This introduction to social and cultural anthropology has become a modern classic, revealing the rich global variation in social life and culture across the world.

Presenting a clear overview of anthropology, it focuses on central topics such as kinship, ethnicity, ritual, and political systems, offering a wealth of examples that demonstrate the enormous scope of anthropology and the importance of a comparative perspective. Unlike other texts on the subject, Small Places, Large Issues incorporates the anthropology of complex modern societies. Using reviews of key works to illustrate his argument, Thomas Hylland Eriksen's lucid and accessible overview remains an established introductory text in anthropology.

This fourth edition is updated throughout and increases the emphasis on the interdependence of the human world. It incorporates recent debates and controversies, ranging from globalization and migration research to problems of cultural translation, and discusses the challenges of interdisciplinarity in a lucid way.

Series Preface
Preface to the Third Fourth Edition
1. Anthropology: Comparison and Context
2. A Brief History of Anthropology
3. Fieldwork and Ethnography
4. The Social Person
5. Local Organisation
6. Person and Society
7. Kinship as Descent
8. Marriage and Relatedness
9. Gender and Age
10. Caste and Class
11. Politics and Power
12. Exchange and Consumption
13. Production, Nature and Technology
14. Religion and Ritual
15. Language and Cognition
16. Complexity and Change
17. Ethnicity
18. Nationalism and Minorities
19. Anthropology and the Paradoxes of Globalisation
20. Public Anthropology
Epilogue: Making Anthropology Matter
Bibliography
Index