This volume brings together some of the lost important essays written over the last two decades by one of India's most distinguished social scientists. They focus upon the relationship between various forms of inequality and distinction (race, caste, tribe, ethnicity and gender) and on concepts of the person; on the relationship between the values of equality and individualism; and on the ambivalent role of the modern Indian state as the guuarantor of these values.

Society and Politics in India: Essays in a Comparative Perspective (LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology)

Literature & Fiction

Béteille, André

History & Criticism

Berg Publishers

A major critique of the globalization of the culture principle in anthropology. This study contends that the subjective anthropology promoted through postmodernism represents an extreme development of long established, highly patronizing and misleading evaluations in the anthropologist's creative role in the construction of theory. Arguing that theory building is dependent on the actual study of peoples - a study which is empirically based and historically sensitive - the book advocates the "fieldwork mode of production and reproduction". The simplest model for the construction of empirically-grounded theory involves three interacting sets of factors: the subjective ethnographer and their deployment of current theoretical assumptions; the multi-layered ethnographic "facts" disclosed by fieldwork; and the geopolitical and historical contexts in which fieldwork is conducted.

Arguments with Ethnography: Comparative Approaches to History, Politics and Religion (London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology)

Politics & Social Sciences

Lewis, Loan M.

Social Sciences

A classic and highly influential ethnography, which explores political leadership among Swat Pathans - and which emphasizes the importance of individual decision-making for wider social processes.

Political Leadership among Swat Pathans (London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology)

Barth, Fredrik

Reference

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. Using a wide range of source material, Mrs van der Sprenkel discusses both the concepts underlying and the actual working of government and administration in Manchu China, the nature of the law, judicial procedure, and, finally, the effectiveness of the law in supporting social order.

Legal Institutions in Manchu China: A Sociological Analysis (London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology)

History

Sprenkel, Sybille van der

Asia

Dr Nukunya is one of the few Africans who have worked as trained anthropologists among their own people. His book is a study of the Anlo, the most numerous of the Ewe peoples who are divided between Ghana and Togo. Their descent is remarkable in that a patrilineal ideology is balanced by unusually strong matrilineal ties, and descent is traced from genitor whether or not he is the mother's legal husband. Dr Nukunya describes the complex system of landholdings that the high densisty of population make necessary. Adjustments are made by the exercise of claims through maternal kin; his conclusion contradicts the argument that patrilineal claims are asserted more strongly where there is pressure on land. He also discusses the changes in household structure that result from the absence of parents on trading or fishing expeditions or in wage employment.

Kinship and Marriage Among the Anlo Ewe: Volume 37 (LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology)

Nukunya, G. K.

Chinese Sociologics: An Anthropological Account of the Role of Alienation in Social Reproduction (LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology)

This volume explores the links between individuals, families, communities and the state in China through ritual and myth.

Chinese Sociologics (LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology)

Sangren, P. Steven

Philosophy

The first International Festival of Women in Experimental Theatre, the Magdalena Project, took place in Cardiff in 1986. Fifteen countries were represented by 30 women. This illustrated volume documents the unique event and offers insight into the origins and organization of the workshop, probes into the problems of authority and power relations within the group, records individual training sessions and presents short profiles of each performer. The author explores some of the theoretical issues relating to women's theatre and the state of experimental theatre, which emerged from the festival.

Magdalena Experiment: International Women's Experimental Theatre

Bassnett, Susan

Periods in German Literature: v. 2

Ritchie, J. M. (edit)

Examines the works of contemporary German writers and the changing contexts of German literature from the 1960s to the 1970s.

After the 'Death' of Literature: West German Writing of the 1970s (Berg Monographs in German Studies)

Provides a broad European and cross-cultural perspective on the theory and practice of literature and the Left over the past 50 years.

European Socialist Realism

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