Traditionally the study of early medieval burial practices in England has focused on the furnished burials of the early Anglo-Saxon period with those of the later centuries perceived as uniform and therefore uninteresting. The last decade has seen the publication of many important cemeteries and synthetic works demonstrating that such a simplistic view of later Anglo-Saxon burial is no longer tenable. The reality is rather more complex, with social and political perspectives influencing both the location and mode of burial in this period. This edited volume is the first that brings together papers by leading researchers in the field and illustrates the diversity of approaches being used to study the burials of this period. The overarching theme of the book is differential treatment in death, which is examined at the site-specific, settlement, regional and national level. More specifically, the symbolism of conversion-period grave good deposition, the impact of the church, and aspects of identity, burial diversity and biocultural approaches to cemetery analysis are discussed.

Any student of American history knows of Washington, Jefferson, and the other statesmen who penned the documents that form the legal foundations of our nation, but many other great minds contributed to the development of the young republic's judicial system -- figures such as William Littell, Ben Monroe, and John J. Marshall. These men, some of Kentucky's earliest law reporters, are the forgotten trailblazers who helped establish the foundation of the state's court system. In Writing the Legal Record: Law Reporters in Nineteenth-Century Kentucky, Kurt X. Metzmeier provides portraits of the men whose important yet understudied contributions helped create a new common law inspired by English legal traditions but fully grounded in the decisions of American judges. He profiles individuals such as James Hughes, a Revolutionary War veteran who worked as a legislator to reform confusing property laws inherited from Virginia. Also featured is George M. Bibb, a prominent U.S. senator and the secretary of the treasury under President John Tyler.To shed light on the pioneering individuals responsible for collecting and publishing the early opinions of Kentucky's highest court, Metzmeier reviews nearly a century of debate over politics, institutional change, human rights, and war. Embodied in the stories of these early reporters are the rich history of the Commonwealth, the essence of its legal system, and the origins of a legal print culture in America.

The Force of Custom presents a finely textured ethnographic study that sheds new light on the legal and moral ordering of everyday life in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. Through her extensive fieldwork and firsthand experience, Judith Beyer reveals how Kyrgyz in Talas province negotiate proper behavior and regulate disputes by invoking custom, known to the locals as salt. While salt is presented as age-old tradition, its invocation is shown to be a highly developed and flexible rhetorical strategy that people adapt in order to meet the challenges of contemporary political, legal, economic, and religious environments. Officially, codified state law should take precedence when it comes to dispute resolution, yet the unwritten laws of salt and the increasing importance of Islamic law provide the standards for ordering everyday life. As Beyer further demonstrates, interpretations of both Islamic and state law are also intrinsically linked to salt. By interweaving case studies on kinship, legal negotiations, festive events, mourning rituals, and political and business dealings, Beyer shows how salt is the binding element in rural Kyrgyz social life and how it is used to explain and negotiate moral behavior and to postulate communal identity. In this way, salt provides a time-tested, sustainable source of authentication that defies changes in government and the shifting tides of religious movements.

Desert exploration, like climbing Everest or polar expeditions, is not for the faint-hearted, and many of the vivid tales within this fascinating biographical history end in tragedy. However, the informative and absorbing descriptions of the extraordinary journeys, challenges and achievements of these intrepid figures, are captivating. They risked their lives variously for good old fashioned epic adventure, solitude, fame, the answer to mythical questions and some were even spies. They experienced fear, excitement and hardship in their journeys into the unknown. There are many books on exploration but remarkably few on desert exploration. Moreover, some of the great desert explorers of the last three hundred years are now very little remembered or appreciated in comparison, say, with those who ventured to the poles, climbed Everest, or sought the source of the Nile. Yet, crossing unknown deserts is no less challenging. This volume finally brings these Great Desert Explorers into the limelight, with short, illustrated biographies of around 60 of the most interesting, intrepid and important explorers of the world’s greatest deserts. There is also a brief introduction to each desert region. The many original quotations, illustrations and maps, contemporary figures, as well as plates of a range of desert landscapes make this a colourful, lively and informative read.

If we think of the beginnings of psychoanalysis, we certainly recognise that it overturned the vision human beings had of themselves, the illusion of ownership of their thoughts and actions. And in reality it still remains a way of reading the world, both inside and outside, that is admittedly disorienting. However, especially in recent years, the principles on which psychoanalysis was founded have been subjected to considerable pressure from the outside that forces psychoanalysis to problematise still more its vision of humankind and to abandon everything connected with prejudice toward the culture and history it was born out of, i. e. Western, in order to recognize the link between individual and social boundaries and the differences of various cultures. It is at this intersection between individual horizon and collective sphere that the psychoanalysis could be a galvanising force for knowledge and social growth. The book poses these questions and brings together the different experiences of psychoanalysts living and working in a variety of realities and cultures.

