Social and cultural anthropology Books
Princeton University Press The Work of the Dead
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the 2016 George L. Mosse Prize, American Historical Association""Winner of the 2016 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature, McGill University""Winner of the 2016 Stansky Book Prize, North American Conference on British Studies""Winner of the 2018 Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies, Nanovic Institute""Winner of the 2016 PROSE Award in European & World History, Association of American Publishers""2016 Gold Medal Winner in World History, Independent Publisher Book Awards""One of The Guardian’s Best Books of 2015, selected by Alison Light""One of Flavorwire’s 10 Best Books by Academic Publishers in 2015""One of Flavorwire’s 15 Best Nonfiction Books of 2015""Hardly a sentence in Laqueur's long book is wasted."---John Gray, New York Review of Books"[A] sprawling meditation on mortal remains. . . . Laqueur offers an intricate historical narrative about the place the dead occupy in our lives. . . . The Work of the Dead is a methodologically bracing book."---Thomas Meaney, London Review of Books"Laqueur effectively shows that remains of the dead matter long after they decompose . . . [and his] engaging writing style enlivens this somber subject." * Library Journal *"The product of prodigious research and a subtle and sophisticated knowledge of history, anthropology, and philosophy, The Work of the Dead is as magnificent--and mindboggling--as it is monumental."---Glenn C. Altschuler, Huffington Post"Enormously detailed and absorbing. . . . [A] remarkably supple and fascinating study, providing as it were the sociological and forensic underpinning of every ghost story ever told. . . . The Work of the Dead [is] both provocative and, you should pardon the term, lively (and readers should be sure not to miss the wonderfully argumentative end notes). It'll change the way you look at being dead and buried."---Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly"Laqueur's book is a monumental undertaking, teeming with so many absorbing anecdotes and so much vivid information that it can be read either compulsively or for an hour a day, just to keep in sight of the nub of our fears and the often romantic absurdity of our hopes and superstitions."---Gregory Day, Sydney Morning Herald"This massive, mesmerizing work contains much that's worth pondering." * Publishers Weekly *"Monumentally learned. . . . Laqueur's mastery of this history, and his limpid prose, make this a deeply engaging text."---Deborah Lutz, Times Higher Education"The Work of the Dead is an enormous, erudite, sprawling, garrulous, exhausting and brilliant piece of work. And it never forgets that thread of 'intuition and feeling'." * Economist *"A major work of scholarship on an undiscovered country, the land of the dead, which, as it turns out, has had major implications for the living. Laqueur's book. . . aims to show that our care for the dead (‘materially and imaginatively') marks ‘the sign of our emergence from the order of nature into culture.'"---Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire"[The Work of the Dead] is, quite simply, an extraordinary book. . . . [I]n short, this is the work of a great historian doing what we all do, only better: reckoning with death as we bide time until our own."---Darrin M. McMahon, Literary Review"Magnificent. . . . Dazzling in its scope, expertly researched and crafted,The Work of the Dead shows us what is important about our humanity and longings. It is also a page-turner and a terrific read."---Sharon R. Kaufman, Los Angeles Review of Books"After being asked what he would like to have done with his body after he died, the Greek philosopher Diogenes replied that he wanted it thrown out for animals to devour. Thousands of years later, his answer can still shock. Thomas Laqueur explains why in his sweeping history of the way humans have grappled with death--an abstract terror made concrete by the bodies that remain when the dead have passed on. Combining anthropological reflections on the cultural functions of the dead with historical investigations of the shifting ways their bodies have been treated, Laqueur uses the stubborn resistance to Diogenes' provocation to explore the world the dead left behind."---Tim Shenk, Dissent"Poetically, powerfully sweeping across human history, Laqueur explores what the rituals of caring for the departed reveal about the living. Their story is ours; their absence shapes art and architecture, communities and civilizations. In every era and every culture, Laqueur finds the dead body imbued with meaning." * Swarthmore Bulletin *"Laqueur's venerable research all leads to one principal concluding thought, which is that while we can know logically that the human corpse is unrelated to the personality it once held, it is the most intimately connected material thing that is left of a life."---Juniper Quin, SevenPonds"Do the dead matter? This is the central question in this meticulously researched, all-encompassing exploration of our mortal remains. . . . In this intimate and often very personal reflection, Laqueur asserts that we need our rituals to serve the dead to smooth over the rent that is caused in the passing of those we love. . . This thought-provoking tome, erudite and finely written, seemingly encapsulates all past uttering on the dead in our fleetingly short lives."---Julie Peakman, History Today"[An] invariably fascinating treatment of a morbid subject." * Choice *"One meticulously argumented stroll through time and beliefs, highly attractive in its depth and far-reachingness. . . . Laqueur has succeeded where many others had not: he opened for us a tiny window on the concept of death and dying without violating historiographic objectiveness or trying to impose judgements or values."---Amir Muzur, European Journal of Bioethics"We look at the masterpiece with awe: How is it possible to do so much, to say so much about the dead in so many societies over such a broad sweep of time, even in a book as capacious as this?"----Annette Becker, American Historical Review"The Work of the Dead is packed with information, surprises, unaccustomed lore and learning, and Laqueur shows throughout a sturdy curiosity, as he digs unflinchingly around and into his chosen topic."---Marina Warner, London Review of Books"Monumental." * New English Landscape *"Laqueur brings prodigious compassion, erudition, and independence of thought to his task: every page is instructive, whether he is discussing the pollution caused by crematoria, the problems of pauper burials, the belief that undressing a corpse and opening windows makes it easier for the soul to leave the body, or just the listing of the names of the dead."---David Ganz, The Review of Politics"Historians of death in particular should thus keep this book at hand. Richly illustrated, detailed and accessible, The Work of the Dead is infused with approximately 35 years of travel, conversations, discoveries in archives and personal experience. It invites all readers to think further about the role that the dead play in the way that we live."---Martin Robert, Mortality"This book is a monumental Magnum Opus covering the cultural history of how we are treated mortal remains. . . . This is surely the definitive treatment of the subject, a landmark and highly readable work."---David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer
£23.75
Duke University Press The Surrounds
Book SynopsisIn The Surrounds renowned urbanist AbdouMaliq Simone offers a new theorization of the interface of the urban and the political. Working at the intersection of Black studies, urban theory, and decolonial and Islamic thought, Simone centers the surrounds—those urban spaces beyond control and capture that exist as a locus of rebellion and invention. He shows that even in clearly defined city environments, whether industrial, carceral, administrative, or domestic, residents use spaces for purposes they were not designed for: schools become housing, markets turn into classrooms, tax offices transform into repair shops. The surrounds, Simone contends, are where nothing fits according to design. They are where forgotten and marginalized populations invent new relations and ways of living and being, continuously reshaping what individuals and collectives can do. Focusing less on what new worlds may come to be and more on what people are creating now, Simone shows how the suTable of ContentsPreface vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction. Exposing the Surrounds as Urban Infrastructure 1 1. Without Capture: From Extinction to Abolition 21 2. Forgetting Being Forgotten 61 3. Rebellion without Redemption 100 Coda. Extensions beyond Value 134 References 139 Index 153
£17.99
Dorling Kindersley Ltd How to Sound Smart at Parties
Book SynopsisWelcome to the most interesting dinner party you?ve ever attended!Join seven friends for an evening of trivia, myth-busting, and camaraderie. You''ll have a front row seat at the party, listening in to the early small talk?where light and fun ideas are discussed (?Did you know astronauts have Velcro on the inside of their helmets to scratch their noses??)?to the end of the night, when conversations get deeper. (?Did the popularization of drinking coffee lead to modern democracies??)Packed with over 150 fun facts spanning the topics of ancient civilizations, animal behavior, natural science, outer space, human accomplishments, pop culture, and more, How to Sound Smart at Parties ensures you?ll always have something clever to contribute to the conversation.
£17.00
Oxford University Press Inc Body Soul Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer
Book SynopsisWhen French sociologist Loïc Wacquant signed up at a boxing gym in a black neighborhood of Chicago''s South Side, he had never contemplated getting close to a ring, let alone climbing into it. Yet for three years he immersed himself among local fighters, amateur and professional. He learned the Sweet science of bruising, participating in all phases of the pugilist''s strenuous preparation, from shadow-boxing drills to sparring to fighting in the Golden Gloves tournament. In this experimental ethnography of incandescent intensity, the scholar-turned-boxer fleshes out Pierre Bourdieu''s signal concept of habitus, deepening our theoretical grasp of human practice. And he supplies a model for a carnal sociology capable of capturing the taste and ache of action.This expanded anniversary edition features a new preface and postface that take the reader behind the scenes and reveal the making of this classic ethnography. Wacquant reflects on his path to, and uses of, fieldwork based on apprenticeship. He traces the genealogy and draws the anatomy of habitus and explicates how he deployed it as method of inquiry. The postface retraces the trials and tribulations of his gym mates in and out of the gym over the past thirty years, and reflects on what they reveal about the economics of prizefighting, masculinity, and the passion that binds boxers to their craft.Body and Soul marries the analytic rigor of the sociologist with the stylistic grace of the novelist to offer a compelling portrait of a bodily craft and of life and labor in the black American ghetto at century''s end. A subtle investigation and provocative extension of habitus, this expanded anniversary will intrige and excite students and scholars across the social sciences and the humanities.Trade ReviewIt is a well-written, insightful and above all fascinating account which draws the reader in, combining sociological insight with good stories about strong characters. * The Sociological Review *The combination of erudition and a sense of what it feels like to box are immediate characteristics of Wacquant's accessible and vibrant textual strategy. It's a sweet yet scientific style. * Thesis Eleven *A compelling demonstration of a methodology that seeks to reveal the layers of the pugilistic habitus through the researcher's own experiences. * Theory & Psychology *Body and Soul paints a multidimensional picture through prose that is captivating and poetic.... A compelling statement about ghetto life, sports, and male camaraderie * Symbolic Interactionism *[R]eveals a remarkable ethnographic and theatrical eye... a model account of a personal, embodied sociology. * American Journal of Sociology *Loic Wacquant's Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer is perhaps the best yet sociology of the body—its theorizing is less explicit than is the acuteness of the observations...a provocative, exhilarating, maddening, and profoundly idiosyncratic effort. * Contemporary Sociology *Body & Soul not only sets a new standard for scholarly research and writing on sport. It is a virtuoso performance that could--if properly read and disseminated and emulated--put the study of sport at the center of all sociological theorizing and analysis. * Social Forces *[A] sociological tour de force...sure to be widely used as an exemplar of how to conduct participant observation research.... It is packed with fruitful conceptual and theoretical discussions. * Qualitative Sociology *A fresh and authoritative treatment. * The Ring: The Bible of Boxing *Body & Soul will pull you into the deep rhythms of boxing and should certainly earn a place in the canon of literature in the ring. * Los Angeles Times *This remarkable and courageous book gives life to Pierre Bourdieu's adage that we 'learn by body: A Frenchman in Chicago sets out to learn about the black ghetto but not through detached observation: he joins the local gym and labors to become a boxer for whom, as for his buddies, 'fighting is my life, my woman, my love.' Though he yearns to become a pro, he never loses sight of the sociology in his quest. Bravo for sticking with science, for this book spells out a stunning lesson in the carnal sociology of where we are and what we are doing. * Jerome Bruner, author of Making Stories *Body & Soul is a dazzling renewal of the endangered craft of narrative, participant sociology. Wacquant's taut rendering of the tension between the haven of the gym and the engulfing ghetto forms the backdrop for an absorbing exploration of the opposition between the manly discipline of the gym and the short, nasty brutalities of the ring. The result is a truly unique and powerful document that successfully translates the gritty routines and grim dignities of social existence without destroying or demeaning its subject. * Orlando Patterson, author of Rituals of Blood *Body & Soul is a gem, destined for a life of classics like Street Corner Society (though much fleshier and juicier and denser), studied over and over again as a pattern to follow, though defying the ability, imagination, and, indeed, humanity of the would-be followers. An act impossible to match. A poem in prose, a work of love and wisdom rolled into one: this is how ethnography should be written, were the ethnographers capable of writing like that. * Zygmunt Bauman, author of Liquid Modernity *A truly exceptional, even historic, piece of research. Brilliantly conceived, beautifully written. personally impassioned and, on multiple levels-sociological theory, social policy, ethnographic methodology-an inspiring book. It gives a bittersweet appreciation of what young black men born in 20th-century urban American ghettos might have become on a larger scale. were they given not an easier route but a more challenging, institutionally honored and indigenously supported rite of passage to adulthood. * Jack Katz, author of Seductions of Crime *With a sociological imagination inspired by Bourdieu and writing that is electric, Wacquant brings to life the pain, sweat, and discipline of boxing, as well as the vivid language, small triumphs, and gritty masculine camaraderie of those who devote themselves to it in rundown gyms on Chicago's South Side. With respect and affection for those who mentored him, he takes us into a lifeworld that offers to some an alternative to the deadly streets of urban wastelands. * Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Veiled Sentiments *Table of ContentsPREFACE TO THE EXPANDED ANNIVERSARY EDITION: WHEN SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETS THE SWEET SCIENCE PROLOGUE THE STREET AND THE RING An Island of Order and Virtue "The Boys Who Beat the Street" A Scientifically Savage Practice The Social Logic of Sparring An Implicit and Collective Pedagogy Managing Bodily Capital FIGHT NIGHT AT THE STUDIO "You Scared I Might Mess Up 'Cause You Done Messed Up" Weigh-in at the Illinois State Building An Anxious Afternoon Welcome to Studio Pitiful Preliminaries Strong Beats Hannah by TKO in the Fourth Make Way for the Exotic Dancers "You Stop Two More Guys and I'll Stop Drinkin'" "BUSY" LOUIE AT THE GOLDEN GLOVES POSTFACE FORGING THE PUGILISTIC HABITUS: REFLECTIONS ON BECOMING A PRIZEFIGHTER Pathway to the ethnographic craft Habitus comes to the gym For epistemic reflexivity: from flesh to text Appendix: Genealogy and anatomy of habitus THE AFTERLIVES OF CHICAGO PRIZEFIGHTING ACROSS THREE DECADES What they became after the Woodlawn gym closed On the social and symbolic structures of prizefighting Boxing life on the internet and death in a chicago ring Post scriptum: on pugilistic piety LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A NOTE ON ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND TRANSCRIPTION INDEX
£21.90
Duke University Press Techniques of Pleasure
Book Synopsis Techniques of Pleasure is a vivid portrayal of the San Francisco Bay Area’s pansexual BDSM (SM) community. Margot Weiss conducted ethnographic research at dungeon play parties and at workshops on bondage, role play, and flogging, and she interviewed more than sixty SM practitioners. She describes a scene devoted to a form of erotic play organized around technique, rules and regulations, consumerism, and self-mastery. Challenging the notion that SM is inherently transgressive, Weiss links the development of commodity-oriented sexual communities and the expanding market for sex toys to the eroticization of gendered, racialized, and national inequalities. She analyzes the politics of BDSM’s spectacular performances, including those that dramatize heterosexual male dominance, slave auctions, and US imperialism, and contends that the SM scene is not a “safe space” separate from real-world inequality. It depends, like all sexual desire, on social hierarchiTrade Review“The analysis of these circuits is quite fascinating and could be expanded outside the BDSM scene to explore sexual fantasy and performance in any affluent, educated, tech-savvy culture. Recommended to readers interested in human sexuality.” - Scott Vieira, Library Journal"[A] fascinating, sophisticated, and original look at the ways in which we might begin to rethink how we view alternative iterations of expressions of sexuality. ...I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone interested in areas of sexuality, critical race theory, gender studies, biopolitics, and even discourse analysis." -- Nicholaus Baca * Peitho *“[A] useful scholarly monograph on how once perversions of the select have become indulgences of the many. . . . Techniques of Pleasure is at its best when Weiss describes what goes on at gatherings of consenting adults engaged in semi-public and non-commercial fetishistic S-and-M role-play. To her credit, she includes extensive quotes from practitioners she meets along the way. Ethnographers have the eyes and ears of an explorer.” -- David Rosen * The Brooklyn Rail *“Techniques of Pleasure is an important theoretical and empirical contribution that moves beyond the existing analyses in feminist and queer theory that depict SM as either inherently sexist or inherently transgressive. Building on both these theories without discarding their core assumptions, Weiss demonstrates how SM can be both sexist and transgressive, often at the same time. Beyond the empirical focus of this book, Weiss contributes to the broader literature on late capitalism’s impact on bodies, sexualities, and subjectivities.” -- Amy L. Stone * American Journal of Sociology *“[A] vital, if controversial, contribution to the body of writing and theory on BDSM.” - Nina Lary, Bitch“[A] useful scholarly monograph on how once perversions of the select have become indulgences of the many. . . . Techniques of Pleasure is at its best when Weiss describes what goes on at gatherings of consenting adults engaged in semi-public and non-commercial fetishistic S-and-M role-play. To her credit, she includes extensive quotes from practitioners she meets along the way. Ethnographers have the eyes and ears of an explorer.” - David Rosen, The Brooklyn Rail“Researchers and teachers of popular culture may use this book to counterbalance the recent upsurge in media depictions of BDSM, particularly the strain of erotic fiction known as ‘mommy porn,’ which uses BDSM imagery to reinforce heteronormative ideals… It is a complex subject, worthy of the meticulous treatment Weiss offers.” -- Misty Luminais * International Social Science Review *“Techniques of Pleasure is an impressive book that does much to humanize BDSM to those who wish to get involved in the community or simply wish to be better educated about the topic. . . . Weiss exposes a world that is typically viewed as dank and dark by the casual outsider; through her insightful analysis, she brings this subculture into the light and shows us the ‘softer side of kink.’” - C. J. Bishop, Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality“Techniques of Pleasure...is a landmark study of the BDSM 'scene' in San Francisco...Weiss succeeds admirably in producing a work that is conceptually rich and ethnographically engaging.” -- Richard Joseph Martin * Current Anthropology *“Margot Weiss’ sociological approach to the formation of sexual desire is breathtakingly smart and powerful, and should be required reading for any serious scholar of sexuality henceforth.” - Adam Isaiah Green, Contemporary Sociology“Techniques of Pleasure...is a landmark study of the BDSM “scene” in San Francisco...Weiss succeeds admirably in producing a work that is conceptually rich and ethnographically engaging.” - Richard Joseph Martin, Current Anthropology“Techniques of Pleasure is a wonderful, theoretically significant, and ethnographically rich book. Margot Weiss contextualizes the development of the Bay Area’s BDSM scene, analyzing contemporary BDSM as biopolitical practice. Examining the complex connections between discipline and freedom, subject formation and subjugation, power and play, Weiss extends feminist and queer theoretical debates about identity, community, sexuality, gender, race, and the nature of power. This book breaks new theoretical ground in relation not only to BDSM but also to questions of personhood, political economy, and embodiment in late capitalism.”—David Valentine, author of Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category“I cannot emphasize enough how vital the analysis in Techniques of Pleasure is. Margot Weiss reveals the half-lie of ‘safe space’ in the BDSM world and, in doing so, artfully unveils the half-lies that propel ideas of ‘agency’ and ‘choice’ in neoliberal culture.”—Annalee Newitz, author of Pretend We’re Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture“Weiss offers a nuanced reading of sex, power, consumption, and subjectivity that makes Techniques of Pleasure a major contribution to new theoretical work on neoliberal economic processes and the anthropology of sexuality and gender.” -- Michael Connors Jackman * American Ethnologist *“Margot Weiss’ sociological approach to the formation of sexual desire is breathtakingly smart and powerful, and should be required reading for any serious scholar of sexuality henceforth.” -- Adam Isaiah Green * Contemporary Sociology *“[A] vital, if controversial, contribution to the body of writing and theory on BDSM.” -- Nina Lary * Bitch *“The analysis of these circuits is quite fascinating and could be expanded outside the BDSM scene to explore sexual fantasy and performance in any affluent, educated, tech-savvy culture. Recommended to readers interested in human sexuality.” -- Scott Vieira * Library Journal *“In its analytic candor, both generous and unflinching, Weiss’s book is an appropriate entrée for anyone wishing to engage with contemporary BDSM communities — nestled within the larger queer academic trend of critiquing neoliberalist ideological formations of liberated selves and others.” -- Andy Campbell * GLQ *Table of ContentsA Note on Terminology vii Acknowledgments xiii Introduction. Toward a Performative Materialism 1 1. Setting the Scene: SM Communities in the San Francisco Bay Area 34 2. Becoming a Practitioner: Self-Mastery, Social Control, and the Biopolitics of SM 61 3. The Toy Bag: Exchange Economies and the Body at Play 101 4. Beyond Vanilla: Public Politics and Private Selves 143 5. Sex Play and Social Power: Reading the Effective Circuit 187 Appendix. Interviewee Vignettes 233 Notes 241 References 269 Index 291
£20.69
Duke University Press Ruderal City
Book SynopsisIn Ruderal City Bettina Stoetzer traces relationships among people, plants, and animals in contemporary Berlin as they make their lives in the ruins of European nationalism and capitalism. She develops the notion of the ruderal—originally an ecological designation for the unruly life that inhabits inhospitable environments such as rubble, roadsides, train tracks, and sidewalk cracks—to theorize Berlin as a “ruderal city.” Stoetzer explores sites in and around Berlin that have figured in German national imaginaries—gardens, forests, parks, and rubble fields—to show how racial, class, and gender inequalities shape contestations over today’s uses and knowledges of urban nature. Drawing on fieldwork with gardeners, botanists, migrant workers, refugees, public officials, and nature enthusiasts while charting human and more-than-human worlds, Stoetzer offers a wide-ranging ethnographic portrait of Berlin’s postwar ecologies that reveals Table of ContentsPreface: Forest Tracks vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Rubble 1. Botanical Encounters 35 Gardens 2. Gardening the Ruins 67 Parks 3. Provisioning against Austerity 103 4. Barbecue Area 138 Forests 5. Living in the Unheimlich 173 6. Stories of the “Wild East” 205 Epilogue: Seeding Livable Futures 239 Notes 245 References 283 Index 319
£20.69
Cornell University Press The Constitution of Selves
Book SynopsisAn amnesia victim asking "Who am I?" means something different from a confused adolescent asking the same question. Marya Schechtman takes issue with analytic philosophy's emphasis on the first sort of question to the exclusion of the second. The...Trade ReviewSchechtman has greatly enriched the discussion of personal identity. This stimulating book enlarges our sense of the philosophically possible. -- Christopher Williams, University of Nevada at Reno * The Philosophical Review *This excellent and engaging book succeeds in raising questions about the dominant approach to asking questions about our identities and our concern for the future, as well as in offering... the beginnings of an alternative way to ask and answer such questions. That's quite a lot of philosophical work in such a short book. * Ethics *
£20.79
Yale University Press The Witch
