近年来，高丙中教授开始带领研究生到海外（包括美国、澳大利亚、印度、德国、马来西亚等国家）去进行田野调查，取得了一批虽然初步但却重要的研究成果。这些成果虽然尚属初步性质，但却具有一定的标志性意义：它标志着中国社会学人类学工作者开始从本国的需要出发，运用一种世界性的眼光来去对包括西方国家在内的海外世界进行实地性的考察。《海外民族志与中国社会科学》选取了高丙中教授及其团队在这方面所取得的部分成果。其中第一部分收入的三篇文章主要讨论了 “海外民族志”研究对于中国社会科学研究的意义，第二、第三部分则分两个主题具体呈现了该团队在海外从事民族志研究的部分成果。

How have the momentous policy shifts that followed the death of Mao Zedong changed families in China? What are the effects of the decollectivization of agriculture, the encouragement of limited private enterprise, and the world's strictest birth-control policy? Eleven sociologists and anthropologists explore these and other questions in this path-breaking volume. The essays concern both urban and rural communities and range from intellectual to working-class families. They show that there is no single trend in Chinese family organization today, but rather a mosaic of forms and strategies that must be seen in the light of particular local conditions. Content: Introduction: The Impact of Post-Mao Reforms on Family Life, Deborah Davis and Stevan Harrell Urban Families in the Eighties: An Analysis of Chinese Surveys, Jonathan Unger Urban Households: Supplicants to a Socialist State, Deborah Davis Geography, Demography, and Family Composition in Three Southwestern Villages, Stevan Harrell Family Strategies and EconomicTransformation in Rural China: Some Evidence from the Pearl River Delta, Graham E. Johnson Family Strategies and Structures in Rural North China, Mark Selden Reconstituting Dowry and Brideprice in South China, Helen F. Siu Wedding Behavior and Family Strategies in Chengdu, Martin King Whyte The Peasantization of the One-Child Policy in Shaanxi, Susan Greenhalgh Cultural Support for Birth Limitation among Urban Capital-owning Women, Hill Gates Strategies Used by Chinese Families Coping with Schizophrenia, Michael R. Phillips Settling Accounts: The Intergenerational Contract in an Age of Reform, Charlotte Ikels

E-mails proposing an "urgent business relationship" help make fraud Nigeria's largest source of foreign revenue after oil. But scams are also a central part of Nigeria's domestic cultural landscape. Corruption is so widespread in Nigeria that its citizens call it simply "the Nigerian factor." Willing or unwilling participants in corruption at every turn, Nigerians are deeply ambivalent about it--resigning themselves to it, justifying it, or complaining about it. They are painfully aware of the damage corruption does to their country and see themselves as their own worst enemies, but they have been unable to stop it. A Culture of Corruption is a profound and sympathetic attempt to understand the dilemmas average Nigerians face every day as they try to get ahead--or just survive--in a society riddled with corruption. Drawing on firsthand experience, Daniel Jordan Smith paints a vivid portrait of Nigerian corruption--of nationwide fuel shortages in Africa's oil-producing giant, Internet cafés where the young launch their e-mail scams, checkpoints where drivers must bribe police, bogus organizations that siphon development aid, and houses painted with the fraud-preventive words "not for sale." This is a country where "419"--the number of an antifraud statute--has become an inescapable part of the culture, and so universal as a metaphor for deception that even a betrayed lover can say, "He played me 419." It is impossible to comprehend Nigeria today--from vigilantism and resurgent ethnic nationalism to rising Pentecostalism and accusations of witchcraft and cannibalism--without understanding the role played by corruption and popular reactions to it.

男女平等理想好像永远处于逃遁状态，在地平线上不断闪现，似乎又可望而不可即。杜杉杉认为，如果将视线从潜伏于女权主义主流的形形色色乌托邦理想上移开．人们可能会惊奇地看到．男女平等社会确实存在。基于对云南拉祜族社会的大量田野调查。《社会性别的平等模式:“筷子成双”与拉祜族的两性合一》发现，诚如有关“筷子成双”的诸多拉祜谚语所喻示，男女平等社会可以在两性合一的理念中有效实践。

日本人类学家向来有面向海外“他者”研究的传统，与此同时日本文化自身也作为“他者”被研究。本书编译了其中有代表性的关于原住民、发展与文化的优秀论文，以及李海泉本人对日本研究专著《未开化的日本》所写的书评，使读者由此得以一窥日本人类学研究的动向，也加深了对日本民族文化的认识。此外，本书附录的两篇译文还对生态人类学和日本灾害危机管理作了一定的考察。 插页中的照片均为李海泉亲自拍摄，中日庙会比较和日本的土地神仙均为难得的一手资料，呈现给读者真实生动的日本文化风情。