An anthropological study of this cohesive group which prefers to struggle against modern civilization than change a traditional way of life

This book is about violence in the Brazilian city of Sao Luis. It describes how people think about and negotiate dangerous encounters - vital and disturbing experiences that, when they go wrong, yield moral failure, humiliation, and death. Brazilians, like people elsewhere, worry about the perils of coming face-to-face with the wrong person, at the wrong time, under the wrong circumstances. The book discusses two conceptually linked forms of perilous face-to-face encounters: Carnival, a bacchanalian festival, and briga, a potentially lethal street confrontation. When playing becomes fighting, Carnival's samba, fueled by the controlled venting of dangerous passions, gives way to the explosive pas de deux of the street fight. Sao-luisenses tell vivid, sometimes terrifying, stories of verbal and physical confrontations. Their narratives, based on cultural models of Carnivals and brigas, highlight the vulnerability of the self to humiliation by others and the vulnerability of moral controls to one's own hostile emotions. The book argues that this double sense of social and psychological vulnerability is a product of Brazilian interpersonal relations, which are profoundly marked by the arbitrary exercise of power and the stifling of resentment in subordinates. Culture here consists not of shared symbols but of shared quandaries. The author suggests that Brazilian street fighting is an alarm bell - an inarticulate representation of pressing but poorly understood social and psychological dilemmas. Violence in Sao Luis may therefore be a desperate attempt to understand and come to grips with the very resentment, rooted in the city's harsh social transactions, that engenders it.

This is a new, revised edition of a highly acclaimed and widely used general introduction to social anthropology, first published in 1976. In a clear, lively, and entertaining fashion, it offers teachers and students a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to social anthropology, combining British structural-functionalism with the leading ideas of Marx, Freud and Lévi-Strauss, and joining forces with historians, political scientists, and psychologists. One of his particuair concerns is to reveal how insights from 'traditional' cultures illuminate what we take for granted in contemporary industrial and post-industrial society. He shows how, in the pluralist world in which we all now live, those who study 'other' cultures ultimately learn about themselves. This is the relevance of social anthropology today.

Aspects of non-capitalist social relations in rural Egypt: the small peasant household in an Egyptian Delta Village; Cash crop production and family labour: Tobacco Growers in corrientes, Argentina; Interhousehold co-operation in Peru's southern Andes: a case of multiple sibling-groupr marriage; Co-operation on and between eastern finnish family farms; The estimation of work in a northern finnish farms in Poland; Women's work in rural south west England; Domestic work in rural iceland: an historical overview; The organization of labour in an Israeli Kibbutz.

Akos Ostor's work is an interpretive study of cultural forms and meaning in the social relations of everyday life in Vishnupur, India. Culture and Power considers basic issues of anthropology, problems in the study of social categories and concepts and the social reality, the impact of the West on India.

Thomas Sheridan's study of the municipio of Cucurpe, Sonora, offers new insight into the ability of peasants to respond to ecological and political change. In order to survive as small rancher-farmers, the CucurpeAos battle aridity and one another in a society characterized by sharp economic inequality and long-standing conflict over the distribution of land and water. Sheridan has written an ethnography of resource control, one that weds the approaches of political economy and cultural ecology in order to focus upon both the external linkages and internal adaptations that shape three peasant corporate communities. He examines the ecological and economic constraints which scarce and necessary resources place upon households in Cucurpe, and then investigates why many such households have formed corporate communities to insure their access to resources beyond their control. Finally, he identifies the class differences that exist within the corporate communities as well as between members of those organizations and the private ranchers who surround them. "Where the Dove Calls" (the meaning of "Cucurpe" in the language of the Opata Indians), an important contribution to peasant studies, reveals the household as the basic unit of Cucurpe society. By viewing Cucurpe's corporate communities as organizations of fiercely independent domestic units rather than as expressions of communal solidarity, Sheridan shows that peasants are among the exploiters as well as the exploited. CucurpeAos struggle to maintain the autonomy of their households even as they join together to protect corporate grazing lands and irrigation water. Any attempt to weaken or destroy that independence is met with oppositionthat ranges from passive resistance to violence.

