
Daughters of the Canton Delta: Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South China, 1860-1930
Stockard’s first book Daughters of the Canton Delta (Stanford) is based on three years of field research she conducted in South China where her interviews focused on changing family and marriage practices with industrialization in the area’s silk industry. In Daughters, she analyzes how new silk technology impacted the lives, marriage choices, and families of women of several generations in South China. On the basis of more than 300 interviews, Stockard maps out developments in silk technology over time and space – and links these technological changes to regional change in family and marriage practices.
“Stockard has uncovered and meticulously documented startling marriage practices… This is a splendid book. It is well-argued and well written…It should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the cross-cultural dimensions of marriage.”
– The American Historical Review
Read More Reviews
Buy OnlineReviews –
Daughters of the Canton Delta: Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South China, 1860-1930
“Stockard has uncovered and meticulously documented startling marriage practices… This is a splendid book. It is well-argued and well written…It should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the cross-cultural dimensions of marriage.”
– The American Historical Review
“This is an especially engaging book, combing as it does careful ethnography and a sustained effort to explain the cultural patterns that it uncovers… Anyone with an interest in village culture in South China will find much to appreciate in the book.”
– Social Science Quarterly
“Stockard has discovered a unique site from which to study the wider panorama of Chinese culture and history. Her vantage point offers an unanticipated and revealing perspective on Chinese notions of women and propriety, marriage and money, family and lineage, and the relationship between imperial orthodoxy and village practice…Even long-time observers of the Chinses landscape will find new things to ponder.”
– Journal of Social History
“The field of Chinese kinship has been ploughed many time, yet there are still treasures to be turned up. Stockard treats us to an insight into her own excited discovery of one of these.”
– The China Quarterly

Marriage in Culture: Practice and Meaning Across Diverse Societies
In this book, Stockard develops a cross-cultural comparative analysis of marriage, residence, and labor practices in four societies.
“Marriage in Culture provides an informative and fascinating introduction to the cross-cultural study of marriage and kinship. I recommend it to instructors who want to introduce students to family diversity around the globe and throughout history. It is an excellent resource for courses on gender marriage, and family, but also for introduction to sociology and social stratification courses.”
– Teaching Sociology
Read More Reviews
Buy OnlineReviews –
Marriage in Culture: Practice and Meaning Across Diverse Societies
“This excellent book would be useful in a variety of classes, including introductory and upper-level courses in anthropology, family studies, international studies, sociology, and women’s studies. … Stockard writes in an engaging style. The book is highly readable and students have consistently given it very positive evaluations at the end of the semester. Photographs in Marriage in Culture help bring the text to life and illustrate that the anthropology work is talking about real people.”
“Stockard does an excellent job of presenting a rich array of materials and concepts in a short book of only slightly more than one hundred pages. She convincingly argues for the importance of a gendered perspective, using the ethnographic tools of an anthropologist dedicated to a holistic approach for understanding marriage and families. At the same time that she shows the utility of examining the full range of family variables-subsistence technology and post-marital residence practice. The book gives students a set of concepts and tools that are very helpful in analyzing not only marriage, but a wide range of family issues.”
“This book is one that delivers on its promise. Near the beginning of the book, Stockard states that “In short, marriage can be understood only as a product of a specific culture, within a particular history and environment.” Upon completing this book, the reader understands that argument, yet at the same time is also convinced that there are interconnections between and patterns among social variables that help us analyze families in many historical and cultural settings. It is rare to find a book that does such a good job of balancing a nomothetic and an ideographic approach to analyzing families. … In twenty years of teaching family sociology, this is the best book I’ve found for helping students truly understand concepts related to cultural variation in family patterns.”
– Journal of Teaching in Marriage and Family
“Marriage in Culture provides an informative and fascinating introduction to the cross-cultural study of marriage and kinship. I recommend it to instructors who want to introduce students family diversity around the globe and throughout history. It is an excellent resource for course on gender marriage, and family, but also to the introduction to sociology and social stratification courses.”
“Of course, instructions will assign Marriage in Culture to encourage students to identify and confront their own cultural assumptions … Stockard’s text is useful for problematizing the term “family values” and implicit notions of “normalcy” that often accompany it. The book also helps students develop their sociological imaginations by encouraging them to consider larger social forces that shape personal experiences. I found its helpful to try to project myself into the pictures of brides and grooms, and think “There but by the grace sociological factors X, Y, and Z, go I.””
– Teaching Sociology
From The Publisher
“Marriage in Culture is an innovative text that makes accessible to a broad audience the rich insights that anthropology provides into the meaning of marriage in different cultures.
Marriage practices in the four societies analyzed contrast with each other in dramatic ways – from number of spouses to the meaning of postmarital residence arrangements. The author provides compelling ethnographic accounts of the !Kung San (Bushman), Chinese, Iroquois, and Tibetan societies to familiarize students with the unique perspective of anthropologist on marriage as a cultural practice.
Each chapter places marriage within the context of a whole culture, situated within a specific historical time, and explores the ways in which different economic, political, family and gender systems shape the practice and meaning of marriage. The author makes an original contribution by highlighting the importance of postmarital residence in defining different experiences of marriage for husband and wife in each society.”
– www.wadsworth.com

