Anthropology Books
Stanford University Press Studying Those Who Study Us
Book SynopsisDiana E. Forsythe was a leading anthropologist of science, technology, and work who pioneered the field of the anthropology of artificial intelligence. This volume collects her best-known essays, along with other major works that remained unpublished upon her death in 1997. It is also an exemplar of how reflexive ethnography should be done.Trade Review"Diane Forsythe pioneered the field of the anthropology of artificial intelligence, and the essays in this collection are crucially important for three reasons. First, they have historical value as groundbreaking work in a new field. Second, they have enduring value for other scholars, notably the burgeoning number of social scientists studying computer cultures. And Forsythe's careful discussions of her methods, and the interesting reflexivity she worked out, will serve as important models for future anthropologists and others. The editor has done an outstanding job of selecting, ordering, and introducing the essays." - Paul N. Edwards, University of Michigan"The essays posthumously collected here are the fruits of the later career of a fine anthropologist and a sensitive, skilled ethnographer. . . . Forsythe's collection will interest a broad audience concerned with the production of software and the behavior of teams. Highly and unreservedly recommended for all collections."—Choice"[A] thought-provoking book . . . .[It] reveals an intriguing insight into the tacit assumptions made in the fields of artificial intelligence and current anthropology."—Science Books and FilmTable of ContentsEditor's introduction; Editor's note; 1. Blaming the user in medical informatics: the cultural nature of scientific practice; 2. The construction of work in artificial intelligence; 3. Engineering knowledge: the construction of knowledge in artificial intelligence; 4. Knowing engineers? A response to Forsythe; 5. STS (Re)constructs anthropology: reply to Fleck; 6. Artificial intelligence invents itself: collective identity and boundary maintenance in an emergent scientific discipline; 7. New bottles, old wine: hidden cultural assumptions in a computerized explanation system for migrane sufferers; 8. Ethics and politics of studying up in technoscience; 9. Studying those who study us: medical informatics appropriates ethnography; 10. 'It's just a matter of common sense': ethnography as invisible work; 11. Disappearing women in the social world of computing; 12. George and Sandra's daughter, Robert's girl: doing ethnographic research in my parents' field; Appendix; Notes; Bibliography; Index.
£19.79
Stanford University Press Sexual Naturalization
Book SynopsisSexual Naturalization offers compelling new insights into the racialized constitution of American nationality. In the first major interdisciplinary study of Asian-white miscegenation from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, Koshy traces the shifting gender and racial hierarchies produced by antimiscegenation laws, and their role in shaping cultural norms. Not only did these laws foster the reproduction of the United States as a white nation, they were paralleled by extraterritorial privileges that facilitated the sexual access of white American men to Asian women overseas. Miscegenation laws thus turned sex acts into race acts and engendered new meanings for both.Koshy argues that the cultural work performed by narratives of white-Asian miscegenation dramatically transformed the landscape of desire in the United States, inventing new objects and relations of desire that established a powerful hold over U.S. culture, a capture of imaginative space tTrade Review"This volume makes an important contribution to American studies and race theory, revealing Asian American identity as a key site for understanding the complex significations that determine racial genealogies and sexual boundaries." -- Choice"Susan Koshy's Sexual Naturalization is a remarkable contribution to miscegenation discourse, illuminating the repressed role of Asian Americans and miscegenation in the construction of race, gender, and nation....This is a rich, groundbreaking study." -- American LiteratureTable of ContentsContents @toc4:Acknowledgments iii @toc2:Introduction 1 @toc1:Part I. Sexual Orients and the American National Imaginary @toc3:Chapter 1. Mimic Modernity: "Madame Butterfly" and the Erotics of Informal Empire 000 Chapter 2. Eugenic Romances of American Nationhood 000 @toc1:Part II. Engendering the Hybrid Nation @toc3:Chapter 3. Unincorporated Territories of Desire: Hypercorporeality and Miscegenation in Carlos Bulosan's Writings 000 @toc:Chapter 4. Sex Acts as Assimilation Acts: Female Power and Passing in Bharati Mukherjee's Wife and Jasmine 000 @toc4:Notes 000 Bibliography 000 Index 000
£19.79
Stanford University Press Reverse Anthropology
Book SynopsisStuart Kirsch is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He has consulted widely on environmental issues and land rights in the Pacific, and was actively involved in the political campaign and legal case against the environmental impact of the Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea.Trade Review"In a sensitive and nuanced discussion of Yonggom emotions and morality, he effectively illustrates that Yonggom identify sorcerers by examining human emotions and intentionality." -- American Anthropologist"This is an important story that will draw many audiences. It weaves personal experience, politics, and activism in and out of a scholarly analysis made possible by the way Kirsch draws on the analytical skills of his subjects. In this it is nothing short of a brilliant and sympathetic enterprise." -- Dame Marilyn Strathern FBA, William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology * University of Cambridge *"Kirsch's ethnographic passages sing with the immediacy of deep and vibrant experience . . . Because of its rich detail and moral clarity, Reverse Anthropology is a productive contribution to anthropological understandings of indigenous social analysis and it deserves a wide readership." -- Expedition"Kirsch's ethnography is compelling on several levels. It is an excellent example of using indigenous frames of reference for understanding contemporary issues of globalization, colonialism and modernization. It is also a groundbreaking approach to the study of indigenous movements that yields alternative interpretations of political relationships and historical events going back to the first contact between European explorers and Melanesian indigenous groups. Finally, for students of anthropology, it is a highly personal account of the multiple roles of the anthropologist as analyst, participant and advocate for an indigenous group in a precedent-setting legal case against a powerful multinational mining corporation." -- Canadian Review of Sociology"What is masterful about this . . . book is that the author, all the while telling the stories of these contemporary environmental and political struggles, contextualizes them in deeply indigenous ways of knowing and understanding history and the natural and social world." -- Journal of Anthropological Research"Kirsch deserves recognition for this refreshing and intellectually stimulating monograph . . . That this work combines such an emancipatory potential for anthropology with descriptive, theoretically compelling, and well-written ethnography is a testament to Kirsch's scholarship and activism." -- Anthropos"Stuart Kirsch's work is distinquished by his unusual analytic approach to collaborative work with the Yonggom people in pursuing environmental and civil rights. Inspired by Roy Wagners study of Melanesian cargo cults in terms of indigenous analyses of land, labor, capital, and consumption, Dr. Kirschs Reverse Anthropology links two traditions of research in Melanesia: classic ethnographic studies of reciprocity, religion, kinship, ecology, and personhood, dating from the works of Malinowski and Mauss, to contemporary research on class, commodification, citizenship, environmental pollution, and political violence. This compelling study demonstrates the conceptual and political contribution of reverse anthropology to our common understanding of the workings of local communities, nation-states, transnational corporations, and so-called modernization, thus creating a new synergy in the scholarship of Melanesia relevant to anthropological work much more broadly." -- Gillian Feeley-Harnik * University of Michigan *"Kirsch documents and explains how Yonggom people construct social worlds and relationships through exchange and what happens when these patterns are disrupted or unreciprocated. The ethnographic descriptions of everyday life, conversations, complex rituals, myths, magic, and sorcery are rich in detail—reflecting his long association with people there and his empathic identification with the sorrow and loss they have experienced." -- Current Anthropology"Reverse Anthropology is an uncommonly sophisticated work of engaged ethnography, and a book that provides an impressive and uncompromising model of equal accountability to scholarly research and indigenous advocacy. With patience, insight, and brilliant attention to Yonggom subjectivity, Stuart Kirsch reveals what it means to turn anthropology inside out. This is a standout book in the new anthropology of modern Melanesia." -- Steven Feld * University of New Mexico *"Perhaps, if one thing can save our species hurtling to a collective global suicide through the nightmare of over industrialization, it's Reverse Anthropology: making our own society the subject of an objective analysis from the view-point of other cultures, and drawing on this insight . . . Kirsch's book is a significant contribution to this exercise." -- Mines & Communities"This book . . . serves as a model for culturally appropriate solutions to contemporary local problems." -- CHOICETable of Contents@fmct:Contents @toc4:A note to the reader iii List of illustrations iii Acknowledgements iii A note on language iii @toc2:Introduction 000 1 Historical encounters 000 2 The enchantment of place 000 3 Unrequited reciprocity 000 4 Sorcery and the mine 000 5 Mythical encounters 000 6 Divining violence 000 7 Loss and the future imagined 000 Conclusions 000 @toc4:Notes 000 References 000 Index 000
£19.79
Stanford University Press Schooling Passions
Book SynopsisThis book explores how regional and national senses of belonging are produced and transmitted in elementary schools in western India.Trade Review"Benei's presence as an observer [makes] apparent the role of emotion and embodiment in the making of patriotic citizens. She observes the passion evoked by, and represented in, singing, speaking properly, the sartorial self-fashioning of students and teachers, and bodily comportment during everyday rituals of nationalism--a passion that is in large part lost to the historian. For most historians of education, the reconstruction of emotion and embodiment will involve imagination and speculation. Schooling Passions is an excellent guide to such worthwhile work."—Christopher Bischof, H-Net"This book builds on and yet challenges much of the concept-driven work on nationalism. Its interconnection of the topics of language ideology, embodiment, gender, story, schooling, nation, and patriotism is unique and quite persuasive. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in nationalism, education, embodiment and emotion, language and multiculturalism, or South Asia. It is extremely well written, up to date with theory and scholarship, and demonstrates nuanced interpretations of eld experiences with young children, their teachers, and their families."—Susan D. Blum, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"Veronique Benei has written an elegant and tantalizing book, impressive in its finely engraved argumentation."—Nita Kumar, Journal of Asian Studies"Véronique Benei presents her fieldwork on a richly laid out disciplinary plain constituted by an impressive familiarity with scholarship in social history, anthropology, political theory, and post-structural aesthetics, not to mention Marathi language, literature, and cinema. The range of disciplinary interests and territories covered in the book is not merely impressive: it establishes the nature of challenge involved in studying institutionalized education as a political process."—Krishna Kumar, Economic and Political Weekly"Benei's compelling ethnography is much more than a book about schooling; it's about schooling in the service of the nation, how schooling functions to create citizens, and how nationalism is inculcated in our youth. I have seldom read a more powerful, beautifully written book."—Susan Wadley, Syracuse University"Schooling Passions is a major contribution to the study of nationalism and to the burgeoning field of anthropology of emotions. Benei's book is a rich ethnographic study of mundane educational practices based on a deep understanding of their historical context. She pays meticulous attention to the details of language use, to songs and to the everyday disciplines of schooling in western India. Benei's broad theoretical scope enables her to analyze emotions and the corporeal, while also reminding us that language is at the heart of cultural and political passions: what matters is how, when, and in which style, one declares one's love for the nation." —Thomas Blom Hansen, University of Amsterdam"[A] superb book. Schooling Passions cements Benei's reputation, reorienting debates on religious nationalism away from a sole focus on riots towards an analysis of more everyday, embodied, and experiential spaces of nationalist identification." —Craig Jeffrey, Progress for Human Geography
£89.10
Stanford University Press Schooling Passions
