Social and cultural anthropology Books
University of California Press Blind Spot
Book SynopsisNeoliberalism has been the defining paradigm in global health since the latter part of the twentieth century. This book offers a tale about the forces driving decision making in health and development policy today, illustrating how the privatization of health care can have catastrophic outcomes for some of the world's most vulnerable populations.Trade Review"An accessible summary of the rise of neoliberalism following World War II and its impact on global health and development programs into the late 20th century and beyond... A valuable resource." -- Kristin E. Yarris American Journal of Human Biology "Blind Spot provides much greater clarity in our understanding of the specific agendas promoted by neoliberalism, including the distinct forces involved and their relation to health delivery programs." American AnthropologistTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Foreword Paul Farmer Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: A World Transformed Part I. The Beginning of the Encounter: The Soviet World Meets Its Global Counterparts 2. Health in the Time of the USSR: A Window into the Communist Moral World 3. Seeking Help at the End of Empire: A Transnational Lifeline for Badakhshan Part II. Life at the End of Empire: The Crisis and the Response 4. The Health Crisis in Badakhshan: Sickness and Misery at the End of Empire 5. Minding the Gap? The Revolving Drug Fund Part III. Transplanting Ideology: Village Health Meets the Global Economy 6. Bretton Woods to Bamako: How Free-Market Orthodoxy Infiltrated the International Aid Movement 7. From Bamako to Badakhshan: Neoliberalism's Transplanting Mechanism Part IV. The Aftermath: Neoliberal Success, Global Health Failure 8. Privatizing Health Services: Reforming the Old World 9. Revealing the Blind Spot: Outcomes That Matter 10. Epilogue: Reframing the Moral Dimensions of Engagement Notes Bibliography Index
£22.50
University of California Press Robo sapiens japanicus
Book SynopsisJapan is arguably the first postindustrial society to embrace the prospect of human-robot coexistence. Over the past decade, Japanese humanoid robots designed for use in homes, hospitals, offices, and schools have become celebrated in the mass media and social media throughout the world. In Robo sapiens japanicus, Jennifer Robertson casts a critical eye on press releases and public relations videos that misrepresent actual robots as being as versatile and agile as their science fiction counterparts. An ethnography and sociocultural history of governmental and academic discourses of human-robot relations in Japan, this book explores how actual robots-humanoids, androids, animaloids-are imagineered in ways that reinforce the conventional sex/gender system and political-economic status quo. In addition, Robertson interrogates the notion of human exceptionalism as she considers whether civil rights should be granted to robots. Similarly, she juxtaposes how robots and robotic exoskeletons Trade Review"Jennifer Robertson’s engaging and insightful book Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Robots, Gender, Family and the Japanese Nation is one of the first scholarly works to examine the social and cultural implications of robotics in Japan. . . . Robertson’s book breaks new ground by putting the field of Japanese robotics technology into conversation with social scientific scholarship on gender, nationalism, and disability. The book will be of great interest to researchers working in these fields and will surely stimulate further work on the culture of robotics. Robertson is a gifted writer whose prose is fluid and free of jargon. Advanced undergraduate students and graduate students will encounter little difficulty in making their way through the text. They and other readers will be well rewarded for doing so." * Social Science Japan *"At a time when mainstream English-language media tends to uncritically buy into the Japanese government/corporate vision of a utopian robot future, Robertson’s thoroughly researched and insightful dismantling of the myths and propaganda surrounding Japanese robots is incredibly valuable." * Japanese Studies *"Anyone with even a passing interest in robotics in Japan would naturally enjoy this book, but the benefit of its insights extends to all those interested in the workings of contemporary Japan." * Journal of Japanese Studies *"This book is a vital contribution to the history and anthropology of robotics and offers insightful critiques of gendered and ableist assumptions underlying robot designs past and present." * Technology and Culture *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Author’s Notes 1. Robot Visions 2. Innovation as Renovation 3. Families of Future Past 4. Embodiment and Gender 5. Robot Rights vs. Human Rights 6. Cyborg-Ableism beyond the Uncanny (Valley) 7. Robot Reality Check Notes Bibliography Index
£22.50
University of California Press They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields Injury
Book SynopsisTakes the reader on a tour of the melon and corn harvesting fields of California's Central Valley to understand why farmworkers suffer heatstroke and chronic illness at rates higher than workers in any other industry. The author documents in detail how a tightly interwoven web of public policies and private interests create needless suffering.Trade Review"Horton keenly advocates for measures to remedy farmworkers' health, such as ending policies of agricultural exceptionalism, reforming the health care and immigration systems, and promoting labor policies to improve farmworkers' health." * CHOICE *"Captivating... Horton’s book comes at a critical moment to enter into discussions about undocumented migration in the US. It represents a substantial contribution to exposing the hidden reality of migrant farmworkers’ stressful lives, and also highlights potential areas of policy and law reform. Her in-depth analysis of the legal, historical, and cultural causes of migrant exploitation makes her work a relevant and eye-opening read for anyone who consumes produce in the US." * Border Criminologies *"They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields will become an essential text in undergraduate and graduate classrooms. Horton has made a clear theoretical contribution to the academic fields of anthropology, the social sciences, public health, and immigration studies, and her captivating narrative will appeal to the larger general public interested in migrant health...Horton’s analysis of the structural violence experienced by undocumented farmworkers will draw a wide readership and bring much-deserved attention to this marginalized and exploited population." * American Ethnologist *"Sarah Horton’s book is a strong reminder of why and how we should be doing ethnography in solidarity with the communities we research and write about." * Anthropology of Work Review *"An excellent example of how to successfully produce engaged ethnographic writing that grapples with concerns of positionality, enhances empathy for vulnerable populations, and makes anthropological theory accessible to a broader readership, all of which is no easy feat." * American Anthropologist *"Horton’s work provides a platform from which people not only lend their voice but also employ their power to promote strategies for change." * Journal of Anthropological Research *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Burning Up: Heat Illness in California’s Fields 2. Entering Farm Work: Migration and Men’s Work Identities 3. Ghost Workers: The Labor Consequences of Identity Loan 4. Presión Alta: The Physiological Toll of Farm Work 5. Álvaro’s Casket: Heat Illness and Chronic Disease at Work 6. Desabilitado: Kidney Disease and the Disability- Assistance Hole Conclusion: Strategies for Change Appendix A. On Engaged Anthropology and Ethnographic Writing Appendix B. Methods Appendix C. Core Research Participants Notes References Index
£22.50
University of California Press Working Skin
Book SynopsisSince the 1980s, arguments for a multicultural Japan have gained considerable currency against an entrenched myth of national homogeneity. This book enters this conversation with an ethnography of Japan's Buraku people.Trade Review"Finely composed and researched." -- Stephen Mansfield Japan Times "Gutsy... [Hankins] took tremendous pains to put himself at the heart of the Buraku community and expose himself to the widest possible range of experiences... Well-observed." Social Science Japan Journal "Hankins has written a fascinating ethnography that examines the complexities and contradictions inherent in the labor of multiculturalism." American Anthropologist "Working Skin is a highly original treatise... offers powerful insights... The book sets a new gold standard." Pacific Affairs Book Review "[Working Skin] makes a significant contribution to a new generation of scholarship on buraku issues." Journal of Japanese StudiesTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface: Hailing from Texas Acknowledgments Introduction: The Labor of Multiculturalism Part One Recognizing Buraku Difference 1 * Of Skins and Workers: Producing the Buraku 2 * "Ushimatsu Left for Texas": Passing the Buraku Part Two Choice and Obligation in Contemporary Buraku Politics 3 * Locating the Buraku: A Political Ecology of Pollution 4 * A Sleeping Public: Buraku Politics and the Cultivation of Human Rights Part Three International Standards and the Possibilities of Solidarity 5 * Demanding a Standard: Buraku Politics on a Global Stage 6 * Wounded Futures: Prospects of Transnational Solidarity Conclusion: The Disciplines of Multiculturalism Epilogue: Texas to Japan, and Back Notes References Index
£22.50
University of California Press The Pandemic Perhaps
