One of America's leading anthropolgists offers solutions to the perplexing question of why people behave the way they do.

Why do Hindus worship cows? Why do Jews and Moslems refuse to eat pork? Why did so many people in post-medieval Europe believe in witches?

Marvin Harris answers these and other perplexing questions about human behavior, showing that no matter how bizarre a people's behavior may seem, it always stems from identifiable and intelligble sources.

City provides an accessible yet critical introduction to one of the key ideas in human geography. While most of the world’s population now lives in cities, the definition and theoretical specification of the city nonetheless remains elusive. In this extensively updated second edition, Phil Hubbard considers the different ways that the lived and messy realities of urban life have been approached by geographers, past and present.

Situating these in the context of ongoing debates concerning gl...

‘Criminal Careers’ follows the lives and criminal behaviours of 2,397 people in Poland, who as juveniles committed a crime and received a form of punishment from the juvenile court between the late 1980s and the year 2000.

A classic standalone title that meets a specific, and ongoing, need of the qualitative research community.  A sophisticated and nuanced introduction to coding qualitative data that is used by researchers, students, and lecturers around the world.

An encyclopedic introduction to research, showing students how to approach each stage of their research project and develop the skills needed to apply methodological concepts.

This resource is a much-needed support to the few textbooks in the field and offers an excellent introduction and overview to the established principles and new thinking in cultural heritage management . Leading experts in the field from Europe, North America and Australia, bring together recent and innovative works in the field. With geographically and thematically diverse case studies, they examine the theoretical framework for heritage resource management.

Setting significant new thinking ...

Imagining Urban Complexity introduces passionate and critical perspectives on the link between the humanities and urban studies. It emphasizes tropes, media, and genres as cultural techniques that shape complexity in urban environments by distributing affordances, modes of sensing, and modes of sense-making. Focusing on urban political and cultural dynamics in 24 global cities, the book shows that urban environments are thematized in literature and art, but are also entities that are shaped, ...