Bücher der Reihe EASA Series

The relationship between anthropologists' ethnographic investigations and the lived social worlds in which these originate is a fundamental issue for anthropology. Where some claim that only native voices may offer authentic accounts of culture and hence that ethnographers are only ever interpreters of it...

In Portugal between 2005 and 2010, "e;modernization through technology"e; was the major political motto used to develop and improve the country's peripheral and backward condition. This study reflects on one of the resulting, specific aspects of this trend-the implementation of public video surveillance. The in-depth ethnography provides evidence of how the political construction of security and surveillance as a strategic program actually conceals intricate institutional relationships between political decision-makers and common citizens. Essentially, the detailed account of the major actors, as well as their roles and motivations, serves to explain phenomena such as the confusion between objective data and subjective perceptions or the lack of communication between parties, which as this study argues, underlies the idiosyncrasies and fragilities of Portugal's still relatively young democratic system.

Through the idea of the "extended field," this volume examines issues in fieldwork and ethnography and provides fresh insights into the problems of ethnographic knowledge construction. It is a key text for new fieldworkers, established researchers and those looking for material to support modules on these issues.

Showcases varied and complex disciplinary practices and relationships in a set of ethnographic studies. Interrogating the respective fields of work, religion, governance, leisure, education and child rearing, together the essays in this book explore and offer different ways of thinking about discipline in everyday life.

Providing a comprehensive spectrum of case studies in relevant contexts, this volume raises the issue of the rehabilitation of vision and contextualizes vision in the contemporary debate on the construction of local knowledge versus the hegemony of the socio-technical network. It gives practical examples that are useful to undergraduate students.

Explores a diversity of circumstances and motives towards contemporary mobility, ranging from expatriates to peripatetic professionals to middle class migrants in search of extended educational and career opportunities to people seeking self-development through travel.

In modern times, a plethora of treatment technologies is available to the consumer, each employing a variety of concepts of the body, self, sickness and healing. This volume explores the options, strategies and consequences that are both relevant and necessary for patients and practitioners who are manoeuvring this medical plurality.

Nowadays a plethora of treatment technologies is available to the consumer, each employing a variety of concepts of the body, self, sickness and healing. This volume explores the options, strategies and consequences that are both relevant and necessary for patients and practitioners who are manoeuvring this medical plurality.

Now that nearly twenty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet bloc there is a need to understand what has taken place since that historic date and where we are at the moment. Bringing together authors with different historical, cultural, regional and theoretical backgrounds, this volume engages in debates that address new questions aris

In its assessment of the current "state of play" of ethnographic practice in social anthropology, this volume explores the challenges that changing social forms and changing understandings of "the field" pose to contemporary ethnographic methods.

Based on ethnographic research on the online activities of Christian & Muslim actors in the Moluccan conflict, this study investigates processes of identity construction, community building, & evolving conflict dynamics on the internet. An innovative contribution to conflict & internet research, this study paves the way for a new cyber anthropology

Now that nearly twenty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet bloc there is a need to understand what has taken place since that historic date and where we are at the moment. Bringing together authors with different historical, cultural, regional and theoretical backgrounds, this volume engages in debates that address new questions...

Social scientists and philosophers confronted with religious phenomena have always been challenged to find a proper way to describe the spiritual experiences of the social group they were studying.

The contributors explore how landscapes become known primarily through movement and journeying rather than stasis. Working across four continents, they explain how landscapes are constituted and recollected in the stories people tell of their journeys through them, and how, in turn, these stories are embedded in landscaped forms.

There are few areas of society today that remain outside the ambit of policy processes, and likewise policy-making has progressively reached into the structure of everyday life. An instrument of modern government, policy and its processes provide an analytical window into the systems of governance themselves...

Everyday practice of religion is complex in its nature, ambivalent, and at times contradictory. The task of an anthropology of religious practice is therefore precisely to see how people navigate and make sense of that complexity, and what the significance of religious beliefs and practices in a given setting can be.

This volume investigates how the experiences, histories, and relationships of social class are a necessary ingredient for explaining the re-emergence and dynamics of populist nationalism in both Eastern and Western Europe. Featuring in-depth urban and regional case studies, this volume reclaims class for anthropological research..

There are few areas of society today that remain outside the ambit of policy processes, and likewise policy-making has progressively reached into the structure of everyday life. An instrument of modern government, policy and its processes provide an analytical window into the systems of governance themselves...

People travel as never before. However, anthropological research has tended to focus primarily on either labor migration or on tourism. In contrast, this collection of essays explores a diversity of circumstances and impetuses towards contemporary mobility. It ranges from expatriates to peripatetic professionals to middle class migrants...

Pakistani migrant families in Denmark find themselves in a specific ethno-national, post-9/11 environment where Muslim immigrants are subjected to processes of non-recognition, exclusion and securitization. This ethnographic study explores how, why, and at what costs notions of relatedness, identity, and belonging are being renegotiated within local families and transnational kinship networks. Each entry point concerns the destructive-productive constitution of family life, where neglected responsibilities, obligations, and trust lead not only to broken relationships, but also, and inevitably, to the innovative creation of new ones. By connecting the micro-politics of the migrant family with the macro-politics of the nation state and global conjunctures in general, the book argues that securitization and suspicion-launched in the name of "e;integration"e;-escalate internal community dynamics and processes of family upheaval in unpredicted ways.

In its assessment of the current 'state of play' of ethnographic practice in social anthropology, this volume explores the challenges that changing social forms and changing understandings of 'the field'pose to contemporary ethnographic methods. These challenges include the implications of the remarkable impact social anthropology is having...

Based on vivid and colorful case studies about Mafiosi, priests, mothers, and migrants, the author offers new perspectives on the anthropology of religion and magic through categories of landscape, the body, human practice, and material experience.

The relationship between anthropologists' ethnographic investigations and the lived social worlds in which these originate is a fundamental issue for anthropology. Where some claim that only native voices may offer authentic accounts of culture and hence that ethnographers are only ever interpreters of it...

Through the idea of the "extended field," this volume examines issues in fieldwork and ethnography and provides insights into the problems of ethnographic knowledge construction. It is a key text for new fieldworkers, established researchers and those looking for material to support modules on these issues.

Based on extensive field research, the essays in this volume illuminate the experiences of migrants from their own point of view, providing a critical understanding of the complex social reality in which each experience is grounded.

In Israel, as in numerous countries of the global North, Filipina women have been recruited in large numbers for domestic work, typically as live-in caregivers for the elderly. The case of Israel is unique in that the country has a special significance as the 'Holy Land' for the predominantly devout Christian Filipina women and is at the center of an often violent conflict, which affects Filipinos in many ways. In the literature, migrant domestic workers are often described as being subject to racial discrimination, labour exploitation and exclusion from mainstream society. Here, the author provides a more nuanced account and shows how Filipina caregivers in Israel have succeeded in creating their own collective spaces, as well as negotiating rights and belonging. While maintaining transnational ties and engaging in border-crossing journeys, these women seek to fulfill their dreams of a better life. During this process, new socialities and subjectivities emerge that point to a form of global citizenship in the making, consisting of greater social, economic and political rights within a highly gendered and racialized global economy.

Pagan and Native Faith movements have sprung up across Europe in recent decades, yet little has been published about them compared with British and American Pagans. Though all such movements valorize human relationships with nature and embrace polytheistic cosmologies, practitioners' beliefs, practices, goals and agendas are diverse.

Introducing anthropological exchange theory to a wider readership, this volume explores sociality in work environments marked by the kind of structural changes that have come to define contemporary "flexible" capitalism.