Book SynopsisThis book explores how regional and national senses of belonging are produced and transmitted in elementary schools in western India.Trade Review"Benei's presence as an observer [makes] apparent the role of emotion and embodiment in the making of patriotic citizens. She observes the passion evoked by, and represented in, singing, speaking properly, the sartorial self-fashioning of students and teachers, and bodily comportment during everyday rituals of nationalism--a passion that is in large part lost to the historian. For most historians of education, the reconstruction of emotion and embodiment will involve imagination and speculation. Schooling Passions is an excellent guide to such worthwhile work."—Christopher Bischof, H-Net"This book builds on and yet challenges much of the concept-driven work on nationalism. Its interconnection of the topics of language ideology, embodiment, gender, story, schooling, nation, and patriotism is unique and quite persuasive. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in nationalism, education, embodiment and emotion, language and multiculturalism, or South Asia. It is extremely well written, up to date with theory and scholarship, and demonstrates nuanced interpretations of eld experiences with young children, their teachers, and their families."—Susan D. Blum, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"Veronique Benei has written an elegant and tantalizing book, impressive in its finely engraved argumentation."—Nita Kumar, Journal of Asian Studies"Véronique Benei presents her fieldwork on a richly laid out disciplinary plain constituted by an impressive familiarity with scholarship in social history, anthropology, political theory, and post-structural aesthetics, not to mention Marathi language, literature, and cinema. The range of disciplinary interests and territories covered in the book is not merely impressive: it establishes the nature of challenge involved in studying institutionalized education as a political process."—Krishna Kumar, Economic and Political Weekly"Benei's compelling ethnography is much more than a book about schooling; it's about schooling in the service of the nation, how schooling functions to create citizens, and how nationalism is inculcated in our youth. I have seldom read a more powerful, beautifully written book."—Susan Wadley, Syracuse University"Schooling Passions is a major contribution to the study of nationalism and to the burgeoning field of anthropology of emotions. Benei's book is a rich ethnographic study of mundane educational practices based on a deep understanding of their historical context. She pays meticulous attention to the details of language use, to songs and to the everyday disciplines of schooling in western India. Benei's broad theoretical scope enables her to analyze emotions and the corporeal, while also reminding us that language is at the heart of cultural and political passions: what matters is how, when, and in which style, one declares one's love for the nation." —Thomas Blom Hansen, University of Amsterdam"[A] superb book. Schooling Passions cements Benei's reputation, reorienting debates on religious nationalism away from a sole focus on riots towards an analysis of more everyday, embodied, and experiential spaces of nationalist identification." —Craig Jeffrey, Progress for Human Geography
£21.59
Stanford University Press Tort Custom and Karma
Book SynopsisThis colorful portrait of law and society during a period of rapid social change reaches a counter-intuitive conclusion about the role of law in injury cases: globalization has led ordinary Thai people to turn away from courts and lawyers and to embrace a form of religious practice that leaves them without any remedy for harms they have suffered.Trade Review"David Engel and Jaruwan Engel make an important contribution to the field of sociolegal studies in this outstanding, concise volume that traces the retreat of law in the face of rapid social change in Chiang Mai . . . The book's insights into the relationship between community-based and state-based resolution of disputes are particularly valuable . . . [T]he Engel's scholarship will enlighten students of law and society across disciplines and belongs in every sociolegal collection . . . Essential."—J. D. Marshall, CHOICE"This beautifully written book was co-authored by two distinguished experts on law and society in Thailand . . . The book is a powerful voice in area studies. It admirbly engages in the globalization debate from the perspective of the ordinary people's everyday experience . . . Tort, Custom, and Karma is a welcome addition to the literature."—Law and Politics Book Review"This is a brilliant and artful account of the dwindling of law in contemporary Thai life. It presents a formidable challenge to the widespread expectation that globalization will be accompanied by enlarged reliance on increasingly similar law." —Marc Galanter, London School of Economics and Political Science"The Engels explore the effects of globalization on the legal consciousness and concepts of justice of northern Thais through interview with injured persons in Chiangmai during the 1960s and 1970s and then in the 1990s . . . They use this framework to evaluate how globalization and modernization have affected conceptions of injury, causation, remedies, and justice and provide suggestions as to how this research may be extended to broaden our sociolegal understanding."Shad Kidd, Religious Studies Review"This beautifully clear book reveals how globalization has torn the webs of locally based legal and religious dispute resolution systems without putting anything in their place. The result, for many accident victims, is a reemphasis on religious ways of making sense of and responding to accidents, rather than a focus on the law and compensation. This empathetic presentation of another worldview is truly exemplary."—David Nelken, Cardiff University, UK and Macerata University, Italy"This book raises unexpected and disturbing questions regarding the impact globalization may have on religion, society and the legal cultures with which it interacts. It exposes issues that cry out for further exploration, not only in Thailand and other areas of Southeast Asia, but far beyond as well." —Frank Reynolds, University of Chicago
£18.89
Stanford University Press Emotions in the Field
Book SynopsisThis book investigates how anthropologists can make use of the emotions fieldwork generates within them to deepen their understanding of the communities they study.Trade Review"In recent years reflexive accounts of fieldwork have become commonplace in anthropology. This book, while it provides a welcome contribution to this mode of anthropology, goes well beyond it by treating the emotions and experiences of fieldwork in an analytical rather than anecdotal manner . . . This book will provoke discussion of fieldwork from a new perspective, and hopefully spark new contributions to the literature. It will be of most use to those concerned with the linkages between ethnographic methodology and the analyses that anthropologists produce, as well as to those entering the field or newly returned. I have already recommended it to a number of graduate students as a significant resource in predicting, understanding, and analyzing fieldwork practice."—Susan Hemer, Anthropological Forum"I welcome the way in which emotions are given center stage in this volume, seen as not only worthwhile, but also as potentially important and useful in the creation of knowledge. Issues such as transference and countertransference are not usually taught in methods classes, leaving neophyte fieldworkers sometimes holding incomprehensible and possibly upsetting and disturbing feelings. Thus, sociologists should take note of the book and its message."—Diane L. Wolf, Contemporary Sociology"This book is a welcome rediscovery of the importance of emotions as key social and political facts. The perception that emotions are not after-effects but are themselves constitutive of practice is a timely reminder and insight."—Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley"A powerful affirmation of the humanity of the field encounter in all its ambivalence, and a timely call for social scientists to harness the rich potential of a people-centered research enterprise."—João Biehl, Princeton University
£21.59
Stanford University Press Fallen Elites
Book SynopsisThis book examines how states make soldiers and what happens to fallen military elites when they no longer fit into the political spectrum.Trade Review"Bickford relates an exceptionally nuanced story of once powerful men with considerable humor and insight. Fallen Elites makes a brilliant contribution to our thinking about militarism and the military's impact on social life. It has relevance well beyond the former East Germany and is a truly fascinating book." -- Lesley Gill * Vanderbilt University, author of The School of the Americas *"Bickford's candor about the men 'left behind' is really valuable to our understandings of the dynamics between militaries, state transformations, democratizations, soldiering, and masculinities. He offers a genuinely engaging and unique work." -- Cynthia Enloe * Clark University, author of Nimo's War, Emma's War *"Meticulously researched, highly readable, and instructive, Bickford's work gives tremendous insight into what it means to be a soldier serving a state associated with the losing side." -- Mark Montesclaros"A particular strength of this book is Bickford's analysis of the behaviors of former East German officers accepted into the Bundeswehr. His knowledge is largely based on personal contacts, and gaining acceptance among this particular niche originating in the GDR is a significant professional achievement." -- Dennis Showalter"This remarkably eloquent book employs the tools of anthropology to understand the 'tribe' of a particularly intriguing remnant of the Cold War, the former East German army. . . Building skillfully on his military service as a sergeant in the US Army, anthropologist Bickford gained impressive access to the former solider elites who had been robbed of status power but not all pension. . . The transcripts of these testimonies, which are interwoven with the analysis, offer fascinating descriptions of the grim world of these fallen elite. Highly recommended." -- D. Prowe * CHOICE *
£21.59
Stanford University Press Broken Links Enduring Ties
Book SynopsisThis groundbreaking book investigates comparatively how transnational and interracial adoptions are affecting the dynamics of family-making in America.Trade Review"Seligmann's thoughtful comparison of domestic, inter-racial adoptions, and international adoptions in the U.S. is inspired. Broken Links, Enduring Ties is a moving discussion of the struggles and pleasures of individual adoptive parents and children as they work to forge viable lives and identities." -- Alma Gottlieb"In this terrific book, Linda Seligmann compares the meanings that adoptive parents in the United States attribute to race and nation and considers how children respond. Broken Links, Enduring Ties reveals the shifting cultural patterns and stubborn global forces shaping the quest to know who we are, where we belong, and with whom. Seligmann's perspective on the importance of faith and popular religious belief is an especially original and significant contribution to the growing ethnographic literature on adoption." -- Ellen Herman * University of Oregon *"Broken Links, Enduring Ties is an excellent account of the uneven terrain of transnational and transracial adoption in the US over the past two decades, tracing the distinct histories, experiences, and challenges of Chinese, Russian, and African American adoption. Seligmann's clear prose and wide-ranging interviews bring to life the many transformations shaping new modes of belonging, and new understandings of family and identity." -- Toby Alice Volkman, Director of Policy Initiatives and Secretary * Henry Luce Foundation *"Linda J. Seligmann's newest book examines the consequences of transnational and domestic transracial adoptions for family-making in the United States. Seligmann's study invokes the comparative method, kinship studies, and documentation of the intimate and everyday aspects of race, ethnicity, class, and geopolitical inequalities. Writing with a deliberate clarity that will make this book widely accessible to families and adoption professionals as well as to students and colleagues, she brings several crucially important aspects of anthropological thought to bear on adoption . . . In Broken Links, Enduring Ties, Seligmann combines some of anthropology's greatest strengths—the comparative method, careful analysis of first-person narratives, and close attention to kinship and race—with a clear and direct writing style and a sympathetic ear that will make the book relevant far beyond our discipline." -- Jessaca B. Leinaweaver * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *"Seligmann offers a thoughtful, meticulously documented work . . . Recommended." -- W. Feigelman
£25.19
Stanford University Press Navigating Austerity