Book SynopsisTrade Review“For anyone researching the subject, this is the book you’ve been waiting for.”—Washington Post“Magisterial . . . Hutton concerns himself with the bad, black version of the craft that has terrified poor souls for centuries. His approach blends a broad geographic sweep with the detailed attention of microhistory.”—Kathryn Hughes, Guardian“[A] panoptic, penetrating book.”—Malcolm Gaskill, London Review of Books“What he has done very valuably, though, is to put what most of us know already into a far wider context, both geographically and historically. It’s up to us then to examine our own notions of witches and witchcraft—no longer threatening, but still perfectly familiar.”—Wall Street Journal“Hutton, a leading authority on paganism and witchcraft, traces the idea of witches far beyond the Salem witch trials to beliefs and attitudes about witches around the world throughout history.”—Los Angeles Times“There are several over-familiar images that we jump to when we think of witches, even today: the hat, the broom, the cauldron. Yet this scholarly, engrossing take on the witch travels across centuries and continents to prove that it is a figure that is both more pervasive and more diverse than we might expect.”—History Revealed“Ronald Hutton is the doyen of British occult studies. Through his scrupulous, but always sympathetic, approach… his latest book offers a convincing account of how an early conspiracy theory, the spurious idea of an organised Satanic religion, came to obsess political and religious authorities, killing in the process so many simple healers and users of folk medicine.”—Ian Irvine, Prospect“The history of witchcraft and its persecution makes for compelling, often terrifying reading. . . what makes [Hutton’s] history unique is it provides a much longer – and broader – perspective. The Witch draws upon previously neglected anthropological and ethnographic findings to set the origins of witchcraft and its subsequent persecution in an ancient and global context.”—Tracy Borman, Literary Review“This is an extremely ambitious, thought-provoking, challenging and inspiring book.”—Dr. Willem de Blecourt, Reviews in History“Ronald Hutton’s The Witch is a true masterpiece which follows several intersecting strands of debate on these subjects to test if a global approach can illuminate the early modern witch hunts”— Gary K. Waite, Journal of Ecclesiastical History"An engrossing journey through the world of witches and witchcraft. Highly recommended for those fascinated by the nature and extent of the notorious European Witch Trials."—Tony Robinson "Eloquent, historically grounded, and global in reach, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the social and political context of witchcraft and the manipulation of supposed supernatural powers."—Timothy Darvill, OBE, author of Prehistoric Britain"Few historical concepts come as imbued with horror and intrigue as that slippery figure of the witch. Ronald Hutton has turned his considerable expertise to this always-current subject, illuminating the late Medieval and early modern idea of witches and witchcraft. Readers looking for a rigorous interdisciplinary approach to the history of witchcraft will devour this book."—Katherine Howe, New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane“The book we have all been waiting for.”—Diane Purkiss, author of The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-century Representations
£12.99
Dover Publications Inc. Freud S Totem and Taboo
Book Synopsis
£6.49
Duke University Press Making Peace with Nature
Book SynopsisThe Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) has been off-limits to human habitation for nearly seventy years, and in that time, biodiverse forms of life have flourished in and around the DMZ as beneficiaries of an unresolved war. In Making Peace with Nature Eleana J. Kim shows how a closer examination of the DMZ in South Korea reveals that the area’s biodiversity is inseparable from scientific practices and geopolitical, capitalist, and ecological dynamics. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with ecologists, scientists, and local residents, Kim focuses on irrigation ponds, migratory bird flyways, and land mines in the South Korean DMZ area, demonstrating how human and nonhuman ecologies interact and transform in spaces defined by war and militarization. In so doing, Kim reframes peace away from a human-oriented political or economic peace and toward a more-than-human, biological peace. Such a peace recognizes the reality of war while pointing to potential forms of human and nonhumaTrade Review"Making Peace with Nature is to be commended for its thoughtful attention to the competing priorities and placemaking of the DMZ region by both human and more-than-human actors. In decentring the human, Kim makes a critical intervention in discourses of peace that instrumentalise the DMZ for political or economic gain. Making Peace with Nature makes a valuable contribution across disciplines and may be of particular interest to scholars and students in Korean studies, Asian studies, cultural anthropology, political science, and the environmental humanities." -- Ivanna Sang Een Yi * Asian Studies Review *"Kim offers an opportunity to think of the ecological ramifications of the closed borders of the last few years. One particularly powerful chapter is her study of undetonated mines along the DMZ from the Korean War." -- Adrian De Leon * Public Books *"Kim’s astute theoretical work … is a refreshing approach to the puzzle of nonhuman agency." -- Caterina Scaramelli * American Ethnologist *"Eleana Kim’s book stands as a thought-provoking contribution to our understanding of the Korean DMZ. ... She presents a compelling case for the future sustainability of the Korean DMZ area and leaves an indelible mark on the discourse surrounding this historic landmark." -- Chae-han Kim * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations ix The South Korean DMZ Region xi A Note about Romanization and Translation xii Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 1. In the Meantime of Division 30 2. Ponds 62 3. Birds 87 4. Landmines 119 Epilogue. De/militarized Ecologies 152 Notes 159 Works Cited 177 Index 191
£18.89
Duke University Press Decolonizing Extinction
Book SynopsisIn Decolonizing Extinction Juno Salazar Parreñas ethnographically traces the ways in which colonialism, decolonization, and indigeneity shape relations that form more-than-human worlds at orangutan rehabilitation centers on Borneo. Parreñas tells the interweaving stories of wildlife workers and the centers'' endangered animals while demonstrating the inseparability of risk and futurity from orangutan care. Drawing on anthropology, primatology, Southeast Asian history, gender studies, queer theory, and science and technology studies, Parreñas suggests that examining workers’ care for these semi-wild apes can serve as a basis for cultivating mutual but unequal vulnerability in an era of annihilation. Only by considering rehabilitation from perspectives thus far ignored, Parreñas contends, could conservation biology turn away from ultimately violent investments in population growth and embrace a feminist sense of welfare, even if it means expeTrade Review"This is seriously thought-provoking and challenging material, and it may be essential to understand it if we want to save orangutans from ourselves." -- John R. Platt * The Revelator *"Impactful. . . . Juno S. Parreñas details diverse assumptions and expectations participants bring to this complex network, thereby generating a unique and timely addition to the conservation literature. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and professionals." -- L. K. Sheeran * Choice *"Decolonizing Extinction is essential reading for anyone with the ambition to do multispecies ethnography well. It’s also a beautiful and moving book that struggles with the ethical weight of ethnography as a mode of knowledge production." -- Gabriel N. Rosenberg * Radical History Review *"[This book] excels in these tricky in-between places: in meetings between species, between temporalities, between bodies, between genders, between sexes, and across divergent positions within colonial histories and presents. Parreñas tracks meetings across difference with the best kind of ethnographic sensitivity." -- Rosemary Collard * Society & Space *"Decolonizing Extinction offers a compelling example of why feminism is well suited and positioned to take on issues related to animals, as well as how gender relations of power are necessarily embedded in human-animal relations, and in turn broader process of colonization and arrested autonomy." -- Alice Hovorka * Society & Space *"The book brilliantly weaves discussions about broader socio-political transformations and norms alongside very careful and detailed accounts of the everyday practices and interactions between orangutans and people." -- Krithika Srinivasan * Society & Space *"A powerful, thought-provoking, and touching account of the quotidian nature of mass extinction." -- Becky Mansfield * Society & Space *"Parreñas’s Decolonizing Extinction is a beautifully written book, in which she uses a case study of orangutan rehabilitation on Borneo to weave together many complex analytic threads: gender, race, and labor; care, violence, and freedom; liberalism and neoliberalism; the geological past, the colonial present, and the prospect of a different future." -- Rebecca Lave * Society & Space *“With Decolonizing Extinction, Juno Salazar Parreñas gives us a groundbreaking and beautifully written multispecies ethnography that explores the entwined lives of human and nonhuman primates. Deftly combining primatology, political ecology, and postcolonial and feminist theory, her book will interest biological and cultural anthropologists alike and has the potential to foster deeper cross-disciplinary engagement.” -- Genese Marie Sodikoff * American Ethnologist *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Decolonizing Extinction 1 Part I. Relations 1. From Ape Motherhood to Tough Love 33 2. On the Surface of Skin and Earth 61 Part II. Enclosures 3. Forced Copulation for Conservation 83 4. Finding a Living 105 Part III. Futures 5. Arrested Autonomy 131 6. Hospice for a Dying Species 157 Conclusion: Living and Dying Together 177 Notes 189 References 223 Index 255
£19.79
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Acoustic Justice
Book SynopsisAcoustic Justice engages issues of recognition and misrecognition by mobilizing an acoustic framework. From the vibrational intensities of common life to the rhythm of bodies in movement, and drawing from his ongoing work on sound and agency, Brandon LaBelle positions acoustics, and the broader experience of listening, as a dynamic means for fostering responsiveness, understanding, dispute, and the work of reorientation. As such, acoustic justice emerges as a compelling platform for engaging struggles over the right to speak and to be heard that extends toward a broader materialist and planetary view. This entails critically addressing questions of space, borders, community, and the acoustic norms defining capacities of listening, leading to what LaBelle terms poetic ecologies of resonance. Acoustic Justice works at issues of recognition and resistance, place and displacement, by moving across a range of pertinent references and topics, from social practices and sound artTrade ReviewThis is yet another delightful read on sonic agency by Brandon LaBelle, highlighting this time what is at stake when we think of social and political transformation as an acoustic question. In Acoustic Justice, LaBelle takes the readers through thrilling discussions on ‘hearing differently,’ on ‘generous infrastructure’ and ‘relating otherwise’ – all of them involved in reconfiguring our capacity to act politically. LaBelle's unique approach offers insight into the temporal and situational realms of sound and listening that are fleeting yet necessary for any process of reimagining political possibilities. In the world today, marked by intense structural feelings of uncertainty and fragility, his theorizing of an impersonal, distributed, and collaborative political agency is not just refreshing but indeed very much needed. This book resonates across various fields of social sciences and humanities and is an essential reading for those interested in political theory, sound studies, resistance, and affect theory. * Ana Hofman, Senior Research Fellow, Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Slovenia *Brandon LaBelle’s Acoustic Justice makes important contributions to the scholarship on sound, politics and the public sphere. Exploring how listening as a form of attentiveness functions in an arena of sonic agency, LaBelle deftly illustrates how an acoustic justice exercises a democratic collective action. This is a non-state form of democracy with the capacity to bring into being an extrajudicial civic body, one with greater capacity for what he calls ‘hearing differently.’ Hearing differently accounts for differences in what is or can be heard as a result of silences, gaps, deafnesses, or absences. Offering up acoustics as a metric for both material and social relations, LaBelle dynamically reads the encounter between the organic and built environments as a ‘distribution of the heard’ invigorating our understanding of the polis as a social acoustic phenomenon. * Roshanak Kheshti, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego, USA *Labelle is such a playful and expansive thinker. Acoustic Justice draws so much together across art, philosophy, activism, and beyond to sound an urgent intervention in the politics of attention: a commitment both to hearing differently and to hearing difference. This is an account of acoustics unbound from the audible and an account of justice just 'to the side of law,' that migrates in and out of the legal system and insists on the need for a fair hearing 'in the space of the ordinary.' * James E K Parker, author of Acoustic Jurisprudence: Listening to the Trial of Simon Bikindi (2015) *Table of Contents1. Holding, Healing, Attending: Towards Collaborative Living 2. Acoustic Performativity: Practices of Composition 3. Poetic Ecologies: Resonance, Imagination, Repair 4. Skin-Work: Queer Acoustics, Borderspaces, Economies of Desire 5. Deaf Attention: Peripheral Visions, Spatial Meanings, Sensory Politics 6. Acoustic Support
£22.79
Amber Books Ltd Ancient Egyptian Myths: Gods and Pharoahs,
Book SynopsisThe Great Sphinx of Giza, painted friezes in pyramid chambers, and symbolic paintings of the eye of Horus are familiar and breathtaking works of art. Yet behind them lies a deep cosmological tapestry in which the origins of the Earth and riches brought by the Nile flood are explained through deities. As pharaohs, kingdoms and dynasties rise and fall, so the roles of gods, goddesses and myths change, making Ancient Egypt’s mythology a fascinating journey that reflects shifting power, fortune and influence in the lives of Egyptians. Ancient Egyptian Myths takes a broad approach to the cosmology of Ancient Egypt, describing the function of myth to both the powerful and the powerless. It includes internal and external political and economic influences on the status of deities and their myths. The book examines iconography and texts that transported Egyptians from practical stories explaining the world around them to the mystery and magic that led them into the realm of the dead. It explains the roles of priests and the exclusiveness of temples. Finally, it reveals influences of Egypt’s myths on belief systems and the arts that continue to this day. Illustrated throughout with artworks and photographs, Ancient Egyptian Myths is an engaging and highly informative exploration of a rich mythology that still fascinates today.Table of ContentsIntroduction The sources of Egyptian mythology over kingdoms and dynasties, from oral traditions in the Old Kingdom, through carved Coffin Texts and papyrus leaves of the Book of the Dead to the writings of Plutarch, and how they compare with those from other ancient civilisations, such as Mesopotamia. Explaining the purpose of texts: to guide, through spells attached to deities and the myths embodied in them, through death and into the afterlife. Unfolding the democratization of this process, which in the early Old Kingdom was the prerogative of the upper classes. 1. Creation myths and cosmology Explaining how, from the cosmic egg to the moulding of earth from a mud island rising out of a great sea, Ancient Egyptian creation myths explained how order was established out of chaos, the heavens linked with earth, and life with death and rebirth. Creator gods initially remained local to independent centres: Memphis, Heliopolis and Hermopolis until one, Atum, rose among them. Describing power struggles, the expansion of Egypt and the ensuing ascendancy of other creator gods such a Ptah and Amun, recounting the myths surrounding them. 2 Life, death and rebirth The myths and characteristics of the most powerful deities, especially Ancient Egypt’s lifegivers, explaining the mythology that explained the annual Nile flood, the ensuing fertile soil, and the sun, which together fed and clothed the population and gave surplus for trade and expanding military forces. Recounting the myths through time of, among others, Ra, the sun god, at times attached to Atum and Amun. Also Osiris, whose epic tale of death and rebirth, explained not only the death and rebirth of humans but also the innundation and retreat of the Nile’s waters. 3 The wider pantheon For all their power, creation gods and goddesses remained rather remote and mysterious, though through time some gained qualities and narratives that the masses could identify with. Including earthly manifestations of creator gods, such as Apis, the bull, who represented Ptah, a Memphis god. Explaining the pantheon as a fluid body, with gods and goddesses often taking on several identities and roles, which changed with time. Examples include Hathor, once the fierce lioness goddess of Nubia, and the myth that led to her metamorphosis into the Egyptian the goddess of pleasure and fertility, and a mother of pharaohs. Aspects of gods and myths that people could identify with, such as Thoth, the scribe and powerful Osiris, who was god of death and reincarnation but also of the Nile flood, corn, the moon and vegetation. 4 Priests, sects and power The priest class controlled sects for individual deities and were custodians of their myths, supervising day-to-day rituals honouring the gods in often lavish temple complexes, which were open only to priests, priestesses and pharaohs. The role of the pharaoh’s High Priest through time; the relationship between wealthy, often powerful priests and pharaohs, and the changing nature of deities and the stories around them, as a consequence. 5 War, expansion and trade How, through trade, diplomacy and war, myths and deities from other lands became absorbed into Ancient Egypt’s narrative and pantheon, from Nubia to the south, Libya to the west, to Palestine and Syria in the east. The ascendancy of Ancient Greece and Rome, and the absorption of Egyptian myths and deities into their pantheon. The spread of Ancient Egypt’s cosmology further afield, such as the cult of Osiris, which fanned out westward to the Middle East, and eastward to the shores of the Rhine, to Rome and to England. 6 Celebrating gods, goddesses and myths Describing daily reminders of deities and myths manifested through art and architecture, not only in pyramids and temples, great painted friezes and statues, and the stunning jewellery of the wealthy, but also in the small statuettes or simple clay models and amulets of the masses. Festivals to honour deities and their powerful myths were organised through temples and enjoyed by the whole population. Processions involved dancing, singing and drumming towards the temple of a particular deity, or down to the Nile in the case of Hapi, who brought the life-giving flood. Describing instruments such as the sacred and powerful percussive sistrum, identified with goddess Hathor and often incorporating her cow horn symbol. 7 The legacy of Egyptian mythology Discussing ongoing fascination with the mythology of Ancient Egypt, and its symbolism, which can be found in many belief systems, cosmologies and organisations that have emerged since the end of the civilization, from astrology and alchemy to theosophy and freemasonry. From the 18th century, and especially after Champollion’s decipherment of hierogyphs in 1822, Ancient Egypt ‘fever’ was high, the term Egyptology was born, and all things Ancient Egypt became apparent in design, especially jewellery. The mystique surrounding Egypt’s mythology surfaced during Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon’s archaeological excavations of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, and has been revived in the entertainment world, through animation, and video and online games and movies such as the Tomb Raider series. Advances in science and technology could, through archaeology, reveal new facets to Egyptian mythology and a broader area of influence on them. Bibliography Index
£16.99
University Press of Colorado Aztec Antichrist: Performing the Apocalypse in
Book Synopsis
£29.57
LEGARE STREET PR Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese
Book Synopsis
£28.45
Indiana University Press Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women
Book SynopsisWhen thinking of intrepid travelers from past centuries, we don't usually put Muslim women at the top of the list. And yet, the stunning firsthand accounts in this collection completely upend preconceived notions of who was exploring the world. Editors Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma recover, translate, annotate, and provide historical and cultural context for the 17th- to 20th-century writings of Muslim women travelers in ten different languages. Queens and captives, pilgrims and provocateurs, these women are diverse. Their connection to Islam is wide-ranging as well, from the devout to those who distanced themselves from religion. What unites these adventurers is a concern for other women they encounter, their willingness to record their experiences, and the constant thoughts they cast homeward even as they traveled a world that was not always prepared to welcome them. Perfect for readers interested in gender, Islam, travel writing, and global history, Trade ReviewCompiled by editors Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz and Sunil Sharma, Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women showcases writings from 45 Muslim women — acquired through an extensive selection of writings in 10 languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Punjabi, Indonesian, English and others. . . . What emerges is a group of women writers who were not afraid to voice their thoughts in the presence of authority figures and unfavourable circumstances. Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women Writers is an enduring testament to just a few of the countless fascinating stories documented by women travellers throughout the ages. -- Fehmida Zakeer * The National News *This anthology will be of interest to anyone working on travel, colonial history, Muslim women, and comparative literature, Islamic Studies. It will also be an excellent resource in many courses that cover a range of topics be it religious piety, feminism, travel, travel writing, and much more. -- Shobhana Xavier * New Books Network *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsA Note on Translation, Transliteration and SyntaxIntroduction: Muslim Women, Travel Writing and Cultures of Mobility, by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Daniel MajchrowiczPart I: Travel as Pilgrimage1. The Widow of Mirza Khalil: A Bereaved Wife Seeks Solace2. Nawab Sikander Begum: A Queen's Impressions of Mecca3. Mehrmah Khanom: Adventures on the Road to Iraq4. Hajiyeh Khanom Alaviya Kermani: Iran to Mecca by Way of Bombay5. Sakineh Soltan Khanom Esfahani Kuchak: Iraq Diary6. Nawab Sultan Jahan Begum: The Long March to Medina7. Ummat al-Ghani Nur al-Nisa: Notes from Mecca and the Levant8. Begum Sarbuland Jang: Seeking Sisterhood in Damascus9. Rahil Begum Shervaniya: Life Aboard a Pilgrim Ship10. Nur Begum: Poems from a Punjabi Pilgrim11. Zainab Cobbold: At Home in the Hijaz with a British Convert12. Fatima Begum: An Indian Haji Observes her Fellow Pilgrims13. Qaisari Begum: The Long Road to Mecca14. Begum Hasrat Mohani: Letters from a Pilgrimage to Iraq15. Mahmooda Rizvi: Three Months in IraqPart II: Travel as Emancipation and Politics16. Melek Hanim: A Turk among the Greeks17. Huda Shaarawi: A European Summer on the Eve of War18. Zeyneb Hanoum: A Turkish Désenchantée in Europe19. Selma Ekrem: Alone in New York City20. Şükûfe Nihal Başar: Three Days in Finland21. Halide Édib: A Turkish Nationalist in Colonial India22. Amina Said: An Egyptian Feminist at an Indian Conference23. Shareefah Hamid Ali: Representing India at the United Nations24. Suharti Suwarto: Ten Indonesian Women in the Soviet UnionPart III: Travel as Education25. Atiya Fyzee: Living and Learning in London26. Maimoona Sultan: To Turkey by Train through a Child's Eyes27. Sediqeh Dowlatabadi: An Iranian Feminist Travails in France28. Begum Habibullah: With Three Boys at an English Boarding School29. Iqbalunnisa Hussain: At the University of Leeds30. Muhammadi Begum: Oxford Diary31. Herawati Diah: A Journalist in the Making32. Mehr al-Nisa: An Indian Nurse in Ohio33. Zaib-un-nissa Hamidullah: Sixty Days in AmericaPart IV: Travel as Obligation and Pleasure34. Princess Jahanara: Mystical Meetings in Kashmir35. Dilshad: A Prisoner is Taken to Khoqand36. Sayyida Salamah bint Said/Emily Ruete: A Lover's Flight from Zanzibar37. Taj al-Saltanah: Life and Death in Qajar Iran38. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain: A Pleasure Trip to the Himalaya39. Nazli Begum: On Grand Tour with the Nawab of Janjira40. Safia Jabir Ali: Touring Europe on Business41. Sughra Humayun Mirza: Meeting the Caliph in Switzerland42. Sughra Sabzvari: An Indian Family in Iran43. Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah: Life in England on the Brink of War44. Shams Pahlavi: A Shah's Daughter in Exile45. Nyonya Aulia-Salim: An Indonesian Tours America by MotorGlossaryContributorsIndex
£45.90
Duke University Press The Inheritance
Book SynopsisThe Inheritance is anthropologist Elizabeth A. Povinelli's graphic memoir in which she explores her family's history and the events, traumas, and social structures that define our individual and collective pasts and futures.Trade Review“With the understanding of a scholar and the storytelling instincts of a novelist, Elizabeth A. Povinelli has brought a rare degree of scope and insight to the graphic memoir form. Relatively few illustrated works are so complex and insightful, so intricately concerned with families, nationalities, and politics. An extraordinary book.” -- Michael Cunningham, author of * The Hours *“A melancholy yet often darkly funny reflection on the intersections of biography, geography, kinship, and history, The Inheritance is a genuinely original work that made an impact on this reader and will leave a lasting mark on the field.” -- Naisargi N. Dave, author of * Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics *"An inspired use of the graphic format to weave a narrative with a power beyond words alone." (Starred Review) * Kirkus Reviews *"This book is memoir, art, and anthropology, as it cleverly addresses the interplay between individual lives and collective experiences, thus inviting a more open and associative mode of interpretation than most academic monographs.… This text handles complex and contested social themes through sparing text and provocative imagery and as such is a unique contribution to the conversation on the legacies of European immigration to the United States." -- Caroline DeVane * Europe Now *"This is a fascinating study of family persona and their changing relationships, but it is not just an engaging family history. The book is also an analysis of the historical context, 'the patterns of violence, dislocation, racism and structural inequality' (p. xi) that shape US society." -- Louise Lamphere * Journal of Anthropological Research *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Preface xi Act I 1 Act II Papa The Vorburgers Gramma Act III Reading List
£20.69
Edinburgh University Press Homemaking in the Russianspeaking Diaspora
Book SynopsisExamines the material culture of Russian-speaking migrants
£17.99
Oxford University Press Agency and Cognitive Development
Book SynopsisChildren of different ages live in different worlds. This is partly due to learning: as children learn more and more about the world they experience it in different ways. But learning cannot be the whole story or else children could learn anything at any age - which they cannot.In a startlingly original proposal, Michael Tomasello argues that children of different ages live and learn in different worlds because their capacities to cognitively represent and operate on their experience change in significant ways over the first years of life. These capacities change because they are elements in a maturing cognitive architecture evolved for agentive decision making and action, including in shared agencies in which individuals must mentally coordinate with others. The developmental proposal is that from birth infants are goal-directed agents who cognitively represent and learn about actualities; at 9 -12 months toddlers become intentional (and joint) agents who also imaginatively and perspectivally represent and learn about possibilities; and at 3-4 years preschool youngsters become metacognitive (and collective) agents who also metacognitively represent and learn about objective/normative necessities. These developing agentive architectures - originally evolved in humans'' evolutionary ancestors for particular types of decision making and action - help to explain why children learn what they do when they do.This novel agency-based model of cognitive development recognizes the important role of (Bayesian) learning, but at the same time places it in the context of the overall agentive organization of children at particular developmental periods.
£42.75
University of California Press Deeply into the Bone
Book SynopsisIllustrates the power of rites to help us navigate life's troublesome transitions. This book covers the significant life events of birth, initiation, marriage, and death. It explores innovative rites for important events such as beginning school, same-sex commitment ceremonies, abortion, serious illness, divorce, and retirement.Trade Review"Grimes' combination of scholarly knowledge, anecdotes, literary essays, and observations on modern culture provide a first-class foundation for this thoroughly absorbing foray into a deeply interesting and relevant subject."-NAPRA ReView "Without question, this is one of the finest books I have read in several decades. It is well written, beautifully printed, and deals with passages of life [and] the rituals that people have or have not developed to cope with them."-William Klassen, The Kitchener-Waterloo Record "A thoughtful, insightful examination...a deeply evocative portrait of life-passage rituals and their meaning in a variety of human contexts."-Library JournalTable of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Rough Passages, Reinvented Rites 1. Celebrating New Life, Ritually Nurturing the Young 2. Coming of Age, Joining Up 3. Divining Mates, Making Kin 4. Living with the Dead, Exiting Gracefully 5. Passages, Troubled and Uncharted Conclusion: Beyond Passage Notes Sources Cited Index
£27.00
Oxford University Press Racism and Ethnic Relations in the
Book SynopsisHow did racism evolve in different parts of the Portuguese-speaking world? How should the impact on ethnic perceptions of colonial societies based on slavery or the slave trade be evaluated? What was the reality of inter-ethnic mixture in different continents? How has the prejudice of white supremacy been confronted in Brazil and Portugal? And how should we assess the impact of recent trends of emigration and immigration? These are some of the major questions that have structured this book. It both contextualises and challenges the visions of Gilberto Freyre and Charles Boxer, which crystallised from the 1930s to the 1960s, but which still frame the public history of this topic. It studies crucial issues, including recent affirmative action in Brazil or Afro-Brazilian literature, blackness in Brazil compared with Colombia under the dynamics of identity, recent racist trends in Portugal in comparative perspective, the status of native people in colonial Portuguese Africa, discriminationTrade Reviewan invaluable contribution * Anthony Soares, Bulletin of Spanish Studies *Table of ContentsPARTI I. PRESENT ISSUES; PART II. THE MODERN FRAMEWORK; PART III. THE LONG VIEW
£67.50
Oxford University Press Navigating the Old English Poor Law
Book SynopsisThis edition of over 600 letters written by or for the poor in the early nineteenth-century Cumbrian town of Kirkby Lonsdale provides a unique window onto the experiences, views and conditions of a much-neglected group in English society. At the most human level, these letters are replete with sickness and suffering, the inability of mothers and fathers to fulfil their basic roles, claims that people were starving and naked, writers who were at death''s door and those who were homeless and desperate. The letters also provide a sense of the emotional landscape of those who have largely escaped the attention of historians of emotion. Here we find anger, suffering, gratitude, hopelessness, fear, humiliation and humility, largely in the words and voice of those who experienced such emotions. And above all we find agency - a group of poor people and their advocates who were willing and able, indeed saw it as their right, to challenge those who administered welfare and attempt to shape a sysTrade ReviewAn impressively rich resource of primary sources ... It is simultaneously fascinating and depressing to see the historical problems of poverty that echo today ... providing an enriched understanding of the workings of an historic system of poor relief. * Gráinne McKeever, Journal of Social Security Law *This edition of primary sources is a welcome addition to the history of English welfare... * Samantha Williams, Family & Community History *This collection provides thought-provoking insights into the workings of the Old Poor Law. * Rechtsgeschichte - Legal History *Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction THE KIRKBY LONSDALE LETTERS, 1809-1836 Bibliography Index
£95.00
Oxford University Press Inc The Invented State
Book SynopsisIn The Invented State, Emily Thorson argues that a problematic and understudied aspect of political misinformation reflects widespread public misperception about what the government does. Because much of public policy is invisible to the public, there is fertile ground for false beliefs to flourish, leading to the creation of what Thorson terms the invented state: systematic misperceptions about public policy. However, people get the facts wrong not because they are lazy, stupid, or blinded by partisan loyalty. Rather, misperceptions are created when three conditions are met: when citizens have incomplete information about an issue, when their own biases color their understanding of it, and when they feel that the issue is important. In other words, the invented state is created not just by exposure to explicit misinformation, but also by individuals'' cognitive errors. Correcting these policy misperceptions is highly effective at reducing false beliefs. In addition, providing people w
£64.00
Oxford University Press Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£999.99
The University of Chicago Press The Victim Its Masks An Essay on Sacrifice and
Book SynopsisThe Ait Mazine of northern Morocco reenact the story of Abraham as a ritual sacrifice, a symbolic observance of submission to the divine. After comes a bacchanalian masquerade which seems to violate every principle the sacrifice affirmed. This study reunites them as a single ritual process.
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press The Dominion of the Dead
Book SynopsisIn The Dominion of the Dead, Robert Pogue Harrison explores the many places where the dead cohabit the world of the living - the graves, images, literature, architecture, and monuments that house the dead in their afterlife among us. This elegantly conceived work devotes particular attention to the practice of burial.Trade Review"This is the best book ever written about the cultural meaning of burial, our need to remember the dead (hence our need for history), and the deeper than etymological link between the human and the humus." - Jonathan Bate, Times Literary Supplement; "A guide to the care of self (and society) through an analysis of the care for the dead, written in a manner that is inimitable, provocative and intellectually compelling." - Publishers Weekly; "A significant and learned treatise on something that should concern all of us." - Jack Matthews, Washington Times; "A penetrating look into the realm of the dead." - Bernadette Murphy, Los Angeles Times Book Review; "Harrison... has a rare poetic intelligence that does not shrink from speculative immensity.... In a kind of literary seance, the voices of the dead - poets like Swinburne and Homer, writers like Conrad and Joyce, philosophers like Vico and Heidegger - shape the text.... By the end one begins to think differently about the living as well as the dead." - Edward Rothstein, New York Times; "A daring and ambitious book.... The subject is one in which the reader participates, and it will not end as long as there is someone to ponder it." - W. S. Merwin, New York Review of Books"
£17.00
The University of Chicago Press A Socialist Peace Explaining the Absence of War
Book SynopsisFor the last twenty years, the West African nation of Guinea has exhibited all the characteristics that have correlated with civil wars in other countries, and Guineans themselves regularly talk about the inevitability of war tearing their country apart. Yet the country has narrowly avoided civil conflict again and again. In A Socialist Peace?, Mike McGovern asks how this was possible, how a nation could beat the odds and evade civil war. All six of Guinea's neighbors have experienced civil war or separatist insurgency in the past twenty years. Guinea itself has similar makings for it. It is rich in resources, yet its people are some of the poorest in the world. Its political situation is polarized by fiercely competitive ethnic groups. Weapons flow freely through its lands and across its borders. And, finally, it is still recovering from the oppressive regime of Sekou Toure. Yet it is that aspect which McGovern points to: while Toure's reign was hardly peaceful, it was successful ofte
£24.70
The University of Chicago Press Knot of the Soul Madness Psychoanalysis Islam
Book Synopsis
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press Dangerous Fun
Book SynopsisA thrilling ethnography of big wave surfing in Hawaii that explores the sociology of fun. Straight from the beaches of Hawaii comes an exciting new ethnography of a community of big-wave surfers. Oahu's Waimea Bay attracts the world's best big wave surfersmen and women whocome to test their physical strength, courage, style, knowledge of the water, and love of the ocean. Sociologist Ugo Corte sees their fun as the outcome of social interaction within a community. Bothas participant and observer, heexamines how mentors, novices, and peers interact to create episodes of collective fun in a dangerous setting; how they push one another's limits, nourish a lifestyle, advance the sport and, in some cases, make a living based on their passion for the sport. InDangerous Fun,Corte traces how surfers earn and maintain a reputation within the field, and how, as innovations are introduced, and as they progress, establish themselves and age, they modify their strategies for maximizing performance Trade Review"Its theoretical merits in the ritual interactionist paradigm . . . make the book a must read for any sociologist interested in explaining the seductions of risk taking and the fun in danger—in leisure worlds, individual pleasures, and social life." * Symbolic Interaction *“Deftly explains big wave surfing’s embodied practices, interpersonal relationships, and status hierarchies. The end result is a highly persuasive treatise on the role of emotions, risk-taking, and social collaboration in the pursuit of fun—an essential (if academically undervalued) aspect of human existence. And, beyond his serious engagement with sociological theory. . . . [T]he text is equally filled with humor and beauty. . . . Corte’s analysis represents a significant step in better understanding the complexities of what fun is and how people can find it in myriad ways.” * Social Forces *“Ugo Corte presents an outstanding ethnographic account of big wave surfing. Not only because of the quality of the research but also because of the literary quality of the whole piece. The book achieves an excellent balance between scholar discussion and adventure chronicle that would appeal both to academics and surf aficionados. . . . I would consider Corte’s book as one of the best ethnographic studies of sport so far." * Sociología del Deporte *"Ugo Corte has done impressive fieldwork, including interviews, trying out big wave surfing himself, and hanging out with big wave surfers on the Hawaiian Islands, to capture the ‘memory of a community’ . . . Corte has written a well-researched and fascinating book that will be important to small-group research in cultural sociology." * Cultural Sociology *"Fascinating. . . [and] helpful for scholars looking for social scientific methods to study ritualized and group-based athletes whose practices are deeply entangled with the natural world. Corte’s Dangerous Fun is a valuable addition to the sociological understanding of such social phenomena." * Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture *"Dangerous Fun is bound to be recognized as an essential contribution to the ethnography of risk and the sociology of emotions. Part-memoir, part-history, and part-theory, Corte brilliantly describes why men and women in the Hawaiian surfing world are willing to put themselves in jeopardy in search of a high that is simultaneously personal and communal. Not since Matthew Desmond’s On the Fireline have we had such a powerful account of the intersection of pleasure and danger. One need not have straddled a surfboard to appreciate that a commitment to sociality allows for the profound attraction of controlled peril." -- Gary Alan Fine, Northwestern University“Dangerous Fun is a landmark in the sociology of sport, showing how fear is converted into excitement and fun. Big wave surfing is a team sport: waiting for the wave far off-shore, calling alarms of dangerous waves, circulating narratives of near-death disasters that are the turning point to dropping out or becoming a big-wave surfer. One has to seek out high danger in the presence of a like-minded group to get hooked on this kind of emotional/ physiological transformation. Corte’s book is a fundamental theory of risk-taking of all kinds, even addiction.” -- Randall Collins, author of Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory"The North Shore of O‘ahu is the Vatican of surfing: small in area but densely packed with lore, power, secrets, and great waves. Ugo Corte goes straight to the heart of one of its abiding mysteries–the subculture within the subculture–the exceptional people who ride very big waves. He illuminates surfers’ mentality, diversity, self-expression, social bonds and rituals with dramatic narrative and extensive interviews all in an analytic framework." -- William Finnegan, author of Barbarian Days"Corte’s important book will have crossover appeal not only between academic fields like sociology and psychology, but between academics and non-academics, especially surfers who are intellectually curious. This is because Dangerous Fun is an engaging participant-observation ethnography written in a style that fits in with the best of the classic ethnographic works in the field of sociology. The reader is immediately drawn into the book because the characters are so interesting and because Corte does a great job explaining the feeling of the thrill found in big wave surfing." * Contemporary Sociology *Table of ContentsPrologue: From Northern Europe to the North Shore of Oahu Introduction 1 From Land to Water 2 Beyond the Boil 3 Fun and Community 4 Failing to Succeed, Failing to Become 5 Reciprocal Influence 6 From Adventure to Entertainment and toward Sport 7 One Last Ride Epilogue: Gone but Here, yet Barely in Sight Acknowledgments Notes References Index
