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By Area: Asia

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eBook available Published July 2010
Abortion in Asia

Local Dilemmas, Global Politics

Whittaker, A. (ed)

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Medical Anthropology

Hb
Paperback available
Forthcoming April 2026
The Afterlives of Tamil Tigers

Fighters’ Memories of War and Survival

Mantovan, G.

Through the testimonies of war, defeat, and survival from veterans of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) now exiled in France, Giacomo Mantovan sheds light on the production of self and subjectivity within a revolutionary and authoritarian organisation, and contributes to debates on compliance, resistance, and political agency under authoritarian regimes.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present Sociology
Published September 2023
An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange

Interactions, Transactions and Ethics in Asia and Beyond

Copeman, J., Long, N. J., Chau, L. M., Cook, J. & Marsden, M.(eds)

This volume advocates for an analytical focus on intellectual exchange, as well as producing an ethnographically informed framework for its study across cultures and contexts.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
eBook available Published January 2023
The Art of Fate Calculation

Practicing Divination in Taipei, Beijing, and Kaifeng

Homola, S.

The Art of Fate Calculationexplores how conceptions of fate circulate in Chinese and Taiwanese societies while resisting uniformization and institutionalization. This is not only due to the stigma of “superstition” but also to the internal dynamic of fate calculation practice and learning.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion Sociology

Hb
eBook available Published May 2024
Asian Lives in Anthropological Perspective

Essays on Morality, Achievement and Modernity

Bayly, S.

Asian Lives in Anthropological Perspective draws together essays that trace historical and contemporary realities in India and Vietnam about a variety of compelling topics such as the experience of the Indian caste system and the ethical challenges faced by Vietnamese working women.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Theory and Methodology

Hb
eBook available Published October 2020
Aspirations of Young Adults in Urban Asia

Values, Family, and Identity

Westendorp, M., Remmert, D. & Finis, K. (eds)

Comparing first-person ethnographic accounts of young people living, working, and creating relationships in cities across Asia, this volume explores their contemporary lives, pressures, ideals, and aspirations.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Urban Studies

Hb
Paperback available
Published May 2014
Asymmetrical Conversations

Contestations, Circumventions, and the Blurring of Therapeutic Boundaries

Naraindas, H., Quack, J., & Sax, W. S. (eds)

“This is a compelling and intellectually satisfying volume that offers important new ethnographic work which, I would argue, revitalizes studies of medical pluralism…an important project by some of the most outstanding and well-known scholars in these areas of study — several of whose names readers will recognize and inspire interest in the volume.” · Murphy Halliburton, City University of New York

Subjects: Medical Anthropology Anthropology of Religion

Hb
Published June 1998
Autonomy

Life Cycle, Gender, and Status among Himalayan Pastoralists

Rao, A.

Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
Published July 2002
Bali and Beyond

Case Studies in the Anthropology of Tourism

Yamashita, S.

Subjects: Travel and Tourism Development Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published November 2024
Becoming Good Women

Schooling, Aspirations and Imagining the Future Among Female Students in Sri Lanka

Batatota, L. S.

This book illustrates that tuition space acts as an important site for identity formation and placemaking, where students play out their cosmopolitan aspirations whilst acquiring educational capital. It focuses on narratives of female Sinhalese students attending a national school in the Central Province of Sri Lanka.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Educational Studies Gender Studies and Sexuality

Hb
eBook available Published November 2019
Becoming Vaishnava in an Ideal Vedic City

Fahy, J.

Becoming Vaishnava in an Ideal Vedic City centers on a growing multinational community of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) devotees in Mayapur, West Bengal. Paying particular attention to devotees’ failure to consistently live up to ISKCON’s ideals, and the ongoing struggle to realize the utopian vision of an ‘ideal Vedic city’.

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published January 2020
Big Capital in an Unequal World

The Micropolitics of Wealth in Pakistan

Armytage, R.

Following the hidden lives of the global “1%”, this book examines the networks, social practices, marriages, and machinations of the elite in Pakistan. In doing so, it reveals the daily, even mundane, ways in which elites contribute to and shape the inequality that characterises the modern world.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published November 2017
Bishkek Boys

Neighbourhood Youth and Urban Change in Kyrgyzstan’s Capital

Schröder, P.

In this pioneering ethnographic study of identity, author Philipp Schröder explores integration and urban change in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek. Bishkek Boys offers unique insights into how post-Socialist economic liberalization, rural-urban migration and (state) ethnic nationalism have reshaped social relations among the boys who come of age in this Central Asian urban environment.

Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Refugee and Migration Studies Urban Studies

Hb
Paperback available
Published November 2009
The Body in Asia

Turner, B. & Yangwen, Z. (Eds.)

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology of Religion

Hb
Published October 2024
Calibrated Engagement

Chronicles of Local Politics in the Heartland of Myanmar

Huard, S.

For decades, the heartland of Myanmar has been configured as a pacified space under military surveillance. A closer look reveals how politics is enacted at distance with the state. Calibrated Engagement weaves together ethnography and history to chronicle the transformation of rural politics in Anya, the dry lands of central Myanmar.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Development Studies
eBook available Published August 2025
Cambodian Journeys

Stories of Refugees Surviving the Khmer Rouge

Mamula, S. & Sutton, E.