Globalization and Change in Fifteen Cultures: Born in One World, Living in Another
In this anthology, fifteen anthropologists provide original articles analyzing the effects of globalization and change on local cultures in diverse societies.
From the Thompson Wadsworth editorial review:
Explore cultural change with GLOBALIZATION AND CHANGE IN FIFTEEN CULTURES: BORN IN ONE WORLD, LIVING IN ANOTHER ! Composed of original articles, this anthology brings antrhopolgy to life and reflects a world changed by globalization and an anthropology committed to documenting the effects of the vast cultural flows of people, information, goods, capital and technology, now in motion the world over. …
Read More Reviews Buy OnlineReviews –
Globalization and Change in Fifteen Cultures: Born in One World, Living in Another
According to the editors, the aim … is to ‘introduce students to cultural differences, as well as to demonstrate the commonality of human lives everywhere’ (p. xv). This encapsulates nicely the dynamic between the universal and the particular, and between the global and the local, so important in contemporary discussions of culture.
What makes this latest anthology different … is its purported emphasis on globalisation and change, and its move away from examining cultures in relative isolation. It aims to show students, via ethnographic case studies, some of the local effects of globalisation. The strength of the ethnographic method, and the value of its emphasis on everyday lived experience as a lens with which to understand wider contextual changes and dynamics, is indeed showcased in this collection.
– Anthropological Forum
From the Thompson Wadsworth editorial review:
Explore cultural change with GLOBALIZATION AND CHANGE IN FIFTEEN CULTURES: BORN IN ONE WORLD, LIVING IN ANOTHER ! Composed of original articles, this anthology brings antrhopolgy to life and reflects a world changed by globalization and an anthropology committed to documenting the effects of the vast cultural flows of people, information, goods, and technology, now in motion the world over. Examples of global coverage include the Bedouin in Sudan, Mardu in Australia, Sambia in New Guinea, Canela in Brazil, Yolmo in Nepal, Ju/Hoansi in Namibia, Minangkabau in Sumatra, Scottish crofters, Greek villagers, Chinese minorities, the Aztecs and Yucatecans in Mexico, and Mexican immigrants , African-American gang members, and Wisconsin town residents in the U.S.A.
Globalization and Change in Fifteen Cultures: Born in One World, Living in Another features:
Articles grouped into major themes that include challenges to identity and power, patterns of migration / mobility, economic change and modernization, and changing gender hierarchies.
Changes and adaption societies have made in their social, political and economic spheres as a result of Western contact.
An introduction on cultural change by series editors
Articles that begin with fieldwork biographies of the anthropologist and that are rich with photographs and maps directly from the field

