Art as Politics explores the intersection of art, identity politics, and tourism in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Based on long-term ethnographic research from the 1980s to the present, the book offers a nuanced portrayal of the Sa'dan Toraja, a predominantly Christian minority group in the world's most populous Muslim country. Celebrated in anthropological and tourism literatures for their spectacular traditional houses, sculpted effigies of the dead, and pageantry-filled funeral rituals, the Toraja have entered an era of accelerated engagment with the global economy marked by on-going struggles over identity, religion, and social relations. -Winner 2009 Alpha Sigma Nu National Book Award -"The unusual richness and appeal of this insightful book unfold in layers, delightful to read yet theoretically sophisticated."--Jill Forshee, author of Between the Folds -"An excellent case study...with lively and beautifully written prose." - American Ethnologist The unusual richness and appeal of this insightful book unfold in layers, delightful to read yet theoretically sophisticated. Attentive to the ironies, entanglements, and serendipities of life, Adams demonstrates through prose and photographs the changing worlds of Toraja individuals and their artistic productions. Her deeply perceptive, epic account has so much to say that it leaves no room for jargon. She offers instead a mature, refreshingly honest, engaging approach that dynamically illuminates the intricate interconnections between arts and society in the contemporary world. An anthropology of art for these times, Art as Politics meticulously draws from scholarly works while building on the richness of its own history. -- Jill Forshee , author of Between the Folds: Stories of Cloth, Lives, and Travels from Sumba Kathleen Adams is a Professor of Anthropology at Loyola University Chicago and an Adjunct Curator at the Field Museum of Natural History. Previously she held the Mouat Endowed Chair in International Studies at Beloit College.  Her research in Southeast Asia and the United States has been supported by the Fulbright Foundation, the American Philosophical Society and other foundations. In addition to Art as Politics, s he is also coeditor of Home and Hegemony: Domestic Work and Identity Politics in South and Southeast Asia (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2000) and Everyday Life in Southeast Asia (Indiana University Press, 2011). Her articles on ethnic relations, cultural representations, tourism and the politics of arts have appeared in various journals, including American Ethnologist , Museum Anthropology, Cultural Survival Quarterly, Annals of Tourism Research , and Tourist Studies.  In 2012 she was named as one of the nation's top 300 professors by The Princeton Review.  Used Book in Good Condition