Social and Cultural Anthropology for the 21st Century
Social and Cultural Anthropology for the 21st Century: Connected Worlds is a lively, accessible, and wide-ranging introduction to socio-cultural anthropology for undergraduate students. It draws on a wealth of ethnographic examples to showcase how anthropological fieldwork and analysis can help us understand the contemporary world in all its diversity and complexity.
The book is addressed to a twenty-first-century readership of students who are encountering social and cultural anthropology for the first time. It provides an overview of the key debates and methods that have historically defined the discipline and of the approaches and questions that shape it today. In addition to classic research areas such as kinship, exchange, and religion, topics that are pressing concerns for our times are covered, such as climate change, economic crisis, social media, refugees, sexuality, and race. Foregrounding ethnographic stories from all over the world to illustrate global connections and their effects on local lives, the book combines a focus on history with urgent present-day social issues. It will equip students with the analytical tools that they need to negotiate a world characterized by unprecedented cross-cultural contact, ever-changing communicative technologies, and new forms of uncertainty.
The book is an essential resource for introductory courses in social and cultural anthropology and as a refresher for more advanced students.
Marzia Balzani is research professor of anthropology, New York University Abu Dhabi. She has published on the anthropology of South Asia, political ritual, diasporic Islam, and gendered and religious persecution. In 200308, she was chief examiner for social and cultural anthropology for the International Baccalaureate, and in 201012, she was chief examiner for Anthropology for the A level (AQA).
Niko Besnier is professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and honorary research fellow at La Trobe University. He has published widely on globalization, sport, sexuality and gender, economic relations, and language. In 19982003, he was chief examiner for social and cultural anthropology for the International Baccalaureate, and in 201519, he edited the journal American Ethnologist.
Marzia Balzani and Niko Besnier have embarked in a most challenging journey: that of writing an introduction to sociocultural anthropology. A discipline that constantly interrogates the fields of power that surround the production of knowledge is difficult to introduce, yet the task needs to be done. Balzani and Besnier speak to the reader in simple terms that explain complexities: they engage with classical themes such as kinship in new ways; they underline process, relations, and mobilities; they address scale from the immediate intimacies of the body to global transnational power, and they do it brilliantly. They tell the story in a clear language, beautifully interlaced with ethnographic cases and historical grounding, without forgetting to present some important theoretical and methodological debates. Social and Cultural Anthropology for the 21st Century is a masterful feat that underscores how anthropology is about exploring the connections that make life possible.
Susana Narotzky, University of Barcelona
Anthropology textbooks have all too often relied on discussions primarily of traditional societies for an audience mainly of Anglo-American readers. Social and Cultural Anthropology for the 21st Century: Connected Worlds is expressly designed to avoid both of these pitfalls, and does so admirably, in its discussions of the present and future as much as of the past, and in its vast array of examples from societies across the globe. It is also really interesting and fun to read: I will certainly use it in my own introductory anthropology class.
Gordon Mathews, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Over the decades that Ive been teaching anthropology at university, students at all levels have asked for an introductory text that clearly explains the discipline, its perspectives, practices, and insights. This is the book, leading the pack by a mile. It is authoritative, up to date, engagingly written and strikingly illustrated.
The books chapters focus on topics long central to the social sciences, among them, kinship, marriage, sex and gender, exchange and gift-giving, nation and state, and rank, caste and class. The book couches an understanding of the history of ideas in contemporary examples that bring these topics to life, making them thinkable and discussable. The books style is sure to get readers reflecting and debating, as they convey the combination of observation, contextualization and critical interpretation that is central to anthropology.
Written by two anthropologists with extensive research experience in the Pacific, Asia and Western societies, this book will richly reward its readers with an understanding of the discipline.
Francesca Merlan, Australian National University
This book is a much-needed and timely introduction to social and cultural anthropology for a new and media-savvy generation of learners. It is accessible and visually attractive, but also suitably and refreshingly challenging. By making global connections and marrying classic themes with contemporary concerns, the authors have brought the subject bang up to date and have provided a compelling introductory textbook for our time.
Jeanette Edwards, University of Manchester
Social and Cultural Anthropology for the 21st Century
Connected Worlds
Marzia Balzani and Niko Besnier
Cover image: Photograph: Heidi Hrknen. Young Cuban women in the middle of the photo shoot that constitute the most important part of their quinceaera, a ritual celebration of their fifteenth birthday and coming of age.
First published 2022
by Routledge
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2022 Marzia Balzani and Niko Besnier
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Balzani, Marzia, author. | Besnier, Niko, author.
Title: Social and cultural anthropology for the 21st century : connected worlds / Marzia Balzani and Niko Besnier.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021028832 (print) | LCCN 2021028833 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138829091 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138829121 (paperback) | ISBN 9781315737805 (ebook) | ISBN 9781315737805 (mobi) | ISBN 9781317571780 (epub) | ISBN 9781317571797 (adobe pdf)
