Social and cultural anthropology Books

Book SynopsisA detailed ethnographic and historical study of the implications of fast-track land reform in Zimbabwe from the perspective of those involved in land occupations around Lake Mutirikwi, from the colonial period to the present day. Finalist for the African Studies Association 2016 Melville J. Herskovits Award The Mutirikwi river was dammed in the early 1960s to make Zimbabwe's second largest lake. This was a key moment in the Europeanisation of Mutirikwi's landscapes, which had begun with colonial land appropriations in the 1890s. But African landscapes were not obliterated by the dam. They remained active and affective. At independence in 1980, local clans reasserted ancestral land claims in a wave of squatting around Lake Mutirikwi. They were soon evicted as the new government asserted control over the remaking of Mutirikwi's landscapes. Amid fast-track land reform in the 2000s, the same people returned again to reclaim the land. Many returned to the graves and ruins of past lives forged in the very substance of the soil, and even incoming war veterans and new farmers appealed to autochthonous knowledge to make safe theirresettlements. This book explores those reoccupations and the complex contests over landscape, water and belonging they provoked. The 2000s may have heralded a long-delayed re-Africanisation of Lake Mutirikwi, but just as African presence had survived the dam, so white presence remains active and affective through Rhodesian-era discourses, place-names and the materialities of ruined farms, contour ridging and old irrigation schemes. Through lenses focused on the political materialities of water and land, this book reveals how the remaking of Mutirikwi's landscapes has always been deeply entangled with changing strategies of colonial and postcolonial statecraft. It highlights howthe traces of different pasts intertwine in contemporary politics through the active, enduring yet emergent, forms and substances of landscape. Joost Fontein is Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa.Trade ReviewFontein's interdisciplinary approach as an anthropologist, a sociologist, an ecologist, and a historian provides further credence to his writings.Fontein may have opened the door for a whole new understanding of peoples and places. * AFRICAN AFFAIRS *Highly recommended, both for those interested in detailed analyses of (the impact of) land reform in Zimbabwe, as well as those interested in more theoretical debates about the significance of materialities in anthropology and history. * ANTHROPOLOGY SOUTHERN AFRICA *This is a story of a tangle of imminent pasts and imagined futures firmly rooted in the substances of Mutirikwi . many audiences . will want to journey through the pasts and futures of this book. * IJAHS *T]his handsome volume helps readers to wrestle with the complexities of matter, experience, and time in southern Africa. Fontein's scholarship will interest students of African Studies, landscape, African history and historiography, materiality, development studies, and critical heritage studies. * JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY *Basing his book on extensive fieldwork, in-depth oral interviews, and an intimate understanding of the historical and social context, Fontein provides an exceptionally detailed analysis. . . . The moving stories of informants, vivid photos, and helpful maps make for an excellent work. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsRemaking Mutirikwi: An Introduction PART ONE: Remaking Mutirikwi in the 2000s New farmers, old claims Graves, ruins & belonging Rain, power & sovereignty Hippos, fishing & irrigation PART TWO: Damming Mutirikwi, 1940s-1990s Genealogical geographies New white futures, new Rhodesian settlers & large-scale irrigation, 1940s-1950s Remaking Victorian landscapes, 1950s-1960s War & danger in the wake of the dam, 1970s Promised returns & frustrated futures in the wake of war, 1980s-1990s Epilogue: Remaking Mutirikwi in the late 2000s and early 2010s

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Book SynopsisExamines the making and remaking of Nairobi, one of Africa's most fragmented, vibrant cities, contributing to debates on urban anthropology, the politics of the past and postcolonial materialities. What does it mean to make a life in an African city today? How do ordinary Africans, surrounded by collapsing urban infrastructures and amid fantastical promises of hypermodern, globalised futures, try to ensure a place for themselves in the city's future? Exploring the relationship between the remains of empire and the global city, and themes of urban belonging and exclusion, housing and security, Constance Smith examines the making and remaking of one ofAfrica's most fragmented, vibrant cities. Nairobi is on the cusp of radical urban change. As in other capital cities across Africa, the Kenyan government has launched "Vision 2030", an urban megaproject that envisions the capital as a "world class metropolis", a spectacular new node in a network of global cities. Yet as a city born of British colonialism, Nairobians also live amongst the dilapidated vestiges of imperial urban planning; spaces designed to regulate urban subjects. Based on extensive ethnographic research in a dilapidated, colonial-era public housing project built as a model urban neighbourhood but which is now slated for demolition, Smith explores how projects of self-making and city-making are entwined. She traces how it is through residents' everyday lives - in the mundane, incremental work of home maintenance, in the accumulation of stories about the past, in ordinary people's aspirations for the future - that urban landscapes are formed, imaginatively, materially and unpredictably, across time. Nairobi emerges as a place of pathways and plans, obstructions and aspirations, residues and endurances, thatinflect the way that ordinary people produce the city, generating practices of historymaking, ideas about urban belonging and attempts to refashion "Vision 2030" into a future more meaningful and inclusive to ordinary city dwellers. Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania,Rwanda: Twaweza CommunicationsTrade ReviewAlthough an academic text, this book will be informative for a wider audience including planners, consultants and policymakers. It should serve as essential reading for those undertaking planning in cities, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and as a primer for understanding the complex realities that shape urban areas. * LSE REVIEW OF BOOKS *Researchers interested in understanding urban development from an ethnographic lens will find inspiration in the different perspectives of this book as it illustrates the plea of inclusivity by the residents yearning to co-own national visions together with its bearer rather than being simply by-standers/on-lookers. In addition, the book is resourceful in understanding Nairobi from a residential historical perspective and how this history is embedded in the present urban architecture. The use of photography provides a clearer understanding to the reader of the character of the neighbourhood and the different concepts presented in the book. * H-Soz-Kult *This delicious ethnography, full of familiar actions, turns of phrase, habits, and logics, pays close attention to minute details that repeat and accumulate and build mass, bumping up against the present in important ways. In the process, Smith forces us to reexamine some temporal concepts such as decay, memory, and disintegration to understand their generative qualities. For Smith, decay is not loss but rather accumulation or excess-excess that accumulates to make the fabric of the city, a felted fabric densely matted and entangled, held together through friction. * African Studies Review *Smith has done empathetic and adventurous fieldwork. * H-AFRICA *Table of ContentsIntroduction PART I: PRESENT PASTS, UNCERTAIN FUTURES Making a Place over Time Dirt, Remains and Decay Performing Property, Making History PART II: MAKING NEW HORIZONS Land, Home and Funerals Constructing Security Claims Making the Future in the Shadow of Vision 2030 Conclusion: Belonging to the future

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Book SynopsisExamines the new challenges facing Africa's pastoral drylands from large-scale investments and how this might affect the economic and political landscape for the regions affected and their peoples. More than ever before, the gaze of global investment has been directed to the drylands of Africa, but what does this mean for these regions' pastoralists and other livestock-keepers and their livelihoods? Will those who have occupied drylands over generations benefit from the developments, as claimed, or is this a new type of territorialisation, exacerbating social inequality? This book's detailed local studies of investments at various stages of development - from Kenya, Tanzania, Somaliland, Ethiopia - explore, for the first time, how large land, resource and infrastructure projects shape local politics and livelihoods. Land and resources use, based on ancestral precedenceand communal practices, and embedded regional systems of trade, are unique to these areas, yet these lands are now seen as the new frontier for development of national wealth. By examining the ways in which large-scale investmentsenmesh with local political and social relations, the chapters show how even the most elaborate plans of financiers, contractors and national governments come unstuck and are re-made in the guise of not only states' grand modernist visions, but also those of herders and small-town entrepreneurs in the pastoral drylands. The contributors also demonstrate how and why large-scale investments have advanced in a more piecemeal way as the challenges of implementation have mounted. JEREMY LIND is Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. DORIS OKENWA holds a PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics. IAN SCOONES is a Professorial Fellow at the IDS, University of Sussex and co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre.Trade ReviewThis rich and highly informative book highlights local understanding of investment projects and offers interpretations of how their meaning and importance are framed by diverse agents. * Pastoralism *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Politics of Land, Resources & Investment in Eastern Africa's Pastoral Drylands - Jeremy Lind Introduction: The Politics of Land, Resources & Investment in Eastern Africa's Pastoral Drylands - Doris Okenwa Introduction: The Politics of Land, Resources & Investment in Eastern Africa's Pastoral Drylands - Ian Scoones Local Transformations of LAPSSET: Evidence from Lamu, Kenya - Ngala Chome Town Making at the Gateway to Kenya's "New Frontier" - Hannah Elliott Contentious Benefits & Subversive Oil Politics in Kenya - Doris Okenwa Meanings of Place & Struggles for Inclusion in the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project - James Drew Conflict & Resistance around a Rice Development Scheme in the SAGCOT Area of Tanzania - Adriana Blache Hosting Refugees as an Investment in Development: Grand Designs versus Local Expectations in Turkana County, Kenya - Cory Rodgers Negotiating Access to Land & Resources at the Geothermal Frontier in Baringo, Kenya - Clemens Greiner The Berbera Corridor Development & Somaliland's Political Economy - Ahmed M. Musa State-building, Market Integration & Local Responses in South Omo, Ethiopia - Fana Gebresenbet The Impacts of Delay: Exploring a Failed Large-scale Agro-investment in Tanzania - Linda Engström Twilight Institutions: Land-buying Companies & their Long-term Implications in Laikipia, Kenya - Marie Ladekjær Gravesen Farmer-led Irrigation Investments: How Local Innovators are Transforming Failed Irrigation Schemes - Gregory Akall Shifting Regimes of Violence within Ethiopia's Awash Valley Investment Frontier - Simone Rettberg

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Book SynopsisExamines the new challenges facing Africa's pastoral drylands from large-scale investments and how this might affect the economic and political landscape for the regions affected and their peoples. More than ever before, the gaze of global investment has been directed to the drylands of Africa, but what does this mean for these regions' pastoralists and other livestock-keepers and their livelihoods? Will those who have occupied drylands over generations benefit from the developments, as claimed, or is this a new type of territorialisation, exacerbating social inequality? This book's detailed local studies of investments at various stages of development - from Kenya, Tanzania, Somaliland, Ethiopia - explore, for the first time, how large land, resource and infrastructure projects shape local politics and livelihoods. Land and resources use, based on ancestral precedenceand communal practices, and embedded regional systems of trade, are unique to these areas, yet these lands are now seen as the new frontier for development of national wealth. By examining the ways in which large-scale investmentsenmesh with local political and social relations, the chapters show how even the most elaborate plans of financiers, contractors and national governments come unstuck and are re-made in the guise of not only states' grand modernist visions, but also those of herders and small-town entrepreneurs in the pastoral drylands. The contributors also demonstrate how and why large-scale investments have advanced in a more piecemeal way as the challenges of implementation have mounted. JEREMY LIND is Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. DORIS OKENWA holds a PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics. IAN SCOONES is a Professorial Fellow at the IDS, University of Sussex and co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Politics of Land, Resources & Investment in Eastern Africa's Pastoral Drylands - Jeremy Lind Introduction: The Politics of Land, Resources & Investment in Eastern Africa's Pastoral Drylands - Doris Okenwa Introduction: The Politics of Land, Resources & Investment in Eastern Africa's Pastoral Drylands - Ian Scoones Local Transformations of LAPSSET: Evidence from Lamu, Kenya - Ngala Chome Town Making at the Gateway to Kenya's "New Frontier" - Hannah Elliott Contentious Benefits & Subversive Oil Politics in Kenya - Doris Okenwa Meanings of Place & Struggles for Inclusion in the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project - James Drew Conflict & Resistance around a Rice Development Scheme in the SAGCOT Area of Tanzania - Adriana Blache Hosting Refugees as an Investment in Development: Grand Designs versus Local Expectations in Turkana County, Kenya - Cory Rodgers Negotiating Access to Land & Resources at the Geothermal Frontier in Baringo, Kenya - Clemens Greiner The Berbera Corridor Development & Somaliland's Political Economy - Ahmed M. Musa State-building, Market Integration & Local Responses in South Omo, Ethiopia - Fana Gebresenbet The Impacts of Delay: Exploring a Failed Large-scale Agro-investment in Tanzania - Linda Engström Twilight Institutions: Land-buying Companies & their Long-term Implications in Laikipia, Kenya - Marie Ladekjær Gravesen Farmer-led Irrigation Investments: How Local Innovators are Transforming Failed Irrigation Schemes - Gregory Akall Shifting Regimes of Violence within Ethiopia's Awash Valley Investment Frontier - Simone Rettberg

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Book SynopsisInnovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and postcolonial politics. In 1898, just before she was hanged for rebelling against colonial rule, Charwe Nyakasikana, spirit medium of the legendary ancestor Ambuya Nehanda, famously prophesised that "my bones will rise again". A century later bones, bodies and human remains have come to occupy an increasingly complex place in Zimbabwe's postcolonial milieu. From ancestral "bones" rising again in the struggle for independence, and later land, to resurfacing bones of unsettled wardead; and from the troubling decaying remains of post-independence gukurahundi massacres to the leaky, tortured bodies of recent election violence, human materials are intertwined in postcolonial politics in ways that go far beyond, yet necessarily implicate, contests over memory, commemoration and the representation of the past. In this book Joost Fontein examines the complexities of human remains in Zimbabwe's 'politics of the dead'. Challenging and innovative, he takes us beyond current scholarship on memory, commemoration and the changing significance of 'traditional' death practices, to examine the political implications of human remains as material substances, as duplicitous rumours, and as returning spirits. Linking the indeterminacy of human substances to the productive but precarious uncertainties of rumours and spirits, the book points to how the incompleteness of death is politically productive and ultimately derives from the problematic, entangled excessivities of human material and immaterial existence, and is deeply intertwined with the stylistics of postcolonial power and politics. Joost Fontein is Professor of Anthropology, University of Johannesburg. He was previously Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water and Belonging (James Currey, 2015), shortlisted for the African Studies Association 2016 Herskovits Prize. Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana): University of Johannesburg PressTrade ReviewAn innovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and post-colonial politics. * Zimbabwe Review *This very important book offers valuable contributions to our understanding of the everyday politics of the dead in Zimbabwe. The author's theorization and discussion of the typologies of death, bones, and human remains are useful to a wider audience, within and beyond Zimbabwe, including academics and graduate students within the field of anthropology and sociology of death, political and contemporary history of Zimbabwe, and spirituality and religious studies. -- Death StudiesBeyond doubt, this is a 'must-have' work for all interested in the relationship between death and the broader, intriguing Zimbabwean past. -- Journal of Southern African StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction Changing death and human corporeality across Africa and beyond The politics of the dead in Zimbabwe The power of uncertainty Sources and structure of the book 1 Liberation Heritage: Bones and the politics of commemoration The burial of Gift Tandare Heritage and commemoration Heritage and commemoration in Zimbabwe Liberation heritage Unsettling Bones 2 Bones & Tortured Bodies: Corporealities of violence and post-violence Resurfacing bones Emotive materiality, affective presence and transforming materials Tortured bodies Towards 'healing' and 'reconciliation' during the GNU 2009-2013 Conclusions 3 Chibondo: Exhumations, uncertainty and the excessivity of human materials The Chibondo exhumations Too 'fresh', 'intact', fleshy, leaky and stinky? The torque of materiality and the excessive potentiality of human remains The politics of uncertainty Conclusions 4 Political Accidents: Rumours, death and the politics of uncertainty The death of Solomon Mujuru Factionalism, rivalries and murky business dealings The inquest A particular kind of death Conclusions 5 Precarious Possession: Rotina Mavhunga, politics and the uncertainties of mediumship Rotina Mavhunga - the diesel n'anga Precarious occupation 6 Mai Melissa: Towards the alterity of spirit and the incompleteness of death Towards the alterity of spirit Conclusions 7 After Mugabe Burying Bob Conclusions Bodies and spirits, change and continuity AIDS, cholera, Congo, prisons, Chiadzwa, diaspora, FTLR, and charismatic Pentecostalisms New directions for liberation heritage Ambuya Nehanda returns? Exhuming Bob?

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Book SynopsisA groundbreaking analysis of 21st century labour practices in the mining industry and the new scramble for industrial power on the African continent. Since the beginning of the 21st century, African countries with mineral resources have witnessed an unprecedented rise in foreign direct investments and the development of new flexible workforce management practices in the mining industry. But what does this mean for those who actually work in this industry? Based on research in the Congo and Zambia, where a mining boom has led to more than thirty new mining projects in recent years, this book explores the processes of improvisation and adaptation behind the emergence of this neoliberal labour regime. The contributors show how mining projects' labour practices have been mediated, negotiated, or resisted by mine workers, unionists, and human resource managers. They discuss variations in labour practices put in place by new mining projects depending on the type of capital involved, the type of mine being developed, and their location. Finally, the book examines the implications of power dynamics surrounding companies' labour strategies from the broader perspective of the responsibility of trade unions, gender equality, and identity politics.Trade ReviewExposes a new history for thinking about labor in highly contested resource regions of the neoliberal order and what is soon to become a more fascistic and protective order of international economics after neoliberalism. ... Should be read by anyone working on mining in modern Africa, as it offers a broader history than the southern African focus of most work on African mining. As well, the work would be a welcome addition for broader readers looking to understand labor relations and the history of organizing in postcolonial spaces. -- African Studies QuarterlyTable of ContentsIntroduction: Mining Capitalism from Below by Benjamin Rubbers Labour Regimes: A Comparative History by Benjamin Rubbers and Emma Lochery Safety: The Politics of Life in a Neoliberal Labour Regime by James Musonda and Francesca Pugliese Gender: Navigating a Male-dominated Space by Francesca Pugliese and James Musonda Union Elections: Marketing 'Modern' Unionism by Kristien Geenen and Thomas McNamara Strikes: Claiming Union Power in Chinese Companies by Thomas McNamara and Kristien Geenen Human Resource Managers: Mediating Capital and Labour by Emma Lochery and Benjamin Rubbers Conclusion: Beyond the Neoliberal Labour Regime by Benjamin Rubbers

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Book SynopsisKey book on the debates surrounding the knowledge economy and decolonialization of African Studies, that brings the subject up to date for the 21st century. Decolonization of knowledge has become a major issue in African Studies in recent years, brought to the fore by social movements such as #RhodesMustFall and #BlackLivesMatter. This timely book explores the politics and disputed character of knowledge production in colonial and postcolonial Uganda, where efforts to generate forms of knowledge and solidarity that transcend colonial epistemologies draw on long histories of resistance and refusal. Bringing together scholars from Africa, Europe and North America, the contributors in this volume analyse how knowledge has been created, mobilized, and contested across a wide range of Ugandan contexts. In so doing, they reveal how Ugandans have built, disputed, and reimagined institutions of authority and knowledge production in ways that disrupt the colonial frames that continue to shape scholarly analyses and state structures. From the politics of language and gender in Bakiga naming practices to ways of knowing among the Acholi, the hampering of critical scholarship by militarism and authoritarianism, and debates over the names of streets, lakes, mountains, and other public spaces, this book shows how scholars and a wide range of Ugandan activists are reimagining the politics of knowledge in Ugandan public life.Table of Contents1. Introduction, by Edgar C. Taylor, Katherine Bruce-Lockhart, Jonathon L. Earle and Nakanyike Musisi PART 1: FRAMING KNOWLEDGE 2. Decolonial Dilemmas and Burdened Epistemic Heritages in Names and Naming among the Bakiga, by Tushabe wa Tushabe 3. Poetic Violence? Intimate Understandings of Cattle Raiding in Karamoja, by David Eaton 4. Spirits of Difference: Religion, Healing, and Decolonisation in Acholi, by Letha Victor 5. Contested Freedoms: Human Rights, Decolonization, and Political Agency in Postcolonial Uganda, by Lydia Boyd 6. The First White Man to See the Nile: Decolonising History Education in Uganda, by Ashley L. Greene PART 2: IMAGINING INSTITUTIONS 7. Militarism and the Dilemmas of Decolonising Knowledge in Uganda, by Moses Khisa 8. Institutional Knowledge and the Ugandan Public Service: From Colonialism and Neocolonialism to the New Public Service, by Genevieve Meyers 9. Local Knowledge and Knowledge of the 'Locals':The Political Ambivalence of Bureaucratic Knowledge in Uganda's Villages, by Florence Brisset-Foucault 10. Coloniality and Power in Uganda's Archives, by Riley Linebaugh and Katherine Bruce-Lockhart 11. Higher Art Education & New Initiatives in Kampala: Potentials and Problems of Decolonising Knowledge, by Margaret Nagawa and Fiona Siegenthaler PART 3: MAKING PUBLICS 12. Repudiating a Liberal Framework for Political Accountability: The Politics of the Whole versus the Politics of the Party in Uganda in the 1940s, by Holly Hanson 13. Decolonising Citizenship and Identity Contestations: Revisiting the Historicity of the Indian Question in Uganda, by Asiimwe B. Godfrey 14. Liberation Ethnology: District Decolonialism, State Knowledge Production, and the Neoliberal Revolution in Uganda, by Adrian Browne 15. Finding Ourselves, Seeing Ourselves: Nationalism and Reclaiming Colonial Spaces in Uganda, by Daniel Kalinaki & Rebecca Rwakabukoza 16. Rudeness/Incivility as Political Strategy: The Poetics and Politics of Stella Nyanzi's Facebook Work, by Danson Sylvester Kahyana

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Book SynopsisThe history of the often-overlooked chewa Ethiopian warriors and their crucial role in defending their homeland against invasion, as well as their strong influence on political identity and the social infrastructure. Today best known for their role in defending Ethiopia from Italian invasion 1935-41, chewa warriors protected Ethiopia for centuries. Yet, depicted by some 19th-century Western observers as little more than "a horde" of warmongers, and later suppressed by Ethiopian monarchs who sought to create a centralized modern state, their contribution has been neglected. Drawing on oral and written sources, as well as the zeraf poetry through which theyexpressed themselves, this book explores for the first time in depth the history, practices and principles of warriorhood of the chewa, and their wider influence on society and state. Often self-trained individuals who began by defending their communities, by the end of the 19th century there were chewa warrior groups from almost all linguistic groups who fought together to resist foreign invaders. Some chewa enrolled in the service of the Ethiopian "kings of kings", who organized them as named corps that supplemented the formal defence of the state. Today, chewa political identity, which transcended social, familial, political and other groupings, remains deeply rooted in Ethiopian society.Trade ReviewIn Ethiopian Warriorhood: Defence, Land and Society, Tsehai Berhane-Selassie provides a nuanced analysis of the role of the chewa - voluntary, community supported warriors - in the evolution of the Ethiopian state. .[F]or historians of the Horn, this book provides a valuable analysis of state formation that shifts the focus from individual monarchs to a misunderstood group of intermediary actors, and adds a new layer to the complicated history of land rights in Ethiopia. * CANADIAN JOURNAL OF AFRICAN STUDIES / REVUE CANADIENNE DES ÉTUDES AFRICAINES *[Tsehai Berhane-Selassie's] book is a thoroughly researched contribution in the growing literature of Ethiopian social history. It is truly an insider view carefully drawn from oral testimonies such as heroic recitals and various written accounts of historical importance. .The study should truly interest academic scholars, policy makers, students, and education experts alike. * AFRICAN STUDIES QUARTERLY *The book (composed of ten chapters) is well written and extensively footnoted. [...] She [the author] should indeed be congratulated for her splendid contribution to Ethiopian studies. * Aethiopica *It is very recently that indigenous thought acquired currency in the scholarly world. Tsehai's current book is pioneering in this regard. [...]Her book is a thoroughly researched contribution in the growing literature of Ethiopian social history. It is truly an insider view carefully drawn from oral testimonies such as heroic recitals and various written accounts of historical importance. * African Studies Quarterly *Ethiopian Warriorhood provides a data-rich historical ethnography of an imperial institution. From a scholarly perspective, it is a very useful book for students of the modern history and anthropology of the Horn of Africa, as well as of comparative studies on conflict, militarism, and empire. * Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute *A vast and remarkable undertaking, Tsehai's book is a recommended reading for any serious student of Ethiopian history and for all who wish to understand Ethiopia's enduring traditions today. * Orientalistische Literaturzeitung *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction: Traditions of hierarchical warriorhood The historical context of emergent warriors Military lands and power politics Ecological roots of local leadership Social localities of emergent warriors Military training in sports, horsemanship and hunting Political authority and military power Zeraf: symbols and rituals of power and rebellion First Italian invasion, 1896 Guerrilla warfare, 1935-41 Conclusion

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Book SynopsisA fresh perspective on conflict and peace-making that highlights the cosmologies and invisible entities that state, society and religious authorities draw on to claim or reclaim legitimacy and control. Peace-making can be a violent, arbitrary assertion of power. At the same time, the spheres of power, politics and religion are rarely discrete: when governments behave like gods through demonstrations of arbitrary violence, the remaking of moral and spiritual worlds can provide radical ways to contest the brutality of both conflict and peace. This book is an exploration of the way that Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities living around the Bilnyang and connected river systems in Warrap and Unity States in South Sudan have experienced peace-making and conflict in an increasingly militarized South Sudan. The book traces patterns of violence in peace-making back to colonial and mercantile activities in the late 19th century, but focuses on the period since the 1980s. Challenging dominant understandings of conflict and peace centred on neo-liberal brokerage and settlements or a politics entirely driven by instrumentalist, neo-patrimonial, marketized logics, this book shows how South Sudanese authorities, particularly religious authorities, have contested the legitimacy of violence and peace by drawing on divinely inspired notions of authority and norms of conduct. Drawing on archive, ethnographic and oral history research, as well as participant observations of the elite peace negotiations since 2013, Pendle describes the peace-making efforts of a range of actors from international diplomats to chiefs, Nuer prophets and local priests, to show how peace-making in South Sudan became an instrument used by actors to build authority by reshaping rituals, remaking hierarchies and re-encoding moral protest against oppressive regimes. By recasting anthropological and historical scholarship on divine authorities and moral communities in South Sudan, this book brings a new perspective to conflict, peace and governance that will be invaluable not only to scholars but to policymakers, practitioners and NGOs. This book is available as an Open Access ebook under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC.Trade ReviewThe book is a significant resource for scholars in the field of conflict management and peace-building, international organisations, policymakers and anyone interested in considering the interplay of religion, governance, tradition, peace-making, and conflict management. -- Nadir A. Nasidi * LSE *Table of ContentsIntroduction I Histories and Archives of Peace and Impunit Introduction 1. Priestly Peace and the Divinity of the Gun: The coming of government in the late 19th and early 20th centuries 2. Sacred Authority and Judicial Peace: Peace-making during the Anglo-Egyptian Condominum II. Negotiating Peace 3. Regulating the Proliferation of Divine Power: Wars 1980s-2000s 4. 'Local peace' and the Silencing of the Dead: The 1999 Wunlit Peace Meeting 5. The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement 6. The Proliferation of Conflict in Gogrial, post-2005 7. The Proliferation of Peace in Gogrial, 2005-2020 8. For Peace or Payment? The bany e bith and the logics of peace-making in Gogrial, 2005-2020 9. Cosmological Crisis and Continuing Conflict in Unity State, 2005-2013 10. Prophetic Proliferations: making Peace in Unity State, 2005-2013 III. Logics of Peace and the Shape of War 11. A War for the Dead and Wars Made by Peace 12. Prophets Making Peace: Peace-making in Unity State, post-2013 13. Peace and Unending Wars in Warrap State, post-2013 14. The Problems of Forgiveness, 2013-2020 Conclusion: The cosmic politics of peace in South Sudan

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Book SynopsisExplores the dynamics of African masquerades and mask performances on the continent, linking performative expressions to societal characteristics. What is the meaning of masks and masquerades in African traditions and how can we understand their role in rituals and performances? Why do we find masks in some African regions and not in others, and what does this 'mask habitat' say about the general dynamics of masquerades in Africa? Though masks are among the most famous art icons of Africa, exploration of their uses and the way in which they articulate social characteristics of African societies has been underexamined. This book takes an anthropological perspective on the phenomenon of masquerades on the African continent to show how mask rituals are an integral part of African indigenous religions and societies, and are informed by and linked to specific types of social and ecological conditions. Having established the commonalities of mask rituals and a mask typology, the authors look at the varieties of mask performances and the types of rituals in which masks function in rites of passage and in rituals of gender, power, and identity. The following chapters focus on different types of rituals featuring masks, from initiation and death ceremonies to secrecy, kingship, law and war. With its broad examination of the use of masks on the continent, from Angola to Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DRC, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, this well illustrated book will stand as an authoritative study of the use of masks, of interest not only to those in African Studies but to anthropologists and ethnographers worldwide.Table of ContentsIntroduction - Enter the mask - The study of masking - Structure of the book The Masking Crescent: Distribution of Masks and Masking in Africa 1. Mask Distribution and Theory - Masking zones - Theoretical approach - Parameters of masking - Profiles of masking societies - The zebu exclusion - Methodology 2. What is a Mask - Explaining masks: The Magritte effect - A basic mask typology - Bush, spirits, ancestors, and other people - Masks and power - Tradition, prototype and invention - Conclusion 3. Masks and Masculinity: Initiation - Chewing the mask - Separation from the mother - Liminal revelation - Mask and circumcision - Symbols of gender: Death and food - Communitas and age - Masks and masculinities - Conclusion 4. Secrecy and Power - Writing on the mask - Dimensions of secrecy - Initiation societies and the empty secret - The sound of secrecy - Ethics, society, and secrecy - Conclusion 5. Death and its Masks - Singing at the mask - Burial and the farewells - Burial by masks - Funeral as initiation - Individual and society in funerals - Masks and the second funeral - Celebrating life - Conclusion 6. Women: Pivot of the Masks - The first mask - Gender domains - Celebrating femininity - Women dancing with masks - The mask of the woman is her body - Conclusion 7. Masks and Politics - Masks for father - Masks and the history of the patriline - Feasting the sultan - The mask as king - Initiation, masks, and regicide - Masquerades and modern politics - Conclusion: The Akan gap 8. Masks and the Order of Things - Masks in the field - Masks and the adjudication of law - The discourse on witchcraft - Masks versus 'witches' - 'Uncovering witchcraft': A mask performance abroad - 'War masks' - Conclusion 9. Masks and Modernity - Playful sharks in the Delta - Theatre at Cross River - The king of masks, the elephant of masks - Masks for new audiences - Masks as icons of ethnic identity - Heritage, icon, and commodity - Conclusion 10. Memories of Power, Power of Memories - Arrest that mask! - Satire, the weapon of the weak - Masquerades and the slaving state - From Africa to the African Diaspora - Conclusion 11. Conclusion - The cultural niche for masquerades - A future for masks? Bibliography Sources for ethnographic cases Picture credits Index

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Book SynopsisFinalist for the African Studies Association's 2021 Best Book Prize. Explores the limits of law in changing unequal land relations in Kenya. Why, despite the introduction of new land laws beginning in 2012, has there been an increase in land grabbing in Kenya? Why has legislation failed to address long standing grievances about grossly unequal land distribution? This important book suggests that questions of justice should be central to discussions of African land reform. Constitutional reformers in Kenya promised transformative changes in land relations. However, the reality has disappointed. Land law reforms since 2010 have been more concerned with the administration of land and with bureaucratic power than with the real consequences of unequal access to land for ordinary Kenyans. Manji documents this thwarted struggle and surveys the prospects for genuine change. Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Ambreena Manji is Professor of Land Law and Development at the School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University. Between 2010 and 2014, she was Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Her books include The Politics of Land Reform in Africa (2006). Vita Books: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and South Africa.Trade ReviewThe book makes several important contributions to scholarship on land politics in Kenya. -- Canadian Journal of African StudiesBuilding on her own previous work, as well as the work of notable scholars such as Ghai, McAuslan and Harbeson, Manji provides a detailed overview of the history of the land struggle beginning in the colonial era, through the various commissions of inquiry, the formulation of the NLP, and the incorporation of land issues into the Constitution and drafting of the 2012 land laws. -- Journal of Modern African StudiesTable of ContentsForeword by Dr Willy Mutunga Introduction: What We Talk About When We Talk About Land Land Reform in Kenya: The History of an Idea Making Mischief: Land in Modern Kenya Land and Constitutional Change The New Institutional Framework for Land Governance Land Governance Before the Supreme Court Rethinking Historical Land Injustices Taking Justice Seriously

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Book SynopsisA timely and important examination of the environmental crises, investigating their biophysical, political, economic, and socio-cultural aspects, that reveals why previous conservation efforts failed. The eastern part of the Mau Forest, the most important closed-canopy forest in East Africa, has come under severe threat since the 1990s. In this political ecology Lisa Fuchs exploring the failure of the government-led forest restoration and rehabilitation initiative to 'Save the Mau', launched in 2009, the author examines two of the most contentious issues in Kenya since colonial times: land and the environment. She sheds light on the structural factors and the role of individuals in the forest's destruction and of non-protection and traces the colonial legacy of post-independent environmental conservation policies and practices. In doing so, Fuchs demonstrates that the Mau crisis is more than an environmental crisis: it is also a political, an economic, and a socio-cultural crisis. Though a detailed empirical analysis, the author shows that the 'Mau crisis' led to the near collapse of landscapes and livelihoods in the Mau Forest ecosystem. She traces the implementation of insufficient conservation programmes, which resulted from historical path-dependency and the adoption of global environmental governance blueprints, forest allocation and benefits, and exposes a forest management system that prioritises commercial forest production over biodiversity conservation. Access and entitlements to the highly fertile forest land, and the amalgamation of forest rehabilitation with the reclamation of grabbed public forest are emphasised as a further core contributor to the crisis. The socio-cultural dynamics within and among various forest-dwelling communities, including the indigenous hunting and gathering Ogiek and 'in-migrant' groups, are also analysed. The book highlights that local types of environmentalism are caught between the 'invention of traditions' and 'perverse modernisation' and shows the contradictory effects of the celebrated, highly anticipated but poorly executed 'Save the Mau' initiative, and how the presence of political will to maintain the crisis conditioned its perseverance. Finally, the book proposes realistic alternatives to sustainable forest management in politicised environments, whose relevance and applicability are considerable in this age of anthropogenic 'environmental' crises and conflicts. Published in association with IFRA/AFRICAETable of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Politics of Conservation Aid: The Development State 'Saving the Mau' 2. Institutional Failure or Setting Priorities? The Continuation in Exploitation-focused Forest Management 3. The Political Economy of Land: Maintaining Control over Forest Land Allocation and Distribution 4. The Politics of Belonging and Exclusion in Response to Changes in the Eastern Mau: The Complex Definition of Legitimate Land and Resource Use 5. Conclusions

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Book SynopsisExamines how young male migrants in urban Nairobi navigate the tension between expectations of success and repetitive failure. Pipeline is a low-income, high-rise-tenement settlement in Nairobi's marginalized East and one of sub-Saharan Africa's most densely populated estates. An aspirational place where fleeting forms of capitalist consumption reassure migrants of an upward trajectory, it is also a place where their ambitions of long-term economic success and stable romantic relationships are routinely thwarted. This book explores how men who migrate to Nairobi from Western Kenya navigate this tension that is generated by the contrast between their view of Pipeline as a launching pad for their personal and professional careers and the fact that they face constant economic, romantic, and personal backlashes. Drawing on over two years of fieldwork, the book reveals that many male migrants design their future on trajectories of personal and economic growth but have to adjust or indefinitely postpone their plans once they arrive in Kenya's capital. Under the pressure to succeed from romantic partners, spouses, rural kin, and children, they create and participate in homosocial spaces where a sense of brotherhood emerges and their experience of pressure is attenuated. Alongside a deep ethnographic exploration of how male migrants model their financial, physical, and mental well-being in three different masculine spaces - an ethnically homogenous investment group, an interethnic gym, and the semi-digital sphere of self-help books, workshops, and motivational trainings on man- and fatherhood - this book brings a new perspective to our understanding of urban African life and the nature of masculinity. This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND, with funding from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Open Access Fund and the German Research Foundation.Trade ReviewEthnographically rich and revealing, this highly readable book brings alive the experiences of Nairobi's migrant men at home and in the workplace, among family and friends, and with women and male peers. In vivid, accessible prose and with obvious empathy, Mario Schmidt shows how economic constraints and social obstacles constantly frustrate-but never extinguish-his interlocutors' desires to live up to widely shared expectations of manhood. -- Daniel Jordan Smith * Charles C. Tillinghast, Jr. Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology, Brown University and author of To Be a Man Is Not a One-Day Job: Masculinity, Money, and Intimacy in Nigeria (2017) *In this engrossing and highly readable ethnography, Schmidt traces the changing contours of gender relations among migrants to Nairobi. Both theoretically grounded and ethnographically nuanced, the book sheds important light on how men navigate the relentless anxieties and pressures that mark their day to day lives. Few studies offer such an intimate and textured portrayal of urban lives on the continent. -- Catherine Dolan * Professor of Anthropology, SOAS, University of London *Fascinating, thought-provoking, crucial ethnography of masculinity in the context of youth, aspiration, and structural precarity. The details matter and the stories are vivid, sympathetic, and critical. You can feel the pressure of life in Nairobi's high-rise tenement housing. This book charts new territory for masculinity, migration, and urban studies in Africa. -- Bettina Ng'weno * Associate Professor, UC Davis *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction Part 1: Experiencing Pressure 1. The History and Infrastructure of an Aspirational Estate 2. Economic Pressure and the Expectation of Success 3. Romantic Responsibilities and Marital Mistrust Part 2: Evading Pressure 4. Investing in Male Sociality and Wasteful Masculinity 5. Lifting Weights and the Performance of Brotherhood 6. Masculinity Consultants and the Threat of Men's Expendability Conclusion: Pipeline to Nowhere Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisInnovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and postcolonial politics. In 1898, just before she was hanged for rebelling against colonial rule, Charwe Nyakasikana, spirit medium of the legendary ancestor Ambuya Nehanda, famously prophesised that "my bones will rise again". A century later bones, bodies and human remains have come to occupy an increasingly complex place in Zimbabwe's postcolonial milieu. From ancestral "bones" rising again in the struggle for independence, and later land, to resurfacing bones of unsettled wardead; and from the troubling decaying remains of post-independence gukurahundi massacres to the leaky, tortured bodies of recent election violence, human materials are intertwined in postcolonial politics in ways that go far beyond, yet necessarily implicate, contests over memory, commemoration and the representation of the past. In this book Joost Fontein examines the complexities of human remains in Zimbabwe's 'politics of the dead'. Challenging and innovative, he takes us beyond current scholarship on memory, commemoration and the changing significance of 'traditional' death practices, to examine the political implications of human remains as material substances, as duplicitous rumours, and as returning spirits. Linking the indeterminacy of human substances to the productive but precarious uncertainties of rumours and spirits, the book points to how the incompleteness of death is politically productive and ultimately derives from the problematic, entangled excessivities of human material and immaterial existence, and is deeply intertwined with the stylistics of postcolonial power and politics. Joost Fontein is Professor of Anthropology, University of Johannesburg. He was previously Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His books include Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water and Belonging (James Currey, 2015), shortlisted for the African Studies Association 2016 Herskovits Prize. Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Botswana): University of Johannesburg PressTrade ReviewAn innovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and post-colonial politics. * Zimbabwe Review *This very important book offers valuable contributions to our understanding of the everyday politics of the dead in Zimbabwe. The author's theorization and discussion of the typologies of death, bones, and human remains are useful to a wider audience, within and beyond Zimbabwe, including academics and graduate students within the field of anthropology and sociology of death, political and contemporary history of Zimbabwe, and spirituality and religious studies. -- Death StudiesBeyond doubt, this is a 'must-have' work for all interested in the relationship between death and the broader, intriguing Zimbabwean past. -- Journal of Southern African StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction Changing death and human corporeality across Africa and beyond The politics of the dead in Zimbabwe The power of uncertainty Sources and structure of the book 1 Liberation Heritage: Bones and the politics of commemoration The burial of Gift Tandare Heritage and commemoration Heritage and commemoration in Zimbabwe Liberation heritage Unsettling Bones 2 Bones & Tortured Bodies: Corporealities of violence and post-violence Resurfacing bones Emotive materiality, affective presence and transforming materials Tortured bodies Towards 'healing' and 'reconciliation' during the GNU 2009-2013 Conclusions 3 Chibondo: Exhumations, uncertainty and the excessivity of human materials The Chibondo exhumations Too 'fresh', 'intact', fleshy, leaky and stinky? The torque of materiality and the excessive potentiality of human remains The politics of uncertainty Conclusions 4 Political Accidents: Rumours, death and the politics of uncertainty The death of Solomon Mujuru Factionalism, rivalries and murky business dealings The inquest A particular kind of death Conclusions 5 Precarious Possession: Rotina Mavhunga, politics and the uncertainties of mediumship Rotina Mavhunga - the diesel n'anga Precarious occupation 6 Mai Melissa: Towards the alterity of spirit and the incompleteness of death Towards the alterity of spirit Conclusions 7 After Mugabe Burying Bob Conclusions Bodies and spirits, change and continuity AIDS, cholera, Congo, prisons, Chiadzwa, diaspora, FTLR, and charismatic Pentecostalisms New directions for liberation heritage Ambuya Nehanda returns? Exhuming Bob?

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Book SynopsisA unique historical and linguistic resource for those in anthropology, art, folklore, history, linguistics, literature, psychology, religion, sociology, and environmental studies, as well as performers and poets. Not simply relics of the past, proverbs are an oral tradition containing historical and anthropological knowledge missing from conventional sources, and as micro-histories, provide a valuable source for the reconstruction of the manners, characteristics, and worldviews of societies. While only a few hundred Kamba proverbs have ever appeared in print, thousands have circulated over time, from the monsoon exchange era of the Roman Empire through the advent of Islam, European imperialism and colonialism to independence. Today, a resurgence of interest in the form has been generated via social media, songs and vernacular radio programmes. This book provides the first, comprehensive collection of Kamba proverbs from Eastern Kenya in their original Kĩkamba language and in translation. Analysing 2,000 proverbs drawn from oral interviews, archival collections, museum artefacts and published sources, the author traces the origins of each and explores their meaning, interpretation and use. Covering a diverse range of subjects that ranges from plants, animals, birds and insects, to weather, land, the roles of men and women, cosmology, ritual and belief, healing, trade, politics and peacemaking, the book offers new insights into Kenya's rural world and the expansion of Kamba society, East African history, language and culture of vital significance for the social sciences. A valuable comparative work for societal change elsewhere in Africa and beyond, the book also suggests an innovative, alternative approach to the study of the African past.Trade ReviewRecommended for lovers of proverbs and those interested in East African history and Kamba culture. -- African Studies QuarterlyTable of ContentsPART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Introduction PART II: THE NATURAL WORLD 2. Atmosphere and Biosphere 3. Wild Plants 4. Wild Game 5. Wild Birds 6. Predators and Vermin 7. Insects and their role in Kamba History 8. Amphibians and Reptiles PART III: KAMBA AT HOME 9. Farm, Hearth, and Home 10. Crops and Other Plants 11. Domesticated Animals 12. Men and Masculinity 13. Women and Motherhood 14. Children and Adulthood PART IV: KAMBA SOCIETY 15. Place names and Ethnic names 16. Beliefs, Rituals, and Cosmology 17. Wealth and Poverty 18. Cuisine and Consumption 19. Health, Healing, and the Body 20. Trade, Markets, and Industries 21. Politics, Conflict, and Peacemaking

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Book SynopsisAs a consequence of various rounds of EU enlargements, the degree of cultural diversity in Europe has intensified - a phenomenon which is increasingly perceived as problematic by many EU citizens. This fascinating book not only empirically explores the current state of the identity and the legitimacy of the EU as viewed by its citizens, but also evaluates their attitudes towards it. The expert contributors show that the development of a European identity and a common European culture is a prerequisite for European integration; that European identity and a common political culture will not develop rapidly but emerge slowly, and that the beginnings of a European identity and a common European culture are currently emerging. The roles of civil society organizations and political parties are examined within this context, and an explanatory model with subjective predictors of the attitudes towards the EU is tested. The empirical analysis is underpinned by a theoretical framework incorporating operational definitions and conceptual discussion of legitimacy and identity. This intriguing and thought-provoking book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and students focusing on political science and international relations.Trade Review‘This book is an overall good quality addition to the library of any EU researcher. Its well defined focus does not in any way reduce the relevance of its conclusions. Ultimately, its original empirical findings, its impressive display of quantitative methodology and its contribution to integration and diversity literature will be advantageous in respect of almost any EU-related argument, not to mention a good starting point for future research.’ -- Journal of Contemporary European ResearchTable of ContentsContents: Preface and introduction Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Dieter Fuchs PART I: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 1. Cultural Diversity, European Identity and Legitimacy of the EU: A Review of the Debate Olivier Ruchet 2. Cultural Diversity, European Identity and Legitimacy of the EU: A Theoretical Framework Dieter Fuchs PART II: EUROPEAN IDENTITY, NATIONAL IDENTITY AND SUPPORT FOR THE EU 3. Support of the EU and European Identity: Some Descriptive Results Dieter Fuchs and Christian Schneider 4. Multiple Identities and Attitudes Towards Cultural Diversity in Europe: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis Andrea Schlenker-Fischer 5. National and European Identity: The Case of France Isabelle Guinaudeau PART III: ATTITUDE FORMATION TOWARDS THE EU 6. Deliberation and the Process of Identity Formation: Civil Society Organizations and Constitution Making in the EU Julia De Clerck-Sachsse 7. National Political Conflict and Identity Formation: The Diverse Nature of the Threat from the Extreme Left and Extreme Populist Right Simon Bornschier 8. Making the Polity: Exploring the Linkage between European Citizens’ and Political Elites’ Preference for European Union Public Policy Catherine E. de Vries and Christine Arnold 9. Explaining Support for European Integration: An Attitudinal Model Dieter Fuchs 10. Cultural Diversity, European Identity and Legitimacy of the EU: Summary and Discussion Dieter Fuchs, Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Andrea Schlenker-Fischer Index

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Book SynopsisEste libro ofrece la primera revisión en forma de volumen monográfico de las transferencias culturales de Gran Bretaña a España en el siglo XVIII. A close reading of the cultural exchanges between England and Spain in the18th century as seen in the periodical press. Este libro ofrece la primera revisión en forma de volumen monográfico de las transferencias culturales de Gran Bretaña a España en el siglo XVIII, centrándose en particular en el género más novedoso del setecientos, la pódica. Para ello, explora el fenómeno hasta ahora difuso de la anglomanía - moda de las ideas, influencias y estilos ingleses que dominó la Europa del setecientos - y su fenómeno opuesto, la anglofobia, en tres tipos de prensa bien diferenciados, todo ello en conjunción con la propia coyuntura nacional y el programa de reformas borbónico. Además, esta obra enfatiza la labor de estos periodistas y periódicos, así como sus conexiones con el poder, a la vez que los sitúa como agentes fundamentales de esa red europea de intercambios materiales e intelectuales que sustentó la República de las Letras. Con todo ello, este volumen contribuye a la serie de debates dedicados a la reevaluación de la Ilustración española que buscan situarla en el mapa de las Luces Europeas de entonces y de ahora. LETICIA VILLAMEDIANA GONZÁLEZ es Profesora Titular en el Departamento de Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Warwick. This book constitutes the first monographic study of the cultural transfers from Great Britain to Spain through 18th-Century periodical press, one of the most innovative genres of the period. It exploresthe notion of anglomania - the craze for all things English which spread throughout all Europe - and its reactive phenomenon, anglophobia, offering a contextualised analysis of the transmission, reception and adaptation of BritishEnlightened ideas and reforms in three different types of Spanish periodicals. In so doing, this volume brings to the fore the work of some understudied writers and journalists and situates these important periodicals and their connections to power as a key part of a wider European context of material and intellectual exchanges that sustained the Republic of Letters. This in turn, contributes to recent scholarship arguing for a central place of Spain in the intellectual map of the Enlightenment. LETICIA VILLAMEDIANA GONZÁLEZ is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Hispanic Studies at the University of Warwick.Table of ContentsIntroducción Anglofilia, anglomanía y anglofobia en la Europa del siglo XVIII La prensa española en el siglo XVIII El espejo inglés: emulación y prensa económica Traducciones, adaptaciones y (re)creaciones en los espectadores españoles Entre filias y fobias: la doble imagen de Inglaterra en la prensa de entresiglos Epílogo Apéndices Bibliografía Índice

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Book SynopsisGrounded in ethnographic research, this edited collection examines the intersections between grassroots culture, local identities, and the politics of catalanisme and independentisme from the end of the Francoist period to the present day. Through studies of various cultural manifestations including festivals, human tower-building, gastronomy, and bull-runs, chapters explore how civil mobilisation, women's increasing participation in the public sphere, and issues of gentrification and heritagisation have intertwined with identity politics and nationalist trends. An important consideration is how a popular culture centred on sociability responded to the lockdowns and restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. More generally, the book reflects on the politicisation of culture and its role in nation-building, problematising such concepts as 'inclusion', 'integration', 'authenticity', 'belonging', and 'identity'. Contributors: Lluís Bellas, Camila del Mármol, Manuel Delgado, Mireia Guil, Venetia Johannes, Sarai Martín López, Romina Martínez Algueró, Dorothy Noyes, Xavier Roigé, Alessandro Testa, Mariann VacziTrade ReviewPopular Culture, Identity, and Politics in Contemporary Catalonia is an enlightening volume which explores the connections between festivals, traditions, folklore, politics, identity, national character, territory, food and regional diversity. The authors also offer fascinating insights into the everyday life experiences and culture of large swathes of the population who engage with folkloric traditions. ... Overall, this volume offers valuable insights into the Catalan cultural, social and political landscape. -- Jordi Cornellà-Detrell * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Contributors Introduction: Culture, Identity, and Politics in Contemporary Catalonia - Mariann Vaczi and Alessandro Testa 1: Castells, Myths, and Allegories of Nation Building - Mariann Vaczi 2: The Ritual Making of Central Catalonia 1: National Identity and the Hanging of the Donkey - Alessandro Testa 3: The Ritual Making of Central Catalonia 2: Comparses and the Dynamics of Inclusive Nationalism - Alessandro Testa 4: Reclaiming the Cathar Past: At the Crossroads between Identity Politics and Tourist Economies in Catalonia - Camila Del Mármol 5: The Heritage of the Humiliated: Popular Resistance in Defense of the "Bous" in the Lands of the Ebro - Manuel Delgado, Romina Martínez Algueró, and Sarai Martín López 6: Communities without Festivities? Community Effects, Transformations, and Conflicts after Covid-19 in Catalonia - Xavier Roigé, Mireia Guil, and Lluís Bellas 7: Bon Profit! Food as National Identity in Catalonia - Venetia Johannes Afterword: Beneath the Nation: Collective Creation and Civic Need - Dorothy Noyes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWritten on the Body surveys the history of the tattoo in Europe and North America from Antiquity to the present. While the subject of tattooing has previously been approached from the viewpoints of anthropology, sociology and cultural studies, this is the first book to set the practice into a historical perspective. This is partly because there was no obvious context for writing a serious history of it prior to the emergence of scholarship on the cultural history of the body. The tattoo emerges as a haunting presence on Europe's margins, figuring as something alien and uncanny. It seems to hover for much of its history in a space between the cosmetic and the punitive, frequently indicative of and complicated by the practice of penal violations of bodily integrity. It is this fluidity of the tattoo's meaning, rather than its marginality, that is the focus of Written on the Body.Trade ReviewThis anthology, which is rarely scarred by academic jargon, fascinates with its detail, covering enough surface to show how much more is left to be explored. The New York Times Tattoos have a strange double-nature. They have an uncanny power to affront, yet they also exert an almost irresistible fascination, even on historians. Jane Caplan's collection of essays from 14 estimable British and American historians provides an informative exploration and interpretation of the tattoo in Western Culture. Boston Herald This eccentric and entertaining collection of essays makes a strong case for thinking that we should look more closely at human skin ... There aren't many places where Betty Boop, Wagner, and a succubus or two can be found jostling each other for space. One could be on the tatooed body. The other is in this brilliantly scholarly and scatty book. -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst The Art Newspaper An amazingly rich volume ... Caplan's anthology of essays is stimulating for further work on the very idea of body ornamentation as a source of cultural history. -- Sander L. Gilman American Historical ReviewTable of ContentsWith essays by Clare Anderson, Susan Benson, James Bradley, Jane Caplan, Juliet Fleming, Alan Govenar, Harriet Guest, Mark Gustafson, C. P. Jones, Charles MacQuarrie, Hamish Maxwell-Stuart and Ian Duffield, Stephan Oettermann, Jennipher Allen Rosecrans and Abby M. Schrader.

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Book SynopsisComposing Apartheid is the first book ever to chart the musical world of a notorious period in world history, apartheid South Africa. It explores how music was produced through, and was productive of, key features of apartheid's social and political topography.The collection of essays is intentionally broad, and the contributors include historians, sociologists and anthropologists, as well as ethnomusicologists, music theorists and historical musicologists.The essays focus on a variety of musics (jazz, music in the Western art tradition, popular music) and on major composers (such as Kevin Volans) and works (Handel's Messiah). Musical institutions and previously little-researched performers (such as the African National Congress' troupe-in-exile Amandla) are explored.The writers (from South Africa, the UK and US) move well beyond their subject matter, intervening in debates on race, historiography and postcolonial epistemologies and pedagogies.Trade ReviewThis is one of the best books to have emerged from South African musicology in the last decade... It opens up a new level of discourse about music during the apartheid era: a level on which the theoretical, the ethical, the historical and the aesthetic play against each other in newly meaningful ways. Roger Parker, Cambridge University, UKTable of ContentsIntroduction: Grant Olwage Chapter 1: Back to the Future? Idioms of ‘displaced time’ in South African composition Christine Lucia Chapter 2: Apartheid’s Musical Signs: Reflections on black choralism, modernity and race-ethnicity in the segregation era Grant Olwage Chapter 3: Discomposing Apartheid’s Story: Who owns Handel? Christopher Cockburn Chapter 4: Kwela’s White Audiences: The politics of pleasure and identification in the early apartheid period Lara Allen Chapter 5: Popular Music and Negotiating Whiteness in Apartheid South Africa Gary Baines Chapter 6: Packaging Desires: Album covers and the presentation of apartheid Michael Drewett Chapter 7: Musical Echoes: Composing a past in/for South African jazz Carol A. Muller Chapter 8: Singing Against Apartheid: ANC cultural groups and the international anti-apartheid struggle Shirli Gilbert Chapter 9: ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’: Stories of an African anthem David Coplan and Bennetta Jules-Rosette Chapter 10: Whose ‘White Man Sleeps’ Aesthetics? and politics in the early work of Kevin Volans Martin Scherzinger Chapter 11: State of Contention: Recomposing apartheid at Pretoria’s State Theatre, 1990-1994. A personal recollection Brett Pyper Chapter 12: Decomposing Apartheid: Things come together Ingrid Byerly Chapter 13: Arnold van Wyk’s Hands Stephanus Muller

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Book SynopsisHow To Be a Real Gay takes its title from a series of workshops organised by gay activists in the small town of Ermelo, South Africa. Focusing on everyday practices of gayness in hair salons, churches, taverns, and meeting halls, the book explores the ambivalent space that homosexuality occupies in the newly democratic South Africa: on the one hand, protection of gay rights is a litmus test for the country's constitutional democracy, yet on the other, homosexuality is seen to threaten traditional values, customs, and beliefs.The book is the first to emerge that recounts how gays in small-town South Africa negotiate this difficult symbolic terrain. How do discourses on international gay and lesbian social movements and gay equality hang together with local views on identity, gender, and relationships? Why do small-town gays harness fashion, style, and glamour in the making and sustaining of identity? How do economically vulnerable gays organise, access resources, and create networks linking small towns to cities? How To Be a Real Gay delves to the core of what it means to be 'the other' in contexts of risk, exclusion, and inclusion. In its richly textured way, the book also speaks to the tremendous capacity of gays to imagine and create life-worlds in a harsh environment.Trade ReviewIt is beautifully written up in a style which makes for entertaining reading and this book is, to my mind, a hybrid genre of oral history, life-stories and participating observations. - Ena Jansen Reid has woven together theory, method, research results and personal observations in an attractive way ... Throughout the book he discusses and tests theories. He does not put down the great story of the history of sexuality in South Africa in a dry way in broad terms, but embeds the most important events in a story. - Gert Hekma

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Book SynopsisThe contributors to this collection of seven essays (plus an editor's introduction and a comparative afterword) have framed debates about the construction of commercial culture in China. They all have agreed that during the early twentieth century China's commercial culture was centered in the private sector of Shanghai's economy and especially in the "concession" areas under Western or Japanese rule, but they have differed over the issue of whether foreign influence was decisive in the creation of Shanghai's commercial culture. Between 1900 and 1937, was Shanghai's commercial culture imported from the West or invented locally? And between 1937 and 1945, was the history of this commercial culture cut short by Japanese military invasions and occupations of the city or was it sustained throughout the war? The contributors have proposed various and even conflicting answers to these questions, and their interpretations bear upon wider debates in historical, cultural, and comparative studies.Trade ReviewAdmirably compact and coherent, Inventing Nanjing Road is an excellent sampler of current research on the development of business, advertisement, entertainment, and urban life-styles in modern Shanghai. The essays in this volume, which introduce the field's intellectual issues, as well as the colorful sources available to address them, will attract new researchers to the field. For use in undergraduate and graduate classes on Chinese urban history. * Journal of Asian Studies *Provides a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of how commercial culture was constructed in Shanghai in the first decades of the twentieth century. * Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies *

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Book SynopsisDeath and the Idea of Mexico is the first social, cultural, and political history of death in a nation that has made death its tutelary sign. Examining the history of death and of the death sign from the sixteenth-century holocaust to contemporary Mexican American identity politics, anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz's innovative study marks a turning point in understanding Mexico's rich and unique use of death imagery. Unlike contemporary Europeans and Americans, whose denial of death permeates their cultures, the Mexican people display and cultivate a jovial familiarity with death. This intimacy with death has become the cornerstone of Mexico's national identity.It is tempting to view this rich elaboration of death imagery as yet another example of an invented tradition, that is, a cult shaped by the modern state's cultural policies or by the narrow interests of contemporary identity politics. Lomnitz takes a different approach. Rather than flattening out the tradition by insisting only on the ways it is willfully manipulated, this book focuses on the dialectical relationship between dying, killing, and the administration of death, and the very formation of the colonial state, of a rich and variegated popular culture, and of the Mexican nation itself. The elevation of Mexican intimacy with death to the center of national identity is but a moment within that history within a history in which the key institutions of society are built around the claims of the fallen.Based on a wide range of sources from missionary testimonies to newspaper cartoons, from masterpieces of artistic vanguards to accounts of public executions and political assassinations Death and the Idea of Mexico moves beyond the limited methodology of traditional historiographies of death to probe the depths of a people and a country whose fearless acquaintance with death shapes the very terms of their social compact. This work effects a novel turn in the classical historiography of death a turn that can be characterized by a move from social and cultural history to political history. The move toward the politics of death gives readers a unique insight into the peculiar story of death in the Americas.

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Book SynopsisThe Spanish conquest and colonisation of the Americas dramatically transformed the lives of native peoples in Mesoamerica and the Andes. This revolutionary and multilayered process varied greatly in its intensity and timing from region to region, but in all cases radically changed indigenous societies, their values and beliefs. The encounter between native peoples and the Spanish conquistadors and later settlers was marked by violence and drastic, epidemic-driven population decline. This dislocatory phase gradually gave way to myriad forms of accommodation, resistance, and social, cultural and religious hybridity -- the colonial heritage of Spanish America. The innovative essays in this volume compare the colonial experience of native peoples of the conquered Aztec, Maya and Inca civilisations, from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. They highlight their creative responses to the challenges posed by colonial rule, its institutions, religion, and legal and economic systems. Interdisciplinary in approach, the essays distil a generation of scholarship and suggest an agenda for future research. This book will be of great interest to historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and post-colonialists.

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Book SynopsisAcross the Western world, full membership of society is established through entitlements to space and formalized in the institutions of property and citizenship. Those without such entitlements are deemed less than fully human as they struggle to find a place where they can symbolically and physically exist. Written by an anthropologist who accidentally found herself homeless, The Ethics of Space is an unprecedented account of what happens when homeless people organize to occupy abandoned properties. Set against the backdrop of economic crisis, austerity, and a disintegrating British state, Steph Grohmann tells the story of a flourishing squatter community in the city of Bristol and how it was eventually outlawed by the state. The first ethnography of homelessness done by a researcher who was formally homeless throughout fieldwork, this volume explores the intersection between spatial existence, subjectivity, and ethics. The result is a book that rethinks how ethical views are shaped and constructed through our own spatial existences.

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Book SynopsisIn this book, written between 1979 and 2020, Gilbert Lewis distills a lifetime of insights he garnered as a medical anthropologist. He asks: How do different cultures' beliefs about illness influence patients' abilities to heal? Despite the advances of Western medicine, what can it learn from non-Western societies that consider sickness and curing to be as much a matter of social relationships as biological states? What problems arise when one set of therapeutic practices displaces another? Lewis compares Indigenous medical beliefs in New Guinea in 1968, when villagers were largely self-reliant, and in 1983, after they became dependent on Western medicine. He then widens his comparative scope by turning to West Africa and discussing a therapeutic community run by a prophet who heals the ill through confession and long-term residential care.Pandora's Box began life with the prestigious Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures that Gilbert Lewis delivered in 1979 at the University of Rochester. He expanded them with materials gathered over the next forty years, completing the manuscript a few weeks before his death. Engagingly written, this book will inspire anthropologists, medical professionals, students, and curious readers to look with new eyes at current crises in world health.Trade Review"This is a remarkable book by the UK’s leading medical anthropologist. Gilbert Lewis was both a professional anthropologist and a trained medical doctor. He brought these skills and extraordinary personal insight when carrying out pioneering fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. In this his final book, he retains the clarity of his original lectures and extends his analysis to healing processes in Africa. It is a striking achievement, invaluable for anyone specializing in medical anthropology today." -- Murray Last, author of The Sokoto Caliphate"As fresh as if it were written yesterday, this historical account of the everyday life of falling ill—and of the care or callousness elicited thereby—is augmented by anthropological debates of the time. Not only when speaking of the Gnau people, Gilbert Lewis' pragmatic compassion shines through the exquisite quality of observation and the measured, even-handed pace of his prose. It is wonderful to hear his thoughts and insights all over again in this way." -- Marilyn Strathern, author of Before and After Gender"Lewis' concise ethnographic descriptions, combined with profound reflections on medicine and society, morality and practical reasoning, bring back to life his gentle caution to 'tread carefully' in one’s thinking. The self-conscious alertness his lectures instilled in audiences demonstrates that medical anthropology—a field he cofounded—has profound contributions to make for humankind." -- Elisabeth Hsu, author of Pulse Diagnosis in Early Chinese Medicine

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Book SynopsisIn this powerful new work, Simone Toji reconsiders ethnography as a form of appreciation of the contradictions inherent in the making of life itself. Recovering Bronislaw Malinowski’s idea of the “imponderabilia of actual life” as an inspiring ethnographic attitude, she shows how lives are composed through moments of indecision, opacity, and incongruity that make them irreducibly open ended. The singular lives of four migrants, from Paraguay, South Korea, and Bolivia, are rendered as journeys across the city of São Paulo, interspersed with resonant explorations of the power of life’s invention and reinvention as part of the human condition. This important new book is a major contribution to migration studies, social and cultural anthropology, and the social sciences as a whole, and will appeal to readers from the undergraduate level through the doctoral.

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Book SynopsisA sympathetic examination of the failure of anti-corruption efforts in contemporary Indonesia. Combining ethnographic fieldwork in the city of Kupang with an acute historical sensibility, Sylvia Tidey shows how good governance initiatives paradoxically perpetuate civil service corruption while also facilitating the emergence of new forms of it. Importing critical insights from the anthropology of ethics to the burgeoning anthropology of corruption, Tidey exposes enduring developmentalist fallacies that treat corruption as endemic to non-Western subjects. In practice, it is often indistinguishable from the ethics of care and exchange, as Indonesian civil servants make worthwhile lives for themselves and their families. This book will be a vital text for anthropologists and other social scientists, particularly scholars of global studies, development studies, and Southeast Asia.Trade Review"It is impossible not to be impressed by the depth of ethnographic data and cases that make up this book. While the author does touch upon theoretical debates and to relationship between global ideals and local contexts, these do not leave the same lasting impression as the anecdotes and case studies, told with empathy and an eye for understanding, rather than judging, the circumstances and actions of Tidey’s associates in Kupang." * Inside Indonesia *"Ethics or the Right Thing is a beautifully written and very convincing book which deserves a wide readership." * PoLAR *"In this excellent ethnography, Tidey interrogates the widely prevalent assumption in global discourse about the state and development that corruption is always inimical to the 'good,' thereby challenging dominant conceptions of good governance. Based on long-term research in Indonesia, she argues—and convincingly demonstrates—that corruption can, in practice, be deeply intertwined with care. More broadly, the book offers an insightful perspective on ethics embedded in a nuanced understanding of social and political relations." -- Daniel Jordan Smith, Brown University"This is an example of anthropology at its best—beautifully written, utterly compelling and dealing with endless entanglements without losing the reader. Theoretically, it is a sophisticated picture of how individuality, relational life and broader social processes interact on the themes of care and corruption. Tidey conveys an area that has been largely underplayed by social science—that people navigate contradictions, paradoxes and opposing meanings all at the same time. As binary polarisations in political ideologies return with force, this nuanced and subtle account of an ethical domain is timely." -- Emma Crewe, School of Oriental and African Studies"Where, if anywhere, does care stop and corruption begin and vice-versa? These are fundamental ethical issues that receive searching exploration in this brilliantly observed study of civil servants in Kupang, simultaneously Indonesia's self-styled 'giving city' and its allegedly most corrupt. A strikingly original examination not only of personal but also of political morality, this book marks a major advance in the anthropology both of ethics and of governance. It is destined to be widely influential." -- Joel Robbins, Cambridge University

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Book SynopsisCross-regional scholarly dialogue inspired by the work of the pioneering Cuban scholar. Fernando Ortiz (1881–1969) coined the term “transculturation” in 1940. This was an early case of theory from the South: concepts developed from an explicitly peripheral epistemological vantage point and launched as a corrective to European and North American theoretical formulations. What Ortiz proposed was a contrapuntal vision of complexly entangled processes that we, today, would conceptualize as cultural emergence. Inspired by Ortiz, this volume engineers an unprecedented conversation between Mediterraneanists and Caribbeanists. It harnesses Ortiz’s mid-twentieth-century theoretical formulations to early twenty-first-century issues pertinent to both regions, including migration, territorial sovereignty, and cultural diversity. The contributors explore this perspective (arguably formed during Ortiz’s youth in late nineteenth-century Menorca) in a dialogue between scholars of the contemporary Caribbean and Mediterranean to enable novel analytics for both regions and to more broadly to probe the promises and limits of Ortiz’s contribution for contemporary anthropological research and theorizing.

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Book SynopsisA formative ethnography of the relationship between markets and social life, back in print. Originally published in 1979, Clifford Geertz’s essay on the Moroccan bazaar is a classic ethnographic account of the interplay of economic, social, and religious lives in the bustle of transaction. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the Middle Atlas town of Sefrou, Geertz explores how actors from diverse backgrounds assess the worth and meaning of other people’s wares, words, and ways of doing business. He shows how the search for market information, so central to the theorization of markets by economists, is here based on careful appraisals of social relations, embedded in understandings of the broader institutional environment of the market town and its hinterlands. With a richness of insights procured for generations of readers, Geertz’s essay on the sūq is a model of and for the craft of ethnographic theory. Long out of print, it is republished here in a stand-alone edition introduced by Lawrence Rosen.

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Book SynopsisA study of homelessness and addiction exploring the void of drug-induced blackout and its impact on identity and time. What does it mean to exist outside the normative temporality of life, of housed living, and, ultimately, of selfhood? Becoming Somebody Else takes up this question, offering a window into the fragmented and chaotic lives of people experiencing homelessness in urban London as they drink and drug themselves into blackout in post-austerity Britain. A state of being where time, body, agency, and self collapse into a memoryless abyss, the blackout is a prism into how human beings make and unmake their selfhood in the wake of social suffering and personal trauma. Attending to the words and histories of several individuals, Joshua Burraway knits together structural, psychological, and phenomenological approaches to understand the ways in which memory, agency, and selfhood are sites of struggle and belonging, and in doing so, suggests new ways of thinking about addiction, homelessness, and therapeutic possibility.

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Book SynopsisWhat do we know about race today? Is it surprising that after a hundred years of debate and inquiry by anthropologists, the answer not only remains uncertain but the very question is so fraught? In part, this reflects the deep investments modern societies have made in the concept of race. We can hardly know it objectively when it comprises a pervasive aspect of our identities and social landscapes, determining advantage and disadvantage in a thoroughgoing manner. Yet know it we do—perhaps mistakenly, haphazardly, or too informally, but knowledge claims about race permeate everyday life in the United States. In addition, what we understand or assume about race changes as our practices of knowledge production also change. Until recently, a consensus held among social scientists—predicated, in part, upon findings by geneticists in the 1970s about the structure of human genetic variability—that “race is socially constructed.” In the early 2000s, following the successful sequencing of the human genome, a series of counter-claims challenging the social construction consensus was formulated by some geneticists who sought to support the role of genes in explaining race. This volume arises out of the fracturing of that consensus and the attendant recognition that asserting a constructionist stance is no longer a tenable or sufficient response to the surge of knowledge claims about race.Contributors: Ron Eglash, Clarence C. Gravlee, John Hartigan, Linda M. Hunt, Kuzawa W. Kuzawa, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Jeffrey C. Long, Pamela L. Sankar, Zaneta M. Thayer, Nicole Truesdell

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisLife today is rife with rapid-fire “high alert” responses, a proliferating trend that is especially pronounced in the United States (though most certainly felt elsewhere as well), where past catastrophes shape expanding perceptions of imminent danger. September 11, 2001 looms as an inescapable spectral presence, defining an important baseline for the ramping up of biosecurity measures. However, the contributors to this volume argue against biosecurity as the new status quo by focusing instead on the ugly underbelly. Through considering the vulnerability of individuals and groups and particularly looking at how vulnerability propagates in the shadow of biosecurity, BioInsecurity and Vulnerability challenges the acceptance of surveillance measures or security interventions as necessities of life in the new millennium.

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Book SynopsisHow did Southwestern peoples make a living in the vast arid reaches of the Great Basin? When and why did violence erupt in the Mesa Verde region? Who were the Fremont people? How do some Hopis view Chaco Canyon? These are a few of the topics addressed in Living the Ancient Southwest. In this highly-illustrated anthology, general readers will discover essays by eighteen anthropologist-writers. They speak about the beauty and originality of Mimbres pottery, the rock paintings in Canyon de Chelly, the history of the Wupatki Navajos, O’odham songs describing ancient trails to the Pacific Coast, and other topics relating to the deep indigenous history and culture of the American Southwest.

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Book SynopsisThis volume has brought together scholars from anthropology, history, psychology, and ethnic studies to share their original research into the lesser-known stories of slavery in North America and reveal surprising parallels among slave cultures across the continent. Although they focus on North America, these scholars also take a broad view of slavery as a global historical phenomenon and describe how coercers and the coerced, as well as outside observers, have understood what it means to be a “slave” in various times and cultures, including in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The contributors explore the links between indigenous customs of coercion before European contact, those of the tumultuous colonial era, some of the less-familiar paradigms of slavery before the Civil War, and the hazy legal borders between voluntary and involuntary servitude today. The breadth of the chapters complements and enhances traditional scholarship that has focused on slavery in the colonial and nineteenth-century South, and the contributors find the connections among the many histories of slavery in order to provide a better understanding of the many ways in which coercion and slavery worked across North America and continue to work today.

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Book SynopsisDrawing inspiration from Standing Bear’s legacy, Amiotte uses ephemera, historical and modern photographs and artworks, and the remembered stories of his relatives to compose collages that tell the story of a culture and people in transition. The vivid juxtaposition of materials allows viewers to experience the nuances and fluctuations in the Lakota people’s environment, values, and way of life. Louis S. Warren relates the life of Standing Bear in a brief biography, and Janet Catherine Berlo contributes an essay placing Amiotte’s collages in their artistic and anthropological contexts.

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Book SynopsisThis textbook supports the Impact of Materials on Society course and teaching materials, developed with the Materials Research Society. The textbook, which is freely available online (https://ufl.pb.unizin.org/imos/) and for purchase in print-on-demand format, offers an exploration into materials and the relationship with technologies and social structures. The textbook was developed by an interdisciplinary team from Engineering and Liberal Arts and Sciences, including anthropologists, sociologists, historians, media studies experts, Classicists, and more. Chapters include coverage of clay, ceramics, concrete, copper and bronze, gold and silver, steel, aluminum, polymers, and writing materials. Supplemental materials, including lecture slides, assignments, and exams, may be accessed in a companion volume.

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Book SynopsisThe Garifuna are a Central American, Afro-Indigenous people descended from shipwrecked West Africans and local Indigenous groups on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. For over two centuries, the Garifuna have experienced oppression, exile, and continued diaspora that has stretched their communities to Honduras, Belize, and beyond. However, little has been written about the experiences of the Garifuna in Nicaragua, a community of about 5,000 who live primarily on the Caribbean coast of the country. In Surviving the Americas, Serena Cosgrove, José Idiáquez, Leonard Joseph Bent, and Andrew Gorvetzian shed light on what it means to be Garifuna today, particularly in Nicaragua. Their research includes over nine months of fieldwork in Garifuna communities in the Pearl Lagoon on the southern Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and in New York City. The resulting ethnography illustrates the unique social issues of the Nicaraguan Garifuna and how their culture, traditions, and reverence for their ancestors continues to persist.Trade ReviewSurviving the Americas is a vivid and intimate account of the Nicaraguan Garifuna. The activist commitments and collaborative nature of the work as well as its decolonial lens provide keen insights into the persistence of this under-acknowledged Afro-Indigenous community in the Garifuna and African Diasporas. * Jennifer Goett, Associate Professor of Comparative Cultures and Politics, Michigan State University *Beautifully written… contextualized, and nice integration of academic sources and Garifuna voices. * Sarah England, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Soka University of America *Ethnographically rich! Surviving the Americas intervenes to decolonize Garifuna ethnography by attending to critical discussions of indigeneity, intersectionality, and resilience. * Keri Vacanti Brondo, Professor of Anthropology, University of Memphis *"Surviving the Americas is a welcome addition to the literature on Garifuna and Indigenous and Afro descendant Central America. Garifuna in Nicaragua have received little attention in the literature, and the book helps us understand both the diversity of Garifuna communities in Central America and the social and political conditions confronting Garifuna in different nation-states. It is well suited to course adaption in introductory or advanced courses in anthropology, Indigenous studies, or Central American studies. Clearly written and accessible to non-specialists, it provides a compelling account of cultural persistence under neocolonial structures that produce displacement, highlighting how 'those routes that so often take people away from communities while allowing exogenous forces in can also prove to be sources of new hope for resilience.'" * New West Indian Guide *

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Book SynopsisObstetric fistula is a birthing injury caused by prolonged obstructed labor that results in urinary and fecal incontinence. It is nearly non-existent in the Global North. In contrast Niger, in West Africa, has one of the highest rates of fistula in the world. In Western humanitarian and media narratives, fistula is presented as deeply stigmatizing, resulting in divorce, abandonment by kin, exile from communities, depression and suicide. In Fistula Politics, Alison Heller illustrates the inaccuracy of these popular narratives and shows how they serve the interests not of the women so affected, but of humanitarian organizations, the media, and local clinics. Trade Review"Alison Heller has transformed the discourse on fistula with her brilliantly detailed ethnography of the lives of affected women in Niger. Fistula Politics is an inspiring account of the real lives of determined women facing the hardships of birthing injuries: pregnancy losses and social suffering, persistent wetness and months-long waiting for treatment in the context of 'regional poverty' and mismanaged care. Transformed my understanding! Truly brilliant!" -- Ellen Gruenbaum * author of The Female Circumcision Controversy: An Anthropological Perspective *“Most of us know the 'fistula narrative,' a story of innocent girls who suffer the dreadful consequences of early childbearing and can be saved through a simple biomedical intervention. Ali Heller’s evocative and meticulously empirical book reveals the complexities that this sensational narrative fails to capture. The alternative accounts told here raise vital questions about fistula’s true causes, consequences, cures, and costs—and about the marketing of humanitarian biomedicine.” -- Claire L. Wendland * author of A Heart for the Work: Journeys through an African Medical School *"Chronicle of Higher Education new scholarly books weekly book list," by Nina C. Ayoub * Chronicle of Higher Education *" A recommended read for scholars and practitioners in global public health, international development and medical anthropology." * Anthrodendum *"Fistula Politics is a highly readable, teachable, and beautifully illustrated monograph that is grounded in careful empirical observation. The book is elegantly organized and could be taught in undergraduate and graduate courses in medical anthropology or sociology, global health, human reproduction, gender studies, human rights, or research methods." * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *"Fistula Politics is a richly-documented ethnography of Nigerian women's reproductive lives...Compellingly illustrates the value of anthropology as it provides us with an ethnographically-based, yet comprehensive and holistic, insight into people's lived experiences." * Anthropos *"Fistula Politics is written in clear, accessible language. I expect it will be widely read not only by medical anthropologists and gender and sexuality studies specialists but also by the very actors who intervene in preventing and repairing fistula." * Africa *"Heller’s ethnography, Fistula Politics, is a welcome addition to ethnographic studies of fistula, biomedicine, and the body." -- Chau J. Kelly * H-Net *Table of ContentsContents Note on Terminology List of Abbreviations Foreword 1 Chapter 1: Incontinence and Inequalities 44 Part I Living Incontinence 45 Laraba’s Story 53 Chapter 2: Fistula Stigma 96 Chapter 3: Liminal Wives 143 Part II Clinical Encounters 144 Six Beds, Sixty Minutes 153 Chapter 4: The “Worst Place to be a Mother” 193 Chapter 5: The Indeterminable Wait 234 Part III The Marketplace of Victimhood 235 Arantut’s Story 241 Chapter 6: Superlative Sufferers 271 Chapter 7: Costs and Consequences 299 Chapter 8: The Threshold of Continence Appendix Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book Synopsis2020 Award for Distinguished Book from the Animals & Society Section of the American Sociological Association One in five people in the United States is a birdwatcher, yet the popular understanding of birders reduces them to comical stereotypes, obsessives who only have eyes for their favorite rare species. In real life, however, birders are paying equally close attention to the world around them, observing the devastating effects of climate change and mass extinction, while discovering small pockets of biodiversity in unexpected places. For the Birds offers readers a glimpse behind the binoculars and reveals birders to be important allies in the larger environmental conservation movement. With a wealth of data from in-depth interviews and over three years of observing birders in the field, environmental sociologist Elizabeth Cherry argues that birders learn to watch wildlife in ways that make an invaluable contribution to contemporary conservation efforts. She investigates how birders develop a “naturalist gaze” that enables them to understand the shared ecosystem that intertwines humans and wild animals, an appreciation that motivates them to participate in citizen science projects and wildlife conservation. Trade Review"Without qualification, For the Birds will make a substantial and significant contribution to sociology. Cherry’s writing style and conversational tone take us through the training of a neophyte birder into a level of expertise all the while keeping the book extremely readable, lively and accessible." -- Lisa Jean Moore * author of Buzz: Urban Beekeeping and the Power of the Bee *“With its eagle-eyed sights on birders in their natural habitat, Elizabeth Cherry’s beautiful ethnography reveals the reverence and concern that citizen scientists feel for these charismatic creatures. Like the naturalist gaze itself, For the Birds is equal parts instructive and pleasurable.” -- David Grazian * author of American Zoo: A Sociological Safari *For the Birds by Elizabeth Cherry included in Publishers Weekly's Fall 2019 Adult Announcements * Publishers Weekly *"Recommended." * Choice *"With a wealth of data from in-depth interviews and over three years of observing birders in the field, environmental sociologist Elizabeth Cherry argues that birders learn to watch wildlife in ways that make an invaluable contribution to contemporary conservation efforts. She investigates how birders develop a 'naturalist gaze' that enables them to understand the shared ecosystem that intertwines humans and wild animals, an appreciation that motivates them to participate in citizen science projects and wildlife conservation." * ASA Environmental Sociology newsletter *"A major contribution." * Social Forces *"For the Birds provides both an interesting and accessible study of the birding community. Cherry provides deep and colorful description of birders and allows the community to speak directly to the reader by using interview quotes throughout the book. We have much to learn from birders about making the common uncommon and looking at our own backyards through a pair of binoculars." * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction 1 Becoming a Birder 2 The Naturalist Gaze 3 Common Birds and the Social Construction of Nature 4 Wilderness, Wildness, and Mobility 5 Good Birds, Bad Birds, and Animal Agency 6 Birding and Citizen Science 7 Birding as a Conservation Movement Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThere are currently a record-setting number of forcibly displaced persons in the world. This number continues to rise as solutions to alleviate humanitarian catastrophes of large-scale violence and displacement continue to fail. The likelihood of the displaced returning to their homes is becoming increasingly unlikely. In many cases, their homes have been destroyed as the result of violence. Why are the homes of certain populations targeted for destruction? What are the impacts of loss of home upon children, adults, families, communities, and societies? If having a home is a fundamental human right, then why is the destruction of home not viewed as a rights violation and punished accordingly? From Bureaucracy to Bullets answers these questions and more by focusing on the violent practice of extreme domicide, or the intentional destruction of the home, as a central and overlooked human rights issue.Trade Review“This innovative and noteworthy book adds an important perspective to human rights scholarship with valuable insight into the use of domicide as a political and military strategy.” -- Scott Harding * associate professor, University of Connecticut *"Tracking the widespread and often unseen practices of domicide – the deliberate destruction of home – this book forces us to rethink the meaning of home as a human right. Clear, rigorous, and persuasive, it makes the need for a Convention Against Domicide an urgent and necessary endeavor." -- Michael Vicente Pérez * assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Memphis *“This innovative and noteworthy book adds an important perspective to human rights scholarship with valuable insight into the use of domicide as a political and military strategy.” -- Scott Harding * associate professor, University of Connecticut *"Tracking the widespread and often unseen practices of domicide – the deliberate destruction of home – this book forces us to rethink the meaning of home as a human right. Clear, rigorous, and persuasive, it makes the need for a Convention Against Domicide an urgent and necessary endeavor." -- Michael Vicente Pérez * assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Memphis *Table of ContentsPart I: Introduction 1. Castles and Cages: A Theory of Home and Home Loss 2. The Difference Between Life and Death: The Human Right to Home 3. A Causal Pathway and Typology of Extreme Domicide Part II: From Bureaucracy To Bullets 4. “And Leave Them Burning Our Homes”: The Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya (1952-1960) 5. No Place to Call Home: Mutually Assured Domicide in Cyprus (1974) 6. “The Cruelest Work I Ever Knew”: Domicide and The Cherokee Trail of Tears (1838-1839) 7. Reducing Homes to Keys: The Occupation of Palestine and the Matrix of Control (1945-present) 8. "Their Home Will Be Razed Down to the Basement”: Chechnya’s Generations of Domicide (1944-2009) 9. Manufacturing Homogeneity: Domicide in Bosnia (1992-1995) 10. Wiping Neighborhoods Off the Map: The Syrian War (2011-present) 11. “All the Villages We Saw on the Way to the Sea Were Burning”: The Rohingya in Myanmar (2012-present) Part III: Conclusions 12. You Can’t Go Home Again: Justice, Reconciliation, and a Convention Against Domicide 13. Home Matters: Lessons Learned While Studying Extreme Domicide Acknowledgments Notes Index

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