Not a textbook in the ordinary sense, this work offers a vision of how anthropology - a discipline that operates through intimate knowledge of local societies - can offer vastly increased understanding of society and culture even in this age of mass communication. In its examination of topics ranging as far afield as the mass media, environmental and development issues, kinship and suffering in transnational settings, the politics of both the nation-state and the local community, the arts, cosmologies of science as well as religion, and the relationship between social life and history, this book is not just about an academic discipline; it is about the theoretical as well as ethical commitments that have enabled anthropologists to play a leading role in the critique of racism and other forms of intolerance.

Michael Herzfeld is Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University and author of seven books and numerous articles. Past president of the Modern Greek Studies Association, Society for the Anthropology of Europe, and past Editor of American Ethnologist, Herzfeld has been awarded the Staley Prize (1994), the Rivers Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (1994), and several fellowships including one from the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation.