The late Aparna Rao spent many years doing ethnographic fieldwork among numerous rural and semi-rural communities in Afghanistan, Kashmir and in western India, and published several books and papers based on her research. Michael Bollig is a Professor in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. He has conducted fieldwork in northern Kenya and northern Namibia with pastoral communities. He is interested in the dynamics of human-environment relations and socio-economic change in rural communities. Conflict management and the socio-cultural processes connected to violence are a second focus of his work. He recently published Risk Management in a Hazardous Environment. A Comparative Study of Two Pastoral Societies (Springer/New York 2005). He is the chairperson of the interdisciplinary ACACIA programme (Arid Climate, Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa). Monika Bock is a Social Anthropologist, affiliated with the University of Cologne. She has conducted fieldwork among a matrilineal community in North-Eastern India. She is interested in kinship & gender studies, cognitive anthropology, and the medializaon of war and violence. Together with Aparna Rao she published Culture Creation and Procreation: Concepts of Kinship in South Asian Practice (Berghahn Books 2000).