Ethnic studies / Ethnicity Books

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Book SynopsisBetween Conflict and Collegiality explores how ethnonational-religious struggle between Jews and Palestinians affects relations in ethnically mixed work teams in Israel. Asaf Darr documents the tensions that permeate the workplace and reveals when such tensions threaten the cohesion of the work environment. Darr chronicles the grassroots coping strategies employed by both Jewish and Palestinian through field studies conducted with workers in various sectors in Israel, adopting a comparative method that identifies the differences in how ethnonational-religious tensions play out. Between Conflict and Collegiality asks how workers deal with external ethnonational and religious pressures and whether the broader ethnonational conflict is reflected in the career expectations and trajectories of minority group members. Darr examines whether minority group members'' use of their own language at work become a point of contestation; how religion is manifesteTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Introducing Tension into the Workplace 2. The Grassroots Coping Strategy of Split Ascription 3. Ethnonational Background and Career Trajectories 4. Language Use as a Symbolic Arena for Ethnonational Display 5. Religion at Work 6. Building Bridges across the Ethnonational Divide Discussion and Conclusions

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Catholic Work of Nation Building 1. Reconstructing the Catholic West: Catholics, Protestants, and the State on the Mission Battlegrounds 2. Catholics in the White City: The Columbian Catholic Congress of 1893 3. American Catholicism and Philippine Colonization: A Study in Religious Imperialism 4. Catholic Gatekeepers: The Church, Immigration, and the Forging of an American Catholicism 5. Toward Tri-Faith America: Catholics Confront the Politics of Anti-Catholicism Conclusion

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Book SynopsisA Global Idea outlines how youthas shown by the Arab Spring uprisings and subsequent state responsesbecame a prominent social and political category during the first two decades of the twenty-first century in the Middle East. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interview data, and textual analysis, Mayssoun Sukarieh explains that the spread of youth as an important category is linked to the operation of a global youth development complex, a diverse transnational network of state, private sector, civil society, and international development aid organizations that worked through key urban areas such as Washington, DC, Amman, and Dubai. In its analysis of the arrival, extension, and embedding of the youth development complex in the Middle East during this period, A Global Idea addresses a broader question that is of global and not just regional concern. How are certain ideas that are central to the working and reproduction of global capitalism able to travel

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Book SynopsisIn The Coalitions Presidents Make, Marcus Mietzner explains how Indonesia has turned its volatile post-authoritarian presidential system into one of the world''s most stable. He argues that since 2004, Indonesian presidents have deployed nuanced strategies of coalition building to consolidate their authority and these coalitions are responsible for the regime stability in place today. In building coalitions, Indonesian presidents have looked beyond parties and parliamentthe traditional partners of presidents in most other countries. In Indonesia, actors such as the military, the police, the bureaucracy, local governments, oligarchs, and Muslim groups are integrated into presidential coalitions by giving them the same status as parties and parliament. But while this inclusiveness has made Indonesia''s presidential system extraordinarily durable, it has also caused democratic decline. In order to secure the stability of their coalitions, presidents must obs

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Book SynopsisAs politicians debate how to address the estimated eleven million unauthorized immigrants residing in the United States, undocumented youth anxiously await the next policy shift that will determine their futures. From one day to the next, their dreams are as likely to crumble around them as to come within reach. In Shifting Boundaries, Alexis M. Silver sheds light on the currents of exclusion and incorporation that characterize their lives. Silver examines the experiences of immigrant youth growing up in a small town in North Carolina—a state that experienced unprecedented growth in its Latino population in the 1990s and 2000s, and where aggressive anti-immigration policies have been enforced. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interview data, she finds that contradictory policies at the national, state, and local levels interact to create a complex environment through which the youth must navigate. From heritage-based school programs to state-wide bans on attending community college; from the failure of the DREAM Act to the rescinding of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA); each layer represents profound implications for undocumented Latino youth. Silver exposes the constantly changing pathways that shape their journeys into early adulthood—and the profound resilience that they develop along the way.Trade Review"Thoroughly researched and elegantly written, Shifting Boundaries tells the poignant story of undocumented Latino immigrants coming of age in small-town America. Alexis Silver's narrative, both timeless and timely, is a must-read for anyone interested in America's tortuous immigration debates and the challenges they present for immigrant youth." -- Jacqueline Hagan * The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill *"Alexis Silver has written a terrific book. This extraordinary study provides a fresh perspective on immigrant incorporation and the importance of place during political instability. Rich in detail, persuasively argued, and novel in its approach, this timely and relevant book shines an important light on the resilience of young immigrants in the face of unsettling and changing times." -- Roberto G. Gonzales * author of Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America *"Shifting Boundaries provides a compelling argument for understanding the plight of undocumented youths as they inch their way toward—and take alternative routes to—integration when the path seems impassable...Most of all, this book offers a profound analysis that shows the humanity of undocumented immigrants within an increasingly hostile national context."––Nilda Flores-Gonzalez, American Journal of Sociology

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Book SynopsisAs politicians debate how to address the estimated eleven million unauthorized immigrants residing in the United States, undocumented youth anxiously await the next policy shift that will determine their futures. From one day to the next, their dreams are as likely to crumble around them as to come within reach. In Shifting Boundaries, Alexis M. Silver sheds light on the currents of exclusion and incorporation that characterize their lives. Silver examines the experiences of immigrant youth growing up in a small town in North Carolina—a state that experienced unprecedented growth in its Latino population in the 1990s and 2000s, and where aggressive anti-immigration policies have been enforced. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interview data, she finds that contradictory policies at the national, state, and local levels interact to create a complex environment through which the youth must navigate. From heritage-based school programs to state-wide bans on attending community college; from the failure of the DREAM Act to the rescinding of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA); each layer represents profound implications for undocumented Latino youth. Silver exposes the constantly changing pathways that shape their journeys into early adulthood—and the profound resilience that they develop along the way.Trade Review"Thoroughly researched and elegantly written, Shifting Boundaries tells the poignant story of undocumented Latino immigrants coming of age in small-town America. Alexis Silver's narrative, both timeless and timely, is a must-read for anyone interested in America's tortuous immigration debates and the challenges they present for immigrant youth." -- Jacqueline Hagan * The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill *"Alexis Silver has written a terrific book. This extraordinary study provides a fresh perspective on immigrant incorporation and the importance of place during political instability. Rich in detail, persuasively argued, and novel in its approach, this timely and relevant book shines an important light on the resilience of young immigrants in the face of unsettling and changing times." -- Roberto G. Gonzales * author of Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America *"Shifting Boundaries provides a compelling argument for understanding the plight of undocumented youths as they inch their way toward—and take alternative routes to—integration when the path seems impassable...Most of all, this book offers a profound analysis that shows the humanity of undocumented immigrants within an increasingly hostile national context."––Nilda Flores-Gonzalez, American Journal of Sociology

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Book SynopsisIn the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Brazil improved the health and well-being of its populace more than any other large democracy in the world. Long infamous for its severe inequality, rampant infant mortality, and clientelist politics, the country ushered in an unprecedented twenty-five-year transformation in its public health institutions and social development outcomes, declaring a striking seventy percent reduction in infant mortality rates. Thus far, the underlying causes for this dramatic shift have been poorly understood. In Movement-Driven Development, Christopher L. Gibson combines rigorous statistical methodology with rich case studies to argue that this transformation is the result of a subnationally-rooted process driven by civil society actors, namely the Sanitarist Movement. He argues that their ability to leverage state-level political positions to launch a gradual but persistent attack on health policy implementation enabled them to infuse their social welfare ideology into the practice of Brazil's democracy. In so doing, Gibson illustrates how local activists can advance progressive social change more than predicted, and how in large democracies like Brazil, activists can both deepen the quality of local democracy and improve human development outcomes previously thought beyond their control. Trade Review"Movement-Driven Development provides an original theoretical framework for understanding how mobilization can advance social policy. An impeccable, multifaceted study of a uniquely successful movement of public health professionals in Brazil, it is a foundational contribution to the evolution of social movement and development theory. Scholars, policy-makers, and activists will all gain from Gibson's analysis." -- Peter Evans, Professor Emeritus * University of California, Berkeley and Senior Research Fellow, Brown University *"Christopher Gibson's new book is a substantive, theoretical, and methodological success. It offers new ideas concerning social movements and institutional change, and harnesses a rigorous comparison of four case studies to teach us about the role of Brazil's public health movement in improving social development outcomes."—James Mahoney, Northwestern University"Movement-Driven Development is a huge contribution to the field of development, illustrating with impeccable empirical analysis that high levels of GDP, left-leaning political parties, women's political representation, and participatory institutions are not sufficient for robust social development."––Rebecca Tarlau, Mobilization"Movement-Driven Development is a methodological masterpiece that would be an excellent book for a graduate class in political sociology, development, and research methods....[The] book draws important attention to differences in local level politics across large countries, the conditions for implementing progressive social programs, and ways in which committed activists change institutions instead of being corrupted by them." -- Matthew B. Flynn * Social Forces *"[Gibson's] fluently elucidated statistical analysis is...complimented by historical case studies...This book will be useful to a range of readers, from Brazilianists and social movement theorists to scholars of development and health policy." -- Adam Talbot * American Journal of Sociology *"[Movement-Driven Development]... successfully addresses a much larger and critical question: how highly unequal societies can overcome, paternalistic domination geared to undermine social development and the provision of public services." -- Silvia Borzutzky * Latin American Research Review *

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Book SynopsisApproximately 2.4 million Black youth participate in after-school programs, which offer a range of support, including academic tutoring, college preparation, political identity development, cultural and emotional support, and even a space to develop strategies and tools for organizing and activism. In Reclaiming Community, Bianca Baldridge tells the story of one such community-based program, Educational Excellence (EE), shining a light on both the invaluable role youth workers play in these spaces, and the precarious context in which such programs now exist. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, Baldridge persuasively argues that the story of EE is representative of a much larger and understudied phenomenon. With the spread of neoliberal ideology and its reliance on racism—marked by individualism, market competition, and privatization—these bastions of community support are losing the autonomy that has allowed them to embolden the minds of the youth they serve. Baldridge captures the stories of loss and resistance within this context of immense external political pressure, arguing powerfully for the damage caused when the same structural violence that Black youth experience in school, starts to occur in the places they go to escape it.Trade Review"A compelling analysis of community-based youth service programs and how their ability to respond to community needs has been impaired by the narrow 'reform' agenda sweeping the country. Baldridge is a keen observer and her insights will help parents, educators, and activists in other communities understand why their work may not be supported by powerful elites, and what they can do about it." -- Pedro A. Noguera, Distinguished Professor of Education * UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies *"The movement across America to adopt a Wall Street-like focus on 'return on investments' (ROI) to measure the impact of after-school programs is a big mistake. Bianca Baldridge offers a brilliant and timely alternative to metric-driven services; her research provides a refreshing and illuminating vision of how those who support youth of color can create more holistic alternatives to youth programming." -- Shawn Ginwright, Professor of Education and African American Studies * San Francisco State University *"Baldridge's powerful and sophisticated work urges us to continue to focus on theorizing the relationship between community-based youth work and schooling. Reclaiming Community is an urgent read for educational organizers and leaders, education scholars from all disciplines, social movement scholars, and organization scholars." -- Ranita Ray * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Community-Based Youth Work in Uncertain Times chapter abstractChapter 1 introduces readers to Educational Excellence, its history, mission, triumphs, and challenges. Major themes of the book, its goals, the research methodology, and its significance to sociology of education are presented. The story of the organization is discussed within a broader theoretical discussion of market-driven education reform, race, and paternalism to (1) explore the dialectical relationship between community-based spaces and schools and (2) to explore how political imaginings of race and youth shape and inform the construction of community-based educational spaces engaging Black and other minoritized youth. 2"The EE Family:" Framing Race, Youth, and Educational Possibilities chapter abstractChapter 2 describes the history of Educational Excellence and its transformation from a strict after-school academic program steeped in deficit rhetoric to a comprehensive program that includes emotional and social support as well as political education. This chapter discusses the competing framing (asset-based versus deficit) of Black youth among the organization's founder, board members, and current and new staff members in the program and the struggle to reimagine Black youth beyond deficit narratives rampant in the youth development and nonprofit funding world. This chapter discusses how neoliberal restructuring affects the neighborhood Educational Excellence calls home and the schooling experiences of youth in the program. This chapter examines how youth workers become critical advocates and intercessors on behalf of students, assisting them in navigating difficult school, family, cultural, and social barriers. 3"We're Not Saving Anybody:" Refusing Deficit Narratives chapter abstractThis chapter examines how Black youth within after-school support spaces are often framed politically as "broken" and in need of "fixing." This chapter highlights the voices of youth workers as they navigate community-based educational youth work in a national education climate and with new organizational leadership marked by education reform and therefore pressure to frame Black youth from a deficit perspective to compete for funding opportunities, political praise, and public recognition. This chapter describes how the common trend toward deficit framing is linked to the current neoliberal education market, which incentivizes community-based educational spaces to frame marginalized youth as socially, culturally, and intellectually deficient in order to successfully compete with charter schools for funding. 4"Expanding EE's Footprint": Navigating Organizational Change chapter abstractChapter 4 discusses the growing racial, class, and gender tensions between the organization's founder, executive leadership, and Educational Excellence's board members. This chapter examines the changing nature of leadership in the organization and its impact on the practices of youth workers, shifting priorities of the program, and the overall culture of the program. Rapid growth and increase in the number of youth "served" by Educational Excellence became the new language and mode of operation for the organization. Under these new logics, racial and economic discourse about Black youth and educational opportunity within the organization began to drastically disrupt life at Educational Excellence. This chapter discusses how Educational Excellence expanded into another neighborhood without the proper infrastructure, which shifted the organization in an entirely different direction—one that led to damaged relationships and altered the reputation of the organization. 5"The Family Is Dead": Corporatizing After-School chapter abstractAfter a mass exodus of staff members at Educational Excellence, this chapter discusses how remaining youth workers strive to maintain strong and relevant pedagogical practices, familial-like culture, and an asset-rich ideology of youth in a new climate where organizational leadership is primarily concerned with funding, expansion, and greater exposure for the organization—without regard for the consequences for staff or student morale. This chapter discusses the ways that the camaraderie and relationships established between youth workers served as an anchor for accountability in the program. With relationships in jeopardy, accountability for resisting racist and deficit language withered and neoliberal expansion flourished under new leadership. 6"It Was Never Ours": Race and the Politics of Control chapter abstractChapter 6 examines the external pull factors (broader political and economic forces shaping public education) and internal push factors (competing frames of race, control, and paternalism between staff, the founder, and new leadership) that led youth workers away from Educational Excellence. Youth workers share their process for leaving the organization, what they learned during their time in the program, and reflections on challenging and rewarding experiences. Chapter 6 investigates the persistence of racism and neoliberalism within the current era of education that is eroding liberatory community-based spaces engaging Black youth. Conclusion: Reclaiming Community-Based Youth Work in the Neoliberal Era chapter abstractThe conclusion summarizes major research findings and highlights the major triumphs, challenges, and changes the book documented. Within this chapter, the story of Educational Excellence is placed within a historical context of activism in Black communities. Through the lessons learned from Educational Excellence, a path is laid out for community-based leaders and educators of color to identify, name, and resist the complex dynamics of racism, anti-Blackness, and politics threatening their work with youth. The conclusion lays out recommendations that include (1) encouraging more scholarship that theorizes social location of community-based youth work and the deep pedagogical work that can occur within community-based after-school spaces; and (2) considering the potential effects of macroeconomic and social policies, such as education privatization, on after-school community-based spaces and cautioning against the erasure of self-determination within community-based spaces as a result of the neoliberal turn.

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Book SynopsisLos Angeles is a city of borders and lines, from the freeways that transect its neighborhoods to streets like Pico Boulevard that slash across the city from the ocean to the heart of downtown, creating both ethnic enclaves and pathways for interracial connection. Examining neighborhoods in east, south central, and west L.A.—and their imaginative representation by Chicana, African American, and Jewish American writers—this book investigates the moral and political implications of negotiating space. The Border and the Line takes up the central conceit of "the neighbor" to consider how the geography of racial identification and interracial encounters are represented and even made possible by literary language. Dean J. Franco probes how race is formed and transformed in literature and in everyday life, in the works of Helena María Viramontes, Paul Beatty, James Baldwin, and the writers of the Watts Writers Workshop. Exploring metaphor and metonymy, as well as economic and political circumstance, Franco identifies the potential for reconciliation in the figure of the neighbor, an identity that is grounded by geographical boundaries and which invites their crossing.Trade Review"Dean Franco's vibrant prose and dexterous analysis make The Border and the Line a significant contribution to the study of U.S. ethnic literatures. So much more than a regional case study, this book gifts us a comparative imaginary as far-reaching as it is urgently needed." -- Keith Feldman * University of California, Berkeley *"The Border and the Line is a must-read for anyone concerned with the resurgence of ethically informed reading in ethnic studies, Jewish studies, and literary criticism. Few scholars today read texts as astutely as Dean Franco. He does so here to demonstrate how we all live in relational proximity to our neighbors, even as constructed barriers seek to keep us separate. Superbly written." -- Michael Hames-García * University of Oregon *"[Franco is] both analytically astute and attentive to the interlocking lived realities of the communities on whom his book focuses, thus elegantly breathing new life into the practice of comparative ethnic studies....The Border and the Line is a model for those of us aiming to connect cultural representations to the political-economic realities of communities coexisting in Los Angeles's historical past and present." -- Richard T. Rodríguez * Western American Literature *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: The Borders and Lines of Social Identities chapter abstractThe chapter posits a theory of how race materializes through the production of space. With reference to Ernesto Laclau's rhetorical theory, the introduction examines how metaphor and metonymy correspond to the social and political significance of racial identification. Thus the Introduction aligns the contingent formation of racial and religious identities with metonymy, or the material experience of being-in-place, and aligns static racial names with metaphor. The Introduction theorizes the terms border and line as interrelated figures of spatial constraint and access. Each term has a normative and a transgressive meaning, and the Introduction explores how and when the normative meaning of one term is in play, the transgressive meaning of the other term likewise emerges. 1Redlining and Realigning in East L.A.: The Neighborhoods of Helena María Viramontes and Union de Vecinos chapter abstractThis chapter takes on a fundamental question for literature scholars: How can readers bear responsibility for the literature they read and love? The chapter argues that the reader becomes the neighbor to the literature, and follows with an exploration of the philosophical and material implications of that neighboring. The chapter examines Helena María Viramontes's novel Their Dogs Came with Them, set in Boyle Heights at the peak of its gang wars in the 1970s, and explores the real neighborhood, including the activist project Union de Vecinos, a socialist organizing collective inspired by liberation theology to reclaim the neighborhood, from both the gangs and reactionary policing, in the name of social justice. In both examples, the chapter posits the concept of the miracle as something worldly and material, capable of transformation. 2The Matter of the Neighbor and the Property of "Unmitigated Blackness" chapter abstractThe first half of this chapter explores the Watts Writers Workshop, founded in the heart of Watts by Budd Schulberg after the Watts Riots in 1965. Schulberg created Frederick Douglass House, a charitable foundation and a physical building for black creative arts, and the chapter argues that Schulberg's personal and financial investment in Watts relocated his political standing as the "neighbor" to the Watts writers with whom he worked. The chapter examines a conversation between Schulberg and his friend James Baldwin, about the meaning of "race." Both writers hit upon "love" as the only way to cut through the Gordian knot of racism binding the nation. The chapter closes with a study of Paul Beatty's Los Angeles novel, The Sellout (2015), in which love is ironized and black Angelenos assert an atavistic claim on property, with segregation, plantations, and the return of slavery. 3My Neighborhood: Private Claims, Public Space, and Jewish Los Angeles chapter abstractThis chapter argues for the emergence of privately held ethics in the formation of neighborhood publics. The chapter primarily focuses on Jewish neighborhoods, including the L.A. Eruv, the largest in the West. An eruv is an area with boundaries designated by a rabbinical authority to constitute domestic rather than public space for Jews living within. Eruv is Hebrew for "mixture," and it involves mixing public and private spaces into one large "courtyard" or domestic enclosure. The chapter argues that the eruv is a "counter-public" for the Orthodox space it circumscribes, but that the public alignment of "Jewish" with "Orthodox" eclipses other kinds of Jewish publics in Los Angeles. The chapter compares the idea of the neighborhood in the eruv with Jewish concepts of the neighborhood in a recent short documentary, My Neighbourhood, about secular Israeli Jews who partner with Muslim Palestinians to protest Orthodox Jewish appropriation of Palestinians' homes. Conclusion: Love, Space, and the Grounds of Comparative Ethnic Literature Study chapter abstractThis chapter argues for the value of comparative analysis in studies of race and ethnicity, and makes the case for the inclusion of Jewish studies in the ethnic studies matrix. The Conclusion reviews the parallel but distinct histories of ethnic studies and Jewish studies, and explains the basis of their mutual exclusion. The Conclusion posits the book's critical motif of "the neighborhood" as the apt figure for reconciling different academic accounts of race and ethnicity, and for seeking understanding through unexpected comparisons across racial groups.

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Book SynopsisLos Angeles is a city of borders and lines, from the freeways that transect its neighborhoods to streets like Pico Boulevard that slash across the city from the ocean to the heart of downtown, creating both ethnic enclaves and pathways for interracial connection. Examining neighborhoods in east, south central, and west L.A.—and their imaginative representation by Chicana, African American, and Jewish American writers—this book investigates the moral and political implications of negotiating space. The Border and the Line takes up the central conceit of "the neighbor" to consider how the geography of racial identification and interracial encounters are represented and even made possible by literary language. Dean J. Franco probes how race is formed and transformed in literature and in everyday life, in the works of Helena María Viramontes, Paul Beatty, James Baldwin, and the writers of the Watts Writers Workshop. Exploring metaphor and metonymy, as well as economic and political circumstance, Franco identifies the potential for reconciliation in the figure of the neighbor, an identity that is grounded by geographical boundaries and which invites their crossing.Trade Review"Dean Franco's vibrant prose and dexterous analysis make The Border and the Line a significant contribution to the study of U.S. ethnic literatures. So much more than a regional case study, this book gifts us a comparative imaginary as far-reaching as it is urgently needed." -- Keith Feldman * University of California, Berkeley *"The Border and the Line is a must-read for anyone concerned with the resurgence of ethically informed reading in ethnic studies, Jewish studies, and literary criticism. Few scholars today read texts as astutely as Dean Franco. He does so here to demonstrate how we all live in relational proximity to our neighbors, even as constructed barriers seek to keep us separate. Superbly written." -- Michael Hames-García * University of Oregon *"[Franco is] both analytically astute and attentive to the interlocking lived realities of the communities on whom his book focuses, thus elegantly breathing new life into the practice of comparative ethnic studies....The Border and the Line is a model for those of us aiming to connect cultural representations to the political-economic realities of communities coexisting in Los Angeles's historical past and present." -- Richard T. Rodríguez * Western American Literature *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: The Borders and Lines of Social Identities chapter abstractThe chapter posits a theory of how race materializes through the production of space. With reference to Ernesto Laclau's rhetorical theory, the introduction examines how metaphor and metonymy correspond to the social and political significance of racial identification. Thus the Introduction aligns the contingent formation of racial and religious identities with metonymy, or the material experience of being-in-place, and aligns static racial names with metaphor. The Introduction theorizes the terms border and line as interrelated figures of spatial constraint and access. Each term has a normative and a transgressive meaning, and the Introduction explores how and when the normative meaning of one term is in play, the transgressive meaning of the other term likewise emerges. 1Redlining and Realigning in East L.A.: The Neighborhoods of Helena María Viramontes and Union de Vecinos chapter abstractThis chapter takes on a fundamental question for literature scholars: How can readers bear responsibility for the literature they read and love? The chapter argues that the reader becomes the neighbor to the literature, and follows with an exploration of the philosophical and material implications of that neighboring. The chapter examines Helena María Viramontes's novel Their Dogs Came with Them, set in Boyle Heights at the peak of its gang wars in the 1970s, and explores the real neighborhood, including the activist project Union de Vecinos, a socialist organizing collective inspired by liberation theology to reclaim the neighborhood, from both the gangs and reactionary policing, in the name of social justice. In both examples, the chapter posits the concept of the miracle as something worldly and material, capable of transformation. 2The Matter of the Neighbor and the Property of "Unmitigated Blackness" chapter abstractThe first half of this chapter explores the Watts Writers Workshop, founded in the heart of Watts by Budd Schulberg after the Watts Riots in 1965. Schulberg created Frederick Douglass House, a charitable foundation and a physical building for black creative arts, and the chapter argues that Schulberg's personal and financial investment in Watts relocated his political standing as the "neighbor" to the Watts writers with whom he worked. The chapter examines a conversation between Schulberg and his friend James Baldwin, about the meaning of "race." Both writers hit upon "love" as the only way to cut through the Gordian knot of racism binding the nation. The chapter closes with a study of Paul Beatty's Los Angeles novel, The Sellout (2015), in which love is ironized and black Angelenos assert an atavistic claim on property, with segregation, plantations, and the return of slavery. 3My Neighborhood: Private Claims, Public Space, and Jewish Los Angeles chapter abstractThis chapter argues for the emergence of privately held ethics in the formation of neighborhood publics. The chapter primarily focuses on Jewish neighborhoods, including the L.A. Eruv, the largest in the West. An eruv is an area with boundaries designated by a rabbinical authority to constitute domestic rather than public space for Jews living within. Eruv is Hebrew for "mixture," and it involves mixing public and private spaces into one large "courtyard" or domestic enclosure. The chapter argues that the eruv is a "counter-public" for the Orthodox space it circumscribes, but that the public alignment of "Jewish" with "Orthodox" eclipses other kinds of Jewish publics in Los Angeles. The chapter compares the idea of the neighborhood in the eruv with Jewish concepts of the neighborhood in a recent short documentary, My Neighbourhood, about secular Israeli Jews who partner with Muslim Palestinians to protest Orthodox Jewish appropriation of Palestinians' homes. Conclusion: Love, Space, and the Grounds of Comparative Ethnic Literature Study chapter abstractThis chapter argues for the value of comparative analysis in studies of race and ethnicity, and makes the case for the inclusion of Jewish studies in the ethnic studies matrix. The Conclusion reviews the parallel but distinct histories of ethnic studies and Jewish studies, and explains the basis of their mutual exclusion. The Conclusion posits the book's critical motif of "the neighborhood" as the apt figure for reconciling different academic accounts of race and ethnicity, and for seeking understanding through unexpected comparisons across racial groups.

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Book SynopsisIn the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Brazil improved the health and well-being of its populace more than any other large democracy in the world. Long infamous for its severe inequality, rampant infant mortality, and clientelist politics, the country ushered in an unprecedented twenty-five-year transformation in its public health institutions and social development outcomes, declaring a striking seventy percent reduction in infant mortality rates. Thus far, the underlying causes for this dramatic shift have been poorly understood. In Movement-Driven Development, Christopher L. Gibson combines rigorous statistical methodology with rich case studies to argue that this transformation is the result of a subnationally-rooted process driven by civil society actors, namely the Sanitarist Movement. He argues that their ability to leverage state-level political positions to launch a gradual but persistent attack on health policy implementation enabled them to infuse their social welfare ideology into the practice of Brazil's democracy. In so doing, Gibson illustrates how local activists can advance progressive social change more than predicted, and how in large democracies like Brazil, activists can both deepen the quality of local democracy and improve human development outcomes previously thought beyond their control. Trade Review"Movement-Driven Development provides an original theoretical framework for understanding how mobilization can advance social policy. An impeccable, multifaceted study of a uniquely successful movement of public health professionals in Brazil, it is a foundational contribution to the evolution of social movement and development theory. Scholars, policy-makers, and activists will all gain from Gibson's analysis." -- Peter Evans, Professor Emeritus * University of California, Berkeley and Senior Research Fellow, Brown University *"Christopher Gibson's new book is a substantive, theoretical, and methodological success. It offers new ideas concerning social movements and institutional change, and harnesses a rigorous comparison of four case studies to teach us about the role of Brazil's public health movement in improving social development outcomes."—James Mahoney, Northwestern University"Movement-Driven Development is a huge contribution to the field of development, illustrating with impeccable empirical analysis that high levels of GDP, left-leaning political parties, women's political representation, and participatory institutions are not sufficient for robust social development."––Rebecca Tarlau, Mobilization"Movement-Driven Development is a methodological masterpiece that would be an excellent book for a graduate class in political sociology, development, and research methods....[The] book draws important attention to differences in local level politics across large countries, the conditions for implementing progressive social programs, and ways in which committed activists change institutions instead of being corrupted by them." -- Matthew B. Flynn * Social Forces *"[Gibson's] fluently elucidated statistical analysis is...complimented by historical case studies...This book will be useful to a range of readers, from Brazilianists and social movement theorists to scholars of development and health policy." -- Adam Talbot * American Journal of Sociology *"[Movement-Driven Development]... successfully addresses a much larger and critical question: how highly unequal societies can overcome, paternalistic domination geared to undermine social development and the provision of public services." -- Silvia Borzutzky * Latin American Research Review *

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Book SynopsisApproximately 2.4 million Black youth participate in after-school programs, which offer a range of support, including academic tutoring, college preparation, political identity development, cultural and emotional support, and even a space to develop strategies and tools for organizing and activism. In Reclaiming Community, Bianca Baldridge tells the story of one such community-based program, Educational Excellence (EE), shining a light on both the invaluable role youth workers play in these spaces, and the precarious context in which such programs now exist. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, Baldridge persuasively argues that the story of EE is representative of a much larger and understudied phenomenon. With the spread of neoliberal ideology and its reliance on racism—marked by individualism, market competition, and privatization—these bastions of community support are losing the autonomy that has allowed them to embolden the minds of the youth they serve. Baldridge captures the stories of loss and resistance within this context of immense external political pressure, arguing powerfully for the damage caused when the same structural violence that Black youth experience in school, starts to occur in the places they go to escape it.Trade Review"A compelling analysis of community-based youth service programs and how their ability to respond to community needs has been impaired by the narrow 'reform' agenda sweeping the country. Baldridge is a keen observer and her insights will help parents, educators, and activists in other communities understand why their work may not be supported by powerful elites, and what they can do about it." -- Pedro A. Noguera, Distinguished Professor of Education * UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies *"The movement across America to adopt a Wall Street-like focus on 'return on investments' (ROI) to measure the impact of after-school programs is a big mistake. Bianca Baldridge offers a brilliant and timely alternative to metric-driven services; her research provides a refreshing and illuminating vision of how those who support youth of color can create more holistic alternatives to youth programming." -- Shawn Ginwright, Professor of Education and African American Studies * San Francisco State University *"Baldridge's powerful and sophisticated work urges us to continue to focus on theorizing the relationship between community-based youth work and schooling. Reclaiming Community is an urgent read for educational organizers and leaders, education scholars from all disciplines, social movement scholars, and organization scholars." -- Ranita Ray * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Community-Based Youth Work in Uncertain Times chapter abstractChapter 1 introduces readers to Educational Excellence, its history, mission, triumphs, and challenges. Major themes of the book, its goals, the research methodology, and its significance to sociology of education are presented. The story of the organization is discussed within a broader theoretical discussion of market-driven education reform, race, and paternalism to (1) explore the dialectical relationship between community-based spaces and schools and (2) to explore how political imaginings of race and youth shape and inform the construction of community-based educational spaces engaging Black and other minoritized youth. 2"The EE Family:" Framing Race, Youth, and Educational Possibilities chapter abstractChapter 2 describes the history of Educational Excellence and its transformation from a strict after-school academic program steeped in deficit rhetoric to a comprehensive program that includes emotional and social support as well as political education. This chapter discusses the competing framing (asset-based versus deficit) of Black youth among the organization's founder, board members, and current and new staff members in the program and the struggle to reimagine Black youth beyond deficit narratives rampant in the youth development and nonprofit funding world. This chapter discusses how neoliberal restructuring affects the neighborhood Educational Excellence calls home and the schooling experiences of youth in the program. This chapter examines how youth workers become critical advocates and intercessors on behalf of students, assisting them in navigating difficult school, family, cultural, and social barriers. 3"We're Not Saving Anybody:" Refusing Deficit Narratives chapter abstractThis chapter examines how Black youth within after-school support spaces are often framed politically as "broken" and in need of "fixing." This chapter highlights the voices of youth workers as they navigate community-based educational youth work in a national education climate and with new organizational leadership marked by education reform and therefore pressure to frame Black youth from a deficit perspective to compete for funding opportunities, political praise, and public recognition. This chapter describes how the common trend toward deficit framing is linked to the current neoliberal education market, which incentivizes community-based educational spaces to frame marginalized youth as socially, culturally, and intellectually deficient in order to successfully compete with charter schools for funding. 4"Expanding EE's Footprint": Navigating Organizational Change chapter abstractChapter 4 discusses the growing racial, class, and gender tensions between the organization's founder, executive leadership, and Educational Excellence's board members. This chapter examines the changing nature of leadership in the organization and its impact on the practices of youth workers, shifting priorities of the program, and the overall culture of the program. Rapid growth and increase in the number of youth "served" by Educational Excellence became the new language and mode of operation for the organization. Under these new logics, racial and economic discourse about Black youth and educational opportunity within the organization began to drastically disrupt life at Educational Excellence. This chapter discusses how Educational Excellence expanded into another neighborhood without the proper infrastructure, which shifted the organization in an entirely different direction—one that led to damaged relationships and altered the reputation of the organization. 5"The Family Is Dead": Corporatizing After-School chapter abstractAfter a mass exodus of staff members at Educational Excellence, this chapter discusses how remaining youth workers strive to maintain strong and relevant pedagogical practices, familial-like culture, and an asset-rich ideology of youth in a new climate where organizational leadership is primarily concerned with funding, expansion, and greater exposure for the organization—without regard for the consequences for staff or student morale. This chapter discusses the ways that the camaraderie and relationships established between youth workers served as an anchor for accountability in the program. With relationships in jeopardy, accountability for resisting racist and deficit language withered and neoliberal expansion flourished under new leadership. 6"It Was Never Ours": Race and the Politics of Control chapter abstractChapter 6 examines the external pull factors (broader political and economic forces shaping public education) and internal push factors (competing frames of race, control, and paternalism between staff, the founder, and new leadership) that led youth workers away from Educational Excellence. Youth workers share their process for leaving the organization, what they learned during their time in the program, and reflections on challenging and rewarding experiences. Chapter 6 investigates the persistence of racism and neoliberalism within the current era of education that is eroding liberatory community-based spaces engaging Black youth. Conclusion: Reclaiming Community-Based Youth Work in the Neoliberal Era chapter abstractThe conclusion summarizes major research findings and highlights the major triumphs, challenges, and changes the book documented. Within this chapter, the story of Educational Excellence is placed within a historical context of activism in Black communities. Through the lessons learned from Educational Excellence, a path is laid out for community-based leaders and educators of color to identify, name, and resist the complex dynamics of racism, anti-Blackness, and politics threatening their work with youth. The conclusion lays out recommendations that include (1) encouraging more scholarship that theorizes social location of community-based youth work and the deep pedagogical work that can occur within community-based after-school spaces; and (2) considering the potential effects of macroeconomic and social policies, such as education privatization, on after-school community-based spaces and cautioning against the erasure of self-determination within community-based spaces as a result of the neoliberal turn.

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Book SynopsisAfter the introduction of the "long-term resident" visa, the mass-migration of Nikkeis (Japanese Brazilians) has led to roughly 190,000 Brazilian nationals living in Japan. While the ancestry-based visa confers Nikkeis' right to settlement virtually as a right of blood, their ethnic ambiguity and working-class profile often prevent them from feeling at home in their supposed ethnic homeland. In response, many have converted to Pentecostalism, reflecting the explosive trend across Latin America since the 1970s. Jesus Loves Japan offers a rare window into lives at the crossroads of return migration and global Pentecostalism. Suma Ikeuchi argues that charismatic Christianity appeals to Nikkei migrants as a "third culture"—one that transcends ethno-national boundaries and offers a way out of a reality marked by stagnant national indifference. Jesus Loves Japan insightfully describes the political process of homecoming through the lens of religion, and the ubiquitous figure of the migrant as the pilgrim of a transnational future.Trade Review"Transnational migrants find spiritual sustenance in Suma Ikeuchi's careful, sensitive ethnography. In showing how Pentecostalism grants meaning to a bleak existence, Ikeuchi opens new vistas in our understanding of Japanese Brazilians residing in Japan. She offers fresh insights to all interested in identity puzzles, self-making, religious conversion, and global movement." -- Daniel T. Linger, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology * University of California, Santa Cruz *"Suma Ikeuchi's nuanced fieldwork among Japanese Brazilians (Nikkei) employed in Japan exposes the flawed hemato-logic of government and corporate officials who believed that ancestry ('blood') alone would make Nikkei more assimilable than other foreign guest workers. This book demonstrates the primacy of culture over 'blood' as a cipher for ethnicity." -- Jennifer Robertson * author of Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation (2018) *"This is a remarkable book about a remarkable situation. Through wonderfully vivid ethnography, Ikeuchi documents the lives of Brazilian Pentecostal converts in Japan as they negotiate identities as migrants, homecomers, pilgrims, and believers. In the process, the book becomes an anthropological meditation on time, belonging, sincerity, and the multiple meanings of making connections through blood." -- Simon Coleman, Chancellor Jackman Professor * University of Toronto *"Focusing on the migration of Nikkei between Brazil and Japan, Suma Ikeuchi's brilliant ethnographic work shows how the Japan that Nikkei Pentecostals believe Jesus loves, a thoroughly hybridized one (biologically, culturally, and nationally), is not only befitting of and appropriate to the many tongues uttered by those transnational devotees, but is also consistent with the fluidity and plasticity of the emerging postmodern era. Pentecostalism, a movement depicted historically as a premodern spirituality bubbling up amid and in resistance to modernity's so-called iron cage of rationality, thus remains, through this anthropological study, a viable symbolic frame more than a century later and under drastically different social conditions." -- Amos Yong, Professor of Theology & Mission * Fuller Theological Seminary *"Jesus Loves Japan is a fascinating study of the roles played by religion in a diasporic community....In this remarkably well-researched and well-written monograph, Ikeuchi introduces readers to the little-known Nikkei Brazilian Pentecostals and unpacks the never-ending process of subject-making of a diasporic group that is simultaneously spatial and moral." -- Taku Suzuki * The Journal of Asian Studies *"Jesus Loves Japan exhibits a fine balance between historical narration, theoretical reflection, observation of place and setting, and first-person commentary from the informants and from the author herself....Ikeuchi comments that 'ethnography illustrates the particular to illuminate the universal.' In accomplishing this aim, Jesus Loves Japan is a brilliant success." -- Michael McClymond * Pneuma *"Jesus Loves Japan is an exemplary work of new scholarship....This is an eminently readable book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and it should be welcomed by readers interested in the productive intersections between religion and migration in a globalized world." -- Joshua Tan * Reading Religion *"Suma Ikeuchi presents a compelling case study of a diaspora community trapped between cultures....Jesus Loves Japan is an excellent ethnographic work that proves useful to a wide variety of readers." -- Timothy Smith * Nova Religio *"[Jesus Loves Japan] provides some thought-provoking and unexpected conclusions which warrant serious consideration both from the points of view of religious studies scholarship and legislation. It is a recommended text to readers of religious studies on any level who wish to find out more about the workings of Christianity in East Asia and Japan." -- Lehel Balogh * Religious Studies Review *"Ikeuchi has produced, as far as I know, one of the most complete and perceptive ethnographies made about a single religious Brazilian group in Japan." -- Rafael Shoji * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Pilgrims in the Strange Homeland chapter abstractThis introductory chapter outlines the main questions of the book. How do Nikkei migrant converts negotiate between their national citizenship, ethnic identity, and religious subjectivity? What happens when the right to mobility rests on the ability to embody state-sanctioned origin? How do their projects of return affect the moral contours of citizenship, belonging, and diaspora? It also clarifies the social significance of the book's subject by describing the two growing trends in contemporary globalization: the return migration in East Asia and the growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America. The phenomenon of Pentecostal conversion among Nikkei Brazilian migrants in Japan can thus provide an illuminating lens to study the dynamic intersection of these two migratory and religious movements. 2Japanese Blood, Brazilian Birth, and Transnational God chapter abstractThis chapter offers a historical overview of Japanese-Brazilian migrant communities and their Pentecostal churches in Japan. Why are there Brazilians of Japanese descent living in Japan today and why do many of them convert to Latin American Pentecostalism in their supposed ancestral homeland? The chapter traces their migratory and religious history starting in 1908, when the first Japanese immigrants arrived in Brazil. It then covers the key historical events throughout the 20th and the early 21st century, such as Japan's defeat in the WWII, Nikkeis' ascent to the middle- and upper-class in Brazil, introduction of the ancestry-based visa by Japan in 1990, and the flourishing of Pentecostalism among the Nikkei "return" migrants. The chapter then moves onto the explanation of the ethnographic context of the research conducted by the author between 2012 and 2014 and fieldwork methods tht she employed. 3Putting Aside Living chapter abstractMost Nikkei Brazilians in Japan are at once labor migrants and "return" migrants, who dream of a better future while working in low-paying jobs on visas granted on the basis of their past ancestral ties to the nation. As such, they grapple with the images of time—the past, the present, and the future—in complex ways. This chapter delves into these temporal hopes and anxieties. Specifically, it focuses on a predominant concern regarding time among migrant converts, namely, "putting aside living (deixar de viver, in Portuguese)." As many learn to postpone comfort in the present to work long hours and to save money for the planned return to Brazil, the feeling of suspended life becomes very common: "I am sacrificing the present to live a better future one day." The chapter discusses the symptom of temporal suffocation as a lens to analyze the aspirational temporality of migration. 4Neither Here nor There chapter abstractThis chapter investigates why the rhetoric of "neither here nor there (nem lá nem cá)" is so common among Nikkei Brazilian migrants in Japan. First, it illuminates how Nikkeis have transformed from "Asian whites" with "culture of discipline" in Brazil to "delinquent Latinos" with "culture of disorder" in Japan. This loss of ethnic status exacerbates the feeling that they have lost clear identity. Second, the distance—both physical and emotional—caused by migratory movement and labor environment fuels the sense of crisis that their family ties and gender roles are becoming weak or confusing. Third, the shifting identities of the next generation born or raised in Japan make many older Brazilian migrants think that the youth—many of whom are mixed-raced—are becoming too Japanese, losing the proper Brazilian identity. The chapter elaborates on these three facets that characterize the predominant narrative of in-between identity among the migrants. 5Back to the Present chapter abstractThis chapter discusses the ways in which conversion addresses common concerns regarding time among Nikkei Brazilian migrants in Japan, including the symptom of "putting aside living" discussed in Chapter 3. While labor migration promotes aspirational temporality, the charismatic temporality of Pentecostal conversion encourages converts to focus on the renewal in the moment, or "right now, right here." Many converts therefore feel that Pentecostal practices can help them experience and live the present moment, which they have been sacrificing for years as labor migrants in pursuit of the better future. The chapter thus illuminates how the practices and sensibilities of Pentecostal Christianity responds to the temporal anxieties of transnational migration. Seen through the lens of time, migration and conversion become part of the same process of moral subject formation, thus forming a "temporal tandem." 6The Culture of Love chapter abstractWhile most Nikkei converts claim that love is a timeless "Christian" emotion, the trope of love seems to carry multiple meanings within their century-old history of transpacific diaspora. This chapter delves into the historical registers of Christian love among Nikkei Brazilian migrants in Japan. Nikkei congregants often contrast Christian love (amor) with Japanese discipline (educação). Specifically, they suggest that love augments and overcomes rigid discipline because it is more sincere, spontaneous, and modern. The chapter situates the experience of Christian love within the transnational landscape of flexible racial identities, thereby historicizing affect. In particular, it analyzes various "family restoration" seminars that Pentecostal churches organize in Japan to combat the distancing effects of transnational migration—Married for Life, Worship for Women, and Ancient Paths, to name a few. Migrant converts often believe that the Christian conception of family and gender roles can heal the "wounds" of labor migration. 7Of Two Bloods chapter abstractTo many Nikkeis, their "Japanese blood" carries a contentious meaning as a marker of their marginal place in the national kinship of Japan. This is in stark contrast to the other kind of blood that migrant converts frequently spoke about: the blood of Jesus as the medium of Christian fellowship open for any "brothers and sisters in faith." This chapter takes the tension between the two bloods—the "Japanese blood" and the blood of Jesus—as the point of departure to probe how Nikkei converts are crafting a new sense of citizenship in their strange ancestral homeland. While the national kinship locates the source of migrants' moral entitlement in their Japanese ancestral past, the Pentecostal kinship emphasizes the importance of continuous conversion in the charismatic present. The chapter will delve into the ethical aspects of kin-making by investigating the two diverging logics of relatedness. 8Ancestors of God chapter abstractProtestant Christianity is often understood as a culture of sincere personal belief. This chapter challenges that popular conception by analyzing the ritual life at a Pentecostal migrant church. Specifically, it demonstrates that the purview of "faith (fé)" goes beyond the cognized acceptance of explicit doctrines by elaborating on how some migrants approach conversion as an act of commitment to social and familial relationships that they desire to foster. The chapter focuses on one Okinawan Japanese migrant called Leticia to drive these points home. She chose to participate in water baptism and convert to Pentecostalism to follow her already-converted adult sons and to maintain "the harmony in family." Migrants like Leticia show that the charismatic faith in this ethnographic context consists of multiple layers, personal as well relational. It is this multiplicity that makes it possible for migrants from diverse cultural backgrounds to envision and construct "one community in faith." 9Accompanied Self chapter abstractWhile the notion of the individual figures prominently in the debate about Christian personhood in anthropology, the concept of "relational selves" has shaped much of the existing literature on Japanese self. This chapter takes this seeming divergence between "individual Christian" and "interdependent Japanese" as the point of departure. It probes how Nikkei Brazilian converts narrate their subject positions vis-à-vis the Japanese majority by engaging multiple ideals of personhood. Interestingly, both migrant converts and their Japanese neighbors often articulated their understandings about authentic self by discussing the category of religion. The chapter therefore brings together religion, authenticity, and personhood to illuminate how the Brazilian and Japanese residents in Japan envision the ethics of the self. It concludes that Pentecostal Brazilian migrants uphold that the self should ideally be "accompanied" by the divine Other and discusses glossolalia as one common practice used to foster this vision of accompanied personhood. 10Jesus Loves Japan chapter abstractThis concluding chapter revisits and elaborates on the theme of moral mobility. As the ethnographic expositions in the preceding chapters have shown, mobility is at once spatial, temporal, affective, and ethical. The argument is that movement itself would be simply inconceivable without such moral registers. "Jesus ama o Japão (Jesus loves Japan)" is a phrase that Nikkei migrant converts use in a wide range of contexts. Some migrant converts exclaim the phrase in a triumphant tone while evangelizing Japanese passersby in public; others utter it more hesitantly while reminiscing about the sense of in-betweenness that had haunted them in Japan. In other words, migrant converts resort to the same phrase—"Jesus loves Japan"—to generatively articulate the ethical dimensions of their mobility. The concluding chapter explores how such experiences of moral mobility may be redrawing the boundaries of Nikkei diaspora in the present.

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Book SynopsisThe U.S. military continues to be an overt presence in the Philippines, and a reminder of the country's colonial past. Using Subic Bay (a former U.S. military base, now a Freeport Zone) as a case study, Victoria Reyes argues that its defining feature is its ability to elicit multiple meanings. For some, it is a symbol of imperialism and inequality, while for others, it projects utopian visions of wealth and status. Drawing on archival and ethnographic data, Reyes describes the everyday experiences of people living and working in Subic Bay, and makes a case for critically examining similar spaces across the world. These foreign-controlled, semi-autonomous zones of international exchange are what she calls global borderlands. While they can take many forms, ranging from overseas military bases to tourist resorts, they all have key features in common. This new unit of globalization provides a window into broader economic and political relations, the consequences of legal ambiguity, and the continuously reimagined identities of the people living there. Rejecting colonialism as merely a historical backdrop, Reyes demonstrates how it is omnipresent in our modern world.Trade Review"Victoria Reyes brings us into a world that few observers have dared enter: the 'global borderland' that is the Philippines' Subic Bay, a former American military base. Through this invaluable and innovative ethnography, readers get to see, in vivid richness, the complex workings of money, love, sex, and power that characterize the afterlives of America's military empire in the Pacific. Sociology needs more historical ethnographies like this one." -- Julian Go * author of Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory *"Rarely can a study account for practices of globalization from above and below while situating the events of today in its colonial past, but Victoria Reyes accomplishes this extraordinary feat with her concept of 'global borderlands.' This is a wide-reaching study that should be of interest to anthropologists, geographers, and legal scholars, and sociologists of intimacy, globalization, and economics." -- Rhacel Parreñas, Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies * University of Southern California *"Global Borderlands has the makings of a scholarly classic, using methodologies from history, sociology, and anthropology to intervene in a broad range of fields, most notably borderland studies....Interwoven through each chapter is an engagingly descriptive ethnography with theoretical insights, which will appeal to scholars and students alike. Although the Subic Bay Freeport Zone in the Philippines, once a US naval base, is [Reyes'] case study, the book can be read productively by anyone working within borderland studies. Essential." -- M. J. Wert * CHOICE *"The recent work of sociologists on the Philippines has contributed a great deal to our understanding of the negotiations of class, race, and place in the archipelago, and this work by Reyes certainly adds to that rich and burgeoning subfield. Global Borderlands is a text that opens up a great deal of possible questions in the context of borderlands studies, international relations between the United States and the Philippines, and the everyday act of place and meaning making in spaces where sovereignty may be questioned." -- Mark John Sanchez * H-Diplo *"Global Borderlands offers a thought-provoking conceptual framework that cannot but enrich our understanding of globalization as well as international politics....By relying on multiple methods and on an interdisciplinary approach, Reyes convincingly conveys to the readers the dynamism and fluidity that concepts like sovereignty, power, inequality, as well as social interactions acquire in these global borderlands." -- Alice Dell'Era * New Global Studies *"Victoria Reyes counters a simplistic narrative of American neoimperial dominance through military bases in international countries. Instead, the book reveals the complexities of contested sovereignties and their manifestations in United States and Philippine relations....Global Borderlands is an immensely engaging read." -- Amy Kahng * Ethnic Studies Review *"Global Borderlands is a book that should be taken seriously on methodological, empirical, and theoretical grounds. Scholars of globalization, culture, law, and urban studies in particular should pay attention to the lessons that Reyes mines from Subic Bay." -- Annie Hikido * American Journal of Sociology *"There is much to like about Global Borderlands. It is written for a broad audience and provides vivid evidence of the complexity, contingency and precarity in and near Subic Bay....Readers who approach the book on its own terms will be well-rewarded." -- Gregory Hooks * Social Forces *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThis chapter introduces the concept of global borderlands, places controlled by foreigners where the rules that govern socioeconomic life differ from those that are outside its walls and places that elicit multiple meanings. Global borderlands are proliferating around the world. and in examining Subic Bay, Philippines—a former military base and now a Freeport Zone—this chapter highlights how they are sites of contestation and contradictions, where sovereignty is contingent, meanings and identities are continually remade, and inequality serves as their foundation. 1Money and Authority chapter abstractThis chapter examines the push and pull of political negotiations through an analysis of military agreements, tax law, and tax disputes. It focuses on how inequality is written into the foundation of these places through legal negotiations and the conflicts they spark on the ground. However, it also shows how Filipinos have increasingly found ways to exploit the language of these documents to assert sovereignty, though they do so with varying levels of success. The chapter shows how, in these negotiations, sovereignty is negotiated in the minutiae of who has control over territory versus who has control in the administration over people and facilities, or what Reyes calls administrative sovereignty, allowing Filipinos and foreigners alike to stake a claim and view these negotiations through a lens of success. 2Rape and Murder chapter abstractThis chapter lays out the stakes involved in global borderlands by examining two high-profile crimes: a rape and a murder, both of which were committed by U.S. servicemen against Filipinas. In these two cases, activists, judges, lawyers, and reporters use sexual violence as a vehicle and a proxy for making broader sociopolitical critiques about the relationship between the United States and the Philippines, and the effect that relationship has on the Philippines as a sovereign nation-state. This chapter shows how small, seemingly minute details—such as negotiations over where and under what conditions the culprits are held, who controls access to them, and who stipulates the terms of their detention—are where power dynamics between the United States and the Philippines can be seen. 3Sex and Romance chapter abstractThe global borderlands of active and decommissioned overseas U.S. military bases often conjure up images and sexual fantasies of local women at the beck and call of men, ready to indulge in their every desire. This chapter juxtaposes two alternative and competing understandings of the relationships between U.S. servicemen and Filipinas, as being wrought with violence, inequality, and exploitative sex versus being imagined in romance and seen through the lens of a heroic love myth. It shows how these relationships and the myths that surround them are regulated formally and informally, and it is precisely because they are both prevalent and at odds with one another that they contribute to the staying power of global borderlands. 4Born in the Shadows of Bases chapter abstractThis chapter turns its focus to Amerasians (children of U.S. servicemen and Filipina women), their place in Philippine and U.S. societies, and the conditions in which they thrive rather than barely survive. It shows how the intimate sphere of the family and home is affected by the political and economic relationships between countries. Multiple and competing laws and understandings governing morality and imaginaries of belonging affect the relationships created in Subic Bay. Yet even concerning familial relations, global borderlands do not all operate in the same way. U.S. military bases vary regarding familial laws and policies because place—its geography, sociocultural meanings, and use—matters. Because Subic Bay became a place linked to soldiers' respite from the Vietnam War, whether intended or otherwise, its affect on thousands, if not millions, of children around the world is unique. 5Labor and Imagined Identities chapter abstractThis chapter uses employment as a lens to examine how people on the ground experience Subic Bay. Focusing on the U.S. Subic Bay Naval Base as an employer and two businesses within the Subic Bay Freeport Zone—the Filipino-owned, upscale Harbor Point mall and the South Korean company Hanjin Shipping—the chapter shows how people understand national identities and inequalities through what Reyes calls labor imaginaries. That is, it shows how the experiences and reputations of employers and customers recreate utopian imaginaries and others—those based on human rights violations, hell, and poverty—and how people link them to their understandings of what it means to be a foreigner of a particular nationality. 6Buying Inequality chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on the Filipino and foreign men and women who work in, live in, and visit the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. Many people see the Freeport Zone as a continuation of the U.S. military past and a symbol of the future, providing ways to live the good life and be part of a modern global community. One way to become a part of this modern utopia is through consumption imaginaries, buying into this world through everyday purchases. Through these everyday purchases, people recreate symbolic and tangible stratification between classes and nationalities. However, these imaginaries do not always reflect reality on the ground. Corruption, crime, and intimidation also infiltrate the Freeport Zone and perpetuate inequality. Conclusion chapter abstractThe conclusion reflects on the reasons that global borderlands are a central object of study for the twenty-first century: they are the landscapes in which international tensions arise. Global borderlands simultaneously evoke a sense of a global modernity and are symbols of foreign powers' penetration into domestic societies. As such, they are the battlegrounds of international politics, as we see in contemporary political debates around free trade and global integration in the United States and the European Union. The interwoven fantasies, violence, and local understandings of the foreign are even more sharply divided when global borderlands are located in African, Middle Eastern, Latin American, and Asian countries, like the Philippines. Within these lands the socioeconomic and political stakes at hand are heightened due to their colonial histories and their lower and sometimes more precarious place in the hierarchy of global politics.