Book SynopsisNavigating Austerity addresses a key policy question of our era: what happens to society and the environment when austerity dominates political and economic life? To get to the heart of this issue, Laura Bear tells the stories of boatmen, shipyard workers, hydrographers, port bureaucrats and river pilots on the Hooghly River, a tributary of the Ganges that flows into the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean. Through their accounts, Bear traces the hidden currents of state debt crises and their often devastating effects. Taking the reader on a voyage along the river, Bear reveals how bureaucrats, entrepreneurs and workers navigate austerity policies. Their attempts to reverse the decline of ruined public infrastructures, environments and urban spaces lead Bear to argue for a radical rethinking of economics according to a social calculus. This is a critical measure derived from the ethical concerns of people affected by national policies. It places issues of redistribution and inequality at thTrade Review"The creation and control of public goods, debt, and enterprise are the topics that animate Navigating Austerity. Laura Bear examines the struggles of working people to find meaning in their environment when economic renewal is starved of public investment. Their profound ethical dilemmas and the religious expression of this condition are brilliantly elucidated."—K. Sivaramakrishnan, Yale University"In this powerful book, Laura Bear makes a valuable intervention in the contemporary debate on debt and value in the global economy. Based on a deep and compelling ethnography of the complex economic life on the river Hooghly running through Calcutta — a key site in colonial and global economies for centuries — Bear mounts a deeply informed critique of debt, and sovereign debt in particular, as a mere financial matter. Bear shows how even the most basic creation of value and capital in the global economy depends on a complex and local mobilization of labor, affect, resources, cultural meanings and political forces. This book will help set a new agenda for our understanding of capitalism, particularly in its new and old incarnations South Asia and the global South."—Thomas Blom Hansen, Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University"This book is brilliant, powerful, and original. Navigating Austerity offers a nuanced ethnography of river work along the Hooghly River, and the changes between a time of central planning and a more recent time of austerity. It turns around discussions of public debt, arguing that debt's financialization is both recent and wrong-headed. Bear's elegant argument hit me with the force of the 'hidden in plain sight.'"—Anna Tsing, University of California, Santa Cruz"Navigating Austerity is a morality tale for our times. Laura Bear has given us a bejeweled ethnography of Indian riverine economics that is also a theoretically sophisticated, ethically coherent, and analytically rigorous study with global and comparative implications. This book will travel far beyond the confines of its immediate ethnographic focus to other disciplines, to other lands, and, one may dare hope, to others who have failed to see the self-destruction that in the name of self-interest they have so heedlessly unleashed."—Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University"[Bear's] engagement with life and work in the riverine economy renders the effects of the global economy, austerity capitalism, and the financialization of sovereign debt both intelligible and terrifying. Beneath the surface of a narrative of decay and inventive regeneration under austerity capitalism is a thoughtful examination of masculinity, materials, workmanship and sacrifice."—Luke A. Heslop, Current Anthropology"Navigating Austerity provides a richly detailed ethnographic case study from India of what happens when a country follows extreme policy measures intended to support investor confidence in what is ultimately a flawed international financial system."—John H. Bodley, Journal of Anthropological Research"Navigating Austerity: Currents of Debt Along a South Asian River comes out of the new Anthropology of Policy series at Stanford University Press, but cuts a path far beyond pioneering work in a field focused on critically analysing state discourse and bureaucratic 'anti-politics'. This lively ethnography populates the policy world with human stories of port engineers, regulatory middlemen, family firms and shipyard workers...[This book] makes a timely entry into anthropological treatments of debt and financialisation, environmental change and development."—Caroline E. Schuster, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
£84.15
Stanford University Press Incest Avoidance and the Incest Taboos
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Arthur Wolf has done it again. Wolf's evolutionary explanation of incest avoidance and the incest taboo is one of the greatest achievements in the social sciences over the past half century." -- Larry Arnhart, Presidential Research Professor of Political Science * Northern Illinois University *"In this highly readable account of incest avoidance and taboos, Arthur Wolf explores fundamental questions about what it is to be human. In particular, he examines the articulation between our biological and our social/cultural natures, arriving at some brilliant insights along the way. Every student of anthropology should read this book." -- Charles Stafford * London School of Economics *
£13.94
Stanford University Press The Poverty of Privacy Rights
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The Poverty of Privacy Rights pushes the conceptualization of legal rights into a new and useful direction, establishing a sturdy platform for intelligent advocacy on behalf of poor people and their dignity. Khiara Bridges' deep knowledge of the social welfare and healthcare system, and the conversations her book invites will bring more privacy concerns affecting the poor to the forefront." -- Anita Allen * University of Pennsylvania *"The Poverty of Privacy Rights is a provocative, courageous account of poor women's lives and the American healthcare system. One of the brightest stars of her generation, Khiara Bridges pushes against the traditional framings of sex-based privacy erosion to deftly articulate an urgent contemporary social concern—privacy rights filtered, constrained, and tampered by government. Bridges masterfully argues that to be poor in the United States and dependent on governmental assistance is to experience intrusions and violations of constitutional rights unrivaled by all others." -- Michele Goodwin * University of California, Irvine *"For those who hold dear, however naively, the idea that the proper application of constitutional law itself can create justice, Khiara Bridges's The Poverty of Privacy Rights is a devastating read....[Her] arguments are elegantly presented, thoroughly documented, and persuasive, and there is no doubt that any future work in this area will have to begin by citing this book." -- Wendy A. Bach * Review of Politics *"In The Poverty of Privacy Rights, Khiara Bridges presents an eloquent treatise detailing why Anthropology Matters! She artfully unravels the inevitable contradictions that stem from the aims of poverty policies in the United States between lowincome mothers who experience the policies in their use of social services and those who interpret policies and thereby provide access to or sanctions against services....As anthropologists, we have a responsibility and a platform to engage in moral and ethical knowledge making of the kind documented in Bridges's The Poverty of Privacy Rights. Readers interested in the anthropology of law, public policy, and poverty studies would greatly benefit from this manuscript." -- Sherri Lawson Clark * American Anthropologist *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThis introduction describes this book's thesis: Poor mothers have been deprived of family, informational, and reproductive privacy rights. Those who are empowered to interpret the Constitution have construed the document to bestow wealthier women with rights that protect their families from state regulation, prevent their most intimate information from being collected and disclosed to third parties, and provide them with a space to decide whether to become mothers without the government influencing their decisions. Simultaneously, the Constitution has been construed to deny poor mothers (and those facing the question of whether to become mothers) those same rights. Because privacy rights are thought to yield specific values, they are recognized and protected; and because it is assumed that these privacy rights will not yield these same values when individuals who are behaviorally and ethically deficient bear them, poor mothers have been denied these rights. 1The Moral Construction of Poverty chapter abstractThis chapter documents the ubiquitous voices throughout history that have rejected structural explanations of poverty and, instead, have argued that poverty is the result of individual shortcomings. This chapter shows that the discursive link between poverty and immorality continues to the present day: One can easily hear a narrative in political or popular discourse that links poverty with behavioral or ethical deficiencies. This chapter also shows that the Court's jurisprudence has come to reflect the moral construction of poverty, examining several cases in which the Court's rationale for refusing to limit the power of the government vis-à-vis poor individuals reveals an assumption about the pathology of the poor person—usually a poor mother—subject to privacy invasions. This chapter goes on to make the argument that positive rights are not the solution to poor mothers' predicament. 2The Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine: Revealing, Yet Misleading chapter abstractThis chapter explores the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions, which provides that it is unconstitutional for a state to premise the conferral of a benefit on the beneficiary's surrender of a constitutional right. The chapter argues that unconstitutional conditions cases reveal the justification for the state's denial of privacy rights to poor mothers, showing that the state denies individuals a right when it disbelieves that the individual will realize the value that the right is intended to generate. This chapter goes on to show that poor women lack privacy even when they do not receive a welfare benefit. It contextualizes the privacy invasions that poor mothers endure when receiving welfare benefits in a broader experience of privacy invasions endured by virtue of being poor. This contextualization demonstrates that poor mothers' lack of privacy rights is not a function of reliance on government assistance, but a function of their poverty. 3Family Privacy chapter abstractThis chapter explores various justifications for the family privacy right including instrumental, noninstrumental, and pragmatic justifications. It concludes that the moral construction of poverty counsels in favor of dispossessing poor mothers of the right because it suggests that poor mothers will not realize the value that the right is designed to yield. The chapter goes on to examine the overrepresentation of the poor as subjects of child welfare investigations and within the foster care system—two governmental interventions into the family that the family privacy right purports to allow only when the state suspects child maltreatment. It then shows that the fact of poverty itself gives the state reason to suspect child maltreatment. Accordingly, the state always has the authority to infringe on poor mothers' right to family privacy. The chapter concludes by suggesting that a right that is always already infringed is not right at all. 4Informational Privacy chapter abstractThis chapter explores the justification for the informational privacy right and concludes that poor mothers have been deprived of it because, as with family privacy rights, the informational privacy rights will not yield the value they aredesigned to yield when poor mothers bear them. This chapter goes on to describe a type of right to informational privacy that has not yet been conceptualized fully in the literature. This right, absent compelling circumstances, would prevent the state from coercing those who are marginalized culturally and socially to perform confessions that might be taken to justify their marginalization. This right would be the equivalent of the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against being compelled to be a witness against oneself, except it would apply in noncriminal contexts. 5Reproductive Privacy chapter abstractThis chapter explores reproductive privacy rights and concludes that poor women have been deprived of these rights because society does not trust their ability to make competent, moral decisions about reproduction without state oversight. This chapter documents how Medicaid, through the Hyde Amendment, intrudes into the domain that reproductive privacy rights are designed to protect by constraining the decisions that poor women make concerning abortion. This chapter also discusses how TANF family cap policies intrude into the domain that reproductive privacy rights are designed to protect by constraining poor women's decisions about giving birth to another child. This chapter notes the contradiction of the Hyde Amendment's pronatalism and TANF's antinatalism. It concludes that this contradiction reveals that the state is not interested in the precise decision that poor women make with respect to maternity, but rather is interested in overseeing that decision as she makes it. Conclusion chapter abstractThe conclusion proposes that poor mothers will only enjoy the positive or negative privacy rights that are formally bestowed to them when an individual's economic failure is no longer thought to indicate a flawed character. It examines other historical moments where disenfranchised groups struggled for rights that had been denied to them, focusing on black people's struggle for the right to vote and sexual minorities' struggle for the right to marry. These precedents reveal that formerly disenfranchised groups were successful in acquiring the rights that they sought not because they appealed to the Court to interpret the Constitution differently, but because they shifted the cultural discourse. The law ultimately came to reflect that transformation of culture. The lesson of history is that poor mothers will only be granted privacy rights when our culture shifts, and the moral construction of poverty is unseated from its present discursive throne.