£22.80
Palgrave MacMillan UK Alliteration in Culture
Book SynopsisNations and their Histories highlights the importance of the past and its uses in the formation of modern nations and national identities. The book looks at the construction of different national historiographies as well as present representations of the past in the political and cultural life of nations, covering the five continents.Table of ContentsIntroduction; S.Carvalho & F.Gemenne PART I: NATIONAL HISTORIES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONS Nationalism and the Making of National Past; J.Breuilly The Comparative History of National Historiographies in Europe; S.Berger 'Colonizing' the Past: History and Memory in Greece and Turkey; S.A.Sofos & U.Özk?r?ml? The Politics of Memorialization in Zimbabwe; T.Ranger Beginning the World Over Again: Past and Future in American Nationalism; D.H.Doyle Rediscovering Columbus in Nineteenth-Century American Textbooks; C.Cadot Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Mexico; D.A.Brading PART II: PRESENT REPRESENTATIONS OF NATIONAL HISTORIES Eternal France: Crisis and National Self-Perception in France, 1870-2005; R.Gildea Cuisine, Nationality and the Making of a National Meal: The English Breakfast; K.O'Connor National Restoration and Moral Renewal: The Dialectics of the Past in the Emergence of Modern Israel; A.Gal Crafting Iranian Nationalism: Intersectionality of Aryanism, Westernism and Islamism; A.Kian & G.Riaux The Evolution of State Discourses on the Nationalist Political Party in Post-Colonial Cameroon; C.Nsoudou Refashioning Sub-National Pasts for Post-National Futures; J.Wenzel A Season of War: Warriors, Veterans and Warfare in American Nationalism; S-M.Grant Sinocentrism and the National Question in China; E.Hyer Nation, History, Museum: The Politics of the Past at the National Museum of Australia; B.Wellings Conclusion; S.Carvalho & F.Gemenne
£42.74
Palgrave MacMillan UK White Middle Class Identities and Urban Schooling
Book SynopsisThis book examines experiences and implications of 'against-the-grain' school choices, where white middle class families choose ordinary and 'low performing' secondary schools for their children. It offers a unique view of identity formation, taking in matters like family history, locality and whiteness.Trade ReviewSociety for Education Studies Book Prize 2012 Winner - Runner-up 'The production of this beautifully crafted and important book adds to what we know of education policy in practice and brings complex and fresh evidence to the setting of school choice, class and lived social identity. This work will be a major reference point for sociological theory and policy in practice for some time to come.' - Meg Maguire, Journal of Education Policy 'This book focuses on the persepctives of white middle-class parents who make 'against'-the-grain school choices for their children in urban England. It provides key insights into the dynamics of class practising that are played out in these choices and the multiple narratives and contexts that influence them.' - Dympna Devine, British Journal of Sociology of Education 'This magnificent book...will command widespread interest.' - Mike Savage, British Journal of Sociology of Education 'This book will be of interest to education and social policy researchers, sociologists, education professionals and indeed left-leaning white middle class parents.' - Nicola Ingram, British Journal of Sociology of Education 'A thoughtful and very interesting analysis by a talented group of researchers.' - Professor Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania, USA 'White Middle Class Identities and Urban Schooling is a very important book. Looking at class practices and habitus as linked to family and schooling, the authors unpack the ways in which choice of secondary school is increasingly linked to the forging of social structure. In so doing, they bring the ability of the middle class to erect boundaries both symbolically and geographically into a new era of social class construction, while instantiating increasingly widespread choice of secondary school for one's children as a key and pivotal site for class formation and contestation. This is a 'must read' for anyone interested in contemporary class formation.' Professor Lois Weis, Graduate School of Education, University at Buffalo, USATable of ContentsAcknowledgements 1. Introduction: The White Middle Classes in the Twenty-First Century – Identities Under Siege? 2. White Middle Class Identity Formation: Theory and Practice 3. Family History, Class Practices and Habitus 4. Habitus as a Sense of Place 5. Against-the-Grain School Choice in Neoliberal Times 6. A Darker Shade of Pale: Whiteness as Integral to Middle Class Identity 7. The Psychosocial: Ambivalences and Anxieties of Privilege 8. Young People and the Urban Comprehensive: Remaking Cosmopolitan Citizens or Reproducing Hegemonic White Middle Class 9. 9. Values? Reinvigorating Democracy: Middle Class Moralities in Neoliberal Times Conclusion: Appendix 1: Methods and Methodology Appendix 2: Parental Occupations and Sector Appendix 3: The Sample Families in Terms of ACORN Categories References
£42.74
University of Illinois Press Africans to Spanish America Expanding the
Book SynopsisExpands and enrichs African diaspora history in the AmericasTrade Review"A pioneering effort to write the history of Africans in colonial Spanish America using the African diaspora paradigm. The authors fully demonstrate the considerable potential of this approach."--Kris Lane, author of The Colour of Paradise: The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires"A page-turning secret society history based on solid research and accuracy."--Southern Historian“Africans to Spanish America is both useful and provocative, with chapters drawing on a range of methodological approaches to explore the complexities and nuances of racial identity in diverse Spanish American societies.”-- Journal of Latin American Studies"Aside from "expanding" diasporic history geographically, Africans to Spanish America also reminds us that between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries the experiences of people of African descent in Spanish America were more varied than the paradigmatic plantation-centered historiography of the Caribbean and Brazil has implied."--New West Indiana Guide"Expands the spatial and chronological contours of the African diaspora. A rich anthology comprised of short, clearly argued, and jargon-free essays."--Hispanic American Historical Review"Deeply researched work. The essays pay due attention to the religious and political institutions that enabled Spanish colonial rule but show how African-descended subjects--in a departure from third-wave scholarship--identified with those institutions more often than they resisted them."--American Historical Review"The authors add valuable knowledge to the literature on slavery and colonialism in the Americas as they shift attention to the earliest phases of European imperialism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and to locations throughout the hemisphere. . . . An empirically rich work that contributes valuable knowledge to a fast-growing field of research."--International Migration Review"A truly significant contribution to the field of the African Diaspora in colonial Spanish America in the era of slavery and slave society. The volume's most striking feature is the depth of inquiry into various features of Spanish American slave society and their impact on the lives of people of African descent and on the character of the colonial societies and imperial policy."--David Barry Gaspar, coeditor of Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the AmericasTable of ContentsIntroduction 1Sherwin K. Bryant, Ben Vinson III, and Rachel Sarah O'ToolePart 1. Complicating Identity in the African Diaspora to Spanish America 1. The Shape of a Diaspora: The Movement of Afro-Iberians to Colonial Spanish America 27Leo J. Garofalo 2. African Diasporic Ethnicity in Mexico City to 1650 50Frank "Trey" Proctor III 3. To Be Free and Lucumi: Ana de la Calle and Making African Diaspora Identities in Colonial Peru 73Rachel Sarah O'ToolePart 2. Royal Subjects, Loyal Christians, and Saints in the Alley 4. Between the Cross and the Sword: Religious Conquest and Maroon Legitimacy in Colonial Esmeraldas 95Charles Beatty-Medina 5. Afro-Mexican Saintly Devotion in a Mexico City Alley 114Joan C. Bristol 6. "The Lord walks among the pots and pans": Religious Servants of Colonial Lima 136Nancy E. van DeusenPart 3. Comparisons and Whitening Revisited: Race and Gender in Colonial Cuba 7. Whitening Revisited: Nineteenth-Century Cuban Counterpoints 163Karen Y. Morrison 8. Tensions of Race, Gender, and Midwifery in Colonial Cuba 186Michele Reid-Vazquez 9. The African American Experience in Comparative Perspective: The Current Question of the Debate 206Herbert S. Klein Glossary 223 Bibliography 229 List of Contributors 263 Acknowledgments 268 Index 269
£68.25
University of Illinois Press Feminist Technology
Book SynopsisIs there such a thing as a 'feminist technology'? If so, what makes a technology feminist? Is it in the design process, in the thing itself, in the way it is marketed, or in the way it is used by women? This title considers these questions by examining a range of products, tools, and technologies that were specifically designed for women.Trade Review"This coherent and integrated collection lays out the issues and questions of feminist technology, crossing a true range of disciplinary boundaries including science and technology studies, architecture, biology, and the social sciences."--Barbara Katz Rothman, author of Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in a Patriarchal SocietyTable of ContentsContributors are: Jennifer Aengst, Maia Boswell-Penc, Kate Boyer, Frances Bronet, Shirley Gorenstein, Anita Hardon, Deborah G. Johnson, Linda L. Layne, Deana McDonagh, and Sharra L. Vostral
£19.94
University of Illinois Press Commemorating Hell
Book SynopsisExploring the political and cultural layers of memory and commemorationTrade Review"Commemorating Hell is a fascinating and unique combination of social history and cultural analysis that uses the social memory of Mittelbau-Dora to analyze the personal and social processes of coming to grips with horrific past acts. It is among the best books examining the dark history of the Dora camp."--David Price, author of Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World WarTable of ContentsIntroduction ix 1. Conceptualizing Horror 1 2. The Camp Mittelbau-Dora 19 3. An End and a Beginning 39 4. The Change of Command 59 5. Shaping the New Land and Its Memories 77 6. The Mahn- und Gedenkstatte in the GDR 93 7. The Wall Comes Down 115 8. The Modern Gedenkstatte 137 9. Major Themes and Conclusions 152 Notes 169 Bibliography 183 Index 195
£999.99
University of Illinois Press The Costs of the Gig Economy
Book SynopsisInstitutions in Recife, Brazil, have restructured subsidies in favor of encouraging musicians to become more entrepreneurial. Falina Enriquez explores how contemporary and traditional musicians in the fabled musical city have negotiated these intensified neoliberal cultural policies and economic uncertainties. Drawing on years of fieldwork, Enriquez shows how forcing artists to adopt neutral market solutions reinforces, and generates, overlapping racial and class-based inequalities. Lacking the social and financial resources of their middle-class peers, working-class musicians find it difficult to uphold institutional goals of connecting the city's cultural roots to global markets and consumers. Enriquez also links the artists' situation to that of cultural and creative workers around the world. As she shows, musical sponsorship in Recife and the contemporary gig economy elsewhere employ processes that, far from being neutral, uphold governmental and corporate ideologies that produce sTrade Review"The Costs of the Gig Economy is a welcome English-language contribution about Recife's contemporary music scene, which receives less attention compared to those in São Paulo, Rio de Janerio, and Salvador. . . . In a clear and engaging writing style, Enriquez zooms in and out of various scales—from local to global—and weaves her theoretical framework of 'rooted cosmopolitanism' into the interconnected issues musicians, cultural promoters, and bureaucrats encounter. Her case studies are refreshingly inclusive of both popular and traditional musicians navigating this environment." --Notes
£19.19
Indiana University Press Global Pentecostalism in the 21st Century
Book SynopsisFocuses on cultural developments among second- and third-generation adherents in regions with large Pentecostal communities, considering the impact of these developments on political participation, citizenship, gender relations, and economic morality.Trade ReviewThis edited volume offers the reader excellent coverage on a range of issues about the social, cultural, and political aspects of Pentecostalism. With contributions from sociologists, anthropologists, and religion scholars, the editor has brought together some of the top experts in the field with cases from most regions of the world including Brazil, Zimbabwe, China, Russia, Ukraine, India, and the Philippines. * Religious Studies Review *Global Pentecostalism in the 21st Century is a valuable addition to the literature on a topic that was neglected by anthropologists for too long . . . it takes the pulse of an important field of research and begins to direct our gaze toward the futures of Pentecostalisms and to whatever new religious developments may come. * Anthropology Review Database *Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction: The Unexpected Modern—Gender, Piety, and Politics in the Global Pentecostal Surge \ Robert W. Hefner1. Pentecostalism: An Alternative Form of Modernity and Modernization? \ David Martin2. The Future of Pentecostalism in Brazil: The Limits to Growth \ Paul Freston3. Social Mobility and Politics in African Pentecostal Modernity \ David Maxwell4. Tensions and Trends in Pentecostal Gender and Family Relations \ Bernice Martin5. Gender, Modernity, and Pentecostal Christianity in China \ Nanlai Cao6. The Routinization of Soviet Pentecostalism and the Liberation of Charisma in Russia and Ukraine \ Christopher Marsh and Artyom Tonoyan7. Pentecost amid Pujas: Charismatic Christianity and Dalit Women in Twenty-First-Century India \ Rebecca Samuel Shah and Timothy Samuel Shah8. Politics, Education, and Civic Participation: Catholic Charismatic Modernities in the Philippines \ Katharine L. WiegeleAfterword \ Peter L. BergerContributorsIndex