Book SynopsisIn 2005, American experts sent out urgent warnings throughout the country: a devastating flu pandemic was fast approaching. Influenza was a serious disease, not a seasonal nuisance; it could kill millions of people. This book explores how American experts framed a catastrophe that never occurred.Trade Review"Caduff's detailed analysis of the sites, practices, and poetics of scientific authority and claim-making, in and through both uncertainties and indeterminacy, is uniquely insightful and compelling. His attentive, detailed, and discerning ethnography performs its own variety of dramatic work-the text itself is a delightful and gripping read. It is both an erudite collection of insights about that which goes into and makes up the contemporary world of 'scientific prophecy.' Caduff offers a surplus of generative ideas and his own brand of creativity and complexity in thinking through the politics of pandemic preparedness." Raad Fadaak, McGill University "In Carlo Caduff's brilliant ethnography The Pandemic Perhaps, we enter a world of delayed apocalypse. The HnNn mutation of the influenza virus is on the radar of the WHO; scientists prognosticate the next pandemic; preparedness measures are put in place by public health organizations; a flu vaccine is ready to be shipped by the pharmaceutical company. But, once more suspended, the pandemic does not happen today. To think about the intersection of scientific uncertainty and its relationship to the millennial public health message Caduff's The Pandemic Perhaps is just the right companion." Karen Jent, University of Cambridge "It is the strange serendipity of maternity leave that finds me reading 10:04 and The Pandemic Perhaps at odd hours and in tandem; two books for which hurricanes-or, more specifically, the preparations they precipitate-relay the condensed temporality of the coming catastrophe, a dovetailing of past perils and precarious futures for which a New York City 'on the brink' provides a hyperactive backdrop. Through often-exquisite prose (Lerner is a poet; Caduff's formulations can approximate verse) these authors explore the worlds that surface and dissolve under the shadow of prediction and the modes of attention that give them their shape." Ann Kelly, King's College London "I consider this book as a great contribution for the anthropology of life. Caduff's excellent investigation, both ethnographic and historical, offers a very convincing analysis of the material and conceptual configurations in which viruses are engaged, hence demonstrating the value of approaches which explore the agency of living beings and vital processes. He offers insightful ideas that shed new light on fundamental aspects of life. Focusing on the unique sort of beings viruses are, The Pandemic Perhaps constitutes, without any doubt, a very important work." Perig Pitrou, College de France "The Pandemic Perhaps presents a thoughtful ethnographic examination of the public culture of danger, specifically as the contemporary sense of impending doom has come to be linked ever more tightly to the assumed threat of a deadly influenza pandemic. More specifically still, it is a journey through the scientific, as well as governmental and corporate, reconstruction of the United States in the name of pandemic preparedness at a time when the biological world appears to be getting out of our control." Merrill Singer, Medical Anthropology Quarterly "Carlo Caduff's The Pandemic Perhaps is a story of the influenza pandemic that never was. Caduff tells this story from an American perspective through his encounters with scientists and other actors who engage in the august work of "preparedness," but in doing so, often draw upon and amplify an apocalyptic imaginary that doubtless shapes scientific and public priorities (and fears). With lucid and critical detail Caduff shows how forms of prophecy (new and old) push catastrophe towards further and further horizons." Todd Meyers, NYU Shanghai Caduff's book adds much to the history and social science of public health and infectious disease and will be of value to anyone interested in global health, influenza, or epidemiology. Bulletin of the History of MedicineTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1 * A Ferret's Sneeze 2 * On the Run 3 * Casualties of Contagion 4 * Experiments of Concern 5 * A Real Test 6 * The Great Deluge Epilogue Note on the Cover Image Notes Bibliography Index
£22.50
University of California Press Image Brokers
Book SynopsisHow does a photograph become a news image? An ethnography of the labor behind international news images, this book ruptures the self-evidence of the journalistic photograph by revealing the many factors determining how news audiences are shown people, events, and the world.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Formative Fictions and the Work of News Images PART ONE. IMAGE-MAKING 1 What Precedes the Digital News Image? 2 Global Views Inc.: Visualizing Politics, from Shock and Awe to the Fall of Saddam Hussein 3 Agence France-Presse: What Is the Dominant? 4 Newsworld: Everyday Practices of Editing the World PART TWO. WORLDMAKING 5 Barnstorm: An American Rite of Passage 6 Visa Pour l'Image: Personal Visions and Amateur Documents 7 World Press Photo: Developing World Photography Conclusion: Waiting for the Dust to Settle Acknowledgments Contents Appendix A: Cast of Characters Appendix B: Timeline of the "War on Terror" Notes Bibliography Index
£22.50
University of California Press Extraordinary Conditions
Book SynopsisExplores the lived experience of psychosis, trauma, and depression among people of diverse cultural orientations, revealing how mental illness engages fundamental human processes of self, desire, gender, and interpretation. This book focuses on psychological suffering and the social rendering of the mentally ill as non-human or not fully human.Trade Review"This extraordinary book will be relevant to all who are interested in medical anthropology, psychiatry, and health studies... Highly recommended." CHOICE Connect "Provocative and ethnographically rich ... Her book and her arguments are of paramount importance for anthropology, psychiatry and public health as we struggle to improve care for people facing extraordinary conditions, and its encapsulation in a single volume offers an unmatched resource for teaching and research design in these areas." Ethos "Comfortably traversing the boundaries between anthropology and psychiatry, Jenkins seeks to contextualize what is known as mental illness, taking it beyond the elicitation of symptoms to broader realms of subjective meaning situated within sociocultural influences... This book is an intellectually engaged yet passionate quest to examine these influences in lives as lived." American AnthropologistTable of ContentsList of Figures and Tables Prelude and Acknowledgments Introduction: Culture, Mental Illness, and the Extraordinary PART ONE. PSYCHOSIS, PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY, AND FAMILIES 1. Cultural Chemistry in the Clozapine Clinic 2. This Is How God Wants It? The Struggle of Sebastian 3. Emotion and Conceptions of Mental Illness: The Social Ecology of Families Living with Schizophrenia PART TWO. VIOLENCE, TRAUMA, AND DEPRESSION 4. The Impress of Extremity among Salvadoran Women Refugees 5. Blood and Magic: No Hay que Creer ni Dejar de Creer 6. Trauma and Trouble in the Land of Enchantment Conclusion: Fruits of the Extraordinary Notes Works Cited Index
£22.50
University of California Press Scratching Out a Living
Book SynopsisHow has Latino immigration transformed the South? In what ways is the presence of these newcomers complicating efforts to organize for workplace justice? This is a portrait of neoliberal globalization and calls for organizing strategies that bring diverse working communities together in mutual construction of a more just future.Trade Review"Scratching Out a Living is a model of engaged scholarship. In this timely, beautifully-written, and deeply researched activism-based ethnography about the poultry industry in the American South, Stuesse demonstrates how workers are exploited and divided on the basis of racial and ethnic identities within the context of neoliberal globalization. Without underestimating the difficulties, her research reveals that the basis for inter-racial working class solidarity among African Americans and Latinos does indeed exist in the newest 'new' South." -Judges' Comments, 2017 C.L.R. James Award for Published Books for Academic or General Audiences Working-Class Studies AssociationTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1. Southern Fried: Globalization and Immigrant Transformations 2. Dixie Chicken: Racial Segregation, Poultry Integration, and the Making of the "New" South in Central Mississippi 3. The Caged Bird Sings for Freedom: Black Struggles for Civil and Labor Rights, 1950-1980 4. To Get to the Other Side: The Hispanic Project and the Rise of the Nuevo South 5. Pecking Order: Latino Newcomers, Receptions, and Racial Hierarchies 6. A Bone to Pick: Labor Control and the Painful Work of Chicken Processing 7. Sticking Our Necks Out: Challenges to Union and Workers' Center Organizing 8. Walking on Eggshells: Illegality, Employer Sanctions, and Disposable Workers 9. Plucked: Labor Contractors and Immigrant Exclusion 10. Flying Upwind: Toward a New Southern Solidarity Postscript Home to Roost: Reflections on Activist Research Notes References Index
£22.50
University of California Press Sensational Movies
Book SynopsisTracing the rise and development of the Ghanaian video film industry between 1985 and 2010, this book examines video movies as seismographic devices recording a culture and society in turmoil. It also captures the process of film-making in Ghana.Trade Review"A thoughtful and theoretically powerful study, culminating two decades of fieldwork and movie-watching, of mediatization and materialization... An important contribution to the anthropology of religion, of popular media, of invented tradition, and of the cultural formation of the senses and experience." Anthropology Review Database "A rich account... the most sustained and theoretically sophisticated treatment of Christian popular culture in Africa to emerge to date and an important contribution to studies of religion and media." American Ethnologist "A fascinating and engaged ethnography of a crucial period in the Ghanaian film world." Marginalia "...will be regarded as both foundational and pioneering across multiple disciplines for years to come... it is how [Meyer] evaluates and hypothesizes the development of this cultural movement that places her work at the forefront of interdisciplinary research in Africa." Material ReligionTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsPrefaceAbbreviations Introduction 1 * The Video Film Industry 2 * Accra, Visions of the City 3 * Moving Pictures and Lived Experience4 * Film as Revelation 5 * Picturing the Occult6 * Animation 7 * Mediating Traditional Culture Epilogue Notes ReferencesFilmographyIndex
£27.00
University of California Press The Anthropology of Catholicism A Reader
Book SynopsisProvides both ethnographic material and theoretical reflections on Catholicism around the world, this book demonstrates how a revised anthropology of Catholicism can generate new insights and analytical frameworks that will impact anthropology as well as other disciplines.Trade Review"Overall, the book brings needed shape and specificity to an otherwise amorphous field of study.... Summing Up: Highly recommended." * CHOICE *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Anthropology of Catholicism Maya Mayblin, Kristin Norget, and Valentina Napolitano PART ONE. A GENEALOGY OF THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CATHOLICISM 1. Excerpt from "St Besse: A Study of an Alpine Cult" Robert Hertz 2. Excerpt from "Tarantism and Catholicism" Ernesto de Martino 3. Excerpt from "The Place of Grace in Anthropology" Julian A. Pitt-Rivers 4. Excerpt from "The Dinka and Catholicism" Godfrey Lienhardt 5. Excerpt from "Iconophily and Iconoclasm in Marian Pilgrimage" Victor Turner and Edith Turner 6. Excerpt from Person and God in a Spanish Valley William A. Christian 7. Excerpt from "The Priest as Agent of Secularization in Rural Spain" Stanley H. Brandes 8. Excerpt from "Women Mystics and Eucharistic Devotion in the Thirteenth Century" Caroline Walker Bynum PART TWO. CONTEMPORARY WORKS IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CATHOLICISM 9. "Complexio Oppositorum"? Religion, Society, and Power in the Making of Catholicism in Rural South India David Mosse 10. Marking Memory: Heritage Work and Devotional Labor at Quebec's Croix de Chemin Hillary Kaell 11. Containment and Contagion: The Gender of Sin in Contemporary Catholicism Maya Mayblin 12. Opulence and Simplicity: The Question of Tension in Syrian Catholicism Andreas Bandak 13. The Paradox of Charismatic Catholicism: Rupture and Continuity in a Q'eqchi'-Maya Parish Eric Hoenes del Pinal 14. The Virgin of Guadalupe and Spectacles of Catholic Evangelism in Mexico Kristin Norget 15. The Rosary as a Meditation on Death at a Marian Apparition Shrine Ellen Badone 16. A Catholic Body? Miracles, Secularity, and the Porous Self in Malta Jon P. Mitchell 17. Experiments of Inculturation in a Catholic Charismatic Movement in Cameroon Ludovic Lado 18. On a Political Economy of Political Theology: El Senor de los Milagros Valentina Napolitano 19. Making a Home in an Unfortunate Place: Phenomenology and Religion J. Michelle Molina PART THREE. INTERVENTIONS IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CATHOLICISM 20. "We're All Catholics Now" Simon Coleman 21. What Is Catholic about the Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis? Robert A. Orsi 22. Possession and Psychopathology, Faith and Reason Thomas J. Csordas 23. Catholicism and the Study of Religion Birgit Meyer 24. The Media of Sensation Niklaus Largier Bibliography List of Contributors Index
