Category: anthropology

Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF Now Available in Paperback

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Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF“Laurel Kendall has written a study of contemporary Korean shamans that is both entertaining and enlightening. Most studies of the topic treat shamans as an anachronistic remnant of the past. Kendall challenges that approach, drawing on several decades of close observation of shamans in action to reveal how shamanism is constantly evolving. It is an important work that will appeal to a wide audience.” —Don Baker, University of British Columbia

“With the publication of Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF, Laurel Kendall opens a new chapter in the study not only of shamanism in Korea, but also in many societies undergoing the process of industrialization and modernization. It is distinguished by its rich ethnographic data and novel theoretical approach to the field of Korean popular religion. One of its many merits is that, unlike conventional studies that focus on ‘authentic’ shaman ritual performances, it reveals a wide spectrum of shamans and rituals within a grand system of practice.” —Kwang Ok Kim, Seoul National University

“Laurel Kendall’s sympathetic and lucid writing consistently leads from vivid narratives to penetrating theoretical insights. In her hands the IMF becomes a brilliant trope for the interplay between magical causality and the bewildering modernity which moulds our lives, as it does the lives of her shamans’ clients.” — Piers Vitebsky, University of Cambridge

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3398-5 / $24.00 (PAPER)

Rethinking Pattern and Mind in the Pacific

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Lines That ConnectBuilding on historical and contemporary literature in anthropology and art theory, Lines That Connect: Rethinking Pattern and Mind in the Pacific, by Graeme Were, treats pattern as a material form of thought that provokes connections between disparate things through processes of resemblance, memory, and transformation. Pattern is constantly in a state of motion as it traverses spatial and temporal divides and acts as an endless source for innovation through its inherent transformability. Were argues that it is the ideas carried by pattern’s relational capacity that allows Pacific islanders to express their links to land, genealogy, and resources in the most economic ways. In doing so, his book is a timely and unique contribution to the analysis of pattern and decorative art in the Pacific amid growing debates in anthropology and art history.

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3384-8 / $38.00 (CLOTH)

Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow Now Available in Paperback

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Cries of JoySince the mid-1990s, Taiwan’s unique brand of Mandopop (Mandarin Chinese–language pop music) has dictated the musical tastes of the mainland and the rest of Chinese-speaking Asia. Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow: Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations, by Marc L. Moskowitz, explores Mandopop’s surprisingly complex cultural implications in Taiwan and the PRC, where it has established new gender roles, created a vocabulary to express individualism, and introduced transnational culture to a country that had closed its doors to the world for twenty years.

August 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3422-7 / $24.00 (PAPER)

Racializing Okinawan Diaspora in Bolivia and Japan

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Embodying BelongingEmbodying Belonging: Racializing Okinawan Diaspora in Bolivia and Japan, by Taku Suzuki, is the first full-length study of a Okinawan diasporic community in South America and Japan. Under extraordinary conditions throughout the twentieth century (Imperial Japanese rule, the brutal Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II, U.S. military occupation), Okinawans left their homeland and created various diasporic communities around the world. Colonia Okinawa, a farming settlement in the tropical plains of eastern Bolivia, is one such community that was established in the 1950s under the guidance of the U.S. military administration. Although they have flourished as farm owners in Bolivia, thanks to generous support from the Japanese government since Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, hundreds of Bolivian-born ethnic Okinawans have left the Colonia in the last two decades and moved to Japanese cities, such as Yokohama, to become manual laborers in construction and manufacturing industries.

Based on the author’s multisited field research on the work, education, and community lives of Okinawans in the Colonia and Yokohama, this ethnography challenges the unidirectional model of assimilation and acculturation commonly found in immigration studies. In its vivid depiction of the transnational experiences of Okinawan-Bolivians, it argues that transnational Okinawan-Bolivians underwent the various racialization processes—in which they were portrayed by non-Okinawan Bolivians living in the Colonia and native-born Japanese mainlanders in Yokohama and self-represented by Okinawan-Bolivians themselves—as the physical embodiment of a generalized and naturalized “culture” of Japan, Okinawa, or Bolivia.

May 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3344-2 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

Japan’s Aging Urbanites and New Death Rites

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Nature's EmbraceBased on extensive fieldwork, Nature’s Embrace: Japan’s Aging Urbanites and New Death Rites, by Satsuki Kawano, reveals the emerging pluralization of death rites in postindustrial Japan. Low birth rates and high numbers of people remaining permanently single have led to a shortage of ceremonial caregivers (most commonly married sons and their wives) to ensure the transformation of the dead into ancestors resting in peace. Consequently, older adults are increasingly uncertain about who will perform memorial rites for them and maintain their graves. In this study, anthropologist Kawano examines Japan’s changing death rites from the perspective of those who elect to have their cremated remains scattered and celebrate their return to nature.

March 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3372-5 / $47.00 (PAPER)

Catholicism and Women’s Work in a Micronesian Society

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Mary, the Devil, and TaroCatholicism, like most world religions, is patriarchal, and its official hierarchies and sacred works too often neglect the lived experiences of women. In Mary, the Devil, and Taro: Catholicism and Women’s Work in a Micronesian Society, Julianna Flinn looks beyond these texts and reveals how women practice, interpret, and shape their own Catholicism on Pollap Atoll, part of Chuuk State in the Federated States of Micronesia. She focuses in particular on how the Pollapese shaping of Mary places value on indigenous notions of mothering that connote strength, active participation in food production, and the ability to provide for one’s family.

