Many men dream of running away to a tropical island and living surrounded by beauty and exotic exuberance. Walter Spies did more than dream. He actually did it. In the 1920s and 30s, Walter Spies — et
The one universal fact of life is death. Yet different cultures define and react to death so variously that the events surrounding it are a key indicator of the exuberant inventiveness of each society
Not many Glaswegian schoolgirls have grown up to become revolutionary heroes of distant, eastern nations but Muriel Stewart Walker did just that. Under a multitude of different names – ‘K’tut Tantri’
Sir James Brooke's curious career began in 1841, when he was caught up in a war in Brunei. He was an opportunist who, with the Sultan's backing, made war on the Dayaks tribespeople and as a result fou
Rogue Raider is a humorous fictionalized history set in Southeast Asia during the First World War, which centers on a lovable rogue in the form of Captain Julius Lauterbach of the German Imperial Navy
In 1985, Dr. Nigel Barley, senior anthropologist at The British Museum, set off for the relatively unknown Indonesian island of Sulawesi in search of the Toraja, a people whose culture includes headhu
Many opposing theories have been elaborated by different anthropologists in an attempt to explain the nature of symbolism. In this work Nigel Barley uses a particular ethnographic case to examine the relevance and limitations of these existing theories and to develop a new alternative approach which draws on areas of linguistics and folkloristics at one time neglected by symbolic theorists. The book is a detailed study of the symbolic universe of the Dowayos of north Cameroon, as displayed in their ritual and beliefs. Considering matters as diverse as their oral literature, their material culture and their festivals, Dr Barley's analysis develops by unfolding sequentially a map of the symbolic structures that underlie Dowayo culture and shape their apperception of the world about them. This book will be particularly useful for students. It will also interest all anthropologists concerned with the study of symbolism and with the application to anthropology of models derived from
Set against the backdrop of the Dutch invasion of Bali just over a century ago, and the resulting "mass suicides" of the Balinese royalty, Love and Death in Bali uses the tales of ordinary people to
