Cultural studies Books
The University of Chicago Press No Dig No Fly No Go
Book SynopsisSome maps help us find our way; others restrict where we go and what we do. Restrictive mapping has been indispensable in settling the American West, protecting fragile ocean fisheries, and keeping sex offenders away from playgrounds. This book is suitable for those who vote, own a home, or aspire to be an informed citizen.Trade Review"An entertaining and enlightening excursion." -Boston Globe "Mark Monmonier is an able populariser of academic geography, and an expert guide to the bureaucratic, legal and political hierarchies that determine how places acquire, change and lose their names." -Economist "Mark Monmonier's boyishly infectious history of (principally American) toponyms maps out the sexism, racism and imperialism through which we have come to know our landscapes." -Times Literary Supplement"
£72.20
The University of Chicago Press No Dig No Fly No Go How Maps Restrict and Control
Book SynopsisSome maps help us find our way; others restrict where we go and what we do. These maps control behavior, regulating activities from flying to fishing, prohibiting students from one part of town from being schooled on the other, and banishing certain individuals and industries to the periphery. This title tackles this aspect of mapping.Trade Review"An entertaining and enlightening excursion." - Boston Globe. "Mark Monmonier is an able populariser of academic geography, and an expert guide to the bureaucratic, legal and political hierarchies that determine how places acquire, change and lose their names." - Economist. "Mark Monmonier's boyishly infectious history of (principally American) toponyms maps out the sexism, racism and imperialism through which we have come to know our landscapes." - Times Literary Supplement.
£18.00
The University of Chicago Press Saying Something Jazz Improvisation Interaction
Book SynopsisIn this work, Ingrid Monson juxtaposes musicians' talk and musical examples to ask how musicians go about "saying something" through music in a way that articulates identity, politics, and race.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1: Talking to Musicians 2: Grooving and Feeling 3: Music, Language, and Cultural Styles: Improvisation as Conversation 4: Intermusicality 5: Interaction, Feeling, and Musical Analysis 6: Ethnomusicology, Interaction, and Poststructuralism Coda Notes Interviews Recordings Bibliography Index
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press Saying Something
Book SynopsisIn this work, Ingrid Monson juxtaposes musicians' talk and musical examples to ask how musicians go about "saying something" through music in a way that articulates identity, politics, and race.
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Homosexualities
Book SynopsisThis work provides an examination of the construction of male and female homosexualities. Although the variety of behaviours, subcategories, and meanings of same-sex sex is considerable, Murray argues that there are a few recurring types. He relates the patterns to other sociological institutions.Trade Review"[An] indispensable resource on same-sex sexual relationships and their social contexts.... Essential reading." - Choice; "[P]romises to deliver a lot, and even more extraordinarily succeeds in its lofty aims.... [O]riginal and refreshing.... [A] sensational book, part of what I see emerging as a new commonsense revolution within academe." - Kevin White, International Gay and Lesbian Review
£38.00
The University of Chicago Press The Shadow and the Act
Book SynopsisThough thought of as rivals, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Amiri Baraka shared a range of interests. Jazz, in particular, was a decisive influence on their thinking. This title connects their writings on jazz to the philosophical tradition of pragmatism, particularly its support for more freedom for individuals and more democratic societies.Trade Review"This is an extraordinary book. Muyumba's pathbreaking account of Ellison, Baraka, and Baldwin's aesthetic theories and the connection between those theories and African American politics is creative and convincing." - Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Princeton University"
£24.00
The University of Chicago Press Home and Work
Book SynopsisThis text explores the intricacies and implications of how people draw the line between home and work. Arguing that relationships between the two realms range from those that are highly integrating to those that are highly segmenting, it examines the symbolic value of objects and actions.