January 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3374-9 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

Continuity and Change in North Vietnam

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Tradition, RevolutionTradition, Revolution, and Market Economy in a North Vietnamese Village, 1925-2006, by Hy V. Luong, examines both continuity and change over eight decades in a small rural village deep in the North Vietnamese countryside. Son-Duong, a community near the Red River, experienced firsthand the ravages of French colonialism and the American war, as well as the socialist revolution and Vietnam’s recent reintegration into the global market economy. In this revised and expanded edition of his 1992 book, Revolution in the Village, Hy V. Luong draws on newly available archival documents in Hanoi, narratives by villagers, and three field seasons from the late 1980s to 2006. He situates his finely drawn village portrait within the historical framework of the Vietnamese revolution and the recent reforms in Vietnam.

January 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3423-4 / $28.00 (PAPER)

Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations

Posted on by stephchun

Cries of JoySince the mid-1990s, Taiwan’s unique brand of Mandopop (Mandarin Chinese–language pop music) has dictated the musical tastes of the mainland and the rest of Chinese-speaking Asia. Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow: Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations, by Marc L. Moskowitz, explores Mandopop’s surprisingly complex cultural implications in Taiwan and the PRC, where it has established new gender roles, created a vocabulary to express individualism, and introduced transnational culture to a country that had closed its doors to the world for twenty years.

December 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3369-5 / $40.00 (CLOTH)

Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics Now Available in Paperback

Posted on by stephchun

GossipAlthough gossip is disapproved of across the world’s societies, it is a prominent feature of sociality, whose role in the construction of society and culture cannot be overestimated. In particular, gossip is central to the enactment of politics: through it people transform difference into inequality and enact or challenge power structures. Based on the author’s intimate ethnographic knowledge of Nukulaelae Atoll, Tuvalu, Gossip and the Everyday Production of Politics, by Niko Besnier, uses an analysis of gossip as political action to develop a holistic understanding of a number of disparate themes, including conflict, power, agency, morality, emotion, locality, belief, and gender. It brings together two methodological traditions—the microscopic analysis of unelicited interaction and the macroscopic interpretation of social practice—that are rarely wedded successfully.

November 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3357-2 / $25.00 (PAPER)

Art as Politics Wins AJCU Award

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Art as PoliticsArt as Politics: Re-Crafting Identities, Tourism, and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia, by Kathleen M. Adams, has been awarded the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities’ Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award in the Social Sciences:

“This book is quite rare because it combines sophisticated interdisciplinary analysis, extensive firsthand field research, and a narrative that is both compelling and delightful to read. . . . Adams’ understanding of the complex effects of global tourism on indigenous cultures is even further amplified by her reflections about how anthropology itself is far from a neutral actor in this process. Her stories about how the various elements of Toraja society try to get her to validate their own identity and status struggles wonderfully balance academic theories with personal experience. This is not only social science at its best but it is written with the emotion and insight of excellent literature.”

South Korean Popular Religion in Motion

Posted on by stephchun

Shamans, Nostalgias
Thirty years ago, anthropologist Laurel Kendall did intensive fieldwork among South Korea’s (mostly female) shamans and their clients as a reflection of village women’s lives. In the intervening decades, South Korea experienced an unprecedented economic, social, political, and material transformation and Korean villages all but disappeared. And the shamans? Kendall attests that they not only persist but are very much a part of South Korean modernity. Shamans, Nostalgias, and the IMF: South Korean Popular Religion in Motion, an enlightening and entertaining study of contemporary Korean shamanism, makes the case for the dynamism of popular religious practice, the creativity of those we call shamans, and the necessity of writing about them in the present tense. Shamans thrive in South Korea’s high-rise cities, working with clients who are largely middle class and technologically sophisticated. Emphasizing the shaman’s work as open and mutable, Kendall describes how gods and ancestors articulate the changing concerns of clients and how the ritual fame of these transactions has itself been transformed by urban sprawl, private cars, and zealous Christian proselytizing.

“Laurel Kendall has written a study of contemporary Korean shamans that is both entertaining and enlightening. Most studies of the topic treat shamans as an anachronistic remnant of the past. Kendall challenges that approach, drawing on several decades of close observation of shamans in action to reveal how shamanism is constantly evolving. It is an important work that will appeal to a wide audience.” —Don Baker, University of British Columbia

September 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3343-5 / $49.00 (CLOTH)

Buddhism and Lao Religious Culture

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Spirits of the PlaceSpirits of the Place: Buddhism and Lao Religious Culture, by John Clifford Holt, is a rare and timely contribution to our understanding of religious culture in Laos and Southeast Asia. Most often studied as a part of Thai, Vietnamese, or Khmer history, Laos remains a terra incognita to most Westerners—and to many of the people living throughout Asia as well. Holt’s new book brings this fascinating nation into focus. With its overview of Lao Buddhism and analysis of how shifting political power—from royalty to democracy to communism—has impacted Lao religious culture, the book offers an integrated account of the entwined political and religious history of Laos from the fourteenth century to the contemporary era.

“John Holt’s study of Lao Buddhism makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the understudied religious culture of Laos. Of special value are the comparisons Holt draws between Lao and Sinhala religious culture, and the insight achieved when Buddhist conceptuality, symbol, and ritual are seen through the lens of the indigenous Lao religious substratum rather than vice versa.” —Donald K. Swearer, Director, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School

August 2009 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3327-5 / $58.00 (CLOTH)

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