Michelle Rosaldo presents an ethnographic interpretation of the life of the Ilongots, a group of some 3,500 hunters and horticulturists in Northern Luzon, Philippines. Her study focuces on headhunting, a practice that remained active among the Ilongots until at least 1972. Indigenous notions of 'knowledge' and 'passion' are crucial to the Ilongots' perceptions of their own social practices of headhunting, oratory, marriage, and the organization of subsistence labour. In explaining the significance of these key ideas, Professor Rosaldo examines what she considers to be the most important dimensions of Ilongot social relationships: the contrasts between men and women and between accomplished married men and bachelor youths. By defining 'knowledge' and 'passion' in the context of their social and affective significance, the author demonstrates the place of headhunting in historical and political processes, and shows the relation between headhunting and indigenous concepts of curing, reproduction, and health. Theoretically oriented toward interpretive of symbolic ethnography, this book clarifies some of the ways in which the study of a language - both vocabulary and patterns of usage - is a study of a culture; the process of translation is presented as a method of cultural interpretation. Professor Rosaldo argues that an appreciation of the Ilongots' specific notions of 'the self' and the emotional concepts associated with headhunting can illuminate central aspects of the group's social life.

The Sherpas of the Himalayas practice Tibetan Buddhism, a variety of Mahayana Buddhism. This is a general interpretation of Sherpa culture through examining the relationship between the Sherpas' Buddhism and other aspects of their society, and a theoretical contribution to the study of ritual and religious symbolism. In analysing the symbols of Sherpa rituals, professor Ortner leads us toward the discovery of conflict, contradiction, and stress in the wider social and cultural world. Following a general ethnographic sketch, each chapter opens with a brief description of a ritual. The ritual is then dissected, and its symbolic elements are used as guides in the exploration of problematic structures, relationships, and ideas of the culture. The author uses these rituals to illuminate the interconnections between religious ideology, social structure and experience. Professor Ortner analysis of the rituals reveals both the Buddhist pull toward exaggerating the isolation of individuals, and the secular pull that attempts to overcome isolation and to reproduce the conditions for social community.