This book tells the survival stories of seven Cambodians who endured the Khmer Rouge Genocide, their escape to Thailand, and their difficult resettlement in the United States. It is a collection of first-person oral histories, supplemented by images of documents and photographs, highlighting journeys of resilience, survival, and adaptation while profoundly traumatized.

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Political and Economic Anthropology Peace and Conflict Studies

Hb
Published August 2024
Care in a Time of Humanitarianism

Stories of Refuge, Aid, and Repair in the Global South

Osanloo, A. & deBergh Robinson, C. (eds)

Care in a Time of Humanitarianism presents complex histories of forced migration and humanitarianism in an accessible way. It adopts a comparative approach to highlight the diverse cultural and religious traditions of care that are adopted across the Global South for the “distant others”.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies Sociology

Paperback available
Published October 1994
Cars

Analysis, History, Cases

Williams, K., Haslam, C., Johal, S. & Williams, J.

Subject: History (General)

Hb
Paperback available
Published December 2004
Categories of Self

Louis Dumont's Theory of the Individual

Celtel, A.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Hb
eBook available Published August 2016
'City of the Future'

Built Space, Modernity and Urban Change in Astana

Laszczkowski, M.

The long-awaited comprehensive account of the rise of Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan, this book argues for an understanding of space as inextricably material-and-imaginary, and unceasingly dynamic – allowing for a plurality of incompatible pasts and futures materialized in spatial form.

Subjects: Urban Studies Anthropology (General) Geography

Hb
Paperback available
Published May 2013
Colonial Collecting and Display

Encounters with Material Culture from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands

Wintle, C.

Subjects: Museum Studies History (General) Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published August 2016
Conceptions

Infertility and Procreative Technologies in India

Bharadwaj, A.

The book examines the causes and consequences of infertility and the rapid proliferation of new reproductive technologies in ‘modern India’. The book emerges from an ethnographic inquiry that explains how assisted conception, as a means of bypassing infertility, is being accommodated, understood and used in India today.

Subject: Medical Anthropology

Hb
eBook available Published May 2025
Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples

Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development

Chatty, D. & Colchester, M. (eds)

The second edition of this remarkable book updates the immense advances in policy and soft international law with regards to the rights of mobile indigenous peoples in conservation.

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Environmental Studies (General) Development Studies

Hb
Paperback available
Published January 2007
Conversations on the Beach

Fishermen's Knowledge, Metaphor and Environmental Change in South India

Hoeppe, G.

Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published November 2021
Cosmic Coherence

A Cognitive Anthropology Through Chinese Divination

Matthews, W.

Humans are unique in their ability to create systematic accounts of the world – theories based on guiding cosmological principles. This book is about the role of cognition in creating cosmologies, and explores this through the ethnography and history of Yijing divination in China.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General)

Hb
eBook available Published October 2021
Crafting Chinese Memories

The Art and Materiality of Storytelling

Swancutt, K. (ed)

Through an interdisciplinary conversation with contributors from social anthropology, religious studies, film studies, literary studies, cultural studies, and history, Crafting Chinese Memories is the first volume to address how works of art shape memories, and offers new ways of conceptualising storytelling, memory-making, art, and materiality. It explores the memories of artists, filmmakers, novelists, storytellers, and persons who come to terms with their own histories even as they reveal the social memories of watershed events in modern China.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Memory Studies Cultural Studies (General)

Hb
Published March 2014
Creole Identity in Postcolonial Indonesia

Knörr, J.

Contributing to identity formation in ethnically and religiously diverse postcolonial societies, this book examines the role played by creole identity in Indonesia, and in particular its capital, Jakarta. While, on the one hand, it facilitates transethnic integration and promotes a specifically postcolonial sense of common nationhood due to its heterogeneous origins, creole groups of people are often perceived ambivalently in the wake of colonialism and its demise, on the other. In this book, Jacqueline Knörr analyzes the social, historical, and political contexts of creoleness both at the grassroots and the State level, showing how different sections of society engage with creole identity in order to promote collective identification transcending ethnic and religious boundaries, as well as for reasons of self-interest and ideological projects.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Colonial History

Paperback available
Published January 2001
Culture, Creation, and Procreation

Concepts of Kinship in South Asian Practice

Böck, M. & Rao, A. (eds)

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality

Hb
Paperback available
Published August 2001
Demography and National Security

Weiner, M. & Stanton Russell, S. (eds)

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Peace and Conflict Studies

Hb
Paperback available
Published April 2003
Discerning Palates of the Past

An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Crop Cultivation and Plant Usage in India

Reddy, S. N.

This book analyzes the agricultural and pastoral infrastructure of the Mature and Late Harappan cultures (ca. 2500-1700 BC) of northwest India. The economic role of drought-resistant millet crops is reconstructed using ethnographic studies of crop processing, palaeoethnobotany, and carbon isotope analysis. New directions are provided for discerning archaeologically how pastoralism and agriculture may be integrated in complex economic systems.

Subjects: Archaeology Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
Published December 2002
The Domain of Constant Excess

Plural Worship at the Munnesvaram Temples in Sri Lanka

Bastin, R.

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published March 2014
Domesticating Youth

Youth Bulges and their Socio-political Implications in Tajikistan

Roche, S.