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Islands of Sovereignty Haitian Migration and the
Book SynopsisIn Islands of Sovereignty, anthropologist and legal scholar Jeffrey S. Kahn offers a new interpretation of the transformation of US borders during the late twentieth century and its implications for our understanding of the nation-state as a legal and political form. Kahn takes us on a voyage into the immigration tribunals of South Florida, the Coast Guard vessels patrolling the northern Caribbean, and the camps of Guantánamo Bayonce the world's largest US-operated migrant detention facilityto explore how litigation concerning the fate of Haitian asylum seekers gave birth to a novel paradigm of offshore oceanic migration policing. Combining ethnographyin Haiti, at Guantánamo, and alongside US migration patrols in the Caribbeanwith in-depth archival research, Kahn expounds a nuanced theory of liberal empire's dynamic tensions and its racialized geographies of securitization. An innovative historical anthropology of the modern legal imagination, Islands of Sovereignty forces us to recons
£91.00
The University of Chicago Press Islands of Sovereignty Haitian Migration and the
Book SynopsisAn anthropological account of how the United States established a border for Guantanamo and developed it into a secure, separate place, defined differently from other locales and subject to different understandings of law and security.
£31.00
The University of Chicago Press Republic of Signs
Book SynopsisNorton examines the enactment of liberal ideas in popular culture; in the possessions of ordinary people and the habits of everyday life. She sees liberalism as the common sense of the American people: a set of conventions unconsciously adhered to, a set of principles silently taken for granted. The author ranges over a wide expanse of popular activities (e.g. wrestling, roller derby, lotteries, shopping sprees, and dining out), as well as conventional political topics (e.g., the Constitution, presidency, news media, and centrality of law). Yet the argument is pointed and probling, never shallow or superficial. Fred and Wilma Flintstone are as vital to the republic as Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. In discussions that range from the Constitution and the presidency to money and shopping, voting, lotteries, and survey research, Norton discerns and imaginatively invents possibilities that exceed recognized actualities and already approved opportunities.Richard E. Flathman, American Pol
£23.00
The University of Chicago Press Cruising the Dead River David Wojnarowicz and
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£84.00
The University of Chicago Press Troublemakers
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£31.00
The University of Chicago Press Dreams Illusion and Other Realities
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£38.00
The University of Chicago Press Creolized Aurality Guadeloupean Gwoka and
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Merging political, musical, and social analysis Camal offers a thick sonic description of the lived experience of colonialism in the French Caribbean. Creolized Aurality moves beyond a simple study of the political and musical forms of the French Caribbean and towards a true theorization of not just Antillean sound, but the sound of a postcolonial predicament. Camal asks: what does postcolonialism sound like? How is creole nationalism sonically enacted? And how can an analysis of soundscapes reveal a social and political world? The result is a powerful contribution to both Caribbean Studies and the Anthropology of sound more broadly."--Yarimar Bonilla, Rutgers University "Partly a rethinking of creolization, partly an exploration of sound studies and aurality, and partly a careful excavation of anti- and postcolonial politics, this book weaves its narrative through a sustained engagement with the sounds, discourses, and meanings of gwoka in Guadeloupe. Creolized Aurality is an innovative, timely, and intellectually substantive contribution to Caribbean studies, anthropology, and ethnomusicology."--Timothy Rommen, University of Pennsylvania
£74.10
The University of Chicago Press Creolized Aurality Guadeloupean Gwoka and
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Merging political, musical, and social analysis Camal offers a thick sonic description of the lived experience of colonialism in the French Caribbean. Creolized Aurality moves beyond a simple study of the political and musical forms of the French Caribbean and towards a true theorization of not just Antillean sound, but the sound of a postcolonial predicament. Camal asks: what does postcolonialism sound like? How is creole nationalism sonically enacted? And how can an analysis of soundscapes reveal a social and political world? The result is a powerful contribution to both Caribbean Studies and the Anthropology of sound more broadly."--Yarimar Bonilla, Rutgers University "Partly a rethinking of creolization, partly an exploration of sound studies and aurality, and partly a careful excavation of anti- and postcolonial politics, this book weaves its narrative through a sustained engagement with the sounds, discourses, and meanings of gwoka in Guadeloupe. Creolized Aurality is an innovative, timely, and intellectually substantive contribution to Caribbean studies, anthropology, and ethnomusicology."--Timothy Rommen, University of Pennsylvania
