In 1931 Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote his famous "Remarks on Frazer's "Golden Bough", published posthumously in 1967. At that time, anthropology and philosophy were in close contact – continental thinkers drew heavily on anthropology's theoretical terms,...

Fakes, forgery, counterfeits, hoaxes, frauds, knock-offs – such terms speak, ostensibly, to the inverse of truth or the obverse of authenticity and sincerity. Do all cultures equally spend an incredible amount of energy and labor on detecting differe...

This book offers a rich assortment of some of Michael Silverstein's most important lectures at the University of Chicago over the past forty years, all of which converge on theoretical issues involved in the semiotic, cognitive, and sociopolitical st...

The late anthropologist Valerio Valeri (1944-1998) was best known for his substantial writings on societies of Polynesia and eastern Indonesia. This volume, however, presents a lesser-known side of Valeri's genius through a dazzlingly erudite set of...

For the Ankave of Papua New Guinea, men, unlike women, do not reach adulthood and become fathers simply by growing up and reproducing. What fathers – and by extension, men – actually are is a result of a series of relational transformations, operated...

"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...

Not since Clifford Geertz's "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" has the publication of an anthropological analysis been as eagerly awaited as this book, Terence S. Turner's The Fire of the Jaguar. His reanalysis of the famous myth from the K...

In anthropology as much as in popular imagination, kings are figures of fascination and intrigue, heroes or tyrants in ways presidents and prime ministers can never be. This collection of essays by two of the world's most distinguished anthropologist...

Highly innovative and theoretically incisive, "Two Lenins" is the first book-length anthropological examination of how social reality can be organized around different yet concurrent ideas of time. Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov grounds his theoretical explo...

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...