Reviews –

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

Reviews –

Globalization and Change in Fifteen Cultures: Born in One World, Living in Another

Contributors:

Berdan, Frances F. “Continuity and Change in Aztec Culture: From Imperial Lords to Royal Subjects”
Crocker, William & Jean “Change in the Lives of a Brazilian Indigenous People: To Pluck Eyelashes (or Not?) among the Canela
Gladney, Dru C. “Cultural Identity in China: The Rising Politics of Ethnic Difference”
Keiser, Lincoln “The Vice Lords Today: Sociocultural Change in an African American Street Gang”
Herdt, Gilbert & Stolpe, Birgitta “Sambia Gender, Sexuality, and Social Change”
Blackwood, Evelyn “Mothers to Daughters: Social Change and Matrilineal Kinship in a Minangkabau Village”
Lee, Richard B. “The Ju’Hoansi at the Crossroads: Continuity and Change in the Time of AIDS”
Hull, Cindy L. “From Field to Factory and Beyond: New Strategies for New Realities in a Yucatecan Village”
Bishop, Naomi “The Yolo People of Melemchi, Nepal: Change and Continuity”
Tonkinson, Robert “The Mardu Aborigines: On the Road to Somewhere”
Young, William C. “From Local “Tribe” to Transnational Arab: The “New” Rashaayda Bedouin of Sudan”
Chavez, Leo R. “Culture Change and Cultural Reproduction: Lessons from Research on Transnational Migration”
Parman, Susan “Scottish Crofters: Narratives of Change among Small Landholders in Scotland”
Friedl, Ernestine “A Village in Greece: Vasilika Then and Now”
Sano, Toshiyuki and Fujita, Mariko “Through Japanese Eyes: Culture Change in a Midwestern Town”

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