Educators want to know why university enrollment by Blacks is decreasing. Psychologists at a drug rehabilitation center want to know how kids decide what drugs to use, and how they decide to switch from soft to hard drugs. Sociologists in a Women's Studies Center want to know why women's groups disband so frequently. What do all these people have in common? They want to know why people in a certain group behave the way they do. More importantly, they need to know the specific decision criteria used by the group in question. Ethnographic Decision Tree Modeling presents a practical method for answering these questions. From starting research to testing and verifying results, this handy volume takes you step-by-step through this unique research process. Gladwin summarizes rules of interviewing, outlines the uses of contrast questions and quantitative data, and shows how to develop a decision tree model. In addition, common problems and errors are pointed out and various applications of the method are presented. "Offers an interesting data modeling device for organizing and interpreting every process of decision making, risk and benefit analysis and rule bending." --Nexus: The Canadian Student Journal of Anthropology

How prevalent is family violence outside the United States? Can policies and programs designed to prevent family violence in one culture be adapted to other cultures? Does a relationship exist between general violence and family violence in a given society? These are but a few of the questions addressed in this compelling, well-written volume. The author uses ethnographic data culled from 90 different societies to develop a global picture of the incidence, causes, and correlates of family violence. Through the use of both quantitative analysis and ethnographic description, Levinson tests the explanation/power of various current theories against worldwide family violence data. For anyone working in the area of family violence, this volume is a must. "I found the work to be exceptional. . . . I surely will want to adopt it for my graduate course in the Sociology of Deviance." --Bob Regoli, University of Colorado at Boulder "The book would be extremely useful. I know of no comparative work of this type now available. . . . The author writes well and is an accomplished scholar." --Mary Riege Laner, Arizona State University "This book can provide much illumination on world-wide family violence. The accounts given by ethnographers add life to the statistics given. . . . Anyone interested in broadening his or her knowledge of family violence would do well with this book." --Family Violence Bulletin "[Levinson] has made extensive use of the collection of cultural materials from the Human Relations Area files, to examine the question of how common family violence is in different societies, and what factors tend to make such violence more or less common in those societies. . . . He has reached a number of very important conclusions, [which] provide a solid basis for further research. . . . Useful in developing an understanding an of the way in which family violence occurs and may be helpful in programs to prevent the occurrence of such violence." --New Jersey Family Lawyer "Provides thought-provoking material about family violence, which will be of interest to many audiences. . . . This comparative study should help fill a critical gap." --Journal of Marriage and the Family "The author gives examples of societies where family violence is virtually unknown to disprove the view that it is somehow natural and inevitable. Because of this wider perspective on a common problem, this book is worthwhile reading for anyone dealing professionally with couples of families where violence is likely to occur." --Sexual and Marital Therapy "An important addition to the anthropological study of deviance; important to students interested in deviant behavior, family, and gender issues, and the social construction of violence." --NEXUS: The Canadian Journal of Anthropology "Those interested in examining family violence from a broader, cross-cultural perspective that will suggest hypotheses for understanding and preventing family violence at the societal level in our own culture will find Family Violence in Cross-Cultural Perspective to be most interesting reading." --Review and Expositor, Inc.

In this provocative volume, Handwerker advances the thesis that the key factor in revolutionary social change accompanying industrialization is the change in women's power relationships with their family. The author draws upon ethnographic, demographic and survey research on Barbados where industrial revolution and the transition from high to low fertility rates has occured quickly and recently. He compares his West Indian data with cases from the modern Third World and from England's own industrial revolution. Handwerker challenges many of the tenets of Third World modernization theory and fertility planning policy and suggests that providing women with resources through education and employment may be the best method of f

Collects documents and information on Ishi, the last member of the Yahi.

"The book contains a major statement on the comparative study of women--violence, aggression, and their psychosocial impact on women's lives."--Gilbert H. Herdt, University of Chicago "The book contains a major statement on the comparative study of women--violence, aggression, and their psychosocial impact on women's lives."--Gilbert H. Herdt, University of Chicago

Producing against Poverty is an anthropological research on micro-entrepreneurs in Lima, Peru. It analyses the way micro-producers accumulate capital. The anthropological approach of the book starts with an analysis of the daily lives of the micro-producers. Its gender approach makes a comparison between the position of men and women throughout its argumentation. The author also analyses the conditions of labourers working for micro-producers. By paying extensive attention to the subcontracting links between micro-production and the large scale production process, she carefully builds up to general conclusions which go way beyond the micro level of analysis. Micro-production reproduces poverty by subordinating important participants of the production such as women and labourers. The ultimate conclusion is that the informal sector grows not only in times of economic recession, but also in times of economic growth.

The Nagas of Northeast India, radically different in culture and beliefs from the better-known Hindu peoples of the plains, were renowned in the years before Indian independence for their fierce resistance to British rule and for their practice of head-hunting. Although sharing many social and cultural traits, the thousands of small Naga villages often vary greatly from one another, and the Nagas display both unity and diversity in their dress and ornament. Their vibrant material culture is generously illustrated here in color photographs that display textiles, basketry, jewelry, weapons, metalwork, and carvings. Drawing on a diverse range of historical materials, the authors examine how the notion of tribes came to be applied to the Nagas and point out its subsequent importance in the development of contemporary Naga nationalism.