£73.95
Stanford University Press Navigating Austerity
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The creation and control of public goods, debt, and enterprise are the topics that animate Navigating Austerity. Laura Bear examines the struggles of working people to find meaning in their environment when economic renewal is starved of public investment. Their profound ethical dilemmas and the religious expression of this condition are brilliantly elucidated."—K. Sivaramakrishnan, Yale University"In this powerful book, Laura Bear makes a valuable intervention in the contemporary debate on debt and value in the global economy. Based on a deep and compelling ethnography of the complex economic life on the river Hooghly running through Calcutta — a key site in colonial and global economies for centuries — Bear mounts a deeply informed critique of debt, and sovereign debt in particular, as a mere financial matter. Bear shows how even the most basic creation of value and capital in the global economy depends on a complex and local mobilization of labor, affect, resources, cultural meanings and political forces. This book will help set a new agenda for our understanding of capitalism, particularly in its new and old incarnations South Asia and the global South."—Thomas Blom Hansen, Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University"This book is brilliant, powerful, and original. Navigating Austerity offers a nuanced ethnography of river work along the Hooghly River, and the changes between a time of central planning and a more recent time of austerity. It turns around discussions of public debt, arguing that debt's financialization is both recent and wrong-headed. Bear's elegant argument hit me with the force of the 'hidden in plain sight.'"—Anna Tsing, University of California, Santa Cruz"Navigating Austerity is a morality tale for our times. Laura Bear has given us a bejeweled ethnography of Indian riverine economics that is also a theoretically sophisticated, ethically coherent, and analytically rigorous study with global and comparative implications. This book will travel far beyond the confines of its immediate ethnographic focus to other disciplines, to other lands, and, one may dare hope, to others who have failed to see the self-destruction that in the name of self-interest they have so heedlessly unleashed."—Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University"[Bear's] engagement with life and work in the riverine economy renders the effects of the global economy, austerity capitalism, and the financialization of sovereign debt both intelligible and terrifying. Beneath the surface of a narrative of decay and inventive regeneration under austerity capitalism is a thoughtful examination of masculinity, materials, workmanship and sacrifice."—Luke A. Heslop, Current Anthropology"Navigating Austerity provides a richly detailed ethnographic case study from India of what happens when a country follows extreme policy measures intended to support investor confidence in what is ultimately a flawed international financial system."—John H. Bodley, Journal of Anthropological Research"Navigating Austerity: Currents of Debt Along a South Asian River comes out of the new Anthropology of Policy series at Stanford University Press, but cuts a path far beyond pioneering work in a field focused on critically analysing state discourse and bureaucratic 'anti-politics'. This lively ethnography populates the policy world with human stories of port engineers, regulatory middlemen, family firms and shipyard workers...[This book] makes a timely entry into anthropological treatments of debt and financialisation, environmental change and development."—Caroline E. Schuster, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
£22.79
Stanford University Press Drugs Thugs and Diplomats
Book SynopsisIn 2000, the U.S. passed a major aid package that was going to help Colombia do it all: cut drug trafficking, defeat leftist guerrillas, support peace, and build democracy. More than 80% of the assistance, however, was military aid, at a time when the Colombian security forces were linked to abusive, drug-trafficking paramilitary forces. Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats examines the U.S. policymaking process in the design, implementation, and consequences of Plan Colombia, as the aid package came to be known. Winifred Tate explores the rhetoric and practice of foreign policy by the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, Congress, and the U.S. military Southern Command. Tate's ethnography uncovers how policymakers' utopian visions and emotional entanglements play a profound role in their efforts to orchestrate and impose social transformation abroad. She argues that U.S. officials' zero tolerance for illegal drugs provided the ideological architecture for the subsequent militarization of domesTrade Review"Here's the book we've been waiting for to help us make sense of the much debated Plan Colombia, from the national security bureaucracy in Washington to the coca fields in Colombia. Tate's fascinating account is a model for how to do an ethnography of foreign policymaking." -- Peter Andreas * Brown University *"Tate's book sets a new standard for the anthropological study of policymaking. A master ethnographer with deep experience, she tells the chilling story of how the militarization of U.S. drug policy, the mobilization of fear, the limitations of human rights lobbying, and the outsourcing of Colombian security to paramilitary forces all came together to produce a 'model aid plan' that, for most Colombians, was anything but. A tour de force of political acuity." -- Susan Greenhalgh * Harvard University *"Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats is a rich and insightful analysis of the cultural dimensions of policy making, focusing on Plan Colombia, the massive US program of military and economic aid to Colombia. This book makes a major contribution to the exciting new field of the anthropology of policy." -- Sally Engle Merry * New York University *"Winifred Tate's Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: U.S. Policymaking in Colombia makes an interesting contribution not only to the field of the anthropology of policy but also to the understanding of Plan Colombia, one of the backbones of U.S. strategy in its War on Drugs in Latin America." -- Alejandro Castillejo-Cuéllar * American Anthropologist *"Winifred Tate's Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats stands out among books on this topic for its methodological and theoretical rigor and its insightful arguments. This book is a powerful ethnography of foreign policymaking, focusing on Plan Colombia, the multibillion-dollar counternarcotics and counterinsurgency plan launched in 2000, to which the United States contributed more than $8 billion from 2000 to 2012 and which is now presented in policy circles as an example of a successful antinarcotics and antiterrorism policy. The book is more than an analysis of the genesis, implementation, and impact of Plan Colombia; it distills the complexities and negative consequences behind the plan's touted success. Tate analyzes policymaking as a field that entails contradictory objectives, bureaucratic politics, and multiple actors inside and outside government institutions. Galvanizing her experience as a policy advocate, her extensive research in Colombia, and her skill in poignant analysis, she unveils how policy implementation depends on legitimizing discourses, alliances, the creation of "acceptable" expertise, and the mobilization of emotional attachments. She highlights the importance of understanding policymaking and policymakers not as rational, linear processes and actors but as evolving fields." -- Angélica Durán-Martínez * Latin American Politics and Society *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThe introduction focuses on defining the central terms and agenda of an anthropology of policy. The chapter argues that policy narratives play a central role in making politics legible, that is, coherent and comprehensible, rather then setting out a concrete plan for future action. This chapter analyzes the process of policy problematization, through which particular social relationships, identities and practices are defined as requiring institutional intervention from the state, and how policy production generates alliances and support among competing bureaucracies through strategic ambiguity providing an appearance of institutional coherence and consensus among disparate programs. Such ambiguity also limits dissent and opposition. This chapter analyzes the challenges of ethnographic research on policy, developing the concept of "embedded ethnography," in which ethnographiers have taken on positions within organizations not as researchers, but in institutional roles gain valuable insight that enrich their later anthropological analysis. 1Domestic Drug Policy Goes to War chapter abstractThis chapter argues that the zero tolerance paradigm that the U.S. embraced domestically in the 1980s provided the ideological architecture for the subsequent militarization of domestic drug policy abroad. It begins with the history of the contemporary US war on drugs beginning with the Nixon Administration and traces how illegal narcotics emerged as a national security threat, requiring the war-fighting machinery of the U.S. to be applied in concert with foreign militaries throughout the Western Hemisphere and the reorientation of the military industrial bureaucracy. Increased military roles bolstered a range of institutional interests, including the U.S. Southern Command's efforts to increase their mission profile and Democratic concerns about the culture wars. The labeling of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia as a narcoguerrilla meta-threat merged lingering Cold War fears of Communism with the escalating concern of hyper-violent traffickers. 2Human Rights Policymaking and Military Aid chapter abstractChapter 2 tells the story of how an increasingly professionalized human rights lobby attempted to transform their documentation of abuses into specific policy reforms. Many of these activist practices originated with the Central America peace movement of the 1980s. One of the most important examples of human rights legislation was the Leahy Law, which prohibited US military counternarcotics assistance to foreign military units facing credible allegations of abuses, and its unintended consequences. First passed in 1997, the law emerged from strategic alliances between elite NGO advocates, grassroots activists and critically located Congressional aides. This chapter explores the resulting transformation of aid delivery: rather than suspend aid when no "clean" units could be found, US officials convinced their Colombian allies to create new units consisting of vetted soldiers. Implementation of the law reveals the knowledge practices inherent in policy implementation, the social production of credibility, and erased some forms of violence. 3Paramilitary Proxies chapter abstractChapter 3 examines evolving forms of counterinsurgency violence, arguing that the paramilitaries emerged as state proxies in part because of the human rights legislation that demanded accountability from official actors. 4Living Under Many Laws chapter abstractChapter 4 describes the strategies employed by Putumayans to shape their political future while living in a region contested by multiple actors claiming the right to govern during the coca boom of the 1990s. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, the FARC were the dominant power in the region, regulating local conflicts, organizing collective work, and imposing their rules. The Catholic Church played a critical role in developing a vision of peasant autonomy and political participation. Despite repeated protests and ongoing lobbying efforts, local farmers were unable to shift the counternarcotics program imposed by the US: aerial spraying of chemical herbicides. Beginning in the late 1990s, United Self Defense Forces paramilitary forces working with military commanders terrorized the region in order to consolidate their social and territorial control. Despite their criminalization and repression, peasant farmers in Putumayo used a range of tactics to encourage state presence in the region. 5Origin Stories chapter abstractChapter 5 employs origin stories produced through oral history interviews with policymakers to reveal agency and institutional action frequently hidden in public policy debates. The officials describe Plan Colombia as emerging from a range of policy priorities: a domestic counternarcotics policy intended to address the Clinton's administration moral crisis, a peace plan to bolster Colombian President Andres Pastrana's negotiations with the FARC, or a counterinsurgency program to defeat the Colombian guerrillas. This strategic ambiguity enabled the range of institutional alliances to coalesce in support of military aid. This chapter explores the functioning of the Plan Colombia Interagency Task Force, charged with creating Plan Colombia. The Colombian diplomatic corps also played an active role in shaping the aid package to fit their political agenda. Yet some lower ranking officials disputed the description of Plan Colombia as a consensus plan; they were the losers in the bureaucratic battles dominated by militarization. 6Competing Solidarities chapter abstractThis chapter explores how solidarity emerges from the resonance of a particular issue or population has with a set of could-be advocates and materially made through institutional and organizational channels. Supporters and critics imagined themselves as acting in solidarity with distinct categories of Colombians, from counternarcotics soldiers to human rights activists. For critics of Plan Colombia, this process reactivated activist identities and commitments, legacies of the Central American peace movement. The focus of this chapter is travel as a technique of emotional management, producing new forms of political subjectivities accompanied by expectations of political action. Travel played a central role in the construction of distinct sensory, affective and moral geographies. Congressional delegations focused on militarized technology, weaponry and enacted scenarios of counternarcotics operations. These excursions were channeled into larger political field valorizing militarized expertise delineating the boundaries of appropriate policy debates. 7Putumayan Policymaking chapter abstractChapter 7 explores how elected officials and local residents resisted criminalization and exclusion, attempted to engage distant powers and mobilized to shape the policies impacting their region, presenting policy alternatives through scientific efforts to document the harms of fumigation, depoliticized development proposals, and testimony. Although these efforts were invisible or discounted in official Washington policymaking arenas, the policy imaginaries and practices of the targets of intervention are a critical site for apprehending the full process of policymaking. Putumayan activists participated in proxy citizenship, the mechanism through which certain rights of citizenship—the ability to make claims for redress to a state—are conferred on activists through relationships with NGOs. This process generated political opportunities, created new citizenship subjectivities but also involved political costs, as activists were forced to transform their claims and their profound critiques of US policy were remade into support for US programs. Conclusion: Plan Colombia in the US Policymaking Imagination chapter abstractU.S. intervention in Colombia has been widely praised as a success to be replicated in other sites. The conclusion analyze these claims to success and what constitutes "the Colombian miracle," as the title of a 2010 National Standard article put it. The life stories of three residents of Putumayo challenge this triumphal narrative, offering in their place sober assessments of damage in the region, including the failures and catastrophic results of counternarcotics programs, the economic and political legacies of paramilitarism, and the complexities of community security. This chapter argues that an anthropological approach necessarily includes the appraisals of policymakers and analysts and the targets of policy, their efforts to shape these programs and their reflections on the process. Examining democracy promotion and nation-building efforts reveal that such projects are less involved with encouraging widespread involvement in governance than facilitating specific policy outcomes.
