In Hard Luck and Heavy Rain Joseph C. Russo takes readers into the everyday lives of the rural residents of southeast Texas. He encounters the region as a kind of world enveloped in on itself, existing under a pall of poverty, illness, and oil refinery smoke. His informants’ stories cover a wide swath of life, from histories of LGBT life and the local petrochemical industries t...(展开全部)

Sweden is a remote country in the freezing northern Europe, with less than nine million inhabitants and a reputation for Volvos, hockey players, cheap furniture, vodka, and blonde women. Since the late 1980s, however, Sweden has produced over a thousand extreme heavy metal bands, creating one of the most respected regional music scenes in the world. This is the improbable histo...(展开全部)

It is a classical anthropological paradox that symbols of rebirth and fertility are frequently found in funerary rituals throughout the world. The original essays collected here re-examine this phenomenon through insights from China, India, New Guinea, Latin America, and Africa. The contributors, each a specialist in one of these areas, have worked in close collaboration to pro...(展开全部)

In the grand tradition of Paul Kennedy s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers comes this provocative history of world democracy, which begins with the ancient Myceans and ends in our fractious present. Overturning long-cherished notions, John Keane poses challenging questions: Did democracy actually begin in ancient Greece or earlier in Mesopotamia? Do the American and British...(展开全部)

The Life and Death of Democracy will inspire and shock its readers. Presenting the first grand history of democracy for well over a century, it poses along the way some tough and timely questions: how did democratic ideals and institutions come to have the shape they do today? Given all the recent fanfare about democracy promotion, why are many people now gripped by the feeling...(展开全部)

In this powerful, compassionate work, one of anthropology's most distinguished ethnographers weaves together rich fieldwork with a compelling critical analysis in a book that will surely make a signal contribution to contemporary thinking about violence and how it affects everyday life. Veena Das examines case studies including the extreme violence of the Partition of India in ...(展开全部)

微依那·达斯（Veena Das） 美国约翰·霍普金斯大学人类学系主任。她的研究方向包括：女权运动、性别研究、宗派暴力、医学人类学、后殖民主义与后结构主义理论等。达斯的处女作《印度种姓和仪式面面观》（Aspects of Hindu Caste and Ritual，牛 津大学出版社1977年版），探讨了印度种姓制度结构的组成。1995年，达斯获得了瑞士人类学—地理学年会奖章。2000年，她被芝加哥大学聘为名誉教授。 此后，她的研究兴趣转向暴力和社会苦难问题，与哈佛大学的凯博文（Arthur Kleinman）教授等人一起合编了《社会苦难》（Social Suffering，加州大学出版社1998年版）及《暴力与主体性》（Violence and Subjectivity，加州大学出版社2000年版）等书，她本人的专著《重大事件——当代印度分析之人类...(展开全部)

What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this ambitious and topical book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies. An-Na‘im argues that the coerciv...(展开全部)

Novelist, playwright, film actor, martial artist, and political commentator, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was arguably the most famous person in Japan at the time of his death. Henry Scott Stokes, one of Mishima's closest friends, was the only non-Japanese allowed to attend the trial of the men involved in Mishima's spectacular suicide. In this insightful and empathetic look at th...(展开全部)

On January 30, 1933, hearing about the celebrations for Hitler's assumption of power, Erich Ebermayer remarked bitterly in his diary, 'We are the losers, definitely the losers'. Learning of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which made Jews non-citizens, he raged, 'hate is sown a million-fold'. Yet in March 1938, he wept for joy at the Anschluss with Austria: 'Not to want it just beca...(展开全部)