"This new edition of the Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology provides a unique guide to the ideas, arguments and history of the discipline. Combining anthropological theory and ethnography, it includes 275 substantial entries, over 300 short biographies of important figures in anthropology, and nearly 600 glossary items." "The new entries reflect major changes in anthropology in the past decade: subdisciplines like medical anthropology have become more central to mainstream work in the discipline; recent work includes issues of gender and sexuality, and anthropology's new ethnographic engagement with the central institutions of modernity like finance and science. Anthropology is now an unequivocally global discipline, so the second edition explores other traditions of anthropological work (Japanese anthropology, Latin American anthropology) as well as the process of globalization itself." "Authoritative entires have been commissioned from among the world's leading anthropologists. Alphabetically organized, the main entries contain clear, concise and provocative explanations of key anthropological theories and ideas, as well as surveys of the most important ethnographic regions and regional traditions of ethnographic research. Each major entry contains cross-references and a list of further reading."--Jacket.