£21.59
Stanford University Press Flowers That Kill
Book SynopsisTrade Review"...As debate continues over the meaning of the Japanese Constitution or the Confederate battle flag in America, this study adds valuable insights into the workings of symbolism and identity." -- Nicolas Gattig * The Japan Times *"Flowers That Kill is a timely reminder of the limits of resistance and the power of symbols in a time where entrenched ideologies continue to propel political conflicts from all sides." -- Jason Danely * American Ethnologist *"Flowers That Kill is a monumental work of political philosophy. Powerfully argued and dazzlingly precise, Ohnuki-Tierney's nuanced portrait of the linguistic, cultural, and historical underpinnings of political symbols across Japan and totalitarian Europe is essential reading for anyone interested in how propaganda actually works." -- Sharalyn Orbaugh * University of British Columbia *"Contrasting the symbolism of cherry blossoms manipulated by the Japanese military state and that of the rose in Europe, Ohnuki-Tierney explores how authoritarian regimes use icons of popular culture to foster their domination. This superb book opens a new chapter in political anthropology, showing how the use of symbols in political discourse both produces meaning and disguises the foundations upon which this meaning is constructed." -- Philippe Descola * Collège de France *"Flowers That Kill is an impressive, wide-ranging feat of scholarship that illuminates a fascinating topic: the capacity of flowers to shift imperceptibly from benevolent symbols to harbingers of death and destruction. The deft but nuanced way in which Ohnuki-Tierney handles this sensitive material makes the book of crucial importance to academics and non-academics alike—really, to anyone still troubled by the horrors of World War II or by the human calamities of our times." -- Peter Geschiere * University of Amsterdam, author of Perils of Belonging *"Flowers That Kill is an important and daring new contribution to political anthropology. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney investigates the use of owers, and other living things, in the schemes to bolster and enforce certain forms of political power, especially authoritarian politics.This is an audacious intervention into the political anthropology of propaganda and of the political gods and god father politicians that devise and deploy it. The book is certain to provoke much thought and debate." -- Magnus Fiskesjö * American Anthropologist *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: Opacity, Misrecognition, and Other Complexities of Symbolic Communication chapter abstractAs the animal considered closest to humans, the monkey is an important symbol in Japanese culture. Its symbolism consists of three major themes: mediator, scapegoat, and clown, each acquiring a dominant meaning in a particular historical period, but all three always constituting a palimpsest. As expressed in the monkey performance, its symbolism involves a subversive element—against the stratification in medieval times, against militarism at the height of Japan's imperial aggression, defiance against a social superior, and questioning the throne on which humans sit, ruling over all other animals. Yet, it never ignited a revolution or a social protest, even when the monkey was symbolically associated with the discriminated social group within which the monkey trainers were recruited, precisely because the simultaneous presence of the multiplicity of its meaning prevents any communicative clarity. 1Japanese Cherry Blossoms: From the Beauty of Life to the Sublimity of Sacrificial Death chapter abstractThe universe represented by Japanese cherry blossoms is full of paradoxes that become a generative power operating at both individual and collective level—simultaneously subverting and upholding the cultural and societal structure. Cherry blossom viewing is an arena for developing the collective identity of various social groups, and ultimately, the Japanese as a whole. All, including the self, are beautiful. When the Japanese military state foregrounded the symbolism of cherry blossoms to represent the sacrifice for Japan, hardly anyone, including the soldiers, recognized the change. The Japanese cherry blossoms offer an excellent example of how multiple meanings of a symbol and their aesthetic contribute to the ambiguity and opacity of communication through symbols. 2European Roses: From "Bread and Roses" to the Aesthetization of Murderers chapter abstractLike Japanese cherry blossoms, roses in Western European cultures are assigned a large number of meanings: Christ and the Virgin, birth, death and rebirth, love, beauty, life, joy and sorrow. As an important symbol of the common people against the establishment, the rose occupied a central place in the May Day festivals in medieval Europe, later leading to its role in the festival of the French Revolution. At the end of the nineteenth century, it became the symbol of the Socialist International. The rose as an important symbol of love and comradeship among workers was then used and abused to portray the dictator—Stalin and Hitler in particular—as the benevolent "Father" who loves the people. This flower is another example of how aesthetic and multiple meanings lead to the opacity of the message, preventing people to see the thorns behind the beauty. 3The Subversive Monkey in Japanese Culture: From Scapegoat to Clown chapter abstractAs the animal considered closest to humans, the monkey is an important symbol in Japanese culture. Its symbolism consists of three major themes: mediator, scapegoat, and clown, each acquiring a dominant meaning in a particular historical period, but all three always constituting a palimpsest. As expressed in the monkey performance, its symbolism involves a subversive element—against the stratification in medieval times, against militarism at the height of Japan's imperial aggression, defiance against a social superior, and questioning the throne on which humans sit, ruling over all other animals. Yet, it never ignited a revolution or a social protest, even when the monkey was symbolically associated with the discriminated social group within which the monkey trainers were recruited, precisely because the simultaneous presence of the multiplicity of its meaning prevents any communicative clarity. 4Rice and the Japanese Collective Self: Purity of Exclusion chapter abstractAs the animal considered closest to humans, the monkey is an important symbol in Japanese culture. Its symbolism consists of three major themes: mediator, scapegoat, and clown, each acquiring a dominant meaning in a particular historical period, but all three always constituting a palimpsest. As expressed in the monkey performance, its symbolism involves a subversive element—against the stratification in medieval times, against militarism at the height of Japan's imperial aggression, defiance against a social superior, and questioning the throne on which humans sit, ruling over all other animals. Yet, it never ignited a revolution or a social protest, even when the monkey was symbolically associated with the discriminated social group within which the monkey trainers were recruited, precisely because the simultaneous presence of the multiplicity of its meaning prevents any communicative clarity. 5The Collective Self and Cultural/Political Nationalisms: Cross-Cultural Perspectives chapter abstractAs the animal considered closest to humans, the monkey is an important symbol in Japanese culture. Its symbolism consists of three major themes: mediator, scapegoat, and clown, each acquiring a dominant meaning in a particular historical period, but all three always constituting a palimpsest. As expressed in the monkey performance, its symbolism involves a subversive element—against the stratification in medieval times, against militarism at the height of Japan's imperial aggression, defiance against a social superior, and questioning the throne on which humans sit, ruling over all other animals. Yet, it never ignited a revolution or a social protest, even when the monkey was symbolically associated with the discriminated social group within which the monkey trainers were recruited, precisely because the simultaneous presence of the multiplicity of its meaning prevents any communicative clarity. 6The Invisible and Inaudible Japanese Emperor chapter abstractAs the animal considered closest to humans, the monkey is an important symbol in Japanese culture. Its symbolism consists of three major themes: mediator, scapegoat, and clown, each acquiring a dominant meaning in a particular historical period, but all three always constituting a palimpsest. As expressed in the monkey performance, its symbolism involves a subversive element—against the stratification in medieval times, against militarism at the height of Japan's imperial aggression, defiance against a social superior, and questioning the throne on which humans sit, ruling over all other animals. Yet, it never ignited a revolution or a social protest, even when the monkey was symbolically associated with the discriminated social group within which the monkey trainers were recruited, precisely because the simultaneous presence of the multiplicity of its meaning prevents any communicative clarity. 7(Non-)Externalization of Religious and Political Authority/Power: A Cross-Cultural Perspective chapter abstractAs the animal considered closest to humans, the monkey is an important symbol in Japanese culture. Its symbolism consists of three major themes: mediator, scapegoat, and clown, each acquiring a dominant meaning in a particular historical period, but all three always constituting a palimpsest. As expressed in the monkey performance, its symbolism involves a subversive element—against the stratification in medieval times, against militarism at the height of Japan's imperial aggression, defiance against a social superior, and questioning the throne on which humans sit, ruling over all other animals. Yet, it never ignited a revolution or a social protest, even when the monkey was symbolically associated with the discriminated social group within which the monkey trainers were recruited, precisely because the simultaneous presence of the multiplicity of its meaning prevents any communicative clarity.
£22.49
Stanford University Press Letters to the Contrary
Book SynopsisThis remarkable collection of letters reveals the debate over universal human rights. Prominent mid-twentieth-century intellectuals and leadersincluding Gandhi, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Arnold Schoenbergengaged with the question of universal human rights. Letters to the Contrary presents the foundation of the intellectual struggles and ideological doubts still present in today''s human rights debates. Since its adoption in 1948, historians and human rights scholars have claimed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was influenced by UNESCO''s 194748 global survey of intellectuals, theologians, and cultural and political leaders, that supposedly demonstrated a truly universal consensus on human rights. Based on meticulous archival research, Letters to the Contrary provides a curated history of the UNESCO human rights survey and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary debates over the origins, legitimacy, and universTrade Review"In this clever and timely book, Mark Goodale complicates the presumed universality of human rights, providing an alternative history of the UNESCO process. Besides representing a fabulous archival 'find,' Letters to the Contrary provides vital historical and anthropological analysis to illuminate these texts. This stellar book is novel in its focus on a largely overlooked episode in the history of UNESCO and rights and classic in the sense that rights and internationalism continue to be central to so many disciplines today. Unearthed letters from the likes of Eliot, Auden, Schoenberg, Carr, and Huxley form a veritable who's who of twentieth-century political thought. Lively, eminently readable, and utterly stimulating."—Lynn Meskell, Stanford University"Goodale's superb reconstruction of the history surrounding the UNESCO-sponsored survey of human rights demonstrates perfectly the political and contingent nature of the origins of the international human rights enterprise. It reveals both the centrality of philosophy to that enterprise, and the virtual impossibility of seeking a conception of human rights that is universal in philosophical analysis rather than political compromise."—Philip Alston, New York University"Human rights might survive our age of rupture if we cease to delude ourselves with myth-making about their historical origins. In this outstanding book, Mark Goodale shows unequivocally that the creation moment of 'the age of rights' was in no sense universal at all. Letters to the Contrary makes it impossible to defend the triumphalist vision of the postwar human rights story with the blithe assertion that everybody agreed human rights were now the only game in town."—Stephen Hopgood, SOAS, University of London"All international human rights lawyers concerned with the universality of human rights should read this book. Mark Goodale reveals how human rights comparison and distinction, not identification of a common denominator, were at the core of the UNESCO human rights survey and the resulting examination of the grounds of an international declaration of human rights. Rediscovering a differentiated and culturally sensitive philosophical discussion of human rights is not only humbling, it allows us to hope for reinvigorated universal debate."—Samantha Besson, University of FribourgTable of ContentsHistory: UNESCO in the Paradigmatic Transition Interpretations: From a "Hollow Sham" to a "Plurality of Cultural Values" Memorandum and Questionnaire Circulated by UNESCO on the Theoretical Bases of the Rights of Man The Grounds of an International Declaration of Human Rights Foreword and Introduction to Human Rights, Comments and Interpretations, UNESCO 1949 Liberalism from the Ashes Beyond Egotistic Man: Communist, Socialist, and Social Democratic Challenges Rights in a Sacred Universe The Universal Declaration of Human Duties The Technological Society of the Future Universal Human Rights in a Colonial World Human Rights as History and Practice Specific Freedoms From Repudiation to the Play of Fancy
£91.80
University of Oklahoma Press The Sioux Life and Customs of a Warrior Society
Book SynopsisFor many people the Sioux, as warriors and as buffalo hunters, have become the symbol of all that is Indian. They were the heroes of the Great Plains, and they were the villains, too. Royal Hassrick here attempts to describe the ways of the people, the patterns of their behaviour, and the concepts of their imagination.
£20.66
John Wiley & Sons Historic Contact
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£41.36
John Wiley & Sons Eastern Cherokee Stories A Living Oral Tradition and Its Cultural Continuance
Book SynopsisSandra Muse Isaacs uses the concepts of Gadugi and Duyvkta to explore the Eastern Cherokee oral tradition, and to explain how storytelling in this tradition - as both an ancient and a contemporary literary form - is instrumental in the perpetuation of Cherokee identity and culture.Trade ReviewEastern Cherokee Stories is the most thoroughly contextualized book of Eastern Cherokee narratives to date, with rich Cherokee language information worked in wherever possible. It is a very welcome contribution to Cherokee studies and to the existing collections of Cherokee stories."" - Margaret Bender, author of Signs of Cherokee Culture: Sequoyah's Syllabary in Eastern Cherokee Life
£30.56
MP-OKL Uni of Oklahoma The Search for the First Americans Science Power
Book SynopsisFossil remains from Mesa Verde, Clovis, and other sites testify to the presence of First Americans. What remains unsettled, as The Search for the First Americans makes clear, is not only who these people were, where they came from, and when, but also the very nature and practice of the science searching for answers.
£17.06
University of Missouri Press Race and State 2 Collected Works of Eric Voegelin
Book SynopsisFirst published in 1933, this study on race and state was motivated by the rise of National Socialism in Germany. It analyzes contemporary race theories and traces the rise of the modern race idea, analyzing why race ideas became successful in Germany.Trade ReviewThe best historical account of race-thinking in the pattern of a `history of ideas." —Hannah Arendt from Origins of Totalitarianism
£52.20
Northwestern University Press The Anthropology of Music
Book SynopsisThis is a comprehensive approach to music from the point of view of anthropology. The author maintains that ethnomusicology, by definition, must not divorce the sound-analysis of music from its cultural context of people thinking, acting, and creating.Trade ReviewFor the broad perspective it provides of man as music-maker, as also for the lucid résumé of past and present appraoches to this subject which it presents, Merriam's new book should, I think, be treated as essential reading both within the social sciences and the humanities." —Man"With great thoroughness, Merriam has pointed out to anthropologists how much they can contribute to our general knowledge of music as human experience." —American Anthropologist"...Merriam's book, seen from the viewpoint of anthropology, is deserving of the highest respect." —Ethnomusicology"With great thoroughness, Merriam has pointed out to anthropologists how much they can contribute to our general knowledge of music as human experience." —David P. McAllester, Wesleyan University American Anthropologist 1965-04-15
£23.96
Northwestern University Press Siberia Siberia
Book SynopsisThis work offers an account of the Russians' 400 years of experience in Siberia. Rasputin looks at the the peculiar physical and character traits of the Siberian Russian type, and at the gap between dreams and reality that have plagued Russians in Siberia.
£18.36
Northwestern University Press Hegels Anthropology
Book SynopsisThis book provides a critical analysis of Hegel's Anthropology, a long-neglected treatise dedicated to the psyche, or soul, that bridges Hegel's philosophy of organic nature with his philosophy of subjective spirit. Allegra de Laurentiis recuperates this overlooked text, guiding readers through its essential arguments and ideas. She shows how Hegel conceives of the sublation of natural motion, first into animal sentience and then into the felt presentiment of selfhood, all the way to the threshold of self-reflexive thinking. She discusses the Anthropology in the context of Hegel's mature system of philosophy (the Encyclopaedia) while also exposing some of the scientific and philosophical sources of his conceptions of unconscious states, psychosomatism, mental pathologies, skill formation, memorization, bodily habituation, and the self-conditioning capacities of our species. This treatise on the becoming of anthropos, she argues, displays the power and limitations of Hegel's idealistiTable of Contents Abbreviations Preface Introduction: Spirit’s Humble Beginnings 1. On the character of Hegel’s text 2. Text and Context Chapter 1. Aristotelian Roots 1. On unraveling the sense of psuche 2. Hylomorphism 3. The real unity of the Cartesian man 4. Return to the roots: being-soul Chapter 2. Life, or die Weltseele 1. Nature exceeds itself 2. Goethe’s UrphÄnomen 3. Hegel’s Urteil 4. Natural spirit Chapter 3. False Enigmas and Real Beginnings 1. Mind-body conundrums and the meaning of Idealism 2. The soul begins as world-soul (kosmos zoon empsuchon) Chapter 4. Animal Life, or das tierische Subjekt 1. The strange case of the human soul 2. One genealogy, many races 3. From Enlightenment to Reaction: Johann Blumenbach to James Hunt Chapter 5. No Longer Just Animal Life 1. The soul of peoples 2. Kinship and the individual: disposition, temperament, character 3. Kinship and the individual: age, sexuality and the patterns of life Chapter 6. Premonitions of Selfhood, or die ahnende Seele 1. Organic sensibility and psyche’s sentience 2. From sentience to self-feeling: a matrix for the ego 3. The monadic soul: on dreaming, fetal life and hypnosis Chapter 7. Disorders 1. Healthy and diseased schisms of the soul 2. Leading a twofold life: on double genii and bipolar magnets 3. Out-of-joint times and inner derangement Conclusion. Inhabiting the World, or die Gewohnheit 1. Spirit builds itself a home 2. On divine sparks, unnatural freedom, and other human matters Notes Bibliography Index
£89.10
University of Pennsylvania Press Metaphors of Masculinity
Book Synopsis
£21.59
University of Pennsylvania Press Between Theater and Anthropology
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Fascinating for anyone seriously interested in human behavior, full of ideas that lead us to reexamine our thinking about all performances, from the most dramatic to the most seemingly trivial." * New York Times *
£25.19
University of Pennsylvania Press Storytellers Saints and Scoundrels
Book SynopsisSwamiji, a Hindu holy man, is the central character of Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels. He reclines in a deck chair in his modern apartment in western India, telling subtle and entertaining folk narratives to his assorted gatherings. Among the listeners is Kirin Narayan, who knew Swamiji when she was a child in India and who has returned from America as an anthropologist. In her book Narayan builds on Swamiji''s tales and his audiences'' interpretations to ask why religious teachings the world over are so often couched in stories.For centuries, religious teachers from many traditions have used stories to instruct their followers. When Swamiji tells a story, the local barber rocks in helpless laughter, and a sari-wearing French nurse looks on enrapt. Farmers make decisions based on the tales, and American psychotherapists take notes that link the storytelling to their own practices. Narayan herself is a key character in this ethnography. As both a local woman and a Trade Review"This volume is beautifully written, is a delightful read, is theoretically sophisticated, yet presents a rich human portrait of the ethnographer and her informant. Most important, we learn a great deal about folktales, Indian gurus, and India." * Anthropology Newsletter *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments A Note on Transliteration Introduction I. ORIENTATIONS 1. There's Always a Reason 2. Lives and Stories 3. Sadhus 4. The Listeners II. STORYTELLING OCCASIONS 5. Loincloths and Celibacy 6. False Gurus and Gullible Disciples 7. Death and Laughter 8. Heaven and Hell 9. The Divine Storyteller III. CONCLUSIONS 10. The World of the Stories 11. Storytelling as Religious Teaching Epilogue Appendices 1. Glossary of Commonly Used Hindi Terms 2. Map of India Notes Bibliography Index
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University of Pennsylvania Press Beyond the Second Sex
Book SynopsisAddresses the conflict, contradictions and ambiguities that are often encountered in field research.Trade Review"It realizes with distinction the promise of its subtitle to provide 'new directions in the anthropology of gender.'" * Times Higher Education Supplement *
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University of Pennsylvania Press Infertility and Patriarchy
Book SynopsisTrade Review"An extremely impressive book. It not only contributes to our theoretical understanding of the interaction of class, patriarchy, culture, and reproduction but it has important policy implications for improving the lives of infertile Egyptian women. As research on gender in the Middle East proliferates, this work is a symbol of the wisdom of disaggregating our understanding of 'women.'" * International Journal of Middle East Studies *"By exploring the consequences of childlessness, Inhorn offers important insights for demographers and others interested in understanding the desire for and meaning of children." * Studies in Family Planning *
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University of Pennsylvania Press The Object of Memory
Book Synopsis"Well researched and written with passion and elegance."-International Journal of Middle East StudiesTrade Review"Well researched and written with passion and elegance." * International Journal of Middle East Studies *
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University of Pennsylvania Press The Steelband Movement
Book SynopsisThe Steelband Movement examines the dramatic transformation of pan from a Carnival street music into a national art and symbol in Trinidad and Tobago. By focusing on pan as a cultural process, Stephen Stuempfle demonstrates how the struggles and achievements of the steelband movement parallel the problems and successes of building a nation. Stuempfle explores the history of the steelband from its emergence around 1940 as an assemblage of diverse metal containers to today's immense orchestra of high-precision instruments with bell-like tones. Drawing on interviews with different generations of pan musicians (including the earliest), a wide array of archival material, and field observations, the author traces the growth of the movement in the context of the grass-roots uprisings of the 1930s and 1940s, the American presence in Trinidad in World War II, the nationalist movement of the postwar period, the aftermath of independence from Britain in 1962, the Black Power protests and the oiTable of ContentsMaps Preface Introduction 1. Festive and Musical Traditions in Trinidad 2. The Emergence of the Steelband: The 1930s and 1940s 3. The Institutionalization of the Steelband: The 1940s and 1950s 4. The Steelband in the Post-Independence Era: The 1960s and 1970s 5. The Steelband in Contemporary Trinidad and Tobago 6. The Steelband: Cultural Creativity and the Construction of Identities Suggested Listening Notes Bibliography Index
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University of Pennsylvania Press A Different Kind of War Story
Book SynopsisA Different Kind of War Story takes us to the frontlines of one of the most brutal wars in recent history. The setting is Mozambique during the fifteen-year war of terror that took a million lives—mostly civilian—and completely destroyed homes, crops, hospitals, schools, and even access to water. The characters are the soldiers who fought it, the thieves and opportunists who profited from it, and the ordinary people whose lives were shattered by it and from whose ranks emerged the heroes and healers who created peace.Combining contemporary theory and innovative methodology, Nordstrom explores the nature and culture of terror warfare and raises thought-provoking questions about state power, civilian resistance, and the politics of identity. She compares the conflict in Mozambique with similar conflicts and offers a new way of looking at political violence, showing that just as violence is learned, it can be unlearned.Trade Review"A deeply researched study into the nature of political violence."-Journal of Contemporary African Studies
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University of Pennsylvania Press Renaissance Culture and the Everyday
Book SynopsisIn Renaissance Culture and the Everyday, scholars illuminate the sometimes surprising issues at stake in such common matters of daily life as mirrors, books, horses, money, laundry baskets, graffiti, embroidery, and food during the Renaissance in England and on the Continent.Trade Review"A lively and illuminating collection of essays that extends the recent trend away from a concentration on structures of state power and religious authority and toward the domestic, the local, and the ordinary. But the ordinary, in the skillful analyses brought together in this volume, proves to be extraordinarily charged with conflict, strangeness, and dramatic intensity. Fumerton and Hunt have assembled some of the most interesting voices in Renaissance studies today." * Stephen Greenblatt *
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University of Pennsylvania Press Beyond Kinship
Book Synopsis"Skillfully edited by Joyce and Gillespie, the volume Beyond Kinship illustrates the breadth of investigations into history, people, and place that Levi Strauss's formulation makes possible."-Current AnthropologyTrade Review"An impressive set of papers that must be read by everyone concerned with integrating material objects into their analyses of complex cognitive aspects of culture. This sublime collection reflects the cutting edge of a mature discipline." * Journal of American Folklore *"Lévi-Strauss's latter-day thinking on houses and house societies offers an antikinship kinship theory that puts a new slant on time, family, and hierarchy. Skillfully edited by Joyce and Gillespie, the volume Beyond Kinship illustrates the breadth of investigations into history, people, and place that Lévi Strauss's formulation makes possible." * Current Anthropology *Table of ContentsContents and Contributors Foreword —Clark E. Cunningham Opening Up the House: An Introduction —Susan D. Gillespie Lévi-Strauss: Maison and Société Maisons —Susan D. Gillespie Toponymic Groups and House Organization Among the Nahuas of Northern Veracruz, Mexico —Alan R. Sandstrom Transformations of Nuu-chah-nulth Houses —Yvonne Marshall Temples as "Holy Houses": The Transformation of Ritual Architecture in Traditional Polynesian Societies —Patrick V. Kirch The Continuous House: A View from the Deep Past —Ruth Tringham Maya "Nested Houses": The Ritual Construction of Place —Susan D. Gillespie The Tanimbarese Tavu: The Ideology of Growth and the Material Configurations of Hierarchy in an Indonesian Society —Susan McKinnon House, Place, and Memory in Tana Toraja (Indonesia) —Roxana Waterson Heirlooms and Houses: Materiality and Social Memory —Rosemary A. Joyce
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University of Pennsylvania Press Hosay Trinidad
Book Synopsis"Hosay Trinidad contributes substantially to the anthropology of contemporary identity politics as well as to the study of 'boundaries' which has come to play a key role in important new lines of scholarship across the social sciences."-AnthroposTrade Review"Hosay Trinidad should be considered a great publishing achievement. It is a livre de chevet, a must for scholars of Caribbean studies, anthropology, and the performing arts." * History of Religions *"Hosay Trinidad contributes substantially to the anthropology of contemporary identity politics as well as to the study of 'boundaries' which has come to play a key role in important new lines of scholarship across the social sciences." * Anthropos *"The book is free of jargon and recommended for anyone with an interest in contemporary interreligious issues, the possibilities within local Islamic cultures . . . , and questions of identity formation in a multicultural and multireligious society." * Religious Studies Review *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations A Note on Orthography Introduction 1. Orientations and Overview 2. Muharram Rituals in Iran: Past and Present 3. The Passage of Rites to South Asia 4. Onward to the Caribbean 5. Building the Tadjah, Constructing Community 6. Conclusion: Maintenance and Transformation via Cultural Creolization 7. Epilogue Notes Glossary Bibliography Index Acknowledgments
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University of Pennsylvania Press Fire in the Placa
