Anthropology and the Individual: A Material Culture Perspective

Anthropologists from Europe and the Americas appropriate perspectives that were first developed in their discipline to study society, and demonstrate how they can be adopted to study individuals. They seek a path between two overcrowded approaches, one an opposition between the individual and society, and the other the individual as the minimal exemplication of society. Their vehicle is an aesthetic of order that is derived from someone's relationships top objects, places, parents or community, or struggles or values. Among their perspectives are trading in fake brands, the Greek house in Albania as a material process, how Madrid creates individuals, Belgrade mothers and their migrant children, fashioning individuality and social connectivity among Yoruba women in London, and creating order through struggle in revolutionary Cuba. Distributed in the US by Palgrave Macmillan. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)