On foreign ground

The essays in this collection explore classical anthropological questions in modern sites, from Ghana to Karelia, from India to Italy, from Kuala Lumpur to St. Petersburg. They examine change and continuity through the lens of memory and sense of place, religious practice, migration and diaspora, social and politico-economic structures. Together these themes illustrate the resilience of culture in creating meaningful orders in people’s lives and underline the importance of analysis of cultural difference in today’s world. Scholarly approaches that are foundational to anthropological knowledge are here applied to the exploration of the particularities and rationales behind various kinds of cultural orders. Thus the essays contained in this collection are rewarding both for empirical and theoretical content and can be recommended for teachers, students and researchers of anthropology.