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Book SynopsisMigrant Crossings examines the experiences and representations of Asian and Latina/o migrants trafficked in the United States into informal economies and service industries. Through sociolegal and media analysis of court records, press releases, law enforcement campaigns, film representations, theatre performances, and the law, Annie Isabel Fukushima questions how we understand victimhood, criminality, citizenship, and legality. Fukushima examines how migrants legally cross into visibility, through frames of citizenship, and narratives of victimhood. She explores the interdisciplinary framing of the role of the law and the legal system, the notion of "perfect victimhood", and iconic victims, and how trafficking subjects are resurrected for contemporary movements as illustrated in visuals, discourse, court records, and policy. Migrant Crossings deeply interrogates what it means to bear witness to migration in these migratory times—and what such migrant crossings mean for subjects who experience violence during or after their crossing.Trade Review"Migrant Crossings brilliantly dissects our understandings of the plight of Latina and Asian women trafficked into informal economies of sex and service. Combining original analysis of court cases, news accounts, and police reports with the author's experience as a volunteer counselor, Fukushima reveals a legal system that requires a survivor's story to fit the model of 'perfect victimhood' in order to cross into visibility and be deemed worthy of asylum." -- Evelyn Nakano Glenn * University of California, Berkeley *"Migrant Crossings critically examines the framing and impact of the U.S. anti-human trafficking movement. Annie Fukushima explores how our work in the movement is often at odds with our stated objectives and reveals how an individual's experiences are shaped by a racist, misogynistic, and colonialist history. A deeply important read for all of us working to realize the promise of human rights." -- Jean Bruggeman, Executive Director * Freedom Network USA *"Migrant Crossings offers a deeply insightful analysis of the structures of human trafficking. It illustrates linkages between labor migration and human trafficking while convincing readers that vulnerability to human trafficking belongs in a historical continuum of U.S. racial exclusion." -- Rhacel Salazar Parreñas * author of Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work *"For policymakers, [Migrant Crossings] raises important considerations of how implicit theories & assumptions translate into discriminatory practices, even as we set out to liberate those we have identified as victims." -- Hugo Seron-Anaya * Humanity & Society *"In the literal sense, this work crosses through an impressive range of disciplines, including women's and feminist studies, critical race and ethnic studies, sexuality studies, labor studies, legal studies, and sociology. In the figurative sense, Fukushima has the reader cross from this world into the spooky, abstract world through her 'unsettled witnessing' of 'ghosts' to her discussions of the 'living dead.'... Fukushima's work should be celebrated for the wealth of knowledge and information it has managed to contain in less than 300 pages." –Verjine Adanalian, Human Rights Quarterly"In challenging the notion that human trafficking today is 'new,' Fukushima also shows readers how many of today's policies and discourses related to (im)migration and human trafficking are deeply haunted by the past." -- Samantha Majic * Contemporary Sociology *"Weaving in frameworks bridging media studies, transnational feminist theory, and ethnic studies, the work brings a broadly interdisciplinary and analytically contemplative inquiry into critical antitrafficking studies. Pairing creatively wide-ranging empirical data extending from first and secondary court data to films and various media, Fukushima creates a pastiche that offers viewers a sense of how antitrafficking has created victims and saviors along racist and imperialist logics." -- Elena Shih * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: chapter abstractCase-examples of Latino migrants who were seen as victims of human trafficking are juxtaposed with migrant cases, where the alleged victim is seen as a criminal. As such, the introduction opens with the stakes of what it means for some migrants to be seen as victims of human trafficking, and the social, political, and legal consequences of being invisible. Therefore, the introduction introduces the reader to central concepts in the book: criminalization, migrant labor, tethered subjectivity, transnational feminism, witnessing, unsettled witnessing, decolonial and migrant crossings. It also offers a summary of the book. 1An American Haunting: Witnessing Human Trafficking and Ghostly Exclusions chapter abstract"An American Haunting" examines transnational migration, in particular a popularized case referred to as the "ghost case" or the "blessing scam." The blessing scam is an internationally known where Chinese migrants were "swindled" out of their money and jewelry. However, as a normative narrative of criminality circulated in popular media, another story coalesced around a story of vulnerability and victimhood. Through an interdisciplinary and transnational feminist method, I examine how the ghost case was a human trafficking that never was. Through a theory of "unsettled witnessing," this chapter examines the multiple contexts of migration, violence, labor, and informal economies to further unravel the dichotomies that are normalized in human right's rhetoric and practice: victim/criminal, illegal/legal, and citizen/noncitizen. Other cases examined include United States v. Fang Ping Ding and United States v. Kil Soo Lee. 2Legal Control of Migrant Crossings: Citizenship, Labor, and Racialized Sexualities chapter abstract"Legal Genealogies of Migrant Crossings" frames how one is constituted as trafficked by the law, its enforcement, its production through discourse, and its social implications. This chapter contextualizes "modern-day slavery" and U.S. trafficking laws. Due to the layers of scales in which human-trafficking laws exist—state, nation-state, and international—this chapter offers a mapping of human-trafficking laws and their intersections with labor migration and racialized sexualities. 3"Perfect Victims" and Labor Migration chapter abstractThere is a common perception of a "perfect victim" as a passive victim is the norm in anti-trafficking discourse. This chapter explores how notions of victimhood are tied to legality, narrative, and choice. To explore victimhood, legal case studies of domestic servitude are examined: United States v. the Calimlims, United States v. the Jacksons, and United States v. the Lundbergs. The research on Filipina/o migration and diasporic subjectivities is rich; however, few studies examine the Filipina/o trafficking experience in the context of criminality. This chapter juxtaposes immigrant victimhood and criminality through homosocial and coethnic violence of Filipinas trafficking Filipinas. 4Witnessing Legal Narratives, Court Performances, and Translations of Peruvian Domestic Work chapter abstractThis chapter examines the case of United States v. Dann, in which a Peruvian domestic worker was trafficked into servitude in California. Central to this narrative is the testimony, which also must be analyzed as an authoritative document that is performed. This chapter examines raced, gendered, and classed dynamics between the indigenous Latina domestic worker, Liliana, who was perceived of as vulnerable and a victim. In contrast to Liliana, the upper-class Peruvian woman employer, Dann, was constructed as criminal. This case study highlights a deeper understanding of court performances and the role of crying and translation in human-trafficking cases through a micro-case examination in the context of macro-perceptions of human trafficking and immigration. 5(Living)Dead Subjects: Mamasans, Sex Slaves, and Sexualized Economies chapter abstractTrafficking subjects are like the living dead, resurrected time and again for the living. This chapter examines how the representation of Korean sexualities reproduce (living)dead subjects that haunt the living through figures of the comfort woman, sex workers, and sex trafficking in the United States. Korean Americans are addressing their socially dead status, which continues to circulate through mass-media consumption of raids and rescue as exemplified in the film Eden(2012) starring Korean American actress Jamie Chung, premised on the story of a Korean American sex-trafficked survivor. Conclusion: chapter abstractMigrant Crossings ends with technologies and the image of the Cyclops. Through the case of Operation Syclops, the closing chapter ends with surveillance and the terms of legibility that create citizen subjects through frames of victimhood, criminality, and notions of legality. The technologies range from technologies of mobilizing a human rights agenda through apps to surveillance of particular economies such as Asian massage parlors and the U.S. border. It is a reflection of the contemporary climate of human-trafficking laws, immigration, and the climate of terror and insecurity in a post-9/11 era and mobile gendered subjects—trafficked immigrant women.

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Book SynopsisAfter the introduction of the "long-term resident" visa, the mass-migration of Nikkeis (Japanese Brazilians) has led to roughly 190,000 Brazilian nationals living in Japan. While the ancestry-based visa confers Nikkeis' right to settlement virtually as a right of blood, their ethnic ambiguity and working-class profile often prevent them from feeling at home in their supposed ethnic homeland. In response, many have converted to Pentecostalism, reflecting the explosive trend across Latin America since the 1970s. Jesus Loves Japan offers a rare window into lives at the crossroads of return migration and global Pentecostalism. Suma Ikeuchi argues that charismatic Christianity appeals to Nikkei migrants as a "third culture"—one that transcends ethno-national boundaries and offers a way out of a reality marked by stagnant national indifference. Jesus Loves Japan insightfully describes the political process of homecoming through the lens of religion, and the ubiquitous figure of the migrant as the pilgrim of a transnational future.Trade Review"Transnational migrants find spiritual sustenance in Suma Ikeuchi's careful, sensitive ethnography. In showing how Pentecostalism grants meaning to a bleak existence, Ikeuchi opens new vistas in our understanding of Japanese Brazilians residing in Japan. She offers fresh insights to all interested in identity puzzles, self-making, religious conversion, and global movement." -- Daniel T. Linger, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology * University of California, Santa Cruz *"Suma Ikeuchi's nuanced fieldwork among Japanese Brazilians (Nikkei) employed in Japan exposes the flawed hemato-logic of government and corporate officials who believed that ancestry ('blood') alone would make Nikkei more assimilable than other foreign guest workers. This book demonstrates the primacy of culture over 'blood' as a cipher for ethnicity." -- Jennifer Robertson * author of Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation (2018) *"This is a remarkable book about a remarkable situation. Through wonderfully vivid ethnography, Ikeuchi documents the lives of Brazilian Pentecostal converts in Japan as they negotiate identities as migrants, homecomers, pilgrims, and believers. In the process, the book becomes an anthropological meditation on time, belonging, sincerity, and the multiple meanings of making connections through blood." -- Simon Coleman, Chancellor Jackman Professor * University of Toronto *"Focusing on the migration of Nikkei between Brazil and Japan, Suma Ikeuchi's brilliant ethnographic work shows how the Japan that Nikkei Pentecostals believe Jesus loves, a thoroughly hybridized one (biologically, culturally, and nationally), is not only befitting of and appropriate to the many tongues uttered by those transnational devotees, but is also consistent with the fluidity and plasticity of the emerging postmodern era. Pentecostalism, a movement depicted historically as a premodern spirituality bubbling up amid and in resistance to modernity's so-called iron cage of rationality, thus remains, through this anthropological study, a viable symbolic frame more than a century later and under drastically different social conditions." -- Amos Yong, Professor of Theology & Mission * Fuller Theological Seminary *"Jesus Loves Japan is a fascinating study of the roles played by religion in a diasporic community....In this remarkably well-researched and well-written monograph, Ikeuchi introduces readers to the little-known Nikkei Brazilian Pentecostals and unpacks the never-ending process of subject-making of a diasporic group that is simultaneously spatial and moral." -- Taku Suzuki * The Journal of Asian Studies *"Jesus Loves Japan exhibits a fine balance between historical narration, theoretical reflection, observation of place and setting, and first-person commentary from the informants and from the author herself....Ikeuchi comments that 'ethnography illustrates the particular to illuminate the universal.' In accomplishing this aim, Jesus Loves Japan is a brilliant success." -- Michael McClymond * Pneuma *"Jesus Loves Japan is an exemplary work of new scholarship....This is an eminently readable book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and it should be welcomed by readers interested in the productive intersections between religion and migration in a globalized world." -- Joshua Tan * Reading Religion *"Suma Ikeuchi presents a compelling case study of a diaspora community trapped between cultures....Jesus Loves Japan is an excellent ethnographic work that proves useful to a wide variety of readers." -- Timothy Smith * Nova Religio *"[Jesus Loves Japan] provides some thought-provoking and unexpected conclusions which warrant serious consideration both from the points of view of religious studies scholarship and legislation. It is a recommended text to readers of religious studies on any level who wish to find out more about the workings of Christianity in East Asia and Japan." -- Lehel Balogh * Religious Studies Review *"Ikeuchi has produced, as far as I know, one of the most complete and perceptive ethnographies made about a single religious Brazilian group in Japan." -- Rafael Shoji * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Pilgrims in the Strange Homeland chapter abstractThis introductory chapter outlines the main questions of the book. How do Nikkei migrant converts negotiate between their national citizenship, ethnic identity, and religious subjectivity? What happens when the right to mobility rests on the ability to embody state-sanctioned origin? How do their projects of return affect the moral contours of citizenship, belonging, and diaspora? It also clarifies the social significance of the book's subject by describing the two growing trends in contemporary globalization: the return migration in East Asia and the growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America. The phenomenon of Pentecostal conversion among Nikkei Brazilian migrants in Japan can thus provide an illuminating lens to study the dynamic intersection of these two migratory and religious movements. 2Japanese Blood, Brazilian Birth, and Transnational God chapter abstractThis chapter offers a historical overview of Japanese-Brazilian migrant communities and their Pentecostal churches in Japan. Why are there Brazilians of Japanese descent living in Japan today and why do many of them convert to Latin American Pentecostalism in their supposed ancestral homeland? The chapter traces their migratory and religious history starting in 1908, when the first Japanese immigrants arrived in Brazil. It then covers the key historical events throughout the 20th and the early 21st century, such as Japan's defeat in the WWII, Nikkeis' ascent to the middle- and upper-class in Brazil, introduction of the ancestry-based visa by Japan in 1990, and the flourishing of Pentecostalism among the Nikkei "return" migrants. The chapter then moves onto the explanation of the ethnographic context of the research conducted by the author between 2012 and 2014 and fieldwork methods tht she employed. 3Putting Aside Living chapter abstractMost Nikkei Brazilians in Japan are at once labor migrants and "return" migrants, who dream of a better future while working in low-paying jobs on visas granted on the basis of their past ancestral ties to the nation. As such, they grapple with the images of time—the past, the present, and the future—in complex ways. This chapter delves into these temporal hopes and anxieties. Specifically, it focuses on a predominant concern regarding time among migrant converts, namely, "putting aside living (deixar de viver, in Portuguese)." As many learn to postpone comfort in the present to work long hours and to save money for the planned return to Brazil, the feeling of suspended life becomes very common: "I am sacrificing the present to live a better future one day." The chapter discusses the symptom of temporal suffocation as a lens to analyze the aspirational temporality of migration. 4Neither Here nor There chapter abstractThis chapter investigates why the rhetoric of "neither here nor there (nem lá nem cá)" is so common among Nikkei Brazilian migrants in Japan. First, it illuminates how Nikkeis have transformed from "Asian whites" with "culture of discipline" in Brazil to "delinquent Latinos" with "culture of disorder" in Japan. This loss of ethnic status exacerbates the feeling that they have lost clear identity. Second, the distance—both physical and emotional—caused by migratory movement and labor environment fuels the sense of crisis that their family ties and gender roles are becoming weak or confusing. Third, the shifting identities of the next generation born or raised in Japan make many older Brazilian migrants think that the youth—many of whom are mixed-raced—are becoming too Japanese, losing the proper Brazilian identity. The chapter elaborates on these three facets that characterize the predominant narrative of in-between identity among the migrants. 5Back to the Present chapter abstractThis chapter discusses the ways in which conversion addresses common concerns regarding time among Nikkei Brazilian migrants in Japan, including the symptom of "putting aside living" discussed in Chapter 3. While labor migration promotes aspirational temporality, the charismatic temporality of Pentecostal conversion encourages converts to focus on the renewal in the moment, or "right now, right here." Many converts therefore feel that Pentecostal practices can help them experience and live the present moment, which they have been sacrificing for years as labor migrants in pursuit of the better future. The chapter thus illuminates how the practices and sensibilities of Pentecostal Christianity responds to the temporal anxieties of transnational migration. Seen through the lens of time, migration and conversion become part of the same process of moral subject formation, thus forming a "temporal tandem." 6The Culture of Love chapter abstractWhile most Nikkei converts claim that love is a timeless "Christian" emotion, the trope of love seems to carry multiple meanings within their century-old history of transpacific diaspora. This chapter delves into the historical registers of Christian love among Nikkei Brazilian migrants in Japan. Nikkei congregants often contrast Christian love (amor) with Japanese discipline (educação). Specifically, they suggest that love augments and overcomes rigid discipline because it is more sincere, spontaneous, and modern. The chapter situates the experience of Christian love within the transnational landscape of flexible racial identities, thereby historicizing affect. In particular, it analyzes various "family restoration" seminars that Pentecostal churches organize in Japan to combat the distancing effects of transnational migration—Married for Life, Worship for Women, and Ancient Paths, to name a few. Migrant converts often believe that the Christian conception of family and gender roles can heal the "wounds" of labor migration. 7Of Two Bloods chapter abstractTo many Nikkeis, their "Japanese blood" carries a contentious meaning as a marker of their marginal place in the national kinship of Japan. This is in stark contrast to the other kind of blood that migrant converts frequently spoke about: the blood of Jesus as the medium of Christian fellowship open for any "brothers and sisters in faith." This chapter takes the tension between the two bloods—the "Japanese blood" and the blood of Jesus—as the point of departure to probe how Nikkei converts are crafting a new sense of citizenship in their strange ancestral homeland. While the national kinship locates the source of migrants' moral entitlement in their Japanese ancestral past, the Pentecostal kinship emphasizes the importance of continuous conversion in the charismatic present. The chapter will delve into the ethical aspects of kin-making by investigating the two diverging logics of relatedness. 8Ancestors of God chapter abstractProtestant Christianity is often understood as a culture of sincere personal belief. This chapter challenges that popular conception by analyzing the ritual life at a Pentecostal migrant church. Specifically, it demonstrates that the purview of "faith (fé)" goes beyond the cognized acceptance of explicit doctrines by elaborating on how some migrants approach conversion as an act of commitment to social and familial relationships that they desire to foster. The chapter focuses on one Okinawan Japanese migrant called Leticia to drive these points home. She chose to participate in water baptism and convert to Pentecostalism to follow her already-converted adult sons and to maintain "the harmony in family." Migrants like Leticia show that the charismatic faith in this ethnographic context consists of multiple layers, personal as well relational. It is this multiplicity that makes it possible for migrants from diverse cultural backgrounds to envision and construct "one community in faith." 9Accompanied Self chapter abstractWhile the notion of the individual figures prominently in the debate about Christian personhood in anthropology, the concept of "relational selves" has shaped much of the existing literature on Japanese self. This chapter takes this seeming divergence between "individual Christian" and "interdependent Japanese" as the point of departure. It probes how Nikkei Brazilian converts narrate their subject positions vis-à-vis the Japanese majority by engaging multiple ideals of personhood. Interestingly, both migrant converts and their Japanese neighbors often articulated their understandings about authentic self by discussing the category of religion. The chapter therefore brings together religion, authenticity, and personhood to illuminate how the Brazilian and Japanese residents in Japan envision the ethics of the self. It concludes that Pentecostal Brazilian migrants uphold that the self should ideally be "accompanied" by the divine Other and discusses glossolalia as one common practice used to foster this vision of accompanied personhood. 10Jesus Loves Japan chapter abstractThis concluding chapter revisits and elaborates on the theme of moral mobility. As the ethnographic expositions in the preceding chapters have shown, mobility is at once spatial, temporal, affective, and ethical. The argument is that movement itself would be simply inconceivable without such moral registers. "Jesus ama o Japão (Jesus loves Japan)" is a phrase that Nikkei migrant converts use in a wide range of contexts. Some migrant converts exclaim the phrase in a triumphant tone while evangelizing Japanese passersby in public; others utter it more hesitantly while reminiscing about the sense of in-betweenness that had haunted them in Japan. In other words, migrant converts resort to the same phrase—"Jesus loves Japan"—to generatively articulate the ethical dimensions of their mobility. The concluding chapter explores how such experiences of moral mobility may be redrawing the boundaries of Nikkei diaspora in the present.

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Book SynopsisThe U.S. military continues to be an overt presence in the Philippines, and a reminder of the country's colonial past. Using Subic Bay (a former U.S. military base, now a Freeport Zone) as a case study, Victoria Reyes argues that its defining feature is its ability to elicit multiple meanings. For some, it is a symbol of imperialism and inequality, while for others, it projects utopian visions of wealth and status. Drawing on archival and ethnographic data, Reyes describes the everyday experiences of people living and working in Subic Bay, and makes a case for critically examining similar spaces across the world. These foreign-controlled, semi-autonomous zones of international exchange are what she calls global borderlands. While they can take many forms, ranging from overseas military bases to tourist resorts, they all have key features in common. This new unit of globalization provides a window into broader economic and political relations, the consequences of legal ambiguity, and the continuously reimagined identities of the people living there. Rejecting colonialism as merely a historical backdrop, Reyes demonstrates how it is omnipresent in our modern world.Trade Review"Victoria Reyes brings us into a world that few observers have dared enter: the 'global borderland' that is the Philippines' Subic Bay, a former American military base. Through this invaluable and innovative ethnography, readers get to see, in vivid richness, the complex workings of money, love, sex, and power that characterize the afterlives of America's military empire in the Pacific. Sociology needs more historical ethnographies like this one." -- Julian Go * author of Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory *"Rarely can a study account for practices of globalization from above and below while situating the events of today in its colonial past, but Victoria Reyes accomplishes this extraordinary feat with her concept of 'global borderlands.' This is a wide-reaching study that should be of interest to anthropologists, geographers, and legal scholars, and sociologists of intimacy, globalization, and economics." -- Rhacel Parreñas, Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies * University of Southern California *"Global Borderlands has the makings of a scholarly classic, using methodologies from history, sociology, and anthropology to intervene in a broad range of fields, most notably borderland studies....Interwoven through each chapter is an engagingly descriptive ethnography with theoretical insights, which will appeal to scholars and students alike. Although the Subic Bay Freeport Zone in the Philippines, once a US naval base, is [Reyes'] case study, the book can be read productively by anyone working within borderland studies. Essential." -- M. J. Wert * CHOICE *"The recent work of sociologists on the Philippines has contributed a great deal to our understanding of the negotiations of class, race, and place in the archipelago, and this work by Reyes certainly adds to that rich and burgeoning subfield. Global Borderlands is a text that opens up a great deal of possible questions in the context of borderlands studies, international relations between the United States and the Philippines, and the everyday act of place and meaning making in spaces where sovereignty may be questioned." -- Mark John Sanchez * H-Diplo *"Global Borderlands offers a thought-provoking conceptual framework that cannot but enrich our understanding of globalization as well as international politics....By relying on multiple methods and on an interdisciplinary approach, Reyes convincingly conveys to the readers the dynamism and fluidity that concepts like sovereignty, power, inequality, as well as social interactions acquire in these global borderlands." -- Alice Dell'Era * New Global Studies *"Victoria Reyes counters a simplistic narrative of American neoimperial dominance through military bases in international countries. Instead, the book reveals the complexities of contested sovereignties and their manifestations in United States and Philippine relations....Global Borderlands is an immensely engaging read." -- Amy Kahng * Ethnic Studies Review *"Global Borderlands is a book that should be taken seriously on methodological, empirical, and theoretical grounds. Scholars of globalization, culture, law, and urban studies in particular should pay attention to the lessons that Reyes mines from Subic Bay." -- Annie Hikido * American Journal of Sociology *"There is much to like about Global Borderlands. It is written for a broad audience and provides vivid evidence of the complexity, contingency and precarity in and near Subic Bay....Readers who approach the book on its own terms will be well-rewarded." -- Gregory Hooks * Social Forces *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThis chapter introduces the concept of global borderlands, places controlled by foreigners where the rules that govern socioeconomic life differ from those that are outside its walls and places that elicit multiple meanings. Global borderlands are proliferating around the world. and in examining Subic Bay, Philippines—a former military base and now a Freeport Zone—this chapter highlights how they are sites of contestation and contradictions, where sovereignty is contingent, meanings and identities are continually remade, and inequality serves as their foundation. 1Money and Authority chapter abstractThis chapter examines the push and pull of political negotiations through an analysis of military agreements, tax law, and tax disputes. It focuses on how inequality is written into the foundation of these places through legal negotiations and the conflicts they spark on the ground. However, it also shows how Filipinos have increasingly found ways to exploit the language of these documents to assert sovereignty, though they do so with varying levels of success. The chapter shows how, in these negotiations, sovereignty is negotiated in the minutiae of who has control over territory versus who has control in the administration over people and facilities, or what Reyes calls administrative sovereignty, allowing Filipinos and foreigners alike to stake a claim and view these negotiations through a lens of success. 2Rape and Murder chapter abstractThis chapter lays out the stakes involved in global borderlands by examining two high-profile crimes: a rape and a murder, both of which were committed by U.S. servicemen against Filipinas. In these two cases, activists, judges, lawyers, and reporters use sexual violence as a vehicle and a proxy for making broader sociopolitical critiques about the relationship between the United States and the Philippines, and the effect that relationship has on the Philippines as a sovereign nation-state. This chapter shows how small, seemingly minute details—such as negotiations over where and under what conditions the culprits are held, who controls access to them, and who stipulates the terms of their detention—are where power dynamics between the United States and the Philippines can be seen. 3Sex and Romance chapter abstractThe global borderlands of active and decommissioned overseas U.S. military bases often conjure up images and sexual fantasies of local women at the beck and call of men, ready to indulge in their every desire. This chapter juxtaposes two alternative and competing understandings of the relationships between U.S. servicemen and Filipinas, as being wrought with violence, inequality, and exploitative sex versus being imagined in romance and seen through the lens of a heroic love myth. It shows how these relationships and the myths that surround them are regulated formally and informally, and it is precisely because they are both prevalent and at odds with one another that they contribute to the staying power of global borderlands. 4Born in the Shadows of Bases chapter abstractThis chapter turns its focus to Amerasians (children of U.S. servicemen and Filipina women), their place in Philippine and U.S. societies, and the conditions in which they thrive rather than barely survive. It shows how the intimate sphere of the family and home is affected by the political and economic relationships between countries. Multiple and competing laws and understandings governing morality and imaginaries of belonging affect the relationships created in Subic Bay. Yet even concerning familial relations, global borderlands do not all operate in the same way. U.S. military bases vary regarding familial laws and policies because place—its geography, sociocultural meanings, and use—matters. Because Subic Bay became a place linked to soldiers' respite from the Vietnam War, whether intended or otherwise, its affect on thousands, if not millions, of children around the world is unique. 5Labor and Imagined Identities chapter abstractThis chapter uses employment as a lens to examine how people on the ground experience Subic Bay. Focusing on the U.S. Subic Bay Naval Base as an employer and two businesses within the Subic Bay Freeport Zone—the Filipino-owned, upscale Harbor Point mall and the South Korean company Hanjin Shipping—the chapter shows how people understand national identities and inequalities through what Reyes calls labor imaginaries. That is, it shows how the experiences and reputations of employers and customers recreate utopian imaginaries and others—those based on human rights violations, hell, and poverty—and how people link them to their understandings of what it means to be a foreigner of a particular nationality. 6Buying Inequality chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on the Filipino and foreign men and women who work in, live in, and visit the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. Many people see the Freeport Zone as a continuation of the U.S. military past and a symbol of the future, providing ways to live the good life and be part of a modern global community. One way to become a part of this modern utopia is through consumption imaginaries, buying into this world through everyday purchases. Through these everyday purchases, people recreate symbolic and tangible stratification between classes and nationalities. However, these imaginaries do not always reflect reality on the ground. Corruption, crime, and intimidation also infiltrate the Freeport Zone and perpetuate inequality. Conclusion chapter abstractThe conclusion reflects on the reasons that global borderlands are a central object of study for the twenty-first century: they are the landscapes in which international tensions arise. Global borderlands simultaneously evoke a sense of a global modernity and are symbols of foreign powers' penetration into domestic societies. As such, they are the battlegrounds of international politics, as we see in contemporary political debates around free trade and global integration in the United States and the European Union. The interwoven fantasies, violence, and local understandings of the foreign are even more sharply divided when global borderlands are located in African, Middle Eastern, Latin American, and Asian countries, like the Philippines. Within these lands the socioeconomic and political stakes at hand are heightened due to their colonial histories and their lower and sometimes more precarious place in the hierarchy of global politics.

