Since its inception in 1941, the Wenner-Gren Foundation has convened more than 125 international symposia on pressing issues in anthropology. Wenner-Gren International symposia recognise no boundaries-intellectual, national, or subdisciplinary. These symposia affirm the worth of anthropology and its capacity to address the nature of humankind from a great variety of perspectives. They make new links to related disciplines, such as law, history, and ethnomusicology, and revivify old links, as between archaeology and sociocultural anthropology, for example. Each symposium brings together participants from around the world, for a week-long engagement with a specific issue, but only after intensive planning of the topic and format over the previous 18 months.
Between 2002 and 2010 Berg published 12 volumes resulting from these Symposia in the Wenner-Gren International Symposium Series, with the president of the foundation serving as the series editor, and the symposium organizers editing the individual volumes.
By Rebecca Cassidy, Molly Mullin
April 01, 2007
Domestication has often seemed a matter of the distant past, a series of distinct events involving humans and other species that took place long ago. Today, as genetic manipulation continues to break new barriers in scientific and medical research, we appear to be entering an age of biological ...
Edited
By Gustavo Lins Ribeiro, Arturo Escobar
February 01, 2006
Since its inception, anthropology's authority has been based on the assumption that it is a unified discipline emanating from the West. In an age of heightened globalization, anthropologists have failed to discuss consistently the current status of their practice and its mutations across the globe....
Edited
By Veit Erlmann
September 01, 2004
Vision is typically treated as the defining sense of the modern era and a powerful vehicle for colonial and postcolonial domination. This is in marked contrast to the almost total absence of accounts of hearing in larger cultural processes. Hearing Cultures is a timely examination of the elusive, ...
Edited
By D. Ann Herring, Alan C. Swedlund
April 01, 2010
Until recently, plagues were thought to belong in the ancient past. Now there are deep worries about global pandemics. This book presents views from anthropology about this much publicized and complex problem. The authors take us to places where epidemics are erupting, waning, or gone, and to other...
Edited
By Caroline Humphrey, Katherine Verdery
May 01, 2004
How has it come about that indigenous cultures, body parts, and sequences of musical notes are considered property? How has the movement from collective to privatized systems affected notions of property? At what point in transaction chains do native cultures, indigenous medicines, or cyberdata ...
Edited
By Elizabeth Edwards, Chris Gosden, Ruth Phillips
July 01, 2006
Anthropologists of the senses have long argued that cultures differ in their sensory registers. This groundbreaking volume applies this idea to material culture and the social practices that endow objects with meanings in both colonial and postcolonial relationships. It challenges the privileged ...
Edited
By Lynn Meskell, Peter Pels
March 01, 2005
Anthropologists who talk about ethics generally mean the code of practice drafted by a professional association for implementation by its members. As this book convincingly shows, such a conception is far too narrow. A more radical approach is to recognize that moral judgments are made at every ...
Edited
By Les Field, Richard G. Fox
May 01, 2007
How do anthropologists work today and how will they work in future? While some anthropologists have recently called for a new "public" or "engaged" anthropology, profound changes have already occurred, leading to new kinds of work for a large number of anthropologists. The image of anthropologists ...
Edited
By Richard G. Fox, Barbara J. King
May 01, 2002
Culture is a vexed concept within anthropology. From their earliest studies, anthropologists have often noted the emotional attachment of people to their customs, even in cases where this loyalty can make for problems. Do anthropologists now suffer the same kind of disability with respect to their ...
Edited
By Marisol de la Cadena, Orin Starn
July 01, 2007
A century ago, the idea of indigenous people as an active force in the contemporary world was unthinkable. It was assumed that native societies everywhere would be swept away by the forward march of the West and its own peculiar brand of progress and civilization. Nothing could be further from the ...
Edited
By Gunter Senft, Ellen B Basso
November 01, 2009
Ritual Communication examines how people create and express meaning through verbal and non-verbal ritual. Ritual communication extends beyond collective religious expression. It is an intrinsic part of everyday interactions, ceremonies, theatrical performances, shamanic chants, political ...
Edited
By Stephen C. Levinson, Nicholas J. Enfield
September 01, 2006
This book marks an exciting convergence towards the idea that human culture and cognition are rooted in the character of human social interaction, which is unique in the animal kingdom. Roots of Human Sociality attempts for the first time to explore the underlying properties of social interaction ...