£17.59
Indiana University Press Jaffa Shared and Shattered
Book SynopsisBinational cities play a pivotal role in situations of long-term conflict, and few places have been more marked by the tension between intimate proximity and visceral hostility than Jaffa, one of the mixed towns of Israel/Palestine. In this nuanced ethnographic and historical study, Daniel Monterescu argues that such places challenge our assumptions about cities and nationalism, calling into question the Israeli state's policy of maintaining homogeneous, segregated, and ethnically stable spaces. Analyzing everyday interactions, life stories, and histories of violence, he reveals the politics of gentrification and the circumstantial coalitions that define the city. Drawing on key theorists in anthropology, sociology, urban studies, and political science, he outlines a new relational theory of sociality and spatiality.Trade Review The book's analysis of the relations between the political, the cultural, and the neoliberal economy through a historical engagement with the city of Jaffa is a significant contribution to understanding the complexity of life for Jaffa's residents. * Journal of Levantine Studies *Anybody with an interest in the politics and sociology of Israeli/Palestinian relations needs to read this book. Daniel Monterescu provides a rich and theoretically sophisticated account of urban politics in Jaffa. * Perspectives on Politics *In showing how Jaffa is both shared and shattered, the book is an important and timely contribution to ongoing debates about mutual relations between Palestinians and Israelis in the context of recurring conflict, entrenched inequality and ongoing colonisation. It is essential reading for everyone interested in contemporary Palestinian–Israeli relations and should be of particular interest to political and urban anthropologists. * Social Anthropology *For anyone who would like to understand the experience of living as a member of the minority Arab population in a 'mixed' city in Israel, then Jaffa is both the place and the study to read. . . [T]his is a well-researched, very worthwhile excursus into a complicated societal problem. . . . Highly recommended. * Choice *Jaffa Shared and Shattered is a rich and provocative addition to the scholarly literature on Palestine/ Israel and urban studies. * American Ethnologist *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Contrived Coexistence: Relational Histories of Urban Mix in Israel/Palestine Part I. Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Communal Formations and Ambivalent Belonging1. Spatial Relationality: Theorizing Space and Sociality in Jewish-Arab "Mixed Towns"2. The Bridled "Bride of Palestine": Urban Orientalism and the Zionist Quest for Place3. The "Mother of the Stranger": Palestinian Presence and the Ambivalence of SumudPart II. Sharing Place or Consuming Space: The Neoliberal City4. Inner Space and High Ceilings: Agents and Ideologies of Ethnogentrification5. To Buy or Not to Be: Trespassing the Gated CommunityPart III. Being and Belonging in the Binational City: A Phenomenology of the Urban 6. Escaping the Mythscape: Tales of Intimacy and Violence7. Situational Radicalism and Creative Marginality: The "Arab Spring" and Jaffa's CountercultureConclusion: The City of the Forking Paths: Imagining the Futures of Binational UrbanismNotesReferencesIndex
£19.19
Indiana University Press Frontiers of Belonging
Book SynopsisTrade Review"This book makes important contributions to scholarship in the fields of anthropology and refuge/migration studies. Most ethnographies of forced migration tend to focus on adult refugees. Lems provides an intimate, close-up look into the experiences of teenage unaccompanied minors."—Nell Gabiam, Iowa State University"Frontiers of Belonging beautifully and tragically renders the concept of 'exclusive inclusion' by exploring the stories of several unaccompanied refugee youth in Switzerland. . . . It calls our attention to the vast discrepancy between who refugees know themselves to be and what the Swiss bureaucracy, and the pedagogical agents (pedagogues) who come into everyday contact with refugees believes they are. . . . It is emotionally evocative and thought provoking."—Jennifer Riggan, Arcadia UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. On Doing "Being Normal"2. The Model(led) Pupil3. The Poster Child of Integration4. The Unlucky Many5. The Integration Pilot6. Existential Balancing ActsBibliographyIndex
£22.79
Indiana University Press Digital Evangelicals
Book SynopsisWhen it comes to evangelical Christianity, the internet is both a refuge and a threat. It hosts Zoom prayer groups and pornographic videos, religious revolutions and silly cat videos. Platforms such as social media, podcasts, blogs, and digital Bibles all constitute new arenas for debate about social and religious boundaries, theological and ecclesial orthodoxy, and the internet's inherent danger and value. In The Digital Evangelicals, Travis Warren Cooper locates evangelicalism as a media event rather than as a coherent religious tradition by focusing on the intertwined narratives of evangelical Christianity and emerging digital culture in the United States. He focuses on two dominant media traditions: media sincerity, immediate and direct interpersonal communication, and media promiscuity, communication with the primary goal of extending the Christian community regardless of physical distance. Cooper, whose work is informed by ethnographic fieldwork, traces these conflicting paradiTrade ReviewShedding light on the profound phenomenon of digital evangelicalism, this book sparkles with illuminating insights on the contemporary tensions and paradoxes of religious authority, as well as the vital role of new media for religious organizing in a datafied world. The Digital Evangelicals assembles a range of multimodal data across platforms to help us think more deeply about the communicative constitution of religious authority, authenticity and community. -- Pauline Hope Cheong, co-editor of Digital Religion, Social Media and Culture: Perspectives, Practices and FuturesThe Digital Evangelicals is much-needed intervention in a field chock full of books telling you what so-called evangelicals "really are" or "really should be." Cooper's attention to the discourses that define the boundaries of evangelical identity and community offer an important corrective to the search for the best definition of evangelicalism. Drawing on a unique archive of digital sources, The Digital Evangelicals shows how claims about "authentic" evangelicalism are really battles over authority and power. -- Michael J. Altman, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of AlabamaThe Digital Evangelicals is an ambitious, impressive, unprecedented work. Part cultural history, part critical textual analysis, part ethnography, it is more than the sum of these parts. Cooper's book demands a fundamental reconsideration of what it means to analyze evangelicalism as a hybrid online-offline cultural form. -- James Bielo, author of Emerging Evangelicals: Faith, Modernity, and the Desire for AuthenticityThe Digital Evangelicals is an impressive text. In addition to detailing how today's emerging evangelicals engage new media, Cooper also provides a framework for rethinking what, exactly, this thing called 'evangelicalism' even is. Through richly detailed ethnographies of Twitter debates, Instagram rituals, and Zoom church services, the book charts how communities constitute evangelicalism through media—and how social media might play a role in evangelicalism's undoing. The book is impressive both for its breadth of its analysis and the depth of its theoretical critique. -- Christopher Cantwell, co-editor of Introduction to Digital Humanities: Research Methods in the Study of ReligionTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: Media and Message1. Media Sincerity and Promiscuity: Origins2. Evangelical Media Ecologies from Print to the Internet3. Evangelical Theories of the DigitalPart II: Authenticity Construction across New Media: Case Studies4. #FareWellRobBell: Heresy Discourse and the Horizontalization of Authority5. Feminist Publics and the Progressive Evangelical Blogosphere6. Instagram, Authenticity, AffectPart III: Local Technologies in a Global World7. Emerging Midwestern Evangelicals and Digital Media8. Media Ambivalence in Emerging EvangelicalismConclusion: Zoom Church, Cancel Culture, and the Exportation of Evangelical MediaAppendixGlossaryBibliographyIndex
£52.50
University of Washington Press Reporting for China How Chinese Correspondents
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Reporting for China is a fascinating and imaginatively conceived study of Chinese correspondents who work abroad. . . . Readers beleaguered by recent US sparring over fake news and alternative facts will find in this study a refreshingly concrete exploration of the tension, unblinkingly relayed by Nyíri. . . . The book offers, in a very accessible style, a nuanced and vivid account of a domain that has long been subject to overly facile assumptions about what freedom of speech actually entails and how it comes to be curtailed." -- Louisa Schein * American Ethnologist *"As the pioneering work in this field, Nyiri’s vibrant and important book opens up a lot of new questions about China’s global media expansion and soft power attempts. It spearheads an exciting new direction in the analysis of Chinese media and cultural studies." -- Maria Repnikova * China Review International: A Journal of Reviews of Scholarly Literature in Chinese Studies *"The first extensive, systematic study of Chinese journalists who work as foreign correspondents for Chinese audiences. . . . A must-read for those interested in the machinations of Chinese politics and the Chinese state. . . . A fine example of how anthropologists study the media . . . valuable not just for anthropologists but also for scholars and students in the fields of media, communications, and journalism." -- Wanning Sun * The China Journal *"This is an original, nuanced, and informative study that deserves a wide audience." * Pacific Affairs *"Reporting for China: How Chinese Correspondents Work with the World is a fascinating account of the expanding ways the Chinese are engaging with the world. . . . [and] is successful not only in revealing the hidden dynamics and tensions that compel Chinese foreign correspondents to report the way they do, but also in shedding light on the Chinese government’s intentions and influence as these pertain to the news media." * Anthropology of Work Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: China and the World 1. The Worldwide Expansion of China’s Media 2. How Stories are Made 3. How Correspondents Work 4. Finding the “China Peg” Epilogue: Cosmopolitan Professionals in the Service of the Nation
£29.66
University of Washington Press The New Way
Book SynopsisTrade Review"In her fine-grained analysis of local realities and the globalization of religion, Tâm Ngô has delivered an important contribution to Hmong and Vietnamese studies, the study of religion, Southeast Asian ethnography, and globalized evangelical Protestantism." -- Pascal Bourdeaux * Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review *"Not only is the book remarkable for its collection and use of hard-to-get data from a wide array of sources in Vietnam and abroad, including extended periods of fieldwork in a Hmong village, but also for the story it recounts of conversion not by mission on the ground but via broadcast from the air." -- Nick Cheesman * New Books in Southeast Asian Studies (NBN) *"This book on the conversion of the Vietnamese Hmong is important because, to an extent, the history of modern Vietnam is a history of contending with Christianity. . . . Ngô argues that beginning in the 1980s the Vietnamese Hmong, disillusioned by broken promises and oppressive developmental policies, have seized Protestantism as a route to empowerment and modernity." -- Mai Na M. Lee * Pacific Affairs *"Represents a great achievement as the summation of extensive independent fieldwork on a topic that is essentially the convergence of three 'politically sensitive' topics in Vietnam: religious change, ethnic politics, and transnational groups. Ngô has become the first academic to publish English-language research about this topic based on ethnographic methods, which is no mean feat given the government restrictions placed on academic research in upland Vietnam." -- Seb Rumsby * Southeast Asian Studies *
£27.99
University of Washington Press Ecological Nationalisms