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Book SynopsisMigrant Crossings examines the experiences and representations of Asian and Latina/o migrants trafficked in the United States into informal economies and service industries. Through sociolegal and media analysis of court records, press releases, law enforcement campaigns, film representations, theatre performances, and the law, Annie Isabel Fukushima questions how we understand victimhood, criminality, citizenship, and legality. Fukushima examines how migrants legally cross into visibility, through frames of citizenship, and narratives of victimhood. She explores the interdisciplinary framing of the role of the law and the legal system, the notion of "perfect victimhood", and iconic victims, and how trafficking subjects are resurrected for contemporary movements as illustrated in visuals, discourse, court records, and policy. Migrant Crossings deeply interrogates what it means to bear witness to migration in these migratory times—and what such migrant crossings mean for subjects who experience violence during or after their crossing.Trade Review"Migrant Crossings brilliantly dissects our understandings of the plight of Latina and Asian women trafficked into informal economies of sex and service. Combining original analysis of court cases, news accounts, and police reports with the author's experience as a volunteer counselor, Fukushima reveals a legal system that requires a survivor's story to fit the model of 'perfect victimhood' in order to cross into visibility and be deemed worthy of asylum." -- Evelyn Nakano Glenn * University of California, Berkeley *"Migrant Crossings critically examines the framing and impact of the U.S. anti-human trafficking movement. Annie Fukushima explores how our work in the movement is often at odds with our stated objectives and reveals how an individual's experiences are shaped by a racist, misogynistic, and colonialist history. A deeply important read for all of us working to realize the promise of human rights." -- Jean Bruggeman, Executive Director * Freedom Network USA *"Migrant Crossings offers a deeply insightful analysis of the structures of human trafficking. It illustrates linkages between labor migration and human trafficking while convincing readers that vulnerability to human trafficking belongs in a historical continuum of U.S. racial exclusion." -- Rhacel Salazar Parreñas * author of Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work *"For policymakers, [Migrant Crossings] raises important considerations of how implicit theories & assumptions translate into discriminatory practices, even as we set out to liberate those we have identified as victims." -- Hugo Seron-Anaya * Humanity & Society *"In the literal sense, this work crosses through an impressive range of disciplines, including women's and feminist studies, critical race and ethnic studies, sexuality studies, labor studies, legal studies, and sociology. In the figurative sense, Fukushima has the reader cross from this world into the spooky, abstract world through her 'unsettled witnessing' of 'ghosts' to her discussions of the 'living dead.'... Fukushima's work should be celebrated for the wealth of knowledge and information it has managed to contain in less than 300 pages." –Verjine Adanalian, Human Rights Quarterly"In challenging the notion that human trafficking today is 'new,' Fukushima also shows readers how many of today's policies and discourses related to (im)migration and human trafficking are deeply haunted by the past." -- Samantha Majic * Contemporary Sociology *"Weaving in frameworks bridging media studies, transnational feminist theory, and ethnic studies, the work brings a broadly interdisciplinary and analytically contemplative inquiry into critical antitrafficking studies. Pairing creatively wide-ranging empirical data extending from first and secondary court data to films and various media, Fukushima creates a pastiche that offers viewers a sense of how antitrafficking has created victims and saviors along racist and imperialist logics." -- Elena Shih * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: chapter abstractCase-examples of Latino migrants who were seen as victims of human trafficking are juxtaposed with migrant cases, where the alleged victim is seen as a criminal. As such, the introduction opens with the stakes of what it means for some migrants to be seen as victims of human trafficking, and the social, political, and legal consequences of being invisible. Therefore, the introduction introduces the reader to central concepts in the book: criminalization, migrant labor, tethered subjectivity, transnational feminism, witnessing, unsettled witnessing, decolonial and migrant crossings. It also offers a summary of the book. 1An American Haunting: Witnessing Human Trafficking and Ghostly Exclusions chapter abstract"An American Haunting" examines transnational migration, in particular a popularized case referred to as the "ghost case" or the "blessing scam." The blessing scam is an internationally known where Chinese migrants were "swindled" out of their money and jewelry. However, as a normative narrative of criminality circulated in popular media, another story coalesced around a story of vulnerability and victimhood. Through an interdisciplinary and transnational feminist method, I examine how the ghost case was a human trafficking that never was. Through a theory of "unsettled witnessing," this chapter examines the multiple contexts of migration, violence, labor, and informal economies to further unravel the dichotomies that are normalized in human right's rhetoric and practice: victim/criminal, illegal/legal, and citizen/noncitizen. Other cases examined include United States v. Fang Ping Ding and United States v. Kil Soo Lee. 2Legal Control of Migrant Crossings: Citizenship, Labor, and Racialized Sexualities chapter abstract"Legal Genealogies of Migrant Crossings" frames how one is constituted as trafficked by the law, its enforcement, its production through discourse, and its social implications. This chapter contextualizes "modern-day slavery" and U.S. trafficking laws. Due to the layers of scales in which human-trafficking laws exist—state, nation-state, and international—this chapter offers a mapping of human-trafficking laws and their intersections with labor migration and racialized sexualities. 3"Perfect Victims" and Labor Migration chapter abstractThere is a common perception of a "perfect victim" as a passive victim is the norm in anti-trafficking discourse. This chapter explores how notions of victimhood are tied to legality, narrative, and choice. To explore victimhood, legal case studies of domestic servitude are examined: United States v. the Calimlims, United States v. the Jacksons, and United States v. the Lundbergs. The research on Filipina/o migration and diasporic subjectivities is rich; however, few studies examine the Filipina/o trafficking experience in the context of criminality. This chapter juxtaposes immigrant victimhood and criminality through homosocial and coethnic violence of Filipinas trafficking Filipinas. 4Witnessing Legal Narratives, Court Performances, and Translations of Peruvian Domestic Work chapter abstractThis chapter examines the case of United States v. Dann, in which a Peruvian domestic worker was trafficked into servitude in California. Central to this narrative is the testimony, which also must be analyzed as an authoritative document that is performed. This chapter examines raced, gendered, and classed dynamics between the indigenous Latina domestic worker, Liliana, who was perceived of as vulnerable and a victim. In contrast to Liliana, the upper-class Peruvian woman employer, Dann, was constructed as criminal. This case study highlights a deeper understanding of court performances and the role of crying and translation in human-trafficking cases through a micro-case examination in the context of macro-perceptions of human trafficking and immigration. 5(Living)Dead Subjects: Mamasans, Sex Slaves, and Sexualized Economies chapter abstractTrafficking subjects are like the living dead, resurrected time and again for the living. This chapter examines how the representation of Korean sexualities reproduce (living)dead subjects that haunt the living through figures of the comfort woman, sex workers, and sex trafficking in the United States. Korean Americans are addressing their socially dead status, which continues to circulate through mass-media consumption of raids and rescue as exemplified in the film Eden(2012) starring Korean American actress Jamie Chung, premised on the story of a Korean American sex-trafficked survivor. Conclusion: chapter abstractMigrant Crossings ends with technologies and the image of the Cyclops. Through the case of Operation Syclops, the closing chapter ends with surveillance and the terms of legibility that create citizen subjects through frames of victimhood, criminality, and notions of legality. The technologies range from technologies of mobilizing a human rights agenda through apps to surveillance of particular economies such as Asian massage parlors and the U.S. border. It is a reflection of the contemporary climate of human-trafficking laws, immigration, and the climate of terror and insecurity in a post-9/11 era and mobile gendered subjects—trafficked immigrant women.

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Book SynopsisThe Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery explores how antiblack racism lived on through the figure of the Chinese worker in US literature after emancipation. Drawing out the connections between this liminal figure and the formal aesthetics of blackface minstrelsy in literature of the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction eras, Caroline H. Yang reveals the ways antiblackness structured US cultural production during a crucial moment of reconstructing and re-narrating US empire after the Civil War. Examining texts by major American writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Sui Sin Far, and Charles Chesnutt—Yang traces the intertwined histories of blackface minstrelsy and Chinese labor. Her bold rereading of these authors' contradictory positions on race and labor sees the figure of the Chinese worker as both hiding and making visible the legacy of slavery and antiblackness. Ultimately, The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery shows how the Chinese worker manifests the inextricable links between US literature, slavery, and empire, as well as the indispensable role of antiblackness as a cultural form in the United States.Trade Review"Elegantly parsing both continuities and discontinuities in racial formation from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, Caroline Yang charts the peculiar survivals of the minstrel form. The power of antiblackness to deform Blackness and Chineseness on both stage and page is everywhere evident in this assiduously researched and argued book." -- Tavia Nyong'o * Yale University *"The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery offers fascinating new insights into minstrelsy as an enduring cultural form. Caroline Yang's nuanced comparative analyses enrich by challenging us to reconceptualize minstrelsy in the development of US literature and our ideas of the 'West.'" -- Edlie L. Wong * University of Maryland, College Park *"Yang provides new insights into the role of blackface minstrelsy in the post–Civil War period, particularly in California....Readers should bear in mind that the author's aim is not to explore the personal racism of any given author. Rather, it is to elucidate an evolving system of racial representation deployed across literature and popular culture that underpinned white supremacy, US imperialism, and settler colonialism. Recommended." -- J. R. Wendland * CHOICE *"Situating the 'Chinese question' in relation to Reconstruction, The Peculiar Afterlife assiduously documents continuities between the white supremacy of the antebellum South and the racial logics of the frontier... Yang's excavation of the Chinese worker's representational ties to blackface minstrelsy provides a timely illustration of the pervasive and constitutive role of antiblackness in US racial discourses." -- Amy C. Tang * The American Literary History Online Review *

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Book SynopsisChallenging the commonly held perception that immigrants' lives are shaped exclusively by their sending and receiving countries, Here, There, and Elsewhere breaks new ground by showing how immigrants are vectors of globalization who both produce and experience the interconnectedness of societies—not only the societies of origin and destination, but also, the societies in places beyond. Tahseen Shams posits a new concept for thinking about these places that are neither the immigrants' homeland nor hostland—the "elsewhere." Drawing on rich ethnographic data, interviews, and analysis of the social media activities of South Asian Muslim Americans, Shams uncovers how different dimensions of the immigrants' ethnic and religious identities connect them to different elsewheres in places as far-ranging as the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. Yet not all places in the world are elsewheres. How a faraway foreign land becomes salient to the immigrant's sense of self depends on an interplay of global hierarchies, homeland politics, and hostland dynamics. Referencing today's 24-hour news cycle and the ways that social media connects diverse places and peoples at the touch of a screen, Shams traces how the homeland, hostland, and elsewhere combine to affect the ways in which immigrants and their descendants understand themselves and are understood by others. Trade Review"This brilliantly argued, beautifully written book pushes migration studies in an entirely new direction. Identifying a conceptual space located outside both countries of immigration and emigration and to which the immigrants have no direct connection, Shams provides an entirely novel demonstration of how conflicts stemming from the world's 'elsewhere' places shape the collective identity categories available to immigrants and their descendants. An important work, yielding lessons for both scholars and students to savor and ponder." -- Roger Waldinger * University of California, Los Angeles *"This is a tour de force. Combining nuanced ethnography with multi-sited historical analysis, Shams shows how South Asian immigrants' lives in the U.S. are shaped not only by where they come from and where they go, but also by events in third places they have never been. The surprising centrality of these 'elsewheres' is a breakthrough insight in migration studies." -- David Scott FitzGerald * author of Refuge beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers *"A significant body of contemporary migration research assumes that a dualistic focus on the country of origin and host society are appropriate for the creation of cutting-edge accounts of contemporary migration. In her study of South Asian Muslims and their descendants settling in California, Tahseen Shams challenges the adequacy of the homeland/hostland approach by demonstrating that depictions of events in migrants' countries of origin as well as those in regions to which these migrants have no connection—such as Syria, Palestine, Nigeria, and Western Europe—significantly influence their acceptance and adjustment. In so doing, Here, There, and Elsewhere advances our approach for understanding migration, resettlement, and transnational phenomena." -- Steven J. Gold * Michigan State University *"In this well-written and timely ethnographic study, Shams draws on her insider knowledge as a first-generation Bangladeshi-American woman to eloquently illustrate how different generations of South Asian Muslims navigate their identities as Muslims....Moving beyond a simple homeland-hostland binary, Shams' book is a welcoming intervention in both theories of assimilation and transnationalism." -- Cristine S. Khan and Van C. Tran * Social Forces *"[A] significant intervention in how we understand immigrants' lived experiences....Shams effectively uses examples from her fieldwork to convey the utility of the multicentered relational framework to various arenas of South Asian Muslim Americans' identity construction, while leaving analytical space for this concept to be further developed through additional case studies of other immigrant groups within and outside of the U.S.A. This is an important book." -- Adrienne Lee Atterberry * South Asian Diaspora *"This well-written book presents new insights and an alternative model for researching immigrant communities, and contributessignificantly to migration, religious, and ethnic studies. Recommended." -- D. A. Chekki * CHOICE *"Here, There, and Elsewhere is pushing the boundaries of immigrant studies by pointing to the importance of global interconnections in understanding immigrant identity and socialization. It is worthy of serious attention by scholars of immigration and ethnic studies." -- Sangay Mishra * Ethnic and Racial Studies *"Tahseen Shams's Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World tells an important story about migrants: how migrant communities are interconnected to a host land and homeland, here and there, respectively. This is a compelling and thought-provoking concept, what Shams terms as an 'elsewhere,' that builds upon existing transnational feminist theories, by which Shams illuminates how a place neither 'here' nor 'there' can shape the migrant experience." -- Annie Isabel Fukushima * American Journal of Sociology *"Shams's groundbreaking multicentered relational framework of Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World is a model to understand migrants' identity and their sense of belonging beyond the homeland-hostland dyad and the influence of 'Elsewhere.'" -- Sumiya Mahmud * The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology *"Many scholars have attempted to address integration, assimilation, or enculturation as a way to make sense of the immigrant journey of identity shaping and shift in the hostland. Shams allows us to think on a multidimensional plane where identity can be informed by acts of individual agency, such as supporting Palestine, or acts of protection, such as subscribing to the 'good Muslim' script. These examples are influenced by the history and politics of the home and host countries. Shams allows for immigrants to be seen as individuals, without essentializing their stories based on their Muslimness." -- Ashvina Patel * H-Diplo *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Societies Interconnected chapter abstractThis chapter introduces a new concept for thinking about the places that are neither the immigrants' homeland nor hostland, but which are nonetheless salient in their identity-making processes. Extending the foundational frameworks of international migration that focus exclusively on the dynamics within or between the sending and receiving countries, this chapter provides an overview of the book's key argument—that contrary to dyadic explanations, how immigrants self-identify and how they are identified by others are shaped by geopolitics unfolding in the homeland, hostland, and "elsewhere." The chapter also outlines the book's methodological justifications and sources of data, namely ethnographic observations, interviews, and social media data of sixty South Asian Muslim Americans in California. 2Beyond Here and There: The Multicentered Relational Framework chapter abstract"Elsewhere" does not mean everywhere. Using examples from both contemporary politics and immigration history, this chapter uses a new analytical model—the multicentered relational framework—to show how a faraway foreign place gains salience for an immigrant group and becomes an "elsewhere." Serving as the theoretical spine of the book, this chapter outlines the variations of "elsewhere" and its limitations. The chapter next expounds the three facets of the multicentered relational framework—namely, homeland-hostland, hostland-"elsewhere," and "elsewhere"-homeland—to show how each reveals different dimensions of immigrants' collective identity formation. 3Global Dimensions of Homeland Ties chapter abstractThis chapter shows how immigrants' homeland ties gain global dimensions based on hostland-"elsewhere" interactions. Using examples of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Indian immigrants' homeland politics, it shows that the struggles for nation-building in the sending countries are not insulated within just those societies but are instead shaped by their interactions with "elsewheres," specifically the Middle East and Europe. These struggles are at times mirrored among the immigrant communities in America, while some homeland cleavages lose relevance over time. Yet some other homeland boundaries gain life anew as they take on new, globally informed meanings for the immigrants based on hostland sociopolitics and "elsewhere' dynamics. 4The Geopolitics of Being "Good Muslims" in America chapter abstractThis chapter shows how "elsewhere" geopolitics exacerbate social pressures on Muslim and "Muslim-looking" groups in post-9/11 America. Often stereotyped as model minorities based on their race/ethnicity, South Asian Americans, if they are Muslim, are viewed as threats in moments of crisis. Members of this immigrant group often strive to present themselves as "good," "moderate" Muslims and highlighting the universal values they share such as peacefulness. Islamic organizations also highlight the compatibility of Islam with American values by "Islamizing" aspects of American culture on the one hand, and "Americanizing" tenets of Islam on the other. The strategies of individuals can inadvertently lead to political silence, whereas organizational strategies can involve Muslims in U.S. politics, advocating for their interests here and "elsewhere." 5"Muslims in Danger" Both Here and Elsewhere chapter abstractThis chapter traces how and why "elsewhere" gains salience in immigrants' self-identification, at times more than their homelands. Many South Asian Muslim immigrants interpret their collective position in America using examples of "elsewheres" where Muslims are also a stigmatized minority. These "elsewhere" examples combined with the homeland's colonized past, the post-9/11 U.S. context, and ongoing tensions between the hostland United States and the Middle East reinforce the immigrants' worldview that "the West" is biased against "the Muslim world." This perspective leads them to participate politically in ways they believe will favorably impact not only the condition of Muslims in America but also anticolonial efforts of Muslims in the Middle East. These examples of "elsewhere" orientations demonstrate immigrants' long-distance nationalism and political transnationalism. 6Taking Precautions Here for "Muslims in Conflict" Elsewhere chapter abstractBased on analysis of public and participant reactions to six ISIS attacks—two in Europe (Paris and Brussels), two in the Middle East (Beirut and Istanbul), and two in the United States (San Bernardino, California, and Orlando, Florida)—this chapter shows that conflicts in "elsewhere" Europe influence host country perceptions of South Asian Muslims more than the conflicts in the Middle East do. The Islamist attacks in Europe and in the U.S. generated comparable levels of response. Muslims' fear of backlash and the precautions they took for their safety were comparable in each case. Conversely, Islamist attacks in the Middle East generated low levels of reaction, even from Muslims who self-identified with that region. This incongruity is influenced by the media, geopolitics, global discourse on Muslims, and the prevailing public imaginary of the West and the Muslim world. 7Here, There, and Elsewhere chapter abstractThis book presents several questions for migration and race scholars. Does "elsewhere" influence black Muslim identities, or is it an immigrant phenomenon? Are "elsewhere" effects present for predominantly non-Muslim but racialized "Muslim-looking" groups, like Latino/a? With South Asian Muslim Americans responding to Muslim-related contexts in the Middle East, are places in South Asia with Muslim majorities then "elsewheres" for Arab and Middle Eastern Americans? If not, why? How can the multicentered relational framework be used to analyze immigrant identities outside the U.S. context? This concluding chapter reflects on possible answers to these questions and on the political developments unfolding globally.

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Book SynopsisCrossing distinct literatures, histories, and politics, Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America reveals the intertwined story of contemporary Asian Americans and Latinxs through a shared literary aesthetic. Their transfictional literature creates expansive imagined worlds in which distinct stories coexist, offering artistic shape to their linked political and economic struggles. Long Le-Khac explores the work of writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Karen Tei Yamashita, Junot Díaz, and Aimee Phan. He shows how their fictions capture the uneven economic opportunities of the post–civil rights era, the Cold War as it exploded across Asia and Latin America, and the Asian and Latin American labor flows powering global capitalism today. Read together, Asian American and Latinx literatures convey astonishing diversity and untapped possibilities for coalition within the United States' fastest-growing immigrant and minority communities; to understand the changing shape of these communities we must see how they have formed in relation to each other. As the U.S. population approaches a minority-majority threshold, we urgently need methods that can look across the divisions and unequal positions of the racial system. Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America leads the way with a vision for the future built on panethnic and cross-racial solidarity.Trade Review"Long Le-Khac expertly demonstrates how aesthetic form can reveal solidarities within and across ethnic and racial differences. Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America reveals this capacity in transfiction, finding community within shared historical ground and political aspirations." -- Crystal Parikh * New York University *"Long Le-Khac elaborates a concept of transfictional literature that provides an important means of understanding the formation of Asian and Latinx communities in relation to one another, at mid-century and within our contemporary moment. This unique book is a wonderful contribution that will enrich the growing scholarship on comparative racialization." -- Lisa Lowe * Yale University *"Long Le-Khac offers a completely new way of understanding the form and substance of the stories of our time. Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America fundamentally rearranges the way that scholars of American literature in general will view the work of a new generation of U.S. ethnic writers." -- Ramón Saldivar * Stanford University *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: A Transfictional Solidarity chapter abstractThe introduction opens with a little-known historical connection between Asian Americans and Latinxs: U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War in March 1965 shaped the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic just a month later. The opening shows how a shared transfictional form in Vietnamese and Dominican American fictions helps perceive this entanglement of distinct communities in the Cold War. The introduction clarifies the formation of an Asian and Latinx America and the urgent stakes of solidarity between Asian Americans and Latinxs. It argues for comparison through aesthetic form as a method of comparative ethnic studies, and it theorizes transfictional form, its relation to the novel and short story cycle, and its purchase on the social tensions linking these communities. It outlines the differentiated yet linked immigration history that makes alliance between these groups difficult to envision. It concludes with a chapter overview. 1Decentering Bildungsroman Hermeneutics: Cisneros, Kingston, and Post-Civil Rights Mobility chapter abstractThe chapter follows Mexican Americans and Chinese Americans confronting the uneven opportunities of the post-civil rights period. In this moment, the bildungsroman, a genre with an individual-centered hermeneutics, reinforced the neoconservative politics of individual development central to the backlash against civil rights reforms. Troublingly, bildungsroman hermeneutics also pervades reading practices, as seen in the criticism on The House on Mango Street (1984) and The Woman Warrior (1976). Developing approaches beyond this hermeneutics, the chapter traces how Sandra Cisneros and Maxine Hong Kingston, alongside African American writer Gloria Naylor, use transfictional form to decenter the bildungsroman's social vision and outline collective shapes for feminist ethnic mobility. Their works stage tensions between the protagonist's development and other characters whose stories cannot progress, unveiling the divisions between minority individuals who rose and the many still stymied by collective inequalities. 2Narrating Cold War Displacement: Junot Díaz and Aimee Phan Trace the Migrations of U.S. Empire chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on a post-Cold War generation of Asian Americans and Latinxs struggling with American narratives that disconnected U.S. violence in the Third World from the Third World migrations entering the U.S. Junot Díaz's Drown (1996) and Aimee Phan's We Should Never Meet (2004) deploy a transfictional tension between narrative borders and border crossings to narrate the violently ruptured yet linked histories of the Dominican and Vietnamese diasporas. Díaz develops a transnational chronotope connecting Dominican immigration to the history of U.S. invasions of that nation. Phan charts the displacement of Vietnamese refugees as inseparable from the circuits of U.S. empire and outlines communities of shared fate for refugee routes. This chapter reframes the immigrant and refugee as intertwined categories justifying U.S. interventions. It uncovers how Asia and Latin America were linked in a global military project and looks across the regional divides in histories of the Cold War. 3Unsettling Strata and Type: Divided Communities of Neoliberal Immigration in Karma and The People of Paper chapter abstractThis chapter examines the neoliberal era of stratified immigration that produces a discrepant range of immigrant fates—from undocumented labor to knowledge workers. Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper (2005) and Rishi Reddi's Karma (2007) depict Asian American and Latinx communities divided by neoliberalism. The chapter shows how these works transpose major and minor characters to unsettle narrative hierarchies that govern who centers stories of ethnic communities. These transpositions destabilize the reductive forms of racial stereotypes and neoliberal valuations. Scrambling perceptions, Reddi and Plascencia highlight disadvantaged immigrants that belie the idea of Indian American success and upwardly mobile youths that complicate the idea of the Mexican American "underclass." Linking groups that inhabit opposite ends of the immigration system, this chapter reveals their shared struggles with the unequal life chances that neoliberal immigration has wrought. It shows the linked projects of wealth and labor extraction in Asia and Latin America. 4Forming Panethnicity: The Book of Unknown Americans and the Comparative Work of Latinidad chapter abstractThe unified identities driving earlier moments of identity politics can no longer be taken for granted given the diversification of Asian American and Latinx communities. This chapter brings together the debates on panethnicity in Latinx and Asian American studies to show how their central impasses are aligned. The chapter argues for rethinking panethnic identity, a political fiction, with panethnic literary fictions. Cristina Henríquez's The Book of Unknown Americans (2014) uses transfictional form to express the antagonisms between panethnic unity and multiplicity. The novel tells stories of migrants from across Latin America. These stories intersect but do not merge into any narrative unity. Transfictional form, this chapter argues, recognizes the Latinx differences that prevent Latinx experiences from being told in any one story. This form simultaneously guides the comparative thought needed to envision new shapes of panethnic alliance that link Latinxs to each other and to broader formations. 5Imagining Unity: I Hotel and the Utopian Horizons of Asian America chapter abstractThis chapter reimagines identity politics alongside Karen Tei Yamashita's novel about the Asian American movement, I Hotel (2010). The novel's converging and diverging form renders panethnic movements as a flux of unity and dissolution and a network of slippages across ethnic boundaries. This form situates conflicts within the Asian American movement as part of broader social contradictions. Internal conflicts can orient panethnic coalitions to a systemic and utopian horizon of justice. Utopian horizons help reconsider unity and closure, ideas critiqued by the politics of difference embraced in Asian American and Latinx studies. This chapter recasts panethnic unity not as a political premise but as a promise to struggle for, a horizon for imagining the just future that would make unity free of contradiction possible. It calls Asian Americans and Latinxs to look beyond their circumscribed borders and see their internal struggles for unity as entangled with systemic projects of justice. Conclusion: A Politics of Beyond chapter abstractThe conclusion explains how fictional world-building can generate theoretical models of the social worlds Asian Americans and Latinxs navigate. Transfictional world-building draws readers beyond the borders of a story. This aesthetics can inspire a politics of beyond in which Asian Americans and Latinxs look beyond their own community borders to see their interconnections. A politics of beyond calls Asian American and Latinx coalitions struggling to define their boundaries to instead embrace their porous borders and political entanglements with each other. The conclusion suggests the potential power of such solidarities to address the conditions that formed and continue to trouble the Asian and Latinx U.S. The book concludes that engaging in Latinx struggles is essential to Asian American politics and vice versa. The Asian and Latinx American political solidarity we need to meet this idea requires a leap of imagination, which is why fiction is so vital. chapter abstract