“This is an outstanding study of the ‘youth bulge’ in a remote country of Central Asia…Through her extensive field work, the author acquired a deep personal knowledge of the peculiarity of the country and its culture, for which little is available in the academic literature…This work is important not only for understanding the dynamics of the youth bulge in Tajikistan, but also to better grasp the rationale and multiple dimensions of youth movements in other developing countries of the same geographical area, and in particular the so-called “Arab Spring” revolutions.” · Michel Garenne, Institut Pasteur, Paris

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published December 2025
Education, Aspiration and Social Mobility

Uncertain Futures for Rural Youth in India

Froerer, P.

Informed by over two decades of anthropological research in Chhattisgarh, this book examines how the marginalized Adivasi (tribal) youth in rural India navigate the contradictory ways in which education represents both a strategy for social mobility and a very tangible risk.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Educational Studies Mobility Studies Sociology

Hb
eBook available Published November 2025
Embracing Change in Coastal Sri Lanka

Local Strategies in a Global Context

Stirrat, R. L.

Prioritising processes not structures based on the general premise that change rather than stasis is what characterises society, this book focuses on social change in a coastal village in Sri Lanka where change was the result of people reacting to processes at work in the wider economic and political context and were in no way passive victims to forces out of their control.

Subjects: Development Studies Political and Economic Anthropology

Hb
eBook available Published June 2021
Embracing Landscape

Living with Reindeer and Hunting among Spirits in South Siberia

Küçüküstel, S.

Examining human-animal relations among the reindeer hunting and herding Dukha community in northern Mongolia, this book focuses on concepts such as domestication and wildness from an indigenous perspective. By looking into hunting rituals and herding techniques, the ethnography questions the dynamics between people, domesticated reindeer, and wild animals.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General)

Hb
Paperback available
Published March 2008
Empathy and Healing

Essays in Medical and Narrative Anthropology

Skultans, V.

Subject: Medical Anthropology

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published February 2024
Evil Spirits and Rocket Debris

In Search of Lost Souls in Siberia

Broz, L.

The Altai Republic in southern Siberia is renowned for excavations of frozen mummies. It also hosts fallout zones for the second stages of rockets launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome. Local inhabitants blame ‘evil spirits’ released by archaeological work and toxic fuel from rocket debris for their misfortunes. This book explores the divergent fates of such claims.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion Sociology

Hb
eBook available Published March 2021
Floating Economies

The Cultural Ecology of the Dal Lake in Kashmir, India

Casimir, M. J.

In the Himalayas of the Indian part of Kashmir three communities depend on the ecology of the Dal lake: market gardeners, houseboat owners and fishers. Floating Economies describes for the first time the complex intermeshing economy, social structure and ecology of the area against the background of history and the present volatile socio-political situation.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General)

Hb
eBook available Published November 2025
Food, Culture and Society in India

Social, Political, Economic and Cultural Perspectives

Patgiri, R. & Lalli, G. (Eds.)

Bringing together empirical research from across India, this volume examines how food intersects with identity, migration, livelihood and media. It offers interdisciplinary insights into the cultural, political and social dimensions of food in contemporary Indian life.

Subjects: Food & Nutrition Sociology Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published June 2023
From Village Commons to Public Goods

Graduated Provision in Urbanizing China

Trémon, A.-C.

Illuminating the complex processes of China’s uneven urbanization through the lens of the transition from village commons to public goods, this book is set in three urbanized villages in Shenzhen, Chengdu, and Xi’an, which have experienced similar demographic explosions and dramatic changes to their landscapes, the livelihoods of its inhabitants, and the power structures governing their residents.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Urban Studies Sociology

Paperback available
Published November 2024
Frontier Ethnographies

Deconstructing Research Experiences in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Choudhury, N. & Schmeding, A. (eds)

Frontier Ethnographies explores the ethnographic edges of contemporary anthropological inquiry in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Through examining moments of insecurity, vulnerability, doubt, fear, failure, and daydreaming, the volume reflects on the researchers’ experiences and challenges of doing field research in frontier settings.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Political and Economic Anthropology

Hb
Published June 2013
The Gaddi Beyond Pastoralism

Making Place in the Indian Himalayas

Wagner, A.

Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published January 2023
Glimpses of Hope

The Rise of Industrial Labor at the Urban Margins of Nepal

Hoffmann, M.

Over the last decade, Nepal has witnessed significant urban growth and an expanding urban middle class. Glimpses of Hope tells the story of the people who enable some of the middle class consumer practices in urban Nepal. The book focuses on workers in modern food-processing, water-bottling, house building, and sand-mining industries and explores how workers see such forms of work, where union organization can help, and how work opportunities emerge along lines of gender and ethnicity.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology (General) Sociology

Hb
Forthcoming May 2026
God in the Machine

The Ganesh Yourself Experiment

Grimaud, E.

A teleoperated robot roaming in the streets of Mumbai enables anyone to put oneself in the place of the Hindu god Ganesha and have a conversation. God in the Machine explores the Ganesh Yourself experiment, a fascinating exercise in anthropology that leads to a radical deconstruction of religion, politics, and technology.

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Theory and Methodology Sociology
Published May 2008
God-botherers and Other True-believers

Gandhi, Hitler, and the Religious Right

Bailey, F. G.

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published May 2017
Grace after Genocide

Cambodians in the United States

Mortland, C. A.