£27.00
University of California Press The ParaState
Book SynopsisSince its independence in the nineteenth century, the South American state of Colombia has been shaped by decades of bloody political violence. This book draws on interviews with paramilitary death squads and drug lords to provide a cultural interpretation of the country's history of violence and state control.Trade Review"The ParaState delivers an important if upsetting (both of our emotions and our delusions) account of how organizations that operate inside and allegedly against the state can enjoy impunity thanks to the state... a sobering tale of the lengths to which the elite will go to render the masses supine and submissive." Anthropology Review Database "Well-written, in a direct and honest way, the book provides a fine descriptive analysis of the experience of an anthropologist doing fieldwork that demonstrates the relevance of considering the points of view of the paramilitaries in explaining paramilitary violence." Criminal Law and Criminal Justice BooksTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Prologue: From the Field Journal Introduction 1 • “Everything I Did in the Name of Peace” 2 • Fragments from the Shadows of War 3 • Limpieza: The Expenditure of Spectacular Violence 4 • An Ethnography of Cocaine 5 • The Intertwinement 6 • Demobilization and the Unmasking of the State Conclusion Notes References Index
£22.50
University of California Press The Anthropology of Sport
Book SynopsisFew activities bring together physicality, emotions, politics, money, and morality as dramatically as sport. In Brazil's stadiums or parks in China, on Cuba's baseball diamonds or rugby fields in Fiji, human beings test their physical limits, invest emotional energy, bet money, perform witchcraft, and ingest substances, making sport a microcosm of what life is about. The Anthropology of Sport explores not only what anthropological thinking tells us about sports, but also what sports tell us about the ways in which the sporting body is shaped by and shapes the social, cultural, political, and historical contexts in which we live. Core themes discussed in this book include the body, modernity, nationalism, the state, citizenship, transnationalism, globalization, and gender and sexuality.Trade Review"The three authors of The Anthropology of Sport have written their up-to-date survey of anthropology and sport in the style of an introductory textbook. The trio covers a basic range of topics in eight chapters, each of which could function as the essential reading for a lecture . . . Major thinkers and concepts are introduced in a deliberated, easy-to-understand manner." * Pacific Affairs *"Brownell, Besnier, and Carter’s work is a new text in a yet undefined field – it may be the start of something new. If interested in the global nature of sport today, The Anthropology of Sport is a necessary read." * Foucault News *"Besnier, Brownell and Carter . . . follow a distinct anthropological line of thinking, advocating a wide application of the term 'sport' that takes into account its various local, daily and emic conceptions in the context of globalization." * Paideuma *"This is a well‐written and accessible text. . . . The book can stimulate new research in a highly fertile but understudied area of anthropology." * American Ethnologist *"A foundational text. . . . The writing is clear, the style consistent, and the presentation informative and absorbing." * Journal of Anthropological Research *"Deeply insightful. . . . This volume can function as an important point of reference and source of inspiration for myriad anthropological research projects to come." * Social Anthropology *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1 • Sport, Anthropology, and History 2 • Sport, Colonialism, and Imperialism 3 • Sport, Health, and the Environment 4 • Sport, Social Class, Race, and Ethnicity 5 • Sport and Sex, Gender, and Sexuality 6 • Sport, Cultural Performance, and Mega-events 7 • Sport, Nation, and Nationalism 8 • Sport in the World System Epilogue: Sport for Anthropology Notes Selected Bibliography Index
£22.50
University of California Press Savage Visit
Book SynopsisIn eighteenth-century Britain, the appearance of savages from the New World provoked intense fascination. This book shows why the phenomenon grew and how it related to bitter debates over the morality of imperial expansion.Table of ContentsContents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments A Note on Names Introduction 1. The New World in England before the Eighteenth Century 2. Four from Iroquoia: The Appeal of Savagery 3. Seven from the Cherokee, Nine from the Creeks 4. Ostenaco and the Losing of America 5. Passing the Mantle: From America to Oceania 6. Mai and the Finding of Oceania 7. Palauans, Hawaiians, Tahitians: Diminishing Oddities 8. Bennelong from Resnullius: The Decline of Savagery Conclusion Abbreviations Notes Index
£999.99
University of California Press Regulating Style
Book SynopsisFashion knockoffs are everywhere. Even in the out-of-the-way markets of highland Guatemala, fake branded clothes offer a cheap, stylish alternative for people who cannot afford high-priced originals. The author approaches the fashion industry from the perspective of indigenous Maya people who make and sell knockoffs.Trade Review"Reading Regulating Style, one could imagine the IP conditions described by Thomas as unfolding in Bangladesh, the Philippines, or any of the myriad of other places that produce clothing for the fashion industry. Alongside a historically-specific disregard for and de-legitimization of Mayan culture, the refusal to acknowledge the informal rights of clothing pirates has produced a form of colonial dispossession increasingly common around the world. However, as Thomas also shows, by appropriating a fashion brand, marginalized communities can subvert not only corporate domination and appropriation of locally-produced value, but also the socio-economic and political conditions that cause oppression." * PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review *"This is a methodologically rigorous, carefully crafted, innovative book. Besides being an example of thorough academic scholarship, it becomes evident that the author has exceptional knowledge of and authentic concern for life in the Maya highlands. This fundamentally anthropological study raises many interesting questions with respect to the global IP framework and its impact on development." * ReVista *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Economic Regulation and the Value of Concealment 2. The Ethics of Piracy 3. Brand Pollution 4. Fiscal and Moral Accountability 5. Making the Highlands Safe for Business Conclusion: Late Style Notes References Index
£22.50
University of California Press Bitter and Sweet Food Meaning and Modernity in
Book SynopsisLess than a half century ago, China experienced a cataclysmic famine, which was particularly devastating in the countryside. This book examines the role of food in one rural Chinese community, as it has shaped everyday lives over the course of several tumultuous decades.Trade Review"Bitter and Sweet is a rich and detailed ethnography that makes a convincing case for following food through its transformations as it is created, exchanged and consumed to reveal myriad themes of contemporary social life, what I would call a “gustemological” approach to culture." * Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition *"This is useful reading not only for fellow anthropologists in the China field, but also for anyone interested in knowing about modern China. Summing Up: Highly recommended." * CHOICE *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Note on the Text 1 * The Value of Food in Rural China 2 * Labor 3 * Memory 4 * Exchange 5 * Morality 6 * Conviviality Conclusion: Stitching the World Together Appendix A Appendix B Notes Glossary References Index
£27.00
University of California Press Race and the Brazilian Body
Book SynopsisBased on spontaneous conversations of shantytown youth hanging out on the streets of their neighborhoods and interviews from the comfortable living rooms of the middle class, the author shows how racial ideas permeate the daily lives of Rio de Janeiro's residents across race and class lines.Trade Review"By highlighting new challenges and forms of resistance to racist ideologies, Roth-Gordon makes an outstanding contribution to a global dialogue on race that illustrates the hegemonic forces at play that maintain racial inequalities." * American Ethnologist *"Although decades of ink have already been spilled on the still contentious issue of racism in Brazil (and Latin America more broadly), Roth- Gordon’s book points to fruitful areas for future research." * Anthropological Quarterly *" A must-read for scholars studying race and politics in Brazil." * Journal of Anthropological Research *"Roth-Gordon offers important in-sights in fewer than two hundred pages of clearly articulated text. . .the book is a rare pedagogical gem." * General Anthropology *"A remarkably accessible book that will be of great interest to scholars of race in Latin America who wish to incorporate an attention to language and practice to theirown work. The book’ s clear explanations of how the research was organized and executed likewise make it an excellent teaching tool for undergraduates and graduate students." * Journal of Latin American Studies *"[Roth-Gordon] presents [her findings] in an accessible narrative that would provide compelling reading for an undergraduate course on race or Brazil and might help us all better understand why famously 'cordial' Brazilians recently elected an uncordially racist president." * Latin American Research Review *Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1. BRAZIL'S "COMFORTABLE RACIAL CONTRADICTION" 2. "GOOD" APPEARANCES: RACE, LANGUAGE, AND CITIZENSHIP 3. INVESTING IN WHITENESS: MIDDLE-CLASS PRACTICES OF LINGUISTIC DISCIPLINE 4. FEARS OF RACIAL CONTACT: CRIME, VIOLENCE, AND THE STRUGGLE OVER URBAN SPACE 5. AVOIDING BLACKNESS: THE FLIP SIDE OF BOA APARENCIA 6. MAKING THE MANO: THE UNCOMFORTABLE VISIBILITY OF BLACKNESS IN POLITICALLY CONSCIOUS BRAZILIAN HIP-HOP CONCLUSION: "SEEING" RACE NOTES REFERENCES INDEX