Book Synopsis"This impressive contribution to the anthropology of Europe is the first full-length study in English of the Patum, a Corpus Christi fire festival unique to the town of Berga, in the foothills of the Catalan Pyrenees (Spain). It also marks the emergence of an important scholar... Highly recommended."-ChoiceTrade Review"An excellent model of how to approach the analysis of principal communities, in Europe and elsewhere, that are struggling to overcome internal conflicts and contradictions and find acceptable ways of participating in a wider, increasingly globalized world." * South European Society and Politics *"This impressive contribution to the anthropology of Europe is the first full-length study in English of the Patum, a Corpus Christi fire festival unique to the town of Berga, in the foothills of the Catalan Pyrenees (Spain). It also marks the emergence of an important scholar. Noyes combines that rarity-well-crafted and accessible prose-with a theoretical architecture that borrows from hermeneutics and the anthropology of power. . . . Highly recommended." * Choice *"This book stands above other festival studies in its ability not only to convey information but also, of equal importance, to recreate the emotional texture of events for performers and audience alike. . . . This book is a must." * Journal of American Folklore *Table of ContentsA Note on Catalonia and the Catalan Language Introduction PART I. REPRESENTING THE FESTIVAL Chapter 1. Between Representation and Presence: The Onlooker Problem Chapter 2. The Patum and the Body Politic PART II. PERSONIFICATION AND INCORPORATION Chapter 3. The Gaze and the Touch: Personhood and Belonging in Everyday Life Chapter 4. The Patum Effigies: Attitudes Personified Chapter 5. The Techniques of Incorporation PART III. UNDER FRANCO: THE OEDIPAL PATUM Chapter 6. Return to the Womb Chapter 7. The Eye of the Father Chapter 8. The New Generation PART IV. THE MASS AND THE OUTSIDE: "THE PATUM WILL BE OURS NO LONGER" Chapter 9. Consumption and the Limits of Metaphor Chapter 10. Reproduction and Reduction Chapter 11. The Patum in Spain and the World Notes References Index Acknowledgments
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University of Pennsylvania Press Karaoke Fascism
Book SynopsisTo come to Burma, one of the few places where despotism still dominates, is to take both a physical and an emotional journey and, like most Burmese, to become caught up in the daily management of fear. Based on Monique Skidmore''s experiences living in the capital city of Rangoon, Karaoke Fascism is the first ethnography of fear in Burma and provides a sobering look at the psychological strategies employed by the Burmese people in order to survive under a military dictatorship that seeks to invade and dominate every aspect of life.Skidmore looks at the psychology and politics of fear under the SLORC and SPDC regimes. Encompassing the period of antijunta student street protests, her work describes a project of authoritarian modernity, where Burmese people are conscripted as army porters and must attend mass rallies, chant slogans, construct roads, and engage in other forms of forced labor. In a harrowing portrayal of life deep within an authoritarian state, recovering hTrade Review"Skidmore captures perfectly how even the passing visitor to Burma absorbs the atmosphere of fear and internalises the vulnerability and precariousness of a life under a military dictatorship. It is rare for an academic work to be so captivating." * Australian Journal of Anthropology *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface 1. Rangoon: End of Strife 2. Bombs, Barricades, and the Urban Battlefield 3. Darker Than Midnight: Fear, Vulnerability, and Terror-Making 4. Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Cigar 5. The Veneer of Modernity 6. The Veneer of Conformity 7. The Tension of Absurdity 8. Fragments of Misery: The People of the New Fields 9. The Forest of Time 10. Going to Sleep with Karaoke Culture Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments
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University of Pennsylvania Press The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco
Book SynopsisThe Performance of Human Rights in Morocco is a unique distillation of politics, anthropology, and performance, offering both a clear picture of the present state of human rights and a vision of a possible future for public protest and dissidence in Morocco.Trade Review"An important contribution to scholarship on an area of the world that receives relatively little attention . . . as well as an important contribution to what is fast becoming a fifth subfield for anthropology: legal anthropology." * Journal of Folklore Research *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Chapter 1: Law and Custom Chapter 2: Disappearance Chapter 3: Prison Chapter 4: The 1981 Casablanca Uprising and Its Aftermath Chapter 5: Rani nimhik: Women and Testimony Chapter 6: Islamist Political Prisoners Chapter 7: Hatta la yatakarrar hadha: Never This Again Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments
£999.99
University of Pennsylvania Press Female Circumcision
Book SynopsisBolokoli, khifad, tahara, tahoor, qudiin, irua, bondo, kuruna, negekorsigin, and kene-kene are a few of the terms used in local African languages to denote a set of cultural practices collectively known as female circumcision. Practiced in many countries across Africa and Asia, this ritual is hotly debated. Supporters regard it as a central coming-of-age ritual that ensures chastity and promotes fertility. Human rights groups denounce the procedure as barbaric. It is estimated that between 100 million and 130 million girls and women today have undergone forms of this genital surgery.Female Circumcision gathers together African activists to examine the issue within its various cultural and historical contexts, the debates on circumcision regarding African refugee and immigrant populations in the United States, and the human rights efforts to eradicate the practice. This work brings African women''s voiTrade Review"Abusharaf's integrated collection of articles presents current international, cultural, and ideological debates as well as accounts of campaigns against the practices in several countries in Africa and of their impact in Europe and North America. . . . A provocative book, clearly written for both general and scholarly audiences." * American Ethnologist *Table of Contents1. Introduction: The Custom in Question —Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf PART I: LOCAL CONTEXTS AND CURRENT DEBATES 2. "Had This Been Your Face, Would You leave It as Is?" Female Circumcision Among Nubians of Egypt —Fadwa El Guindi 3. Male and Female Circumcision: The Myth of the Difference —Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh PART II: AFRICAN CAMPAIGNS TO ERADICATE FEMALE CIRCUMCISION 4. Community-Based Efforts to End Female Genital Mutilation in Kenya: Raising Awareness and Organizing Alternative Rites of Passage —Asha Mohamud, Samson Radeny, and Karin Ringheim 5. A Community of Women Empowered: The Story of Deir Al Barsha —Amal Abdel Hadi 6. Strategies for Encouraging the Abandonment of Female Genital Cutting: Experiences from Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Mali —Nafissatou J. Diop and Ian Askew 7. The Sudanese National Committee on the Eradication of Harmful Traditional Practices and the Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation —Hamid El Bashir 8. The Babiker Badri Scientific Association for Women's Studies and the Eradication of Female Circumcision in the Sudan —Shahira Ahmed 9. "My Grandmother Called It the Three Feminine Sorrows": The Struggle of Women Against Female Circumcision in Somalia —Raqiya D. Abdalla PART III: DEBATES IN IMMIGRANT-RECEIVING SOCIETIES 10. The Double-Edged Sword: Using Criminal Law Against Female Genital Mutilation —Audrey Macklin 11. Representing Africa in the Kasinga Asylum Case —Charles Piot 12. Afterword: Safe Harbor and Homage —L. Amede Obiora Notes List of References List of Contributors Index Acknowledgments
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University of Pennsylvania Press Shattered Voices
Book SynopsisFollowing periods of mass atrocity and oppression, states are faced with a question of critical importance in the transition to democracy: how to offer redress to victims of the old regime without perpetuating cycles of revenge. Traditionally, balance has been restored through arrests, trials, and punishment, but in the last three decades, more than twenty countries have opted to have a truth commission investigate the crimes of the prior regime and publish a report about the investigation, often incorporating accounts from victims.Although many praise the work of truth commissions for empowering and healing through words rather than violence, some condemn the practice as a poor substitute for traditional justice, achieved through trials and punishment. There has been until now little analysis of the unarticulated claim that underlies the truth commissions'' very existence: that language—in this case narrative stories—can substitute for violence. Acknowledging revTrade Review"If you want peace, you must work for justice. Teresa Phelps presents challenging and provocative ideas of justice and explains what truth commissions can and cannot do as vital parts of the justice process. Building on works of literature, philosophy, psychology, and history, as well as on the language of the truth reports themselves, she breaks new ground for understanding what we must do in our continual quest for justice." * Theodore M. Hesburgh, author of The Humane Imperative *"This vivid and moving book will help shape the emerging form of truth commissions in many places around the world." * James Boyd White, author of The Edge of Meaning *
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University of Pennsylvania Press Feminist Anthropology
Book SynopsisFeminist Anthropology probes critical issues in the study of gender, sex, and sexuality. While feminist anthropology is often perceived as fragmented, this vital new work establishes common ground and situates feminist inquiries within the larger context of social theory and anthropological practice.Table of ContentsForeword. Taking stock—the transformation of feminist theorizing in anthropology Introduction. Feminist anthropology: perspectives on our past, present, and future 1. The future of gender or the end of a brilliant career? 2. Feminist theories of embodiment and anthropological imagination: making bodies matter 3. Gender, genes, and the evolution of human birth 4. Marriage, matrifocality, and "missing" men 5. Archaeologists, feminists, and queers: sexual politics in the construction of the past 6. In the midst of the moving waters: material, metaphor, and feminist archaeology 7. Materiality and social change in the practice of feminist anthropology. 8. Feminist perspectives and the teaching of archaeology: implications from the inadvertent ethnography of the classroom 9. Toward a (more) feminist pedagogy in biological anthropology: ethnographic reflections and classroom strategies 10. The professional is political Afterword: on waves
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University of Pennsylvania Press Young and Defiant in Tehran
Book SynopsisIn this ethnography of contemporary youth culture in Iran's capital, Shahram Khosravi examines the practices of everyday life through which young Tehranis demonstrate defiance against the official culture and the parental generation.Trade Review"A lively and rich text for anybody interested in youth culture, urban and popular cultures, cultural politics, Muslim cultures, and Middle East studies. Shahram Khosravi defies popular images of dull Iranian culture and introduces vibrant features of Tehran life and cultural negotiations. The book successfully engages and uniquely contributes to ongoing debates about Islam, modernity, culture, urban spaces, and resistance." * Anthropological Quarterly *Table of ContentsNote on Transliteration and Dates Preface Introduction 1: Cultural Crimes 2: The Aesthetics of Authority 3: A Dissident Neighborhood 4: A Passage to Modernity: Golestan 5: The Third Generation 6: Culture of Defiance Conclusion Coda Notes Glossary Bibliography Index Acknowledgments
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University of Pennsylvania Press Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern
Book SynopsisThe Samburu of northern Kenya struggle to maintain their pastoral way of life as drought and the side effects of globalization threaten both their livestock and their livelihood. Mirroring this divide between survival and ruin are the lines between the self and the other, the living and the dead, this side and inia bata, that side. Cultural anthropologist Bilinda Straight, who has lived with the Samburu for extended periods since the 1990s, bears witness to Samburu life and death in Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya.Written mostly in the field, Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya is the first book-length ethnography completely devoted to Samburu divinity and belief. Here, child prophets recount their travels to heaven and back. Others report transformations between persons and inanimate objects. Spirit turns into action and back again. The miraculous is interwoven with the mundane as the Samburu continue their dayTrade Review"An engaging, provocative intervention in cultural theory." * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *"Straight's . . . work reminds the reader of the important ways that theory and ethnography can mutually inform and illuminate, and the book is an important contribution to the existing literature for both area specialist and the theoretically inclined." * American Anthropologist *Table of ContentsList of Figures Author's Note Chapter One: Experience Chapter Two: Signs Chapter Three: Nkai Chapter Four: Latukuny Chapter Five: N'goki Chapter Six: Death Chapter Seven: Resurrection Chapter Eight: Loip Chapter Nine: Conclusion Glossary Notes Appendices Bibliography Index
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University of Pennsylvania Press Women of Fes Ambiguities of Urban Life in