Grace after Genocide is the first comprehensive ethnography of Cambodian refugees, charting their struggle to transition from agrarian life to survival in post-industrial America, while still maintaining their Cambodian identities. The ethnography details how America’s mid-twentieth century involvement in Southeast Asia has had enormous consequences on Khmer refugees and their children.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published September 2010
The Hadrami Diaspora

Community-Building on the Indian Ocean Rim

Manger, L.

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published November 2019
Heritage Movements in Asia

Cultural Heritage Activism, Politics, and Identity

Mozaffari, A. & Jones, T. (eds)

This volume is unique in that it is dedicated to approaching the analysis of heritage through the concepts of social movements. Adapting the latest developments in the field of social movements, the chapters examine the formation, use and contestation of heritage by various official, non-official and activist players and the spaces where such ongoing negotiations and contestation take place.

Subjects: Heritage Studies Museum Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published January 2014
Hindi Is Our Ground, English Is Our Sky

Education, Language, and Social Class in Contemporary India

LaDousa, C.

Subjects: Educational Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published November 2020
Homo Itinerans

Towards a Global Ethnography of Afghanistan

Monsutti, A.

This book builds on more than two decades of ethnographic itinerancy in some twenty countries, bringing the readers from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran to Europe, North America and Australia. It describes the everyday life and transnational circulations of Afghan refugees and expatriates.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published October 2016
Honour and Violence

Gender, Power and Law in Southern Pakistan

Shah, N.

This volume explores the implication of modern law in the seemingly ancient cultural practice of karo kari, which allows male family members to take the lives of female relatives accused of adultery. Drawing connections between local contests over marriage and resources, Nafisa Shah unearths deep historical processes and power relations at work in Upper Sindh, Pakistan.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published March 2024
The Horse in My Blood

Multispecies Kinship in the Altai and Saian Mountains

Peemot, V. S.

Building upon Indigenous research epistemologies, Victoria Peemot engages with the study of how the human-horse relationships interact with each other, experience injustices and develop resilience strategies as multispecies unions.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General) Sociology

Hb
Published February 2007
Identifying with Freedom

Indonesia after Suharto

Day, T (ed)

Subject: Theory and Methodology

Pb
Published August 1997
Identity, Gender and Poverty

New Perspectives on Caste and Tribe in Rajasthan

Unnithan-Kumar, M.

Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Development Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published February 2025
Illness and Enlightenment

Exploring Tibetan Perspectives on Madness in Text and Everyday Life

Deane, S.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Tibetan region of Amdo in northwest China, Illness and Enlightenment examines Tibetan medical and religious texts, to explore the multi-faceted concept of nyoné through key Tibetan concepts of wind, heart, and mind, as well as human-spirit relationships.

Subjects: Medical Anthropology Anthropology of Religion

Hb
eBook available Published May 2017
Indigenist Mobilization

Confronting Electoral Communism and Precarious Livelihoods in Post-Reform Kerala

Steur, L.

Indigenist Mobilization explores the history of the dynamics between the Communist party in Kerala and indigenist activists, and the subtle ways in which global capitalist restructuring leads to a resonance of indigenist visions in the changed the everyday working lives and future aspirations of subaltern groups in Kerala.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology

Hb
Forthcoming April 2026
Jewish Refugees in Shanghai

Experiences, Memories, Interviews, Histories

Hochstadt, S.

Between 1933-1942, around 20,000 refugees fled to Shanghai to escape Nazi-occupied Europe, most of them Jewish. Here they spent a decade preserving their culture and enduring Japanese occupation. Hochstadt, whose Viennese grandparents were among those who fled, compiles hundreds of sources and interviews to tell their story.

Subjects: Jewish Studies Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present Refugee and Migration Studies
Published December 2016
Languid Bodies, Grounded Stances

The Curving Pathway of Neoclassical Odissi Dance

Sikand, N.

Odissi dance has transformed over the centuries from an Indian temple ritual to a transnational genre performed—and consumed—throughout the world. Building on ethnographic research in multiple locations, this book reveals the complexity of odissi as it is practiced today, at the intersection of identity, nationalism, tradition, and neoliberal economics.

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published October 2007
Learning Religion

Anthropological Approaches

Berliner, D. & Sarró, R. (eds)

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Theory and Methodology Sociology

Hb
Paperback available
Published November 1996
The Link with Nature and Divine Meditations in Asia

Formoso, B. (ed)

Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Anthropology of Religion

Pb
Published December 2006
Local Science Vs Global Science

Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge in International Development

Sillitoe, P. (ed)

Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Development Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
Published March 2003
Louis Dumont and Hierarchical Opposition

Parkin, R.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published June 2012
A Lover's Quarrel with the Past

Romance, Representation, Reading

Ghosh, R.

Subject: History (General)

Hb
eBook available Published September 2023
Madness, Bureaucracy and Gender in Mumbai, India

Narratives from a Psychiatric Hospital

Strauss, A.

Regional mental hospitals in India are perceived as colonial artefacts in need of reformation. In the last two decades, there has been discussion around the maltreatment of patients, corruption and poor quality of mental health treatment in these institutions. This ethnography scrutinizes bureaucracy of these asylum-like institutions in the context of national change and the global mental health movement.

Subjects: Medical Anthropology Gender Studies and Sexuality

Hb
eBook available Published January 2023
A Magpie’s Tale

Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives on the Kazakh of Western Mongolia

Portisch, A. O.

