The book offers an ethnographic account of the composition, leadership, and ritual performance of a charismatic Catholic prayer group. Through analysis, it reveals how the charismatic priest maximizes his authority by integrating personal and institutional power within the context of global Pentecostalism and recent American cultural history.What happens when charisma and bureaucratic structure collide? This book provides a firsthand look at how charismatic authority emerges within...

Free markets alone do not work effectively to solve certain kinds of human problems, such as education, old age care, or disaster relief. Nor have markets ever been the sole solution to the psychological challenges of death, suffering, or injustice. Instead, we find a major role for the non-market institutions of society - the family, the state, and social institutions. The first in-depth anthropological study of charities in contemporary Chinese societies, this book focuses on the unique ...

Written by eleven leading anthropologists from around the world, this volume extends the insights of Fredrik Barth, one of the most important anthropologists of the twentieth century, to push even further at the frontiers of anthropology and honor his memory. As a collection, the chapters thus expand Barth’s pioneering work on values, further develop his insights on human agency and its potential creativity, as well as continuing to develop the relevance for his work as a way of thinking a...