This is the first multi-volume collection of writings on sociocultural anthropology, the field of anthropology which is concerned with how people in different places live in and understand the world around them. It covers the field's core and changing objectives and methodologies, how context shapes how people make a living and reproduce, how people organize relationships with other people as well as with animals and the environment, how people communicate with other people, and ongoing change in how people make sense of where they live, with whom they interact, and their sense of meaning. Taken together, the collection of 88 articles maps the development of sociocultural anthropology from its beginnings in the mid-19th century through to recent debates on the rise of new methods, increased attention to reflexivity and intersubjectivity, and the ongoing 'critique of anthropology' and the efforts to decolonize it.The four volumes are arranged thematically and each is separately introduced. In Volume 1, contributions lay out some of the early and enduring motivations of sociocultural anthropologists: who are the world's peoples? From the effort to describe non-Western cultures, entries move to critiques of early sociocultural anthropology, for example, from feminist anthropologists and indigenous anthropologists, as well as applied anthropologists who saw a need for sociocultural anthropologists to be involved in community development. Volume 2 focuses on studies of livelihoods and reproduction and health. Volume 3 looks at forms of social relations and organization as defined by kinship as well as non-kin relations. Volume 4 includes entries that look more directly at language and other forms of communication, religion and spiritual beliefs, and expressive culture and performance. The final articles offer insights about how tumultuous changes, such as refugee movements and environmental change are affecting people around the world, and how they are making sense of these changes.The four volumes are energized by the inclusion, and often juxtaposition, of classic texts by Sir Edmund Leach, Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Lucy Mair, Claude Lévi Strauss, Marshall Sahlins, and Maurice Godelier, mixed in with writings by contemporary authors such as Lila Abu-Lughod, Seth Holmes, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Tom Boellstorff, Susan Greenhalgh, George Marcus, and Arjun Appadurai.

Table of Contents:
Volume 1: Foundations, Fundamentals, and FrontiersIntroduction, Barbara Miller1.1 Commodity Fetishism in Organs Trafficking, Nancy Scheper-Hughes1.2 Ethnological Problems in Canada, Franz Boas1.3 Theory in Anthropology: Center and Periphery, Arjun Appadurai1.4 Representations of Race and Racism in American Anthropology, Eugenia Shanklin1.5 Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others, Lila Abu-Lughod1.6 An Anthropology of Structural Violence, Paul Farmer 1.7 Magical Hair, E. R. Leach1.8 The Cultural Ecology of India's Sacred Cattle, Marvin Harris1.9 Policy Studies and Anthropology, Glynn Cochrane1.10 Medical Anthropology and the Redefining of Human Nature, M. Margaret Clark 1.11 Anthropology and Development: Evil Twin or Moral Narrative?, David D. Gow1.12 The Fox Project, Sol Tax1.13 Disability, Destitution, and Disaster, Karen Nakamura1.14 Claiming Cape Town: Towards a Symbolic Interpretation of Khoisan Activism and Land Claims, Rafaël Verbuyst1.15 Social Impact Assessment and the Anthropology of the Future of Canada’s Tar Sands, Clinton N. Westman1.16 Defining the "Community": Applying Ethnographic Methods for a Latino Immigrant Health Intervention, Mark Edberg, Sean Clary, Lauren B. Simmons, Idalina Cubilla-Batista, Elizabeth L. Andrade, and Glencora Gudger1.17 “Is it worth risking your life?” Ethnography, Risk