The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology

Richard Fardon is Professor of West African Anthropology and Head of the Doctoral School at SOAS, University of London. He writes as a social anthropologist and an ethnographer of West Africa with wide interests that include art, intellectual history, religion, politics, and identity. Olivia Harris was a Professor of Anthropology at LSE and served as head of the Anthropology Department from 2005 to 2008. Trevor H.J. Marchand was born in Montreal, Quebec. He is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, and is recipient of the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Rivers Memorial Medal (2014). He was trained as an architect (McGill), received a PhD in anthropology (SOAS), and qualified as a fine woodworker at London’s Building Crafts College (2007). During the past 25 years, Marchand has conducted fieldwork with craftspeople in Nigeria, Yemen, Mali, and London. His research has been supported by prestigious grants from the British Academy, the Economic & Social Research Council, SOAS, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, and the Canadian International Development Agency. His books include Craftwork as Problem Solving (2016), Making Knowledge (2010), The Masons of Djenné (2009), Knowledge in Practice (2009, with K. Kresse), and Minaret Building and Apprenticeship in Yemen (2001). The Masons of Djenné was winner of three international prizes, including the African Studies Association Herskovits Award. Marchand’s documentary films include The Art of Andrew Omoding (2016, for the UK “Radical Craft” Exhibition), The Intelligent Hand (2015), Masons of Djenné (2013, for the Smithsonian Institution), and Future of Mud (2007, with S. Vogel). He has curated exhibitions for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (Mud Masons of Mali, 2013 – present), the Royal Institute of British Architects (Djenné: African City of Mud, 2010), and the Brunei Gallery in London (Yemen: Space, Place & Architecture, 2017). Marchand’s forthcoming monograph is titled The Pursuit of Pleasurable Work. The motivation behind his research is to challenge popular ideas about the value and intelligence of skilled craftsmanship. Professor Cris Shore is Chair in Social Anthropology at the University of Auckland, NZ.  Professor Veronica Strang is Executive Director of the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University.  Richard Ashby Wilson is the Gladstein Distinguished Chair of Human Rights and Professor of Law and Anthropology at UConn Law School, and founding director of the Human Rights Institute at University of Connecticut, US.

This handbook valuably frames the perspectives of scholars whose commitment to empirical field research has established them as voices at once critical and authoritative, and who here tackle the discipline′s compelling topical issues and anticipate its emergent. challengesMichael HerzfeldHarvard University This is a must have volume for scholars and students of anthropology alike. All the contributors are significant anthropologists in their field and they guide the reader brilliantly through the particular fields of their expertise. This is a book which covers both the enormous breadth of anthropology and the challenging ways it addresses critical issues of the contemporary world.Bruce KapfererUniversity of Bergen Cutting anthropology up into as many jig-saw pieces as possible is the counter-intuitive way the editors puzzle out a coherent and convincing picture of unity in the discipline today.Richard G. FoxPresident Emeritus, Wenner-Gren FoundationWhat the editors and contributors have achieved here is considerable. By taking the pulse of ′British social anthropology,′ they have illustrated how unified and simultaneously how diversified anthropology has become. It is no longer divided simply by historical or geographic tradition (British versus American) but has grown into an exciting, mature, and introspective discipline that, perhaps most importantly of all, has had profound and beneficial effects on other disciplines while being profoundly and beneficially affected by them. It is gratifying to see how much anthropology has to offer and that scholars and professionals outside anthropology have begun to welcome that offer.Jack David EllerAnthropology Review Database

