This unique study of boy-inseminating rituals among the Sambia of New Guinea challenges our deepest assumptions about the role of culture in understanding homosexuality and gender-identity development.

Pacific populations are becoming younger and this ‘youth bulge’ is often perceived as a dangerous precursor to civil unrest. Yet young people are also a valuable resource holding exciting potential for the future of island nations. Addressing these conflicting views of youth, this volume presents ethnographic case studies of young people from across the Pacific and the diaspora. Moving beyond the typical focus on ‘youth problems’ in reports by Pacific governments and development agencies, the authors examine the highly diverse lives and perspectives of young people in urban and rural locations. They celebrate the contributions of youth to their communities while examining the challenges they face. The case studies explore the impacts of profound local and global changes and cover a wide sweep of youth experiences across themes of education, employment and economic inequalities, political and civil engagement, and migration and the diaspora. Contributors to this volume bring many decades of experience of research with Pacific people as well as fresh perspectives from early career and graduate researchers. Most are anthropologists and their chapters contribute to the interdisciplinary fields of youth studies and Pacific studies, offering thought-provoking insights into the possibilities for Pacific youth as they face uncertain futures.

Winner, Association for Latin American Art-Arvey Foundation Book Award, 2022 More than a thousand years ago on the north coast of Peru, Indigenous Moche artists created a large and significant corpus of sexually explicit ceramic works of art. They depicted a diversity of sex organs and sex acts, and an array of solitary and interconnected human and nonhuman bodies. To the modern eye, these Moche “sex pots,” as Mary Weismantel calls them, are lively and provocative but also enigmatic creations whose import to their original owners seems impossible to grasp. In Playing with Things, Weismantel shows that there is much to be learned from these ancient artifacts, not merely as inert objects from a long-dead past but as vibrant Indigenous things, alive in their own inhuman temporality. From a new materialist perspective, she fills the gaps left by other analyses of the sex pots in pre-Columbian studies, where sexuality remains marginalized, and in sexuality studies, where non-Western art is largely absent. Taking a decolonial approach toward an archaeology of sexuality and breaking with long-dominant iconographic traditions, this book explores how the pots "play jokes," "make babies," "give power," and "hold water,” considering the sex pots as actual ceramic bodies that interact with fleshly bodies, now and in the ancient past. A beautifully written study that will be welcomed by students as well as specialists, Playing with Things is a model for archaeological and art historical engagement with the liberating power of queer theory and Indigenous studies.

The past century witnessed dramatic changes in the lives of modern Chinese women and gender politics. Whilst some revolutionary actions to rectify the feudalist patriarchy, such as foot-binding and polygyny were first seen in the late Qing period; the termination of the Qing Dynasty and establishment of Republican China in 1911-1912 initiated truly nation-wide constitutional reform alongside increasing gender egalitarianism. This book traces the radical changes in gender politics in China, and the way in which the lives, roles and status of Chinese women have been transformed over the last one hundred years. In doing so, it highlights three distinctive areas of development for modern Chinese women and gender politics: first, women’s equal rights, freedom, careers, and images about their modernized femininity; second, Chinese women’s overseas experiences and accomplishments; and third, advances in Chinese gender politics of non-heterosexuality and same-sex concerns. This book takes a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on film, history, literature, and personal experience. As such, it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Chinese culture and society, women's studies, gender studies and gender politics.

Rational Rules argues that moral learning can be understood in terms of general-purpose rational learning procedures. Nichols provides statistical learning accounts of some fundamental aspects of moral development, combining aspects of traditional empiricist and rationalist approaches.