£26.00
The University of Chicago Press Exotic No More Second Edition
Book SynopsisIn this new edition of the anthropological classic Exotic No More, some of today's most respected anthropologists demonstrate the tremendous contributions that anthropological theory and ethnographic methods can make to the study of contemporary society. With chapters covering a wide variety of subjects--the economy, religion, the sciences, gender and sexuality, human rights, music and art, tourism, migration, and the internet--this volume shows how anthropologists grapple with a world that is in constant and accelerating transformation. Each contributor uses examples from their adventurous fieldwork to challenge us to rethink some of our most firmly held notions. This fully updated edition reflects the best that anthropology has to offer in the twenty-first century. The result is both an invaluable introduction to the field for students and a landmark achievement that will set the agenda for critical approaches to the study of contemporary life. Contributors: Ruben Andersson, Philip
£26.00
The University of Chicago Press Planters Merchants and Slaves Plantation
Book SynopsisTrade Review"In this social, economic, and demographic history, Burnard brilliantly anatomizes the British plantation system and plantation slavery. His conspectus ranges over nearly two centuries, from Guyana to the Chesapeake. It bristles with insight and even finds new meaning in the American Revolution. Novice students and grizzled scholars alike will find much to appreciate in Burnard's pages."--J.R. McNeill, author of Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 "Peppered with provocative arguments--regarding the military, what today we would call race hatred, and the American Revolution's legacy of enslavement--Burnard's work makes its main contribution in the detail with which he limns out the history of the plantation sector. . . . In following the arc of this history, Burnard's greatest contribution may be in his careful comparative work across regions that scholars often treat as distinct. . . . Not all readers will agree with each of his interpretations but he offers us a compelling frame-work for thinking about slavery and its place within the British Empire and the new United States. It is a tribute to his accomplishment that we come away wishing that the book went beyond the various regions within plantation British America to illuminate in addition the plantation societies founded by others."--Carla Gardina Pestana "Journal of Early American History " "Burnard's wide reading, along with his willingness to chal-lenge long-held assumptions, means that his book hews a fresh path across several overlapping fields. He may well prompt disagreements, but those who read him are all likely to benefit from the freshness of his observations and the range of his examples. Readers will come away from this book with plenty of new insights."--James Robertson "Journal of Early American History " "Burnard's synthesis recognizes the distinctive regions of plantation America--the Chesapeake tobacco economy, the Carolina Low Country rice economy, and the Caribbean sugar economy--while also recognizing systemic structural regularities. These included powerful local elites, destructive and violent slave regimes, and wealth that benefited local elites and metropoles but not an entire colony. Burnard especially treats Jamaica, Virginia, and the effects of the American Revolution. He demonstrates that the plantation system was, from an imperial perspective, an economic success, even though its wealth was only a tiny proportion of the metropolitan economy. The author does not intend this demonstration of economic rationality to mitigate the social, demographic, and environmental devastations of the system that have been so well documented. Recommended."--Choice "Given Burnard's extensive experience writing about and researching slavery in various sites across this vast region--Maryland, Jamaica, and Demerara, most notably--it is hard to imagine a guide better positioned to lead an excursion through this vast historiography. And indeed, the book ably draws examples and insights from the whole region, with attention to both commonalities and contrasts. No simple Caribbean-versus-North America binary emerges. Instead, plantation colonies shared broad profitability rooted in their common reliance on violence. Nonetheless, various colonies and regions remained distinct from each other due to variations of crop, size, time of development, geography, internal politics, and degree of economic diversity. It is a tremendous challenge for a work of synthesis to avoid flattening out the picture of the places it covers, and Burnard succeeds in summarizing while keeping local variation in focus."