Running with the Fairies
Towards a Transpersonal Anthropology of Religion
Running with the Fairies: Towards a Transpersonal Anthropology of Religion is a unique account of the living spirituality and mysticism of fairyfolk in Ireland. Fairyfolk are fairyminded people who have had direct experiences with the divine energy and appearance of fairies, and fairypeople, who additionally know that they have been reincarnated from the Fairy Realm. While fairies have been folklore, superstition, or fantasy for most children and adults, now for the first time in a scholarly work, highly educated persons speak frankly about their religious/spiritual experiences, journeys, and transformations in…
In the first scholarly account of the Fairy Faith in over a hundred years, a PhD anthropologist interviews educated people in Ireland who have had direct spiritual experiences with fairies, recognizing the reality of nature spirit beings in a Western context.
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The Question of Integration
Immigration, Exclusion and the Danish Welfare State
The question of integration has become an important concern as many societies are experiencing a growing influx of people from abroad. But what does integration really mean? What does it take for a person to be integrated in a society? Through a number of ethnographic case studies, this book explores varying meanings and practices of integration in Denmark. This welfare society, characterized by a liberal life style and strong notions of social equality, is experiencing an upsurge of nationalist sentiment. The authors show that integration is not just a neutral…
What does integration mean? Through ethnographic case studies, this book explores integration in Denmark, a welfare society facing rising nationalism. It shows that integration is not a neutral term, but an ideologically loaded concept for redefining community.
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Perspectives on Dance Fusion in the Caribbean and Dance Sustainability
Rituals of Modern Society
This volume examines the theme of fusion in Caribbean dance from a wide range of perspectives, including its socio-cultural-historical formation. The contributions are drawn from a conference entitled “Caribbean Fusion Dance Works: Rituals of Modern Society”, which focused primarily on the Caribbean as a unique locale. However, chapters on dance fusions in other diasporic locations and the sustainability of dance as an art form are also included here in order to offer a sense of an inevitable and, in some instances, desirable evolution due to the globalizing forces…
This volume examines fusion in Caribbean dance from socio-cultural-historical perspectives. Chapters on dance fusions in other diasporic locations and the sustainability of dance are also included, offering a sense of its evolution due to globalizing forces.
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The anthropology of art in China includes studies of popular arts among the Han in both rural and urban settings, and of folk arts among minority peoples. The country is currently experiencing rapid social change and aesthetic values are being transformed. Chinese scholars have both an exciting range of dramatic case studies to present and their own distinctive theories to offer on these processes. This volume is the first to present an overview of the anthropology of art in China to researchers in the English-speaking world. The essays are written…
This is the first overview of the anthropology of art in China for the English-speaking world. As the country experiences rapid social change, leading Chinese scholars present exciting case studies and distinctive theories on visual art, dance, and music.
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“The greatest crisis of our times in a failure of the human imagination.” -Editors The world is currently undergoing a period of unprecedented crises on virtually every front: economic, ecological, and humanitarian. It is starkly apparent that a shift is needed in our dominant structural systems – and that by addressing the collective thinking that has created and maintained these systems, scholars can do their part to catalyze such a shift. The interdisciplinary field known as the Anthropology of Consciousness offers important insights for enacting this necessary shift. This book…
In a world of unprecedented crises, a shift in thinking is needed. Diverse scholars explore what the Anthropology of Consciousness can contribute, reframing it as an “anthropology of conscience.”
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This book engages young scholars, teachers and students in a critical dialogue with past and present directions in cultural-historical studies. More particularly, it prepares prospective anthropologists, as well as readers interested in human cultures for understanding basic theoretical and methodological ethnographic principles and pursuing further what has been known as cultural anthropological perspectives. The book discusses key, field-based studies in the discipline and places them in dialogue with related studies in social history, linguistics, philosophy, literature, and photography, among others.
This collection discusses key field-based studies in cultural anthropology and places them in dialogue with related studies in social history, linguistics and philosophy, among others. It engages a critical dialogue with past and present directions in cultural-historical studies.
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Dreaming in Auschwitz
The Concentration Camp in the Prisoners' Dreams
This book, based on the descriptions of their dreams that former Auschwitz inmates wrote in 1973, provides a deep, insightful explanation of the role of dreams in shaping the prisoners’ experiences. It studies these testimonies from a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, analysing the psychological, social, anthropological, narrative and even artistic dimensions of the reports. The book characterises the content of the dreams and their possible meanings, the manners in which the respondents sensed, understood and described their dreams, and the informants’ attitudes towards dreaming. Among thousands of books about the Nazi…
This unique book explores the Holocaust through the prism of dreams. Based on descriptions written by former Auschwitz inmates, it reveals truths that remained unconscious, incomprehensible, and unspeakable, opening a new way of thinking and writing about the Holocaust.