£27.00
University of California Press The Biopolitics of Beauty
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The Biopolitics of Beauty is gripping in its empirical narrative and in its theoretical framework, which demonstrates that empirical attention to beauty can bring together theories about medicalization and theories about affect. . . . Jarrín demonstrates that affect and biopolitical discourse shape how patients and plastic surgeons engage each other around questions of beauty, health, and social mobility." * PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review *Table of ContentsIllustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: The Biopolitical and Affective Dimensions of Beauty 1. The Eugenesis of Beauty 2. Plastic Governmentality 3. The Circulation of Beauty 4. Hope, Affect, Mobility 5. The Raciology of Beauty 6. Cosmetic Citizens Conclusion: Thinking of Beauty Transnationally Notes Bibliography Index
£27.00
University of California Press The Indigenous State
Book SynopsisIn 2005, Bolivians elected their first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Ushering in a new democratic cultural revolution, Morales promised to overturn neoliberalism and inaugurate a new decolonized society. In this book, the author examines the successes and failures in the ten years since Morales' election.Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: The “Cultural Democratic Revolution” of Evo Morales Part One. Refounding the State 1. The Emergence of Indigenous Nationalism in Bolivia: Social Movements and the MAS State 2. The Constituent Assembly: Challenges to Liberalism 3. Wedding the Nation: Spectacle and Political Performance Part Two. Development and Decolonization 4. Living Well? The Battle for National Development 5. Race and Racism in the New Bolivia 6. From Indigeneity to Economic Liberation 7. Charagua’s Struggle for Indigenous Autonomy Conclusion: Between Politics and Policing Notes Credits for Previously Published Materials References Index
£27.00
University of California Press No Go World
Book SynopsisWar-torn deserts, jihadist killings, trucks weighted down with contraband and migrantsfrom the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands to the Sahara, images of danger depict a new world disorder on the global margins. With vivid detail, Ruben Andersson traverses this terrain to provide a startling new understanding of what is happening in remote danger zones. Instead of buying into apocalyptic visions, Andersson takes aim at how Western states and international organizations conduct military, aid, and border interventions in a dangerously myopic fashion, further disconnecting the world's rich and poor. Using drones, proxy forces, border reinforcement, and outsourced aid, risk-obsessed powers are helping to remap the world into zones of insecurity and danger. The result is a vision of chaos crashing into fortified borders, with national and global politics riven by fear. Andersson contends thatwe must reconnect andsnap out of this dangerous spiral, which affects uswhether we live in Texas or Timbuktu. Only by developing a new cartography of hope can we move beyond the political geography of fear that haunts us.Trade Review"No Go World is an ambitious and wide-ranging exploration of how risk, danger and fear are ‘remapping’ the world with dire ethical and practical consequences. In examining how ‘remote zones of insecurity are becoming central to our new world disorder’ (p. 3), the book seizes an ambitious remit and is a worthwhile read for a broad range of readers interested in security studies, insurance, risk, human geography and questions of social-science method itself." * Journal of Refugee Studies *"The history of Western map making serves Andersson as a particularly powerful metaphor throughout the book. It allows him to illustrate the Western gaze, time horizons, beliefs, hopes, and fears in relation to the Orient." * American Anthropologist *"Vividly and convincingly, No Go World describes a global shift toward cordoning off more and more zones labeled violent and high-risk, making them inaccessible to outsiders. . . . Andersson’s argument is devastating and crucial." * Public Books *"Andersson’s adventuring is almost impossible to contain in just one sentence, as it weaves in and out of locations, through maps both real and those mappae mundi full of monsters he was obsessed with as a child. . . . The value, ultimately, and there is real value, in No Go World is in the discovery of the mostly unseen everyday that refuses to be defeated by the military border." * Society and Space *Table of ContentsList of Figures List of Maps Preface Introduction: Into the Danger Zone PART 1: THE STORY OF THE MAP 1. The Timbuktu Syndrome 2. Remoteness Remapped 3. The Tyranny of Distance Interlude: The Drone, the Web, and the World of Mirrors PART 2: CONTAGION 4. Wolves at the Door 5. The Snake Merchants 6. Where the Wild Things Are Conclusion: Danger Unmapped Acknowledgments Power of Narration, Narration of Power: An Anthropological Appendix Notes Works Cited Index
£22.50
University of California Press Modernizing Composition Sinhala Song Poetry and
Book SynopsisThe study of South Asian music falls under the purview of ethnomusicology; whereas that of South Asian literature falls under South Asian studies. This book examines the history of Sinhala-language song and poetry in twentieth-century Sri Lanka.Trade Review"Modernizing Composition is a product of thorough research, fresh interpretation, and clear writing; it will be of great value to readers in postcolonial studies looking to broaden their regional outlook and readers in Sri Lanka studies seeking to expand their theoretical perspectives." * Asian Music *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Note on Translation and Transliteration Introduction Part One: The Colonial Era 1. Nationalist Thought and the Sri Lankan World 2. Brothers of the Pure Sinhala Fraternity 3. Wartime Romance Part Two: The Postcolonial Era 4. Divergent Standards of Excellence 5. For the People 6. Illusions to Disillusions Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
£27.00
University of California Press Life without Lead
Book SynopsisLife without Lead examines the social, political, and environmental dimensions of a devastating lead poisoning epidemic. Drawing from a political ecology of health perspective, the book situates the Uruguayan lead contamination crisis in relation to neoliberal reform, globalization, and the resurgence of the political Left in Latin America. The author traces the rise of an environmental social justice movement, and the local and transnational circulation of environmental ideologies and contested science. Through fine-grained ethnographic analysis, this book shows how combating contamination intersected with class politics, explores the relationship of lead poisoning to poverty, and debates the best way to identify and manage an unprecedented local environmental health problem.Trade Review"Beginning in the early 2000s, large numbers of Montevideo residents learned that their health problems had been caused by widespread lead contamination. This volume looks at social, political and environmental factors that the author believes contributed to the problem and influenced how it was dealt with." * Survival: Global Politics and Strategy *"Daniel Renfrew’s Life Without Lead is an exhaustively researched, imaginatively conceived, and empathetically written ethnographic study of lead poisoning and environmental justice activism in Montevideo, Uruguay. . . . Renfrew has succeeded in producing something much more than spectral social science: he has brought his subject to life." * Somatosphere *"Whether dealing with working-class nostalgia, urban planning, corporate transparency, or biomedical science, Renfrew underscores the crucial role that un-knowing and non-knowledge play in stories of toxic disaster. . . . Life without Lead will be a provocative and informative text for scholars and students at the ever more crowded intersection of medical anthropology, disaster studies, and the ethnography of toxic worlds." * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *"Life Without Lead has enormous value as a guide to the socio-political underpinnings and reactions to Uruguay’s lead poisoning crisis." * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *"Renfrew wryly sets the stage for a multi-faceted environmental justice case study that is imaginatively presented, memorably written, and persuasively argued." * Anthropological Quarterly *"This book remains an engaging, accessible and interesting read and one of the very few book-length studies of Uruguay. Beyond anthropology it will be well suited for regional studies, environmental, human, cultural and economic geography, and of course, popular politics and activism reading lists." * Anthropology Book Forum *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations and Maps Acknowledgments Introduction: Saturn’s Nightmare 1 • To Live, Not Only Survive 2 • This Is Not a Game 3 • La Teja Shall Sing 4 • The Two Fires of ANCAP 5 • New House, New Life 6 • We Are All Contaminated Conclusion: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope Notes Bibliography Index
£22.50
University of California Press Unprepared Global Health in a Time of Emergency
Book SynopsisRecent years have witnessed an upsurge in global health emergencies-from SARS to pandemic influenza to Ebola to Zika. Each of these occurrences has sparked calls for improved health preparedness. This book addresses the question, how did we become unprepared? Emerging disease has only recently come to be understood as a problem of preparedness. Andrew Lakoff follows the history of health preparedness from its beginnings in 1960s Cold War civil defense to the early twenty-first century, when international health authorities carved out a global space for governing potential outbreaks. Alert systems and trigger devices now link health authorities, government officials, and vaccine manufacturers, all of whom manage the possibility of a global pandemic. Funds have been devoted to cutting-edge research on pathogenic organisms, and a system of post hoc diagnosis analyzes sites of failed preparedness to find new targets for improvement. Yet, despite all these developments, the project of global health security continues to be unsettled by the prospect of surprise.Trade Review"Andrew Lakoff offers an engaging analysis of the evolving state of emergency response to global health crises... Unprepared is an impressive account of outcomes based on their counterfactuals." * Social Forces *"Significantly, the book focuses not only on the changing mode of governing—the emergence of preparedness—but also on the diverse governmental technologies applied within this approach. If the problem has shifted from knowledge-dependent possibilities (accidents, risks), manageable by means of risk technology, to potential threats, what types of intervention technologies become possible? . . . The book seeks neither to provide a manifesto for the importance of preparedness nor to criticize its failures. Instead, drawing on the perspective of historical ontology, it tracks the emergence of an unstable consolidation of global health security, posing the question: "How did the norm of preparedness come to structure expert thought and action concerning the future of infectious disease?” * Bulletin of the History of Medicine *" As a basic, yet detailed overview, this book would do well to serve practitioners engaged in public policy issues, particularly regarding public health, and scholars who engage in similar research. Further, the author helps generate possible conversations regarding our current national issues in public health, such as the opioid crisis or tobacco use. Arguably one of this book’s primary contributions is the way it promotes contemplation and discussion on global health catastrophes whether the reader is intimately involved in the field or even using historical analysis in their own research to apply methods for addressing future challenges." * Anthropology & Education Quarterly *"As studies in historical ontology, Lakoff’s works have taught us how to see today’s world of epidemic anticipation and control beyond that cornerstone of hygienic modernity: prevention. Unprepared fulfills the promise of his invitation to the dizzying depths of global health security by laying bare how enactments of readiness are intricately and at the same time anxiously linked to an unstable constitution of threat." * Somatosphere *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. A Continuous State of Readiness 2. The Generic Biological Threat 3. Two Regimes of Global Health 4. Real Time Biopolitics 5. A Fragile Assemblage 6. Diagnosing Failure Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
£64.00
University of California Press Unprepared Global Health in a Time of Emergency
Book SynopsisRecent years have witnessed an upsurge in global health emergencies-from SARS to pandemic influenza to Ebola to Zika. Each of these occurrences has sparked calls for improved health preparedness. This book addresses the question, how did we become unprepared? Emerging disease has only recently come to be understood as a problem of preparedness. Andrew Lakoff follows the history of health preparedness from its beginnings in 1960s Cold War civil defense to the early twenty-first century, when international health authorities carved out a global space for governing potential outbreaks. Alert systems and trigger devices now link health authorities, government officials, and vaccine manufacturers, all of whom manage the possibility of a global pandemic. Funds have been devoted to cutting-edge research on pathogenic organisms, and a system of post hoc diagnosis analyzes sites of failed preparedness to find new targets for improvement. Yet, despite all these developments, the project of global health security continues to be unsettled by the prospect of surprise.Trade Review"Andrew Lakoff offers an engaging analysis of the evolving state of emergency response to global health crises... Unprepared is an impressive account of outcomes based on their counterfactuals." * Social Forces *"Significantly, the book focuses not only on the changing mode of governing—the emergence of preparedness—but also on the diverse governmental technologies applied within this approach. If the problem has shifted from knowledge-dependent possibilities (accidents, risks), manageable by means of risk technology, to potential threats, what types of intervention technologies become possible? . . . The book seeks neither to provide a manifesto for the importance of preparedness nor to criticize its failures. Instead, drawing on the perspective of historical ontology, it tracks the emergence of an unstable consolidation of global health security, posing the question: "How did the norm of preparedness come to structure expert thought and action concerning the future of infectious disease?” * Bulletin of the History of Medicine *" As a basic, yet detailed overview, this book would do well to serve practitioners engaged in public policy issues, particularly regarding public health, and scholars who engage in similar research. Further, the author helps generate possible conversations regarding our current national issues in public health, such as the opioid crisis or tobacco use. Arguably one of this book’s primary contributions is the way it promotes contemplation and discussion on global health catastrophes whether the reader is intimately involved in the field or even using historical analysis in their own research to apply methods for addressing future challenges." * Anthropology & Education Quarterly *"As studies in historical ontology, Lakoff’s works have taught us how to see today’s world of epidemic anticipation and control beyond that cornerstone of hygienic modernity: prevention. Unprepared fulfills the promise of his invitation to the dizzying depths of global health security by laying bare how enactments of readiness are intricately and at the same time anxiously linked to an unstable constitution of threat." * Somatosphere *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. A Continuous State of Readiness 2. The Generic Biological Threat 3. Two Regimes of Global Health 4. Real Time Biopolitics 5. A Fragile Assemblage 6. Diagnosing Failure Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
£22.50
University of California Press Humanitarianism and Mass Migration Confronting
Book SynopsisThe world is witnessing a rapid rise in the number of victims of human trafficking and of migrantsvoluntary and involuntary, internal and international, authorized and unauthorized. In the first two decades of this century alone, more than 65 million people have been forced to escape home into the unknown. The slow-motion disintegration of failing states with feeble institutions, war and terror, demographic imbalances, unchecked climate change, and cataclysmic environmental disruptions have contributed to the catastrophic migrations that are placing millions of human beings at grave risk. Humanitarianism and Mass Migration fills a scholarly gap by examining the uncharted contours of mass migration. Exceptionally curated, it contains contributions from Jacqueline Bhabha, Richard Mollica, Irina Bokova, Pedro Noguera, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, James A. Banks, Mary Waters, and many others. The volume's interdisciplinary and comparative approach showcases new research that reveals how current structures of health, mental health, and education are anachronistic and out of touch with the new cartographies of mass migrations. Envisioning a hopeful and realistic future, this book provides clear and concrete recommendations for what must be done to mine the inherent agency, cultural resources, resilience, and capacity for self-healing that will help forcefully displaced populations. Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: The Catastrophic Migrations of the Twenty-First Century Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco PART ONE. THE NEW CARTOGRAPHY OF MASS MIGRATION 1. Unchecked Climate Change, Mass Migration, and Sustainability: A Probabilistic Case for Urgent Action Fonna Forman and Veerabhadran Ramanathan 2. A Migration Becomes an Emergency: The Flight of Women and Children from the Northern Triangle and Its Antecedents Roberto Suro PART TWO. FRAMES ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH ON THE MOVE 3. Children on the Move in the Twenty-First Century: Developing a Rights-Based Plan of Action Jacqueline Bhabha 4. A Compassionate Perspective on Immigrant Children and Youth Carola Suárez-Orozco PART THREE. CATASTROPHIC MIGRANT LIVES AT THE MARGINS 5. The New H5 Model: Trauma and Recovery Richard F. Mollica 6. Addressing Mental Health Disparities in Refugee Children through Family and Community-Based Prevention Theresa S. Betancourt, Rochelle L. Frounfelker, Jenna Berent, Bhuwan Gautam, Saida Abdi, Abdirahman Abdi, Zahara Haji, Ali Maalim, and Tej Mishra 7. Surveying the Hard-to-Survey: Refugees and Unaccompanied Minors in Greece Theoni Stathopoulou 8. Mitigating the Impact of Forced Displacement and Refugee and Unauthorized Migration on Youth: Integrating Developmental Processes with Intervention Research Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Alice Wuermli, and J. Lawrence Aber PART FOUR. THE WORK OF EDUCATION IN THE TRANSITIONS OF IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE YOUTH 9. Empowering Global Citizens for a Just and Peaceful World Irina Bokova 10. Inclusion and Membership through Refugee Education? Tensions between Policy and Practice Sarah Dryden-Peterson 11. Civic Education for Noncitizen and Citizen Students: A Conceptual Framework James A. Banks 12. Refugees in Education: What Can Science Education Contribute? Pierre Léna 13. Lost in Transit: Education for Refugee Children in Sweden, Germany, and Turkey Maurice Crul, Frans Lelie, Elif Keskiner, Jens Schneider, and Özge Biner 14. From the Crisis of Connection to the Pursuit of Our Common Humanity: The Role of Schools in Responding to the Needs of Immigrant and Refugee Children Pedro A. Noguera 15. Children of Immigrants in the United States: Barriers and Paths to Integration and Well-Being Mary C. Waters 16. Improving the Education and Social Integration of Immigrant Students Francesca Borgonovi, Mario Piacentini, and Andreas Schleicher Epilogue: Pope Francis on Migration Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo Contributors Index
£64.00
University of California Press Traveling with Sugar
Book SynopsisTraveling with Sugar reframes the rising diabetes epidemic as part of a five-hundred-year-old global history of sweetness and power. Amid eerie injuries, changing bodies, amputated limbs, and untimely deaths, many people across the Caribbean and Central America simply call the affliction sugaror, as some say in Belize, traveling with sugar. A decade in the making, this book unfolds as a series of crónicasa word meaning both slow-moving story and slow-moving disease. It profiles the careful work of those still fighting it as they grapple with unequal material infrastructures and unsettling dilemmas. Facing a new incarnation of blood sugar, these individuals speak back to science and policy misrecognitions that have prematurely cast their lost limbs and deaths as normal. Their families' arts of maintenance and repair illuminate ongoing struggles to survive and remake larger systems of food, land, technology, and medicine.Trade Review"This well-researched ethnography is an excellent addition to existing scholarship in that it offers fresh perspectives on the global history of sweetness and power and the ways in which this relationship continues to shape human health." * CHOICE *"The reckoning of the living and dead, history and future, limb and loss through a mirror of the planet—its health, sickness, destruction—tells a powerful story . . . not only [of] human bodies but also plants, seeds, food systems, synthetic and herbal medicines, weather, and lands." * American Anthropologist *"Traveling with Sugar is an accomplished work that lives up to its premise: telling a global story through an intimate portrayal of people’s slow and constant care." * Anthropology Book Forum *"Thoughtfully organized and powerfully written, this poetic piece humanizes both those who need care and those trying to provide that care. Traveling with Sugar can and should be taught in both undergraduate and graduate courses in medical