"The Mafia? What is the Mafia? Something you eat? Something you drink? I don't know the Mafia. I have never seen it". So said Mommo Piromalli, a Ndrangheta crime boss, to a journalist in the seventies. In "Mafiacraft", Deborah Puccio-Den explores the...

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,...

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...

When Emily Martin delivered the annual Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures at the University of Rochester in 1986, she took as her subject the meaning of money in China and the United States. Though the topic is of perennial interest – and never more so than...

Though his work was little known outside Italian intellectual circles for most of the twentieth century, anthropologist and historian of religions Ernesto de Martino is now recognized as one of the most original thinkers in the field. This book is te...