A lamak is a long narrow ritual hanging that is an essential requirement at almost all rituals in Bali. It is hung from altars and shrines at temple festivals and on festive holy days. Made usually of palm leaves, it is by nature ephemeral and it is made time and again. Even though permanent forms of the lamak, made of cloth or coins, do exist, the ephemeral palm leaf form must be present. Sometimes reaching a length of several metres and decorated with a range of motifs, its most elaborate forms are made by specialist craftsmen and women. The lamak serves as base for offerings and attracts deities and deified ancestors to them. Decorative motifs representing sources of life are ordered according to Balinese concepts of the vertical structure of the cosmos. Best known among the motifs is the cili, a human figure in female form that symbolizes human fertility and regeneration. Through offerings and the active role of the lamak, worshippers offer thanks to their deities and request prosperity and protection. Despite decades of change and modernization that have affected all aspects of life in Bali, the essential role of the lamak has survived intact. Although there are many studies of Bali’s internationally appreciated arts and crafts, this is the first one to examine in detail this fascinating and unique form of ephemeral material culture which is a prominent feature of Balinese creativity. The study answers the question: why do Balinese make lamak and why do they continue to make them time and again? It examines the use and function of the lamak in ritual, the motifs that decorate them, the materials and techniques to make them, regional and individual styles, and processes of change and commercialization. Francine Brinkgreve is curator for the Insular Southeast Asia collection at the National Museum of World Cultures, which includes Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden and the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. During her study Cultural Anthropology at Leiden University, she specialized in the cultures of Indonesia.

Egypt’s Wearable Heritage combines different subjects of crafts and arts from Egypt and the West-Asian and North African region. It is a richly illustrated and colourful book on different aspects of ‘wearable heritage’, such as jewellery, costume, amulets, but also hairstyles and even weaponry. Egypt’s Wearable Heritage contains aspects of beliefs, economy and socio-cultural phenomena and contemporary culture.

Carl Abbott, who has taught urban studies and urban planning in five decades, brings together urban studies and literary studies to examine how fictional cities in work by authors as different as E. M. Forster, Isaac Asimov, Kim Stanley Robinson, and China Miéville might help us to envision an urban future that is viable and resilient. Imagining Urban Futures is a remarkable treatise on what is best and strongest in urban theory and practice today, as refracted and intensely imagined in science fiction. As the human population grows, we can envision an increasingly urban society. Shifting weather patterns, rising sea levels, reduced access to resources, and a host of other issues will radically impact urban environments, while technology holds out the dream of cities beyond Earth. Abbott delivers a compelling critical discussion of science fiction cities found in literary works, television programs, and films of many eras from Metropolis to Blade Runner and Soylent Green to The Hunger Games, among many others.

This study examines a small group of highly educated Chinese who have exerted outsized influence on China's recent rise. They share one thing in common - they all left China to study in the US and subsequently returned to China to apply what they had learned. Their work has in some ways made China more like the US. But more importantly, in adapting overseas practices to the Chinese context, they have not simply imitated or duplicated that which already exists abroad. Instead, they have invented something entirely novel, something that resides at the very heart of China's contemporary developmental experience. Based on extensive interview data collected by the author, these personal accounts open a window on the day-to-day struggles - and step-by-step achievements - of China's most prominent social entrepreneurs and societal activists.

Social Stratification in Contemporary China raises and debates major sociological issues of modern and present-day China from a historical perspective. Such topics as "equality and inequality"and "acceptability of defined inequality" have been dealt with in a broad historical context since 1949 when the People's Republic was founded. The work is widely accepted as one of the most important studies trying to clarify the difficult perceptions of policy of reform and opening up that was formulated and implemented in the early 1980s in China. Professor Li Qiang is one of the leading sociologists in China.

Walter Edward Guinness (1880–1944), the first Lord Moyne, was an Anglo-Irish politician, businessman and explorer. Travelling across the globe in his private yacht in search for ethnographic material, Lord Moyne visited South Papua three times in 1929, 1935 and 1936. Unlike previous explorers of New Guinea, Lord Moyne and his group travelled along the rivers much further inland, and were able to make sustained contact with several groups of villages, engaging in performances and bartering for a range of objects that included shields and other carvings. Many of these objects were brought back to the British Museum as a means to address the severe lack of representation of South Papuan art and handicraft in the collection for which the area is renowned. Using the most advanced equipment to hand, Lord Moyne’s party took some of the first photographs of the indigenous Asmat people. The wide-ranging series of photographs taken by his companion Lady Vera Broughton provide a unique account of indigenous Asmat life and culture at the time immediately prior to colonisation. many of which are published here for the first time.