anthropology, sociology, global health, and health disparity courses." * New Florida Journal of Anthropology *"A luminous ethnography . . . resists tragedy by attending to people’s capacity for 'extraordinary survival' and mutual aid . . . [and] asks us to grapple with profound transdisciplinary questions about how the past lives in the present." * Bulletin of the History of Medicine *"A masterclass in accompaniment . . . refreshes our understanding of etiologies of diabetes in profoundly urgent ways. . . . Each chapter is a rich and original contribution on its own, and together the book is a discipline-altering tour-de-force." * Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences *"A remarkable work. . . . A story of the long-term impact of the European empires and commercial expansions. . . that developed the sugar plantation economy of Central America and the Caribbean." * American Journal of Human Biology *"The trouble [this book] highlights is not a lack of knowledge, but the cruelty of a profit-driven system that allows, even encourages, living, breathing, loving, always-human people to be treated as disposable." * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *Table of ContentsPART ONE. CONTEXTS Approach Emergency in Slow Motion Shorelines—A Global Epidemic as Seen from Belize—Traveling with Sugar—Errata: Methods and Mistakes—Slow Care Past Is Prologue Sugar Machine Sweetness—Sugar Roads—Chronic Landscapes—Diabetes Multiple— Still. There What Is Communicable? Caregivers in an Illegible Epidemic Foot Soldiers—Non-Traumatic Measures—Displaced Surveillance— Mixed Metaphors—Para-Communicable Conditions—Geographies of Blame—Three Atmospheres PART TWO. CRONICAS Crónica One: Thresholds Traveling an Altered Landscape with Cresencia The Normal and the Extraordinary—Ancestral Discontent—Coral Gardens and Their Metabolism—Sugar Girls—Land Tenure (Is This Legal?)—On the Other Side—Dr. Saldo—Great White Hazards— Healthy Living Made Fun and Easy!—Straddling Crónica Two: Insula Technology, Policy, and Other Units of Jordan’s Isolations Type What?—Islands and Empire—Global Policy Gaps—Other Orphans—Unsteady Units—Many Machines—The Life of Muerte— Design Archipelagos—Counting Crónica Three: Generations Approaching “Biologies of History” with Arreini and Guillerma Scientific Racism: Lineages—Housekeeping—Trans-Plantation— Epidemiological Transition—Hunger and Diabetes—What Is the “Epi” in Epigenetics?—Prevention—Blood’s Sugar—Quicksilver— Sequencing Crónica Four: Repair Work Maintenance Projects with Laura, Jose, and Growing Collectives Halfway Technologies—Phantom Limbs—Sugar Shoes—Dialysis: Pressure—“We Don’t Want to Die”—Food Infrastructures—Between Hurricanes—Prosthetic Hope International—Holding Measures— The Gradual Instant Epilogue Dedication Acknowledgments About Translations Image Credits Notes Bibliography Index
£27.00
University of California Press Religion
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Although the book is in many ways a textbook, Chidester has conceived something far more imaginative than a standard introduction to the world’s religions. Instead, Chidester has chosen to critically analyze the emergence of “religion” as a category, not just once, but in multiple contexts and registers. Specifically, Chidester sets out to develop this critical approach to religion together with the themes and concerns of material culture. So the question becomes not just what religion is and how it is defined, but how the intellectual coordinates out of which “religion” emerges are organized by “material dynamics.” * Reading Religion *" . . . Chidester’s analysis of the dynamic materiality of religion is a valuable corrective. In short, Religion demonstrates that all religion—no matter how world-denying—is material religion." * Nova Religio *" . . . reflect[s] a healthy shift in the study of religions." * Journal of Religion *"Chidester . . . successfully describe[s] the current state of the material turn in religious studies, which gives the book significant value." * Studies in Religion *"I would warmly recommend the book as a well-informed and creative resource for approaching the study of religion." * Religion *"[Chidester's] broad reading in global history and his deep understanding of the historiography of the academic study of religion will make this book very useful for students and scholars far beyond the modern era." * Journal of Contemporary Religion *"The book offers many interesting and important insights of how we creatively – and with a sense of humor – can think of and understand religion in its diversity as intertwined with materiality." * Anthropology Book Forum *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction: Material Dynamics PART I CATEGORIES 1. Animism 2. Sacred 3. Space 4. Time 5. Incongruity PART II FORMATIONS 6. Culture 7. Economy 8. Colonialism 9. Imperialism 10. Apartheid PART III CIRCULATIONS 11. Shamans 12. Mobility 13. Popular 14. Touching 15. Oceans Conclusion: Dynamic Materiality Notes Index
£22.50
University of California Press A War on People Drug User Politics and a New
Book SynopsisIf we see that our contemporary condition is one of war and widely diffused complexity, how do we understand our most basic ethical motivations? What might be the aims of our political activity?A War on Peopletakes up these questions and offers a glimpse of a possible alternative future in this ethnographically and theoretically rich examination of the activity of some unlikely political actors: users of heroin and crack cocaine, both active and former. The result is a groundbreaking book on how antidrug war political activity offers transformative processes that are termed worldbuilding and enacts nonnormative, open, and relationally inclusive alternatives to such key concepts as community, freedom, and care. Read the author's article about the opiod crisis on Open Democracy.Trade Review"For those interested in a theoretically complex and ambitious contribution to the anthropology of ethics and political anthropology, this book has much to offer." * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *Table of ContentsIntroduction: On War and Potentiality 1. The Drug War as Widely Diff used Complexity 2. “Addicts” and the Disruptive Politics of Showing 3. A Community of Those without Community 4. Disclosive Freedom 5. Attuned Care Epilogue: Otherwise Notes Index
£64.00
University of California Press A War on People
Book SynopsisTrade Review"For those interested in a theoretically complex and ambitious contribution to the anthropology of ethics and political anthropology, this book has much to offer." * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *Table of ContentsIntroduction: On War and Potentiality 1. The Drug War as Widely Diff used Complexity 2. “Addicts” and the Disruptive Politics of Showing 3. A Community of Those without Community 4. Disclosive Freedom 5. Attuned Care Epilogue: Otherwise Notes Index
£999.99
University of California Press Diva Nation
Book SynopsisDiva Nation explores the constructed nature of female iconicity in Japan. From ancient goddesses and queens to modern singers and writers, this edited volume critically reconsiders the female icon, tracing how she has been offered up for emulation, debate or censure. The research in this book culminates from curiosity over the insistent presence of Japanese female figures who have refused to sit quietly on the sidelines of history. The contributors move beyond archival portraits to consider historically and culturally informed diva imagery and diva lore. The diva is ripe for expansion, fantasy, eroticization, and playful reinvention, while simultaneously presenting a challenge to patriarchal culture. Diva Nation asks how the diva disrupts or bolsters ideas about nationhood, morality, and aesthetics.Trade Review"This collection is an important contribution to a better understanding of the diva in the post-feminist era. The main objective of the book is not to celebrate women or womanhood or to disclose notable women that have nevertheless been overlooked by patriarchal historiography, but to build a new interpretive framework." * Leonardo *“At turns witty and wise, frothy and fascinating, there’s something for anyone interested in gender studies, Japanese culture or the shadowy layers of its subculture.” * The Japan Times *"In light of the recent global attention to movements such as #MeToo, fuelled by women fighting against routine and status quo sexism, the publication of Diva Nation seems timely . . . This collection will be valuable not only to those interested in Japanese studies, but also for those with an interest in gender studies, queer studies and any field engaging with minority cultural or subcultural groups." * New Voices in Japanese Studies *"Diva Nation stands out as a scholarly text that is commendably approachable in terms of the analysis. It is moreover an engaging book thanks to the material and the writing, and its merging of anthropology, history, literature, cultural studies, and gender studies makes it a valuable addition to many libraries and many syllabi." * Pacific Affairs *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Preface: Transnational and Time-Travelling Divas xiLaura Hein Diva Seductions: An Introduction to Diva Nation 1Laura Miller and Rebecca Copeland 1. Kirino Natsuo Meets Izanami: Angry Divas Talking Back 13Rebecca Copeland 2. Ame no Uzume Crosses Boundaries 34Tomoko Aoyama 3. Searching for Charisma Queen Himiko 51Laura Miller 4. Izumo no Okuni Queers the Stage 77Barbara Hartley 5. From Child Star to Diva: Misora Hibari as Postwar Japan 95Christine R. Yano 6. Yoko Ono: A Transgressive Diva 115Carolyn S. Stevens 7. Transbeauty IKKO: A Diva’s Guide to Glamour, Virtue, and Healing 133Jan Bardsley 8. Seizing the Spotlight, Staging the Self: Uchida Shungiku 151Amanda C. Seaman 9. The Unmaking of a Diva: Kanehara Hitomi’s Comfortable Anonymity 168David Holloway 10. Ice Princess: Asada Mao the Demure Diva 185Masafumi Monden Afterword: Diva tte nan desu ka? (What Is a Diva?) 203Rokudenashiko (Translated by Kazue Harada) Bibliography 207 Contributors 229 Index 233
£27.00
University of California Press Good Quality
