This book explores examples of this process of invention - the creation of Welsh and Scottish 'national culture'; the elaboration of British royal rituals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the origins of imperial ritual in British India and Africa; and the attempts by radical movements to develop counter-traditions of their own. This book addresses the complex interaction of past and present, bringing together historicans and anthropologists in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism which possess new questions for the understanding of our history.

    The History of Manners examines the links between the social graces and social control, concentrating on changes in social norms and individual perceptions and behavior.

    In this tapestry of poetic and religious scholarship, Graves explores the stories behind the earliest of European deities—the White Goddess of Birth, Love, and Death—who was worshipped under countless titles. He also uncovers the obscure and mysterious power of "pure poetry" and its peculiar and mythic language.

    A new foreword by Matti Bunzl brings the influence of Fabian's study up to the present.Time and the Other is a critique of the notions that anthropologists are "here and now," their objects of study are "there and then," and that the "other" exists in a time not contemporary with our own.

    The author of this book argues that there is proof to argue that all languages now spoken on earth are descendents of a single ancestral language.

    Interjecting personal experiences into ethnographic writing it is "a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context."

    

    Beginning with the creation of Earth out of Chaos, Vernant continues with the castration of Uranus, the war between the Titans and the Olympian gods, the wily ruses of Prometheus and Zeus, and the creation of Pandora, the first woman. His narrative takes readers from the Trojan War to the voyage of Odysseus, from the story of Dionysus to the terrible destiny of Oedipus to Perseus's confrontation with the Gorgons.Jean-Pierre Vernant has devoted himself to the study of Greek mythology. In recounting these tales, he unravels for us their multiple meanings and brings to life the beloved figures of legend whose narratives lie at the origin of our civilization. With remarkable psychological acuity, Vernant presents a picture of the world as the Greeks understood it. The relationship between the human and the divine -- realms that have always been intimately connected -- and their place within a world of potent natural forces are evoked effortlessly in a narrative that retains the magical quality of myth and reads with the compelling momentum of a good novel.

    Many, it seems likely, will never be deciphered ..."--Sir Arthur C. Clarke, C.B.E.A landmark study of the world's most important undeciphered writing systems and the current race to crack themMaybe it's the tantalizing possibility of giving new voice to long-hushed peoples and civilizations. Perhaps it's the puzzle solver's delight in the mental challenges posed by breaking their codes. Whatever the reasons, the public has long been fascinated with undeciphered ancient scripts and the ongoing efforts to crack them. In "Lost Languages, Andrew Robinson reports from the front lines of the global efforts now under way to crack the Meroitic hieroglyphs of ancient Nubia, the Etruscan alphabet, the Indus Valley Sealstones, the Zapotec script--the earliest in the Americas--and five other major "lost languages." An enthralling story of genius, passion, and competition, "Lost Languages provides a revealing look at how decipherment is done. In what is truly an archaeological mystery book, the author examines each script in detail and reviews what is known about the people who created it, while weaving in the intriguing cast of characters currently competing for the glory of cracking these ancient codes.

    Breathtaking in its range and erudition, it explores Shiite festivals and the English Civil war, the finger exercises of monkeys and the effects of inflation in Weimar Germany. In this study of the interplay of crowds, Canetti offers one of the most profound and startling portraits of the human condition.

    In fact it is a very common form of political organisation and one which has characterised much of the human past. People Without Government describes briefly the anarchic political structures of a number of these societies. True they are mainly small-scale hunting, gathering and horticultural groups. However, the social organisation of certain large populations with complex relations is also sometimes anarchic. Thus anarchy applies to a broad spectrum of different kinds of societies. This book seeks to show what anarchy has been like in practice. Special attention is paid to the techniques of leadership, maintaining order and decision-making. The dynamic interplay between freedom and authority is considered, particularly the apparent tendency of anarchic polities to degenerate into states with government and for organisations to become oligarchies, and it is concluded that liberty and individuality are at best very tenuous and fleeting entities. There can be no relenting in the struggle for freedom.

    Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and light; one stick alone is just a stick. In both cases, it is friction that produces movement, action, effect. Challenging the widespread view that globalization invariably signifies a "clash" of cultures, anthropologist Anna Tsing here develops friction in its place as a metaphor for the diverse and conflicting social interactions that make up our contemporary world. She focuses on one particular "zone of awkward engagement"--the rainforests of Indonesia--where in the 1980s and the 1990s capitalist interests increasingly reshaped the landscape not so much through corporate design as through awkward chains of legal and illegal entrepreneurs that wrested the land from previous claimants, creating resources for distant markets. In response, environmental movements arose to defend the rainforests and the communities of people who live in them. Not confined to a village, a province, or a nation, the social drama of the Indonesian rainforest includes local and national environmentalists, international science, North American investors, advocates for Brazilian rubber tappers, UN funding agencies, mountaineers, village elders, and urban students, among others--all combining in unpredictable, messy misunderstandings, but misunderstandings that sometimes work out.Providing a portfolio of methods to study global interconnections, Tsing shows how curious and creative cultural differences are in the grip of worldly encounter, and how much is overlooked in contemporary theories of the global.

    Looking at this concept through the lens of his own encounters in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and considering its formative significance for his own work, Kapuscinski traces how the West has understood the non-European from classical times to the present day. He observes how in the twenty-first century we continue to treat the residents of the Global South as hostile aliens, objects of study rather than full partners sharing responsibility for the fate of humankind.In our globalised but increasingly polarised world, Kapuscinski shows how the Other remains one of the most compelling ideas of our times.

    Exposing the inadequacies of old conceptions of static cultures and detached observers, the book argues instead for social science to acknowledge and celebrate diversity, narrative, emotion, and subjectivity.

    It offers an in-depth inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational.