Social and cultural anthropology Books
Stanford University Press Feel the Grass Grow: Ecologies of Slow Peace in
Book SynopsisOn November 24, 2016, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia signed a revised peace accord that marked a political end to over a half-century of war. Feel the Grass Grow traces the far less visible aspects of moving from war to peace: the decades of campesino struggle to defend life, land, and territory prior to the national accord, as well as campesino social leaders' engagement with the challenges of the state's post-accord reconstruction efforts. In the words of the campesino organizers, "peace is not signed, peace is built." Drawing on nearly a decade of extensive ethnographic and participatory research, Angela Jill Lederach advances a theory of "slow peace." Slowing down does not negate the urgency that animates the defense of territory in the context of the interlocking processes of political and environmental violence that persist in post-accord Colombia. Instead, Lederach shows how the campesino call to "slowness" recenters grassroots practices of peace, grounded in multigenerational struggles for territorial liberation. In examining the various layers of meaning embedded within campesino theories of "the times (los tiempos)," this book directs analytic attention to the holistic understanding of peacebuilding found among campesino social leaders. Their experiences of peacebuilding shape an understanding of time as embodied, affective, and emplaced. The call to slow peace gives primacy to the everyday, where relationships are deepened, ancestral memories reclaimed, and ecologies regenerated.Trade Review"This book expertly and eloquently offers a close examination of how human and more-than-human relations are regenerated in the context of war and its aftermath. Lederach recovers and makes visible how campesino peacebuilding emerges from a distinct ecological imagination, and their efforts to achieve in praxis reparation and reconciliation."—María Clemencia Ramírez, Instituto Colombiano de Antropologia e Historia"Lederach's scholarship is impeccable, deftly fusing Colombian and international scholarship on peacemaking, her own ethnographic insights, and the voices of montemariano peasants, who are not mere interlocutors, but co-thinkers and mentors. This beautifully written book is a powerful example of what collaborative ethnography can be."—Joanne Rappaport, Georgetown University"This is a deeply human and humane book that builds a case for 'slow peace', or peace based on developing relationships over time in a particular place. Angela Lederach has crafted an excellent book that is full of sensitively observed details of how communities get on with life after conflict. The book ties together the themes of the environment, power, temporality and place. It is highly recommended."—Roger Mac Ginty, Durham University"This beautifully written book is a must read for academic and nonacademic readers interested in peace building processes at the grassroots level. Essential."—A. Arraras, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction: To Defend Life: An Introduction One: From and For the Territory: The Campesino Struggle for Peace Two: The Earth Suffered, Too: The Death of the Avocado Forest and Multispecies Three: The Times of Slow Peace Four: Too Much Prisa: The Temporal Dynamics of Violence and Peace Four: Too Much Prisa: The Temporal Dynamics of Violence and Peace Six: Voice and Votes: Building Territorial Peace Seven: Vigías of Hope: Slow Peace and the Ethics of Attention Coda: Coda
£23.39
Stanford University Press The Indebted Woman: Kinship, Sexuality, and
Book SynopsisWomen, and particularly poor women, have become essential cogs in the wheel of financialized capitalism. Globally, women are responsible for managing household debt, and that debt has exploded over the last decade, reaching an all-time high after the COVID-19 pandemic. Across various categories of loans, including subprime lending, microcredit policies, and consumer loans, as well as rent and utilities, women are overrepresented as clients and managers, and are being enfolded into the system. The Indebted Woman discusses the crucial yet invisible roles poor women play in making and consolidating debt and credit markets. Isabelle Guérin, Santosh Kumar, and G. Venkatasubramanian spent over two decades observing a credit market that specifically targets women in the Indian countryside of east-central Tamil Nadu. They found that paying off debts required labor, frequently involved sexual transactions, and shaped women's bodies and subjectivities. Bringing together ethnography, statistical surveys, and financial diaries, they offer for the first time a comprehensive theory for this sexual division of debt that goes far beyond the Indian case, exposing the ways capitalism transforms womanhood and how this transformation in turn fuels capitalism.Trade Review"This book is pathbreaking in the most literal sense: it opens the way for more studies of women and debt as central features of capitalist economies. It gives insight into the ways in which the reproduction of capital depends on women's reproductive labor as household debt managers, but also into the ways in which they strategically navigate the system."—Joan W. Scott, Princeton University"With gripping evidence and theoretical acumen, Guerin, Kumar, and Venkatubramanian reframe our understandings of the debt economy. By foregrounding the deeply gendered labor of debt, The Indebted Woman launches a new research agenda. A book that transcends disciplinary boundaries and moves forward the analysis of intimate economies."—Viviana A. Zelizer, author of The Purchase of Intimacy and Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy"The Indebted Woman is a compact account of the credit markets in South Arcot, and in particular their disproportionate effect on Dalit women.... Where the book shines is in its conscientious economic research, awakening readers to the lived experiences of Dalit women and their invisible and indispensable role in the South Indian economy."—Annelie Hyatt, Columbia Journal of Literary CriticismTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Intimacies and Measurement 2. Kinship Debt 3. The Sexual Division of Debt 4. Debt Work 5. Bodily Collateral 6. Debt and Love 7. Human Debts 8. What Does the Future Hold?
£72.00
Stanford University Press A Blessing and a Curse: Oil, Politics, and
Book SynopsisA Blessing and a Curse examines the lived experience of political change, moral uncertainty, and economic crisis amid Venezuela's controversial Bolivarian Revolution. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in an urban barrio over the course of a decade, Matt Wilde argues that everyday life in this period was intimately shaped by a critical contradiction: that in their efforts to capture a larger portion of oil money and distribute it more widely among the population, the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro pursued policies that ultimately entrenched Venezuela in the very position of dependency they sought to overcome. Offering a new synthesis between anthropological work on energy, politics, and morality, the book explores how the use of oil money to fund the revolution's social programs and political reforms produced profound cultural anxieties about the contaminating effects of petroleum revenues in everyday settings. Tracing how these anxieties rippled out into community life, family networks, and local politics, Wilde shows how questions about how to live a good life came to be intimately shaped by Venezuela's contradictory relationship with oil. In doing so, he brings a vital perspective to contemporary debates about energy transitions by proposing a new way of thinking about the political and moral economies of natural resources in postcolonial settings.Trade Review"Venezuela's ambitious project of redistributive social transformation inspired many, but did not go according to plan. This book tells us about the role of oil wealth and its undermining of other possible forms of prosperity; it also gives a vivid account of the aspirations of those who were trying to operationalise a fairer society, and how they put their 'barrio socialism' into practice."—Deborah James, The London School of Economics and Political Science"In A Blessing and a Curse, Wilde shows the value of sensitive long-term ethnography to our understanding of this most complex and troubled of places. Cutting through the standard polemics, his nuanced approach draws out the consequences of Venezuelans' relationship with oil for everyday life, moral economies, and kinship as much as for macro-level political economy. A remarkable achievement."—Sian Lazar, University of Cambridge"This is the book on Venezuela that we have been waiting for. Through the lives of the Hernández family and their neighbors, Matt Wilde paints an intimate portrait of the long arc of the Bolivarian Revolution as experienced from the urbanbarrios. It is an ethnographically sensitive, theoretically insightful account of the promises and failings of one of the twenty-first century's most consequential political movements. A highly readable and eminently teachable text."—Robert Samet, Union CollegeTable of Contents1. Sowing the Oil 2. Portrait of a Political Family 3. Aspirations and Disparities in the Bolivarian Barrio 4. Insecurity and the Search for Moral Order 5. The Moral Life of Revolution 6. Petro-democracy and Its Discontents 7. The Weight of the Future 8. The Unraveling 9. Beyond the Magical State
£75.20
Stanford University Press A Blessing and a Curse: Oil, Politics, and
Book SynopsisA Blessing and a Curse examines the lived experience of political change, moral uncertainty, and economic crisis amid Venezuela's controversial Bolivarian Revolution. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in an urban barrio over the course of a decade, Matt Wilde argues that everyday life in this period was intimately shaped by a critical contradiction: that in their efforts to capture a larger portion of oil money and distribute it more widely among the population, the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro pursued policies that ultimately entrenched Venezuela in the very position of dependency they sought to overcome. Offering a new synthesis between anthropological work on energy, politics, and morality, the book explores how the use of oil money to fund the revolution's social programs and political reforms produced profound cultural anxieties about the contaminating effects of petroleum revenues in everyday settings. Tracing how these anxieties rippled out into community life, family networks, and local politics, Wilde shows how questions about how to live a good life came to be intimately shaped by Venezuela's contradictory relationship with oil. In doing so, he brings a vital perspective to contemporary debates about energy transitions by proposing a new way of thinking about the political and moral economies of natural resources in postcolonial settings.Trade Review"Venezuela's ambitious project of redistributive social transformation inspired many, but did not go according to plan. This book tells us about the role of oil wealth and its undermining of other possible forms of prosperity; it also gives a vivid account of the aspirations of those who were trying to operationalise a fairer society, and how they put their 'barrio socialism' into practice."—Deborah James, The London School of Economics and Political Science"In A Blessing and a Curse, Wilde shows the value of sensitive long-term ethnography to our understanding of this most complex and troubled of places. Cutting through the standard polemics, his nuanced approach draws out the consequences of Venezuelans' relationship with oil for everyday life, moral economies, and kinship as much as for macro-level political economy. A remarkable achievement."—Sian Lazar, University of Cambridge"This is the book on Venezuela that we have been waiting for. Through the lives of the Hernández family and their neighbors, Matt Wilde paints an intimate portrait of the long arc of the Bolivarian Revolution as experienced from the urbanbarrios. It is an ethnographically sensitive, theoretically insightful account of the promises and failings of one of the twenty-first century's most consequential political movements. A highly readable and eminently teachable text."—Robert Samet, Union CollegeTable of Contents1. Sowing the Oil 2. Portrait of a Political Family 3. Aspirations and Disparities in the Bolivarian Barrio 4. Insecurity and the Search for Moral Order 5. The Moral Life of Revolution 6. Petro-democracy and Its Discontents 7. The Weight of the Future 8. The Unraveling 9. Beyond the Magical State
£23.39
Stanford University Press Legal Phantoms: Executive Action and the Haunting
Book SynopsisThe 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was supposed to be a stepping stone, a policy innovation announced by the White House designed to put pressure on Congress for a broader, lasting set of legislative changes. Those changes never materialized, and the people who hoped to benefit from them have been forced to navigate a tense and contradictory policy landscape ever since, haunted by these unfulfilled promises. Legal Phantoms tells their story. After Congress failed to pass a comprehensive immigration bill in 2013, President Obama pivoted in 2014 to supplementing DACA with a deferred action program (known as DAPA) for the parents of citizens and lawful permanent residents and a DACA expansion (DACA+) in 2014. But challenges from Republican-led states prevented even these programs from going into effect. Interviews with would-be applicants, immigrant-rights advocates, and government officials reveal how such failed immigration-reform efforts continue to affect not only those who had hoped to benefit, but their families, communities, and the country in which they have made an uneasy home. Out of the ashes of these lost dreams, though, people find their own paths forward through uncharted legal territory with creativity and resistance.
£23.79
Stanford University Press Cosmopolitan Scientists
Book SynopsisAs the university transformed itself into a center of innovation, and biotechnology became a billion-dollar industry, commercialization of university inventions became both lucrative and urgent. In the United States, this shift decisively converted the academic scientist into an entrepreneur. From there, legal structures that facilitated university scientists'' patenting and commercialization spread across the world, including to Japan, where earlier modes of doing science made such diffusion more difficultand more interesting. Cosmopolitan Scientists delineates what happens when global policies diffuse to different cultural and institutional contexts. Instead of simply accepting or resisting the change, Japanese university scientists creatively enacted the new rules, making unique local variations of the global policyand thus making it Japanese. Drawing on vivid accounts from bioscientists who experienced and enacted the shift toward commercialization, the book
£70.55
Stanford University Press Cosmopolitan Scientists
Book SynopsisAs the university transformed itself into a center of innovation, and biotechnology became a billion-dollar industry, commercialization of university inventions became both lucrative and urgent. In the United States, this shift decisively converted the academic scientist into an entrepreneur. From there, legal structures that facilitated university scientists'' patenting and commercialization spread across the world, including to Japan, where earlier modes of doing science made such diffusion more difficultand more interesting. Cosmopolitan Scientists delineates what happens when global policies diffuse to different cultural and institutional contexts. Instead of simply accepting or resisting the change, Japanese university scientists creatively enacted the new rules, making unique local variations of the global policyand thus making it Japanese. Drawing on vivid accounts from bioscientists who experienced and enacted the shift toward commercialization, the book
£17.99
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Radical Innovators: The Blessings of Adversity in
Book SynopsisIn this book leading cultural anthropologist Anton Blok sheds new light on the lives and achievements of pioneers who revolutionized science and art over the past five centuries, demonstrating that adversity rather than talent alone was crucial to their success. Through a collective biography of some ninety radical innovators, including Erasmus, Spinoza, Newton, Bach, Sade, Darwin, Melville, Mendel, Cézanne, Curie, Brâncusi, Einstein, Wittgenstein, Keynes, and Goodall, Blok shows how a significant proportion in fact benefited from social exclusion. Beethoven’s increasing deafness isolated him from his friends, creating more time for composing and experimenting, while Darwin’s chronic illness gave him an excuse to avoid social gatherings and get on with his work. Adversity took various forms, including illegitimate birth, early parental loss, conflict with parents, bankruptcy, chronic illness, physical deficiencies, neurological and genetic disorders, minority status, peripheral origins, poverty, exile, and detention. Blok argues, however, that all these misfortunes had the same effect: alienation from mainstream society. As outsiders, innovators could question conventional beliefs and practices. With little to lose, they could take chances and exploit opportunities. With governments, universities and industry all emphasizing the importance of investing in innovation, typically understood to mean planned and focussed research teams, this book runs counter to conventional wisdom. For far more often, radical innovation in science and art is entirely unscripted, resulting from trial and error by individuals ready to take risks, fail, and start again.Trade Review�Theories of innovation may seem to be a monopoly of economists, but Anton Blok, an anthropologist who has studied history and is interested in psychology, has produced a new and powerful answer to the questions, Who becomes an innovator? And what drives them?� Peter Burke, University of Cambridge �Anton Blok has solved the riddle of genius. What does it take to become a �radical innovator� in art or science? Childhood adversity and the attendant social exclusion, early and complete concentration in a chosen field, and a lifelong, total devotion to the self-imposed task. One can only wonder what youthful fate and adult commitment enabled Blok to achieve his radically innovative account of artistic and scientific creativity in this highly readable book.� Abram de Swaan, University of AmsterdamTable of ContentsContents Foreword Chapter 1 The margins as a place of innovation Chapter 2 Sibling rivalry Chapter 3 Heuristic exceptions Chapter 4 Adversity Chapter 5 Chance and necessity Chapter 6 The periphery as a locus of innovation. Appendices Notes Bibliography Index of names Index of subjects
£49.50
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Radical Innovators: The Blessings of Adversity in
Book SynopsisIn this book leading cultural anthropologist Anton Blok sheds new light on the lives and achievements of pioneers who revolutionized science and art over the past five centuries, demonstrating that adversity rather than talent alone was crucial to their success. Through a collective biography of some ninety radical innovators, including Erasmus, Spinoza, Newton, Bach, Sade, Darwin, Melville, Mendel, Cézanne, Curie, Brâncusi, Einstein, Wittgenstein, Keynes, and Goodall, Blok shows how a significant proportion in fact benefited from social exclusion. Beethoven’s increasing deafness isolated him from his friends, creating more time for composing and experimenting, while Darwin’s chronic illness gave him an excuse to avoid social gatherings and get on with his work. Adversity took various forms, including illegitimate birth, early parental loss, conflict with parents, bankruptcy, chronic illness, physical deficiencies, neurological and genetic disorders, minority status, peripheral origins, poverty, exile, and detention. Blok argues, however, that all these misfortunes had the same effect: alienation from mainstream society. As outsiders, innovators could question conventional beliefs and practices. With little to lose, they could take chances and exploit opportunities. With governments, universities and industry all emphasizing the importance of investing in innovation, typically understood to mean planned and focussed research teams, this book runs counter to conventional wisdom. For far more often, radical innovation in science and art is entirely unscripted, resulting from trial and error by individuals ready to take risks, fail, and start again.Trade Review�Theories of innovation may seem to be a monopoly of economists, but Anton Blok, an anthropologist who has studied history and is interested in psychology, has produced a new and powerful answer to the questions, Who becomes an innovator? And what drives them?� Peter Burke, University of Cambridge �Anton Blok has solved the riddle of genius. What does it take to become a �radical innovator� in art or science? Childhood adversity and the attendant social exclusion, early and complete concentration in a chosen field, and a lifelong, total devotion to the self-imposed task. One can only wonder what youthful fate and adult commitment enabled Blok to achieve his radically innovative account of artistic and scientific creativity in this highly readable book.� Abram de Swaan, University of AmsterdamTable of ContentsContents Foreword Chapter 1 The margins as a place of innovation Chapter 2 Sibling rivalry Chapter 3 Heuristic exceptions Chapter 4 Adversity Chapter 5 Chance and necessity Chapter 6 The periphery as a locus of innovation. Appendices Notes Bibliography Index of names Index of subjects
£17.09
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Encountering Difference
Book SynopsisIn the face of the destructive possibilities of resurgent nationalisms, unyielding ethnicities and fundamentalist religious affinities, there is hardly a more urgent task than understanding how humans can learn to live alongside one another. This fascinating book shows how people from various societies learn to live with social diversity and cultural difference, and considers how the concepts of identity formation, diaspora and creolization shed light on the processes and geographies of encounter.Robin Cohen and Olivia Sheringham reveal how early historical encounters created colonial hierarchies, but also how conflict has been creatively resisted through shared social practices in particular contact zones including islands, port cities and the ‘super-diverse’ cities formed by enhanced international migration and globalization. Drawing on research experience from across the world, including new fieldwork in Louisiana, Martinique, Mauritius and Cape Verde, their account provides a balance between rich description and insightful analysis showing, in particular, how identities emerge and merge ‘from below’.Moving seamlessly between social and political theory, history, cultural anthropology, sociology and human geography, the authors point to important new ways of understanding and living with difference, surely one of the key challenges of the twenty-first century.Trade Review"This is one of those rare books which is both erudite, eloquent and existentially engaging. The authors embark on a journey through culturally variegated landscapes, addressing the human condition and the contemporary world as they go along, asking how people are able to live with diversity; and they generously invite the reader to take part in this conversation, which is so crucial for the future of humanity on this shrinking planet of ours."Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo "This book offers a fresh perspective in shifting the focus from human conflict to how people 'make a life together'. To navigate the difficult terrain of a diverse world, it provides readers with a pair of carefully articulated concepts as guiding lights: while diaspora looks backwards to shared heritage and homeland, creolization gives weight to the forward-looking, creative energies inherent in culture contact."Brenda S. A. Yeoh, National University of Singapore "With exceptional range of coverage and strong conceptual engagement, alongside a peppering of informative photographs, this book offers something for research, teaching, and general reading alike. [�] an important launchpad for rethinking how we approach the challenging topic of living with, in, despite, and through difference in divided times."Geography "This book is a delightful read. It succeeds because it grounds empirically rich case studies in a well thought-out theoretical framework, moving beyond bland and uninspiring liberal nostrums that �all cultures matter�. The volume demonstrates that understanding cultural encounters necessitates more than simply acknowledging differences, but requires delving into how coexisting identities complement rather than contradict one another."Barney Warf, Social & Cultural GeographyTable of Contents Framing the question: a preamble 1. Shaping the tools: three concepts 2. Exploring difference: early interactions 3. Locating identity formation: contact zones 4. Expressing merged identities: music 5. Celebrating and resisting: carnival 6. Constructing heritage 7. Marking identities: the cultural politics of multiple loyalties 8. Encountering difference: a conclusion
£45.00
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Encountering Difference
Book SynopsisIn the face of the destructive possibilities of resurgent nationalisms, unyielding ethnicities and fundamentalist religious affinities, there is hardly a more urgent task than understanding how humans can learn to live alongside one another. This fascinating book shows how people from various societies learn to live with social diversity and cultural difference, and considers how the concepts of identity formation, diaspora and creolization shed light on the processes and geographies of encounter.Robin Cohen and Olivia Sheringham reveal how early historical encounters created colonial hierarchies, but also how conflict has been creatively resisted through shared social practices in particular contact zones including islands, port cities and the ‘super-diverse’ cities formed by enhanced international migration and globalization. Drawing on research experience from across the world, including new fieldwork in Louisiana, Martinique, Mauritius and Cape Verde, their account provides a balance between rich description and insightful analysis showing, in particular, how identities emerge and merge ‘from below’.Moving seamlessly between social and political theory, history, cultural anthropology, sociology and human geography, the authors point to important new ways of understanding and living with difference, surely one of the key challenges of the twenty-first century.Trade Review"This is one of those rare books which is both erudite, eloquent and existentially engaging. The authors embark on a journey through culturally variegated landscapes, addressing the human condition and the contemporary world as they go along, asking how people are able to live with diversity; and they generously invite the reader to take part in this conversation, which is so crucial for the future of humanity on this shrinking planet of ours."Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo "This book offers a fresh perspective in shifting the focus from human conflict to how people 'make a life together'. To navigate the difficult terrain of a diverse world, it provides readers with a pair of carefully articulated concepts as guiding lights: while diaspora looks backwards to shared heritage and homeland, creolization gives weight to the forward-looking, creative energies inherent in culture contact."Brenda S. A. Yeoh, National University of Singapore "With exceptional range of coverage and strong conceptual engagement, alongside a peppering of informative photographs, this book offers something for research, teaching, and general reading alike. [�] an important launchpad for rethinking how we approach the challenging topic of living with, in, despite, and through difference in divided times."Geography "This book is a delightful read. It succeeds because it grounds empirically rich case studies in a well thought-out theoretical framework, moving beyond bland and uninspiring liberal nostrums that �all cultures matter�. The volume demonstrates that understanding cultural encounters necessitates more than simply acknowledging differences, but requires delving into how coexisting identities complement rather than contradict one another."Barney Warf, Social & Cultural GeographyTable of Contents Framing the question: a preamble 1. Shaping the tools: three concepts 2. Exploring difference: early interactions 3. Locating identity formation: contact zones 4. Expressing merged identities: music 5. Celebrating and resisting: carnival 6. Constructing heritage 7. Marking identities: the cultural politics of multiple loyalties 8. Encountering difference: a conclusion
£15.19
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Are Black Men Doomed?
Book SynopsisLife for too many African American men is a battle with extreme disadvantage, a fight for survival, and a struggle for dignity in a society which labels them a "problem." For more than 30 years, most of the effort put toward addressing the crisis of Black men has centered on what they must do to improve their condition. Without neglecting that perspective, Are Black men doomed? radically shifts the focus. This urgent intervention explores how a damning portrait of Black men as incorrigibly pernicious has been built and persists, and how the voice of these men themselves has been ignored. It astutely argues that improving the prospects for Black men requires that society fully come to terms with the narrow and incomplete vision it has sustained about these men. It then shows us the means to hear, understand, and value them, offering a new vision rooted in reinterpretation and redemption.Trade Review"This penetrating and honest reflection is three decades in the making and one can feel the steady march of thought moving the prescient analysis forward. This account is at once unsettling, thought provoking, and necessary for our time." Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia University "In this thoughtful and important book, Alford Young calls upon us to not only rethink our collective sentiment about Black males, but to take a more thorough account of how they view themselves as well. A must-read." William Julius Wilson, Harvard University "Are Black Men Doomed? presents a cohesive, thoughtful call to reconsider societal narratives and beliefs surrounding black men … (It) offers new insights that will help lead to a better world for black men."Men and Masculinities "Insightful and thought-provoking […]. Drawing on decades of research, experience, and narratives of black men and boys […,] Young provides a generative new template for continued scholarship and debate on effective ways to improve the conditions and outcomes of black men and boys." Marcus A. Hunter, Contemporary SociologyTable of ContentsPreface 1. The Problem with Black Males 2. Our Problem with Black Males 3. Getting Close from Afar: The Unhealthy Gaze upon Black Males 4. Pushing Past Pathology: Undoing the Consequences of the Negative Gaze 5. Conclusions: The Promise of Looking Anew at Black Males
£34.67
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Are Black Men Doomed?
Book SynopsisLife for too many African American men is a battle with extreme disadvantage, a fight for survival, and a struggle for dignity in a society which labels them a "problem." For more than 30 years, most of the effort put toward addressing the crisis of Black men has centered on what they must do to improve their condition. Without neglecting that perspective, Are Black men doomed? radically shifts the focus. This urgent intervention explores how a damning portrait of Black men as incorrigibly pernicious has been built and persists, and how the voice of these men themselves has been ignored. It astutely argues that improving the prospects for Black men requires that society fully come to terms with the narrow and incomplete vision it has sustained about these men. It then shows us the means to hear, understand, and value them, offering a new vision rooted in reinterpretation and redemption.Trade Review"This penetrating and honest reflection is three decades in the making and one can feel the steady march of thought moving the prescient analysis forward. This account is at once unsettling, thought provoking, and necessary for our time." Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia University "In this thoughtful and important book, Alford Young calls upon us to not only rethink our collective sentiment about Black males, but to take a more thorough account of how they view themselves as well. A must-read." William Julius Wilson, Harvard University "Are Black Men Doomed? presents a cohesive, thoughtful call to reconsider societal narratives and beliefs surrounding black men … (It) offers new insights that will help lead to a better world for black men."Men and Masculinities "Insightful and thought-provoking […]. Drawing on decades of research, experience, and narratives of black men and boys […,] Young provides a generative new template for continued scholarship and debate on effective ways to improve the conditions and outcomes of black men and boys."Marcus A. Hunter, Contemporary SociologyTable of ContentsPreface 1. The Problem with Black Males 2. Our Problem with Black Males 3. Getting Close from Afar: The Unhealthy Gaze upon Black Males 4. Pushing Past Pathology: Undoing the Consequences of the Negative Gaze 5. Conclusions: The Promise of Looking Anew at Black Males
£11.77
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Life: A Critical User's Manual
Book SynopsisHow can we think of life in its dual expression, matter and experience, the living and the lived? Philosophers and, more recently, social scientists have offered multiple answers to this question, often privileging one expression or the other – the biological or the biographical. But is it possible to conceive of them together and thus reconcile naturalist and humanist approaches? Using research conducted on three continents and engaging in critical dialogue with Wittgenstein, Benjamin, and Foucault, Didier Fassin attempts to do so by developing three concepts: forms of life, ethics of life, and politics of life. In the conditions of refugees and asylum seekers, in the light of mortality statistics and death benefits, and via a genealogical and ethnographical inquiry, the moral economy of life reveals troubling tensions in the way contemporary societies treat human beings. Once the pieces of this anthropological composition are assembled, like in Georges Perec’s jigsaw puzzle, an image appears: that of unequal lives.Trade Review“It needs the sharp eye of an anthropologist, the empirical scrutiny of a sociologist, and the imagination of a moral philosopher to decipher the hidden grammar by which the physical life of human beings is measured in our globalized world. Didier Fassin, impressively combining all these talents in one mind, is to my knowledge the first scholar to have accomplished this enormous task – a must read for everyone interested in the dark side of globalization.”Axel Honneth, Goethe University and Columbia University“At a time of growing social inequality, Didier Fassin boldly addresses the persistently unequal valuation of human lives. With sharp philosophical insight, grounded in vivid ethnographic detail, the book uncovers the moral and political processes involved in our treatment of human life. Compassionate and inspiring, Life contributes to scholarly debates and will at the same time appeal to a wide audience.”Viviana A. Zelizer, Princeton University "[A]n ambitious synthesis of moral philosophy and anthropological fieldwork, based on the question of how we can understand existence as both matter and experience, and as both biology and biography." Journal of the Royal Anthropological InstituteTable of Contents Contents Acknowledgements Preamble: Minima Theoria Chapter I. Forms of Life Chapter II. Ethics of Life Chapter III. Politics of Life Conclusion: Unequal Lives Notes References
£45.00
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Life: A Critical User's Manual
Book SynopsisHow can we think of life in its dual expression, matter and experience, the living and the lived? Philosophers and, more recently, social scientists have offered multiple answers to this question, often privileging one expression or the other – the biological or the biographical. But is it possible to conceive of them together and thus reconcile naturalist and humanist approaches? Using research conducted on three continents and engaging in critical dialogue with Wittgenstein, Benjamin, and Foucault, Didier Fassin attempts to do so by developing three concepts: forms of life, ethics of life, and politics of life. In the conditions of refugees and asylum seekers, in the light of mortality statistics and death benefits, and via a genealogical and ethnographical inquiry, the moral economy of life reveals troubling tensions in the way contemporary societies treat human beings. Once the pieces of this anthropological composition are assembled, like in Georges Perec’s jigsaw puzzle, an image appears: that of unequal lives.Trade Review“It needs the sharp eye of an anthropologist, the empirical scrutiny of a sociologist, and the imagination of a moral philosopher to decipher the hidden grammar by which the physical life of human beings is measured in our globalized world. Didier Fassin, impressively combining all these talents in one mind, is to my knowledge the first scholar to have accomplished this enormous task – a must read for everyone interested in the dark side of globalization.”Axel Honneth, Goethe University and Columbia University“At a time of growing social inequality, Didier Fassin boldly addresses the persistently unequal valuation of human lives. With sharp philosophical insight, grounded in vivid ethnographic detail, the book uncovers the moral and political processes involved in our treatment of human life. Compassionate and inspiring, Life contributes to scholarly debates and will at the same time appeal to a wide audience.”Viviana A. Zelizer, Princeton University "[A]n ambitious synthesis of moral philosophy and anthropological fieldwork, based on the question of how we can understand existence as both matter and experience, and as both biology and biography." Journal of the Royal Anthropological InstituteTable of Contents Contents Acknowledgements Preamble: Minima Theoria Chapter I. Forms of Life Chapter II. Ethics of Life Chapter III. Politics of Life Conclusion: Unequal Lives Notes References
£15.19
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Race: A Philosophical Introduction
Book SynopsisThe third edition of Race: A Philosophical Introduction continues to provide the definitive guide to a topic of major contemporary importance. In this thoroughly updated and revised volume, Paul Taylor outlines the main features and implications of race-thinking, while engaging the ideas of important figures such as Linda Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, W. E. B. Du Bois, Michel Foucault and Sally Haslanger. The result is a comprehensive but accessible introduction to philosophical race theory and to a non-biological and situational notion of race, which blends metaphysics and social epistemology, aesthetics, analytic philosophy and pragmatic philosophy of experience. Taylor approaches the key questions in philosophy of race: What is race-thinking? Don’t we know better than to talk about race now? Are there any races? What is it like to have a racial identity? And how important, ethically, is color blindness? On the way to answering these questions, he takes up topics such as mixed-race identity, white supremacy, the relationship between the race concept and other social identity categories, and the impact of race-thinking on our erotic and romantic lives. The concluding section explores the racially fraught issues of policing, immigration, and global justice, and the implications of the political upheavals of the past decade, from the election of Donald Trump to the global upsurge in anti-immigrant populism. Updated throughout, Race remains a vital resource for the educated general reader as well as for students and scholars of ethnic studies, philosophy, sociology, and related fields.Trade Review“Nearly twenty years after its first publication, this book remains the gold standard in the field. This welcome new edition updates its treatment to keep up with the dramatic developments of recent years, above all the shift from the supposed advent of a post-racial United States, symbolized by the Obama presidency, to the unabashed invocation by Donald Trump of a white-supremacist past that had never really gone away.”Charles Mills, CUNY “Race: A Philosophical Introduction has proven itself time and time again to be the best introductory text on philosophy of race, with each new edition confirming this status. This third edition proves its worth with updated points of reference, reshaped arguments, and structural re-organization. The result is yet another original and incisive text that will benefit students and challenge scholars.”Chike Jeffers, Dalhousie UniversityTable of ContentsPreface to the Third Edition Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Language of Race Prologue – Black Power Mixup 1.1. Race-talk and the invitation to philosophy 1.2 Setting the context 1.3. Taking race seriously 1.4. Words vs. things 1.5. What do you mean, “we”? 1.6. What race-talk does Bodies (appearance) Bloodlines (ancestry) Assigning generic meaning 1.7. Modern racialism 1.8. Politics and method Politics and context Systems and structures Process and power 1.9 Conclusion 2. Unnatural Histories Prologue – When were Mona’s dumplings? 2.1. Introduction 2.2. The pre-modern background 2.3. Early modern racialism Table 2.1. The (early) stages of modern racialism, 1492–1923 2.4. High modern interpretations of race 2.5. High modern racial structures The racial state Consolidating whiteness 2.6. Classical racialism vs. critical racialism 2.7. Late-modern racialism Table 2.2. The stages of modern racialism, continued, 1923–2021 On the meaning of civil rights Transition: The Moynihan Report 2.8. Post-modern racialism 2.9. Conclusion 3. Three Challenges to Race-Thinking Prologue – Not Black Black; or, The Wobbly, The Rasta, and the Ex-White Man 3.1 Introduction 3.2. Isn’t race-thinking unethical? 3.3. What racism is 3.4. Isn’t racial biology false? 3.4.1 The first problem – splitting and discreteness 3.4.2. The second problem – lumping and clusters 3.4.3. The third problem – against inheritance 3.5. Isn’t the race concept just in the way? 3.5.1 Ethnicity 3.5.2 Nation 3.5.3 Class 3.5.4 Caste 3.5.5 Sex/gender 3.6. Mergers and injunctions 3.7 Conclusion 4. What Races Are: Twenty Questions about Racial Metaphysics Prologue – Race Is, Race Ain’t 4.1. Introduction 4.2. Subjects and objects, concepts and conceptions 4.3. Patterns and proposals, Cornish and criticism 4.4. Language and reality, irony and asterisks 4.5. Cost and benefit, culture and nature 4.6. Conclusion 5. Ethics, Existence, Experience Prologue – Pure; or, The Fourth Life of Mona Rogers 5.1. Introduction: Who has believed our report 5.2. Ethical eliminativism (the anti-racist challenge, continued) The slippery slope and the argument from political realism The argument from self-realization 5.3. Existence, identity, and despair The basics Despair and doubt, joy and pain Double consciousness Micro-diversity 5.4. Beyond the black-white binary Latinx peoples, outsider racialization, and the gendered substratum Asian peoples and model minority racialization Native Americans and savagism Arabs, Muslims, and the terrorist panic 5.5 Experience, invisibility, and embodiment The basics Invisibility and the other mind–body problem From the ontic to the ontological 5.6 Conclusion 6. The Color Question Prologue – Keanu and the Promotion; or, good job, good teeth 6.1 Introduction 6.2. The ethics of endogamy 6.3. Choices in context 6.4. Weighing some arguments for endogamy 6.5. Self-criticism and social criticism 6.6. Culture, privacy, and policy 6.7. Color and culture 6.8. Affirmative action: background and arguments 6.9. Affirmative action: suspect classifications 6.10. Conclusion 7. A funny thing happened on the way to post-racialism Prologue – What’s What We’ll See; or, Nine-Inch Knives and Six-Inch Stimuli 7.1. La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) 7.2. On post-racialism 7.3. What the Obamas meant 7.4. The nexus of immigration and race 7.5. Immigration enforcement as a racial problem 7.6. Immigration politics as a racial project 7.7. Globalization 7.8. Securitization 7.9. Conclusion: post-post-racialism and the first white president Further Reading Notes Index
£49.50
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Race: A Philosophical Introduction
Book SynopsisThe third edition of Race: A Philosophical Introduction continues to provide the definitive guide to a topic of major contemporary importance. In this thoroughly updated and revised volume, Paul Taylor outlines the main features and implications of race-thinking, while engaging the ideas of important figures such as Linda Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, W. E. B. Du Bois, Michel Foucault and Sally Haslanger. The result is a comprehensive but accessible introduction to philosophical race theory and to a non-biological and situational notion of race, which blends metaphysics and social epistemology, aesthetics, analytic philosophy and pragmatic philosophy of experience. Taylor approaches the key questions in philosophy of race: What is race-thinking? Don’t we know better than to talk about race now? Are there any races? What is it like to have a racial identity? And how important, ethically, is color blindness? On the way to answering these questions, he takes up topics such as mixed-race identity, white supremacy, the relationship between the race concept and other social identity categories, and the impact of race-thinking on our erotic and romantic lives. The concluding section explores the racially fraught issues of policing, immigration, and global justice, and the implications of the political upheavals of the past decade, from the election of Donald Trump to the global upsurge in anti-immigrant populism. Updated throughout, Race remains a vital resource for the educated general reader as well as for students and scholars of ethnic studies, philosophy, sociology, and related fields.Trade Review“Nearly twenty years after its first publication, this book remains the gold standard in the field. This welcome new edition updates its treatment to keep up with the dramatic developments of recent years, above all the shift from the supposed advent of a post-racial United States, symbolized by the Obama presidency, to the unabashed invocation by Donald Trump of a white-supremacist past that had never really gone away.”Charles Mills, CUNY “Race: A Philosophical Introduction has proven itself time and time again to be the best introductory text on philosophy of race, with each new edition confirming this status. This third edition proves its worth with updated points of reference, reshaped arguments, and structural re-organization. The result is yet another original and incisive text that will benefit students and challenge scholars.”Chike Jeffers, Dalhousie UniversityTable of ContentsPreface to the Third Edition Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Language of Race Prologue – Black Power Mixup 1.1. Race-talk and the invitation to philosophy 1.2 Setting the context 1.3. Taking race seriously 1.4. Words vs. things 1.5. What do you mean, “we”? 1.6. What race-talk does Bodies (appearance) Bloodlines (ancestry) Assigning generic meaning 1.7. Modern racialism 1.8. Politics and method Politics and context Systems and structures Process and power 1.9 Conclusion 2. Unnatural Histories Prologue – When were Mona’s dumplings? 2.1. Introduction 2.2. The pre-modern background 2.3. Early modern racialism Table 2.1. The (early) stages of modern racialism, 1492–1923 2.4. High modern interpretations of race 2.5. High modern racial structures The racial state Consolidating whiteness 2.6. Classical racialism vs. critical racialism 2.7. Late-modern racialism Table 2.2. The stages of modern racialism, continued, 1923–2021 On the meaning of civil rights Transition: The Moynihan Report 2.8. Post-modern racialism 2.9. Conclusion 3. Three Challenges to Race-Thinking Prologue – Not Black Black; or, The Wobbly, The Rasta, and the Ex-White Man 3.1 Introduction 3.2. Isn’t race-thinking unethical? 3.3. What racism is 3.4. Isn’t racial biology false? 3.4.1 The first problem – splitting and discreteness 3.4.2. The second problem – lumping and clusters 3.4.3. The third problem – against inheritance 3.5. Isn’t the race concept just in the way? 3.5.1 Ethnicity 3.5.2 Nation 3.5.3 Class 3.5.4 Caste 3.5.5 Sex/gender 3.6. Mergers and injunctions 3.7 Conclusion 4. What Races Are: Twenty Questions about Racial Metaphysics Prologue – Race Is, Race Ain’t 4.1. Introduction 4.2. Subjects and objects, concepts and conceptions 4.3. Patterns and proposals, Cornish and criticism 4.4. Language and reality, irony and asterisks 4.5. Cost and benefit, culture and nature 4.6. Conclusion 5. Ethics, Existence, Experience Prologue – Pure; or, The Fourth Life of Mona Rogers 5.1. Introduction: Who has believed our report 5.2. Ethical eliminativism (the anti-racist challenge, continued) The slippery slope and the argument from political realism The argument from self-realization 5.3. Existence, identity, and despair The basics Despair and doubt, joy and pain Double consciousness Micro-diversity 5.4. Beyond the black-white binary Latinx peoples, outsider racialization, and the gendered substratum Asian peoples and model minority racialization Native Americans and savagism Arabs, Muslims, and the terrorist panic 5.5 Experience, invisibility, and embodiment The basics Invisibility and the other mind–body problem From the ontic to the ontological 5.6 Conclusion 6. The Color Question Prologue – Keanu and the Promotion; or, good job, good teeth 6.1 Introduction 6.2. The ethics of endogamy 6.3. Choices in context 6.4. Weighing some arguments for endogamy 6.5. Self-criticism and social criticism 6.6. Culture, privacy, and policy 6.7. Color and culture 6.8. Affirmative action: background and arguments 6.9. Affirmative action: suspect classifications 6.10. Conclusion 7. A funny thing happened on the way to post-racialism Prologue – What’s What We’ll See; or, Nine-Inch Knives and Six-Inch Stimuli 7.1. La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) 7.2. On post-racialism 7.3. What the Obamas meant 7.4. The nexus of immigration and race 7.5. Immigration enforcement as a racial problem 7.6. Immigration politics as a racial project 7.7. Globalization 7.8. Securitization 7.9. Conclusion: post-post-racialism and the first white president Further Reading Notes Index
£999.99
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Slum Acts
Book SynopsisThis book examines the ways in which knowledge that is inordinate, excessive, and overwhelming comes to mark everyday life in low-income, poor neighborhoods in Delhi with crumbling infrastructures and pervasive violence. Based on long-term ethnography in these spaces, this book provides a detailed analysis of the institutions of the state, particularly of policing and law in India. It argues that catastrophic events at the national level and the techniques of governance through which they are handled secrete forms of knowing that get embedded into the nooks and crannies of everyday life, eroding trust, sowing suspicions, and leading to an exhaustion of capacity for care. Yet the paths to survival honed within these spaces generate critique that compels us to ask how punishment and torture become routinized in democracies. Following the paths of those who struggle with these questions in these neighborhoods, the book finds that deep philosophical questions, such as the inhuman as a possibility of the human rather than its boundary, arise in the weaves of these lives and are experienced as a dimension of the social. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in anthropology and throughout the social sciences and humanities.Trade Review“This book draws on years of meticulous research on everyday life in Delhi to open a new interpretation of slums with enormous political significance. Focusing on inordinate knowledge, Veena Das traces the violence forged in entanglements of punitive law, state torture, poverty, and vernacular critique. She makes us live the ground experience of biopolitics, massively escalated by contemporary state violations in India, and affectively endured by the poor in not always tragic ways. The thought in this book is deep, elegant, and urgent.”Ash Amin, University of CambridgeTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: The Catastrophic Event: Enduring Inordinate Knowledge Chapter 3: The Dispersed Body of the Police and Fictions of the Law Chapter 4: Detecting the Human: Under Which Skies Do We Theorize? Chapter 5: Afterword Notes References
£42.75
John Wiley and Sons Ltd Excluding the Jew Within Us
Book SynopsisWhy does anti-Semitism seem to be so deeply engrained in our societies, our institutions and our attitudes? To answer this question we need to look beyond our current practices and see that anti-Semitism has much deeper roots – that it is woven into the very structures of Western thought. Jean-Luc Nancy argues that anti-Semitism emerged from the conflictual conjunction of two responses to the eclipse of archaic cultures. The Greek and the Jewish responses both affirmed a humanity freed from myth but put forward two very different conceptions of autonomy: on the one hand, the infinite autonomy of knowledge, of logos, and on the other, the paradoxical autonomy of a heteronomy guided by a hidden god. The first excluded the second while simultaneously absorbing and dominating it; the second withdrew into itself and its condition of exclusion and domination. How could the long and terrible history of the hatred of the Jew, masking a self-loathing, be generated by these intrinsically contradictory beginnings? That is the question to which this short book gives a compelling answer.Trade Review�Drawing from Lacoue-Labarthe�s intuition that antisemitism is both �historial� and �spiritual�, Nancy offers us a decisive rethinking of the �banality� of antisemitic hatred and violence situated in light of the historical-metaphysical constitution of the Subject and the specific configuration of Europe and the West.� Philip Armstrong, The Ohio State University
£11.77
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The Good Enough Life
Book SynopsisThis book is a highly original exploration of what life could and should be. It juxtaposes a philosophical enquiry into the nature of the good life with an ethnography of people living in a small Irish town. Attending carefully to the everyday lives of these people, the ethnographic chapters examine topics ranging from freedom and inequality to the creation of community and the purpose of life. These chapters alternate with discussions of similar topics by a wide range of philosophers in the Western tradition, from Socrates and the Stoics through Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger to Adorno, Rawls, MacIntyre, and Nussbaum. As an ethnography, this book reveals just how much we can learn from a respectful acknowledgement of what ordinary modest people have achieved. By creating community as a deliberate and social project that provides the foundation for a more fulfilling life, where affluence has not led to an increase in individualism, the people in this town have found a way to live the good enough life. The book also shows how anthropology and philosophy can complement and enrich one another in an enquiry into what we might accomplish in our lives.Trade Review‘Miller’s book is a brilliant case for the importance of a book of praise, as distinct from the customary critique, showing what it means for a society to allow its members a good life in a world of much one-sided individualism.’Arne Johan Vetlesen, University of Oslo‘Daniel Miller shows us what a truly humane anthropology can be. In an age of rhetorical drama his writing can seem disarmingly modest in tone, but the conversation he prompts between philosophy and fieldwork yields rich ethnographic insights.’Webb Keane, University of Michigan and author of Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories‘a rich description of cultural life’The Irish Times Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Cuan and Kant 1: An Exceptionally Free Society 2: Philosophers of Freedom 3: The First Satiable Society 4: Philosophers and Consumerism 5: Inequality, Drugs and Depression 6: Justice as Fairness 7: The Body and Sports 8: The Origins of Philosophy in Sport 9: Creating Community 10: Placing Heidegger 11: Engaging the World 12: The Stoics and Epicurus 13: Hegel, Cuan, Anthropology and Philosophy Endnotes Bibliography
£49.50
University of Pennsylvania Press Counseling Women: Kinship Against Violence in
Book SynopsisWomen’s rights activists around the world have commonly understood gendered violence as the product of so-called traditional family structures, from which women must be liberated. Counseling Women contends that this perspective overlooks the social and cultural contexts in which women understand and navigate their relationships with kin. This book follows frontline workers in India, called family counselors, as they support women who have experienced violence at home in the context of complex shifting legal and familial systems. Drawing on ethnographic research at counseling centers in Jaipur, Rajasthan, Julia Kowalski shows how an individualistic notion of women’s rights places already vulnerable women into even more precarious positions by ignoring the reality of the social relations that shape lives within and beyond the family. Thus, rather than focusing on attaining independence from kin, family counselors in India instead strive to help women cultivate relationships of interdependence in order to reimagine family life in the wake of violence. Counselors mobilize the beliefs, concepts, and frameworks of kinship to offer women interactive strategies to gain agency within the family, including multigenerational kin networks encompassing parents, in-laws, and other extended family. Through this work, kinship becomes a resource through which people imagine and act on new familial futures. In viewing this reliance on kinship as part of, rather than a deviation from, global women’s rights projects, Counseling Women reassesses Western liberal feminism’s notions of what it means to have agency and what constitutes violence, and retheorizes the role of interdependence in gendered violence and inequality as not only a site of vulnerability but a potential source of strength.Trade Review"Counseling Women is an effective, enlightening, and unique book that is delicately written, and persuasively argued." * Sameena Mulla, Emory University *
£25.19
University of Pennsylvania Press Counseling Women: Kinship Against Violence in
Book SynopsisWomen’s rights activists around the world have commonly understood gendered violence as the product of so-called traditional family structures, from which women must be liberated. Counseling Women contends that this perspective overlooks the social and cultural contexts in which women understand and navigate their relationships with kin. This book follows frontline workers in India, called family counselors, as they support women who have experienced violence at home in the context of complex shifting legal and familial systems. Drawing on ethnographic research at counseling centers in Jaipur, Rajasthan, Julia Kowalski shows how an individualistic notion of women’s rights places already vulnerable women into even more precarious positions by ignoring the reality of the social relations that shape lives within and beyond the family. Thus, rather than focusing on attaining independence from kin, family counselors in India instead strive to help women cultivate relationships of interdependence in order to reimagine family life in the wake of violence. Counselors mobilize the beliefs, concepts, and frameworks of kinship to offer women interactive strategies to gain agency within the family, including multigenerational kin networks encompassing parents, in-laws, and other extended family. Through this work, kinship becomes a resource through which people imagine and act on new familial futures. In viewing this reliance on kinship as part of, rather than a deviation from, global women’s rights projects, Counseling Women reassesses Western liberal feminism’s notions of what it means to have agency and what constitutes violence, and retheorizes the role of interdependence in gendered violence and inequality as not only a site of vulnerability but a potential source of strength.Trade Review"Counseling Women is an effective, enlightening, and unique book that is delicately written, and persuasively argued." * Sameena Mulla, Emory University *
£72.00
University of Pennsylvania Press Friendship
Book SynopsisIn this book, renowned anthropologist Michael Jackson draws on philosophy, biography, ethnography, and literature to explore the meanings and affordances of friendship—a relationship just as significant as, yet somehow different from, kinship and love. Beginning with Aristotle’s accounts of friendship as a political virtue and Montaigne’s famous essay on friendship as a form of love, Jackson examines the tension between the political and personal resonances of friendship in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, the biography of the Indian historian Brijen Gupta, and the oral narratives of a Kuranko storyteller, Keti Ferenke Koroma. He offers reflections on childhood friends, imaginary friends, lifelong friendships, and friendships with animals. He ruminates particularly on the complications of friendship in the context of anthropological fieldwork, exploring the contradiction between the egalitarian spirit of friendship on the one hand and, on the other, the power imbalance between ethnographers and their interlocutors. Through these stories, Jackson explores the unpredictable interplay of mutability and mutuality in intimate human relationships, and the critical importance of choice in forming friendship—what it means to be loyal to friends through good times and bad, and even in the face of danger. Through a blend of memoir, theory, ethnography, and fiction, Jackson shows us how the elective affinities of friendship transcend culture, gender, and age, and offer us perennial means of taking stock of our lives and getting a measure of our own self-worth.Trade Review"A compelling exploration of friendship, rich with insights and astute anthropological and philosophical reflections. Friendship offers a highly original treatment of an important topic in clear and incisive terms. I know of no other work that examines the many diverse aspects of friendship in people’s lives in such rich and informed ways." * Robert Desjarlais, Sarah Lawrence College *
£72.00
University of Pennsylvania Press The Violence of Recognition: Adivasi Indigeneity
Book SynopsisThe Violence of Recognition offers an unprecedented firsthand account of the operations of Hindu nationalists and their role in sparking the largest incident of anti-Christian violence in India’s history. Through vivid ethnographic storytelling, Pinky Hota explores the roots of ethnonationalist conflict between two historically marginalized groups—the Kandha, who are Adivasi (tribal people considered indigenous in India), and the Pana, a community of Christian Dalits (previously referred to as “untouchables”). Hota documents how Hindutva mobilization led to large-scale violence, culminating in attacks against many thousands of Pana Dalits in the district of Kandhamal in 2008. Bringing indigenous studies as well as race and ethnic studies into conversation with Dalit studies, Hota shows that, despite attempts to frame these ethnonationalist tensions as an indigenous population’s resistance against disenfranchisement, Kandha hostility against the Pana must be understood as anti-Christian, anti-Dalit violence animated by racial capitalism. Hota’s analysis of caste in relation to race and religion details how Hindu nationalists exploit the singular and exclusionary legal recognition of Adivasis and the putatively liberatory, anti-capitalist discourse of indigeneity in order to justify continued oppression of Dalits—particularly those such as the Pana. Because the Pana lost their legal protection as recognized minorities (Scheduled Caste) upon conversion to Christianity, they struggle for recognition within the Indian state’s classificatory scheme. Within the framework of recognition, Hota shows, indigeneity works as a political technology that reproduces the political, economic, and cultural exclusion of landless marginalized groups such as Dalits. The Violence of Recognition reveals the violent implications of minority recognition in creating and maintaining hierarchies of racial capitalism.Trade Review"A vivid account and powerful analysis of the Hindu nationalist campaign to appropriate indigenous religion and convert neighbors into enemies. Pinky Hota makes a decisive intervention in the political anthropology of South Asia that will have ramifications for indigenous studies and the critical study of majoritarianism worldwide." * Joel Lee, author of Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion *
£86.40
University of Pennsylvania Press The Violence of Recognition: Adivasi Indigeneity
Book SynopsisThe Violence of Recognition offers an unprecedented firsthand account of the operations of Hindu nationalists and their role in sparking the largest incident of anti-Christian violence in India’s history. Through vivid ethnographic storytelling, Pinky Hota explores the roots of ethnonationalist conflict between two historically marginalized groups—the Kandha, who are Adivasi (tribal people considered indigenous in India), and the Pana, a community of Christian Dalits (previously referred to as “untouchables”). Hota documents how Hindutva mobilization led to large-scale violence, culminating in attacks against many thousands of Pana Dalits in the district of Kandhamal in 2008. Bringing indigenous studies as well as race and ethnic studies into conversation with Dalit studies, Hota shows that, despite attempts to frame these ethnonationalist tensions as an indigenous population’s resistance against disenfranchisement, Kandha hostility against the Pana must be understood as anti-Christian, anti-Dalit violence animated by racial capitalism. Hota’s analysis of caste in relation to race and religion details how Hindu nationalists exploit the singular and exclusionary legal recognition of Adivasis and the putatively liberatory, anti-capitalist discourse of indigeneity in order to justify continued oppression of Dalits—particularly those such as the Pana. Because the Pana lost their legal protection as recognized minorities (Scheduled Caste) upon conversion to Christianity, they struggle for recognition within the Indian state’s classificatory scheme. Within the framework of recognition, Hota shows, indigeneity works as a political technology that reproduces the political, economic, and cultural exclusion of landless marginalized groups such as Dalits. The Violence of Recognition reveals the violent implications of minority recognition in creating and maintaining hierarchies of racial capitalism.Trade Review"A vivid account and powerful analysis of the Hindu nationalist campaign to appropriate indigenous religion and convert neighbors into enemies. Pinky Hota makes a decisive intervention in the political anthropology of South Asia that will have ramifications for indigenous studies and the critical study of majoritarianism worldwide." * Joel Lee, author of Deceptive Majority: Dalits, Hinduism, and Underground Religion *
£25.19
Cognella, Inc Human Evolution: Processes and Adaptations
Book SynopsisHuman Evolution: Processes and Adaptations is designed for introductory courses in biological anthropology. The book develops the theory and methods of the modern evolutionist and, with many clear examples, shows how to apply them to make sense of the biological traits that define our species. Featuring a scientific, issue-oriented perspective on human evolution – how it works, what it can and cannot do, and what it reveals about human nature – this textbook uses engaging analogies to make current research accessible to beginning students. This fourth edition includes new or expanded chapters on fossils and on genetics.More than a mere survey of the requisite topics, this book weaves the threads of natural selection, genetics, adaptation, speciation, classification, fossils, and human behavior into a coherent picture where each element usefully illuminates the others. In an approachable 250 pages, students learn not just the subject matter of biological anthropology, but acquire an evolutionary tool kit they can use to explore any biological question. Use of this tool kit is modeled through analyses that are of topical interest to the students, such as sex and sexuality. Human Evolution is a fresh, stand-alone text with key concepts depicted in more than 90 illustrations, and is designed to stimulate instructors and students alike.
