Ranging from the Pacific islands to the Arctic north and from small villages to modern nation states, this introduction to social and cultural anthropology reveals the rich global variation in social life and culture. The text also provides an overview of anthropology, focusing 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. Small Places, Large Issues broadens the study to incorporate the anthropology of complex modern societies, thus providing a key text for all students of social and cultural anthropology. This new edition is updated throughout and includes a new chapter on the history of anthropology. It also shows why classic studies of small-scale societies are relevant for the study of complex phenomena such as nationalism, consumption and the Internet.