and Death on the US-Mexico Border, Seth M. Holmes1.18 Campus Alternative Food Projects and Food Service Realities: Alternative Strategies, Peggy F. Barlett1.19 Gun Concealment, Display, and Other Magical Habits of the Body, Charles Fruehling Springwood 1.20 Indifference with Indignation: Anthropology, Human Rights, and the Haitian Bracero, Samuel Martínez1.21 Anthropology and Advocacy: A Case Study of the Campaign against the Ok Tedi Mine, Stuart Kirsch1.22 Museums and Feminist Matters: Considerations of a Feminist Museology, Arndís BergsdóttirFurther ReadingVolume 2: Making a Living and Making PeopleIntroduction, Barbara Miller2.1 Protecting Life Below Water: Tending to Relationality and Expanding Oceanic Consciousness Beyond Coastal Zones, Zoe Todd2.2 Sustenance, Nourishment and Cultivation, Laura Jeffery and Rebecca Rotter2.3 Peyote as Commodity: An Examination of Market Actors and Access Mechanisms, Kevin Feeney2.4 “Hummus is Best when it is Fresh and Made by Arabs”: The Gourmetization of Hummus in Israel and the Return of the Repressed Arab, Dafna Hirsch2.5 Livelihood Diversification through Migration among a Pastoral People, J. Terrence McCabe, Nicole M. Smith, Paul W. Leslie, and Amy L. Telligman2.6 Silent Trade with Outsiders: Hunter-Gatherers Perspectives, James Woodburn2.7 Kula: Circulating Exchange of Valuables in the Archipelagoes of Eastern Papua New Guinea, Bronislaw Malinowski2.8 Microfinance and the Gender of Risk: The Case of Kiva.org, Megan Moodie2.9 What Is a Sexual Act?, Maurice Godelier2.10 ”Sex is Never the Same”: Men's Perspectives on Refusing Circumcision from an In-depth Qualitative Study in Kwaluseni, Swaziland, Alfred Adams and Eileen Moyer 2.11 The Politics of Reproduction in a Mexican Village, C. H. Browner2.12 Female-Selective Abortion in Asia: Patterns, Policies, and Debates, Barbara D. Miller2.13 The Swaddling Hypothesis: Its Reception, Margaret Mead2.14 The Amiable Side of Kwakiutl Life: The Potlatch and the Play Potlatch, Helen Codere2.15 Health Sector Involvement in the Management of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting in 30 Countries, R. Elise B. Johansen, Mai Mahgoub Ziyada, Bettina Shell-Duncan, Adriana Marcusàn Kaplan, and Els Leye2.16 ‘‘We Are All Going to Die": Kinship, Belonging, and the Morality of HIV/AIDS-Related Illnesses and Deaths in Rural Tanzania, Hansjörg Dilger2.17 Going Home? Belonging and Burial in the Era of AIDS, Susan Reynolds Whyte2.18 Ritual Healing and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Navajo Society, Thomas J. Csordas2.19 Obstetrics in a Time of Violence, Lydia Zacher Dixon2.20 Taking Pills for Developmental Ails in Southern Brazil: The Biologization of Adolescence?, Dominique P. Béhague2.21 The Rebirth of Secrets and the New Care of the Self in Depressed Japan, Junko Kitanaka2.22 Applied Anthropology and International Health, George M. FosterFurther ReadingVolume 3: Social OrganizationIntroduction, Barbara Miller3.1 Milk-Kinship in Arab Society: An Unexplored Problem in the Ethnography of Marriage, Soraya Altorki3.2 From Sex Tourist to Son-in-Law: Emergent Masculinities and Transient Subjectivities of Farang Men in Thailand, Eric C. Thompson, Pattana Kitiarsa, and Suriya Smutkupt3.3 Dowry-Bride-Burning, and Female Power in India, Linda Stone and Caroline James3.4 The North-American Indians: A Sketch of Some of the Hostile Tribes, Together with a Brief Account of General Sheridan's Campaign of 1868 against the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Kiowa, and Comanche Indians, William Blackmore3.5 Configurations of Culture in North America, Ruth Benedict3.6 Ecologic Relationships of Ethnic Groups in Swat, North Pakistan, Fredrik Barth3.7 The Dominant Caste in Rampura, M. N. Srinivas3.8 Caste and Development: Contemporary perspectives on a