--William and Mary Quarterly "This is a book that exhilarates. It is also one that will vex many readers. The exhilaration stems from Trevor Burnard's geographical reach and conceptual ambition. This is a bold, bravura performance that ranges from the Chesapeake to Demerara. . . . A short review cannot do justice to all the themes of this arresting and provocative work. Readers will find much to applaud and much to take issue with. No one will feel their time has been wasted,"--Chris Evans "Journal of Southern History " "Burnard's new book is a response to Russell R. Menard's challenge to scholars to historicize three things: the development of large-scale British colonial sugar, rice, and tobacco plantations; the gang labor system of slavery they generally employed; and the dominance of the planter class in the colonies with such systems. That is, rather than assume an almost natural evolution of small farms into ever-larger colonial staple plantations, historians need to investigate when, how, and why large plantations were brought into existence. Burnard, like Menard, brings to this exploration of the causes and consequences of the plantation system a broad background of research in the archival sources of both the colonial Caribbean and southern mainland colonies. The result is a provocative book that is about both more and less than its title suggests. . . . The book provides a survey of the social history of Britain's plantation complex that is as much about culture as economics."--Early American Literature "Planters, Merchants, and Slaves is a masterful synthesis of decades of scholarship on the development of plantation societies, integrating original research on the immense wealth created, the relationship of those societies to nonplantation sectors, the extreme violence required to sustain them, and the reasons for their eventual collapse, despite their continuing profitability, from forces arising outside the system. Anyone interested in the significance of slavery and the plantation system for the rise of early modern capitalism; patterns of social, political, and economic development in slave societies; or the widespread violence required to sustain that system will find much to admire in this insightful contribution to Atlantic World history."--New West Indian Guide "Burnard gives us a commanding work of scholarly synthesis and layers it with original research to offer a provocative meditation on the meaning of plantation societies in the early modern Atlantic world. Planters, Merchants, and Slaves draws the Chesapeake, Carolina Lowcountry, and British Caribbean into a single interpretive frame and, by doing so, highlights British Plantation America's enormous dynamism and significance."--S. Max Edelson, author of Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Impasse of the Angels Scenes from a Moroccan
Book SynopsisExplores what it means to be a subject in the historical and poetic imagination of a southern Moroccan society. Incorporating poetic texts, legends, social spaces, folktales and conversations, this book is a synthesis of dissonant, often idiosyncratic voices from the Maghribi post-colonial present.
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press Shakespeare from the Margins Language Culture
Book SynopsisArguing that attention to Shakespearean wordplay reveals unexpected linkages, not only within and between plays but also between the plays and their contemporary culture, this book combines feminist and historical approaches with attention to the "matter" of language as well as of race and gender.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Edification from the Margins: Language, Culture, Context 1: Preposterous Estates, Preposterous Events: From Late to Early Shakespeare 2: The Bible and the Marketplace: The Comedy of Errors 3: "Rude Mechanicals": A Midsummer Night's Dream and Shakespearean Joinery 4: "Illegitimate Construction": Translation, Adultery, and Mechanical Reproduction in The Merry Wives of Windsor 5: "Conveyers Are You All": Translating, Conveying, Representing, and Seconding in the Histories and Hamlet 6: Dilation and Inflation: All's Well That Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida, and Shakespearean Increase 7: Othello and Hamlet: Spying, Discovery, Secret Faults Notes Index
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Talcott Parsons on Institutions and Social Evolu
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£35.15
The University of Chicago Press Secularization and Cultural Criticism
Book SynopsisReligion is an undiscovered country for much of the secular academy, which remains deeply ambivalent about it as an object of study. On the one hand, secular scholars agree that it is time to take religion seriously. On the other, these same scholars persist in assuming that religion rests not on belief but on power and ideology. According to Vincent Pecora, the idea of the secular itself is the source of much of the contradiction and confusion in contemporary thought about religion. Pecora aims here to work through the paradoxes of secularization, which emerges in this book as an intractable problem for cultural criticism in the nation-states of the post-Enlightenment West. Secularization and Cultural Criticism examines the responses of a wide range of thinkersEdward Said, Talal Asad, Jürgen Habermas, Walter Benjamin, Emile Durkheim, Carl Schmitt, Matthew Arnold, and Virginia Woolf, among othersto illustrate exactly why the problem of secularization in the study of society and culture should matter once again. Exploring the endemic difficulty posed by religion for the modern academy, Pecora makes sense of the value and potential impasses of secular cultural criticism in a global age.