Book SynopsisBased on extensive fieldwork, Women of Fes shows how Moroccan women create their own forms of identity through work, family, and society. The book also examines how women's lives are positioned vis-a-vis globalization, human rights, and the construction of national identity.Trade Review"An outstanding contribution of Muslim world anthropology and gender studies; a careful ethnographic work attuned to large-scale forces and their capillary saturation of daily social arrangements and innovations. It very skillfully draws on canonical studies of Morocco (e.g., Abdellah Hammoudi on patriarchy, André Adam on class, Hildred Geertz on kinship, and Fatima Mernissi on gender) to fully contextualize her own luminous ethnography." * American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences *"No one reading this book will doubt that the author has lived up to her aim of making available nuanced portraits of a variety of Muslim women, sensitively and multivocally conveyed, in a domain of literature still dominated by stereotypes of "the oppressed Muslim woman." * American Ethnologist *"Newcomb's insightful and engaging book contributes to an important, but neglected area of scholarship, ethnography of the urban middle class. It demonstrates that Fassi middle-class women, like members of the middle class elsewhere, are actively reconstituting space, identity and community, as they embrace the tension between the order an chaos of modernity, while maintaining strands of continuity between a dissipating past and an imagined future. It constitutes an important resource for students and scholars of anthropology, gender studies and Middle East studies." * Journal of Islamic Studies *"An engaging and very well written study of women and gender change in contemporary Morocco. Employing the narratives of Fassi women, the reader is led into a nuanced world where women consciously try to embrace, and thereby create, their own forms of modernity." * Deborah Kapchan, New York University *Table of ContentsNotes on Transliteration Chapter One: Introduction: Women of Fes and the Territories of Ideology Chapter Two: Rumors: Constructing Fes Chapter Three: Mudawana Reform and the Persistence of Patriarchy Chapter Four: Solidarity with Distinctions: The Limits of Intervention at a Fassi Nongovernmental Organization Chapter Five: Kinship: Seeking Sanctuary in the City Chapter Six: Occupying the Public: New Forms of Gendered Urban Space Chapter Seven: Singing to So Many Audiences Chapter Eight: Conclusion: Community, Chaos, and Continuity Glossary Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments
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University of Pennsylvania Press Along an African Border
Book SynopsisThe divination baskets of south Central Africa are woven for a specific purpose. The baskets, known as lipele, contain sixty or so small articles, from seeds, claws, and minuscule horns to wooden carvings. Each article has its own name and symbolic meaning, and collectively they are known as jipelo. For the Luvale and related peoples, the lipele is more than a container of souvenirs; it is a tool, a source of crucial information from the ancestral past and advice for the future.In Along an African Border, anthropologist Sónia Silva examines how Angolan refugees living in Zambia use these divination baskets to cope with daily life in a new land. Silva documents the special processes involved in weaving the baskets and transforming them into oracles. She speaks with diviners who make their living interpreting lipele messages and speaks also with their knowledge-seeking clients. To the Luvale, these baskets are capable of thinking, hearinTrade Review"Silva's close study makes a valuable addition to the growing repertoire of ethnographic accounts of divination in Africa and the peoples who continue to invoke it as a pivotal cultural institution. . . . It is a tightly woven work that parallels the craftsmanship that Silva details in her study of divinatory baskets." * History of Religions *"With great originality, [Silva] accesses the life stories of these human subjects through the material objects with which they (inter-)relate. . . . Silva provides a stimulating model for any researcher hoping to partner with individuals in their efforts to confront the myriad ways they are objectified, whether by circumstances, by the state, or by scholarship." * Journal of Religion in Africa *"In addition to a useful debate between the economics and business awareness approach, or the personification of ritual, this book contains very useful and detailed descriptions of basket divination rituals and Angolan basket weaving techniques that will be useful to the general reader and students of African studies." * Journal of American Academy of Religion *"A thought-provoking study of the dynamics of divination in a refugee population seeking stability in a disrupted world through an ancient and effective 'way of knowing.' Using the frame of a divination basket's life history from birth to adulthood, Silva provides a rich contextual study of the various paths to understanding presented by the core cultural institution of divination: material culture and art, economic theory, gender relations, the nature of knowledge, ethnography, jurisprudence, and personhood." * Philip M. Peek, Drew University *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Birth Chapter 2. Initiation Chapter 3. Adulthood Conclusion: A Way of Living Glossary Works Cited Index Acknowledgments
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University of Pennsylvania Press On the Move for Love
Book SynopsisSince the Korean War, gijichon—U.S. military camp towns—have been fixtures in South Korea. The most popular entertainment venues in gijichon are clubs, attracting military clientele with duty-free alcohol, music, shows, and women entertainers. In the 1990s, South Korea''s rapid economic advancement, combined with the stigma and low pay attached to this work, led to a shortage of Korean women willing to serve American soldiers. Club owners brought in cheap labor, predominantly from the Philippines and ex-Soviet states, to fill the vacancies left by Korean women. The increasing presence of foreign workers has precipitated new conversations about modernity, nationalism, ethnicity, and human rights in South Korea. International NGOs, feminists, and media reports have identified women migrant entertainers as victims of sex trafficking, insisting that their plight is one of forced prostitution.Are women who travel to work in such clubs victims of traffickiTrade Review"One of the best, most nuanced books I have read on militarized prostitution and sex trafficking. . . . Sealing Cheng successfully contrasts the thought-provoking individual stories of Filipino entertainers in South Korea (and their motives, resistance, and experiences) with the structural, rhetorical, and sometimes well-meaning impediments to migration, security, and a better life." * Meredith Ralston, Human Rights Quarterly *"On the Move for Love vividly captures the intimate dialogues, rigorously challenges the established conceptual frameworks, and powerfully demonstrates the complexity of the lives of women who continuously hope for a better future. . . . A welcome addition to the field." * American Anthropologist *"Cheng has struck the perfect balance between depicting the exploitation, pain, frustration, and sorrow experienced by the women in gijichon and the experiences that illustrate women's choices, hopes, strategies, good humor, and overall humanity." * Nicole Constable, University of Pittsburgh *"A head-spinning, richly detailed, and fiercely original account of migrant Filipina entertainers in Korea. Sealing Cheng's rich ethnography captures migrant subjects who are also desiring subjects; romance as a mode of agency; and "projects of aspiration" as well as 'projects of need.' Deft and nuanced, embracing contradiction, and brave in honoring Filipinas' "dreams of flight", this book is absorbing, moving, and a great read. Destined to become a classic in gender/sexuality studies, migration, ethnography, and global South courses." * Carole S. Vance, Columbia University *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Angel Club PART I. SETTING THE STAGE Chapter 1. Sexing the Globe PART II. LABORERS OF LOVE Vignette I. A Gijichon Tour in 2000 Chapter 2. "Foreign" and "Fallen" in South Korea Chapter 3. Women Who Hope PART III. TRANSNATIONAL WOMEN FROM BELOW Vignette II. A Day in Gijichon, December 1999 Chapter 4. The Club Regime and Club-Girl Power Chapter 5. Love "between My Heart and My Head" PART IV. HOME IS WHERE ONE IS NOT Vignette III. Disparate Paths: The Migrant Woman and the NGO Chapter 6. At Home in Exile Chapter 7. "Giving Value to the Voices" Chapter 8. Hop, Leap, and Swerve—or Hope in Motion Appendices Notes References Index Acknowledgments
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University of Pennsylvania Press Rituals of Ethnicity Thangmi Identities Between
Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive ethnography of the Thangmi, a marginalized community who migrate between Himalayan border zones, Rituals of Ethnicity explores Thangmi cultural worlds and regional political histories to offer a new explanation for the persistence of enduring ethnic identities despite the realities of mobile, hybrid lives.Trade Review"Theoretically informed (but never pompous), attractively and clearly written (but not overwritten), ethnographically grounded (but never boring), multi-sited and boundary-crossing, politically aware, engaged, and reflexive, Sara Shneiderman's ethnographic monograph makes a significant, indeed brilliant, intervention in Himalayan anthropology, one that is (or ought to be) just as relevant for specialists of India as it is for scholars of Nepal." * David Gellner, in Pacific Affairs *"An entirely unique and stunning ethnography. Shneiderman finds herself assisting the Thangmi's drive to manifest their distinctiveness and seek recognition. She manages a high-wire performance herself: one full of compassion, acute theoretical insight, exemplary balance, and respect for the sacredness of the quest-doing as much credit to ethnography as a craft as to the Thangmi as a people. Few have been as fortunate in their ethnographer as the Thangmi." * James C. Scott, Yale University *"Brilliant and original, Rituals of Ethnicity traces how identity, ethnicity, and indigeneity are constructed by members of a marginalized group within different state structures. Arguing for the importance of often self-conscious rituals for mobilizing and objectifying ethnicity, Shneiderman shows how anthropology too can be marshaled for this project, recasting ethnography as a variety of ritualized performance." * Kirin Narayan, Australian National University *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations Preface Chapter 1. Of Rocks and Rivers—Being Both at Once Chapter 2. Framing, Practicing, and Performing Ethnicity Chapter 3. Origin Myths and Myths of Originality Chapter 4. Circular Migration, Circular Economies of Belonging and Citizenship Chapter 5. Developing Associations of Ethnicity and Class Chapter 6. Transcendent Territory, Portable Deities, and the Problem of Indigeneity Chapter 7. The Work of Life-Cycle Rituals and the Power of Parallel Descent Chapter 8. Resisting the End of a Ritual Epilogue: Thami ke ho?—What Is Thami? Glossary Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments
£25.19
University of Pennsylvania Press Culture and PTSD
Book SynopsisSince the 1970s, understanding of the effects of trauma, including flashbacks and withdrawal, has become widespread in the United States. As a result Americans can now claim that the phrase posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is familiar even if the American Psychiatric Association''s criteria for diagnosis are not. As embedded as these ideas now are in the American mindset, however, they are more widely applicable, this volume attempts to show, than is generally recognized. The essays in Culture and PTSD trace how trauma and its effects vary across historical and cultural contexts.Culture and PTSD examines the applicability of PTSD to other cultural contexts and details local responses to trauma and the extent they vary from PTSD as defined in the American Psychiatric Association''s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Investigating responses in Peru, Indonesia, Haiti, and Native American communities as well as among combat veterans, domestic abuse victimsTrade Review"This book should be compulsory reading for all civilian and military mission advisors and mentors." * Journal of Global South Studies *"Stress and trauma have become part of globalized languages of suffering and healing and the construct of PTSD is at the center of this discourse. The editors have brought together a stellar group of contributors who present historical and ethnographic studies that unpack some of the complexity of trauma response and PTSD to show the interplay of social contexts, cultural practices, and psychological processes. Culture and PTSD marks important advances in cultural psychiatry and will be richly rewarding for both researchers and mental health practitioners." * Laurence J. Kirmayer, McGill University *"Culture and PTSD is a wonderful, rich, exciting book that raises and sometimes answers critical questions at the juncture of anthropology and the interdisciplinary study of PTSD. It is a valuable volume that makes a significant contribution to the field." * Erin Finley, The University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio *Table of ContentsPART I. INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Introduction. Culture, Trauma, and PTSD —Byron J. Good and Devon E. Hinton Chapter 1. The Culturally Sensitive Assessment of Trauma: Eleven Analytic Perspectives, a Typology of Errors, and the Multiplex Models of Distress Generation —Devon E. Hinton and Byron J. Good PART II. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES Chapter 2. Is PTSD a Transhistoric Phenomenon? —Richard J. McNally Chapter 3. What Is "PTSD"? The Heterogeneity Thesis —Allan Young and Naomi Breslau Chapter 4. From Shell Shock to PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury: A Historical Perspective on Responses to Combat Trauma —James K. Boehnlein and Devon E. Hinton PART III. CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES Chapter 5. Trauma in the Lifeworlds of Adolescents: Hard Luck and Trouble in the Land of Enchantment —Janis H. Jenkins and Bridget M. Haas Chapter 6. Gendered Trauma and Its Effects: Domestic Violence and PTSD in Oaxaca —Whitney Duncan Chapter 7. Exploring Pathways of Distress and Mental Disorders: The Case of the Highland Quechua Populations in the Peruvian Andes —Duncan Pedersen and Hanna Kienzler Chapter 8. Latinas' and Latinos' Risk for PTSD After Trauma Exposure: A Review of Sociocultural Explanations —Carmela Alcántara and Roberto Lewis-Fernández Chapter 9. Karma to Chromosomes: Studying the Biology of PTSD in a World of Culture —Brandon A. Kohrt, Carol M. Worthman, and Nawaraj Upadhaya Chapter 10. Square Pegs and Round Holes: Understanding Historical Trauma in Two Native American Communities —Tom Ball and Theresa D. O'Nell Chapter 11. Culture, Trauma, and the Social Life of PTSD in Haiti —Erica James Chapter 12. Is PTSD a "Good Enough" Concept for Postconflict Mental Health Care? Reflections on Work in Aceh, Indonesia —Byron J. Good, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, and Jesse H. Grayman List of Contributors Index
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