Questions of Anthropology

Rita Astuti is co-author of Constraints On Conceptual Development. Jonathan Parry is author of Death in Banaras. Charles Stafford is author of Separation and Reunion in Modern China. All the editors teach Anthropology at the London School of Economics.

• Preface, Jonathan Parry, LSE1. What Does It Mean To Be Alone? Catherine Allerton, LSE2. How Do We Know Who We Are? Janet Carsten, Edinburgh University3. What Is Going To Happen Next? Charles Stafford, LSE4. Why, Exactly, Is The World As It Is? Eva Keller, University of Zurich5. How Does Ritual Matter? Fenella Cannell, LSE6. What Makes People Work? Olivia Harris, LSE7. What Kind Of Sex Makes People Happy? Laura Rival, Oxford University8. How Do Women Give Birth? Michael Lambek, University of Toronto/LSE9. What Happens After Death? Rita Astuti, LSE10. How Does Genocide Happen? Michael Stewart, UCL11. Why Are Some People Powerful? Luke Freeman, LSE12. How Do We Know What Is True? Christina Toren, University of St AndrewsAfterword

'This fascinating volume addresses large existential questions through the specifics of real people in real places. We hear an extraordinary diversity of voices, from Scottish adoptees on the anxieties of parentage, to Chinese farmers on anxieties about the future, to the president of Madagascar on the anxieties of power. Without embracing any simplistic universalism, Questions of Anthropology reminds us that all of us on this rapidly shrinking globe do indeed share a common humanity.' Sherry B. Ortner, University of California, Los Angeles