Unique in focus and international in scope, this book brings together 10 essays about the material, metaphorical, and symbolic importance of blood. * An interdisciplinary study that unites the work of noted historians and anthropologists * Incorporates insights from recent work in symbolism, kinship studies, medical anthropology, the anthropology of religion, the sociological study of finance, and textual analysis * Covers topics such as Medieval European conceptions of blood; blood and the brain; blood and the cultural study of finance; and blood types, identity, and association in twentieth-century America

Janet Carsten is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the anthropology of kinship. She is the author of After Kinship (2004) and The Heat of the Hearth: The Process of Kinship in a Malay Fishing Community (1997). She is the editor of Ghosts of Memory: Essays on Remembrance and Relatedness (Blackwell, 2007) and Cultures of Relatedness: New Approaches to the Study of Kinship (2000).