Drawing from a rich fictional and cinematic tradition, Anatomy of a Robot explores the political and textual implications of our perennial projections of humanity onto figures such as robots, androids, cyborgs, and automata. In an engaging, sophisticated, and accessible presentation, Despina Kakoudaki argues that, in their narrative and cultural deployment, artificial people demarcate what it means to be human.

Childhood in a Sri Lankan Village starts with a mystery: why do Sri Lankan children, normally rambunctious and demanding as toddlers, become uncannily compliant as they grow older? To answer this question, anthropologist Bambi Chapin spent over a decade tracking the development of children in a rural Sri Lankan village. What she learned gives us a fresh perspective on the ways children think and on how cultural beliefs are passed down through the generations.

Tracing the intertwined lives and work of four women who carried forward the cause of feminism after the suffrage victory in 1920, this book recasts the “doldrums” of the women’s movement as a time of experimentation in new realms—the National Women’s Party; sexuality, marriage, and relations with men; and work and financial independence—and documents struggles that prefigure those of a later generation.

 In a world where marriage remains a largely sacred undertaking, what role does religion play when such bonds are broken?  Kathleen Jenkins takes up this question in a work that combines broad sociological analysis with the intimate stories of the clergy and the faithful across the religious spectrum as they talk about experiencing a break in core family and religious bonds.  Discussed within are the associated social emotions, the spiritual tools available to them, and the larger cultural strategies and approaches in institutions that assist in restructuring family and religious identity. 

 In a world where marriage remains a largely sacred undertaking, what role does religion play when such bonds are broken?  Kathleen Jenkins takes up this question in a work that combines broad sociological analysis with the intimate stories of the clergy and the faithful across the religious spectrum as they talk about experiencing a break in core family and religious bonds.  Discussed within are the associated social emotions, the spiritual tools available to them, and the larger cultural strategies and approaches in institutions that assist in restructuring family and religious identity. 

 Kids in the Middle explores how children of immigrants use their language capabilities, knowledge of American culture, and facility with media content and devices to help their parents forge connections with local schools, healthcare facilities, and social services as they adjust to life in the United States. Through in-depth inquiry in one Southern California community, Vikki S. Katz explores the important contributions children make to the functioning of their immigrant families and considers what social workers and parents in diverse community can do to support them.  

Conceiving Cuba offers an intimate look at how the institutions promoting the well-being of mothers and children, once a cornerstone of the socialist system, collapsed with the fall of the Soviet Union, throwing both individual families and the nation itself into profound crisis. Drawing from years of first-hand observations and interviews, anthropologist Elise Andaya takes us inside the island’s households and medical facilities, as they struggle to make do with limited resources and grapple with difficult questions concerning family planning, reproductive health, and the future of the socialist revolution itself.  

How did mothers transform from parents of secondary importance in the colonies to having their multiple and complex roles continuously connected to the well-being of the nation? In the first comprehensive history of motherhood in the United States, Jodi Vandenberg-Daves explores how tensions over the maternal role have been part and parcel of the development of American society.  

Choosing the right psychiatrist is as important as it is difficult.  Combining forty years of experience as a practicing psychiatrist with an honest assessment of the trends and current issues patients face when presented with prospective psychiatric treatments, Dr. Robert Taylor provides an invaluable guide to readers considering psychiatric help for the first time or to those changing doctors in an effort to find a better treatment. Dr. Taylor carefully distinguishes what few conditions are established scientifically with clear, proven pharmacologic remedies from the many that do not offer benefits from such treatments.

Genocide not only annihilates people but also destroys and reorganizes social relations, using terror as a method. In Genocide as Social Practice, Argentinean social scientist Daniel Feierstein looks at the policies of state-sponsored repression pursued by the Argentine military dictatorship against political opponents between 1976 and 1983 and those pursued by the Third Reich between 1933 and 1945. He finds similarities, not in the extent of the horror but in terms of the goals of the perpetrators.