Vered Amit

"'Community' is so overused both in everyday language as well as in scholarly work that it could easily be dismissed as a truism. However, the persistence of the term itself shows that the idea continues to resonate powerfully in our daily lives, ethnographic accounts as well as theoretical analyses. This book returns a timely and concerted anthropological gaze to community as part of a broader consideration of contemporary circumstances of social affiliation and solidarity."--Jacket.

"In addition to covering the primary centers of production in the United States and Britain, this volume also includes leading anthropologists from a wide range of regions and backgrounds. Combining valuable essays on seminal historical figures, as well as entries on the foremost scholars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this unique reference offers an important overview of the historical and contemporary reach of anthropological research." "With nearly 600 signed entries from a global team of contributors, this comprehensive work is destined to be the definitive reference source for authoritative information on the historical and contemporary key figures in the field."--Jacket.

In an increasingly globalised world, how is the nature of ethnographic fieldwork changing? In this book, anthropologists provide a thorough and critical appraisal of what fieldwork is and what it should be.

Anthropology - the study of humankind - has dealt mostly with men, increasingly with woman, to some degree with children and old people but very little with youth. The analysis of the creation of youth culture is a long neglected topic across the social sciences yet is fundamental to our understanding of society. Youth Cultures broadens the scope for analysing young people's behaviour by moving away from notions of resistance and deviance and offers a range of ethnographically based studies of different kinds of youth in varied national contexts. From Nepal to Canada, Europe, the Solomon Islands and Algeria, it addresses current issues relating to globalization in Third World cities, ethnic diversity in European cities and consumption practices and places the lives of these young people in the contexts of the wider cultures. Youth Cultures contributes to the general current concern in anthropology with 'rewriting' culture, even while it seeks to close particular gaps in studies on youth culture. By challenging the limitation of previous youth research and acknowledging children and young adults as agents to be respected rather than objectified, this book will be invaluable reading to students of anthropology, sociology, education, psychology, and cultural studies.