This series offers a comprehensive view of Asian and Indo-Pacific anthropology and cultural history. It carries studies from China, Japan, South-East Asia, South Asia, and the entire Pacific region, including Australia and New Zealand. Focusing mainly on detailed ethnographic studies, the series further incorporates pressing thematic work on issues of cross-regional impact, gender and globalization, precarity, refugees, and asylum-seekers, and alternative medical and wellness-seeking practices. The series aims to link anthropological theory with history and religious studies, with discussions of ritual, politics, religious change, and economics. Studies of adaptation and conflict in small-scale situations enmeshed in wider scale processes of transformation form a particular thematic focus. The series aims to reach a core audience of specialists in Asian and Pacific studies, but also to be accessible and valuable to a broader multidisciplinary readership.
If you are interested in proposing a book for the series please contact: [email protected] / [email protected]
By Karl Heider
September 29, 2021
This book focuses on how visual records – mainly on film or video – can provide data for research and presents a variety of visual projects drawn from ethnographic fieldwork in Indonesia. Karl Heider argues for the expansion of visual anthropology - or anthropology with a camera - beyond ...
By Annette Wilkes
April 05, 2019
Focusing on the era of "first encounters" in Polynesia, this book provides a fresh look at some of the early contacts between indigenous people and the captains and crew of European ships. The case studies chosen enable comparison of New Zealand Māori–European transactions with similar Pacific ones...
By Jacqueline Ryle
December 20, 2017
Examining the multifaceted nature of Christianity in Fiji, My God, My Land reveals the deeply complex and often paradoxical dynamics and tensions between processes of change and continuity as they unfold in representations and practices of Christianity and tradition in people's everyday lives. The ...
By Assa Doron
December 18, 2017
This intriguing anthropological study investigates how the boatmen of Banaras have repositioned themselves within the traditional social organization and used their privileged position on the river to contest upper-caste and state domination. Assa Doron examines the evolution of the boatmen ...
By Katherine Giuffre
December 18, 2017
Collective Creativity offers an analysis of the explosion of artistic creativity currently taking place on the South Pacific island of Rarotonga. By exploring the construction of this art-world through the ways in which creativity and innovation are linked to social structures and social networks, ...
By John Gray
December 18, 2017
A rich and fascinating ethnography of domestic architecture and activities among the high caste Chhetris of Kholagaun in Nepal, this book focuses on the spatial organization, everyday activities and ritual performances that generate and display Chhetri houses as 'mandalas', sacred diagrams that are...
By Myrna Tonkinson, Katie Glaskin, Victoria Burbank
December 18, 2017
Drawing on ethnography of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia, Mortality, Mourning and Mortuary Practices in Indigenous Australia focuses on the current ways in which indigenous people confront and manage various aspects of death. The contributors employ their ...
By David McKnight
December 18, 2017
This is a fascinating exploration of the relationship between marriage, violence and sorcery in an Australian Aboriginal Community, drawing on David McKnight’s extensive research on Mornington Island. The case studies, which occurred both before and after a Presbyterian Mission was established on ...
By Holly Wardlow, Joel Robbins
December 18, 2017
Authored by well-established and respected scholars, this work examines the kinds of efforts that have been made to adopt Western modernity in Melanesia and explores the reasons for their varied outcomes. The contributors take the work of Professor Marshall Sahlins as a starting point, assessing ...
Edited
By Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern
June 23, 2005
This collection of essays, edited by leading scholars in the field, focuses on how expressive genres such as music, dance and poetry are of enduring significance to social organization. Research from New Guinea, Indonesia and Taiwan is used to assess how historical changes modify these forms of ...
By Elizabeth Burns Coleman
February 27, 2017
The belief held by Aboriginal people that their art is ultimately related to their identity, and to the continued existence of their culture, has made the protection of indigenous peoples' art a pressing matter in many postcolonial countries. The issue has prompted calls for stronger copyright ...
By Allon J. Uhlmann
March 31, 2017
This ethnographically-based exploration draws on sociological, historical and demographic data to provide a comprehensive analysis of family, gender and kinship in Australia, which informs modern kinship and gender at large. Allon Uhlmann charts the cultural basis that underlies kinship practices...