Book SynopsisExplores how questions of national identity become entangled with environmental concerns in Bangladesh, Nepal, and India. This work provides an insight into the motivations of national governments in managing nature, and deals with the different kinds of regional political conflicts that invoke nationalist sentiment through claims on nature.Trade Review"The editors of this volume have begun a valuable process of understanding which must now be pursued." * Journal of Contemporary Asia *"The cases in Ecological Nationalisms— much too rich to summarize here— all take different positions on the relative importance of the ideas, interests, and identities activated or deployed in the politics of nature. . . . Beautifully produced, rich in content, and important; it is genuinely South Asian in scope and both international and interdisciplinary in execution." * Journal of Asian Studies *"Ecological Nationalisms, an edited volume of essays. . . is an ambitious and successful addition to the steadily growing literature on South Asian environmental history. . . . This work asks many good questions and should inspire subsequent research." * Environmental History *"[Ecological Nationalisms] opens the door to a remarkably wide body of research and enquiry. Most of the studies are not only very detailed but soundly based in an historical and conceptual background. The result is not easy reading but certainly provides an excellent base for understanding the interactive patterns at work in each of the areas studied.. it would be very valuable indeed to post-graduate students focusing on related problems and to senior practitioners." * Electronic Green Journal *"Informative and thought-provoking . . . Ecological Nationalisms is a must-read for serious scholars of South Asia studies." * American Anthropologist *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors 1. Introduction: Ecological Nationalisms: Claiming Nature for Making History / K. Sivaramakrishnan and Gunnel Cederlof Part One | Regional Natures, Nations, and Empire 2. Environmental History, the Spice Trade, and the State in South India / Kathleen D. Morrison 3. The Toda Tiger: Debates on Custom, Utility, and Rights in Nature, South India 1820-1843 / Gunnel Cederlof 4. Contested Forests in North-West Pakistan: The Bureaucracy between the "Ecological," the "National," and the Realities of a Nation's Frontier / Urs Geiser Part Two | Competing Nationalisms 5. Indigenous Forests: Rights, Discourses, and Resistance in Chotanagpur, 1860-2002 / Vinita Damodaran 6. Nature and Politics: The Case of Uttarakhand, North India / Antje Linkenbach 7. Indigenous Natures: Forest and Community Dynamics in Meghalaya, North-East India / Bengt G. Karlsson 8. Sacred Forests of Kodagu: Ecological Value and Social Role / Claude A. Garcia and J.-P. Pascal Part Three | Commodified Nature and National Visions 9. Knowledge Against the State: Local Perceptions of Government Interventions in the Fishery (Kerala, India) / Gotz Hoeppe 10. Shifting Cultivation, Images, and Development in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh / Wolfgang Mey 11. Forest Managementin a Pukhtun Community: The Construction of Identities / Sarah Southwold-Llewellyn 12. "There Is No Life Without Wildlife": National Parks and National Identity in Bardia National Park, Western Nepal / Nina Bhatt Bibliography Index
£110.48
University of Washington Press Enclosed
Book SynopsisHighlights an urgent problem for indigenous communities around the world--repeated displacement from their landsTrade Review"Insightful, comprehensive, and authoritative . . . Grandia has made a significant contribution to environmental anthropology and to our understanding of neoliberalism and contemporary land and labor issues in Latin America." -- Molly Doane * Anthropological Quarterly *"This is a passionately written and often angry book, and the conclusion reaches a crescendo of critical outrage. Grandia is personally engaged in working with Q’eqchi’ groups seeking to resist the policies and processes that alienate people from the land and the independent livelihoods of small-farming or peasantry. [This book is a] powerful means to those ends." -- Bonnie J. McCay * PoLAR: Political & Legal Anthropology Review *"The book is well crafted and clearly written . . . a significant contribution to environmental anthropology and as an important ethnography about the Q’eqchi’." -- Sean S. Downey * Current Anthropology *"Enclosed would be so useful for undergrad and graduate classes in anthropology, geography, history, and sociology….Grandia and the press should be congratulated for producing this important work that will be of great utility for many years to come." -- Sterling Evans * Environmental History *"A rich anthropological account of continuity, change, and contestation over vital material and social resources…[with] thought-provoking contributions to debates over the roles and applications of anthropology and anthropologists in the processes they study." -- Sophie Haines * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *"Enclosed provides a timely and invaluable contribution to our understanding of the contemporary land grab…Grandia’s multifaceted and ‘historically and geographically situated’ analysis is a welcome addition to a literature characterized by varying degrees of depth and vigor….Enclosed is a fascinating and inspiring book whose relevance transcends the Guatemalan and Belizean borders." -- Alberto Alonso-Fradejas * Journal of Peasant Studies *"Grandia revela cómo la historia de las luchas de los q’eqchi’s contra el cercamiento de sus tierras puede contribuir a una mayor comprensión de los cercamientos de las tierras comunales a favor de las empresas en todo el mundo." -- Kurt Holder * Mesoamerica *"This is a passionately written and often angry book, and the conclusion reaches a crescendo of critical outrage. . . . She insists, ‘erosion of the commons is never inevitable;’ it can always be defended and it can be rebuilt. This book and its Spanish version are powerful means to those ends." * PoLAR: Political & Legal Anthropology Review *"[Grandia] insists, 'erosion of the commons is never inevitable'; it can always be defended and it can be rebuilt. This book and its Spanish version are powerful means to those ends." -- Bonnie McCay * Polar Book reviews *Table of ContentsForeword by K. Sivaramakrishnan Preface Acknowledgements Q'eqchi' Language and Orthography Notes on Measurements Maps Introduction: Commons Past 1. Liberal Plunder: A Recurring Q'eqchi' History 2. Maya Gringos: Q'eqchi' Lowland Migration and Territorial Expansion 3. Commons, Customs, and Carrying Capacities: The Property and Population Traps of the Peten Frontier 4. Speculating: The World Bank's Market-Assisted Land Reform 5. From Colonial to Corporate Capitalism: Expanding Cattle Frontiers 6. The Neoliberal Auction: The PPP and the DR-CAFTA Conclusion: Common Features Glossary Acronyms Notes Bibliography Index
£110.48
MP-WIS Uni of Wisconsin Claiming Civic Virtue Gendered Network Memory in
Book SynopsisProvides a wide-ranging investigation of the gendered nature of historical memory and its influence on the development of the Mara region of Tanzania over the past 150 years. Shetler's exploration of oral traditions and histories opens new vistas for understanding how women and men in this culture tell their stories and assert their roles.Trade ReviewA major accomplishment. Shetler persistently approaches female-centered knowledge of the past as an alternative to male-centered forms. The result is a social history of patronage and rights networks in which female-curated knowledge is central. Guaranteed to be of wide interest among students of gender in history, anthropology, and East African studies."" - David J. Schoenbrun, Northwestern University
£64.00
ABC-CLIO Culture and Customs of Singapore and Malaysia
Book SynopsisExplore the contemporary culture and traditional customs of Singapore and Malaysia in a volume that belongs on shelves in every high school and public library.Trade Review"Koh is a former journalist and writer who specializes in Asian history and culture, and she teams with former history teacher and museum educator Ho to present students and general readers with this survey of the cultures and customs of Singapore and Malaysia. The authors provide chapters on religious thought, the arts, entertainment, housing and architecture, food and fashion, marriage and family life and leisure activities in these two independent yet closely related countries. A concluding chapter on the future of Singapore and Malaysian culture addresses the impact of modernization and globalization as well as this region’s demographic shift toward multiculturalism." - Reference & Research Book News
£45.00
Taylor & Francis Ltd The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Destruction
Book SynopsisThe Routledge Handbook of Heritage Destruction presents a comprehensive view on the destruction of cultural heritage and offers insights into this multifaceted, interdisciplinary phenomenon; the methods scholars have used to study it; and the results these various methods have produced.By juxtaposing theoretical and legal frameworks and conceptual contexts alongside a wide distribution of geographical and temporal case studies, this book throws light upon the risks, and the realizations, of art and heritage destruction. Exploring the variety of forces that drive the destruction of heritage, the volume also contains contributions that consider what forms heritage destruction takes and in which contexts and circumstances it manifests. Contributors, including local scholars, also consider how these drivers and contexts change, and what effect this has on heritage destruction, and how we conceptualise it. Overall, the book establishes the importance of the need to study Table of Contents1. A path well worn? Approaches for the old problem of heritage destruction; Part 1 Understanding Destruction -- 2. Heritage Destruction in Conflict; 3. Talking about Heritage Destruction in Market Countries; 4. Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Peacetime and International Law; 5. Development of the Law of Armed Conflict as Applied to Cultural Heritage; 6. Heritage Destruction and Human Rights; 7. Heritage Destruction and Genocide: Legal Resistance, Conceptual Resiliency; 8. Methods, Motivations, and Actors: A Risk-based Approach to Heritage Destruction and Protection; Part 2 Interpretations of Destruction – 9. Heritage Destruction, Natural Disasters, and the Environment: Geological Disasters; 10. Heritage Destruction, Natural Disasters, and the Environment: Atmospheric Disasters; 11. Flooded Heritage: The Impact of Dams on Archaeological Sites; 12. On Destruction in Art and Film; 13. Between Heritage and the Readymade—the Imminent Aesthetic of Ai Weiwei; 14. Heritage Predation and the Pursuit of Politics; 15. Post-conflict Recovery Challenges: Affect and Heritage in Post-conflict Cyprus and Italy; 16. Media Narratives, Heritage Destruction, and Universal Heritage: A Case Study of Palmyra; 17. Collateral Damage: The Negative Side Effects of Protecting Cultural Heritage in Conflict Related Situations; 18. Turning Destruction into an Opportunity: Understanding the Construction of Timbuktu’s ‘success story’ by UNESCO; 19. Heritage Destruction from a Humanitarian Perspective; Part 3 Expressions of Destruction -- 20. Cultural Property Destruction and Damage in Two World Wars; 21. Heritage Destruction and its Impact in Scandinavia and the Baltic Region during the Second World War; 22. Case Study: The Wars of Yugoslav Succession; 23. Cambodia: Gods Threatened by the Art Market and Warfare; 24. Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Times of Conflict: The Case of Syria; 25. Iraq: Creative Destruction and Cultural Heritage in the Warscape; 26. Iraqi and Syrian Responses to Heritage Destruction under the Islamic State: Genocide, Displacement, Reconstruction, and Return; 27. Heritage Destruction in the Caucasus with a Specific Focus on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict; 28. Weaponised Heritage: Urbicide by Construction and Destruction in Nablus, Palestine; 29. What is Happening to Egyptian Heritage? The Case of Privately-owned Buildings; 30. Destruction, Development, and Heritage in Melbourne: SX Towers, Southern Cross Hotel, Eastern Market; 31. Case Study: The destruction of Australian Aboriginal Heritage and its Implications for Indigenous Peoples Globally; 32. Destruction of Heritage in Latin America; Part 4 Transformations – 33. Reconsidering Heritage Destruction and Sustainable Development in a Long-Term Perspective.
£215.00
Taylor & Francis Ltd Shamanic and Mythic Cultures of Ethnic Peoples in
Book SynopsisOn the basis of first-hand materials gathered through decades of field research and fleshed out with the author's insightful religious, cultural, and historical observations extending back to the Qing dynasty, ancient archaeological discoveries, and the legacy of Siberian peoples, this two-volume ethnological study investigates shamanic rituals, myths, and lore in northern China and explores the common ideology underlying the origins of the region's cultures.This second volume focuses on northern shamanic divination, spirit idols, and folklore covering the myths of the Manchu-Tungus, Manchu creation shrine tales, and individual tribal myths. This mythic heritage helps identify shared patterns of thought among the ethnic peoples of northern China; points to cultural integration with Buddhist, Daoist, and Han Chinese cultures; and shows their understand of the natural world, the creation of humankind, social life, and history and their interactions with theirTable of Contents1. Introduction 2. Northern Shamanic Divination 3. The Northern Mythic Heritage 4. The Manchu Creation Myth "War in Heaven" 5. Tribal Myths and Ancestor Worship 6. Spirit Idols 7. The Northern Shaman
£39.99
Taylor & Francis An Introduction to Language and Social Justice
Book SynopsisThis innovative, interdisciplinary course textbook is designed to provide the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the intersections of language, inequality, and social justice in North America, using the applied linguistic anthropology (ALA) framework.Written in accessible language and at a level equally legible for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, this text connects theory and practice by sketching out relevant historical background, introducing theoretical and conceptual underpinnings, illustrating with case studies, discussing a wide range of key issues, and explaining research methodologies. Using a general-to-specialized content structure, the expert authors then show readers how to apply these principles and lessons in communities in the real world, to become advocates and change agents in the realm of language and social justice. With an array of useful pedagogical resources and practical tools including discussion questions and activities, reflTrade Review"Rooted in a profound commitment to engaged scholarship, Avineri and Baquedano-López’s An Introduction to Language and Social Justice is a pathbreaking contribution which powerfully synthesizes diverse insights and generously offers multiple entry points for dynamic praxis linking communication to the creation of more just societies." Jonathan Rosa, Stanford University, USA"As a comprehensive review of the tenets of language and social justice research, An Introduction to Language and Social Justice adeptly synthesizes a heretofore heterogeneous collection of scholarship into one unified text. The book is expertly designed as a pedagogical tool with social justice principles at its base."Robin Conley Riner, Marshall University, USATable of ContentsFiguresTablesPreface Chapter 1: Applied Linguistic Anthropology and Social JusticeChapter 2: Centering Language: A Lexicon for Language and Social Justice Issues (LSJIs)Chapter 3: What Is: Applied Linguistic Anthropological Methods for LSJI InquiryChapter 4: What Has Been: Deepening the Connections between Past and PresentChapter 5: What Could Be: Relationships, Aspirations, and ActionsChapter 6: Now What Index
£37.99