Book SynopsisFrom its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China's pervasive and restrictive reproductive complex. Today, there are sperm banks in each of China's twenty-two provinces, the biggest of which screen some three thousand to four thousand potential donors each year. Given the estimated one to two million azoospermic men--those who are unable to produce their own sperm--the demand remains insatiable. China's twenty-two sperm banks cannot keep up, spurring sperm bank directors to publicly lament chronic shortages and even warn of a national sperm crisis' (jingzi weiji). Good Quality explores the issues behind the crisis, including declining sperm quality in the country due to environmental pollution, as well as a chronic national shortage of donors. In doing so, Wahlberg outlines the specific style of Chinese sperm banking that has emerged, shaped by the particular cultural, juridical, economic and social configurations that make up China's restrictive reproductive complex. Good Quality shows how this high-throughput style shapes the ways in which men experience donation and how sperm is made available to couples who can afford it.Trade Review"...Ayo Wahlberg provides a rich and fine-grained ethnographic account of assisted reproduction in China, focusing on how state population politics and sociocultural configurations have shaped the practice of sperm banking. . . . Good Quality makes a significant contribution to anthropological studies of assisted reproduction, science and technology studies, and studies of China’s reproductive politics. While Wahlberg emphasizes that his focus is on the making of sperm banking, this important book should encourage further studies on various aspects of assisted reproduction in China, such as the experience of infertile couples and the complex decision making leading to the practice of assisted reproduction." * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *"Good Quality, a detailed study of state-controlled sperm banking in China, is a wonderful contribution to a literature that understands birth planning in China as encompassing a wide set of practices. . . . This volume should appeal to scholars of reproduction and those who study China’s modernizing processes. Its accessible writing will make it available to both graduate and undergraduate students." * Social Forces *"Good Quality offers fresh and engaging data, and a novel analytic approach and set of arguments about a rarely studied subject. The author’s ideas are delivered in clear, lively prose infused with a sly sense of humor and deep empathy for his subjects. Good Quality represents, in short, some of the best that anthropology can offer to the more mainstream fields of population study. It is highly recommended for research and graduate and undergraduate teaching alike.” * Population and Development Review *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi List of Abbreviations xv Introduction: Sperm Crisis 1 1. The Birth of Assisted Reproductive Technology in China 29 2. Improving Population Quality 58 3. Exposed Biologies 77 4. Mobilizing Sperm Donors 100 5. Making Quality Auditable 131 6. Borrowing Sperm 157 Conclusion: Routinization 188 Coda 192 Notes 195 References 205
£27.00
University of California Press Vulnerable Witness
Book SynopsisScholars and practitioners who witness violence and loss in human, animal, and ecological contexts are expected to have no emotional connection to the subjects they study. Yet is this possible? Following feminist traditions,Vulnerable Witnesscenters the researcher and challenges readers to reflect on how grieving is part of the research process and, by extension, is a political act. Through thirteen reflective essays the book theorizes the role of grief in the doing of researchfrom methodological choices, fieldwork and analysis, engagement with individuals, and places of study to the manner in which scholars write and talk about their subjects. Combining personal stories from early career scholars, advocates, and senior faculty, the book shares a breadth of emotional engagement at various career stages and explores the transformative possibilities that emerge from being enmeshed with one's own research.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Patricia J. Lopez and Kathryn Gillespie 1. “With You, Time Flowed Like Water”: Geographies of Grief across International Research Collaborations Jessie Hanna Clark 2. Grieving Guinea Pigs: Refl ections on Research and Shame in Peru María Elena García 3. An Immigrant in Academia: Navigating Grief and Privilege Yolanda Valencia 4. The Mongoose Trap: Grief, Intervention, and the Impossibility of Professional Detachment Elan Abrell 5. The Authentic Hypocrisy of Ecological Grief Amy Spark 6. Scale-Blocking Grief: Witnessing the Intimate between a Confl ict Leopard and Confi nement Kalli F. Doubleday 7. On Missing People in the Field David Boarder Giles 8. Grieving Daughter, Grieving Witness Abigail H. Neely 9. The Researcher-Witness of Violence against Queers: One Scholar-Activist’s Pathway through Lament William J. Payne 10. Unsteady Hands: Care and Grief for Conservation Subjects Jenny R. Isaacs 11. Grieving Salmon and the Politics of Collective Ecological Fieldwork Cleo Woelfl e-Erskine 12. Witnessing Grief: Feminist Perspectives on the Loss-Body-Mind-Self-Other Nexus and Permission to Express Feelings Avril Maddrell and Elizabeth Olson 13. Self-Care and Trauma: Locating the Time and Space to Grieve Dana Cuomo Epilogue Patricia J. Lopez and Kathryn Gillespie Contributors Index
£22.50
University of California Press Engaged Anthropology
Book SynopsisDoes anthropology have more to offer than just its texts? In this timely and remarkable book, Stuart Kirsch shows how anthropology canand why it shouldbecome more engaged with the problems of the world. Engaged Anthropology draws on the author's experiences working with indigenous peoples fighting for their environment, land rights, and political sovereignty. Including both short interventions and collaborations spanning decades, it recounts interactions with lawyers and courts, nongovernmental organizations, scientific experts, and transnational corporations. This unflinchingly honest account addresses the unexamined backstage of engaged anthropology. Coming at a time when some question the viability of the discipline, the message of this powerful and original work is especially welcome, as it not only promotes a new way of doing anthropology, but also compellingly articulates a new rationale for why anthropology matters. Trade Review"Engaged Anthropology is a compelling, thorough, and important contribution." * Collaborative Anthropologies *"Dense and detailed, and at times quite personal." * Anthropology Now *"This book is an essential resource for graduate programs, graduate students, and any scholar seeking meaningful ways to strengthen their ethnographic research." * Journal of Anthropological Research *"A sophisticated and passionate account of anthropology put into practice in a variety of political and social contexts. . . . required reading in undergraduate and graduate courses, and for scholars working on decolonisation, Indigenous rights, collaborative anthropology, extractive capitalism, climate change and sovereignty." * Anthropologica *"Engaged Anthropology successfully demonstrates the dynamic relationship between ethics, research, and political commitment." * Anthropology and Humanism *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Map of Cases xv Introduction 1 1 • How Political Commitments Influence Research 20 2 • When Contributions Are Elusive 50 3 • The Search for Alternative Outcomes 82 4 • When the Intervention Fails, Does the Research Still Matter? 107 5 • How Analysis of Local Contexts Can Have Global Significance 136 6 • The Risks of Intervention 165 7 • Dilemmas of an Expert Witness 180 Conclusion 223 Notes 231 References 249
£22.50
University of California Press Addicted to Christ
Book SynopsisHow are spiritual power and self-transformation cultivated in street ministries? In Addicted to Christ, Helena Hansen provides an in-depth analysis of Pentecostal ministries in Puerto Rico that were foundedand run by self-identified ex-addicts, ministries that are also widespread in poor Black and Latino neighborhoods in the U.S. mainland. Richly ethnographic, the book harmoniously melds Hansen's dual expertise in cultural anthropology and psychiatry. Through the stories of ministry converts, she examines key elements ofPentecostalism: mysticism, ascetic practice, and the idea of other-worldliness. She then reconstructs the ministries' strategies ofspiritual victory over addiction: transformation techniques to build spiritual strength and authority through pain and discipline; cultivation of alternative masculinities based on male converts' reclamation of domestic space; and radical rupture from a post-industrial culture of disposability. By contrasting the ministries' logic of addiction with that of biomedicine, Hansen rethinks roads to recovery, discovering unexpected convergences with biomedicine while revealing the allure of street corner ministries.Trade Review“Readers from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines will find much to glean from Hansen’s text, particularly scholars in the areas of psychiatry, religious studies, and biomedicine.” * Reading Religion, American Academy of Religion *"A phenomenal work." * Pneuma *"Hansen’s Addicted to Christ is a phenomenal work that traverses several vital areas of reflection." * Brill *“Powerful and beautifully written.” * Political and Legal Anthropology Review *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xvii Introduction 1 1. Th e Cosmology of Conversion 25 2. On Discipline and Becoming a Disciple 46 3. Visitations and Gifts 73 4. Th e New Masculinity 92 5. Spiritual Mothers 112 6. Family Values 134 7. Bringing It Home 149 Notes 167 Bibliography 181
£27.00
University of California Press Uncertain Citizenship
Book SynopsisUncertain Citizenshipexplores how Bolivian migrants to Chile experience citizenship in their daily lives. Intraregional migration is on the rise in Latin America and challenges how citizenship in the region is understood and experienced. As Megan Ryburn powerfully argues, many individuals occupy a state ofuncertain citizenshipas they navigate movement and migration across borders. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research, this book contributes to debates on the meaning and practice of citizenship in Latin America and for migrants throughout the world.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Citizenship, Migration, and Uncertainty 2. Places of Uncertain Citizenship 3. Papeleo 4. ¿El Sueño Chileno? 5. Solidaridad 6. “¿De Dónde Somos?” “¡De Bolivia!” Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
£27.00
University of California Press Destination Anthropocene
Book SynopsisDestination Anthropocenedocuments the emergence of new travel imaginaries forged at the intersection of the natural sciences and the tourism industry in a Caribbean archipelago.Known to travelers as aparadise of sun, sand, and sea, The Bahamas is rebranding itself in response to the rising threat of global environmental change, including climate change. In her imaginative new book, Amelia Moore explores anexperimentalform oftourism developed in the name of sustainability, one that is slowly changing the way both tourists and Bahamians come to know themselves and relate to island worlds.Trade Review"Moore digs deep into the trenches of ethnographic detail to demonstrate the entangled ways that science and tourism commingle in the 'significant spaces' of small islands as critical spaces." * Current Anthropology *"The book is a stellar effort to denaturalize both the Anthropocene and anthropogenesis and expose instead the global, classed interests that are served by such naturalizations. Researchers, students and policy makers interested in climate justice would particularly benefit from engaging with this work." * Anthropology Book Forum *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: The Anthropocene Islands 1 Building Biocomplexity 2 The Educational Islands 3 Sea of Green 4 Aquatic Invaders in the Anthropocene 5 Down the Blue Hole Conclusion: Anthropocene Anthropology Notes References Index
£22.50
University of California Press State of Health
