LSE monographs on social anthropology

The LSE MONOGRAPHS ON SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY were established in 1940 and is currently edited by Professor Charles Stafford. The series includes a number of classic anthropological titles, including books written by Edmund Leach, Fredrik Barth, Raymond Firth, Maurice Freedman and others. 

In recent years we have published new books by leading contemporary anthropologists including P. Steven Sangren, Maurice Bloch, Henrietta Moore and Alfred Gell.

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Recent Titles

Questions of Anthropology

Rita Astuti, Jonathan Parry, Charles Stafford

Anthropology today seems to shy away from the big, comparative questions that ordinary people in many societies find compelling. Questions of Anthropology brings these issues back to the centre of anthropological concerns. Individual essays explore birth, death and sexuality, puzzles about the relationship between science and religion, questions about the nature of ritual, work, political leadership and genocide, and our personal fears and desires, from the quest to control the future and to find one's 'true' identity to the fear of being alone.Each essay starts with a question posed by individual ethnographic experience and then goes on to frame this question in a broader, comparative context. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Questions of Anthropology presents an exciting introduction to the purpose and value of Anthropology today. Publisher's Page

Essays on Cultural Transmission

Maurice Bloch

This book brings together recent work by Maurice Bloch which explores the highly controversial territory between the cognitive and social sciences. The essays are of broad, theoretical interest and aim to combine naturalistic approaches to cognition with a recognition and respect for the cultural and historical specificity of ethnography. All the essays illustrate Bloch's characteristic approach to the relation between anthropology and cognitive science, where cognitive science is used to criticize anthropological assumptions concerning such key topics as religion, kinship, belief, ritual, symbolism and art. Publisher's Page

Between China and Europe: Person, Culture and Emotion in Macao

Joao de Pina-Cabral

From the mid-1500s to December 1999, Macao was the longest-standing site of economic, religious and political contact between the Chinese and European worlds. Yet this surprising capacity for survival has resulted, ironically, form the very weakness of the Portuguese presence. In particular, since the foundation of Hong Kong (in 1840), Macao had depended on a creative use of its marginality - as a centre for gambling, for the coolie trade, the opium trade, the semi-clandestine gold trade and so on. As a rear window on China, Macao provides us with fascinating examples of marginality that allow us to study the limits of the systems that characterize the Chinese world. Publisher's Page

More recent & forthcoming titles

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