfortune is very much within this tradition. Based on a long-term study of adversity and its social causes in Bunyole eastern Uganda it... Lees meer.

Among the Berti of Northern Darfur Sudan as among many Muslim societies the formal religious practices are predominantly the concern of men while local unorthodox customary rituals are performed mainly by women. It is usual to dismiss such local popular practices... Lees meer.

Ron Brunton revives a problem posed by the great anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers in History of Melanesian Society 1914 . how to explain the strange geographical distribution of kava a narcotic drink once widely consumed by south-west Pacific islanders. Rivers believed... Lees meer.

When Ladislav Holy precipitately left Czechoslovakia for the UK in 1968 he was already one of the leading anthropologists in Central Europe. In the following decades he made important field studies in Africa. Since 1986 he has been engaged in research in the Czech Repub... Lees meer.

All societies are differentiated by age. But in some this differentiation takes the form of institutionalized formally graded age classes the members of which share an assigned structural age if not necessarily the same physiological age. The nature of formal age... Lees meer.

This edited collection attempts to revive a unified anthropological approach to the study of sex and gender hierarchies. Seventeen distinguished contributors - from cultural anthropology physical anthropology archaeology and anthropological linguistics - have produce... Lees meer.

The Vezo a fishing people of western Madagascar are known as the people who struggle with the sea . Dr Astuti explores their identity showing that it is established through what people do rather than being determined by descent. Vezo identity is a way of doing rath... Lees meer.

This original study deals with a specific set of institutions in nineteenth century Athens. Relying on matrimonial contracts travellers accounts memoirs and popular literature the author shows how the distinctive forms of marriage kinship and property transmission... Lees meer.

Italo Pardo has produced an account of the moral life of Naples showing how ethical issues are addressed in everyday life. Italo Pardo has produced a thoughtful and original account of the moral life of Naples a city in which the ethics of work family and neighbou... Lees meer.