Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in The Interpretation of Cultures. One of the most influential short pieces of ethnography ever composed. Geertz writes beautifully in narrative form, unpacking cultural “webs of significance” ranging from politics to gender through the lens of events surrounding a Balinese cockfight.
Hector Carillo, The Night Is Young: Sexuality in Mexico in the Time of AIDS. Carillo masterfully shows how cultures of sexuality hybridize in urban Mexico, giving readers an understanding not only of how people learn to construct sexual identities and orientations, but also of the importance of such understanding for constructing effective AIDS intervention programs.
Paul Farmer, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues. At once a brilliant critique of both medicine and anthropology, Farmer shows how inequality has been, and continues to be, glossed as “cultural difference,” arguing that culturally sensitive education programs will continue to fail so long as we ignore how inequality limits agency.
Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History. With astonishing erudition, Wolf explodes the myth of isolated, ahistorical, and self-bounded cultures, and convincingly demonstrates how analyzing the historical interconnections of cultures around the globe as political-economic processes is crucial for an understanding of the world capitalist system.