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Book SynopsisA rigorous study of the social meaning and consequences of racist humor, and a damning argument for when the joke is not just a joke. Having a "good" sense of humor generally means being able to take a joke without getting offended—laughing even at a taboo thought or at another's expense. The insinuation is that laughter eases social tension and creates solidarity in an overly politicized social world. But do the stakes change when the jokes are racist? In The Souls of White Jokes Raúl Pérez argues that we must genuinely confront this unsettling question in order to fully understand the persistence of anti-black racism and white supremacy in American society today. W.E.B. Du Bois's prescient essay "The Souls of White Folk" was one of the first to theorize whiteness as a social and political construct based on a feeling of superiority over racialized others—a kind of racial contempt. Pérez extends this theory to the study of humor, connecting theories of racial formation to parallel ideas about humor stemming from laughter at another's misfortune. Critically synthesizing scholarship on race, humor, and emotions, he uncovers a key function of humor as a tool for producing racial alienation, dehumanization, exclusion, and even violence. Pérez tracks this use of humor from blackface minstrelsy to contemporary contexts, including police culture, politics, and far-right extremists. Rather than being harmless fun, this humor plays a central role in reinforcing and mobilizing racist ideology and power under the guise of amusement. The Souls of White Jokes exposes this malicious side of humor, while also revealing a new facet of racism today. Though it can be comforting to imagine racism as coming from racial hatred and anger, the terrifying reality is that it is tied up in seemingly benign, even joyful, everyday interactions as well— and for racism to be eradicated we must face this truth.Trade Review"This book is an example of the best the sociological imagination has to offer. Pérez advances a powerful theory, elegantly substantiated with historical and contemporary examples. I learned a lot and so will everyone who reads this book."—Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, author of Racism without Racists"In providing the first sustained discussion of racist humor in the United States, Pérez contributes a significant critical intervention to intellectual discussions of racism."—Simon Weaver, author of The Rhetoric of Racist Humour"Theoretically astute and historically rich, this unique study depicts the racial joke—far from being harmless and disarming—as being inseparable from the cementing of white solidarity, from the spreading of racist commonsense, and from easy disavowal of the damage being done."—David Roediger, author of The Wages of Whiteness"It is a commonplace assumption that humor is always harmless fun and vital for our everyday well-being. In this important new book, Raúl Pérez cogently argues that this is not invariably the case, and that jokes and joking relations can be hostile, divisive, alienating and dehumanizing – or in other words, very harmful. Within a strong and well-woven theoretical framework, The Souls of White Jokes offers a major contribution to the critical sociology of ethnicity and racism as well as to the study of humor in key institutions and organizations."—Michael Pickering, author of Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain"Pérez has written the most consequential sociological analysis of humor in the past 20 years... With the current debates over who or what is racist, Pérez has provided a guide that will provoke debates that are essential in a world of comic possibilities and comic cringes."—Gary Alan Fine, Symbolic Interaction"Raúl Pérez has published a much needed addition to the critical study of how racist jokes do the dirty work of constructing racism and racially hierarchical environments."—Michael J. Lorr, Ethnic and Racial Studies"Pérez has written an essential book for both the non-academic and academic audience—one that will undoubtedly serve as an important teaching tool about racial humor and the importance of understanding how racism is reproduced, even in the absence of hatred or negative feelings."—Muna Adem, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity"I find The Souls of White Jokes an important, theoretically rich and thoroughly convincing study of the entanglements of racist humour with white supremacy. I look forward to seeing how this book will influence scholarship in the field of humour studies in years to come."—Lucy Spoliar, The European Journal of Humour Research"In The Souls of White Jokes, Raúl Pérez provides a compelling explanation of how White racist jokes represent a real-time measurement where Americans can see or hear the continued subjugation and disenfranchisement of Non-Whites in the United States."—Cameron D. Lippard, Social Forces"The Souls of White Jokes seeks to counter the concerns of those on the left who believe that targeting racist humor diverts attention from more important issues, such as poverty and diminishing democratic institutions, in the US. More important, Pérez provides a forceful argument to counter those who believe disparaging racial and ethnic humor merits protection as free speech. Recommended."—J. S. Franks, CHOICETable of Contents1. The Racial Power of Humor 2. Amused Racial Contempt, or a Theory of White Racist Humor 3. Hiding in Plain Sight: The Violent Racist Humor of the Far Right 4. Blue Humor: The Racist Insults and Injuries of the Police 5. President Chimp: The Politics of Amused Racial Contempt Epilogue: Racist Humor and the Cult(ure) of Whiteness

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Book SynopsisThe 21st century has seen growing numbers of seniors turning to migration in response to newfound challenges to traditional forms of retirement and old-age support, such as increased longevity, demographically aging populations, and global neoliberal trends reducing state welfare. Chinese-born migrants to the U.S. serve as an exemplary case of this trend, with 30 percent of all migrants since 1990 being at least 60 years old. This book tells their story, arguing that they demonstrate the significance of age as a mediating factor that is fundamentally important for considering how migration is experienced. The subjects of this study are situated at the crossroads of Chinese immigrant and Chinese-American experiences, embodying many of the ambiguities and paradoxes that complicate common understandings of each group. These are older individuals who have waited their whole lives to migrate to the U.S. to rejoin family but often experience unanticipated family conflict when they arrive. They are retirees living at the social and economic margins of American society who nonetheless find significant opportunities to achieve meaningful retired lifestyles. They are members of a diaspora spanning vast regional and ideological differences, yet their wellbeing hinges on everyday interactions with others in this diverse community. Their stories highlight the many possibilities for mutual engagement that connect Chinese and American ways of being and belonging in the world.Trade Review"In this timely and intriguing book, Newendorp offers a vivid and insightful anthropological account of the unique and multifaceted experiences of Chinese senior migrants as well as their sustained struggles and aspirations for belonging, wellbeing, dignity, and the good life in American society. It propels readers to rethink the meanings and possibilities of retirement and aging in the age of global mobility." -- Li Zhang * University of California, Davis, author of In Search of Paradise and Strangers in the City *"Chinese Senior Migrants and the Globalization of Retirement is a thoroughly researched, well written, and engaging ethnographic study of contemporary Cantonese senior migration. Though centered in Boston's Chinatown, Newendorp skilfully contextualizes the migration stories of Cantonese seniors within broader historical trajectories of pre- and post-1949 Cantonese transnational migration, as she speaks to the broader phenomenon of the 'globalization of retirement.'" -- Andrea Louie * Michigan State University *

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Book SynopsisThe Middle East plays a major role in the history of genetic science. Early in the twentieth century, technological breakthroughs in human genetics coincided with the birth of modern Middle Eastern nation-states, who proclaimed that the region's ancient history—as a cradle of civilizations and crossroads of humankind—was preserved in the bones and blood of their citizens. Using letters and publications from the 1920s to the present, Elise K. Burton follows the field expeditions and hospital surveys that scrutinized the bodies of tribal nomads and religious minorities. These studies, geneticists claim, not only detect the living descendants of biblical civilizations but also reveal the deeper past of human evolution. Genetic Crossroads is an unprecedented history of human genetics in the Middle East, from its roots in colonial anthropology and medicine to recent genome sequencing projects. It illuminates how scientists from Turkey to Yemen, Egypt to Iran, transformed genetic data into territorial claims and national origin myths. Burton shows why such nationalist appropriations of genetics are not local or temporary aberrations, but rather the enduring foundations of international scientific interest in Middle Eastern populations to this day.Trade Review"Genetic Crossroads is a shining example of how to write multi-scalar, multi-sited, and multi-lingual histories of science. Few scholars are able to balance the contradictory pulls of the global and the local; Elise Burton shows how they can be effectively braided together without sacrificing critique, complexity, or context."—Projit Bihari Mukharji, University of Pennsylvania"Deeply researched and powerfully written, Genetic Crossroads is one of the most original books I have read in a decade. Burton's unique history of Middle Eastern genetics is a fascinating study of genetic nationalism and the global hierarchies of such scientific inquiry, and a must-read for historians of all fields."—Eve M Troutt Powell, University of Pennsylvania"Drawing on sources in four Middle Eastern languages and from underused Western archives, Elise Burton explains why the Middle East was so pivotal for global genetics. Exemplifying how to integrate area studies and global history, Genetic Crossroads is a true tour de force."—Cyrus Schayegh, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva"Genetic Crossroads exposes how technical and scientific projects about human ethnicity underpinned nationalist ideologies across the twentieth century. Burton introduces a novel angle to established debates, showing how scientific researchers nourished racial mythologies, and how those mythologies drove the researchers themselves. She draws disparate literatures into a single intervention, extending isolated national stories through her integrative original research. The book is remarkable for its breadth of coverage in time, space, and language; every reader will find something that engages their area of curiosity or expertise."—Committee for the Nikki Keddie Book Award, sponsored by the Middle East Studies Association"Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity by Elise Burton, is a sweeping history of 'genetic nationalism' in the 20th century covering Iran, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt and other Arab countries."—Usman Butt, Middle East Monitor"It is difficult to do justice to this exceptional endeavor. The advantages of the integrative thematic approach adopted by Burton are numerous. Most importantly, it allows the book to be both deeply contextual on some significant levels, and yet driven by a strong argument, by strong structuring hypotheses. Its implied periodization is derived from this combination of context and content. It makes room for sophisticated many-layered comparisons, for complex plot. The book affords both a generalized perspective and delves into great detail on specific issues."—Snait B. Gissis, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences"Genetic Crossroadsis a brilliant book that will surely become a milestone in the study of the global science of human genetics. In putting to use her dual expertise in Middle Eastern studies and the history of science, Burton provides an unprecedented perspective on themes, such as race and ancestry, that are re-dimensioned and relocated in their relevance to others."—Isis: A Journal of the History of Science SocietyTable of ContentsIntroduction: An Uneasy Inheritance 1. Drastic Measurements 2. Truth Serum 3. The Traffic in Blood 4. Sickling Sociologies 5. Genes Against Beans 6. Collection Agents 7. Domesticating Diversity Conclusion: Genomes Without Borders?

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Book SynopsisThe Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery explores how antiblack racism lived on through the figure of the Chinese worker in US literature after emancipation. Drawing out the connections between this liminal figure and the formal aesthetics of blackface minstrelsy in literature of the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction eras, Caroline H. Yang reveals the ways antiblackness structured US cultural production during a crucial moment of reconstructing and re-narrating US empire after the Civil War. Examining texts by major American writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Sui Sin Far, and Charles Chesnutt—Yang traces the intertwined histories of blackface minstrelsy and Chinese labor. Her bold rereading of these authors' contradictory positions on race and labor sees the figure of the Chinese worker as both hiding and making visible the legacy of slavery and antiblackness. Ultimately, The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery shows how the Chinese worker manifests the inextricable links between US literature, slavery, and empire, as well as the indispensable role of antiblackness as a cultural form in the United States.Trade Review"Elegantly parsing both continuities and discontinuities in racial formation from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, Caroline Yang charts the peculiar survivals of the minstrel form. The power of antiblackness to deform Blackness and Chineseness on both stage and page is everywhere evident in this assiduously researched and argued book." -- Tavia Nyong'o * Yale University *"The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery offers fascinating new insights into minstrelsy as an enduring cultural form. Caroline Yang's nuanced comparative analyses enrich by challenging us to reconceptualize minstrelsy in the development of US literature and our ideas of the 'West.'" -- Edlie L. Wong * University of Maryland, College Park *"Yang provides new insights into the role of blackface minstrelsy in the post–Civil War period, particularly in California....Readers should bear in mind that the author's aim is not to explore the personal racism of any given author. Rather, it is to elucidate an evolving system of racial representation deployed across literature and popular culture that underpinned white supremacy, US imperialism, and settler colonialism. Recommended." -- J. R. Wendland * CHOICE *"Situating the 'Chinese question' in relation to Reconstruction, The Peculiar Afterlife assiduously documents continuities between the white supremacy of the antebellum South and the racial logics of the frontier... Yang's excavation of the Chinese worker's representational ties to blackface minstrelsy provides a timely illustration of the pervasive and constitutive role of antiblackness in US racial discourses." -- Amy C. Tang * The American Literary History Online Review *

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Book SynopsisIn their own words, the subjects of this book present a rich portrait of the modern black middle-class, examining how cultural consumption is a critical tool for enjoying material comforts as well as challenging racism. New York City has the largest population of black Americans out of any metropolitan area in the United States. It is home to a steadily rising number of socio-economically privileged blacks. In Black Privilege Cassi Pittman Claytor examines how this economically advantaged group experiences privilege, having credentials that grant them access to elite spaces and resources with which they can purchase luxuries, while still confronting persistent anti-black bias and racial stigma. Drawing on the everyday experiences of black middle-class individuals, Pittman Claytor offers vivid accounts of their consumer experiences and cultural flexibility in the places where they live, work, and play. Whether it is the majority white Wall Street firm where they're employed, or the majority black Baptist church where they worship, questions of class and racial identity are equally on their minds. They navigate divergent social worlds that demand, at times, middle-class sensibilities, pedigree, and cultural acumen; and at other times pride in and connection with other blacks. Rich qualitative data and original analysis help account for this special kind of privilege and the entitlements it affords—materially in terms of the things they consume, as well as symbolically, as they strive to be unapologetically black in a society where a racial consumer hierarchy prevails.Trade Review"With compelling storytelling and exciting theoretical insights, Pittman Claytor addresses an understudied topic from a unique and creative perspective. A must-read for anyone interested in understanding how race operates in the marketplace." -- Corey Fields * Georgetown University, author of Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans *"A common view of consumption is that it is a source of alienation for blacks. Cassi Pittman Claytor's incisive portrait of consumption among those who are black and privileged challenges us to rethink this view. In an engaging style, Pittman Claytor shows how consumption is a resource for middle-class blacks as they navigate a world where race still matters. Black Privilege is an important and necessary addition to the literature on consumption and inequality." -- Patricia A. Banks * Mount Holyoke College, author of Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums *"Cassi Pittman Claytor skillfully uses the narratives of young black professionals to illustrate that it's possible to be able to afford a lifestyle of considerable luxury and leisure and still maintain and cultivate bonds of racial solidarity across class lines. Black Privilege is a crucial intervention in the study of black life, and the study of class and culture in the U.S." -- Mary Pattillo * author of Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City *"A rich and nuanced portrait of the black middle class. Pittman Claytor's insightful analysis should be read widely by college students and wider audiences, for it skillfully and beautifully mobilizes the sociological imagination to make the familiar and taken-for-granted visible." -- Michèle Lamont * co-author of Getting Respect *"This vivid account will be an eye-opener for white readers and will deeply resonate with trained and educated blacks. Narrating original data on race, class, and consumption, Black Privilege is one of those rare studies that leave an indelible impression on readers' minds." -- William Julius Wilson * Harvard University *"In this compelling ethnographic account of middle class Blacks in New York City, Pittman Claytor breaks new ground in the study of black cultural capital and the complex ways her subjects use lifestyle practices to navigate race and class. A major contribution to race, consumption, class, and urban studies. A must-read and must-teach." -- Juliet Schor * author of After the Gig *"Cassi Pittman Claytor's Black Privilege brings rich ethnographic detail to the study of the Black middle class. Showing both the opportunities and restrictions of Black cultural expression and consumption, Claytor expands our understanding of the workings of privilege by underlying the necessity of considering how it is racialized." -- Shamus Khan * Professor author of Sexual Citizens *"Black Privilege is a welcome addition to contemporary research on the US Black middle class. What sets it apart is that it treats the marketplace as a mainstage on which members of the Black middle-class act out their joys and challenges in everyday life. It focuses our attention on how these actors deploy their skills, tastes, and practices—their Black cultural capital—sometimes just to survive and at others to thrive." -- David Crockett * University of South Carolina *"Cassi Pittman Claytor pushes the reader to think about the ways the unique set of experiences, advantages, and opportunities of members of the Black Middle Class are deployed through cultural and material capital within and across race, class, and Black Middle Class boundaries and identities in their neighborhoods, at work, and amongst peers. This book is most compelling for its engagement of cultural processes, the development of the concept of Black cultural capital, and the author's methodology." -- Candice Robinson * Social Forces *"Black Privilegeoffers uncommon insight into the Black middle-class, examining the critical importance of cultural embrace in enjoying material comforts and overcoming racism. This must-read is an eye-opener for anyone curious about the intricacies of Black wealth and status advancement in America." -- Diamond-Michael Scott * Great Books, Great Minds *

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Book SynopsisCrossing distinct literatures, histories, and politics, Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America reveals the intertwined story of contemporary Asian Americans and Latinxs through a shared literary aesthetic. Their transfictional literature creates expansive imagined worlds in which distinct stories coexist, offering artistic shape to their linked political and economic struggles. Long Le-Khac explores the work of writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Karen Tei Yamashita, Junot Díaz, and Aimee Phan. He shows how their fictions capture the uneven economic opportunities of the post–civil rights era, the Cold War as it exploded across Asia and Latin America, and the Asian and Latin American labor flows powering global capitalism today. Read together, Asian American and Latinx literatures convey astonishing diversity and untapped possibilities for coalition within the United States' fastest-growing immigrant and minority communities; to understand the changing shape of these communities we must see how they have formed in relation to each other. As the U.S. population approaches a minority-majority threshold, we urgently need methods that can look across the divisions and unequal positions of the racial system. Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America leads the way with a vision for the future built on panethnic and cross-racial solidarity.Trade Review"Long Le-Khac expertly demonstrates how aesthetic form can reveal solidarities within and across ethnic and racial differences. Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America reveals this capacity in transfiction, finding community within shared historical ground and political aspirations." -- Crystal Parikh * New York University *"Long Le-Khac elaborates a concept of transfictional literature that provides an important means of understanding the formation of Asian and Latinx communities in relation to one another, at mid-century and within our contemporary moment. This unique book is a wonderful contribution that will enrich the growing scholarship on comparative racialization." -- Lisa Lowe * Yale University *"Long Le-Khac offers a completely new way of understanding the form and substance of the stories of our time. Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America fundamentally rearranges the way that scholars of American literature in general will view the work of a new generation of U.S. ethnic writers." -- Ramón Saldivar * Stanford University *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction: A Transfictional Solidarity chapter abstractThe introduction opens with a little-known historical connection between Asian Americans and Latinxs: U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War in March 1965 shaped the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic just a month later. The opening shows how a shared transfictional form in Vietnamese and Dominican American fictions helps perceive this entanglement of distinct communities in the Cold War. The introduction clarifies the formation of an Asian and Latinx America and the urgent stakes of solidarity between Asian Americans and Latinxs. It argues for comparison through aesthetic form as a method of comparative ethnic studies, and it theorizes transfictional form, its relation to the novel and short story cycle, and its purchase on the social tensions linking these communities. It outlines the differentiated yet linked immigration history that makes alliance between these groups difficult to envision. It concludes with a chapter overview. 1Decentering Bildungsroman Hermeneutics: Cisneros, Kingston, and Post-Civil Rights Mobility chapter abstractThe chapter follows Mexican Americans and Chinese Americans confronting the uneven opportunities of the post-civil rights period. In this moment, the bildungsroman, a genre with an individual-centered hermeneutics, reinforced the neoconservative politics of individual development central to the backlash against civil rights reforms. Troublingly, bildungsroman hermeneutics also pervades reading practices, as seen in the criticism on The House on Mango Street (1984) and The Woman Warrior (1976). Developing approaches beyond this hermeneutics, the chapter traces how Sandra Cisneros and Maxine Hong Kingston, alongside African American writer Gloria Naylor, use transfictional form to decenter the bildungsroman's social vision and outline collective shapes for feminist ethnic mobility. Their works stage tensions between the protagonist's development and other characters whose stories cannot progress, unveiling the divisions between minority individuals who rose and the many still stymied by collective inequalities. 2Narrating Cold War Displacement: Junot Díaz and Aimee Phan Trace the Migrations of U.S. Empire chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on a post-Cold War generation of Asian Americans and Latinxs struggling with American narratives that disconnected U.S. violence in the Third World from the Third World migrations entering the U.S. Junot Díaz's Drown (1996) and Aimee Phan's We Should Never Meet (2004) deploy a transfictional tension between narrative borders and border crossings to narrate the violently ruptured yet linked histories of the Dominican and Vietnamese diasporas. Díaz develops a transnational chronotope connecting Dominican immigration to the history of U.S. invasions of that nation. Phan charts the displacement of Vietnamese refugees as inseparable from the circuits of U.S. empire and outlines communities of shared fate for refugee routes. This chapter reframes the immigrant and refugee as intertwined categories justifying U.S. interventions. It uncovers how Asia and Latin America were linked in a global military project and looks across the regional divides in histories of the Cold War. 3Unsettling Strata and Type: Divided Communities of Neoliberal Immigration in Karma and The People of Paper chapter abstractThis chapter examines the neoliberal era of stratified immigration that produces a discrepant range of immigrant fates—from undocumented labor to knowledge workers. Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper (2005) and Rishi Reddi's Karma (2007) depict Asian American and Latinx communities divided by neoliberalism. The chapter shows how these works transpose major and minor characters to unsettle narrative hierarchies that govern who centers stories of ethnic communities. These transpositions destabilize the reductive forms of racial stereotypes and neoliberal valuations. Scrambling perceptions, Reddi and Plascencia highlight disadvantaged immigrants that belie the idea of Indian American success and upwardly mobile youths that complicate the idea of the Mexican American "underclass." Linking groups that inhabit opposite ends of the immigration system, this chapter reveals their shared struggles with the unequal life chances that neoliberal immigration has wrought. It shows the linked projects of wealth and labor extraction in Asia and Latin America. 4Forming Panethnicity: The Book of Unknown Americans and the Comparative Work of Latinidad chapter abstractThe unified identities driving earlier moments of identity politics can no longer be taken for granted given the diversification of Asian American and Latinx communities. This chapter brings together the debates on panethnicity in Latinx and Asian American studies to show how their central impasses are aligned. The chapter argues for rethinking panethnic identity, a political fiction, with panethnic literary fictions. Cristina Henríquez's The Book of Unknown Americans (2014) uses transfictional form to express the antagonisms between panethnic unity and multiplicity. The novel tells stories of migrants from across Latin America. These stories intersect but do not merge into any narrative unity. Transfictional form, this chapter argues, recognizes the Latinx differences that prevent Latinx experiences from being told in any one story. This form simultaneously guides the comparative thought needed to envision new shapes of panethnic alliance that link Latinxs to each other and to broader formations. 5Imagining Unity: I Hotel and the Utopian Horizons of Asian America chapter abstractThis chapter reimagines identity politics alongside Karen Tei Yamashita's novel about the Asian American movement, I Hotel (2010). The novel's converging and diverging form renders panethnic movements as a flux of unity and dissolution and a network of slippages across ethnic boundaries. This form situates conflicts within the Asian American movement as part of broader social contradictions. Internal conflicts can orient panethnic coalitions to a systemic and utopian horizon of justice. Utopian horizons help reconsider unity and closure, ideas critiqued by the politics of difference embraced in Asian American and Latinx studies. This chapter recasts panethnic unity not as a political premise but as a promise to struggle for, a horizon for imagining the just future that would make unity free of contradiction possible. It calls Asian Americans and Latinxs to look beyond their circumscribed borders and see their internal struggles for unity as entangled with systemic projects of justice. Conclusion: A Politics of Beyond chapter abstractThe conclusion explains how fictional world-building can generate theoretical models of the social worlds Asian Americans and Latinxs navigate. Transfictional world-building draws readers beyond the borders of a story. This aesthetics can inspire a politics of beyond in which Asian Americans and Latinxs look beyond their own community borders to see their interconnections. A politics of beyond calls Asian American and Latinx coalitions struggling to define their boundaries to instead embrace their porous borders and political entanglements with each other. The conclusion suggests the potential power of such solidarities to address the conditions that formed and continue to trouble the Asian and Latinx U.S. The book concludes that engaging in Latinx struggles is essential to Asian American politics and vice versa. The Asian and Latinx American political solidarity we need to meet this idea requires a leap of imagination, which is why fiction is so vital. chapter abstract