Cultural Anthropology: Mapping Cultures Across Space and Time
Most recently (2018), Stockard and her co-author Dr. Evelyn Blackwood published a new digital-first text Cultural Anthropology: Mapping Cultures Across Space and Time (Cengage). In this text, the authors introduce a new threaded ethnographic case pedagogy that focuses in-depth on 6 cultural regions of the world. Across all 14 text chapters, Stockard and Blackwood systematically build an in-depth understanding of each of these cultural regions. New chapter coverage in Mapping Cultures includes: “Technologies and Culture Change,” “Language and Musical Expression,” “Kin and Families: Forms of Relatedness” – plus three chapters devoted to topics in globalization, including “Migration and Borderlands in the Global Era.”

Silk Roads to New England: Information and Technology, Innovation and Globalization, 1760-1930
In her latest manuscript Silk Roads to New England, Stockard tracks an experimental American silk industry, its changing technologies and global connections. A work in historical ethnography, Silk Roads documents the development of a little-known colonial-era New England silk culture and industry. It traces the links between this New England silk experiment and the later South China silk industry, which Stockard researched for Daughters of the Canton Delta.
Daughters of the Canton Delta: Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South China, 1860-1930
Stockard’s first book Daughters of the Canton Delta (Stanford) is based on three years of field research she conducted in South China where her interviews focused on changing family and marriage practices with industrialization in the area’s silk industry. In Daughters, she analyzes how new silk technology impacted the lives, marriage choices, and families of women of several generations in South China. On the basis of more than 300 interviews, Stockard maps out developments in silk technology over time and space – and links these technological changes to regional change in family and marriage practices.
“Stockard has uncovered and meticulously documented startling marriage practices… This is a splendid book. It is well-argued and well written…It should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the cross-cultural dimensions of marriage.”
– The American Historical Review
Read More Reviews
Buy OnlineReviews –
Daughters of the Canton Delta: Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South China, 1860-1930
“Stockard has uncovered and meticulously documented startling marriage practices… This is a splendid book. It is well-argued and well written…It should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the cross-cultural dimensions of marriage.”
– The American Historical Review
“This is an especially engaging book, combing as it does careful ethnography and a sustained effort to explain the cultural patterns that it uncovers… Anyone with an interest in village culture in South China will find much to appreciate in the book.”
– Social Science Quarterly
“Stockard has discovered a unique site from which to study the wider panorama of Chinese culture and history. Her vantage point offers an unanticipated and revealing perspective on Chinese notions of women and propriety, marriage and money, family and lineage, and the relationship between imperial orthodoxy and village practice…Even long-time observers of the Chinses landscape will find new things to ponder.”
– Journal of Social History
“The field of Chinese kinship has been ploughed many time, yet there are still treasures to be turned up. Stockard treats us to an insight into her own excited discovery of one of these.”
– The China Quarterly