structure of discrimination and advantage, David Mosse3.9 Patterns of Alcohol Consumption among the Mapuche, Larissa Lomnitz3.10 Aboriginal Spirituality in Corrections: A Canadian Case Study in Religion and Therapy, James B. Waldram3.11 The Decolonizing Generation: (Race and) Theory in Anthropology since the Eighties, Jafari Sinclaire Allen and Ryan Cecil Jobson3.12 Navaho and Zuni Veterans: A Study of Contrasting Modes of Culture Change, John Adair and Evon Vogt 3.13 Anthropological Advocacy in Historical Perspective: The Case of Anthropologists and Virginia Indians, Samuel R. Cook3.14 A Divided Community: The Ethics and Politics of Activist Research, Christopher Loperena3.15 The Making of a Marxist-Feminist-Latin Americanist Anthropologist: An Interview with Helen I. Safa, Kevin A. Yelvington3.16 Weighty Subjects: The Biopolitics of the US War on Fat, Susan Greenhalgh3.17 States of Violence: Indigenous Women Migrants in the era of neoliberal multicriminalism, Shannon Speed3.18 “Ain’t I a Woman?”: Female Landmine Survivors’ Beauty Pageants, Rachel A. D. Bloul3.19 Ruptures, Rights, and Repair: The Political Economy of Trauma in Haiti, Erica Caple James3.20 Coffee Tourism and Community Development in Guatemala, Sarah Lyon3.21 Can Culture Be Copyrighted?, Michael F. Brown3.22 Gregory Bateson and the OSS: World War II and Bateson’s Assessment of Applied Anthropology, David H. PriceFurther ReadingVolume 4: Communication, Belief, Expressive Culture, and FuturesIntroduction, Barbara Miller4.1 The Diagnosis of Disease among the Subanun of Mindanao, Charles O. Frake4.2 Speech Variation and the Study of Indian Civilization, John J. Gumperz4.3 The Social Circulation of Media Discourse and the Mediation of Communities, Debra Spitulnik4.4 Gay Language and Indonesia: Registering Belonging, Tom Boellstorff4.5 Metaphors in Disrupted Lives, Gay Becker4.6 Cruising through Uncertainty: Cell Phones and the Politics of Display and Disguise in Inhambane, Mozambique, Julie Soleil Archambault4.7 The Rice Goddess and the Fox in Japanese Folk Religion and Folk Practice, Morris E. Opler and Robert Seido Hashima4.8 Independent Religious Movements in Three Continents, L. P. Mair4.9 Signifying Serpents: Hermeneutic Change in Appalachian Serpent Handling, Keith G. Tidball and Christopher P. Toumey4.10 ”God Values Intentions:” Abortion, Expiation, and Moments of Sincerity in Russian Orthodox Pilgrimage, Sonja Luehrmann4.11 Doing Anthropology in Sound, Steve Feld and Donald Brenneis4.12 Notes on Children’s Games in British New Guinea, A. C. Haddon4.13 Beads and Breasts: The Negotiation of Gender Roles and Power at New Orleans Mardi Gras, Laurie A. Wilkie4.14 Dealing with Dislocation: Migration, Place and Home among Displaced Kashmiri Pandits, Ankur Datta4.15 A Methodological Model for Exchanging Local and Scientific Climate Change Knowledge in Northeastern Siberia, Susan A. Crate and Alexander N. Federov4.16 Environmental Conservation and Mining: Between Experience and Expectation in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, Paige West4.17 Water Values in a Ghanaian Small-Scale Mining Community, Rachel Long, Elisha Renne, Thomas Robins, Mark Wilson, Kenneth Pelig-Ba, Mozhgon Rajaee, Allison Yee, Elizabeth Koomson, Codi Sharp, Jing Lu, and Niladri Basu4.18 Experimental Forms for the Expression of Norms in the Ethnography of the Contemporary, George.E. Marcus4.19 Cultures of Expertise and Technologies of Government: The Emergence of Think Tanks in Chile, Angel Aedo4.20 Moral Narratives of State Policy: Urban Development in Meicun, China, Chi Pui Cheung4.21 Thomas Hylland Eriksen on Australia’s Boomtown and its Ecological Sustainability: Interview, Sean Carey4.22 Race and the Immuno-logics of Ebola Response in West Africa, Adia BentonFurther ReadingAuthor NotesAppendix of Sources