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Book SynopsisChallenging the commonly held perception that immigrants' lives are shaped exclusively by their sending and receiving countries, Here, There, and Elsewhere breaks new ground by showing how immigrants are vectors of globalization who both produce and experience the interconnectedness of societies—not only the societies of origin and destination, but also, the societies in places beyond. Tahseen Shams posits a new concept for thinking about these places that are neither the immigrants' homeland nor hostland—the "elsewhere." Drawing on rich ethnographic data, interviews, and analysis of the social media activities of South Asian Muslim Americans, Shams uncovers how different dimensions of the immigrants' ethnic and religious identities connect them to different elsewheres in places as far-ranging as the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. Yet not all places in the world are elsewheres. How a faraway foreign land becomes salient to the immigrant's sense of self depends on an interplay of global hierarchies, homeland politics, and hostland dynamics. Referencing today's 24-hour news cycle and the ways that social media connects diverse places and peoples at the touch of a screen, Shams traces how the homeland, hostland, and elsewhere combine to affect the ways in which immigrants and their descendants understand themselves and are understood by others. Trade Review"This brilliantly argued, beautifully written book pushes migration studies in an entirely new direction. Identifying a conceptual space located outside both countries of immigration and emigration and to which the immigrants have no direct connection, Shams provides an entirely novel demonstration of how conflicts stemming from the world's 'elsewhere' places shape the collective identity categories available to immigrants and their descendants. An important work, yielding lessons for both scholars and students to savor and ponder." -- Roger Waldinger * University of California, Los Angeles *"This is a tour de force. Combining nuanced ethnography with multi-sited historical analysis, Shams shows how South Asian immigrants' lives in the U.S. are shaped not only by where they come from and where they go, but also by events in third places they have never been. The surprising centrality of these 'elsewheres' is a breakthrough insight in migration studies." -- David Scott FitzGerald * author of Refuge beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers *"A significant body of contemporary migration research assumes that a dualistic focus on the country of origin and host society are appropriate for the creation of cutting-edge accounts of contemporary migration. In her study of South Asian Muslims and their descendants settling in California, Tahseen Shams challenges the adequacy of the homeland/hostland approach by demonstrating that depictions of events in migrants' countries of origin as well as those in regions to which these migrants have no connection—such as Syria, Palestine, Nigeria, and Western Europe—significantly influence their acceptance and adjustment. In so doing, Here, There, and Elsewhere advances our approach for understanding migration, resettlement, and transnational phenomena." -- Steven J. Gold * Michigan State University *"In this well-written and timely ethnographic study, Shams draws on her insider knowledge as a first-generation Bangladeshi-American woman to eloquently illustrate how different generations of South Asian Muslims navigate their identities as Muslims....Moving beyond a simple homeland-hostland binary, Shams' book is a welcoming intervention in both theories of assimilation and transnationalism." -- Cristine S. Khan and Van C. Tran * Social Forces *"[A] significant intervention in how we understand immigrants' lived experiences....Shams effectively uses examples from her fieldwork to convey the utility of the multicentered relational framework to various arenas of South Asian Muslim Americans' identity construction, while leaving analytical space for this concept to be further developed through additional case studies of other immigrant groups within and outside of the U.S.A. This is an important book." -- Adrienne Lee Atterberry * South Asian Diaspora *"This well-written book presents new insights and an alternative model for researching immigrant communities, and contributessignificantly to migration, religious, and ethnic studies. Recommended." -- D. A. Chekki * CHOICE *"Here, There, and Elsewhere is pushing the boundaries of immigrant studies by pointing to the importance of global interconnections in understanding immigrant identity and socialization. It is worthy of serious attention by scholars of immigration and ethnic studies." -- Sangay Mishra * Ethnic and Racial Studies *"Tahseen Shams's Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World tells an important story about migrants: how migrant communities are interconnected to a host land and homeland, here and there, respectively. This is a compelling and thought-provoking concept, what Shams terms as an 'elsewhere,' that builds upon existing transnational feminist theories, by which Shams illuminates how a place neither 'here' nor 'there' can shape the migrant experience." -- Annie Isabel Fukushima * American Journal of Sociology *"Shams's groundbreaking multicentered relational framework of Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World is a model to understand migrants' identity and their sense of belonging beyond the homeland-hostland dyad and the influence of 'Elsewhere.'" -- Sumiya Mahmud * The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology *"Many scholars have attempted to address integration, assimilation, or enculturation as a way to make sense of the immigrant journey of identity shaping and shift in the hostland. Shams allows us to think on a multidimensional plane where identity can be informed by acts of individual agency, such as supporting Palestine, or acts of protection, such as subscribing to the 'good Muslim' script. These examples are influenced by the history and politics of the home and host countries. Shams allows for immigrants to be seen as individuals, without essentializing their stories based on their Muslimness." -- Ashvina Patel * H-Diplo *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Societies Interconnected chapter abstractThis chapter introduces a new concept for thinking about the places that are neither the immigrants' homeland nor hostland, but which are nonetheless salient in their identity-making processes. Extending the foundational frameworks of international migration that focus exclusively on the dynamics within or between the sending and receiving countries, this chapter provides an overview of the book's key argument—that contrary to dyadic explanations, how immigrants self-identify and how they are identified by others are shaped by geopolitics unfolding in the homeland, hostland, and "elsewhere." The chapter also outlines the book's methodological justifications and sources of data, namely ethnographic observations, interviews, and social media data of sixty South Asian Muslim Americans in California. 2Beyond Here and There: The Multicentered Relational Framework chapter abstract"Elsewhere" does not mean everywhere. Using examples from both contemporary politics and immigration history, this chapter uses a new analytical model—the multicentered relational framework—to show how a faraway foreign place gains salience for an immigrant group and becomes an "elsewhere." Serving as the theoretical spine of the book, this chapter outlines the variations of "elsewhere" and its limitations. The chapter next expounds the three facets of the multicentered relational framework—namely, homeland-hostland, hostland-"elsewhere," and "elsewhere"-homeland—to show how each reveals different dimensions of immigrants' collective identity formation. 3Global Dimensions of Homeland Ties chapter abstractThis chapter shows how immigrants' homeland ties gain global dimensions based on hostland-"elsewhere" interactions. Using examples of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Indian immigrants' homeland politics, it shows that the struggles for nation-building in the sending countries are not insulated within just those societies but are instead shaped by their interactions with "elsewheres," specifically the Middle East and Europe. These struggles are at times mirrored among the immigrant communities in America, while some homeland cleavages lose relevance over time. Yet some other homeland boundaries gain life anew as they take on new, globally informed meanings for the immigrants based on hostland sociopolitics and "elsewhere' dynamics. 4The Geopolitics of Being "Good Muslims" in America chapter abstractThis chapter shows how "elsewhere" geopolitics exacerbate social pressures on Muslim and "Muslim-looking" groups in post-9/11 America. Often stereotyped as model minorities based on their race/ethnicity, South Asian Americans, if they are Muslim, are viewed as threats in moments of crisis. Members of this immigrant group often strive to present themselves as "good," "moderate" Muslims and highlighting the universal values they share such as peacefulness. Islamic organizations also highlight the compatibility of Islam with American values by "Islamizing" aspects of American culture on the one hand, and "Americanizing" tenets of Islam on the other. The strategies of individuals can inadvertently lead to political silence, whereas organizational strategies can involve Muslims in U.S. politics, advocating for their interests here and "elsewhere." 5"Muslims in Danger" Both Here and Elsewhere chapter abstractThis chapter traces how and why "elsewhere" gains salience in immigrants' self-identification, at times more than their homelands. Many South Asian Muslim immigrants interpret their collective position in America using examples of "elsewheres" where Muslims are also a stigmatized minority. These "elsewhere" examples combined with the homeland's colonized past, the post-9/11 U.S. context, and ongoing tensions between the hostland United States and the Middle East reinforce the immigrants' worldview that "the West" is biased against "the Muslim world." This perspective leads them to participate politically in ways they believe will favorably impact not only the condition of Muslims in America but also anticolonial efforts of Muslims in the Middle East. These examples of "elsewhere" orientations demonstrate immigrants' long-distance nationalism and political transnationalism. 6Taking Precautions Here for "Muslims in Conflict" Elsewhere chapter abstractBased on analysis of public and participant reactions to six ISIS attacks—two in Europe (Paris and Brussels), two in the Middle East (Beirut and Istanbul), and two in the United States (San Bernardino, California, and Orlando, Florida)—this chapter shows that conflicts in "elsewhere" Europe influence host country perceptions of South Asian Muslims more than the conflicts in the Middle East do. The Islamist attacks in Europe and in the U.S. generated comparable levels of response. Muslims' fear of backlash and the precautions they took for their safety were comparable in each case. Conversely, Islamist attacks in the Middle East generated low levels of reaction, even from Muslims who self-identified with that region. This incongruity is influenced by the media, geopolitics, global discourse on Muslims, and the prevailing public imaginary of the West and the Muslim world. 7Here, There, and Elsewhere chapter abstractThis book presents several questions for migration and race scholars. Does "elsewhere" influence black Muslim identities, or is it an immigrant phenomenon? Are "elsewhere" effects present for predominantly non-Muslim but racialized "Muslim-looking" groups, like Latino/a? With South Asian Muslim Americans responding to Muslim-related contexts in the Middle East, are places in South Asia with Muslim majorities then "elsewheres" for Arab and Middle Eastern Americans? If not, why? How can the multicentered relational framework be used to analyze immigrant identities outside the U.S. context? This concluding chapter reflects on possible answers to these questions and on the political developments unfolding globally.

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Book SynopsisIn their own words, the subjects of this book present a rich portrait of the modern black middle-class, examining how cultural consumption is a critical tool for enjoying material comforts as well as challenging racism. New York City has the largest population of black Americans out of any metropolitan area in the United States. It is home to a steadily rising number of socio-economically privileged blacks. In Black Privilege Cassi Pittman Claytor examines how this economically advantaged group experiences privilege, having credentials that grant them access to elite spaces and resources with which they can purchase luxuries, while still confronting persistent anti-black bias and racial stigma. Drawing on the everyday experiences of black middle-class individuals, Pittman Claytor offers vivid accounts of their consumer experiences and cultural flexibility in the places where they live, work, and play. Whether it is the majority white Wall Street firm where they're employed, or the majority black Baptist church where they worship, questions of class and racial identity are equally on their minds. They navigate divergent social worlds that demand, at times, middle-class sensibilities, pedigree, and cultural acumen; and at other times pride in and connection with other blacks. Rich qualitative data and original analysis help account for this special kind of privilege and the entitlements it affords—materially in terms of the things they consume, as well as symbolically, as they strive to be unapologetically black in a society where a racial consumer hierarchy prevails.Trade Review"With compelling storytelling and exciting theoretical insights, Pittman Claytor addresses an understudied topic from a unique and creative perspective. A must-read for anyone interested in understanding how race operates in the marketplace." -- Corey Fields * Georgetown University, author of Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans *"A common view of consumption is that it is a source of alienation for blacks. Cassi Pittman Claytor's incisive portrait of consumption among those who are black and privileged challenges us to rethink this view. In an engaging style, Pittman Claytor shows how consumption is a resource for middle-class blacks as they navigate a world where race still matters. Black Privilege is an important and necessary addition to the literature on consumption and inequality." -- Patricia A. Banks * Mount Holyoke College, author of Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums *"Cassi Pittman Claytor skillfully uses the narratives of young black professionals to illustrate that it's possible to be able to afford a lifestyle of considerable luxury and leisure and still maintain and cultivate bonds of racial solidarity across class lines. Black Privilege is a crucial intervention in the study of black life, and the study of class and culture in the U.S." -- Mary Pattillo * author of Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City *"A rich and nuanced portrait of the black middle class. Pittman Claytor's insightful analysis should be read widely by college students and wider audiences, for it skillfully and beautifully mobilizes the sociological imagination to make the familiar and taken-for-granted visible." -- Michèle Lamont * co-author of Getting Respect *"This vivid account will be an eye-opener for white readers and will deeply resonate with trained and educated blacks. Narrating original data on race, class, and consumption, Black Privilege is one of those rare studies that leave an indelible impression on readers' minds." -- William Julius Wilson * Harvard University *"In this compelling ethnographic account of middle class Blacks in New York City, Pittman Claytor breaks new ground in the study of black cultural capital and the complex ways her subjects use lifestyle practices to navigate race and class. A major contribution to race, consumption, class, and urban studies. A must-read and must-teach." -- Juliet Schor * author of After the Gig *"Cassi Pittman Claytor's Black Privilege brings rich ethnographic detail to the study of the Black middle class. Showing both the opportunities and restrictions of Black cultural expression and consumption, Claytor expands our understanding of the workings of privilege by underlying the necessity of considering how it is racialized." -- Shamus Khan * Professor author of Sexual Citizens *"Black Privilege is a welcome addition to contemporary research on the US Black middle class. What sets it apart is that it treats the marketplace as a mainstage on which members of the Black middle-class act out their joys and challenges in everyday life. It focuses our attention on how these actors deploy their skills, tastes, and practices—their Black cultural capital—sometimes just to survive and at others to thrive." -- David Crockett * University of South Carolina *"Cassi Pittman Claytor pushes the reader to think about the ways the unique set of experiences, advantages, and opportunities of members of the Black Middle Class are deployed through cultural and material capital within and across race, class, and Black Middle Class boundaries and identities in their neighborhoods, at work, and amongst peers. This book is most compelling for its engagement of cultural processes, the development of the concept of Black cultural capital, and the author's methodology." -- Candice Robinson * Social Forces *"Black Privilegeoffers uncommon insight into the Black middle-class, examining the critical importance of cultural embrace in enjoying material comforts and overcoming racism. This must-read is an eye-opener for anyone curious about the intricacies of Black wealth and status advancement in America." -- Diamond-Michael Scott * Great Books, Great Minds *

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Book SynopsisIf California were its own country, it would have the world's fifth largest immigrant population. The way these newcomers are integrated into the state will shape California's schools, workforce, businesses, public health, politics, and culture. In Immigrant California, leading experts in U.S. migration provide cutting-edge research on the incorporation of immigrants and their descendants in this bellwether state. California, unique for its diverse population, powerful economy, and progressive politics, provides important lessons for what to expect as demographic change comes to most states across the country. Contributors to this volume cover topics ranging from education systems to healthcare initiatives and unravel the sometimes-contradictory details of California's immigration history. By examining the past and present of immigration policy in California, the volume shows how a state that was once the national leader in anti-immigrant policies quickly became a standard-bearer of greater accommodation. California's successes, and its failures, provide an essential road map for the future prosperity of immigrants and natives alike.Trade Review"Throughout U.S. history, California has offered some of the most welcoming–and most xenophobic–responses to newcomers. This volume closely looks at the immigration lessons from this state, home to one of the largest immigrant populations in the world."—Kevin Johnson, Dean, University of California, Davis School of Law"How should public policies respond to immigration? This impressive, data-driven collection of research answers this pressing question with systematic analysis over time and across groups. The experts featured in this volume provide evidence-based insights and recommendations that will help lead California and the nation to a more inclusive, healthy, and prosperous shared future."—Janelle Wong, Professor of Government and Politics & American Studies, University of Maryland, College Park

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Book SynopsisTechnology is rapidly changing the way we think about money. Digital payment has been slow to take off in the United States but is displacing cash in countries as diverse as China, Kenya, and Sweden. In Reimagining Money, Sibel Kusimba describes the rise of M-Pesa, and offers a rich portrait of how this technology changes the economic and social landscape, allowing users to create webs of relationships as they exchange, pool, borrow, lend, and share digital money in user-built networks. These networks, Kusimba argues, will shape the future of financial technologies and their impact on poverty, inclusion, and empowerment. She describes how urban and transnational migrants maintain a presence in rural areas through money gifts; how families use crowdfunding software to assemble donations for emergency medical care; and how new financial groups invest in real estate and fund weddings. The author presents fascinating accounts that challenge accepted wisdom by examining the notion of money as wealth-in-people—an idea long-cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa and now brought to bear on the digital age with homegrown financial technologies such as digital money transfer, digital microloans, and crowdfunding. The book concludes by proposing a new theory of money that can be applied to designing better financial technologies in the future.Trade Review"Mobile money articulates Kenyans to multiple forms and forces of value in global and local economies. In this provocative, nuanced ethnography, Sibel Kusimba asks the question: can money be designed for the 'wealth-in-people' that sustains lives and livelihoods in an ever-more precarious world?"—William Maurer, University of California, Irvine"Kusimba provides a rich, thought-provoking narrative that vividly captures the lived experiences and contexts of the Kenyan people. Reimagining Money has huge potential in guiding studies in other fields, especially community development. This is truly a masterpiece."—Milcah Mulu-Mutuku, Egerton University"A remarkable, deeply researched book. Kusimba gifts readers with a vivid account of the world of money and technology, beautifully revealing how the everyday use, and sometimes non-use, of M-Pesa weaves monetary exchanges inside webs of relationships."—Nina Bandelj, University of California, Irvine"Reimagining Money offers a rich source of knowledge and insight on a topic that surely will gain in significance in the years ahead."—Jürgen Schraten, Finance and Society"The primary purpose of money, as Kusimba beautifully illustrates through her detailed ethnography, is to create 'wealth-in-people.' Money is but a means to build and accrue valuable relationships with others which enhance one's status and authority. The key 'resources' in life, the most valuable ones, are not minerals, technologies, or even profits; they are human relationships that be called upon and mobilized to facilitate a range of social projects and forms of assistance."—Jenny Huberman, Reviews in Anthropology"Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution is an impressive monograph. Kusimba, who hails from the United States of America (USA), migrates between her place of employment in the USA and East Africa, where she does field research and relational work. This configuration of the work–home dynamic produced useful ethnographic encounters 'in the field' with research respondents and family alike.... As such, her relations with her Kenyan kin drew her into this revolution as participant, not mere bystander."—Detlev Krige, Anthropology Southern AfricaTable of Contents1. A Central Banker Talks Money 2. Airtime Money 3. Money Leapfroggers 4. Whose Money Is This? 5. Money and Wealth-in-People 6. Hearthholds of Mobile Money 7. Distributive Labors 8. Strategic Ignorance 9. Reimagining Debt: The Rat and the Purse 10. Reimagining Giving: A Design Project 11. Designs for Wealth-in-People

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Book SynopsisThe story of how one ethnic neighborhood came to signify a shared Korean American identity. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Los Angeles County's Korean population stood at about 186,000—the largest concentration of Koreans outside of Asia. Most of this growth took place following the passage of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which dramatically altered US immigration policy and ushered in a new era of mass immigration, particularly from Asia and Latin America. By the 1970s, Korean immigrants were seeking to turn the area around Olympic Boulevard near downtown Los Angeles into a full-fledged "Koreatown," and over the following decades, they continued to build a community in LA. As Korean immigrants seized the opportunity to purchase inexpensive commercial and residential property and transformed the area to serve their community's needs, other minority communities in nearby South LA—notably Black and Latino working-class communities—faced increasing segregation, urban poverty, and displacement. Beginning with the early development of LA's Koreatown and culminating with the 1992 Los Angeles riots and their aftermath, Shelley Sang-Hee Lee demonstrates how Korean Americans' lives were shaped by patterns of racial segregation and urban poverty, and legacies of anti-Asian racism and orientalism. Koreatown, Los Angeles tells the story of an American ethnic community often equated with socioeconomic achievement and assimilation, but whose experiences as racial minorities and immigrant outsiders illuminate key economic and cultural developments in the United States since 1965. Lee argues that building Koreatown was an urgent objective for Korean immigrants and US-born Koreans eager to carve out a spatial niche within Los Angeles to serve as an economic and social anchor for their growing community. More than a dot on a map, Koreatown holds profound emotional significance for Korean immigrants across the nation as a symbol of their shared bonds and place in American society. Trade Review"Koreatown, Los Angeles is an important work that brings together multiple histories—of Korean America, Los Angeles, the United States, interracial and interethnic relations, and immigration, among others—to examine Korean Los Angeles and Korean America since the 1970s. A compelling and accessibly written read."—Arissa Oh, Boston College"Meticulously researched and crisply written, Koreatown, Los Angeles is a richly layered chronicle of K-town's history: the ethnic, migrant, economic, and global politics that helped put the multiracial enclave on the map, lit the match that burned it down, and helped it rise from the ashes."—Nadia Y. Kim, Loyola Marymount University"This is a fascinating story exploring the emergence, destruction, and rebuilding of LA's Koreatown and the immigrants who shaped its development. A deep dive into the complexity of race, immigration, class, power, and the 'American Dream' in the largest Korean enclave outside of Korea."—Do Kim, The K.W. Lee Center for Leadership"Koreatown, Los Angeles is rich, detailed, and a must-read for anyone interested in learning more about the largest Korean population settlement outside of Korea."—Michael Haan, Ethnic and Racial Studies"Lee raises interesting questions about the evolution of Koreatown by bringing economic restructuring and intraethnic and interracial relations into the discussion. I was particularly intrigued by how Black-Korean relations have shaped LA from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s."—Jinwon Kim, Social Forces"Koreatown, Los Angeles provides a well-written, concise, easily accessible narrative of the creation of the Korean enclave. It also provides an excellent description of how the great demographic changes that many U.S. cities experienced in the 1970s and '80s played out within the economic shifts engendered by deindustrialization, globalization, and neoliberalism that reshaped the American urban landscape during the period. This work is a valuable contribution to recent Los Angeles history, understandings of immigration and ethic enclave development, and Korean American and Asian American studies."—Elwing Suong Gonzalez, California History"Koreatown, Los Angeles is a welcoming book on the Los Angeles Korean American community, the largest diasporic Korean community outside of Korea. It is refreshing to see historical scholarship covering the Korean American community, which has been studied mostly by social scientists, in particular sociologists. This book demonstrates exemplary historical analysis and craftmanship. More importantly, perhaps it is the first monograph examining Koreatown, Los Angeles as a research object."—Kyeyoung Park, Pacific Affairs"Koreatown, Los Angeles thoroughly demonstrates how Korean Americans have become powerful place-makers in Los Angeles. Lee provides a rich historical account of the community and neighborhood that centers Korean American experiences and perspectives, while also providing important critiques about how urban policies have shaped the livelihood and sense of belonging among Asian American and immigrant communities."—Laureen D. Hom, Contemporary SociologyTable of Contents1. The Changing Face of LA 2. A Little Seoul Sprang Up: Place Entrepreneurs and the Koreatown Concept 3. Searching for Koreatown: Generational Divides and Cultural Bridges in Korean America 4. A Small World: Korean Americans and Global Los Angeles 5. "Most of These Areas Were Formerly Black": Interracial Conflict in South Central and the Burning of Koreatown 6. A Good Comeback

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Book SynopsisThe 21st century has seen growing numbers of seniors turning to migration in response to newfound challenges to traditional forms of retirement and old-age support, such as increased longevity, demographically aging populations, and global neoliberal trends reducing state welfare. Chinese-born migrants to the U.S. serve as an exemplary case of this trend, with 30 percent of all migrants since 1990 being at least 60 years old. This book tells their story, arguing that they demonstrate the significance of age as a mediating factor that is fundamentally important for considering how migration is experienced. The subjects of this study are situated at the crossroads of Chinese immigrant and Chinese-American experiences, embodying many of the ambiguities and paradoxes that complicate common understandings of each group. These are older individuals who have waited their whole lives to migrate to the U.S. to rejoin family but often experience unanticipated family conflict when they arrive. They are retirees living at the social and economic margins of American society who nonetheless find significant opportunities to achieve meaningful retired lifestyles. They are members of a diaspora spanning vast regional and ideological differences, yet their wellbeing hinges on everyday interactions with others in this diverse community. Their stories highlight the many possibilities for mutual engagement that connect Chinese and American ways of being and belonging in the world.Trade Review"In this timely and intriguing book, Newendorp offers a vivid and insightful anthropological account of the unique and multifaceted experiences of Chinese senior migrants as well as their sustained struggles and aspirations for belonging, wellbeing, dignity, and the good life in American society. It propels readers to rethink the meanings and possibilities of retirement and aging in the age of global mobility." -- Li Zhang * University of California, Davis, author of In Search of Paradise and Strangers in the City *"Chinese Senior Migrants and the Globalization of Retirement is a thoroughly researched, well written, and engaging ethnographic study of contemporary Cantonese senior migration. Though centered in Boston's Chinatown, Newendorp skilfully contextualizes the migration stories of Cantonese seniors within broader historical trajectories of pre- and post-1949 Cantonese transnational migration, as she speaks to the broader phenomenon of the 'globalization of retirement.'" -- Andrea Louie * Michigan State University *

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Book SynopsisThe Middle East plays a major role in the history of genetic science. Early in the twentieth century, technological breakthroughs in human genetics coincided with the birth of modern Middle Eastern nation-states, who proclaimed that the region's ancient history—as a cradle of civilizations and crossroads of humankind—was preserved in the bones and blood of their citizens. Using letters and publications from the 1920s to the present, Elise K. Burton follows the field expeditions and hospital surveys that scrutinized the bodies of tribal nomads and religious minorities. These studies, geneticists claim, not only detect the living descendants of biblical civilizations but also reveal the deeper past of human evolution. Genetic Crossroads is an unprecedented history of human genetics in the Middle East, from its roots in colonial anthropology and medicine to recent genome sequencing projects. It illuminates how scientists from Turkey to Yemen, Egypt to Iran, transformed genetic data into territorial claims and national origin myths. Burton shows why such nationalist appropriations of genetics are not local or temporary aberrations, but rather the enduring foundations of international scientific interest in Middle Eastern populations to this day.Trade Review"Genetic Crossroads is a shining example of how to write multi-scalar, multi-sited, and multi-lingual histories of science. Few scholars are able to balance the contradictory pulls of the global and the local; Elise Burton shows how they can be effectively braided together without sacrificing critique, complexity, or context."—Projit Bihari Mukharji, University of Pennsylvania"Deeply researched and powerfully written, Genetic Crossroads is one of the most original books I have read in a decade. Burton's unique history of Middle Eastern genetics is a fascinating study of genetic nationalism and the global hierarchies of such scientific inquiry, and a must-read for historians of all fields."—Eve M Troutt Powell, University of Pennsylvania"Drawing on sources in four Middle Eastern languages and from underused Western archives, Elise Burton explains why the Middle East was so pivotal for global genetics. Exemplifying how to integrate area studies and global history, Genetic Crossroads is a true tour de force."—Cyrus Schayegh, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva"Genetic Crossroads exposes how technical and scientific projects about human ethnicity underpinned nationalist ideologies across the twentieth century. Burton introduces a novel angle to established debates, showing how scientific researchers nourished racial mythologies, and how those mythologies drove the researchers themselves. She draws disparate literatures into a single intervention, extending isolated national stories through her integrative original research. The book is remarkable for its breadth of coverage in time, space, and language; every reader will find something that engages their area of curiosity or expertise."—Committee for the Nikki Keddie Book Award, sponsored by the Middle East Studies Association"Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity by Elise Burton, is a sweeping history of 'genetic nationalism' in the 20th century covering Iran, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt and other Arab countries."—Usman Butt, Middle East Monitor"It is difficult to do justice to this exceptional endeavor. The advantages of the integrative thematic approach adopted by Burton are numerous. Most importantly, it allows the book to be both deeply contextual on some significant levels, and yet driven by a strong argument, by strong structuring hypotheses. Its implied periodization is derived from this combination of context and content. It makes room for sophisticated many-layered comparisons, for complex plot. The book affords both a generalized perspective and delves into great detail on specific issues."—Snait B. Gissis, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences"Genetic Crossroadsis a brilliant book that will surely become a milestone in the study of the global science of human genetics. In putting to use her dual expertise in Middle Eastern studies and the history of science, Burton provides an unprecedented perspective on themes, such as race and ancestry, that are re-dimensioned and relocated in their relevance to others."—Isis: A Journal of the History of Science SocietyTable of ContentsIntroduction: An Uneasy Inheritance 1. Drastic Measurements 2. Truth Serum 3. The Traffic in Blood 4. Sickling Sociologies 5. Genes Against Beans 6. Collection Agents 7. Domesticating Diversity Conclusion: Genomes Without Borders?

