One of America's leading anthropolgists offers solutions to the perplexing question of why people behave the way they do.

Why do Hindus worship cows? Why do Jews and Moslems refuse to eat pork? Why did so many people in post-medieval Europe believe in witches?

Marvin Harris answers these and other perplexing questions about human behavior, showing that no matter how bizarre a people's behavior may seem, it always stems from identifiable and intelligble sources.

A comprehensive overview of all the major theorists and key schools of sociological thought, from sociology's origins through to the early 21st century.

Accessibly written, yet analytically rich, Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder, Fifth Edition, is renowned for its fascinating examination of historical and contemporary serial and mass murder.

Questioning Gender: A Sociological Exploration serves as a point-of-departure for productive conversations and questions about gender and as a resource for exploring answers to many of those questions.

Parenting: A Dynamic Process explores the interaction between parents and children as they shape each other over time. George Holden and Amanda Harrist present the latest interdisciplinary research on parenting in an engaging and accessible matter.

City provides an accessible yet critical introduction to one of the key ideas in human geography. While most of the world’s population now lives in cities, the definition and theoretical specification of the city nonetheless remains elusive. In this extensively updated second edition, Phil Hubbard considers the different ways that the lived and messy realities of urban life have been approached by geographers, past and present.

Situating these in the context of ongoing debates concerning gl...

While the subject of migration has received enormous attention in academic journals and books across the social sciences, introductory texts on the matter are few and far between. Even fewer books have explored migration through a critical and explicit engagement with spatial concepts. Now in its second edition, Migration remains the only text in more than a decade that emphasizes how geographical or spatial concepts can be used critically to understand migration.

The multi-disciplinary text ...

Introducing the idea of 'granular ethnography', this interdisciplinary text shows readers how to take ethnography's theoretical foundations into account and clearly lays out the importance of doing so.

'A sophisticated and passionately written account of the classed and gendered identities of a small group of working-class white women who live in the north-west of England. It is ethnography at its best, having been built on long-term, thoughtful engagements in the field' - Gender and Education

This theory-based introduction to peace studies provides coverage of theories relevant to peace studies: peace; conflict; development; civilizations; and economics. It provides an analogy between peace studies and health studies, and makes a strong case for a transdisciplinary approach.