Telling the story of the author's time living with a Kazakh family in a small village in western Mongolia, this book contextualizes the family’s personal stories within the broader history of the region.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Refugee and Migration Studies

Hb
Published July 2022
Making Things Happen

Community Participation and Disaster Reconstruction in Pakistan

Murphy Thomas, J.

Making Things Happen is about the sociocultural side of post-disaster infrastructure reconstruction, drawing on one project, the Pakistan Earthquake Reconstruction and Recovery Project (PERRP). As disasters are increasing in number and intensity so too will be the need for reconstruction, for which PERRP has lessons to offer.

Subjects: Applied Anthropology Development Studies

Paperback available
Published February 2025
Market and Monastery

Capitalism in Manangi Trade Diaspora

Ratanapruck, P.

In this enlightening ethnography of the Manangi, a Buddhist trading community from northern Nepal, Prista Ratanapruck highlights the way social institutions have boosted Manangi trade opportunities. Examining how capital production and accumulation interacts with the Manangi’s pursuit of social and spiritual aspirations, Market and Monastery illuminates an intriguing form of capitalism.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Development Studies Anthropology (General)
eBook available Published May 2019
Marketing Hope

Get-Rich-Quick Schemes in Siberia

Schiffauer, L.

Looks at how get-rich-quick schemes manifest themselves in a Siberian town. By focusing on the social dynamics of these popular economies, Leonie Schiffauer provides insights into how capitalist logic is learned and negotiated, and how it affects local realities in a post-Soviet environment.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology (General) Sociology

Hb
Published September 2012
A Matter of Belief

Christian Conversion and Healing in North-East India

Joshi, V.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion

Hb
Published January 2014
Metallic Modern

Everyday Machines in Colonial Sri Lanka

Wickramasinghe, N.

Subjects: Colonial History Cultural Studies (General) Development Studies

Hb
Forthcoming March 2026
Migration and Welfare Austerity

Mobilizing Kinship for Care, Welfare and Development in Kyrgyzstan

Ismailbekova, A.

Migration is destructive to the nuclear family and wider village life, but it provides an opportunity for lineages to be mobilized for collective social action that is both local and translocal. This book aims to share experiences of people in Alma, a village in Kyrgyzstan, and how they created a ‘moral economy of migration’ that became territorialised as kinship was de-territorialised.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies Sociology
eBook available Published December 2001
Modern Babylon?

Prostituting Children in Thailand

Montgomery, H.

Subject: Medical Anthropology

Hb
Paperback available
Published December 2013
Natufian Foragers in the Levant

Terminal Pleistocene Social Changes in Western Asia

Bar-Yosef, O. & Calla, F. R.

This large volume presents virtually all aspects of the Epipalaeolithic Natufian culture in a series of chapters that cover recent results of field work, analyses of materials and sites, and synthetic or interpretive overviews of various aspects of this important prehistoric culture.

Subject: Archaeology

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published May 2010
News as Culture

Journalistic Practices and the Remaking of Indian Leadership Traditions

Rao, U.

Subjects: Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
Published October 1999
Orientpolitik, Value, and Civilization

Adler, J. & Fardon, R. (eds) (Steiner, F.)

Subjects: Theory and Methodology

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published October 2021
Outsiders

Memories of Migration to and from North Korea

Bell, M.

In this timely and insightful new book, Markus Bell presents the case study of Korean-Japanese – “Zainichi” – who have escaped North Korea in the years following the end of the Cold War. Through building alliances and long-distance relationships, Zainichi returnees resist forced integration and push back against life-threatening political purges to forge new ways of belonging.

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published January 2018
The Partial Revolution

Labour, Social Movements and the Invisible Hand of Mao in Western Nepal

Hoffmann, M.

Located in the far-western Tarai region of Nepal, Kailali has been the site of dynamic social and political change in recent history. The Partial Revolution examines Kailali in the aftermath of Nepal’s Maoist insurgency, focusing primarily on the end of Kailali’s feudal system of bonded labor.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Development Studies Peace and Conflict Studies

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published January 2017
The Patient Multiple

An Ethnography of Healthcare and Decision-Making in Bhutan

Taee, J.

In Bhutan, medical patients engage a variety of healing practices to seek cures for their ailments. The Patient Multiple delves into the context of patients’ daily lives and decision-making processes, showing how these unique mountain cultures are finding paths to health among a changing and multifaceted medical topography.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Medical Anthropology Anthropology of Religion

Hb
Paperback available
Published August 2012
Patients and Agents

Mental Illness, Modernity and Islam in Sylhet, Bangladesh

Callan, A.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion Gender Studies and Sexuality Medical Anthropology

Hb
Published May 2011
Patrons of Women

Literacy Projects and Gender Development in Rural Nepal

Hertzog, E.

Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Development Studies Anthropology (General)

Paperback available
Published September 2024
Performing State Boundaries

Food Networks, Democratic Bureaucracy and China

Lammer, C.

Polarizing images of China’s authoritarian, socialist or culturalist otherness limit state analyses but produce political effects. In an ecological village in Sichuan, potential supporters saw citizen participation as Western liberalism, Maoism or traditional rural culture. This book shows how contrasting judgments emerged from diverse repertoires through which multiple boundaries between state and non-state were performed.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology (General)
Published September 2008
Precious Pills

Medicine and Social Change among Tibetan Refugees in India

Prost, A.

