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"Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness examines the concept of liminality in the social sciences and humanities, and advocates for a more critical use of the concept while offering more precise alternatives. Originally conceived in response to the near-universal ritualization of changes of status (i.e., 'rites of passage'), liminality was a welcome and much-needed correction to the reigning static and structural models of culture at the time. However, it soon escapes its initial realm and was enthusiastically--and most uncritically--absorbed by many if not all scholarly disciplines. The very success of the concept suggests that there is something about it that resonates with our own cultural sentiments. However, the assumptions that underlie diagnoses of liminality are seldom noted and even more seldom analyzed and critiqued. This book examines the history of the concept, its evolution, and its current status, and asks whether liminality accurately reflects lived realities which might better be described by fluidity, hybridity, multiplicity, constant motion and recombination, and abundant betweenness. Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness is key reading for scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities interested in ritual, performance, identity formation, rights, ontology, and epistemology"--

"The Anthropology of Donald Trump is an edited volume of original anthropological essays, composed by some of the leading figures in the discipline. It applies their concepts, perspectives, and methods to a sustained and diverse understanding Trump's supporters, policies, and performance in office. The volume includes ethnographic case studies of 'Trump country', examines Trump's actions in office, and moves beyond Trump as an individual political figure to consider larger structural and institutional issues. Providing a unique and valuable perspective on the Trump phenomenon, it will be of interest to anthropologists and other social scientists concerned with contemporary American society and politics as well as suitable reading for courses on political anthropology and U.S. culture"--

Studying religion anthropologically : definitions and theories -- Beliefs, beings, and bodies -- Symbols, specialists, and substance -- Religious language : words of truth, words of power -- Ritual : religion in action -- Religion and morality : forming society, transforming self -- Religion, medicine, and wellness -- Religious change and new religious movements -- Translocal or "world" religions -- Religious fundamentalism -- Religious violence -- Secularism and irreligion.

Understanding anthropology -- Understanding and studying culture -- The origins of cultural anthropology -- Language and social relations -- Cultural construction of persons : personality and gender -- Iindividuals and identities : race and ethnicity -- Health, illness, body and culture : seeing culture as a whole -- African American women facing a future with HIV/AIDS -- Economics : humans, nature and society -- Kinship and non-kin organization : being, becoming, and social organization -- Politics : social order and social control -- Religion : relating to the non-human worldseeing culture as a whole -- Magic, matrilineality, and (re)production in the Trobriand Islands -- Cultural dynamics : Tradition and change -- Colonialism and the origin of globalization -- The struggle for political identity in a mobil and undertain world -- Economics in a globalized world : development, modernization and neoliberalism -- Cultural survival and revival in the 21st century -- Waiting for a future delayed : passing time in India and beyond.

"This accessible book introduces the story of 'social science, ' with coverage of history, politics, economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and geography. Eller explains the origin, evolution, methods, main figures in each discipline, as well as the literature, concepts, and theories. The chapters also feature a range of contemporary examples, with consideration given to how the disciplines address present-day issues."--Back cover

Thinking about diversity -- Inter-group relations and the history of diversity in the U.S -- Race and racial thinking -- Ethnicity : beyond the race binary -- Class -- Sex and gender: male and female -- Sex and gender: beyond the gender binary -- Language -- Religion -- Age -- Health and (dis)ability -- Region and geography : the spatial distribution of diversity.

Abstract
Scholars ascribe the label "god" to many of the beings found in the world's religions. However, the definitions of "god" commonly offered do not fit most of those entities. This article argues for a clarification of scientific/analytical language which specifies which supernatural beings are "gods" and which are something else. A likely category for most of the world's putative "gods" is "owner-master," a concept highly developed in Amazonian cultures and religions but present around the world, particularly in hunting and herding societies. Accordingly, the article explores "gods" in various religions that are not at all god-like by any familiar standard, presents the ontology of owner-master as a relationship of care and encompassment, and considers how employing the term "owner-master" instead of "god" in many if not most cases more accurately represents local beliefs, avoids the imposition of foreign/Christian assumptions, and contributes to an understanding of the history of the god-concept.

Abstract
Both scholars and the general public have tended to assume that Islam is immune to modernization and secularization and that Muslims are all fanatical religionists. However, the growing and increasingly active number of nonbelievers in Muslim-majority countries has been called a tsunami by religious authorities. This article surveys the current research on nonreligion and atheism in Islam-dominated countries, with special attention to Egypt. After examining the statistical information on nonbelief, including in unlikely places such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, the article considers the terminology of nonbelief in Arabic, which is not equivalent to English terminology and illustrates the local nature of nonreligion, constructed in relation to local concepts of religion. The article then discusses the social and legal perils of nonbelievers in societies still committed to religious belief and finally investigates the lives and activities of nonbelievers and atheists, individually, in groups, and online. The article concludes with some reflections on modernization and secularization, noting the forces that have made nonbelief more possible and prevalent in Muslim-majority contexts but also led to multiple specific secularities and atheisms.

First anthropology became unbound from "the village", then from the single site, and gradually from the physical site altogether. As humans resume their push into space, anthropology is set to become unbound from the earth itself. This essay considers what the discipline has offered and can offer toward understanding the present and future of space colonization. It begins by examining the surprisingly long and productive history of anthropology's engagement with the subject, going back at least to the 1950s. Then it surveys current analysis of law, sovereignty, and nationalism in space, which largely imagines law and identity in off-earth settlements as more-or-less direct extensions or transfers of earth law and identity; in other words, space settlers will remain affiliated with and loyal to their source countries (or companies). However, taking seriously the analogy of terran migration and colonialism, where colonies developed distinct and separatist identities, the essay predicts the emergence of exonationalism, in which over generations colonists will invent new identities and shift their affiliations to their non-terran homes and ultimately seek independence from the earth. The essay concludes with reflections on how the settlement of space, still a distant goal, will reshape our definition of the human and therefore the practice of anthropology as the science of human diversity.