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In this thoroughly revised fourth edition with ten new chapters. Lola Romanucci-Ross and her co-authors provide thought-provoking discussions on the importance of ethnicity in different cultural and social contexts. They outline how social change as a result of interethnic conflict is a reality of human history and of modern times. Individual chapters propose that the history of social life in different cultures is a continual rhythm of conflict and accommodation between groups, both external and internal. The authors focus on the key topics of changing ethnic and national identities; migration and ethnic minorities; ethnic ascription versus self-definitions; and shifting ethnic identities and political control. There are chapters covering ethnic identities in Africa (including Zaire and South Africa). Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Thailand, the United States, and the former Yugoslavia. This new survey will serve as an excellent text for courses in race and ethnic relations, anthropology, and ethnic studies. Book jacket.
This book explores the multiple effects of globalization on urban and rural communities, providing anthropological case studies from postsocialist Bulgaria. As globalization has been studied largely in urban contexts, the aim of this volume is to shift attention to the under-examined countryside and analyse how transnational links are transforming relations between cities, towns and villages. The volume also challenges undifferentiated notions of ‘the countryside’, calling for an awareness of rural economic and social disparities which are often only associated with urban environments. The work focuses on how the ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ have been reconfigured following the end of socialism and the advent of globalization, in socioeconomic, as well as political, ideological and cultural terms.
This volume presents research on intercultural relations in South-Eastern Europe, including the way they are imagined and managed in different social and historical contexts. After an introductory critique of the concepts of interculturalism and citizenship, the situation in Romania is investigated. The second part deals with a series of in-depth comparative studies, namely on the Roma minorities in Romania and Bulgaria. But it also considers the case of the Pomaks in Bulgaria, of Russians living in parallel societies in the Baltic States and the recent evolution of interculturalism in the region.
The volume addresses reflections on the social conditions in which anthropological research in Eastern European countries under and after socialism was conducted. Methodological commonalities and differences for anthropologists coming from specific academic traditions and political contexts are revealed through fresh reflections on the everyday fieldwork. Institutional settings of the 70s and 80s, challenges in entering the field or engagement with the needs and desires of the studied subjects come out of this web of reflections. While some authors recall fieldwork based in single countries, others recall journeys though multi-sited ethnographies. Raluca Mateoc is postdoctoral researcher in Social Anthropology at the University of Fribourg and at the University of Geneva. François Rüegg is Emeritus Professor of the Institute of Social Anthropology of the University of Fribourg.
At a time of rising global economic precarity and social inequality, the field of economic anthropology offers solutions through the study of local and contextualized economic practices. This book is made up of an exciting collection of succinct essays authored by leading scholars primarily from the field of economic anthropology, but also featuring contributions from sociology and history. The chapters engage with debates at the cutting edge of research on the topics of Eurasia, the anthropology of postsocialism and the embeddedness of economic practices.
Today human ecology has split into many different sub-disciplines such as historical ecology, political ecology or the New Ecological Anthropology. The latter in particular has criticised the predominance of the Western view on different ecosystems, arguing that culture-specific world views and human-environment interactions have been largely neglected. However, these different perspectives only tackle specific facets of a local and global hyper-complex reality. In bringing together a variety of views and theoretical approaches , these especially commissioned essays prove that an interdisciplinary collaboration and understanding of the extreme complexity of the human-environment interface(s) is possible.
In this fully updated edition with a new foreword by Andre Liebich, David M. Crowe provides an overview of the life, history, and culture of the Gypsies, or Roma, from their entrance into the region in the Middle Ages up until the present, drawing from previously untapped East European, Russian, and traditional sources.
These ethnographically-based studies of diverse urban experiences across the world present cutting edge research and stimulate an empirically-grounded theoretical reconceptualization. The essays identify ethnography as a powerful tool for making sense of life in our rapidly changing, complex cities. They stress the point that while there is no need to fetishize fieldwork—or to view it as an end in itself —its unique value cannot be overstated. These active, engaged researchers have produced essays that avoid abstractions and generalities while engaging with the analytical complexities of ethnographic evidence. Together, they prove the great value of knowledge produced by long-term fieldwork to mainstream academic debates and, more broadly, to society.
The focus of this book is on the first-generation Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in Berne, Switzerland. During the Sri Lankan civil war, tens of thousands of Tamil refugees migrated to Switzerland. For decades, they hoped for a return to their desired own state Tamiḻ Īlam and strove to preserve their social ties and home ‘culture’. At the core of their identity was the Tamil language. They essentialized their values as part of the patriotic project of an independent ‘Tamil’ state. Swiss ‘culture’ was seen as incompatible with Tamil ideals. The second generation, socialized in the host country, tended to adopt both ‘cultures’. After the defeat of the Tamil Tigers and the end of the war in 2009, the vision of a return to the homeland was shattered. Ten years later the first-generation Swiss Tamils have little desire to return to a country where all their relatives have left or died, and where the situation is seen as unsafe. The elderly Tamils seem prepared to spend their old age in the Swiss exile, the homeland of their children.
European Multiplicity does not conform to the expectations of a narrow EU studies agenda wherein European integration is seen as the destiny for the continent, each country (including non-members) being compelled to seek a place in an unfolding order “united in diversity”. Rather, the book demonstrates the benefits of an agenda shift, away from an overriding concern with integration towards a consideration of the possibility that a singular ‘Europe’ may not exist and that the multiplicity of Europe is all around us. As the chapters in this volume highlight, multiplicity reveals itself across the range of EU studies as a key dimension in Europe’s transformation. Multiplicity is evid...