"AUTHOR'S NOTE: This book is unconventional. A self-conscious experiment in form that draws together two vernaculars: anthropological thought and the pop culture of my youth. It is a fraught exercise. I write as a White guy about angst and alienation in the privileged spaces of anthropology and higher education. I appreciate the irony. I hope nonetheless that my experiences with and critical perspectives on social conventions, the culture of liberalism, and ableism in academia might be useful. I seek to expand possibilities of anthropological representation while challenging epistemological, aesthetic, and professional norms in my discipline. It bothers me that anthropology can be so sanctimonious. I take aim at the ableist conceit that anthropologists are non-characters studying a messy world. Much of my life has been a mess. My work has been undertaken amid struggles with pregnancy loss, bipolar disorder, and drug addiction. I have deep regrets about my participation in an exploitative field. I have deep regrets about many things. I have hurt people and been hurt by people. I hope my stories and reflections add to what others have already written about a more open, honest, and self-deprecating anthropology"--

Sexuality is an integral part of our lives, and our identities. But how do we study it? Written in a lively and accessible style, Studying Sexualities aims to introduce students to the critical study of sexuality, taking a look at the major theories, media representations, and cultural practices. After having carefully explained the key theoretical and empirical debates on the subject – outlining Foucauldian Constructionism, Psychoanalysis, and Queer Theory - the authors draw on their own original research to address timely topics related to gender, sexuality, and popular culture. Contemporary examples used within the book include discussions of sex shops, cybersex, and sex toys, the TV series Sex and the City, Will and Grace and The L Word, and the immensely popular Twilight books. Studying Sexualities is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students on Cultural, Media, Film, or visual Studies, or Sociology and Sexuality courses, who are interested in researching the fascinating complexities of sexuality today. NIALL RICHARDSON is a lecturer at the University of Sussex, and CLARISSA SMITH and ANGELA WERNDLY are lecturers at the University of Sunderland, UK. This book is the culmination of their considerable teaching and writing experience within the field of sexualities. Their specific research interests include feminism and popular culture, queer theory, the body and consumption.

This book provides an indispensable account of current understandings of children’s emotional development. Integrating the latest research findings from areas such as attachment theory, neuroscience and developmental psychology, it weaves these into a readable and easy-to-digest text. It provides a tour of the most significant influences on the developing child, always bearing in mind the family and social context. It looks at key developmental stages, from life in the womb to the pre-school years and right up until adolescence, whilst also examining how we develop key capacities such as language, play and memory. Issues of nature and nurture are addressed and the effects of different kinds of early experiences are unpicked, looking at both individual children and larger-scale longitudinal studies. Psychological ideas and research are carefully integrated with those from neurobiology and understandings from other cultures to create a coherent and balanced view of the developing child in context. Nurturing Natures integrates a wide array of complex academic research from different disciplines to create a book that is not only highly readable but also scientifically trustworthy. Full of fascinating findings, it provides answers to many of the questions people really want to ask about the human journey from conception into adulthood. Visit Graham Music's personal site at http://www.nurturingminds.co.uk/.

This lively text offers a unique, holistic approach to human diversity for undergraduate courses in fields including anthropology, medicine, human ecology, and general education. Leading medical anthropologist Elisa Sobo rises to the challenge of truly integrating biology and culture. Her inviting writing style and fascinating examples make important new ideas from complexity theory and epigenetics accessible to undergraduates from all disciplines, regardless of academic background. Students learn to conceptualize human biology and culture concurrently—as an adaptive biocultural capacity that has helped to produce the rich range of human diversity seen today. With clearly structured topics, an extensive glossary and suggestions for further reading, this text makes a complex, interdisciplinary topic a joy to teach.

This book presents a groundbreaking exploration of masculinities and homosexualities amongst Chinese gay men. It provides a sociological account of masculinity, desire, sexuality, identity and citizenship in contemporary Chinese societies, and within the constellation of global culture. Kong reports the results of an extensive ethnographic study of contemporary Chinese gay men in a wide range of different locations including mainland China, Hong Kong and the Chinese overseas community in London, showing how Chinese gay men live their everyday lives. Relating Chinese male homosexuality to the extensive social and cultural theories on gender, sexuality and the body, postcolonialism and globalisation, the book examines the idea of queer space and numerous 'queer flows' – of capital, bodies, ideas, images, and commodities – around the world. The book concludes that different gay male identities – such as the conspicuously consuming memba in Hong Kong, the urban tongzhi, the 'money boy' in China and the feminised 'golden boy' in London – emerge in different locations, and are all caught up in the transnational flow of queer cultures which are at once local and global.