Long-term migration is one of the most important factors in the formation of cultural identities in the modern world. Immigrant communities are usually studied in the context of the country people have migrated to; Katy Gardner, however, looks at the neglected `sending' side of the equation. In the sending communities, out-migration has become a central economic and social resource - the route to social, as well as physical, mobility, transforming those who gain access to it. Dr Gardner examines the cultural context and effects of the long-term migration from Bangladesh to Britain and the Middle East, drawing on her fieldwork in the Sylhet district,an area of exceptional migration. Major aspects of Bangledeshi life such as land, family structure, marriage and religion - all of which have been affected by the heavy out-migration - are covered in detail, and the transformation of the social structure is mapped. In focusing on local ideology, this book shows how local cultural meanings are constantly negotiated and contested by different groups in the context of rapid economic change. At the heart of this important contribution to the anthropology of migration is a presentation of the dynamic nature of migration and the concomitant possibility of self-transformation it holds for migrant cultures.

'Beautifully and simply written ... the characters emerge in all their humanity, frailty and humour. Gardner's approach is refreshingly honest ... [she] neither patronizes nor glamourizes the people of Talukpar but repays their trust by conveying their lives and experiences with dignity and respect. Songs At The River's Edge is a jewel of a book and the memory of it will stay long in the reader's mind.' New Internationalist'In reading [it], you experience a profound sense of entering another community and seeing it from the inside. Gardner's evocative description[s] and her ability to convey the emotional intensity of its people make this a memorable book.' Literary ReviewKaty Gardner's account of her fifteen-month stay in the small Bangladeshi village of Talukpur has become a classic study of rural life in South Asia. Through a series of beautifully crafted narratives, the villagers and their stories are brought vividly to life and the author's role as an outsider sensitively conveyed in her descriptions of the warm friendships she makes. Above all Songs at the River's Edge is written from a deep respect of Bangladesh and its country.

What happens when a vast multinational mining company operates a gas plant situated close to four densely populated villages in rural Bangladesh? How does its presence contribute to local processes of "development?" And what do corporate claims of "community engagement" involve? Drawing from author Katy Gardner’s longstanding relationship with the area, The Gas Field reveals the complex and contradictory ways that local people attempt to connect to, and are disconnected by, foreign capital. Everyone has a story to tell: whether of dispossession and scarcity, the success of Corporate Social Responsibility, or imperialist exploitation and corruption. Yet as Gardner argues, what really matters in the struggles over resources is which of these stories are heard, and the power of those who tell them. Based around the discordant narratives of dispossessed land owners, urban activists, mining officials, and the rural landless, The Gas Field touches on some of the most urgent economic and political questions of our time, including resource ownership and scarcity, and the impact of foreign investment and industrialization on global development.

This book places family at the centre of discussions about migration and migrant life, seeing migrants not as isolated individuals, but as relational beings whose familial connections influence their migration decisions and trajectories. Particularly prioritising the voices of children and young people, the book investigates everyday family practices to illuminate how migrants and their significant others do family, parenting or being a child within a family, both transnationally and locally. Themes covered include undocumented status, unaccompanied children’s asylum seeking, adolescents' "dark sides", second generation return migration, home-making, belonging, nationality/citizenship, peer relations and kinship, and good mothering. The book deploys a wide range of methodological approaches and tools (multi-sited ethnographies, participant observation, interviews and creative methods) to capture the ordinary, spatially extended and interpersonal dynamics of migrant family lives. Drawing on a range of cross-cutting disciplines, geographical areas and diversity of levels and types of experiences on part of the editors and authors, this book will be of interest to researchers across the fields of migration, childhood, youth and family studies.

The realities of the globalized world have revolutionized traditional concepts of culture, community, and identity—so how do applied social scientists use complicated, fluid new ideas such as translocality and ethnoscape to solve pressing human problems? In this book, leading scholar/practitioners survey the development of different subfields over at least two decades, then offer concrete case studies to show how they have incorporated and refined new concepts and methods. After an introduction synthesizing anthropological practice, key theoretical concepts, and ethnographic methods, chapters examine the arenas of public health, community development, finance, technology, transportation, gender, environment, immigration, aging, and child welfare. An innovative guide to joining dynamic theoretical concepts with on-the-ground problem solving, this book will be of interest to practitioners from a wide range of disciplines who work on social change, as well as an excellent addition to graduate and undergraduate courses.

In To Be an Entrepreneur, Julia Qermezi Huang focuses on Bangladesh's iAgent social-enterprise model, the set of economic processes that animate the delivery of this model, and the implications for women's empowerment. The book offers new ethnographic approaches that reincorporate relational economics into the study of social enterprise. It details the tactics, dilemmas, compromises, aspirations, and unexpected possibilities that digital social enterprise opens up for women entrepreneurs, and reveals the implications of policy models promoting women's empowerment: the failure of focusing on individual autonomy and independence. While describing the historical and incomplete transition of Bangladesh's development models from their roots in a patronage-based moral economy to a market-based social-enterprise arrangement, Huang concludes that market-driven interventions fail to grasp the sociopolitical and cultural contexts in which poverty and gender inequality are embedded and sustained.