I. INTERNATIONAL INSTRUMENTS

The entire course of modern Western history has been shaped by the rise and fall of the great European empires. The Burdens of Empire examines different aspects of this long history, focusing on how political theorists, jurists, historians and others sought to explain what an empire is and to justify its very existence.

In the wake of tensions between modern and postmodern sensibilities, what larger directions now emerge in cultural anthropology? In this major work, Bruce Knauft takes stock of important recent initiatives in cultural and critical theory. By combining critical reviews and ethnographic engagements with fresh readings of major figures and approaches, the work develops a larger vantage point for considering the dispersing influence of practice theories, postmodernism, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, modern/post-positive feminism, and multicultural criticisms.

Originally published in Spanish in 1970, Watunna is the epic history and creation stories of the Makiritare, or Yekuana, people living along the northern bank of the Upper Orinoco River of Venezuela, a region of mountains and virgin forest virtually unexplored even to the present. The first English edition of this book was published in 1980 to rave reviews. This edition contains a new foreword by David Guss, as well as Mediata, a detailed myth that recounts the origins of shamanism.

A consideration of several regional scenarios based on actual, prolonged, outlying climatic events that have occurred recently in North America. No index. The companion volume to On Meaning (Minnesota, 1987), which focused on semiotic theory. These previously published (in French) texts provide a theoretical and methodological framework for studying discourses in the social sciences. Greimas is professor of general semantics at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Sciences Sociales in Paris. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A prominent scholar surveys the special place of Melanesia in our understanding of human cultural variation