In the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, the complex interplay between anticolonial resistance and accommodation resounds in its music. Guadeloupean gwoka music – a secular, drum-based tradition – captures the entangled histories of French colonization...

"The Passion Book" is the most famous work of erotica in the vast literature of Tibetan Buddhism, written by the legendary scholar and poet Gendun Chopel (1903-1951). Soon after arriving in India in 1934, he discovered the "Kama Sutra". Realizing tha...

How are we to explain the resurgence of customary chiefs in contemporary Africa? Rather than disappearing with the tide of modernity, as many expected, indigenous sovereigns are instead a rising force, often wielding substantial power and legitimacy...

Since 1975, the Peabody Museum has been publishing "The Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions", a unique series of folio volumes with the goal to document all known Maya inscriptions and their associated figurative art. This is the first of four...

Trust occupies a unique place in contemporary discourse. Seen as both necessary and virtuous, it is variously depicted as enhancing the social fabric, lowering crime rates, increasing happiness, and generating prosperity. It allows for complex politi...

"The Owners of Kinship" investigates how kinship in Indigenous Amazonia is derived from the asymmetrical relation between an "owner" and his or her dependents. Through a comprehensive ethnography of the Kanamari, Luiz Costa shows how this relationshi...

The concept of normal is so familiar that it can be hard to imagine contemporary life without it. Yet the term entered everyday speech only in the mid-twentieth century. Before that, it was solely a scientific term used primarily in medicine to refer...

One of the major issues in cultural psychology is how to take diversity seriously while also acknowledging our shared humanity. This collection brings together leading figures in the field of cultural psychology to consider that question, addressing...

Not for sale in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic! The Royal Tombs of Ur, dating from approximately 3000-2700 BCE, are among the most famous and impressive archeological discoveries of the twentieth century. Excavated between 1922 and 1934...

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa has defined the childhoods of an entire generation. Over the past twenty years, international NGOs and charities have devoted immense attention to the millions of African children orphaned by the disease. But in "Cryin...