• VOLUME ONEPreface: The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and the Commonwealth - John Gledhill and James Fairhead Foreword: Thinking Anthropologically, About British Social Anthropology - John L. Comaroff and Jean ComaroffIntroduction: Flying Theory, Grounded Method - Richard Fardon PART ONE: INTERFACES - Edited by Cris Shore and Richard A. WilsonIntroduction: Anthropology′s Interdisciplinary Connections - Cris Shore and Richard A. WilsonAnthropology and Linguistics - Alessandro DurantiAnthropology and Psychology - Christina TorenAnthropology of Biomedicine and Bioscience - Sarah FranklinAnthropology and Art - Arnd SchneiderAnthropology, Media and Cultural Studies - Kevin LathamAnthropology and Public Policy - Cris ShoreAnthropology and Law - Sally Engle MerryAnthropology and History - Jane K. CowanAnthropology and Archaeology - Julian ThomasAnthropology, Economics and Development Studies - Keith HartAnthropology and the Political - Jennifer Curtis and Jonathan SpencerAnthropology and Religious Studies - Martin MillsAnthropology and Museums - Brian DurransAnthropology and Gender Studies - Henrietta L. MooreAnthropology and the Postcolonial - Richard WerbnerAnthropology and Literature - C.W. WatsonPART TWO: PLACES - Edited by Mark NuttallIntroduction: Place, Region, Culture, History: From Area Studies to a Globalized World - Mark NuttallThe Circumpolar North: Locating the Arctic and Sub-Arctic - Mark NuttallReplacing Europe - Sarah GreenRetroversion, Introversion, Extraversion: Three Aspects of African Anthropology - David PrattenRefiguring the Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa - Glenn BowmanSouthwest and Central Asia: Comparison, Integration or Beyond? - Magnus MarsdenSouth Asia: Intimacy and Identities, Politics and Poverty - Patricia Jeffery and Roger JefferyModernization and its Aftermath: The Anthropology of Japan - D.P. MartinezThe Emerging Socio-Cultural Anthropology of Emerging China - J.S. EadesArchipelagic Southeast Asia - Roy EllenAustralasian Contrasts - Nicolas Peterson, Don Gardner and James UrryAustralia - Nicolas PetersonMelanesia - Don GardnerNew Zealand/Aotearoa - James UrryTwo Indigenous Americas - Kathleen Lowrey and Pauline Turner StrongNorth America - Pauline Turner StrongSouth America - Kathleen LowreyNorth and Latin American National Societies from a Continental Perspective - John Gledhill and Peter WadeMigration and Other Forms of Movement - Vered AmitThe Cosmopolitan World - Nigel RapportThe Indigenous World - Robert K. Hitchcock and Maria SapignoliVOLUME TWOPART THREE: METHODS - Edited by the late Olivia Harris and Veronica StrangIntroduction: Issues of Method - Richard Fardon and Veronica StrangFieldwork Since the 1980s: Total Immersion and its Discontents - Janet CarstenBetween Routine and Rupture: The Archive as Field Event - Tristan PlattThe Role of Language in Ethnographic Method - Susan GalThe Ethnographic Interview in an Age of Globalization - Joshua BarkerInterpreting Texts and Performances - Karin BarberBlurred Visions: Reflecting Visual Anthropology - Rupert Cox and Christopher WrightArtefacts in Anthropology - Liana Chua and Amiria SalmondKnowledge and Experimental Practice: A Dialogue Between Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies - Penelope HarveyTwenty-first Century Ethics for Audited Anthropologists - Nayanika MookherjeeEthics Out of the Ordinary - Michael LambekResearching Zones of Conflict and War - Paul RichardsConflicts and Compromises? Experiences of Doing Anthropology at the Interface of Public Policy - Tim Allen and Melissa ParkerFrom Participant-Observation to Participant-Collaboration: Some Observations on Participatory-cum-Collaborative Approaches - Paul SillitoeComparative Methods in Socio-Cultural Anthropology Today - Andre GingrichPART FOUR: FUTURES - Edited by Trevor H.J. MarchandIntroduction: Anthropologies to Come - Trevor H.J. MarchandSection 4.1: Neo-Darwinism, Biology and the Brain Sciences Anthropology and Neo-Darwinism - Robin I.M. DunbarCognition, Evolution and the Future of Social Anthropology - Harvey WhitehouseNeuroanthropology - Greg DowneyKnowledge in Hand: Explorations of Brain, Hand and Tool - Trevor H.J. MarchandSection 4.2: After Development: Environment, Food, Energy, Disaster Environment and Society: Political Ecologies and Moral Futures - James Fairhead and Melissa LeachAnthropological Encounters with Economic Development and Biodiversity Conservation - Laura M. RivalNew Directions in the Anthropology of Food - Jakob A. Klein, Johan Pottier and Harry G. WestWater, Land and Territory - Veronica StrangThe Anthropology of Disaster Aftermath - Edward SimpsonSection 4.3: Demographics, Health and the Transforming BodyDemographies in Flux - Sophie DayNew Medical Anthropology - Helen LambertThe Anthropology of Drugs - Axel KleinTransforming Bodies: The Embodiment of Sexual and Gender Difference - Andrea CornwallSection 4.4: New Technologies and Materialities New Materials and New Technologies: Science, Design and the Challenge to Anthropology - Susanne K chlerAnthropology and Emerging Technologies: Science, Subject and Symbiosis - Ron EglashFrom Media Anthropology to the Anthropology of Mediation - Dominic BoyerAnthropology in the New Millennium - Christopher PinneyAfterword: A Last Word on Futures - Marilyn Strathern