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Men without Maps Some Gay Males of the
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£68.40
The University of Chicago Press Signs of the Americas A Poetics of Pictography
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£26.00
University of Chicago Press Science as Practice and Culture
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£38.00
The University of Chicago Press Sovereignty Inc. Three Inquiries in Politics and
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£54.15
The University of Chicago Press Sovereignty Inc. Three Inquiries in Politics and
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£20.00
The University of Chicago Press People of Plenty Economic Abundance and the
Book SynopsisAmerica has long been famous as a land of plenty, but we seldom realize how much the American people are a people of plentya people whose distinctive character has been shaped by economic abundance. In this important book, David M. Potter breaks new ground both in the study of this phenomenon and in his approach to the question of national character. He brings a fresh historical perspective to bear on the vital work done in this field by anthropologists, social psychologists, and psychoanalysts. The rejection of hindsight, with the insistence on trying to see events from the point of view of the participants, was a governing theme with Potter. . . . This sounds like a truism. Watching him apply it however, is a revelation.Walter Clemons, Newsweek The best short book on national character I have seen . . . broadly based, closely reasoned, and lucidly written.Karl W. Deutsch, Yale Review
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Labors Lot The Power History and Culture of
Book SynopsisA study of the Belyuen community of northern Australia, showing how it draws identity from deep connections between labour, language and the landscape. Povinelli's findings challenge Western notions of productive labour and long-standing ideas about the role of culture in subsistence economies.
£98.80
The University of Chicago Press Labors Lot The Power History and Culture of
Book SynopsisA study of the Belyuen community of northern Australia, showing how it draws identity from deep connections between labour, language and the landscape. Povinelli's findings challenge Western notions of productive labour and long-standing ideas about the role of culture in subsistence economies.
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press The Little Community and Peasant Society and
Book SynopsisThis volume combines two classic works of anthropology. The Little Community draws on the author's own notable studies of the villages of Tepoztlan and Chan Kom to explore the means by which scientists try to understand human communities. It contains, wrote Margaret Mead, the essence of Robert Redfield's multifaceted contributions to the place of community studies in social science. Peasant Society and Culture outlines a speculative foundation for the emergence of anthropology from the study of isolated primitive tribes.
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Inventing the Public Enemy The Gangster in
Book SynopsisIn this account of mass media images, David Ruth looks at Al Capone and other "invented" gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s. It shows that the media gangster was less a reflection of reality than a projection created from Americans' values, concerns and ideas about what would sell.
£27.00
The University of Chicago Press All the Worlds a Fair
Book SynopsisRobert W. Rydell contends that America's early world's fairs actually served to legitimate racial exploitation at home and the creation of an empire abroad. He looks in particular to the ethnological displays of nonwhitesset up by showmen but endorsed by prominent anthropologistswhich lent scientific credibility to popular racial attitudes and helped build public support for domestic and foreign policies. Rydell's lively and thought-provoking study draws on archival records, newspaper and magazine articles, guidebooks, popular novels, and oral histories.
