Reassembling the Collection
Ethnographic Museums and Indigenous Agency
Reassembling the Collection presents innovative approaches to the study of historical and contemporary engagements between museums and the various individuals and communities who were (and are) involved in their production and consumption.
Big Histories, Human Lives
Tackling Problems of Scale in Archaeology
The contributors consider something archaeologists seldom think about: the intersection of micro-scale human experience with large-scale and long-term histories.
Keystone Nations
Indigenous Peoples and Salmon across the North Pacific
The histories and futures of Indigenous peoples and salmon are inextricably bound across the vast ocean expanse and rugged coastlines of the North Pacific. Keystone Nations addresses this enmeshment and the marriage of the biological and social sciences that have led to the research discussed in this book.
The Global Middle Classes
Theorizing through Ethnography
Surging middle-class aspirations and anxieties throughout the world have recently compelled anthropologists to pay serious attention to middle classes and middle-class spaces, sentiments, lifestyles, labors, and civic engagements.
Nature, Science, and Religion
Intersections Shaping Society and the Environment
This book is about the complicated and provocative ways nature, science, and religion intersect in real settings where people attempt to live in harmony with the physical environment. The contributors explore how scientific knowledge and spiritual beliefs are engaged to shape natural resource management, environmental activism, and political processes.
The Shape of Script
How and Why Writing Systems Change
This book builds on earlier projects about the origins and extinctions of script traditions throughout the world in an effort to address the fundamental questions of how and why writing systems change. The contributors--who study ancient scripts from Arabic to Roman, from Bronze Age China to Middle Kingdom Egypt--utilize an approach that views writing less as a technology than as a mode of communication, one that is socially learned and culturally transmitted.
Breathing New Life into the Evidence of Death
Contemporary Approaches to Bioarchaeology
Taking cues from current theoretical perspectives and capitalizing on the strengths of new and sophisticated methods of analysis, Breathing New Life into the Evidence of Death showcases the vibrancy of bioarchaeological research and its potential for bringing "new life" to the field of mortuary archaeology and the study of human remains.
Dangerous Liaisons
Anthropologists and the National Security State
Dangerous Liaisons is a book about intersections. It is a product of two year's worth of discussion among a group of ethnographers from four different countries studying war, violence, the military, and the state.
Enduring Conquests
Rethinking the Archaeology of Resistance to Spanish Colonialism in the Americas
Enduring Conquests presents new interpretations of Native American experiences under Spanish colonialism and challenges the reader to reexamine long-standing assumptions about the Spanish conquests of the Americas.
Forces of Compassion
Humanitarianism between Ethics and Politics
Suffering and charity have a long history. Both human sorrows and attempted remedies were familiar features of life in earlier eras and religious traditions, however, during the final decades of the twentieth century, natural disasters and civilian casualties of war transformed into "humanitarian crises." In these recurring dramas presented by international media, an extensive network of interstate entities and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) supplies assistance to victims.