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North American Indian Medicine Powers
Spirit Talkers
This book is the first-ever publication to provide an in-depth overview of American Indian medicine powers. More importantly, it challenges the current notion that a belief in medicine powers is merely the result of primitive superstition. Utilizing a recent discovery in quantum mechanics, hailed by some physicists as “the greatest discovery in the history of science,” it explains how quantum mechanics principles can be used to better explain why shamans do what they do during ceremony. This results in the book taking the point of view that there is now…
This book challenges the notion that American Indian medicine powers are mere superstition. Utilizing a recent discovery in quantum mechanics, it explains shamanic ceremony, arguing there is now more evidence to assume these powers are real than to assume they are not.
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The Jewish Diaspora after 1945
A Study of Jewish Communities in the Middle East and North Africa
For Jews across the Middle East and North Africa, the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel was a transformational period—in both the build-up to it and its aftermath. Using this momentous event as its focal point, this book takes the reader on a journey to remote destinations in the 20th century Jewish experience, examining aspects of Jewish history that have hardly ever been discussed in one place and in such an intriguing combination. Jews have played an integral role in the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and North…
For millennia, Jews played an integral role in the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and North Africa. The 1948 establishment of Israel was a transformational event leading to their mass expulsion and emigration, ending the existence of these vital communities.
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Encounters | Materialities | Confrontations
Archaeologies of Social Space and Interaction
This collection of texts is a first step towards providing a theoretical and methodological platform for the study of social encounters. The social encounter is a particular sort of concept, focusing on confusion, tension, trauma, and possibly social change that may emerge in situations of contact when people and things interact. A social encounter is, however, not only about negotiation or contemplating existence, but is rather about what happens when people interact actively, when they involve themselves with people and materialities, when they move around, fetch things, use things,…
This collection provides a theoretical and methodological platform for studying social encounters in archaeology. A social encounter focuses on the confusion, tension, and social change that emerge when people and things interact, with often unpredictable effects.
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Rites of Spontaneity
Communality and Subjectivity in Traditional Irish Music Sessions
A room in a pub. Some musicians facing each other. They play well-known traditional Irish tunes on flutes, tin whistles, and fiddles. Every musician plays the melodic line adding her own variations and grace notes. Some musicians are just listening; others are cracking jokes. The crowd nearby is composed of friends, occasional patrons, a regular audience, and curious tourists. Some seem not to care; some come closer to listen or perhaps even participate. This is called a “session”. From an anthropological point of view, sessions are not just a musical…
Musicians in a pub play traditional Irish tunes. This is a “session”—not just a musical environment, but a complex social interaction. This book explores the session as a cultural phenomenon, tracing its journey from local arenas into the global marketplace.
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The Irish Celebrating
Festive and Tragic Overtones
The Irish Celebrating is a collection of essays which focuses on the complex dynamics of celebrating, its significance and its scope, through Ireland’s past and present experience. This book studies the dual aspects of celebrating —‘the festive’ and ‘the tragic’— which, while not necessarily functioning as a binary opposition, have long proved mutually constitutive of the Irish experience. Many different occasions and ways of celebrating are explored, be they associated with feasts, festivals, commemorations, re-enactments or mere merry-making. Irish literature abounds with motifs, symbols, allusions and devices that stand as…
This collection of essays explores the dual aspects of celebrating in Ireland—‘the festive’ and ‘the tragic’. Insightful essays examine how feasts, literature, and commemorations have shaped Ireland’s past, present, and national identity.
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Ethnicity and Englishness
Personal Identities in a Minority Community
In an age of globalisation, the most pressing concerns are with matters of identity, personal and collective. This book explores the culture of nationality, groups and religions through the inner lives of second generation immigrants in England. The young people studied reveal surprising and sophisticated as well as complex attitudes. They reveal the contradictions, the opportunities and the dangers of their collective identities, and reveal how they are able to make use for good or ill their position in society. What they say relates closely to the experiences of any…
This book explores nationality, groups and religion through the inner lives of second-generation immigrants in England. It analyses the reasons for prejudice between groups and suggests ways to deal with it.
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Culture and Psyche
Psychological Approaches in Anthropology
This book originates from a lecture series given on Psychology and Anthropology at Goldsmiths College London in 2018. It offers an introduction to psychological anthropology, and will be useful both for undergraduates and postgraduates. While providing a critical overview of topics commonly included in psychological anthropological texts, such as psychoanalysis, culture and personality, child development, personality, emotion, the self, memory and cognition, this book also offers a chapter on Darwin, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to emphasise that behaviour is not infinitely malleable, but, rather, culture impacts existent biological and psychological…
This introduction to psychological anthropology offers a critical overview of key topics. It argues that behaviour is not infinitely malleable; while culture impacts psychological processes, these processes are constrained by genetic, biological, and evolutionary factors.
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Shifting Positionalities
The Local and International Geo-Politics of Surveillance and Policing
The local-level and international contributors of Shifting Positionalities encompass particular common themes through in-depth social science research in an effort to understand the meanings of the reformulation of state discourses and practices in this post-9/11 era. Current conjunctions between sexual, racial and ethnic identities—and the surveillance practices of those identities—calls for a thorough examination of the multiple and usually unexpected meaning-making practices adapted by individuals. Far from being predictable, the latter speaks to the possibility of individuals and communities utilizing techniques of actively resisting—as opposed to passively embracing—the…
Shifting Positionalities examines the surveillance of sexual, racial, and ethnic identities in the post-9/11 era. It reveals how individuals and communities utilize techniques of actively resisting the policing of their daily lives across borders.
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This book covers the author’s field experiences as an ethnographer in one country of Central America and an applied anthropologist in four US regions. A range of social fields are examined, which include: constructing a work experience table as a composite job resumé; correspondence with a maximum security prisoner for more than ten years; design features for multiple choice testing; farmworker sero-prevalence reports; health-seeking behavior among the Ngöbé (indigenous people in Central America); HIV/AIDS education in rural farm labor camps; Latinx naming practices for grocery stores and restaurants in agricultural…
This book covers the author’s field experiences as an ethnographer in Central America and an applied anthropologist in the US. It highlights the importance of incorporating ethnography into work tasks across a range of social fields and diverse socio-cultural groups.
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Snakes, People, and Spirits, Volume One
Traditional Eastern Africa in its Broader Context
This two-volume publication offers an in-depth analysis of ophidian symbolism in Eastern Africa, while setting the topic within its regional and historical context: namely, with regards to the rest of Africa, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Greek world, ancient Palestine, Arabia, India, and medieval and pre-Christian Europe. Through the ages, most of those areas have connected with Eastern Africa in a broad sense, where ophidian symbolism was as “rampant” and far-reaching, if not more so, as anywhere else on the continent, and perhaps in past civilisations. Much as in…
This analysis of ophidian symbolism in Eastern Africa connects the topic to ancient civilizations. It shows that the meanings attributed to snakes were multifaceted and paradoxical, and that the widely acknowledged assimilation of snakes to death and Evil is unrepresentative.
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Essays on the History and Culture of the Unknown Calabria
Land of the Forgotten
Calabria is one of the oldest civilised regions of Europe. In antiquity, the philosophy, science, literature and poetry of the Greek Pythagoreans flourished here; in the Middle Ages, the Norman Kingdom was the most cultured and opulent civilisation in the world. However, in modern times, Calabria has suffered from the almost complete neglect of its multi-facetted cultural legacy by dominant foreign ruling powers, declining into a third world region at the toe of the Italian peninsula. This book directs the attention of the world to those immense disregarded riches, through…
Calabria, one of Europe’s oldest civilised regions, has suffered from the neglect of its rich cultural legacy. This book directs the world’s attention to those immense disregarded riches through essays on its history, arts, intellectual legacy, and its rejuvenation today.
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Ethnographic Discourse of the Other
Conceptual and Methodological Issues
This book primarily tries to bring out the analogy between the conceptual and methodological discourses on the theme of the other. The term 'Other' here refers to the oppressed sections of the society. It may be dalits, women, indigenous or ethnic communities. Since we are living in a multicultural and multilingual society, we should share our views with others on a platform where issues of the marginalized people are addressed by different scholars following different methods and techniques. Though there are various policies and plans for the welfare of the…
This book explores the ‘Other’—the oppressed and marginalized sections of society. This interdisciplinary volume discusses and theorizes the pragmatic concepts and issues related to these groups in contemporary South Asia.
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Psychoanalytic and Anthropological Considerations of Gilgamesh
A Lost Illusion
The Gilgamesh Epic—a myth dating back almost 5000 years—has been handed down from ancient Babylonian times in several fragments. It is the heroic story of a futile quest for physical immortality and the problems of life that confront us in relation to our own mortality. It gives us insight into conscious and unconscious experiences of power and sexuality and struggles to overcome the ‘human condition’. This book considers the basic text of the myth in the light of anthropological and psychoanalytic concepts, comparing socio-cultural factors and the interpersonal structures of…
A 5000-year-old quest for immortality, the Gilgamesh Epic reflects our timeless struggle with mortality. This psychoanalytic exploration reveals the myth’s enduring relevance, dissecting its themes of power, sexuality, and the human condition for a modern audience.
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