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In Practising Feminism, contributors drawn from a range of backgrounds in anthropology, sociology and social psychology, explore different ways of practising feminism and their effect on gendered identities. The contributors examine feminism and gender identities in different cultures, feminism as a politics of transformation, the call for recognition of heterosexuality as a politicised identity, the practical role of feminism in nationalist struggles, power relations and gender differences, and the methodological implications of feminist practices. They all discuss identity, difference and power and their importance to feminist political practice. Practising Feminism is an important contribution to the neglected middle ground between post-modern deconstructions of difference and identity, and continued feminist concern with grounded power relations and the validity of experience.

Once a year a ritual is held in a Javanese village. After a distribution of food, men dance with professional female dancers. Their allegedly sexual ethos makes these 'tayuban' unacceptable as national culture, but the dancing is a gift to the protective spirit in exchange for well-being, and represents community identity.

This film is an invitation to see Javanese palace dancing as performed in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and to go beyond appearances to discover what the dance means to those who continue the tradition. In this film dancers prepare to entertain guests at a wedding reception and perform the Love Dance (Langen Nawung Asmara). The female dancer, Susindahati, becomes the centre of attention as she does her household duties and then goes to the Secondary School of Performing Arts for classes in teaching theory and practical training in the Golek Asmarandana dance. Susindahati's generation is concerned with the perfecting of technical mastery. It is the older generation who can explain the importance of dance as a discipline, and the ideas associated with it. One of the connoisseurs, R. Kawindrasusena (known as Pak Seno), reads part of a philosophical text in the macapat style, and explains the spiritual elements of palace dance in Yogyakarta. At a training session of the Yayasan Siswa Among Beksa dance association, he describes his early experience of learning to dance, and explains the Javanese way to watch dances such as the elaborate Bedhaya Gandakusuma, which is being rehearsed with a gamelan orchestra and singers. After samples from this one-and-a-half hour long dance, Pak Seno offers his interpretation of the significance of what we have just seen.

Recasting Ritual explores how ritualized action diversifies in response to varying cultural, political and physical contexts. The contributors look at how issues such as globalisation and technology affect ritual performance and how minorities often utilise performances to affirm their own identites while also speaking to outsiders. The contributors examine the relationship between ritual meaning and social identity through case-studies drawn from the Pacific, Scandinavia, the Mediterranean, Latin America, Indonesia, and East and West Africa. Study of the theoretical underpinnings of social action affirms the independence of anthropology as a discipline from cultural, media and performance studies, according it a distinctive role in elucidating contemporary and emergent human conditions.

Dance is more than an aesthetic of life – dance embodies life. This is evident from the social history of jive, the marketing of trans-national ballet, ritual healing dances in Italy or folk dances performed for tourists in Mexico, Panama and Canada. Dance often captures those essential dimensions of social life that cannot be easily put into words. What are the flows and movements of dance carried by migrants and tourists? How is dance used to shape nationalist ideology? What are the connections between dance and ethnicity, gender, health, globalization and nationalism, capitalism and post-colonialism? Through innovative and wide-ranging case studies, the contributors explore the central role dance plays in culture as leisure commodity, cultural heritage, cultural aesthetic or cathartic social movement.