Subjects: Medical Anthropology Refugee and Migration Studies

Hb
Forthcoming February 2026
Reconstruction of the Pakhtun Code of Life in a Changing Pakistan

Khan, A.

This book aims to give a faithful presentation of Pahktun reality by investigating the diverse and changing patterns of social relations among Pahktuns and considering the practice of gham khadee to be a manifestation of the code of life.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
Published December 2024
Refugee Protection in Southeast Asia

Between Humanitarianism and Sovereignty

Kneebone, S., Mariñas, R., Missbach, A. & Walden, M. (eds)

With contributions from scholars within and outside the region, this book promotes new thinking on protection of refugees and on resolving tensions between states, actors and institutions involved in humanitarian action in Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Political and Economic Anthropology
eBook available Published February 2025
Representations of “Japanese Nature”

A Historical Overview

Ohnuki-Tierney, E.

“Nature” as a concept and word is extremely elusive, yet it is commonly taken for granted that “the pristine nature” is “out there.” This book explores the factors that have naturalized the idea of nature as pristine into our psyche, and as something that has a spatial, visual, and temporal dimension for “seasons”.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General)

Hb
Paperback available
Published April 2007
Resistance and the State

Nepalese Experiences

Gellner, D.

Subjects: Development Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
Published August 2022
The Return of Polyandry

Kinship and Marriage in Central Tibet

Fjeld, H. E.

This book describes the surprising increase in polyandry in Panam valley during the 1980s. It explores married lives in polyandrous houses and develops a theory of a flexible kinship of potentiality through the lens of a farming village in Tibet Autonomous Region.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality

Paperback available
eBook available Published February 2018
Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces

Religious Pluralism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus

Darieva, T., Mühlfried, F., & Tuite, K. (eds)

Though long-associated with violence, the Caucasus is a region rich with spirituality. Based on fresh ethnographies and studies of sacred sites in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces discusses vanishing and emerging sacred places in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious post-Soviet Caucasus.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion Sociology

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published February 2023
A Sea of Transience

Poetics, Politics and Aesthetics along the Black Sea Coast

Khalvashi, T. & Demant Frederiksen, M. (eds)

Transience is found in every meeting, encounter and form of coexistence between people and things that exist and live by, or move across or along, the Black Sea. With particular attention to poetics, politics and aesthetics, this volume focuses on the scales of transient moments and histories, and enables readers to see and sense the many forms of transience that occur in a given landscape, sea or space.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Environmental Studies (General)

Hb
Paperback available
Published July 2000
The Silk Roads

Highways of Culture and Commerce

Elisseeff, V.

Subject: History (General)

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published April 2024
State Intimacies

Sterilization, Care and Reproductive Chronicity in Rural North India

Fiks, E.

State Intimacies examines the mundane workings, ambiguity, and fragilities of care in post-colonial rural North India. The experience of reproductive chronicity is grounded in women’s everyday realities and experiences in sterilization camps and other healthcare settings in rural Rajasthan.

Subjects: Medical Anthropology Gender Studies and Sexuality

Hb
eBook available Published August 2016
Staying at Home

Identities, Memories and Social Networks of Kazakhstani Germans

Sanders, R.

This book explores the interplay of those memories, social networks and state policies which play a role in the ‘construction’ of a Kazakhstani German identity. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Kazakhstan, Rita Sanders shows that social capital, including the power to influence identities, plays a key role in Kazakhstani German attitudes

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
Published October 1999
Taboo, Truth and Religion

Adler, J. & Fardon, R. (eds) (Steiner, F.)

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology of Religion

Hb
Paperback available
Published August 1996
A Tamil Asylum Diaspora

Sri Lankan Migration, Settlement and Politics in Switzerland

McDowell, C.

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Peace and Conflict Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published October 2025
Textual Heritage

Locating Textual Practices Across Heritage and the Humanities

Gerlini, E. & Giolai, A. (eds)

Focusing on the afterlives of textual traditions, primarily within East Asia, Textual Heritage highlights how textual practices offer a lens for understanding questions of canonization, embodiment, and circulation. In doing so, this volume advances a theory of “humanistic heritage studies” that mediates the overlap between literary and heritage studies.

Subjects: Heritage Studies Literary Studies Cultural Studies (General)

Hb
Published June 2015
Thai in Vitro

Gender, Culture and Assisted Reproduction

Whittaker, A.

In Thailand, infertility remains a source of stigma for couples using assisted reproductive technologies in the quest for a child. This ethnographic account of public and private clinics explores this experience of infertility and the pursuit of assisted reproductive technologies by Thai couples.

Subjects: Medical Anthropology Gender Studies and Sexuality

Hb
Published December 2002
Tibetans in Nepal

The Dynamics of International Assistance among a Community in Exile

Frechette, A.

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Development Studies

Hb
Paperback available
Published January 2008
Time and History

The Variety of Cultures

Rüsen, J. (ed)

Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies

Hb
eBook available Published April 2020
Total Atheism

Secular Activism and the Politics of Difference in South India

Binder, S.

Exploring lived atheism in the South Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, this book offers a unique insight into India’s rapidly transforming multi-religious society and develops an alternative to Eurocentric accounts of secularity and critically revisits central themes of South Asianist scholarship from the hitherto marginalized vantage point of radically secular and explicitly irreligious atheists in India.

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published September 2011
Tourism, Magic and Modernity

Cultivating the Human Garden

Picard, D.