Marriage in Culture: Practice and Meaning Across Diverse Societies
In this book, Stockard develops a cross-cultural comparative analysis of marriage, residence, and labor practices in four societies.
“Marriage in Culture provides an informative and fascinating introduction to the cross-cultural study of marriage and kinship. I recommend it to instructors who want to introduce students to family diversity around the globe and throughout history. It is an excellent resource for courses on gender marriage, and family, but also for introduction to sociology and social stratification courses.”
– Teaching Sociology
Read More Reviews
Buy OnlineReviews –
Marriage in Culture: Practice and Meaning Across Diverse Societies
“This excellent book would be useful in a variety of classes, including introductory and upper-level courses in anthropology, family studies, international studies, sociology, and women’s studies. … Stockard writes in an engaging style. The book is highly readable and studemts have consistently given it very positive evaluations at the end of the semester. Photographs in Marriage in Culture help bring the text to life and illustrate that the anthropology work is talking about real people.”
“Stockard does an excellent job of presenting a rich array of materials and concepts in a short book of only slightly more than one hundred pages. She convincingly argues for the importance of a gendered perspective, using the ethnographic tools of an anthropologist dedicated to a holistic approach for understanding marriage and families. At the same time that she shows the utility of examining the full range of family variables-subsistence technology and post-marital residence practice. The book gives students a set of concepts and tools that are very helpful in analyzing not only marriage, but a wide range of family issues.”
“This book is one that delivers on its promise. Near the beginning of the book, Stockard states that “In short, marriage can be understood only as a product of a specific culture, within a particular history and environment.” Upon completing this book, the reader understands that argument, yet at the same time is also convinced that there are interconnections between and patterns among social variables that help us analyze families in many historical and cultural settings. It is rare to find a book that does such a good job of balancing a nomothetic and an ideographic approach to analyzing families. … In twenty years of teaching family sociology, this is the best book I’ve found for helping students truly understand concepts related to cultural variation in family patterns.”
– Journal of Teaching in Marriage and Family
“Marriage in Culture provides an informative and fascinating introduction to the cross-cultural study of marriage and kinship. I recommend it to instructors who want to introduce students family diversity around the globe and throughout history. It is an excellent resource for course on gender marriage, and family, but also to the introduction to sociology and social stratification courses.”
“Of course, instructions will assign Marriage in Culture to encourage students to identify and confront their own cultural assumptions … Stockard’s text is useful for problematizing the term “family values” and implicit notions of “normalcy” that often accompany it. The book also helps students develop their sociological imaginations by encouraging them to consider larger social forces that shape personal experiences. I found its helpful to try to project myself into the pictures of brides and grooms, and think “There but by the grace sociological factors X, Y, and Z, go I.””
– Teaching Sociology
From The Publisher
“Marriage in Culture is an innovative text that makes accessible to a broad audience the rich insights that anthropology provides into the meaning of marriage in different cultures.
Marriage practices in the four societies analyzed contrast with each other in dramatic ways – from number of spouses to the meaning of postmarital residence arrangements. The author provides compelling ethnographic accounts of the !Kung San (Bushman), Chinese, Iroquois, and Tibetan societies to familiarize students with the unique perspective of anthropologist on marriage as a cultural practice.
Each chapter places marriage within the context of a whole culture, situated within a specific historical time, and explores the ways in which different economic, political, family and gender systems shape the practice and meaning of marriage. The author makes an original contribution by highlighting the importance of postmarital residence in defining different experiences of marriage for husband and wife in each society.”
– www.wadsworth.com