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press The Kamikaze Biker Paradoy Anomy in Affluent
Book SynopsisIn this firsthand account of high-risk car and motorcycle racing in Japan, Ikuya Sato shows how affluence and consumerism have spawned various experimental and deviant life-styles among youth. Kamikaze Biker offers an intriguing look at a form of delinquency in a country traditionally thought to be devoid of social problems. Ikuya Sato's Kamikaze Biker is an exceptionally fine ethnographic analysis of a recurrent form of Japanese collective youth deviance...Sato has contributed a work of value to a wide range of scholarly audiences.--Jack Katz, Contemporary Sociology A must for anyone interested in Japan, juvenile delinquency and/or youth behavior in general, or the impact of affluence on society.--Choice The volume provides a sophisticated ...discussion of changes happening in Japanese society in the early 1980s. As such, it serves as a window on the 1990s and beyond.--Ross Mouer, Asian Studies Review Kamikaze Biker is a superlative study, one that might help liberate American social science from the simplistic notion that behavior not directly contributing to economic productivity should be summarily dismissed as 'dangerous' and 'deviant.' --Los Angeles Times Book Review
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press Not Under My Roof Parents Teens and the Culture
Book SynopsisDrawing on interviews with parents and teens, this title offers an intimate account of the different ways that girls and boys in the United States and the Netherlands negotiate love, lust, and growing up. It provides a probing analysis of the way family culture shapes not just sex but also alcohol consumption and parent-teen relationships.Trade Review"With grace and style, Amy Schalet presents a forceful and convincing argument about the divergent cultural approaches to sexuality, socialization of adolescents, and conceptions of citizenship in the United States and the Netherlands, probing deep-seated value differences that play out in the management of sex. Nuanced, well documented, and remarkably persuasive, Not Under My Roof is an exemplary study." (Frank Furstenberg, University of Pennsylvania)"
£91.00
The University of Chicago Press American Kinship
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£21.00
The University of Chicago Press The Senses Still
Book SynopsisThis volume brings together essays by five scholars concerned with the senses and the anthropology of everyday life. Covering a wide range of topics from film to food, the authors describe ways in which sensory memories have preserved cultures otherwise threatened by urbanism and modernity.Table of ContentsPrologue C. Nadia Seremetakis 1: The Memory of the Senses, Part I: Marks of the Transitory C. Nadia Seremetakis 2: Intersection: Benjamin, Bloch, Braudel, Beyond C. Nadia Seremetakis 3: The Memory of the Senses, Part II: Still Acts C. Nadia Seremetakis 4: The Cinema Screen as Prosthesis of Perception: A Historical Account Susan Buck-Morss 5: On the Move: The Struggle for the Body in Sweden in the 1930s Jonas Frykman 6: From Desert Storm to Rodney King via ex-Yugoslavia: On Cultural Anaesthesia Allen Feldman 7: "Conscious" Ain't Consciousness: Entering the "Museum of Sensory Absence" Paul Stoller 8: Implications C. Nadia Seremetakis About the Book and Editor About the Contributors
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Natural Histories of Discourse
Book SynopsisThis collection of ethnographies demonstrates that the divide between fleeting discursive practice and formed text is a constructed one, and that the constructional process reveals "culture". The cultural processes of "entextualization" and "contextualization" are examined.
£31.35
The University of Chicago Press Romanticism Nationalism and the Revolt against
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£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Academic Postmodern the Rule of Literature A
Book SynopsisThis critique of the postmodern turn discusses the distinctive aspects of postmodern scholarship: the pervasiveness of the literary and the flight from grand theory to local knowledge. Defining features of postmodern thought are also discussed here such as storytelling and localism.
£24.00
The University of Chicago Press Dance of the Dolphin
Book SynopsisIn Amazonian folktales, dolphins take human form, seduce men and women, and carry them away to a city beneath the river. This book examines these stories, both as folk narratives and as representations of culture and conflict in the Amazon.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Invitation to the Dance 1: Time and Place 2: The Storytellers 3: Stories and Beliefs about Dolphins as Special Fish 4: Stories and Beliefs about Dolphins as Supernatural Beings 5: Questions of Performance 6: The Dolphin as Encantado 7: The Dolphin as Lover 8: The Dolphin as White Man 9: Transformation and Disenchantment Appendix 1. Glossary of Selected Terms Appendix 2. Portuguese-Language Originals of Stories in the Text References Index
£89.30
The University of Chicago Press Dance of the Dolphin Transformation and
Book SynopsisIn Amazonian folktales, dolphins take human form, seduce men and women, and carry them away to a city beneath the river. This book examines these stories, both as folk narratives and as representations of culture and conflict in the Amazon.
