Anthropology and Cultural History in Asia and the Indo-Pacific
About the Book Series
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]
Visual Research and Indonesian Ethnography: Beyond Description
1st Edition
By Karl Heider
May 31, 2023
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 ...
Honour, Mana, and Agency in Polynesian-European Conflict
1st Edition
By Annette Wilkes
December 18, 2020
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...
Expressive Genres and Historical Change: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Taiwan
1st Edition
By Andrew Strathern, Pamela J. Stewart
December 12, 2019
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 ...
Gender, Christianity and Change in Vanuatu: An Analysis of Social Movements in North Ambrym
1st Edition
By Annelin Eriksen
December 12, 2019
Focusing on cultural change and the socio-political movements in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, this book uses both anthropological and historical analysis to examine the way the relationship between gender and Christianity has shaped processes of social change. Based on extensive research ...
Islamic Spectrum in Java
1st Edition
By Timothy Daniels
December 12, 2019
This empirically grounded work explores the emerging aspects of cultural politics in the world’s most populous Muslim nation. It engages with complex issues of cultural translation, localization and globalization from various perspectives through analyzing a diverse range of cultural forms, ...
Migrating Genders: Westernisation, Migration, and Samoan Fa'afafine
1st Edition
By Johanna Schmidt
December 12, 2019
Migrating Genders presents a sustained description of male-to-female transgendered identities, explaining how the fa'afafine fit within the wider gender system of Samoa, and examining both the impact of Westernization on fa'afafine identities and lives, and the experiences of fa'afafine who have ...
Caste, Occupation and Politics on the Ganges: Passages of Resistance
1st Edition
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 ...
Collective Creativity: Art and Society in the South Pacific
1st Edition
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, ...
Domestic Mandala: Architecture of Lifeworlds in Nepal
1st Edition
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...
Mortality, Mourning and Mortuary Practices in Indigenous Australia
1st Edition
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 ...
My God, My Land: Interwoven Paths of Christianity and Tradition in Fiji
1st Edition
By Jacqueline Ryle
December 18, 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 ...
Of Marriage, Violence and Sorcery: The Quest for Power in Northern Queensland
1st Edition
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 ...