“...an excellent and engaging commentary on the tourism industry, postcolonial societies and environmental governance. Its strength lies in the nuance and intricacy of its portrayals of social life and the way that it opens up a difficult yet much needed theoretical space in which to contemplate issues such as how we should investigate tourist subjectivity, how collective imaginaries are formed and sustained, and how dynamics of affect and desire constitute tourism as a social practice. Its readability and the vividness of characterisations in Picard’s accounts of his ethnographic observations will make the book an accessible and appealing text to students of tourism studies and social anthropology, and to these fields it makes a notable contribution.” · Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change

Subjects: Travel and Tourism Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published February 2025
Towards a British Natyam

Creating a British Classical Indian Dance Tradition

Gorringe, M.

An illuminating investigation into the ‘professionalization’ of classical Indian dance forms in Britain, Towards a British Natyam critically analyzes the cultural, social, and political frameworks that make a ‘profession’ within the arts possible, highlighting the transformational power of classical Indian dance within society to decenter white supremacy and recenter pluriversality.

Subjects: Performance Studies Heritage Studies Sociology

Hb
eBook available Published September 2021
Traumatic Pasts in Asia

History, Psychiatry, and Trauma from the 1930s to the Present

Micale, M. S. & Pols, H. (eds)

Traumatic Pasts in Asia extends Euro-American paradigms of traumatic experience to new sites of world-historical suffering and, in the process, explores how these new terrains of investigation inform and enrich earlier understandings.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Memory Studies Medical Anthropology

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published March 2025
Tropical Nature

Colonial and Post-Colonial Conservation in Africa and Asia

Blanc, G., Guérin, M., & Quenet, G. (eds)

An insightful and wide-ranging study of the colonial history of conservation projects, Tropical Nature seeks to provide a much-needed history of the Global South from its own perspective. In doing so, this volume collection spotlights a “small-scale global history” that deciphers the relations binding human societies to the non-human world.

Subjects: Colonial History Environmental Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present

Hb
eBook available Published October 2017
Unearthing the Past to Forge the Future

Colin Mackenzie, the Early Colonial State, and the Comprehensive Survey of India

Wolffhardt, T.

During the 1800s, the East India Company consolidated its rule in India. In desperate need of knowledge about this territory and its population, the company appointed Colin Mackenzie as the first Surveyor General of India. Unearthing the Past to Forge the Future explores the life and career of Mackenzie, and his massive survey of India.

Subjects: Colonial History History: 18th/19th Century

Hb
Published July 2014
Unforgotten

Love and the Culture of Dementia Care in India

Brijnath, B.

Though the number of people living with dementia in India will rise with increased life expectancy, little is known about how people in India cope with dementia. Unforgotten offers a rich ethnographic account of how middle-class families in urban India care for their relatives with dementia—illuminating idioms on dementia and aging, the experience of care-giving, and the social and cultural barriers in accessing support.

Subject: Medical Anthropology

Hb
Published November 2023
The UNHCR and the Afghan Crisis

The Making of the International Refugee Regime

Scalettaris, G.

Today the UNHCR is present in more than 130 countries and takes care of some 90 million people. This book looks at how it is deployed and who its agents are. By taking the reader through the offices in charge of the Afghan refugee crisis during the 2000s, in Geneva and in Kabul, the book shows the internal functioning of this international organization.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Refugee and Migration Studies
Published May 2011
Unruly Hills

A Political Ecology of India's Northeast

Karlsson, B. G.

Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Development Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
Forthcoming May 2026
Urbanizing the Future

A New City Project in Agrarian South India

Upadhya, C.

Tracing the rise, abandonment and revival of Amaravati, the new capital of Andhra Pradesh, Urbanizing the Future delves into the ambitions plan to build a brand-new city in an agrarian landscape. Combining political economy and history with long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this book offers a compelling critique of planned urbanization as a contested and uneven process in contemporary India.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Urban Studies Development Studies
Published February 2014
Variations on Uzbek Identity

Strategic Choices, Cognitive Schemas and Political Constraints in Identification Processes

Finke, P.

“…a meticulous study of ethnic groups faring in different regions of contemporary Uzbekistan. Nowadays, when there are so many unjustifiable restrictions imposed by the Karimov regime for foreign students who are eager to study Uzbek society, this book is a lucky example of a scholar who managed, in spite all restrictions, to conduct and complete substantial fieldwork research in four regions of Uzbekistan.” · Alisher Ilkhamov, Independent Scholar

Subjects: Anthropology (General) History (General) Sociology

Hb
eBook available Published July 2023
Visions of Marriage

Politics and Family on Kinmen, 1920-2020

Chiu, H.-C.

Grounded in multi-generational stories from Kinmen in Taiwan, Visions of Marriage explores the historical entanglements between the pursuit of new personal and national futures. Focusing on the relational and future-making aspects of marriage, the ethnography highlights the intersection of transformations across familial generations and shifting political economies in Taiwan, and more globally. It provides comparative insights on family change and demographic shifts in Asia.>

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Gender Studies and Sexuality

Paperback available
Published February 1995
Warrior Gentlemen

'Gurkhas' in the Western Imagination

Caplan, L.

Subject: Anthropology (General)

Hb
Published August 2011
Weathering the World

Recovery in the Wake of the Tsunami in a Tamil Fishing Village

Hastrup, F.

Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Development Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
Published April 2017
When Things Become Property

Land Reform, Authority and Value in Postsocialist Europe and Asia

Sikor, T., Dorondel, S., Stahl, J. & Xuan To, P.

Almost all elements of nature have become the target of property laws, from the classic preoccupation with land to more ephemeral material, such as air and genetic resources. When Things Become Property examines postsocialist land and forest reforms in Albania, Romania and Vietnam, finding that property reforms are not miracle tools available to governments for refashioning economies, politics or environments.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Political and Economic Anthropology

Paperback available
Published September 2015
Where Are All Our Sheep?

Kyrgyzstan, A Global Political Arena

Petric, B.

After the USSR collapsed, Kyrgyzstan followed a path of economic liberalization, but after a few years, they produced little, and the country’s principal industry of sheep breeding was decimated. This led to dependence on international aid, and ensuing comical encounters between the local population and well-meaning foreigners who help them.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Development Studies

Hb
eBook available Published March 2008
Where There Is No Midwife

Birth and Loss in Rural India

Pinto, S.

Subjects: Medical Anthropology Gender Studies and Sexuality

Hb
Paperback available
Published August 2012
Who Owns the Stock?

Collective and Multiple Property Rights in Animals

Khazanov, A. M. & Schlee, G. (eds)

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology (General)

Hb
eBook available Published October 2012
Wind Over Water

Migration in an East Asian Context

Haines, D. W., Yamanaka, K. & Yamashita, S. (eds)

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Anthropology (General)

Hb
Paperback available
eBook available Published June 2025
Women’s Empowerment and Son Preference in India

Feminist and Ethical discourse on Sex Selective Abortions

Suryanarayanan, S.

This book reviews the feminist, ethical and legal discourse on sex selective abortions and draws on women’s empowerment as an analytical lens to examine the son preference expressed in the notion of Vansh (lineage) among pregnant women.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Gender Studies and Sexuality Medical Anthropology

Hb
eBook available Published March 2018
World Heritage Craze in China

Universal Discourse, National Culture, and Local Memory

Yan, H.

There is a World Heritage Craze in China. China claims to have the longest continuous civilization in the world and is seeking the recognition from UNESCO. With a sociological lens, this book offers comprehensive insights into World Heritage, as well as China’s deep social, cultural, and political structures.

Subjects: Heritage Studies Archaeology Sociology Travel and Tourism

Hb
Paperback available

Browse

By Area: Asia

View: By Date | Alphabetical | eBooks | Paperbacks

Abortion in Asia

Local Dilemmas, Global Politics

Whittaker, A. (ed)

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Medical Anthropology

The Afterlives of Tamil Tigers

Fighters’ Memories of War and Survival

Mantovan, G.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Genocide History History: 20th Century to Present Sociology

An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange

Interactions, Transactions and Ethics in Asia and Beyond

Copeman, J., Long, N. J., Chau, L. M., Cook, J. & Marsden, M.(eds)

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)

The Art of Fate Calculation

Practicing Divination in Taipei, Beijing, and Kaifeng

Homola, S.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion Sociology

Asian Lives in Anthropological Perspective

Essays on Morality, Achievement and Modernity

Bayly, S.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Theory and Methodology

Aspirations of Young Adults in Urban Asia

Values, Family, and Identity

Westendorp, M., Remmert, D. & Finis, K. (eds)

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Urban Studies

Asymmetrical Conversations

Contestations, Circumventions, and the Blurring of Therapeutic Boundaries

Naraindas, H., Quack, J., & Sax, W. S. (eds)

Subjects: Medical Anthropology Anthropology of Religion

Autonomy

Life Cycle, Gender, and Status among Himalayan Pastoralists

Rao, A.

Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Anthropology (General)

Bali and Beyond

Case Studies in the Anthropology of Tourism

Yamashita, S.

Subjects: Travel and Tourism Development Studies Anthropology (General)

Becoming Good Women

Schooling, Aspirations and Imagining the Future Among Female Students in Sri Lanka

Batatota, L. S.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Educational Studies Gender Studies and Sexuality

Becoming Vaishnava in an Ideal Vedic City

Fahy, J.

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General)

Big Capital in an Unequal World

The Micropolitics of Wealth in Pakistan

Armytage, R.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology (General)

Bishkek Boys

Neighbourhood Youth and Urban Change in Kyrgyzstan’s Capital

Schröder, P.

Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Refugee and Migration Studies Urban Studies

The Body in Asia

Turner, B. & Yangwen, Z. (Eds.)

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology of Religion

Calibrated Engagement

Chronicles of Local Politics in the Heartland of Myanmar

Huard, S.

Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Development Studies

Cambodian Journeys

Stories of Refugees Surviving the Khmer Rouge

Mamula, S. & Sutton, E.

Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Political and Economic Anthropology Peace and Conflict Studies

Care in a Time of Humanitarianism

Stories of Refuge, Aid, and Repair in the Global South

Osanloo, A. & deBergh Robinson, C. (eds)

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies Sociology

Cars

Analysis, History, Cases

Williams, K., Haslam, C., Johal, S. & Williams, J.

Subject: History (General)

Categories of Self

Louis Dumont's Theory of the Individual

Celtel, A.

Subjects: Theory and Methodology Sociology

'City of the Future'

Built Space, Modernity and Urban Change in Astana

Laszczkowski, M.