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press Mother of Writing The Origin and Development of a
Book SynopsisIn February of 1971, in the Laotian village of Nam Chia, a forty-one year old farmer named Shong Lue Yang was assassinated by government soldiers. Shong Lue claimed to have been descended of God and given the mission of delivering the first true Hmong alphabet. Many believed him to be the Hmong people's long-awaited messiah, and his thousands of followers knew him as Mother (Source) of Writing. An anthropological linguist who has worked among the Hmong, William A. Smalley joins Shong Lue's chief disciple, Chia Koua Vang, and one of his associates, to tell the fascinating story of how the previously unschooled farmer developed his remarkable writing system through four stages of increasing sophistication. The uniqueness of Shong Lue's achievement is highlighted by a comparison of Shong Lue's writing system to other known Hmong systems and to the history of writing as a whole. In addition to a nontechnical linguistic analysis of the script and a survey of its current use, Mother of Writi
£27.00
The University of Chicago Press Linguistic Diversity and National Unity Language
Book SynopsisUnlike other multi-ethnic nations, Thailand has maintained relative stability despite its 80 languages. In this study of the relations among politics, geography and language, Smalley shows how Thailand has maintained national unity through an elaborate social and linguistic hierarchy.
£38.00
The University of Chicago Press Nietzsche Heidegger and the Transition to
Book SynopsisAmong the most influential and enigmatic thinkers of the modern age, Nietzsche and Heidegger have become pivotal in the struggle to define postmodernism. This work offers an examination of the writings of these philosophers.
£27.00
The University of Chicago Press Punishment and Culture
Book SynopsisDenies that punishment is about justice, reason, and law. This book shows that punishment is an essentially irrational act founded in ritual as a means to control evil without creating more of it in the process. It looks at issues ranging from public executions and the development of the prison to the invention of the guillotine.Trade Review"This is a polished, original, and forcefully argued book that provides a fascinating discussion of a series of iconic penal institutions. Smith's analyses will become a standard reference point, and the lessons he has to teach will, I hope, quickly be learned and assimilated." - David Garland, New York University"
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press The Real Real Thing The Model in the Mirror of
Book SynopsisOur era is defined by the model. From Victoria's Secret and America's Next Top Model to the snapshots we post on Face-book and Twitter, our culture is fixated on the pose, the state of existing simultaneously as artifice and the real thing. The author shows us the very meaning of the arts in the process of transformation.Trade Review"Surveying the field of contemporary culture with grace and wit, Wendy Steiner comes to the surprising conclusion that 'a revolution is underway in the general understanding of beauty.' The Perfected Form of the engineered celebrity and supermodel - and such things as Platonic architecture and sculpture - is giving way to a more interactive beauty. The real real engages the audience in vital interaction - does not petrify as a Medusa head - it's a Reality2." - Charles Jencks, author of Critical Modernism"
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Between Film Screen Modernisms Photo Synthesis
Book SynopsisDiscusses the photogram not only as the undertext of screen images but also in its unexpected links to the early modernist writings of James, Conrad, Forster, Joyce and others. It pursues the suppressed photogram as it ripples the narrative surface of several dozen films from Chaplin to Coppola.
£38.00
The University of Chicago Press The Cinematic Griot The Ethnography of Jean
Book SynopsisThe most prolific ethnographic filmmaker in the world, a pioneer of cinema verite; and one of the earliest ethnographers of African societies, Jean Rouch (1917-) remains a controversial and often misunderstood figure in histories of anthropology and film. By examining Rouch's neglected ethnographic writings, Paul Stoller seeks to clarify the filmmaker's true place in anthropology. A brief account of Rouch's background, revealing the ethnographic foundations and intellectual assumptions underlying his fieldwork among the Songhay of Niger in the 1940s and 1950s, sets the stage for his emergence as a cinematic griot, a peripatetic bard who recites the story of a people through provocative imagery. Against this backdrop, Stoller considers Rouch's writings on Songhay history, myth, magic and possession, migration, and social change. By analyzing in depth some of Rouch's most important films and assessing Rouch's ethnography in terms of his own expertise in Songhay culture, Stoller demonstrates the inner connection between these two modes of representation. Stoller, who has done more fieldwork among the Songhay than anyone other than Rouch himself, here gives the first full account of Rouch the griot, whose own story scintillates with important implications for anthropology, ethnography, African studies, and film.
£57.95