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Book SynopsisIn contemporary South Africa, power no longer maps neatly onto race. While white South Africans continue to enjoy considerable power at the top levels of industry, they have become a demographic minority, politically subordinate to the black South African population. To be white today means having to adjust to a new racial paradigm. In this book, Jacob Boersema argues that this adaptation requires nothing less than unlearning racism: confronting the shame of a racist past, acknowledging privilege, and, to varying degrees, rethinking notions of nationalism. Drawing on more than 150 interviews with a cross-section of white South Africans—representationally diverse in age, class, and gender—Boersema details how they understand their whiteness and depicts the limits and possibilities of individual, and collective, transformation. He reveals that the process of unlearning racism entails dismantling psychological and institutional structures alike, all of which are inflected by emotion and shaped by ideas of culture and power. Can We Unlearn Racism? pursues a question that should be at the forefront of every society's collective consciousness. Theoretically rich and ethnographically empathetic, this book offers valuable insights into the broader sociological process of unlearning, relevant today to communities all around the world.Trade Review"The first ethnographic study of whites after apartheid, Can We Unlearn Racism? is a richly textured account of the lives of the defeated, those who lost social and political power in the course of South Africa's transition to democracy. Telling their stories from the inside out, this stunning work of scholarship reveals how white citizens deal with the present past by repositioning themselves as simply another minority while making claims on group rights in the language of the historically oppressed. Jacob Boersema's book breaks new ground in studies on the sociology of whiteness through the revealing insights promised in the subtitle: What South Africa teaches us about whiteness."—Jonathan Jansen, Distinguished Professor of Education, Stellenbosch University"Boersema's account is eloquent, powerful, and deeply thought-provoking. From the nation that was once the ultimate pariah state, he draws insights on the interplay of gender, class, and white identity politics that are highly relevant to anti-racist projects worldwide."—Ann Morning, New York University"A major contribution to the white racism literature, Boersema's important ethnographic study offers numerous original insights into the current racial situation in South Africa."—Joe Feagin, Texas A&M University"Ultimately, the author highlights that racism has not been unlearned in South Africa, but an ongoing commitment to an anti-racist mind-set reflects the hope for transformation.... Highly recommended."—C. L. Lalonde, CHOICETable of Contents1. White without Whiteness 2. Coming to Terms with Whiteness 3. Elites and White Identity Politics 4. Populism and White Minoritization 5. White Embodiment and the Working Class 6. Whiteness at Home 7. Unlearning Racism at School 8. Learning from South Africa

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Book SynopsisFrom the 1920s to the eve of the Pacific War in 1941, more than 50,000 young second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) embarked on transpacific journeys to the Japanese Empire, putting an ocean between themselves and pervasive anti-Asian racism in the American West. Born U.S. citizens but treated as unwelcome aliens, this contingent of Japanese Americans—one in four U.S.-born Nisei—came in search of better lives but instead encountered a world shaped by increasingly volatile relations between the U.S. and Japan. Based on transnational and bilingual research in the United States and Japan, Michael R. Jin recuperates the stories of this unique group of American emigrants at the crossroads of U.S. and Japanese empire. From the Jim Crow American West to the Japanese colonial frontiers in Asia, and from internment camps in America to Hiroshima on the eve of the atomic bombing, these individuals redefined ideas about home, identity, citizenship, and belonging as they encountered multiple social realities on both sides of the Pacific. Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless examines the deeply intertwined histories of Asian exclusion in the United States, Japanese colonialism in Asia, and volatile geopolitical changes in the Pacific world that converged in the lives of Japanese American migrants.Trade Review"For far too long, Nisei with life experiences in Japan have been written out of Japanese American history. Michael R. Jin rescues them from the historical oblivion perpetuated by the nationalist narrative of singular loyalty. Based on in-depth bilingual research, Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless gives much deserved complexities to the experiences of forgotten Nisei beyond the label of 'disloyal' or helpless victims. A transnational history at its best!" —Eiichiro Azuma, author of In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan's Borderless Empire"Michael R. Jin has transformed Nisei transnationalism from anecdote to experience. This is an impressive achievement." —Lon Kurashige, author ofTwo Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States"Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless is an important contribution to the fields of immigration and Asian American history due in no small part to Jin's polished writing skills. His combination of clear historical description, context, and analysis with just the right amount of sociological and interpretive language helps to make book both readable and informative.... Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless is not simply a study of a marginalized immigrant group 'caught between two worlds.' It portrays a diverse people who had to exercise considerable initiative to navigate multiple social, legal, national, and geopolitical contexts."—John E. Van Sant, Journal of Interdisciplinary History"[Jin] has produced a book that is dramatically innovative in terms of its topic and one that is exceedingly well-written, astutely documented, and deserving of reaching a wide audience of engaged readers."—Art Hansen, Nichi Bei News"While Nisei... have been the subject of numerous studies, those almost entirely treat Nisei as Americans in the United States and fail to address the fact that a noninsignificant number of them had transpacific experiences in the transwar period. By making this latter group his focus, Jin not only works to fill in the gap that exists, but he also presents an interesting framework that offers an alternative to the nation-bounded one that so typically defines modern history. In addition to a reconceptualization of what it meant to be Japanese American during this time, he also offers an important discussion around how these figures are remembered in both the United States and Japan and what the stakes have been around memory making and memorializing."—Emily Anderson, The Journal of Japanese Studies"In offering an alternative way of conceptualizing both diaspora and migration, [Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless] opens the door to new avenues of inquiry and points to new areas of study, including questions that could also be asked about others who participated in an extended transpacific diaspora that was a product not just of two empires.... The potential inherent in the inter-imperial approach that Jin utilizes, in short, is evident not only in what it reveals about the Japanese American diaspora that is his focus but in the fact that it could be usefully extended also to take other imperial networks into account within both a transpacific and a broader worldwide context."—Andrea Geiger, Diplomatic HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Making of a Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific 1. From Citizens to Emigrants: The Japanese American Transnational Generation in the U.S.-Japan Borderlands 2. From Citizens to the Stateless: Migration, Exclusion, and Nisei Citizenship 3. From Citizens to Enemy Aliens: The "Kibei Problem" and Japanese American Loyalty During World War II 4. Beyond Two Homelands: Kibei Transnationalism in the Making of a Japanese American Diaspora 5. Between Two Empires: Nisei Citizenship and Loyalty in the Pacific Theater 6. Buried Wounds of the Secret Sufferers: Memory, History, and the Japanese American Survivors in the Nuclear Pacific Epilogue:

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Book SynopsisIn contemporary South Africa, power no longer maps neatly onto race. While white South Africans continue to enjoy considerable power at the top levels of industry, they have become a demographic minority, politically subordinate to the black South African population. To be white today means having to adjust to a new racial paradigm. In this book, Jacob Boersema argues that this adaptation requires nothing less than unlearning racism: confronting the shame of a racist past, acknowledging privilege, and, to varying degrees, rethinking notions of nationalism. Drawing on more than 150 interviews with a cross-section of white South Africans—representationally diverse in age, class, and gender—Boersema details how they understand their whiteness and depicts the limits and possibilities of individual, and collective, transformation. He reveals that the process of unlearning racism entails dismantling psychological and institutional structures alike, all of which are inflected by emotion and shaped by ideas of culture and power. Can We Unlearn Racism? pursues a question that should be at the forefront of every society's collective consciousness. Theoretically rich and ethnographically empathetic, this book offers valuable insights into the broader sociological process of unlearning, relevant today to communities all around the world.Trade Review"The first ethnographic study of whites after apartheid, Can We Unlearn Racism? is a richly textured account of the lives of the defeated, those who lost social and political power in the course of South Africa's transition to democracy. Telling their stories from the inside out, this stunning work of scholarship reveals how white citizens deal with the present past by repositioning themselves as simply another minority while making claims on group rights in the language of the historically oppressed. Jacob Boersema's book breaks new ground in studies on the sociology of whiteness through the revealing insights promised in the subtitle: What South Africa teaches us about whiteness."—Jonathan Jansen, Distinguished Professor of Education, Stellenbosch University"Boersema's account is eloquent, powerful, and deeply thought-provoking. From the nation that was once the ultimate pariah state, he draws insights on the interplay of gender, class, and white identity politics that are highly relevant to anti-racist projects worldwide."—Ann Morning, New York University"A major contribution to the white racism literature, Boersema's important ethnographic study offers numerous original insights into the current racial situation in South Africa."—Joe Feagin, Texas A&M University"Ultimately, the author highlights that racism has not been unlearned in South Africa, but an ongoing commitment to an anti-racist mind-set reflects the hope for transformation.... Highly recommended."—C. L. Lalonde, CHOICETable of Contents1. White without Whiteness 2. Coming to Terms with Whiteness 3. Elites and White Identity Politics 4. Populism and White Minoritization 5. White Embodiment and the Working Class 6. Whiteness at Home 7. Unlearning Racism at School 8. Learning from South Africa

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Book SynopsisThere is a tendency to think of Korean American literature—and Asian American literature writ large—as a field of study involving only two spaces, the United States and Korea, with the same being true in Asian studies of Korean Japanese (Zainichi) literature involving only Japan and Korea. This book posits that both fields have to account for three spaces: Korean American literature has to grapple with the legacy of Japanese imperialism in the United States, and Zainichi literature must account for American interventions in Japan. Comparing Korean American authors such as Younghill Kang, Chang-rae Lee, Ronyoung Kim, and Min Jin Lee with Zainichi authors such as Kaneshiro Kazuki, Yi Yang-ji, and Kim Masumi, Minor Transpacific uncovers their hidden dialogue and imperial concordances, revealing the trajectory and impact of both bodies of work. Minor Transpacific bridges the fields of Asian studies and Asian American studies to unveil new connections between Zainichi and Korean American literatures. Working in Japanese and English, David S. Roh builds a theoretical framework for articulating those moments of contact between minority literatures in a third national space and proposes a new way of conceptualizing Asian American literature.Trade Review"Thoughtful and lucidly written,Minor Transpacificis a refreshing piece of scholarship that will advance important conversations surrounding transnational minor literature and Korean American cultural production. An original and welcome contribution to Asian American literary and cultural studies."—Lisa Yoneyama, University of Toronto"Despite its title phrase, Minor Transpacific is a major and timely intervention into the field of transpacific studies. Uncovering the labyrinthine matrix of the Korea-Japan-America triangulation, Roh writes with the lucidity and sharp wit of a seasoned literary sleuth. This book is a deep, migratory meditation powered by a palpable emotional undertow."—Yunte Huang, author of Transpacific Imaginations"Minor Transpacificis a major contribution to transpacific studies, not merely because it succeeds in illustrating how a transpacific framework is fruitful in analyzing literary texts but also because it is designed as a (self-)critique of extant academic disciplines. Any scholar interested in cutting across disciplinary barriers will benefit from studying the way Roh constructs his compelling arguments with apt topics and through rigorous close readings."—Kodai Abe, MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States"[David Roh's] study of the literary relations of Korean, Zainichi, and Korean American literature invites readings that "triangulate" Japanese colonialism and racial practices and US imperialist and racial politics as specters that haunt literary texts authored by Korean Japanese and Korean Americans...[Roh] opens literary relations in Asian/American studies to its historical and ongoing "transpacific" construction. Recommended."—J.R. Wendland, Choice"WithMinor Transpacific: Triangulating American, Japanese, and Korean Fictions, David S. Roh amply proves the merits of a transnational approach to the study of Asian(-American) literature and history; indeed, he shows how 'Asian' and 'American' are mutually constitutive—if also unequal and unevenly constituted—terms that become legible as such only through a mediated minor transpacific."—Christina Yi, The Journal of Japanese Studies"Minor Transpacific is a groundbreaking study, filled with skillful close readings and cogent analysis of transpacific minoritarian cultures. Roh displays deep awareness of histories and cultural politics spanning Korea, Japan, and the US. Roh's study provides an important contribution to Asian American, Asian, and Transpacific Studies. By making the minor 'opaque and visible', his book gives form to a 'global minority diaspora' not as of yet envisioned."—Jinah Kim, American Literary HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: Triangulating Fictions 1. The Japanese Empire, American Industrialism, and Korean Labor: Younghill Kang's East Goes West as Colonial Critique 2. American Racial Discourse in Zainichi Fiction: Transpacific Cultural Mediation in Kaneshiro Kazuki's GO 3. Korean American Literature Has Always Been Postcolonial: Clay Walls, A Gesture Life, and Colonial Trauma 4. International Study and Sojournship: Absence and Presence in Seoul Searching and Yuhi 5. Los Angeles and Osaka Are Burning: Diasporic Minority Transpositions in Pachinko and Moeru Sōka Coda: Zainichi, Korean, American

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Book SynopsisFrom the 1920s to the eve of the Pacific War in 1941, more than 50,000 young second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) embarked on transpacific journeys to the Japanese Empire, putting an ocean between themselves and pervasive anti-Asian racism in the American West. Born U.S. citizens but treated as unwelcome aliens, this contingent of Japanese Americans—one in four U.S.-born Nisei—came in search of better lives but instead encountered a world shaped by increasingly volatile relations between the U.S. and Japan. Based on transnational and bilingual research in the United States and Japan, Michael R. Jin recuperates the stories of this unique group of American emigrants at the crossroads of U.S. and Japanese empire. From the Jim Crow American West to the Japanese colonial frontiers in Asia, and from internment camps in America to Hiroshima on the eve of the atomic bombing, these individuals redefined ideas about home, identity, citizenship, and belonging as they encountered multiple social realities on both sides of the Pacific. Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless examines the deeply intertwined histories of Asian exclusion in the United States, Japanese colonialism in Asia, and volatile geopolitical changes in the Pacific world that converged in the lives of Japanese American migrants.Trade Review"For far too long, Nisei with life experiences in Japan have been written out of Japanese American history. Michael R. Jin rescues them from the historical oblivion perpetuated by the nationalist narrative of singular loyalty. Based on in-depth bilingual research, Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless gives much deserved complexities to the experiences of forgotten Nisei beyond the label of 'disloyal' or helpless victims. A transnational history at its best!" —Eiichiro Azuma, author of In Search of Our Frontier: Japanese America and Settler Colonialism in the Construction of Japan's Borderless Empire"Michael R. Jin has transformed Nisei transnationalism from anecdote to experience. This is an impressive achievement." —Lon Kurashige, author ofTwo Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States"Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless is an important contribution to the fields of immigration and Asian American history due in no small part to Jin's polished writing skills. His combination of clear historical description, context, and analysis with just the right amount of sociological and interpretive language helps to make book both readable and informative.... Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless is not simply a study of a marginalized immigrant group 'caught between two worlds.' It portrays a diverse people who had to exercise considerable initiative to navigate multiple social, legal, national, and geopolitical contexts."—John E. Van Sant, Journal of Interdisciplinary History"[Jin] has produced a book that is dramatically innovative in terms of its topic and one that is exceedingly well-written, astutely documented, and deserving of reaching a wide audience of engaged readers."—Art Hansen, Nichi Bei News"While Nisei... have been the subject of numerous studies, those almost entirely treat Nisei as Americans in the United States and fail to address the fact that a noninsignificant number of them had transpacific experiences in the transwar period. By making this latter group his focus, Jin not only works to fill in the gap that exists, but he also presents an interesting framework that offers an alternative to the nation-bounded one that so typically defines modern history. In addition to a reconceptualization of what it meant to be Japanese American during this time, he also offers an important discussion around how these figures are remembered in both the United States and Japan and what the stakes have been around memory making and memorializing."—Emily Anderson, The Journal of Japanese Studies"In offering an alternative way of conceptualizing both diaspora and migration, [Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless] opens the door to new avenues of inquiry and points to new areas of study, including questions that could also be asked about others who participated in an extended transpacific diaspora that was a product not just of two empires.... The potential inherent in the inter-imperial approach that Jin utilizes, in short, is evident not only in what it reveals about the Japanese American diaspora that is his focus but in the fact that it could be usefully extended also to take other imperial networks into account within both a transpacific and a broader worldwide context."—Andrea Geiger, Diplomatic HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Making of a Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific 1. From Citizens to Emigrants: The Japanese American Transnational Generation in the U.S.-Japan Borderlands 2. From Citizens to the Stateless: Migration, Exclusion, and Nisei Citizenship 3. From Citizens to Enemy Aliens: The "Kibei Problem" and Japanese American Loyalty During World War II 4. Beyond Two Homelands: Kibei Transnationalism in the Making of a Japanese American Diaspora 5. Between Two Empires: Nisei Citizenship and Loyalty in the Pacific Theater 6. Buried Wounds of the Secret Sufferers: Memory, History, and the Japanese American Survivors in the Nuclear Pacific Epilogue:

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Book SynopsisDespite its image as an epicenter of progressive social policy, New York City continues to have one of the nation's most segregated school systems. Tracing the quest for integration in education from the mid-1950s to the present, The Battle Nearer to Home follows the tireless efforts by educational activists to dismantle the deep racial and socioeconomic inequalities that segregation reinforces. The fight for integration has shifted significantly over time, not least in terms of the way "integration" is conceived, from transfers of students and redrawing school attendance zones, to more recent demands of community control of segregated schools. In all cases, the Board eventually pulled the plug in the face of resistance from more powerful stakeholders, and, starting in the 1970s, integration receded as a possible solution to educational inequality. In excavating the history of New York City school integration politics, in the halls of power and on the ground, Christopher Bonastia unearths the enduring white resistance to integration and the severe costs paid by Black and Latino students. This last decade has seen activists renew the fight for integration, but the war is still far from won.Trade Review"Rejecting the idea that school integration is an antiquated hangover from the Civil Rights movement, Bonastia repositions racial integration as a worthy tool to achieve equality. Beyond simply 'mixing bodies,' Bonastia reimagines school integration as a commitment to a truly justand equal education for students of color." —Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of Race for Profit"Bonastia offers new ways of thinking about school integration, and shows how 'colorblind meritocracy' legitimizes inequality. This important history will help chart a better educational future."—Matthew Delmont, author of Why Busing FailedTable of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Diverse but Segregated chapter abstractSince the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, New York City repeatedly has vowed to be proactive in reducing school segregation, yet city schools remain highly segregated by race and class. Its actions have not reflected the city's self-image as a racially progressive metropolis. Instead, New York created and maintained a school system that features pockets of managed integration while relegating most Black and Latino students to segregated, under-resourced schools. Education officials have perpetuated this system through the use of border checkpoints to manage integration and segregation. Checkpoints can be physical, administrative, or meritocratic. These checkpoints can take various forms, including locating schools in segregated neighborhoods, delaying action on pro-integrative measures, and screening applicants to schools on the basis of grades and standardized test scores. 2The Case for School Integration chapter abstractFollowing the Brown decision, educational activists pressured the Board of Education to be proactive in support of school integration. The board responded by creating the Commission on Integration tasked with charting a path forward for school integration. Its most controversial recommendations advocated school zoning changes to increase integration and mandatory teacher rotations to assure that students in low-income schools no longer were taught by less-experienced teachers who were often substitutes. Most teachers organizations objected to the latter proposal. Ultimately, the city failed to act on the commission's most meaningful recommendations, a pattern that would repeat itself with subsequent city-sponsored investigations of educational inequality. Activists continued to fight against racial inequality and segregation in NYC schools. The late-1950s cases of the Harlem Nine and the opening of a segregated middle school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn (JHS 258) are analyzed. 3"Good Neighborhoods Do Not Just Happen" chapter abstractIn 1959, the Board of Ed announced that it would transfer a cohort of Black and Puerto Rican elementary-age students from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where schools were severely overcrowded, to underutilized schools in the nearby Queens neighborhoods of Ridgewood and Glendale. Residents of the overwhelmingly white Queens neighborhoods exploded with rage, accusing the board of bringing juvenile delinquents into their schools. In subsequent years, the school integration movement gained steam. In February 1964, nearly half a million New York City youth boycotted schools for a day to protest school segregation. Shortly thereafter, a citywide anti-integration countermovement emerged. In March, an overwhelmingly white crowd of fifteen thousand marched on City Hall and Board of Ed headquarters to protest virtually every mechanism for integration. Four days after that, a second pro-integration boycott took place, though on a smaller scale than its February predecessor. 4Inflamed chapter abstractA 1964 report criticized past Board of Education efforts on integration but cast doubt on the prospects for future progress. The board largely ignored the recommendations to increase integration. In July 1964, uprisings in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant—prompted by the police killing of a Black teenager—roiled New York City. On the first day of the 1964–65 school year, over a quarter of a million white students boycotted to protest the pairing of predominantly Black and predominantly white elementary schools in four locations. In Brooklyn Heights, liberal white parents initially embraced the pairing of two nearby schools to increase integration, but many soured quickly on the experiment, dispatching their children to private schools. There were small groups of white parents who were proactive in their support of school integration, voluntarily sending their children to predominantly Black schools. 5The Roots of Community Control chapter abstractThis chapter traces the evolution of activist demands from integration to community control of schools in Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods. The turn to community control occurred after persistent demands for integration failed to yield meaningful action from the Board of Education. In Brooklyn, as a last-ditch effort for integrated schools, activists called for the creation of enormous educational parks that would foster integration and offer students the latest in technology and an expanded array of course offerings. They were rebuffed. Citywide, parents and activists increasingly insisted that the board had reneged on its obligation to provide quality education and that local communities should have a greater say in school personnel and budgeting. The board approved the creation of three experimental school districts—in Ocean Hill–Brownsville, Harlem, and the Lower East Side—to gauge the viability of this concept. 6Ocean Hill–Brownsville's Afrocentric, Multicultural Vision chapter abstractWhen the community control experiment began in 1967–68, local parents and new teachers in Ocean Hill–Brownsville complained that remaining union teachers were attempting to sabotage the experiment. In May 1968, the OHB Governing Board terminated nineteen union teachers and administrators. The United Federation of Teachers was apoplectic, claiming the staffers were fired without due process. That fall, after OHB had hired nearly a full contingent of replacement teachers, the UFT launched three citywide strikes that crippled education in most of the city; OHB schools remained open. The UFT accused Ocean Hill–Brownsville of blatant anti-Semitism, an accusation the OHB Governing Board denied. In April 1969, the state legislature effectively dismantled the community-control districts. Students who attended OHB schools during the UFT strikes recall a rewarding experience in which they were respected and valued as students and Black and Puerto Rican cultures were celebrated. 7Race and Education after Community Control chapter abstractIn Washington, DC, Southern senators fought against the double standard that applied to school segregation: aggressive enforcement in the South, where schools had been segregated by law, and a laissez-faire policy elsewhere, where school segregation had occurred in practice. They were joined in their call for a national school desegregation policy by Connecticut liberal Abraham Ribicoff. While Ribicoff wished to see school desegregation enforced outside the South, his Southern colleagues were seeking to relax enforcement in their region. In early-1970s New York, a group of Black students in Brooklyn endured a dispiriting battle to find schools that would enroll them: they were treated as unwanted intruders. Later that decade, the city school system faced the threatened withdrawal of federal funds for violating civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination. 8The Renewed Demand for Integration chapter abstractFrom the mid-1970s to the early 2010s, the fight for school integration in New York City was essentially moribund. A 2012 report on the high degree of segregation in NYC schools and a 2014 one labeling New York the most segregated state school system in the US spurred a revitalized integration movement led by students. While Chancellor Richard Carranza argued for integration as a top priority, and several local school districts made efforts to increase integration, Mayor Bill de Blasio was not supportive of systemwide integration even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Student activists from organizations such as IntegrateNYC and Teens Take Charge have continued to exert pressure on school officials to dismantle school segregation by eliminating academic screens from the junior high and high school admissions processes. 9Learning from the Past and Moving Forward chapter abstractThe type of integration envisioned by New York City student activists does not depend on proximity to whiteness or merely moving bodies around. They envision a school system in which there are no longer a clearly identifiable set of "good schools"—populated primarily by white and Asian students, with ample resources, responsive faculty, and an array of courses and extracurricular activities—and a much larger contingent of "bad schools" — populated by Black, Latino, and some Asian students, and lacking these characteristics. In the nearly seven decades since Brown v. Board of Education, New York City school officials have extolled integration but have been reluctant to take action that might cause white families to exit the school system. With white students comprising 15 percent of the public school population, allowing those families to informally veto policies that would improve education for the majority of students is unjustifiable.

