Bøker i LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology-serien

An ethnographic exploration of the rise of new forms of leadership at community and national levels with islanders are synthesising traditional and Western models.

Presents a description of everyday life in order to explore the concept of performance for an anthropology of gender. This title offers an account of the lives of men and women in a South Indian fishing community that reveals fresh ways of framing gender relations, the body and kinship.

A collection of some of Maurice Bloch's most important work, including essays on power, hierarchy, death and fertility.

In 1947 members of the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, under the leadership of Professor Firth, made a study of kinship in a South London borough.

Mrs van der Sprenkel was led to undertake this journey by her experiences while living in China. lt is a detailed sociological analysis of the whole complex of legal and quasi-legal institutions during the Manchu period.

A collection of essays from Edmund Leach, one of the original voices in the social anthropological tradition.

In southeast Madagascar, homesteaders struggle to establish villages and rice paddies. As this expansion turns barren landscapes into fertile resources, competing resident clans attempt to assert control. This text examines the inseparability of people, land and divinity informs a political system.

The Iban or the Sea Dayaks of Sarawak have probably been the best known of the indigenous peoples of Borneo. There was little information on their methods of agriculture and their social system. This book studies the shifting cultivation and cognatic kinship organization. The field work on which this is based was undertaken from 1949 to 1951.

Presents a comprehensive anthropological overview of industrialization in both Western and non-Western societies. This book offers a critical discussion of the assumptions that inform much of the social science literature on industrialization and industrial 'modernity'.

Whether initiating girls or healing cattle, many in Africa share a vision of a world where the cultural, symbolic and cosmic categories of 'male' and 'female' serve, through ritual, to reimagine and transform the world. This work provides a framework with which to evaluate previous ethnographic material on Africa.

Introduces gender theory to the analysis of African ethnography, exploring the ways in which ideational gender categories permeate African systems of thought and ritual practices. This book provides a framework to evaluate ethnographic material on Africa. It also presents case studies of hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, and pastoralists.

The Ma' Betisek are a group of aborigines who live on the mangrove coastal area of Selangor in peninsular Malaysia. This study is mainly focused on the Ma' Betisek communities on Carey Island, off the west coast of Selangor and in particular three villages - Sungei Sialang, Sungei Mata and Sungei Bumbun.

Drawing on a wide range of anthropological case studies, this book focuses on ordinary ethics in contemporary China. The book examines the kinds of moral and ethical issues that emerge (sometimes almost unnoticed) in the flow of everyday life in Chinese communities.

Explores the links between individuals, families, communities, and the state in China through ritual and myth.

Anthropology seems to shy away from the big, comparative questions that ordinary people in many societies find compelling. This title contains essays that explore birth, death and sexuality, puzzles about the relationship between science and religion, questions about the nature of ritual, work and genocide, and our personal fears and desires.

Presents a study of Anlo, part of the Ewe people divided between Ghana and Togo. This book describes the complex system of landholdings made necessary by the high density of population. Adjustments are made by the exercise of claims through maternal kin, contradicting that patrilineal claims are asserted strongly where there is pressure on land.

From the mid-1500s to December 1999, Macao was the longest-standing site of economic, religious and political contact between the Chinese and European worlds. This book shows that as a rear window on China, Macao provides us with examples of marginality that allow us to study the limits of the systems that characterize the Chinese world.

Presents a critique of the globalisation of the culture principle, arguing that theory is dependent on the actual study of peoples.

Through a range of ethnographic case studies focusing on the Portuguese recovery after the economic crisis, this book begins a conversation about the experience of recuperation and repair.

When humans cooperate, what are the social and psychological mechanisms that enable them to do so successfully? Is cooperativeness something natural for humans, built in to our species over the course of evolution, or rather something that depends on cultural learning and social interaction? This book addresses these central questions.

When humans cooperate, what are the social and psychological mechanisms that enable them to do so successfully? Is cooperativeness something natural for humans, built in to our species over the course of evolution, or rather something that depends on cultural learning and social interaction? This book addresses these central questions.