£81.60
University of Minnesota Press Bad Film Histories: Ethnography and the Early
Book SynopsisA daring, deep investigation into ethnographic cinema that challenges standard ways of writing film history and breaks important new ground in understanding archives Bad Film Histories is a vital work that unsettles the authority of the archive. Katherine Groo daringly takes readers to the margins of the film record, addressing the undertheorization of film history and offering a rigorous corrective. Taking ethnographic cinema as a crucial case study, Groo challenges standard ways of thinking and writing about film history and questions widespread assumptions about what film artifacts are and what makes them meaningful. Rather than filling holes, Groo endeavors to understand the imprecisions and absences that define film history and its archives. Bad Film Histories draws on numerous works of ethnographic cinema, from Edward S. Curtis’s In the Land of the Head Hunters, to a Citroën-sponsored “croisière” across Africa, to the extensive archives of the Maison Lumière and the Musée Albert-Kahn, to dozens of expedition films from the 1910s and 1920s. The project is deeply grounded in poststructural approaches to history, and throughout Groo draws on these frameworks to offer innovative and accessible readings that explain ethnographic cinema’s destabilizing energies.As Groo describes, ethnographic works are mostly untitled, unauthored, seemingly infinite in number, and largely unrestored even in their digital afterlives. Her examination of ethnographic cinema provides necessary new thought for both film scholars and those who are thrilled by cinema’s boundless possibilities. In so doing, she boldly reexamines what early ethnographic cinema is and how these films produce meaning, challenging the foundations of film history and prevailing approaches to the archive.Trade Review"Stimulating and necessary . . . Bad Film Histories makes an important theoretical intervention into early cinema history. Katherine Groo prompts us to question our assumptions—to throw away the film-historical map—and to keep moving along multiple trajectories."—Alice Maurice, author of The Cinema and Its Shadow: Race and Technology in Early Cinema"With this book, Katherine Groo establishes the necessary and productive incoherence of film historical inquiry by insisting on certain structuring non-relations between artifact and historical knowledge, between ethnographic subject and scientific investigator, between film and its content, and between the world and its index. Bad Film Histories devastatingly reveals how our current film historical knowledge is entirely without basis, leaving us to wonder what today might constitute an adequate account of the cinema; the solution—as Groo brilliantly argues—is that this is precisely the wrong question to ask."—Mark Lynn Anderson, author of Twilight of the Idols: Hollywood and the Human Sciences in 1920s AmericaTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Untimely Historiographies, Ethnographic Particularities1. Of Other Archives: The Excursive Minors of La Maison Lumière and Les Archives de la Planète 2. Historical Figures: Dance and the Unlettered Line3. Following Derrida: Ethnocinematic Animals, Death Effects, and the Supplement of Expedition Cinema 4. Language Games, or the World Intertitled5. Ethnography Won’t Wait: New Media and Material HistoriesAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex
£80.00
University of Minnesota Press Bad Film Histories: Ethnography and the Early
Book SynopsisA daring, deep investigation into ethnographic cinema that challenges standard ways of writing film history and breaks important new ground in understanding archives Bad Film Histories is a vital work that unsettles the authority of the archive. Katherine Groo daringly takes readers to the margins of the film record, addressing the undertheorization of film history and offering a rigorous corrective. Taking ethnographic cinema as a crucial case study, Groo challenges standard ways of thinking and writing about film history and questions widespread assumptions about what film artifacts are and what makes them meaningful. Rather than filling holes, Groo endeavors to understand the imprecisions and absences that define film history and its archives. Bad Film Histories draws on numerous works of ethnographic cinema, from Edward S. Curtis’s In the Land of the Head Hunters, to a Citroën-sponsored “croisière” across Africa, to the extensive archives of the Maison Lumière and the Musée Albert-Kahn, to dozens of expedition films from the 1910s and 1920s. The project is deeply grounded in poststructural approaches to history, and throughout Groo draws on these frameworks to offer innovative and accessible readings that explain ethnographic cinema’s destabilizing energies.As Groo describes, ethnographic works are mostly untitled, unauthored, seemingly infinite in number, and largely unrestored even in their digital afterlives. Her examination of ethnographic cinema provides necessary new thought for both film scholars and those who are thrilled by cinema’s boundless possibilities. In so doing, she boldly reexamines what early ethnographic cinema is and how these films produce meaning, challenging the foundations of film history and prevailing approaches to the archive.Trade Review"Stimulating and necessary . . . Bad Film Histories makes an important theoretical intervention into early cinema history. Katherine Groo prompts us to question our assumptions—to throw away the film-historical map—and to keep moving along multiple trajectories."—Alice Maurice, author of The Cinema and Its Shadow: Race and Technology in Early Cinema"With this book, Katherine Groo establishes the necessary and productive incoherence of film historical inquiry by insisting on certain structuring non-relations between artifact and historical knowledge, between ethnographic subject and scientific investigator, between film and its content, and between the world and its index. Bad Film Histories devastatingly reveals how our current film historical knowledge is entirely without basis, leaving us to wonder what today might constitute an adequate account of the cinema; the solution—as Groo brilliantly argues—is that this is precisely the wrong question to ask."—Mark Lynn Anderson, author of Twilight of the Idols: Hollywood and the Human Sciences in 1920s AmericaTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Untimely Historiographies, Ethnographic Particularities1. Of Other Archives: The Excursive Minors of La Maison Lumière and Les Archives de la Planète 2. Historical Figures: Dance and the Unlettered Line3. Following Derrida: Ethnocinematic Animals, Death Effects, and the Supplement of Expedition Cinema 4. Language Games, or the World Intertitled5. Ethnography Won’t Wait: New Media and Material HistoriesAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex
£21.59
University of Minnesota Press Life, Emergent: The Social in the Afterlives of
Book SynopsisHow does an inquiry into life as it lives (or dies) amid mass violence look like from the perspective of the “social”? Taking us from Sierra Leone to India to Lebanon, Life, Emergent challenges conventional understandings of biopolitics, weaving a politics of life through the lens of life, not death. Arguing that the “letting die” element of biopolitics has been overemphasized, Yasmeen Arif zeros in on biopolitics’ other pole: “making live.” She does so by highlighting the various means and the forms of life configured in the aftermath—or afterlives—of violent events in contexts of law, justice, community, and identity. Her analysis of the social repercussions is both global and local in scope. Arif examines the convictions made in the Special Court of Sierra Leone, the first hybrid court of its nature under international criminal law. Next, she explores the making of a justice movement in the context of Hindu–Muslim violence in 2002 in the state of Gujarat, India. From there she revisits the Sikh carnage in Delhi of 1984. Finally, she explores a span of civil violence in Lebanon, and particularly, its effects on the city of Beirut. This rigorously argued book brings together the various strands of life and the social that each chapter has disentangled—and in doing so it begins to frame a politics of, and in, life. Trade Review"In posing the relation of the social to the question of life, Yasmeen Arif compellingly lays out what a potential politics of life looks like in the aftermath of mass violence and trauma. This is a courageous and important work."—Roberto Esposito, author of Bíos: Biopolitics and Philosophy"In this compassionate account of communities riven by biopower and violence, Yasmeen Arif powerfully responds to those who would find in our collective future only more violence, trauma, resentment, and vendetta. In this compelling and fearless account, she invites us, rather, to reimagine what comes after traumatized, bare life to change the way we understand and respond to contemporary violence."—Timothy Campbell, Cornell University"Life, Emergent is an impressive demonstration of the merits of the comparative method to show how the ordinary and the extraordinary are knitted together in situations of disaster. Arif writes with great compassion and attention to detail that is both world attentive and locally grounded. A splendid achievement!"—Veena Das, Johns Hopkins UniversityTable of ContentsContents Introduction. Afterlife: Violence, the Social, and Life 1. The International Social: Humanity, Crime, and Law in Sierra Leone 2. Compassionate Citizenship: Nyayagraha, Gandhi, and Justice in Gujarat 3. Wounding Attachment: Suffering, Surviving, and Community in Delhi 4. Emotional Geographies: War, Nostalgia, and Identity in Beirut 5. Bios, Pathos, and Life Emergent Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
£23.39
University of Minnesota Press Postcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West
Book SynopsisFor more than a century cars have symbolized autonomous, unfettered mobility and an increasingly global experience. And yet, they are often used differently outside the centers of global capitalism. This pioneering book considers how, through the lens of the automobile, we can assess the pleasures, dangers, and limits of global modernity in West Africa. Through new and provocative readings of famous plays, novels, and films, as well as recent popular videos, Postcolonial Automobility reveals the surprising ways in which automobility in the region is, at once, an everyday practice, an ethos, a fantasy of autonomy, and an affective activity intimately tied to modern social life. Lindsey B. Green-Simms begins with the history of motorization in West Africa from the colonial era to the decolonizing decades after World War II, and addresses the tragedy of car accidents through a close reading of Wole Soyinka’s 1965 postindependence play The Road. Shifting to screen media, she discusses Ousmane Sembene’s Xala and Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Quartier Mozart and reviews popular, low-budget Nollywood films. Finally, Green-Simms considers how feminist texts rewrite and work in dialogue with the male-centered films and novels where the car stands in for patriarchal power and capitalist achievement.Providing a unique perspective on technology in Africa—one refusing to be confined to narratives of either underdevelopment or inevitable progress—and covering a broad range of interdisciplinary material, Postcolonial Automobility will appeal not only to scholars and students of African literature and cinema but also to those in postcolonial and globalization studies.Trade Review"Clear, lucid, and engaging. Lindsey B. Green-Simms does an excellent job mediating close literary analysis, broader historical and cultural focus on the car in Africa, and astute theoretical readings."—Marian Aguiar, Carnegie Mellon University"With Postcolonial Automobility, Lindsey B. Green-Simms produces a veritable socio-cultural biography of the automobile and illustrates this through various sources including literary texts, African art and popular movies, the variable opinions of car owners and their users, and the multiple urban legends that have grown up with and around vehicles in this part of Africa. It is a beautifully written gift offering to this most desired object of African modernity."—Ato Quayson, University of Toronto, author of Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of TransnationalismTable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Thinking Automobility, Feeling Automobility1. The Hum of Progress: Motorcars and the Modernization of West Africa2. “No Danger No Delay”: Wole Soyinka and the Perils of Driving3. Moving Pictures, Mired Cars: The Automobile in African Francophone4. The Return of the Mercedes: Upward Mobility, the Good Life, and Nigerian Video Film5. Women in Traffic: Towards a Feminist AutomobilityConclusion: Global (Be)LongingsAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
£21.59
University of Minnesota Press Inheriting Possibility: Social Reproduction and
Book SynopsisHow has the dominant social scientific paradigm limited our understanding of the impact of inherited economic resources, social privilege, and sociocultural practices on multigenerational inequality? In what ways might multiple forces of social difference haunt quantitative measurements of ability such as the SAT? Building on new materialist philosophy, Inheriting Possibility rethinks methods of quantification and theories of social reproduction in education, demonstrating that test performance results and parenting practices convey the impact of materially and historically contingent patterns of differential possibility.Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román explores the dualism of nature and culture that has undergirded theories of inheritance, social reproduction, and human learning and development. Research and debate on the reproduction of power relations have rested on a premise that nature is made up of fixed universals on which the creative, intellective, and discursive play of culture are based. Drawing on recent work in the physical and biological sciences, Dixon-Román argues that nature is culture. He contends that by assuming a rigid nature/culture binary, we ultimately limit our understanding of how power relations are reproduced. Through innovative analyses of empirical data and cultural artifacts, Dixon-Román boldly reconsiders how we conceptualize the processes of inheritance and approach social inquiry in order to profoundly sharpen understanding and address the reproducing forces of inequality.Trade Review"In Inheriting Possibility, Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román establishes himself as a social philosopher, methodologist, and policy analyst. In short, he provides the two ingredients on which intellectuals since Marx have relied: theory and method. As a theorist, few scholars match his ability to deconstruct the false binary between nature and culture. As a methodologist, he possesses sophisticated, interpretive skills of psychometrics and measurement’s epistemological limits. Dixon-Román is not only the complete package, but stands out as one of the most creative intellectuals of our time."—Zeus Leonardo, author of Race Frameworks: A Multidimensional Theory of Racism and Education"How can a cultural theory of quantification become the starting point for a materialist analysis of socio-cultural forms of inheritance? Inheriting Possibility offers us compelling arguments for new ontologies of the number and radically challenges what we know about the use of statistics in education and socio-cultural analysis."—Dr. Luciana Parisi, Goldsmiths, University of LondonTable of ContentsContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Enumerating Difference beyond Anthropocentrism1. Inheriting Possibility: Quantum Anthropologies and the Forces of Inheritance2. Cultural Studies and Quantification: Toward a Diffractive Methodology3. Parenting Performativities: Assemblages of “Difference” and the Material–Discursive Practices of Parenting4. Inheriting Merit: The SAT as an Institutionalized Measuring Apparatus for Social ImmobilityConclusion: Enfolding PossibilitiesAppendix A: Quantitative Methods and Results for Chapter 3Appendix B: Quantitative Methods and Results for Chapter 4Acknowledgments NotesBibliographyIndex
£21.59
University of Minnesota Press Gay, Inc.: The Nonprofitization of Queer Politics
Book SynopsisA bold and provocative look at how the nonprofit sphere’s expansion has helped—and hindered—the LGBT cause What if the very structure on which social movements rely, the nonprofit system, is reinforcing the inequalities activists seek to eliminate? That is the question at the heart of this bold reassessment of the system’s massive expansion since the mid-1960s. Focusing on the LGBT movement, Myrl Beam argues that the conservative turn in queer movement politics, as exemplified by the shift toward marriage and legal equality, is due mostly to the movement’s embrace of the nonprofit structure. Based on oral histories as well as archival research, and drawing on the author’s own extensive activist work, Gay, Inc. presents four compelling case studies. Beam looks at how people at LGBT nonprofits in Minneapolis and Chicago grapple with the contradictions between radical queer social movements and their institutionalized iterations. Through interview subjects’ incisive, funny, and heartbreaking commentaries, Beam exposes a complex world of committed people doing the best they can to effect change, and the flawed structures in which they participate, rail against, ignore, and make do. Providing a critical look at a social formation whose sanctified place in the national imagination has for too long gone unquestioned, Gay, Inc. marks a significant contribution to scholarship on sexuality, neoliberalism, and social movements.Trade Review"Gay, Inc. is a beacon of persuasive clarity, outlining the emotionally compelling but politically compromising role of nonprofit organizations in LGBTQ life. With nuanced ethnographic research, Myrl Beam provokes us to see the conflicts between mission and fundraising, between participants and donors, that shape our deepest commitments to social justice. Gay, Inc. is a must read for scholars and activists alike."—Lisa Duggan, New York University"An essential read for anyone who is trying to figure out how social change works, Gay, Inc. helps us understand queer and trans resistance in depth, bringing new insight into social movement debates about the role of nonprofits using grounded histories of resistance and conflict within queer politics."—Dean Spade, Seattle University School of LawTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Neoliberalism, Nonprofitization, and Social Change2. The Work of Compassion: Institutionalizing Affective Economies of AIDS and Homelessness3. Community and Its Others: Safety, Space, and Nonprofitization4. Capital and Nonprofitization: At the Limits of “By and For”5. Navigating the Crisis of Neoliberalism: A Stance of Undefeated DespairConclusionAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex
£72.00
University of Minnesota Press Reimagining Livelihoods: Life beyond Economy,
Book SynopsisA provocative reassessment of the concepts underlying the struggle for sustainable developmentMuch of the debate over sustainable development revolves around how to balance the competing demands of economic development, social well-being, and environmental protection. “Jobs vs. environment” is only one of the many forms that such struggles take. But what if the very terms of this debate are part of the problem? Reimagining Livelihoods argues that the “hegemonic trio” of economy, society, and environment not only fails to describe the actual world around us but poses a tremendous obstacle to enacting a truly sustainable future.In a rich blend of ethnography and theory, Reimagining Livelihoods engages with questions of development in the state of Maine to trace the dangerous effects of contemporary stories that simplify and domesticate conflict. As in so many other places around the world, the trio of economy, society, and environment in Maine produces a particular space of “common sense” within which struggles over life and livelihood unfold. Yet the terms of engagement embodied by this trio are neither innocent nor inevitable. It is a contingent, historically produced configuration, born from the throes of capitalist industrialism and colonialism. Drawing in part on his own participation in the struggle over the Plum Creek Corporation’s “concept plan” for a major resort development on the shores of Moosehead Lake in northern Maine, Ethan Miller articulates a rich framework for engaging with the ethical and political challenges of building ecological livelihoods among diverse human and nonhuman communities. In seeking a pathway for transformative thought that is both critical and affirmative, Reimagining Livelihoods provides new frames of reference for living together on an increasingly volatile Earth.Trade Review"Interesting, imaginative, and extraordinarily well written, Reimagining Livelihoods is an exemplary case of how to think through the ideas and forces that shape our existence behind our backs. Ethan Miller's work is empirical in the best sense, with the information gleaned from interviews often as enlightening as it is unexpected."—Mick Smith, author of Against Ecological Sovereignty: Ethics, Politics, and Saving the Natural World"Ethan Miller provides vital tools to imagine and enact ways of life no longer tethered to the constraining categories of economy, society, and environment. Written with passion and insight and deeply grounded in the material realities of Maine life, Reimagining Livelihoods is essential reading for activists, planners, and academics struggling to compose common worlds within late capitalist ecologies."—Bruce Braun, University of Minnesota"It tacks between deep theory and rich empirical material to carefully, insidiously open up alternate ways-of-seeing in the readers’ minds."—Environmental Values "I applaud Miller’s ambition in this book and would suggest that the ideas within have the potential to ignite a well-taught classroom and leap far beyond."—American Anthropologist Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Troubling Economy, Society, and Environment in MainePart I. Problematizing the Trio1. Constitutional Geometry: Shapes of PowerPart II. Tracing Hegemonies2. Forces and Domains: Dynamics of Mastery and Submission3. Enclosures and Outsides: Making and Unmaking Boundaries 4. A Diagram of Power: Nature-Culture, Capital-State, and DevelopmentPart III. Decomposing the Trio5. Cracks in the Assemblage: Uncertainties, Resistances, and Swerves 6. Multiplying Articulations: How Many Definitions Can Maine’s Professionals Produce? Part IV. (Re)composing Livelihoods 7. Ecopoiesis: Making Habitats and Inhabitants8. Ecological Livelihoods: Beyond the Trio9. Tools for a Politics of Ecological Livelihood10. Ontopolitical Coordinates: Rearticulating Struggles in MaineConclusion: Becoming OtherwiseAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
£77.60
University of Minnesota Press Reimagining Livelihoods: Life beyond Economy,
Book SynopsisA provocative reassessment of the concepts underlying the struggle for sustainable developmentMuch of the debate over sustainable development revolves around how to balance the competing demands of economic development, social well-being, and environmental protection. “Jobs vs. environment” is only one of the many forms that such struggles take. But what if the very terms of this debate are part of the problem? Reimagining Livelihoods argues that the “hegemonic trio” of economy, society, and environment not only fails to describe the actual world around us but poses a tremendous obstacle to enacting a truly sustainable future.In a rich blend of ethnography and theory, Reimagining Livelihoods engages with questions of development in the state of Maine to trace the dangerous effects of contemporary stories that simplify and domesticate conflict. As in so many other places around the world, the trio of economy, society, and environment in Maine produces a particular space of “common sense” within which struggles over life and livelihood unfold. Yet the terms of engagement embodied by this trio are neither innocent nor inevitable. It is a contingent, historically produced configuration, born from the throes of capitalist industrialism and colonialism. Drawing in part on his own participation in the struggle over the Plum Creek Corporation’s “concept plan” for a major resort development on the shores of Moosehead Lake in northern Maine, Ethan Miller articulates a rich framework for engaging with the ethical and political challenges of building ecological livelihoods among diverse human and nonhuman communities. In seeking a pathway for transformative thought that is both critical and affirmative, Reimagining Livelihoods provides new frames of reference for living together on an increasingly volatile Earth.Trade Review"Interesting, imaginative, and extraordinarily well written, Reimagining Livelihoods is an exemplary case of how to think through the ideas and forces that shape our existence behind our backs. Ethan Miller's work is empirical in the best sense, with the information gleaned from interviews often as enlightening as it is unexpected."—Mick Smith, author of Against Ecological Sovereignty: Ethics, Politics, and Saving the Natural World"Ethan Miller provides vital tools to imagine and enact ways of life no longer tethered to the constraining categories of economy, society, and environment. Written with passion and insight and deeply grounded in the material realities of Maine life, Reimagining Livelihoods is essential reading for activists, planners, and academics struggling to compose common worlds within late capitalist ecologies."—Bruce Braun, University of Minnesota"It tacks between deep theory and rich empirical material to carefully, insidiously open up alternate ways-of-seeing in the readers’ minds."—Environmental Values "I applaud Miller’s ambition in this book and would suggest that the ideas within have the potential to ignite a well-taught classroom and leap far beyond."—American Anthropologist Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Troubling Economy, Society, and Environment in MainePart I. Problematizing the Trio1. Constitutional Geometry: Shapes of PowerPart II. Tracing Hegemonies2. Forces and Domains: Dynamics of Mastery and Submission3. Enclosures and Outsides: Making and Unmaking Boundaries 4. A Diagram of Power: Nature-Culture, Capital-State, and DevelopmentPart III. Decomposing the Trio5. Cracks in the Assemblage: Uncertainties, Resistances, and Swerves 6. Multiplying Articulations: How Many Definitions Can Maine’s Professionals Produce? Part IV. (Re)composing Livelihoods 7. Ecopoiesis: Making Habitats and Inhabitants8. Ecological Livelihoods: Beyond the Trio9. Tools for a Politics of Ecological Livelihood10. Ontopolitical Coordinates: Rearticulating Struggles in MaineConclusion: Becoming OtherwiseAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
£20.69
University of Minnesota Press Gringolandia: Lifestyle Migration under Late
Book SynopsisA telling look at today’s “reverse” migration of white, middle-class expats from north to south, through the lens of one South American city Even as the “migration crisis” from the Global South to the Global North rages on, another, lower-key and yet important migration has been gathering pace in recent years—that of mostly white, middle-class people moving in the opposite direction. Gringolandia is that rare book to consider this phenomenon in all its complexity.Matthew Hayes focuses on North Americans relocating to Cuenca, Ecuador, the country’s third-largest city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Many began relocating there after the 2008 economic crisis. Most are self-professed “economic refugees” who sought offshore retirement, affordable medical care, and/or a lower–cost location. Others, however, sought adventure marked by relocation to an unfamiliar cultural environment and to experience personal growth through travel, illustrative of contemporary cultures of aging. These life projects are often motivated by a desire to escape economic and political conditions in North America. Regardless of their individual motivations, Hayes argues, such North–South migrants remain embedded in unequal and unfair global social relations. He explores the repercussions on the host country—from rising prices for land and rent to the reproduction of colonial patterns of domination and subordination. In Ecuador, heritage preservation and tourism development reflect the interests and culture of European-descendent landowning elites, who have most to benefit from the new North–South migration. In the process, they participate in transnational gentrification that marginalizes popular traditions and nonwhite mestizo and indigenous informal workers. The contrast between the migration experiences of North Americans in Ecuador and those of Ecuadorians or others from such regions of the Global South in North America and Europe demonstrates that, in fact, what we face is not so much a global “migration crisis” but a crisis of global social justice.Trade Review"Matthew Hayes provides a vivid sociological portrayal of North Americans living in Ecuador alongside a theoretically sophisticated analysis of the global inequalities that shape growing north-south migration. Gringolandia is a must-read for students and scholars interested in a complex understanding of transnational migration in the context of 21st century globalization."—Sheila Croucher, author of The Other Side of the Fence: American Migrants in Mexico"Gringolandia offers a refreshing and powerful new perspective on lifestyle migration that demonstrates how it is caught up in the production of global inequalities informed by colonial legacies, the structures and practice of planetary gentrification, and the local class struggles this portends. Through his up-close ethnographic observations of the lives and motivations of North Americans living in Ecuador, Matthew Hayes presents a timely and sorely needed intervention that straddles the sociology of migration and urban studies, woven together through a deep concern with decoloniality."—Michaela Benson, Goldsmiths, University of London"The author should be commended for undertaking research on a type of migration different from the mainstream and for the excellent combination of ethnographic, historical, policy and political economy perspectives to show that all migrations are instances of social inequality. "—City & Society"Gringolandia is definitely the first book to consider the phenomenon of mostly white, middle-class people moving from the global North to the global South, but also one of the few that analyses this subject under this postmodern approach."—Journal of Latin American Studies"Gringolandia provides astute descriptive detail on migrants, the web of organizations marketing Ecuador as a destination, displaced Ecuadorian workers, and the effects of heritage-oriented economic development, which brings with it increased property values, higher rents, and large-scale projects requiring loans that shackle Ecuador to the global economy."—CHOICE"The book is not only about expats but also about political economy and whiteness. It is a captivating read and a solid contribution to the migration, global inequality, and race literatures."—Contemporary Sociology"This book is valuable for numerous reasons. It shows many of the complexities of North-South migration, including the multiple causes of migration, how transnational communication technologies are vital to contemporary international migration, and most importantly how unacknowledged but persistent inequalities can shape the trajectory of migration and its outcomes."—Journal of Cultural Geography"Gringolandia is a compelling ethnography of the mixed social life of a migrant enclave in Cuenca, but it is also a valuable critical reflection upon the strained social life of aging North Americans under late capitalism."—AnthropologicaTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Geoarbitrage and the Offshoring of Retirement2. Migrant Imaginaries3. Gringo Identities4. Transforming the City5. The Hacienda6. Lifestyle Migration, Transnational Gentrification and Social JusticeAcknowledgmentsAppendix: MethodologyNotesBibliographyIndex
£74.40
University of Minnesota Press Gringolandia: Lifestyle Migration under Late
Book SynopsisA telling look at today’s “reverse” migration of white, middle-class expats from north to south, through the lens of one South American city Even as the “migration crisis” from the Global South to the Global North rages on, another, lower-key and yet important migration has been gathering pace in recent years—that of mostly white, middle-class people moving in the opposite direction. Gringolandia is that rare book to consider this phenomenon in all its complexity.Matthew Hayes focuses on North Americans relocating to Cuenca, Ecuador, the country’s third-largest city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Many began relocating there after the 2008 economic crisis. Most are self-professed “economic refugees” who sought offshore retirement, affordable medical care, and/or a lower–cost location. Others, however, sought adventure marked by relocation to an unfamiliar cultural environment and to experience personal growth through travel, illustrative of contemporary cultures of aging. These life projects are often motivated by a desire to escape economic and political conditions in North America. Regardless of their individual motivations, Hayes argues, such North–South migrants remain embedded in unequal and unfair global social relations. He explores the repercussions on the host country—from rising prices for land and rent to the reproduction of colonial patterns of domination and subordination. In Ecuador, heritage preservation and tourism development reflect the interests and culture of European-descendent landowning elites, who have most to benefit from the new North–South migration. In the process, they participate in transnational gentrification that marginalizes popular traditions and nonwhite mestizo and indigenous informal workers. The contrast between the migration experiences of North Americans in Ecuador and those of Ecuadorians or others from such regions of the Global South in North America and Europe demonstrates that, in fact, what we face is not so much a global “migration crisis” but a crisis of global social justice.Trade Review"Matthew Hayes provides a vivid sociological portrayal of North Americans living in Ecuador alongside a theoretically sophisticated analysis of the global inequalities that shape growing north-south migration. Gringolandia is a must-read for students and scholars interested in a complex understanding of transnational migration in the context of 21st century globalization."—Sheila Croucher, author of The Other Side of the Fence: American Migrants in Mexico"Gringolandia offers a refreshing and powerful new perspective on lifestyle migration that demonstrates how it is caught up in the production of global inequalities informed by colonial legacies, the structures and practice of planetary gentrification, and the local class struggles this portends. Through his up-close ethnographic observations of the lives and motivations of North Americans living in Ecuador, Matthew Hayes presents a timely and sorely needed intervention that straddles the sociology of migration and urban studies, woven together through a deep concern with decoloniality."—Michaela Benson, Goldsmiths, University of London"The author should be commended for undertaking research on a type of migration different from the mainstream and for the excellent combination of ethnographic, historical, policy and political economy perspectives to show that all migrations are instances of social inequality. "—City & Society"Gringolandia is definitely the first book to consider the phenomenon of mostly white, middle-class people moving from the global North to the global South, but also one of the few that analyses this subject under this postmodern approach."—Journal of Latin American Studies"Gringolandia provides astute descriptive detail on migrants, the web of organizations marketing Ecuador as a destination, displaced Ecuadorian workers, and the effects of heritage-oriented economic development, which brings with it increased property values, higher rents, and large-scale projects requiring loans that shackle Ecuador to the global economy."—CHOICE"The book is not only about expats but also about political economy and whiteness. It is a captivating read and a solid contribution to the migration, global inequality, and race literatures."—Contemporary Sociology"This book is valuable for numerous reasons. It shows many of the complexities of North-South migration, including the multiple causes of migration, how transnational communication technologies are vital to contemporary international migration, and most importantly how unacknowledged but persistent inequalities can shape the trajectory of migration and its outcomes."—Journal of Cultural Geography"Gringolandia is a compelling ethnography of the mixed social life of a migrant enclave in Cuenca, but it is also a valuable critical reflection upon the strained social life of aging North Americans under late capitalism."—AnthropologicaTable of ContentsIntroduction1. Geoarbitrage and the Offshoring of Retirement2. Migrant Imaginaries3. Gringo Identities4. Transforming the City5. The Hacienda6. Lifestyle Migration, Transnational Gentrification and Social JusticeAcknowledgmentsAppendix: MethodologyNotesBibliographyIndex
£999.99
University of Minnesota Press Acid Revival: The Psychedelic Renaissance and the
Book SynopsisA vivid analysis of the history and revival of clinical psychedelic science Psychedelic drugs are making a comeback. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists actively studied the potential of drugs like LSD and psilocybin for treating mental health problems. After a decades-long hiatus, researchers are once again testing how effective these drugs are in relieving symptoms for a wide variety of psychiatric conditions, from depression and obsessive–compulsive disorder to posttraumatic stress disorder and substance addiction. In Acid Revival, Danielle Giffort examines how this new generation of researchers and their allies are working to rehabilitate psychedelic drugs and to usher in a new era of psychedelic medicine. As this team of researchers and mental health professionals revive the field of psychedelic science, they are haunted by the past and by one person in particular: psychedelic evangelist Timothy Leary. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews with people working on scientific psychedelia, Giffort shows how today’s researchers tell stories about Leary as an “impure” scientist and perform his antithesis to address a series of lingering dilemmas that threaten to rupture their budding legitimacy. Acid Revival presents new information about the so-called psychedelic renaissance and highlights the cultural work involved with the reassembly of dormant areas of medical science. This colorful and accessible history of the rise, fall, and reemergence of psychedelic medicine is infused with intriguing narratives and personalities—a story for popular science aficionados as well as for scholars of the history of science and medicine.Trade Review"How does science plow forward in the face of stigma and skepticism? In this captivating account brimming with fascinating episodes, Danielle Giffort shows how a new generation of mental health researchers seeks to bring psychedelic drugs out of the shadows as respectable therapies—and how they ward off the specters of the countercultural past."—Steven Epstein, author of Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge"Psychedelic medicine has the potential to transform psychiatry, but its advancement is threatened by unique social and legal challenges. Acid Revival provides an inside look at how the researchers conducting this controversial work present themselves as legitimate scientists. In a series of colorful stories, Danielle Giffort explains the role that cultural narrative and performance play in the production of expertise. Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding which drugs are deemed medically useful and why."—Joanna Kempner, author of Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health"Acid Revival will appeal to those interested in psychedelic research past and present. The candid interviews the book offers makes it a unique source."—Psymposia "The book will make informative and accessible reading in undergraduate and graduate courses on the field of mental health and the sociology of science."—Oxford Academic "Acid Revival will no doubt become a reference point for those interested in psychiatry’s varied attempts to reinvent itself as it has sought to conquer what Whooley (2019) has called its stubborn ‘ignorance.’"—Social Forces "A thorough case study relevant to the history of science."—Isis Journal "Acid Revival is an engaging and accessible read for anyone interested in scientific expertise or psychedelic science and its history. Giffort’s timely focus on psychedelic expertise provides a useful framework that science studies scholars can build on."—Journal of Behavioral SciencesTable of ContentsContentsPreface: The Politics of EcstasyIntroduction: Set and Setting1. Playing the Science Game: Psychedelic Therapy Meets the Scientific Method2. Take LSD and See: Acid-Dropping Scientists and the Credibility of Firsthand Experience3. The Chemical Key: Unlocking the Black Box of the Psychedelic Experience4. Who Controls Your Cortex? Moral Panic and the Politicization of Psychedelic Drugs5. Turn On, Tune In, and Go to the Bake Sale: Tensions between Mainstream Science and the Psychedelic Counterculture Conclusion: Why? Why Not? Some Final Words on the Ghost of Timothy Leary in the Psychedelic RenaissanceAcknowledgmentsAppendix: MethodsNotesBibliographyIndex
£72.00
University of Minnesota Press Acid Revival: The Psychedelic Renaissance and the
Book SynopsisA vivid analysis of the history and revival of clinical psychedelic science Psychedelic drugs are making a comeback. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists actively studied the potential of drugs like LSD and psilocybin for treating mental health problems. After a decades-long hiatus, researchers are once again testing how effective these drugs are in relieving symptoms for a wide variety of psychiatric conditions, from depression and obsessive–compulsive disorder to posttraumatic stress disorder and substance addiction. In Acid Revival, Danielle Giffort examines how this new generation of researchers and their allies are working to rehabilitate psychedelic drugs and to usher in a new era of psychedelic medicine. As this team of researchers and mental health professionals revive the field of psychedelic science, they are haunted by the past and by one person in particular: psychedelic evangelist Timothy Leary. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews with people working on scientific psychedelia, Giffort shows how today’s researchers tell stories about Leary as an “impure” scientist and perform his antithesis to address a series of lingering dilemmas that threaten to rupture their budding legitimacy. Acid Revival presents new information about the so-called psychedelic renaissance and highlights the cultural work involved with the reassembly of dormant areas of medical science. This colorful and accessible history of the rise, fall, and reemergence of psychedelic medicine is infused with intriguing narratives and personalities—a story for popular science aficionados as well as for scholars of the history of science and medicine.Trade Review"How does science plow forward in the face of stigma and skepticism? In this captivating account brimming with fascinating episodes, Danielle Giffort shows how a new generation of mental health researchers seeks to bring psychedelic drugs out of the shadows as respectable therapies—and how they ward off the specters of the countercultural past."—Steven Epstein, author of Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge"Psychedelic medicine has the potential to transform psychiatry, but its advancement is threatened by unique social and legal challenges. Acid Revival provides an inside look at how the researchers conducting this controversial work present themselves as legitimate scientists. In a series of colorful stories, Danielle Giffort explains the role that cultural narrative and performance play in the production of expertise. Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding which drugs are deemed medically useful and why."—Joanna Kempner, author of Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health"Acid Revival will appeal to those interested in psychedelic research past and present. The candid interviews the book offers makes it a unique source."—Psymposia "The book will make informative and accessible reading in undergraduate and graduate courses on the field of mental health and the sociology of science."—Oxford Academic "Acid Revival will no doubt become a reference point for those interested in psychiatry’s varied attempts to reinvent itself as it has sought to conquer what Whooley (2019) has called its stubborn ‘ignorance.’"—Social Forces "A thorough case study relevant to the history of science."—Isis Journal "Acid Revival is an engaging and accessible read for anyone interested in scientific expertise or psychedelic science and its history. Giffort’s timely focus on psychedelic expertise provides a useful framework that science studies scholars can build on."—Journal of Behavioral SciencesTable of ContentsContentsPreface: The Politics of EcstasyIntroduction: Set and Setting1. Playing the Science Game: Psychedelic Therapy Meets the Scientific Method2. Take LSD and See: Acid-Dropping Scientists and the Credibility of Firsthand Experience3. The Chemical Key: Unlocking the Black Box of the Psychedelic Experience4. Who Controls Your Cortex? Moral Panic and the Politicization of Psychedelic Drugs5. Turn On, Tune In, and Go to the Bake Sale: Tensions between Mainstream Science and the Psychedelic Counterculture Conclusion: Why? Why Not? Some Final Words on the Ghost of Timothy Leary in the Psychedelic RenaissanceAcknowledgmentsAppendix: MethodsNotesBibliographyIndex
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across
Book SynopsisFrom broken-window policing in Detroit to prison-building in Appalachia, exploring the expansion of the carceral state and its oppressive social relations into everyday lifePrison Land offers a geographic excavation of the prison as a set of social relations—including property, work, gender, and race—enacted across various landscapes of American life. Prisons, Brett Story shows, are more than just buildings of incarceration bound to cycles of crime and punishment. Instead, she investigates the production of carceral power at a range of sites, from buses to coalfields and from blighted cities to urban financial hubs, to demonstrate how the organization of carceral space is ideologically and materially grounded in racial capitalism.Story’s critically acclaimed film The Prison in Twelve Landscapes is based on the same research that informs this book. In both, Story takes an expansive view of what constitutes contemporary carceral space, interrogating the ways in which racial capitalism is reproduced and for which police technologies of containment and control are employed. By framing the prison as a set of social relations, Prison Land forces us to confront the production of new carceral forms that go well beyond the prison system. In doing so, it profoundly undermines both conventional ideas of prisons as logical responses to the problem of crime and attachment to punishment as the relevant measure of a transformed criminal justice system.
£57.60
University of Minnesota Press Beyond the Meme: Development and Structure in
Book SynopsisInterdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution that reject meme theory in favor of a complex understanding of dynamic change over time How do cultures change? In recent decades, the concept of the meme, posited as a basic unit of culture analogous to the gene, has been central to debates about cultural transformation. Despite the appeal of meme theory, its simplification of complex interactions and other inadequacies as an explanatory framework raise more questions about cultural evolution than it answers. In Beyond the Meme, William C. Wimsatt and Alan C. Love assemble interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution, providing a nuanced understanding of it as a process in which dynamic structures interact on different scales of size and time. By focusing on the full range of evolutionary processes across distinct contexts, from rice farming to scientific reasoning, this volume demonstrates how a thick understanding of change in culture emerges from multiple disciplinary vantage points, each of which is required to understand cultural evolution in all its complexity. The editors provide an extensive introductory essay to contextualize the volume, and Wimsatt contributes a separate chapter that systematically organizes the conceptual geography of cultural processes and phenomena.Any adequate account of the transmission, elaboration, and evolution of culture must, this volume argues, recognize the central roles that cognitive and social development play in cultural change and the complex interplay of technological, organizational, and institutional structures needed to enable and coordinate these processes.Contributors: Marshall Abrams, U of Alabama at Birmingham; Claes Andersson, Chalmers U of Technology; Mark A. Bedau, Reed College; James A. Evans, U of Chicago; Jacob G. Foster, U of California, Los Angeles; Michel Janssen, U of Minnesota; Sabina Leonelli, U of Exeter; Massimo Maiocchi, U of Chicago; Joseph D. Martin, U of Cambridge; Salikoko S. Mufwene, U of Chicago; Nancy J. Nersessian, Georgia Institute of Technology and Harvard U; Paul E. Smaldino, U of California, Merced; Anton Törnberg, U of Gothenburg; Petter Törnberg, U of Amsterdam; Gilbert B. Tostevin, U of Minnesota.Trade Review"Beyond the Meme is a collection of thought-provoking essays dealing with the multifaceted complexity and wide diversity of cultural systems."—Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science "An appreciation of how development and structure can be brought to bear on specific problems."—Evolutionary Studies
£114.40
University of Minnesota Press Urbanism without Guarantees: The Everyday Life of
Book SynopsisA unique more-than-capitalist take on urban dynamics Vigilante action. Renegades. Human intrigue and the future at stake in New York City. In Urbanism without Guarantees, Christian M. Anderson offers a new perspective on urban dynamics and urban structural inequality based on an intimate ethnography of on-the-ground gentrification.The book is centered on ethnographic work undertaken on a single street in Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen in New York City—once a site of disinvestment, but now rapidly gentrifying. Anderson examines the everyday strategies of residents to preserve the quality of life of their neighborhood and to define and maintain their values of urban living—from picking up litter and reporting minor concerns on the 311 hotline to hiring a private security firm to monitor the local public park. Anderson demonstrates how processes such as investment and gentrification are constructed out of the collective actions of ordinary people, and challenges prevalent understandings of how place-based civic actions connect with dominant forms of political economy and repressive governance in urban space. Examining how residents are pulled into these systems of gentrification, Anderson proposes new ways to think and act critically and organize for transformation of a place—in actions that local residents can start to do wherever they are.Trade Review"From a long-term immersion on an (extra)ordinary block on the Westside of NYC, Christian M. Anderson demonstrates how the blunt powers of urban restructuring are intricately nestled in the jostling of everyday compositions of things through which collectives are made—collectives stitched and woven by the everyday efforts to keep social violence at bay, which can both support and undermine new forms of living, and which then demand a new politics of those spaces in-between."—AbdouMaliq Simone, The Urban Institute, University of Sheffield"Conceptually rich, artfully crafted, and with a striking immediacy, Urbanism without Guarantees offers a compelling analysis of the meanings of urban change from the perspective of ordinary residents."—Christine Hentschel, Hamburg University "A fascinating new book."—Viewing NYC"Christian Anderson’s Urbanism without Guarantees takes its name from Stuart Hall’s ‘Marxism without Guarantees’ (1983) and lives up to its name by delivering a critical Marxist analysis of everyday life."—Myung In Ji, ANTIPODETable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Situating a StruggleI. Renovating and Making the Urban Question Critical: Toward a Parallax Urbanism1. Fateful Leaps: Flipping the Script on Rent Gaps and Revanchism 2. Unsettling the Urban Question3. The Contingencies of Civic Action, Revisited4. The Hitch, or, Performative InfrastructureII. Place-Embedded Stories and Other Incitements to Parallax Urbanism5. A Brief (Infrastructural?) History of West Forty-Sixth Street6. Specters, Traditions, and the Dominance of Common Sense7. Battles, Contradictions, and Good SenseConclusion: This Hegemony Is a DragAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
£80.00
University of Minnesota Press Urbanism without Guarantees: The Everyday Life of
Book SynopsisA unique more-than-capitalist take on urban dynamics Vigilante action. Renegades. Human intrigue and the future at stake in New York City. In Urbanism without Guarantees, Christian M. Anderson offers a new perspective on urban dynamics and urban structural inequality based on an intimate ethnography of on-the-ground gentrification.The book is centered on ethnographic work undertaken on a single street in Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen in New York City—once a site of disinvestment, but now rapidly gentrifying. Anderson examines the everyday strategies of residents to preserve the quality of life of their neighborhood and to define and maintain their values of urban living—from picking up litter and reporting minor concerns on the 311 hotline to hiring a private security firm to monitor the local public park. Anderson demonstrates how processes such as investment and gentrification are constructed out of the collective actions of ordinary people, and challenges prevalent understandings of how place-based civic actions connect with dominant forms of political economy and repressive governance in urban space. Examining how residents are pulled into these systems of gentrification, Anderson proposes new ways to think and act critically and organize for transformation of a place—in actions that local residents can start to do wherever they are.Trade Review"From a long-term immersion on an (extra)ordinary block on the Westside of NYC, Christian M. Anderson demonstrates how the blunt powers of urban restructuring are intricately nestled in the jostling of everyday compositions of things through which collectives are made—collectives stitched and woven by the everyday efforts to keep social violence at bay, which can both support and undermine new forms of living, and which then demand a new politics of those spaces in-between."—AbdouMaliq Simone, The Urban Institute, University of Sheffield"Conceptually rich, artfully crafted, and with a striking immediacy, Urbanism without Guarantees offers a compelling analysis of the meanings of urban change from the perspective of ordinary residents."—Christine Hentschel, Hamburg University "A fascinating new book."—Viewing NYC"Christian Anderson’s Urbanism without Guarantees takes its name from Stuart Hall’s ‘Marxism without Guarantees’ (1983) and lives up to its name by delivering a critical Marxist analysis of everyday life."—Myung In Ji, ANTIPODETable of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Situating a StruggleI. Renovating and Making the Urban Question Critical: Toward a Parallax Urbanism1. Fateful Leaps: Flipping the Script on Rent Gaps and Revanchism 2. Unsettling the Urban Question3. The Contingencies of Civic Action, Revisited4. The Hitch, or, Performative InfrastructureII. Place-Embedded Stories and Other Incitements to Parallax Urbanism5. A Brief (Infrastructural?) History of West Forty-Sixth Street6. Specters, Traditions, and the Dominance of Common Sense7. Battles, Contradictions, and Good SenseConclusion: This Hegemony Is a DragAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
£21.59
University of Minnesota Press Remote Warfare: New Cultures of Violence
Book SynopsisConsiders how people have confronted, challenged, and resisted remote warfare Drone warfare is now a routine, if not predominant, aspect of military engagement. Although this method of delivering violence at a distance has been a part of military arsenals for two decades, scholarly debate on remote warfare writ large has remained stuck in tired debates about practicality, efficacy, and ethics. Remote Warfare broadens the conversation, interrogating the cultural and political dimensions of distant warfare and examining how various stakeholders have responded to the reality of state-sponsored remote violence.The essays here represent a panoply of viewpoints, revealing overlooked histories of remoteness, novel methodologies, and new intellectual challenges. From the story arc of Homeland to redefining the idea of a “warrior,” these thirteen pieces consider the new nature of surveillance, similarities between killing with drones and gaming, literature written by veterans, and much more. Timely and provocative, Remote Warfare makes significant and lasting contributions to our understanding of drones and the cultural forces that shape and sustain them.Contributors: Syed Irfan Ashraf, U of Peshawar, Pakistan; Jens Borrebye Bjering, U of Southern Denmark; Annika Brunck, U of Tübingen; David A. Buchanan, U.S. Air Force Academy; Owen Coggins, Open U; Andreas Immanuel Graae, U of Southern Denmark; Brittany Hirth, Dickinson State U; Tim Jelfs, U of Groningen; Ann-Katrine S. Nielsen, Aarhus U; Nike Nivar Ortiz, U of Southern California; Michael Richardson, U of New South Wales; Kristin Shamas, U of Oklahoma; Sajdeep Soomal; Michael Zeitlin, U of British Columbia. Trade Review"An excellent resource for researchers intent on forming a better understanding of the methodological challenges that are reflected in researching trauma in complex environments, such as the distant battlefield, and how contemporary modes of approaching this topic have shifted over time."—Security & Dialogue
£86.40
University of Minnesota Press Remote Warfare: New Cultures of Violence
Book SynopsisConsiders how people have confronted, challenged, and resisted remote warfare Drone warfare is now a routine, if not predominant, aspect of military engagement. Although this method of delivering violence at a distance has been a part of military arsenals for two decades, scholarly debate on remote warfare writ large has remained stuck in tired debates about practicality, efficacy, and ethics. Remote Warfare broadens the conversation, interrogating the cultural and political dimensions of distant warfare and examining how various stakeholders have responded to the reality of state-sponsored remote violence.The essays here represent a panoply of viewpoints, revealing overlooked histories of remoteness, novel methodologies, and new intellectual challenges. From the story arc of Homeland to redefining the idea of a “warrior,” these thirteen pieces consider the new nature of surveillance, similarities between killing with drones and gaming, literature written by veterans, and much more. Timely and provocative, Remote Warfare makes significant and lasting contributions to our understanding of drones and the cultural forces that shape and sustain them.Contributors: Syed Irfan Ashraf, U of Peshawar, Pakistan; Jens Borrebye Bjering, U of Southern Denmark; Annika Brunck, U of Tübingen; David A. Buchanan, U.S. Air Force Academy; Owen Coggins, Open U; Andreas Immanuel Graae, U of Southern Denmark; Brittany Hirth, Dickinson State U; Tim Jelfs, U of Groningen; Ann-Katrine S. Nielsen, Aarhus U; Nike Nivar Ortiz, U of Southern California; Michael Richardson, U of New South Wales; Kristin Shamas, U of Oklahoma; Sajdeep Soomal; Michael Zeitlin, U of British Columbia. Trade Review"An excellent resource for researchers intent on forming a better understanding of the methodological challenges that are reflected in researching trauma in complex environments, such as the distant battlefield, and how contemporary modes of approaching this topic have shifted over time."—Security & Dialogue
£23.39
University of Minnesota Press The Alchemy of Meth: A Decomposition
Book SynopsisMeth cooks practice late industrial alchemy—transforming base materials, like lithium batteries and camping fuel, into gold Meth alchemists all over the United States tap the occulted potencies of industrial chemical and big pharma products to try to cure the ills of precarious living: underemployment, insecurity, and the feeling of idleness. Meth fires up your attention and makes repetitive tasks pleasurable, whether it’s factory work or tinkering at home. Users are awake for days and feel exuberant and invincible. In one person’s words, they “get more life.” The Alchemy of Meth is a nonfiction storybook about St. Jude County, Missouri, a place in decomposition, where the toxic inheritance of deindustrialization meets the violent hope of this drug-making cottage industry. Jason Pine bases the book on fieldwork among meth cooks, recovery professionals, pastors, public defenders, narcotics agents, and pharmaceutical executives. Here, St. Jude is not reduced to its meth problem but Pine looks at meth through materials, landscapes, and institutions: the sprawling context that makes methlabs possible. The Alchemy of Meth connects DIY methlabs to big pharma’s superlabs, illicit speed to the legalized speed sold as ADHD medication, uniquely implicating the author’s own story in the narrative. By the end of the book, the backdrop of St. Jude becomes the foreground. It could be a story about life and work anywhere in the United States, where it seems no one is truly clean and all are complicit in the exploitation of their precious resources in exchange for a livable present—or even the hope of a future.Trade Review"The Alchemy of Meth is a sui generis masterpiece. Jason Pine's kaleidoscopic vision provides a portrait of the American Dream seen from a place where instead something else flourishes: home methamphetamine production. He depicts both a human tragedy and the socioeconomic pressures that have made tragedy inevitable. The contemporary political moment makes this book particularly timely, but its grace and power will remain timeless."—Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena"This is a truly remarkable ethnography of the affects, economies, and materialities of methamphetamine production (and consumption) in the decaying heartlands of the United States. Fearlessly experimental yet compulsively readable, it picks its way through debris-strewn landscapes, interweaving voices, stories, and idioms (from legal documents to poetry), encountering not only ruin and devastation but also strangeness, magic, and even, on occasion, hope."—Stuart McLean, University of Minnesota"Jason Pine’s writing is alchemical. By fusing his tales of ordinary citizens in Missouri cooking meth, he cooks up a story that goes deep and gives us a raw taste of the decaying fabric of American life today."—Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed and The Bohemians"By weaving together vignettes culled from interviews of users, cooks, family members of the affected, enforcement agents, and pharmaceutical company executives, Pine traced the topography of meth as its use expanded dramatically during the early 21st century."—CityLab"The Alchemy of Meth is like the best of person-centred ethnographies: humane, deliberate, and impactful."—Anthropological Forum
£17.09
University of Minnesota Press On Not Dying: Secular Immortality in the Age of
Book SynopsisAn ethnographic exploration of technoscientific immortality Immortality has long been considered the domain of religion. But immortality projects have gained increasing legitimacy and power in the world of science and technology. With recent rapid advances in biology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, secular immortalists hope for and work toward a future without death.On Not Dying is an anthropological, historical, and philosophical exploration of immortality as a secular and scientific category. Based on an ethnography of immortalist communities—those who believe humans can extend their personal existence indefinitely through technological means—and an examination of other institutions involved at the end of life, Abou Farman argues that secular immortalism is an important site to explore the tensions inherent in secularism: how to accept death but extend life; knowing the future is open but your future is finite; that life has meaning but the universe is meaningless. As secularism denies a soul, an afterlife, and a cosmic purpose, conflicts arise around the relationship of mind and body, individual finitude and the infinity of time and the cosmos, and the purpose of life. Immortalism today, Farman argues, is shaped by these historical and culturally situated tensions. Immortalist projects go beyond extending life, confronting dualism and cosmic alienation by imagining (and producing) informatic selves separate from the biological body but connected to a cosmic unfolding.On Not Dying interrogates the social implications of technoscientific immortalism and raises important political questions. Whose life will be extended? Will these technologies be available to all, or will they reproduce racial and geopolitical hierarchies? As human life on earth is threatened in the Anthropocene, why should life be extended, and what will that prolonged existence look like?Trade Review"If Bruno Latour once argued that we have never been modern, then Abou Farman shows convincingly that we have also never, really, been secular. On Not Dying challenges we secularists to recognize that distinctions between mind and matter, ghost and machine, religion and science have only ever been provisional grounds for a secular world that is increasingly in question."—David Valentine, University of Minnesota"For atheists, death is the end of the human being, but for religious believers, there is an afterlife in another world. Abou Farman describes the ambition of secular immortalists as abolitioning death (assumed to be an intrinsic fact of life) through means of technoscience. In this brilliant study of the cryonics movement, Farman has taken the anthropology of science in a highly original and mind-widening direction."—Talal Asad, Graduate Center, City University of New York"Unmissable and vital reading."—Neural"This is no celebration of cryonic ‘immortalism’ but rather a fascinating appraisal of certain existential binds into which we secularists have gotten ourselves and of immortalists’ exploitation of those binds to advance a techno‐utopian vision of a very particular posthuman future."—American Anthropologist"On Not Dying is a wonderfully crafted ethnography which will appeal to a wide array of audiences including, but not restricted to, those interested in STS, anthropology and the history of science."—Somatosphere "The absence of characterological complexity opens a space for both an intensive history of secularist perspectives on mortality, and a cornucopia of philosophical provocations on humanism, temporality, cosmos, and more."—Medical Anthropology Quarterly Table of ContentsContentsPreface: Realm of the PossibleAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Problems of Discontinuity and Indeterminacy in a Secular World1. After Life: Varieties of Immortality in the Secular World2. Immortalism: The History of a Futuristic Movement3. Suspension: Stretching Time between the Finite and the Infinite4. Deanimation: Matter, Materialism, and Personhood beyond Death5. Convergence: Secular Solipsism and the Mind of the Cosmos6. Progress and Despair: The Perverse Dialectics of Immortality as Techno-Civilizing MissionNotesBibliographyIndex
£86.40
University of Minnesota Press On Not Dying: Secular Immortality in the Age of
Book SynopsisAn ethnographic exploration of technoscientific immortality Immortality has long been considered the domain of religion. But immortality projects have gained increasing legitimacy and power in the world of science and technology. With recent rapid advances in biology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, secular immortalists hope for and work toward a future without death.On Not Dying is an anthropological, historical, and philosophical exploration of immortality as a secular and scientific category. Based on an ethnography of immortalist communities—those who believe humans can extend their personal existence indefinitely through technological means—and an examination of other institutions involved at the end of life, Abou Farman argues that secular immortalism is an important site to explore the tensions inherent in secularism: how to accept death but extend life; knowing the future is open but your future is finite; that life has meaning but the universe is meaningless. As secularism denies a soul, an afterlife, and a cosmic purpose, conflicts arise around the relationship of mind and body, individual finitude and the infinity of time and the cosmos, and the purpose of life. Immortalism today, Farman argues, is shaped by these historical and culturally situated tensions. Immortalist projects go beyond extending life, confronting dualism and cosmic alienation by imagining (and producing) informatic selves separate from the biological body but connected to a cosmic unfolding.On Not Dying interrogates the social implications of technoscientific immortalism and raises important political questions. Whose life will be extended? Will these technologies be available to all, or will they reproduce racial and geopolitical hierarchies? As human life on earth is threatened in the Anthropocene, why should life be extended, and what will that prolonged existence look like?Trade Review"If Bruno Latour once argued that we have never been modern, then Abou Farman shows convincingly that we have also never, really, been secular. On Not Dying challenges we secularists to recognize that distinctions between mind and matter, ghost and machine, religion and science have only ever been provisional grounds for a secular world that is increasingly in question."—David Valentine, University of Minnesota"For atheists, death is the end of the human being, but for religious believers, there is an afterlife in another world. Abou Farman describes the ambition of secular immortalists as abolitioning death (assumed to be an intrinsic fact of life) through means of technoscience. In this brilliant study of the cryonics movement, Farman has taken the anthropology of science in a highly original and mind-widening direction."—Talal Asad, Graduate Center, City University of New York"Unmissable and vital reading."—Neural"This is no celebration of cryonic ‘immortalism’ but rather a fascinating appraisal of certain existential binds into which we secularists have gotten ourselves and of immortalists’ exploitation of those binds to advance a techno‐utopian vision of a very particular posthuman future."—American Anthropologist"On Not Dying is a wonderfully crafted ethnography which will appeal to a wide array of audiences including, but not restricted to, those interested in STS, anthropology and the history of science."—Somatosphere "The absence of characterological complexity opens a space for both an intensive history of secularist perspectives on mortality, and a cornucopia of philosophical provocations on humanism, temporality, cosmos, and more."—Medical Anthropology Quarterly Table of ContentsContentsPreface: Realm of the PossibleAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Problems of Discontinuity and Indeterminacy in a Secular World1. After Life: Varieties of Immortality in the Secular World2. Immortalism: The History of a Futuristic Movement3. Suspension: Stretching Time between the Finite and the Infinite4. Deanimation: Matter, Materialism, and Personhood beyond Death5. Convergence: Secular Solipsism and the Mind of the Cosmos6. Progress and Despair: The Perverse Dialectics of Immortality as Techno-Civilizing MissionNotesBibliographyIndex
£23.39
University of Minnesota Press Saving Animals: Multispecies Ecologies of Rescue
Book SynopsisA fascinating and unprecedented ethnography of animal sanctuaries in the United States In the past three decades, animal rights advocates have established everything from elephant sanctuaries in Africa to shelters that rehabilitate animals used in medical testing, to homes for farmed animals, abandoned pets, and entertainment animals that have outlived their “usefulness.” Saving Animals is the first major ethnography to focus on the ethical issues animating the establishment of such places, where animals who have been mistreated or destined for slaughter are allowed to live out their lives simply being animals. Based on fieldwork at animal rescue facilities across the United States, Elan Abrell asks what “saving,” “caring for,” and “sanctuary” actually mean. He considers sanctuaries as laboratories where caregivers conceive and implement new models of caring for and relating to animals. He explores the ethical decision making around sanctuary efforts to unmake property-based human–animal relations by creating spaces in which humans interact with animals as autonomous subjects. Saving Animals illustrates how caregivers and animals respond by cocreating new human–animal ecologies adapted to the material and social conditions of the Anthropocene.Bridging anthropology with animal studies and political philosophy, Saving Animals asks us to imagine less harmful modes of existence in a troubled world where both animals and humans seek sanctuary.Trade Review "When Elan Abrell visited VINE, we put him to work mucking out the barn. He threw himself into the work whole-heartedly, seizing the opportunity to immerse himself in everyday life at the sanctuary. We could see that he understood why we require visitors to help co-create our community by adding their own labor to the mix. In Saving Animals, Abrell brings the same combination of vigor, rigor, and acuity to the challenge of thinking care-fully about the many ethical questions that arise in the course of rescue and sanctuary work."—pattrice jones, cofounder of VINE Sanctuary "Groundbreaking in both its focus and its depth, Saving Animals is essential reading for anyone interested in the complexities of building less-exploitative relationships with animals, whether in the context of a sactuary or in one's home."—American Anthropologist Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction1. Coming to Sanctuary2. Care and Rescue3. Creating and Operating Sanctuaries4. Animal DeathConclusion: Why Do Sanctuaries Matter?AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
£77.60