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Book SynopsisUpon arrival to the United States, Mexican immigrants are racialized as simultaneously non-White and "illegal." This racialization process complicates notions of race that they bring with them, as the "pigmentocracy" of Mexican society, in which their skin color may have afforded them more privileges within their home country, collides with the American racial system. Racial Baggage examines how immigration reconfigures U.S. race relations, illuminating how the immigration experience can transform understandings of race in home and host countries. Drawing on interviews with Mexicans in Los Angeles and Guadalajara, sociologist Sylvia Zamora illustrates how racialization is a transnational process that not only changes immigrants themselves, but also everyday understandings of race and racism within the United States and Mexico. Within their communities and networks that span an international border, Zamora argues, immigrants come to define "race" in a way distinct from both the color-conscious hierarchy of Mexican society and the Black-White binary prevalent within the United States. In the process, their stories demonstrate how race is not static, but rather an evolving social phenomenon forever altered by immigration.Trade Review"During the Mexican Revolution, nationalizing elites forged ideas about the Mexican character, which included the mistaken notions that racism or Black people did not exist in their country. Mexican immigration has since become the largest, longest, and arguably the most marginalized in U.S. history. Through rich interviews, Sylvia Zamora uncovers how immigration and changes in both societies transform immigrant ideas about race and racism."—Edward Telles, author of Pigmentocracies"Racial Baggage demonstrates how racial ideologies travel across the U.S.-Mexico border. This excellent and highly original book challenges many assumptions about how migrants develop racial awareness and offers a compelling transnational framework that represents a critical intervention in the field."—Julie A. Dowling, author of Mexican Americans and the Question of Race"Zamora has produced an important new contribution to the fields of sociology, history, immigration studies, ethnic/minority studies, and political science. Those interested in better understanding the historical and ideological forces shaping immigration and race will want to readRacial Baggage. Highly recommended."—M. G. Urbina, CHOICE"Drawing on a rich set of interview data with 75 non-migrants, return migrants, and immigrants in the United States, Zamora forcefully advances race relations, identity formation and meaning making, and transnational migration social science literature while also shedding new light on how the US–Mexico border operates as a race-making site."—Stephanie L. Canizales, Social Forces"Ideas about race and the attitudes and practices they elicit vary greatly between the United States and Mexico. But what happens with the large-scale migration and fluid mobility of people between both countries? With Racial Baggage, Sylvia Zamora makes a valuable contribution to understand the dynamic ideas and practices regarding race across the border. It is not only that migrants discover themselves as racialized in the eyes of those already living in the United States of America, but also that their experiences North of the border inform anew their relations back in Mexico."—Raúl Acosta, Ethnic and Racial StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: Immigration and Racial Transformation in America 1. Race in Mexico: Mestizo Privilege 2. Racial Border Crossings 3. First Encounters with Race in El Norte 4. Settling In: Illegality and the U.S. Color Line Conclusion: From Mestizo to Minority

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Book SynopsisIn Of Effacement, David Marriott endeavors to demolish established opinion about what blackness is and reorient our understanding of what it is not in art, philosophy, autobiography, literary theory, political theory, and psychoanalysis. With the critical rigor and polemical bravura which he displayed in Whither Fanon? Marriott here considers the relationships between language, judgement and effacement, and shows how effacement has become the dominant force in anti-blackness. Both skeptically and emphatically, Marriott presents a series of radical philosophical engagements with Fanon's "is not" (n'est pas) and its "black" political truth. How does one speak—let alone represent—that which is without existence? Is blackness n'est pas because it has yet to be thought as blackness? And if so, when Fanon writes of blackness, that it is n'est pas (is not), where should one look to make sense of this n'est pas? Marriott anchors these questions by addressing the most fundamental perennial questions concerning the nature of freedom, resistance, mastery, life, and liberation, via a series of analyses of such key figures as Huey Newton, Nietzsche, Malcolm X, Edward Said, Georges Bataille, Stuart Hall, and Lacan. He thus develops the basis for a reading of blackness by recasting its effacement as an identity, while insisting on it as a fundamental question for philosophy. Trade Review"Dazzlingly original, forcefully subtle in its argumentation, Of Effacement is undeniably path-breaking. Marriott's reading allows us to see Fanon's 'black being' as a 'disquieting in-plenitude' visible only in the way it curves the spaces of the personal, cultural, and political."—Joan Copjec, Brown University"Brilliant, relentless, and unblinking in its acknowledgment that 'there is no ontology of black pain,' David Marriott's Of Effacement is a tour de force of critical analysis. Lingering with Fanon's crystallization of wretchedness into 'a new law of expression' that would precipitate a 'politics beyond that of racial community,' Marriott refuses to avert his gaze from the abyss of Fanon's 'n'est pas.' For in the 'nothing that governs the world gone black,' he locates the possibility of invention without 'arche,telos, or predestined end.' The result is this rigorous, transformative, and supremely necessary book that dares, like Fanon, to 'make the incomprehensible the vocation of [its] politics' and so to open—in ways at once unbearable and exhilarating to contemplate—new pathways for our own."—Lee Edelman, Tufts University"With an unflinching lucidity in reading and critique, Marriott develops a demanding and often startling thinking across the fields of ontology, politics, and aesthetics. Of Effacement deserves the closest attention of all those working in philosophy and theory today."—Geoffrey Bennington, Emory UniversityTable of ContentsPreface PART I ONTOLOGY AND LANGUAGE One N'est Pas Two Nigra Philologica Three Nègre, Figura Four Ontology and Lalangue PART II WRITING AND POLITICS Five Autobiography as Effacement Six Crystallization Seven On Revolutionary Suicide Eight The Real and the Apparent PART III ART AND PHILOSOPHY Nine Corpus Exanime Notes Index

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Book SynopsisHow Americans learned to wait on time for racial change What if, Joseph Darda asks, our desire to solve racism—with science, civil rights, antiracist literature, integration, and color blindness—has entrenched it further? In The Strange Career of Racial Liberalism, he traces the rise of liberal antiracism, showing how reformers' faith in time, in the moral arc of the universe, has undercut future movements with the insistence that racism constitutes a time-limited crisis to be solved with time-limited remedies. Most historians attribute the shortcomings of the civil rights era to a conservative backlash or to the fracturing of the liberal establishment in the late 1960s, but the civil rights movement also faced resistance from a liberal "frontlash," from antiredistributive allies who, before it ever took off, constrained what the movement could demand and how it could demand it. Telling the stories of Ruth Benedict, Kenneth Clark, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Howard Griffin, Pauli Murray, Lillian Smith, Richard Wright, and others, Darda reveals how Americans learned to wait on time for racial change and the enduring harm of that trust in the clock. Trade Review"A riveting guide to why the grand movement demand for 'Freedom now!' was so often eclipsed by what Dr. King called the 'tranquilizing drug of gradualism.' As acute in its meditations on the nature of time as it is in its dissection of racial liberalism."—David Roediger, author of The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History"Darda's powerful and elegant book places racial liberalism at the center of a national story about the endurance of racial subordination within a political system predicated on formal rights and equality. Provides essential bearings for our current moment of racial rebellion and reaction."—Daniel Martinez HoSang, Author of A Wider Type of Freedom: How Struggles for Racial Justice Liberate Everyone

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Book SynopsisThe story of how one ethnic neighborhood came to signify a shared Korean American identity. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Los Angeles County's Korean population stood at about 186,000—the largest concentration of Koreans outside of Asia. Most of this growth took place following the passage of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which dramatically altered US immigration policy and ushered in a new era of mass immigration, particularly from Asia and Latin America. By the 1970s, Korean immigrants were seeking to turn the area around Olympic Boulevard near downtown Los Angeles into a full-fledged "Koreatown," and over the following decades, they continued to build a community in LA. As Korean immigrants seized the opportunity to purchase inexpensive commercial and residential property and transformed the area to serve their community's needs, other minority communities in nearby South LA—notably Black and Latino working-class communities—faced increasing segregation, urban poverty, and displacement. Beginning with the early development of LA's Koreatown and culminating with the 1992 Los Angeles riots and their aftermath, Shelley Sang-Hee Lee demonstrates how Korean Americans' lives were shaped by patterns of racial segregation and urban poverty, and legacies of anti-Asian racism and orientalism. Koreatown, Los Angeles tells the story of an American ethnic community often equated with socioeconomic achievement and assimilation, but whose experiences as racial minorities and immigrant outsiders illuminate key economic and cultural developments in the United States since 1965. Lee argues that building Koreatown was an urgent objective for Korean immigrants and US-born Koreans eager to carve out a spatial niche within Los Angeles to serve as an economic and social anchor for their growing community. More than a dot on a map, Koreatown holds profound emotional significance for Korean immigrants across the nation as a symbol of their shared bonds and place in American society. Trade Review"Koreatown, Los Angeles is an important work that brings together multiple histories—of Korean America, Los Angeles, the United States, interracial and interethnic relations, and immigration, among others—to examine Korean Los Angeles and Korean America since the 1970s. A compelling and accessibly written read."—Arissa Oh, Boston College"Meticulously researched and crisply written, Koreatown, Los Angeles is a richly layered chronicle of K-town's history: the ethnic, migrant, economic, and global politics that helped put the multiracial enclave on the map, lit the match that burned it down, and helped it rise from the ashes."—Nadia Y. Kim, Loyola Marymount University"This is a fascinating story exploring the emergence, destruction, and rebuilding of LA's Koreatown and the immigrants who shaped its development. A deep dive into the complexity of race, immigration, class, power, and the 'American Dream' in the largest Korean enclave outside of Korea."—Do Kim, The K.W. Lee Center for Leadership"Koreatown, Los Angeles is rich, detailed, and a must-read for anyone interested in learning more about the largest Korean population settlement outside of Korea."—Michael Haan, Ethnic and Racial Studies"Lee raises interesting questions about the evolution of Koreatown by bringing economic restructuring and intraethnic and interracial relations into the discussion. I was particularly intrigued by how Black-Korean relations have shaped LA from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s."—Jinwon Kim, Social Forces"Koreatown, Los Angeles provides a well-written, concise, easily accessible narrative of the creation of the Korean enclave. It also provides an excellent description of how the great demographic changes that many U.S. cities experienced in the 1970s and '80s played out within the economic shifts engendered by deindustrialization, globalization, and neoliberalism that reshaped the American urban landscape during the period. This work is a valuable contribution to recent Los Angeles history, understandings of immigration and ethic enclave development, and Korean American and Asian American studies."—Elwing Suong Gonzalez, California History"Koreatown, Los Angeles is a welcoming book on the Los Angeles Korean American community, the largest diasporic Korean community outside of Korea. It is refreshing to see historical scholarship covering the Korean American community, which has been studied mostly by social scientists, in particular sociologists. This book demonstrates exemplary historical analysis and craftmanship. More importantly, perhaps it is the first monograph examining Koreatown, Los Angeles as a research object."—Kyeyoung Park, Pacific Affairs"Koreatown, Los Angeles thoroughly demonstrates how Korean Americans have become powerful place-makers in Los Angeles. Lee provides a rich historical account of the community and neighborhood that centers Korean American experiences and perspectives, while also providing important critiques about how urban policies have shaped the livelihood and sense of belonging among Asian American and immigrant communities."—Laureen D. Hom, Contemporary SociologyTable of Contents1. The Changing Face of LA 2. A Little Seoul Sprang Up: Place Entrepreneurs and the Koreatown Concept 3. Searching for Koreatown: Generational Divides and Cultural Bridges in Korean America 4. A Small World: Korean Americans and Global Los Angeles 5. "Most of These Areas Were Formerly Black": Interracial Conflict in South Central and the Burning of Koreatown 6. A Good Comeback

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Book SynopsisDespite its image as an epicenter of progressive social policy, New York City continues to have one of the nation's most segregated school systems. Tracing the quest for integration in education from the mid-1950s to the present, The Battle Nearer to Home follows the tireless efforts by educational activists to dismantle the deep racial and socioeconomic inequalities that segregation reinforces. The fight for integration has shifted significantly over time, not least in terms of the way "integration" is conceived, from transfers of students and redrawing school attendance zones, to more recent demands of community control of segregated schools. In all cases, the Board eventually pulled the plug in the face of resistance from more powerful stakeholders, and, starting in the 1970s, integration receded as a possible solution to educational inequality. In excavating the history of New York City school integration politics, in the halls of power and on the ground, Christopher Bonastia unearths the enduring white resistance to integration and the severe costs paid by Black and Latino students. This last decade has seen activists renew the fight for integration, but the war is still far from won.Trade Review"Rejecting the idea that school integration is an antiquated hangover from the Civil Rights movement, Bonastia repositions racial integration as a worthy tool to achieve equality. Beyond simply 'mixing bodies,' Bonastia reimagines school integration as a commitment to a truly justand equal education for students of color." —Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of Race for Profit"Bonastia offers new ways of thinking about school integration, and shows how 'colorblind meritocracy' legitimizes inequality. This important history will help chart a better educational future."—Matthew Delmont, author of Why Busing FailedTable of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Diverse but Segregated chapter abstractSince the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, New York City repeatedly has vowed to be proactive in reducing school segregation, yet city schools remain highly segregated by race and class. Its actions have not reflected the city's self-image as a racially progressive metropolis. Instead, New York created and maintained a school system that features pockets of managed integration while relegating most Black and Latino students to segregated, under-resourced schools. Education officials have perpetuated this system through the use of border checkpoints to manage integration and segregation. Checkpoints can be physical, administrative, or meritocratic. These checkpoints can take various forms, including locating schools in segregated neighborhoods, delaying action on pro-integrative measures, and screening applicants to schools on the basis of grades and standardized test scores. 2The Case for School Integration chapter abstractFollowing the Brown decision, educational activists pressured the Board of Education to be proactive in support of school integration. The board responded by creating the Commission on Integration tasked with charting a path forward for school integration. Its most controversial recommendations advocated school zoning changes to increase integration and mandatory teacher rotations to assure that students in low-income schools no longer were taught by less-experienced teachers who were often substitutes. Most teachers organizations objected to the latter proposal. Ultimately, the city failed to act on the commission's most meaningful recommendations, a pattern that would repeat itself with subsequent city-sponsored investigations of educational inequality. Activists continued to fight against racial inequality and segregation in NYC schools. The late-1950s cases of the Harlem Nine and the opening of a segregated middle school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn (JHS 258) are analyzed. 3"Good Neighborhoods Do Not Just Happen" chapter abstractIn 1959, the Board of Ed announced that it would transfer a cohort of Black and Puerto Rican elementary-age students from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where schools were severely overcrowded, to underutilized schools in the nearby Queens neighborhoods of Ridgewood and Glendale. Residents of the overwhelmingly white Queens neighborhoods exploded with rage, accusing the board of bringing juvenile delinquents into their schools. In subsequent years, the school integration movement gained steam. In February 1964, nearly half a million New York City youth boycotted schools for a day to protest school segregation. Shortly thereafter, a citywide anti-integration countermovement emerged. In March, an overwhelmingly white crowd of fifteen thousand marched on City Hall and Board of Ed headquarters to protest virtually every mechanism for integration. Four days after that, a second pro-integration boycott took place, though on a smaller scale than its February predecessor. 4Inflamed chapter abstractA 1964 report criticized past Board of Education efforts on integration but cast doubt on the prospects for future progress. The board largely ignored the recommendations to increase integration. In July 1964, uprisings in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant—prompted by the police killing of a Black teenager—roiled New York City. On the first day of the 1964–65 school year, over a quarter of a million white students boycotted to protest the pairing of predominantly Black and predominantly white elementary schools in four locations. In Brooklyn Heights, liberal white parents initially embraced the pairing of two nearby schools to increase integration, but many soured quickly on the experiment, dispatching their children to private schools. There were small groups of white parents who were proactive in their support of school integration, voluntarily sending their children to predominantly Black schools. 5The Roots of Community Control chapter abstractThis chapter traces the evolution of activist demands from integration to community control of schools in Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods. The turn to community control occurred after persistent demands for integration failed to yield meaningful action from the Board of Education. In Brooklyn, as a last-ditch effort for integrated schools, activists called for the creation of enormous educational parks that would foster integration and offer students the latest in technology and an expanded array of course offerings. They were rebuffed. Citywide, parents and activists increasingly insisted that the board had reneged on its obligation to provide quality education and that local communities should have a greater say in school personnel and budgeting. The board approved the creation of three experimental school districts—in Ocean Hill–Brownsville, Harlem, and the Lower East Side—to gauge the viability of this concept. 6Ocean Hill–Brownsville's Afrocentric, Multicultural Vision chapter abstractWhen the community control experiment began in 1967–68, local parents and new teachers in Ocean Hill–Brownsville complained that remaining union teachers were attempting to sabotage the experiment. In May 1968, the OHB Governing Board terminated nineteen union teachers and administrators. The United Federation of Teachers was apoplectic, claiming the staffers were fired without due process. That fall, after OHB had hired nearly a full contingent of replacement teachers, the UFT launched three citywide strikes that crippled education in most of the city; OHB schools remained open. The UFT accused Ocean Hill–Brownsville of blatant anti-Semitism, an accusation the OHB Governing Board denied. In April 1969, the state legislature effectively dismantled the community-control districts. Students who attended OHB schools during the UFT strikes recall a rewarding experience in which they were respected and valued as students and Black and Puerto Rican cultures were celebrated. 7Race and Education after Community Control chapter abstractIn Washington, DC, Southern senators fought against the double standard that applied to school segregation: aggressive enforcement in the South, where schools had been segregated by law, and a laissez-faire policy elsewhere, where school segregation had occurred in practice. They were joined in their call for a national school desegregation policy by Connecticut liberal Abraham Ribicoff. While Ribicoff wished to see school desegregation enforced outside the South, his Southern colleagues were seeking to relax enforcement in their region. In early-1970s New York, a group of Black students in Brooklyn endured a dispiriting battle to find schools that would enroll them: they were treated as unwanted intruders. Later that decade, the city school system faced the threatened withdrawal of federal funds for violating civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination. 8The Renewed Demand for Integration chapter abstractFrom the mid-1970s to the early 2010s, the fight for school integration in New York City was essentially moribund. A 2012 report on the high degree of segregation in NYC schools and a 2014 one labeling New York the most segregated state school system in the US spurred a revitalized integration movement led by students. While Chancellor Richard Carranza argued for integration as a top priority, and several local school districts made efforts to increase integration, Mayor Bill de Blasio was not supportive of systemwide integration even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Student activists from organizations such as IntegrateNYC and Teens Take Charge have continued to exert pressure on school officials to dismantle school segregation by eliminating academic screens from the junior high and high school admissions processes. 9Learning from the Past and Moving Forward chapter abstractThe type of integration envisioned by New York City student activists does not depend on proximity to whiteness or merely moving bodies around. They envision a school system in which there are no longer a clearly identifiable set of "good schools"—populated primarily by white and Asian students, with ample resources, responsive faculty, and an array of courses and extracurricular activities—and a much larger contingent of "bad schools" — populated by Black, Latino, and some Asian students, and lacking these characteristics. In the nearly seven decades since Brown v. Board of Education, New York City school officials have extolled integration but have been reluctant to take action that might cause white families to exit the school system. With white students comprising 15 percent of the public school population, allowing those families to informally veto policies that would improve education for the majority of students is unjustifiable.

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Book SynopsisUpon arrival to the United States, Mexican immigrants are racialized as simultaneously non-White and "illegal." This racialization process complicates notions of race that they bring with them, as the "pigmentocracy" of Mexican society, in which their skin color may have afforded them more privileges within their home country, collides with the American racial system. Racial Baggage examines how immigration reconfigures U.S. race relations, illuminating how the immigration experience can transform understandings of race in home and host countries. Drawing on interviews with Mexicans in Los Angeles and Guadalajara, sociologist Sylvia Zamora illustrates how racialization is a transnational process that not only changes immigrants themselves, but also everyday understandings of race and racism within the United States and Mexico. Within their communities and networks that span an international border, Zamora argues, immigrants come to define "race" in a way distinct from both the color-conscious hierarchy of Mexican society and the Black-White binary prevalent within the United States. In the process, their stories demonstrate how race is not static, but rather an evolving social phenomenon forever altered by immigration.Trade Review"During the Mexican Revolution, nationalizing elites forged ideas about the Mexican character, which included the mistaken notions that racism or Black people did not exist in their country. Mexican immigration has since become the largest, longest, and arguably the most marginalized in U.S. history. Through rich interviews, Sylvia Zamora uncovers how immigration and changes in both societies transform immigrant ideas about race and racism."—Edward Telles, author of Pigmentocracies"Racial Baggage demonstrates how racial ideologies travel across the U.S.-Mexico border. This excellent and highly original book challenges many assumptions about how migrants develop racial awareness and offers a compelling transnational framework that represents a critical intervention in the field."—Julie A. Dowling, author of Mexican Americans and the Question of Race"Zamora has produced an important new contribution to the fields of sociology, history, immigration studies, ethnic/minority studies, and political science. Those interested in better understanding the historical and ideological forces shaping immigration and race will want to readRacial Baggage. Highly recommended."—M. G. Urbina, CHOICE"Drawing on a rich set of interview data with 75 non-migrants, return migrants, and immigrants in the United States, Zamora forcefully advances race relations, identity formation and meaning making, and transnational migration social science literature while also shedding new light on how the US–Mexico border operates as a race-making site."—Stephanie L. Canizales, Social Forces"Ideas about race and the attitudes and practices they elicit vary greatly between the United States and Mexico. But what happens with the large-scale migration and fluid mobility of people between both countries? With Racial Baggage, Sylvia Zamora makes a valuable contribution to understand the dynamic ideas and practices regarding race across the border. It is not only that migrants discover themselves as racialized in the eyes of those already living in the United States of America, but also that their experiences North of the border inform anew their relations back in Mexico."—Raúl Acosta, Ethnic and Racial StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction: Immigration and Racial Transformation in America 1. Race in Mexico: Mestizo Privilege 2. Racial Border Crossings 3. First Encounters with Race in El Norte 4. Settling In: Illegality and the U.S. Color Line Conclusion: From Mestizo to Minority

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Book SynopsisA rigorous study of the social meaning and consequences of racist humor, and a damning argument for when the joke is not just a joke. Having a "good" sense of humor generally means being able to take a joke without getting offended—laughing even at a taboo thought or at another's expense. The insinuation is that laughter eases social tension and creates solidarity in an overly politicized social world. But do the stakes change when the jokes are racist? In The Souls of White Jokes Raúl Pérez argues that we must genuinely confront this unsettling question in order to fully understand the persistence of anti-black racism and white supremacy in American society today. W.E.B. Du Bois's prescient essay "The Souls of White Folk" was one of the first to theorize whiteness as a social and political construct based on a feeling of superiority over racialized others—a kind of racial contempt. Pérez extends this theory to the study of humor, connecting theories of racial formation to parallel ideas about humor stemming from laughter at another's misfortune. Critically synthesizing scholarship on race, humor, and emotions, he uncovers a key function of humor as a tool for producing racial alienation, dehumanization, exclusion, and even violence. Pérez tracks this use of humor from blackface minstrelsy to contemporary contexts, including police culture, politics, and far-right extremists. Rather than being harmless fun, this humor plays a central role in reinforcing and mobilizing racist ideology and power under the guise of amusement. The Souls of White Jokes exposes this malicious side of humor, while also revealing a new facet of racism today. Though it can be comforting to imagine racism as coming from racial hatred and anger, the terrifying reality is that it is tied up in seemingly benign, even joyful, everyday interactions as well— and for racism to be eradicated we must face this truth.Trade Review"This book is an example of the best the sociological imagination has to offer. Pérez advances a powerful theory, elegantly substantiated with historical and contemporary examples. I learned a lot and so will everyone who reads this book."—Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, author of Racism without Racists"In providing the first sustained discussion of racist humor in the United States, Pérez contributes a significant critical intervention to intellectual discussions of racism."—Simon Weaver, author of The Rhetoric of Racist Humour"Theoretically astute and historically rich, this unique study depicts the racial joke—far from being harmless and disarming—as being inseparable from the cementing of white solidarity, from the spreading of racist commonsense, and from easy disavowal of the damage being done."—David Roediger, author of The Wages of Whiteness"It is a commonplace assumption that humor is always harmless fun and vital for our everyday well-being. In this important new book, Raúl Pérez cogently argues that this is not invariably the case, and that jokes and joking relations can be hostile, divisive, alienating and dehumanizing – or in other words, very harmful. Within a strong and well-woven theoretical framework, The Souls of White Jokes offers a major contribution to the critical sociology of ethnicity and racism as well as to the study of humor in key institutions and organizations."—Michael Pickering, author of Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain"Pérez has written the most consequential sociological analysis of humor in the past 20 years... With the current debates over who or what is racist, Pérez has provided a guide that will provoke debates that are essential in a world of comic possibilities and comic cringes."—Gary Alan Fine, Symbolic Interaction"Raúl Pérez has published a much needed addition to the critical study of how racist jokes do the dirty work of constructing racism and racially hierarchical environments."—Michael J. Lorr, Ethnic and Racial Studies"Pérez has written an essential book for both the non-academic and academic audience—one that will undoubtedly serve as an important teaching tool about racial humor and the importance of understanding how racism is reproduced, even in the absence of hatred or negative feelings."—Muna Adem, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity"I find The Souls of White Jokes an important, theoretically rich and thoroughly convincing study of the entanglements of racist humour with white supremacy. I look forward to seeing how this book will influence scholarship in the field of humour studies in years to come."—Lucy Spoliar, The European Journal of Humour Research"In The Souls of White Jokes, Raúl Pérez provides a compelling explanation of how White racist jokes represent a real-time measurement where Americans can see or hear the continued subjugation and disenfranchisement of Non-Whites in the United States."—Cameron D. Lippard, Social Forces"The Souls of White Jokes seeks to counter the concerns of those on the left who believe that targeting racist humor diverts attention from more important issues, such as poverty and diminishing democratic institutions, in the US. More important, Pérez provides a forceful argument to counter those who believe disparaging racial and ethnic humor merits protection as free speech. Recommended."—J. S. Franks, CHOICETable of Contents1. The Racial Power of Humor 2. Amused Racial Contempt, or a Theory of White Racist Humor 3. Hiding in Plain Sight: The Violent Racist Humor of the Far Right 4. Blue Humor: The Racist Insults and Injuries of the Police 5. President Chimp: The Politics of Amused Racial Contempt Epilogue: Racist Humor and the Cult(ure) of Whiteness

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