Globalization and Change in Fifteen Cultures: Born in One World, Living in Another
In this anthology, fifteen anthropologists provide original articles analyzing the effects of globalization and change on local cultures in diverse societies.
From the Thompson Wadsworth editorial review:
Explore cultural change with GLOBALIZATION AND CHANGE IN FIFTEEN CULTURES: BORN IN ONE WORLD, LIVING IN ANOTHER ! Composed of original articles, this anthology brings antrhopolgy to life and reflects a world changed by globalization and an anthropology committed to documenting the effects of the vast cultural flows of people, information, goods, capital and technology, now in motion the world over. …
Read More Reviews Buy OnlineReviews –
Globalization and Change in Fifteen Cultures: Born in One World, Living in Another
According to the editors, the aim … is to ‘introduce students to cultural differences, as well as to demonstrate the commonality of human lives everywhere’ (p. xv). This encapsulates nicely the dynamic between the universal and the particular, and between the global and the local, so important in contemporary discussions of culture.
What makes this latest anthology different … is its purported emphasis on globalisation and change, and its move away from examining cultures in relative isolation. It aims to show students, via ethnographic case studies, some of the local effects of globalisation. The strength of the ethnographic method, and the value of its emphasis on everyday lived experience as a lens with which to understand wider contextual changes and dynamics, is indeed showcased in this collection.
– Anthropological Forum
From the Thompson Wadsworth editorial review:
Explore cultural change with GLOBALIZATION AND CHANGE IN FIFTEEN CULTURES: BORN IN ONE WORLD, LIVING IN ANOTHER ! Composed of original articles, this anthology brings antrhopolgy to life and reflects a world changed by globalization and an anthropology committed to documenting the effects of the vast cultural flows of people, information, goods, and technology, now in motion the world over. Examples of global coverage include the Bedouin in Sudan, Mardu in Australia, Sambia in New Guinea, Canela in Brazil, Yolmo in Nepal, Ju/Hoansi in Namibia, Minangkabau in Sumatra, Scottish crofters, Greek villagers, Chinese minorities, the Aztecs and Yucatecans in Mexico, and Mexican immigrants , African-American gang members, and Wisconsin town residents in the U.S.A.
Globalization and Change in Fifteen Cultures: Born in One World, Living in Another features:
Articles grouped into major themes that include challenges to identity and power, patterns of migration / mobility, economic change and modernization, and changing gender hierarchies.
Changes and adaption societies have made in their social, political and economic spheres as a result of Western contact.
An introduction on cultural change by series editors
Articles that begin with fieldwork biographies of the anthropologist and that are rich with photographs and maps directly from the field

Cultural Anthropology: Mapping Cultures Across Space and Time
Most recently (2018), Stockard and her co-author Dr. Evelyn Blackwood published a new digital-first text Cultural Anthropology: Mapping Cultures Across Space and Time (Cengage). In this text, the authors introduce a new threaded ethnographic case pedagogy that focuses in-depth on 6 cultural regions of the world. Across all 14 text chapters, Stockard and Blackwood systematically build an in-depth understanding of each of these cultural regions. New chapter coverage in Mapping Cultures includes: “Technologies and Culture Change,” “Language and Musical Expression,” “Kin and Families: Forms of Relatedness” – plus three chapters devoted to topics in globalization, including “Migration and Borderlands in the Global Era.”
Silk Roads to New England: Information and Technology, Innovation and Globalization, 1760-1930
In her latest manuscript Silk Roads to New England, Stockard tracks an experimental American silk industry, its changing technologies and global connections. A work in historical ethnography, Silk Roads documents the development of a little-known colonial-era New England silk culture and industry. It traces the links between this New England silk experiment and the later South China silk industry, which Stockard researched for Daughters of the Canton Delta.
Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology, Series Co-Editor (2005-2015)
In 2005, Dr. Stockard accepted Dr. George Spindler’s invitation to join him as Co-Editor of the Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology (CSCA) series, which he and his late wife Louise Schaubel Spindler established in 1960. By 2015, the CSCA series could claim the status as the longest running series in American anthropology, with more than 200 case studies ever published, including new editions of the classics (https://www.cengage.com/).


With Stockard onboard, 3 classics (with covers featured below) were updated and published in 6th, 4th, and 3rd editions:
Yąnomamö (6e) by Napoleon A. Chagnon
The Dobe Ju/’hoansi (4e) by Richard B. Lee
Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society (3e) by Leo R. Chavez
And also
The Sambia: Ritual, Sexuality, and Change in Papua New Guinea (2e) by Gilbert Herdt
In addition, these new ethnographies were added to the CSCA list:
Hawaiian Fishermen (1e) by Edward W. Glazier
Challenging Gender Norms: Five Genders Among Bugis in Indonesia (1e) by Sharyn Graham Davies
New Cures, Old Medicines: Women and the Commercialization of Traditional Medicines in Bolivia (1e) by Lynn Sikkink
Life in a Muslim Uzbek Village: Cotton Farming After Communism (1e) by Russell Zanca


The Dobe Ju/’hoansi
By Richard B. Lee
Janice E. Stockard and George Spindler Series Editors
