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This book is based on more than a decade of anthropological fieldwork and scholarship among Komi and Nenets nomadic reindeer herders of North-eastern Europe and North-western Siberia. Focused on herding techniques and the way of life of arctic nomads, the authors cogitate the unique attributes of reindeer herding and how they influence the herder's cognitive skills. Two central cognitive abilities are explored: the ability to "find their way" in expansive and homogenous arctic tundra terrain, often in extreme weather conditions and navigating with neither maps nor navigation equipment, and the ability to "decipher and predict" reindeer behaviour. This book acknowledges and reviews current th...
Due to changing climates and demographics, questions of policy in the circumpolar north have focused attention on the very structures that people call home. Dwellings lie at the heart of many forms of negotiation. Based on years of in-depth research, this book presents and analyzes how the people of the circumpolar regions conceive, build, memorialize, and live in their dwellings. This book seeks to set a new standard for interdisciplinary work within the humanities and social sciences and includes anthropological work on vernacular architecture, environmental anthropology, household archaeology and demographics.
In a new and engaging study, Halemba explores the religion and world outlook of the Telengits of Altai. The book provides an account of the Altai, its peoples, clans and political structures, focusing particularly on on the Telengits, whilst also considering the different elements of religious belief exhibited among these native peoples. Paradoxically, as the demand for national recognition grows among such people, and with it the need for more formal state structures, built around the nation, religion too begins to become formalized, and loses its natural, all-pervasive character. With the Telengits, whose natural religion includes elements of Buddhism, this takes the form of a debate as to whether the state religion of their polity is to be Buddhism or, contrary to the character of shamanism, a formal, structured, fixed shamanism. This is a comprehensive anthropological account of the contemporary religious life of the Telengits, holding important implications for wider debates in sociology and politics.
This study of minorities involves the difficult issues of rights, justice, equality, dignity, identity, autonomy, political liberties, and cultural freedoms. The A-Z Encyclopedia presents the facts, arguments, and areas of contention in over 560 entries in a clear, objective manner. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities website.
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Traces the life of the nineteenth century French novelist, attempts to portray his complex personality, and analyzes his major works.
Carnival has been described as one of the foundational elements of European culture, bearing an emblematic and iconic status as the festive phenomenon par excellence. Its origins are partly obscure, but its stratified and complex history, rich symbolic diversity, and sundry social configurations make it an exceptional object of cultural analysis. The product of more than 12 years of research, this book is the first comparative historical anthropology of popular European Carnival in the English language, with a focus on its symbolic, religious, and political dimensions and transformations throughout the centuries. It builds on a variety of theories of social change and social structures, ques...
In this captivating memoir, novelist Anne Roiphe shows us what it was really like to grow up rich and Jewish in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. Revisiting the world of her childhood, Roiphe brings alive a cast of characters who are both difficult to love and impossible to forget. Through the eyes of this precocious, loving daughter, we witness the brutalities that lurked behind the mah-jongg tables, cocktail parties, and summer houses of her family. By turns heartbreaking, funny, and mercilessly honest, Roiphe's story exposes the fault lines of misery that exploded in domestic battles on the home front, far overshadowing the war overseas. The locus of the story is 1185 Park Avenue. It is on...