ANTHROPOLOGY MATTERS
SCHOLARSHIP ON DEMAND

THE BOARD
Series Editor – Daniel Miller

Editorial Board – Catherine Alexander : Mukulika Banerjee : Maurice Bloch : Mary Douglas : Richard Fardon : John Gledhill : Olivia Harris : Simon Harrison : Tim Ingold : Suzanne Küchler : Robert Layton : Henrietta Moore : Michael O’Hanlon : Joanna Overing : David Parkin : Nigel Rapport : Jonathan Spencer : Marilyn Strathern : Julian Thomas : Nicholas Thomas

An iniative on behalf of the anthropological community.

This new series focuses on significant contributions that demonstrate the scholarship and depth of the traditional anthropological monograph, which may not have wide commercial appeal, but have unquestionable academic merit. It will also include important collections that open up new themes and research reports that deal with specific development or policy related issues, and are major interventions in current affairs and decision-making. All of these exemplify the way ‘Anthropology Matters’. Such works might never have found publishing outlets, given the increasing commercial imperatives within the publishing industry, but the technology behind this series allows us to retain the integrity of judging new work on merit alone.

Contact the publisher for further details.

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Anthropology Matters Vol. 1

Of Alien Kings and Perpetual Kin Contradiction and Ambiguity in Ruwund (Lunda) Symbolic Thought Manuela Palmeirim

Of Alien Kings and Perpetual Kin presents a detailed understanding and analysis of the ideology of kingship among the Aruwund (Lunda) of southern Democratic Republic of the Congo. In doing so the text is drawn into addressing a range of important regional themes: the debate on the concept of the 'culture hero' in central African traditions of state formation; the system of 'perpetual kinship'; issues of hierarchy; and the symbolic use of space in royal ritual. All these lead to an analysis that stresses the fluidity and ambiguity of symbolic thought. In this, this innovative work questions the heuristic and theoretical validity of the concept of 'opposition' as used in theoretical models applied to the study of symbolism in which terms are self-contained and mutually exclusive.

Manuela Palmeirim is a Professor of Anthropology at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Minho, Portugal.

Hardback, ISBN 0-9545572-7-1, £45.00 (GBP), $90.00 (USD)

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OUT NOW! - Anthropology Matters Vol. 2

Living with Things Ridding, Accommodation, Dwelling Nicky Gregson

Living with Things provides an account of consumption in terms of its centrality to our dwelling practices. Its focus is on the home, particularly on the movement of people and things within and through it in everyday habitation.

Here dwelling is seen as an activity, as doing things with and to the things to hand around us. Being ‘at home’ is achieved through living amongst things, as well as amongst people and other non-human presences, such as pets and gardens. Being at home is achieved through what we do with objects, the things that are acquired and stored, that linger around in our homes, sometimes for decades, and which we may eventually get rid of. These ordinary things make dwelling structures accommodating accommodations; they make them homes.

Based primarily on a former coal-mining village in North-east England, this book explores practices of inhabitation, from moving in or being modernised, to the daily accommodation of sleep and children. It provides a demonstration of what happens to consumption research when it ‘comes home’ and is positioned not in sites of exchange but within the home and in households.

Hardback, ISBN 0-9545572-8-X, £45.00 (GBP), $90.00 (USD)

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OUT NOW! - Anthropology Matters Vol. 3

The Potters and Pottery of Miravet Production, Marketing and Consumption of Pottery in Catalonia Rob van Veggel

This rich account of potters in a southern Catalan village traces the history of pottery production and marketing and the responses of the potters to changing contexts of consumption. By juxtaposing the local, micro-history of a small group of producers (numbering no more than fifty people) with that of Spain’s changing economic and social climate, the author presents a local perspective of producers as affected by and acting upon global developments, ultimately localizing the European transition to one single integrated market economy.

Maintaining a dual focus on subject and object, and thereby combining social and material history, this book demonstrates how physical transformations in the pottery resulted from and affected its role in the social relations people formed as they produced, marketed and consumed it.

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Hardback, ISBN 978-0-9556400-2-5, £54.99 (GBP), $109.50 (USD)

Lawrence Hammar conducted ethnographic fieldwork from 1990-2 on Daru island, capital of Papua New Guinea's Western Province, and worked alongside Papua New Guinean colleagues from 2003-6 during a nationwide study of HIV, AIDS, STDs, and sexual health and behaviour. His most recent project is 'Positive Research For Positive People: strengthening HIV social research capacity in Fiji', working in tandem with the Pacific Island AIDS Foundation and the Fijian Positive Network. He also teaches anthropology and sexuality courses throughout the state of Ohio.

Hardback, ISBN 978-0-9556400-4-9, £64.99 (GBP), $129.99 (USD)

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OUT NOW! - Anthropology Matters Vol. 5

Mutuality and Empathy Self and Other in the Ethnographic Encounter Edited by Anne Sigfrid Grønseth and Dona Lee Davis

Mutuality and Empathy

Self and Other in the Ethnographic Encounter

Edited by Anne Sigfrid Grønseth and Dona Lee Davis

Focusing on issues of empathy and mutuality, and self and other, as experienced in the everyday challenges of doing participant-observation fieldwork, this volume makes a significant contribution to rethinking the experiential and conceptual construction of the field. The contributors adopt a critical and self reflexive approach that goes beyond issues of voice and representation raised by early postmodern anthropology, to grapple with issues concerning the nature of knowledge transmission that lie at the very heart of the ethnographic effort. They explore how multiple modes of attending, awareness and sense making can shape the ethnographic process. Of note are those unanticipated, less palpable forms of communication that are peripheral to or transcend more formalized and structured research methods and agendas. Among these are empathy, intuition, somatic modes of attention and/or embodied knowledge and identification, as well as, shared sensory experiences and aesthetics. By the elaboration of such concepts the volume as a whole offers a substantial elaboration of a phenomenological approach.

Hardback, ISBN 978-0-9556400-5-6, £49.99 (GBP), $99.99 (USD)

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OUT NOW! - Anthropology Matters Vol. 6

The Shark Warrior of Alewai A Phenomenology of Melanesian Identity Deborah Van Heekeren

The Shark Warrior of Alewai

A Phenomenology of Melanesian Identity

Deborah Van Heekeren

The first anthropological monograph published on the Vula'a people of south-eastern Papua New Guinea, The Shark Warrior of Alewai considers oral histories and Western historical documents that cover a period of more than 200 years in the light of an ethnography of contemporary Christianity.

Van Heekeren's phenomenology of Vula'a storytelling reveals how the life of one man, the Shark Warrior, comes to contain the identity of a people. Drawing on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, she goes on to establish the essential continuities that underpin the reproduction of Vula'a identity, and to demonstrate how these give a distinctive form to Vula'a responses to historical change. In an approach that brings together the fields of anthropology, history and philosophy, the book questions conventional anthropological categories of exchange, gender and kinship, as well as the problematic dichotomization of myth and history, to argue for an anthropology grounded in ontology.

Deborah Van Heekeren is a lecturer in Anthropology at Macquarie University Sydney. Her research interests include the cosmology, myth, history and Christianity of the Vula'a of Papua New Guinea.