Over the past four decades, the "globalized" aspects of cultural circulation have received the majority of scholarly-and consumer-attention, particularly in the study of South Asian music. As a result, a broad range of community-based and other locally focused performance traditions in the regions of South Asia have remained relatively unexplored. Theorizing the Local provides a challenging and compelling counterperspective to the "globalized," arguing for the value of comparative microstudies that are not concerned primarily with the flow of capital and neoliberal politics. What does it mean for musical activities to be local in an increasingly interconnected world? To what extent can theoretical activity be localized to the very acts of making music, interacting, and composing? Theorizing the Local offers glimpses into rich musical worlds of south and west Asia, worlds which have never before been presented in a single volume. The authors cross the traditional borders of scholarship and region, exploring in unmatched detail a vast array of musical practices and significant ethnographic discoveries-from Nepal to India, India to Sri Lanka, Pakistan to Iran. Enriched by audio and video tracks on an extensive companion Web site, Theorizing the Local is an important study of South Asian musical traditions that offers a broader understanding of 21st-century music of the world.

Over the past four decades, the "globalized" aspects of cultural circulation have received the majority of scholarly-and consumer-attention, particularly in the study of South Asian music. As a result, a broad range of community-based and other locally focused performance traditions in the regions of South Asia have remained relatively unexplored. Theorizing the Local provides a challenging and compelling counterperspective to the "globalized," arguing for the value of comparative microstudies that are not concerned primarily with the flow of capital and neoliberal politics. What does it mean for musical activities to be local in an increasingly interconnected world? To what extent can theoretical activity be localized to the very acts of making music, interacting, and composing? Theorizing the Local offers glimpses into rich musical worlds of south and west Asia, worlds which have never before been presented in a single volume. The authors cross the traditional borders of scholarship and region, exploring in unmatched detail a vast array of musical practices and significant ethnographic discoveries-from Nepal to India, India to Sri Lanka, Pakistan to Iran. Enriched by audio and video tracks on an extensive companion Web site, Theorizing the Local is an important study of South Asian musical traditions that offers a broader understanding of 21st-century music of the world.

As nation-states in the Northern Hemisphere experience economic crisis, political corruption and racial tension, it seems as though they might be 'evolving' into the kind of societies normally associated with the 'Global South'. Anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff draw on their long experience of living in Africa to address a range of familiar themes - democracy, national borders, labour and capital and multiculturalism. They consider how we might understand these issues by using theory developed in the Global South. Challenging our ideas about 'developed' and 'developing' nations, Theory from the South provides new insights into key problems of our time.

The transformation of British local government into a new and complex system of local governance raises fundamental theoretical questions as well as empirical ones. Rethinking Local Democracy argues that traditional defences of local government are no longer adequate and that the case for local autonomy and local democracy needs to be radically rethought. It brings together a set of specially-commissioned chapters by leading academics designed to stimulate and contribute to debate on these issues.

This important collection makes a compelling argument for the importance of theory in Native studies. Within the field, there has been understandable suspicion of theory stemming both from concerns about urgent political issues needing to take precedence over theoretical speculations and from hostility toward theory as an inherently Western, imperialist epistemology. The editors of Theorizing Native Studies take these concerns as the ground for recasting theoretical endeavors as attempts to identify the larger institutional and political structures that enable racism, inequities, and the displacement of indigenous peoples. They emphasize the need for Native people to be recognized as legitimate theorists and for the theoretical work happening outside the academy, in Native activist groups and communities, to be acknowledged. Many of the essays demonstrate how Native studies can productively engage with others seeking to dismantle and decolonize the settler state, including scholars putting theory to use in critical ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, and postcolonial studies. Taken together, the essays demonstrate how theory can serve as a decolonizing practice. Contributors. Christopher Bracken, Glen Coulthard, Mishuana Goeman, Dian Million, Scott Morgensen, Robert Nichols, Vera Palmer, Mark Rifkin, Audra Simpson, Andrea Smith, Teresia Teaiwa

This book evaluates the validity of a key proposition of public choice theory: that competition is associated with superior performance by governmental organisations. Three forms of competition in local government are identified: competition between local authorities, competition between councils and private contractors, and competition between parties for political power. The extent and consequences of competition are assessed in both the UK and USA. The analysis is used to draw conclusions on the effects of competition and the validity of public choice theory.

Anthropological perspective are not often represented in urban studies, even though many anthropologist have been contributing actively to theory and research on urban poverty, racism, globalization, and architecture. Theorizing the City corrects this omission. Following a brief history of urban anthropology, emphasizing developments in the field during the 1990s, this volume presents twelve ethnographies of major cities in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Five images of the city-the divided city, the contested city, the global city, the modernist city, and the postmodern city-serve as frameworks for the essays. Each section highlights current research trends such as poststructural studies of race, class and gender in the urban context; political economic studies of transnational culture; and studies of the symbolic meanings and social production of urban spaces.