In the seminal Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer famously considered the ethics of modern warfare, examining the moral issues that arise before, during, and after conflict. However, Walzer and subsequent scholars have often limited their analyses of the ethics of combat to soldiers on the ground and failed to recognize the moral responsibilities of senior political and military leaders.In Just War Reconsidered: Strategy, Ethics, and Theory, James M. Dubik draws on years of research as well as his own experiences as a soldier and teacher to fill the gaps left by other theorists. He applies moral philosophy, political philosophy, and strategic studies to historical and contemporary case studies to reveal the inaccuracies and moral bankruptcy that inform some of the literature on military ethics. Conventional just war theory adopts a binary approach, wherein political leaders have moral accountability for the decision to go to war and soldiers have accountability for fighting the war ethically. Dubik argues, however, that political and military leadership should be held accountable for the planning and execution of war in addition to the decision to initiate conflict.Dubik bases his sober reassessment on the fundamental truth that war risks the lives of soldiers and innocents as well as the political and social health of communities. He offers new standards to evaluate the ethics of warfare in the hope of increasing the probability that the lives of soldiers will not be used in vain and the innocent not put at risk unnecessarily.

Academic exchange is one of the cornerstones of public diplomacy. Receiving foreign academics is one way of influencing foreign elites in an attempt to build goodwill and stable international networks. The result is that academic mobility and the internationalisation of higher education and research have always been directly affected by foreign policy decisions and diplomatic considerations -- and still are. In this book Andreas Åkerlund analyses Swedens scholarship programs for foreign academics in a long-term perspective. Here a quantitative analysis of scholarship holders is related to Swedish exchange policy and grant practices by looking at the Swedish Institute in particular. The result is an account of how public diplomacy, foreign policy, development assistance, and the ideas of a knowledge-based economy and international competition affected academic exchanges with Sweden in the twentieth century.

Some objects stand out as personal and important to us. A packed suitcase, an inherited vase, the remains from a humanitarian aid package - things can induce affects. In this book the authors focus on material culture and on practice - on what affect does. Some of them place the issue of sensitivity in a wider from of professional interest in innovation and culture-tourism. The volume is a contribution to the upcoming field of affect research that has so far has been mainly explored psychology and cultural studies. In their texts the ethnologists and anthropologists involved show how established ways of analysing culture benefit from achievements in this field. They use fieldwork to examine how people project affects onto material objects and explore how objects trigger affects. The editors hope that this book will be read across disciplines, not only to promote the value of ethnographic work, but also to encourage theoretically informed creative empirical approaches to affect and material culture.

Known for its dramatic beauty and valuable natural resources, Appalachia has undergone significant technological, economic, political, and environmental changes in recent decades. Home to distinctive traditions and a rich cultural heritage, the area is also plagued by poverty, insufficient healthcare and education, drug addiction, and ecological devastation. This complex and controversial region has been examined by generations of scholars, activists, and civil servants -- all offering an array of perspectives on Appalachia and its people. In this innovative volume, editors William Schumann and Rebecca Adkins Fletcher assemble both scholars and nonprofit practitioners to examine how Appalachia is perceived both within and beyond its borders. Together, they investigate the region's transformation and analyze how it is currently approached as a topic of academic inquiry. Arguing that interdisciplinary and comparative place-based studies increasingly matter, the contributors investigate numerous topics, including race and gender, environmental transformation, university-community collaborations, cyber identities, fracking, contemporary activist strategies, and analyze Appalachia in the context of local-to-global change.A pathbreaking study analyzing continuity and change in the region through a global framework, Appalachia Revisited is essential reading for scholars and students as well as for policymakers, community and charitable organizers, and those involved in community development.

With nearly twenty-five million citizens, a secretive totalitarian dictatorship, and active nuclear and ballistic missile weapons programs, North Korea presents some of the world's most difficult foreign policy challenges. For decades, the United States and its partners have employed multiple strategies in an effort to prevent Pyongyang from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Washington has moved from the Agreed Framework under President Bill Clinton to George W. Bush's denunciation of the regime as part of the "axis of evil" to a posture of "strategic patience" under Barack Obama. Given that a new president will soon occupy the White House, policy expert Walter C. Clemens Jr. argues that now is the time to reconsider US diplomatic efforts in North Korea.In North Korea and the World, Clemens poses the question, "Can, should, and must we negotiate with a regime we regard as evil?" Weighing the needs of all the stakeholders -- including China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea -- he concludes that the answer is yes. After assessing nine other policy options, he makes the case for engagement and negotiation with the regime. There still may be time to freeze or eliminate North Korea's weapons of mass destruction.Grounded in philosophy and history, this volume offers a fresh road map for negotiators and outlines a grand bargain that balances both ethical and practical security concerns.