Book SynopsisState of Health takes readers inside one of the most controversial regimes of the twenty-first centuryVenezuela under Hugo Chávezfor a revealing description of how people's lives changed for the better as the state began reorganizing society. With lively and accessible storytelling, Amy Cooper chronicles the pleasure people experienced accessing government health care and improving their quality of life. From personalized doctor's visits to therapeutic dance classes, new health care programs provided more than medical services.State of Healthoffers a unique perspective on the significance of the Bolivarian Revolution for ordinary people, demonstrating how the transformed health system succeeded in exciting people and recognizing historically marginalized Venezuelans as bodies who mattered.Trade Review"Given the current polarized situation in Venezuela, medical anthropologist Amy Cooper provides important and compelling insights into how ordinary people experienced policy changes during Hugo Chávez's progressive government . . . In listening to people's stories, Cooper gained innovative insights into how government programs can provide a mechanism for social inclusion and empowerment, including how those institutions transform people's sense of themselves." * CHOICE *“State of Health is a compelling ethnography on the interconnections among health care systems, pleasure, and radical politics during Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. . . . Using a well-developed conceptualization of pleasure that encompasses biophysical health, sensual and social pleasure, and sociopolitical empowerment, State of Health offers critical insights into how poor and working-class Venezuelans experienced the Chávez years. . . . State of Health will appeal to a broad readership interested in Latin America, health care, radical politics, and the anthropology of affect and would be an excellent choice for undergraduate and graduate courses.” * American Ethnologist *“State of Health is an accessible, eminently teachable book set in Venezuela at the height of the Bolivarian revolution. . . . In contrast to many Latin American medical ethnographies that document the distrust and suffering wrought by state-sponsored medicine, Cooper proposes that 'joy, excitement, and satisfaction were central to people’s experiences of Barrio Adentro.' The idea that medical care can be pleasurable is powerful in its simplicity.” * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *“State of Health is an engaging and insightful ethnography of health care provision in Venezuela under Chávez. By centering the role of pleasure, it invites us to rethink our frameworks for analyzing medical care. The book is written in a clear and accessible style, and, as such, it can be read at a variety of levels. . . . This book should be required reading for anyone hoping to learn more about social medicine in Latin America.” * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 1 • Introduction 2 • Moving Medicine Inside the Barrio 3 • Clinical Intimacies as Macropolitics 4 • Beyond Biomedicine 5 • Pleasures of Participation 6 • The Limits of Citizenship Conclusion Notes References Index
£64.00
University of California Press State of Health
Book SynopsisState of Health takes readers inside one of the most controversial regimes of the twenty-first centuryVenezuela under Hugo Chávezfor a revealing description of how people's lives changed for the better as the state began reorganizing society. With lively and accessible storytelling, Amy Cooper chronicles the pleasure people experienced accessing government health care and improving their quality of life. From personalized doctor's visits to therapeutic dance classes, new health care programs provided more than medical services.State of Healthoffers a unique perspective on the significance of the Bolivarian Revolution for ordinary people, demonstrating how the transformed health system succeeded in exciting people and recognizing historically marginalized Venezuelans as bodies who mattered.Trade Review"Given the current polarized situation in Venezuela, medical anthropologist Amy Cooper provides important and compelling insights into how ordinary people experienced policy changes during Hugo Chávez's progressive government . . . In listening to people's stories, Cooper gained innovative insights into how government programs can provide a mechanism for social inclusion and empowerment, including how those institutions transform people's sense of themselves." * CHOICE *“State of Health is a compelling ethnography on the interconnections among health care systems, pleasure, and radical politics during Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. . . . Using a well-developed conceptualization of pleasure that encompasses biophysical health, sensual and social pleasure, and sociopolitical empowerment, State of Health offers critical insights into how poor and working-class Venezuelans experienced the Chávez years. . . . State of Health will appeal to a broad readership interested in Latin America, health care, radical politics, and the anthropology of affect and would be an excellent choice for undergraduate and graduate courses.” * American Ethnologist *“State of Health is an accessible, eminently teachable book set in Venezuela at the height of the Bolivarian revolution. . . . In contrast to many Latin American medical ethnographies that document the distrust and suffering wrought by state-sponsored medicine, Cooper proposes that 'joy, excitement, and satisfaction were central to people’s experiences of Barrio Adentro.' The idea that medical care can be pleasurable is powerful in its simplicity.” * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *“State of Health is an engaging and insightful ethnography of health care provision in Venezuela under Chávez. By centering the role of pleasure, it invites us to rethink our frameworks for analyzing medical care. The book is written in a clear and accessible style, and, as such, it can be read at a variety of levels. . . . This book should be required reading for anyone hoping to learn more about social medicine in Latin America.” * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 1 • Introduction 2 • Moving Medicine Inside the Barrio 3 • Clinical Intimacies as Macropolitics 4 • Beyond Biomedicine 5 • Pleasures of Participation 6 • The Limits of Citizenship Conclusion Notes References Index
£22.50
University of California Press Life Lived in Relief
Book SynopsisPalestinian refugees' experience of protracted displacement is among the lengthiest in history. In her breathtaking new book, Ilana Feldman explores this community's engagement with humanitarian assistance over a seventy-year period and their persistent efforts to alter their present and future conditions. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic field research, Life Lived in Relief offers a comprehensive account of the Palestinian refugee experience living with humanitarian assistance in many spaces and across multiple generations. By exploring the complex world constituted through humanitarianism, and how that world is experienced by the many people who inhabit it, Feldman asks pressing questions about what it means for a temporary status to become chronic. How do people in these conditions assert the value of their lives? What does the Palestinian situation tell us about the world? Life Lived in Relief is essential reading for anyone interested in the history and practice of humTrade Review"Feldman reminds us, in the context of the current migrant crisis, Palestinian refugees have much to teach us about a migrant politics of presence. This is an exceptional book. It represents an invaluable contribution to scholarship on Palestine, humanitarianism, displacement, and refugee politics from a leading ethnographer of Palestinian life." * Journal of Palestine Studies *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration Chapter 1 • Punctuated Humanitarianism and Discordant Politics part one the humanitarian situation Chapter 2 • No Exit: Politics and Refugee Status Chapter 3 • Oscillating Needs and the Aid Apparatus Chapter 4 • Conflicted Positions: Compromised Action and Suspicious Relations part two the humanitarian condition Chapter 5 • The Politics of Living as a Refugee Chapter 6 • Living and Dying at Humanitarianism’s Limits Chapter 7 • Non-humanitarian Futures? Chapter 8 • Making Livable Lives in Worlds in Crisis Historical Timeline Notes Bibliography Index
£22.50
University of California Press Bandage Sort and Hustle Ambulance Crews on the
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Stunning analysis of the Emergency Medical System (EMS), its frontline workers, and patients . . . . A great source for highlighting how well-intentioned labor processes within seemingly benevolent occupations can further marginalize people and reproduce social inequalities." * British Medical Journal, Medical Humanities *"An exemplar of a kind of ethnographic work that reinvigorates the sociological imagination, connecting the deeply felt personal troubles of patients and the daily joys and frustrations of ambulance crews with the stratification of suffering in urban America." * Symbolic Interaction *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Author’s Note Acknowledgments Introduction PART I BANDAGING BODIES: INSIDE THE AMBULANCE 1. People Work 2. Ditch Doctors and Taxi Drivers 3. Feeling the Ambulance PART II SORTING BODIES: THE AMBULANCE BETWEEN HOSPITALS AND SQUAD CARS 4. The Fix-Up Workers 5. The Cleanup Workers 6. Burden Shuffling PART III HUSTING BODIES: THE AMBULANCE UNDERNEATH BUREAUCRACY AND CAPITAL 7. The Barn 8. Supervision 9. Payback Conclusion Appendix: Notes on Data and Methods Notes Reference List Index
£64.00
University of California Press The Life of a Pest An Ethnography of Biological
Book SynopsisThe Life of a Pest tracks the work practices of scientists in Mexico as they study flora and fauna at scales ranging from microscopic to ecosystemic. Amid concerns about climate change, infectious disease outbreaks, and biotechnology, scientists in Mexico have expanded the focus of biopolitics and biosecurity, looking beyond threats to human life to include threats to the animal, plant, and microbial worlds. Emily Wanderer outlines how concerns about biosecurity are leading scientists to identify populations and life-forms either as worthy of saving or as pests in need of elimination. Moving from high security labs where scientists study infectious diseases, to offices where ecologists regulate the use of genetically modified organisms, to remote islands where conservationists eradicate invasive species, Wanderer explores how scientific research informs, and is informed by, concepts of nation.Trade Review"The Life of a Pest is a textured ethnography that offers a rewarding read to those interested in Mexican science, Mexican politics, STS, and future-oriented technologies." * Anthropological Forum *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Living Better in Mexico 1. From Degenerates to Regeneration, Convicts to Conservation 2. The Care of the Pest and Animal Betrayals 3. Acclimatizing Biosecurity 4. Invisible Biologies, Embodied Environments 5. The Bureaucracy of Genetic Modification Conclusion: Vivir Mejor and the Biodiverse Nation Notes References Index
£27.00
University of California Press A Time of Lost Gods
Book SynopsisTraversing visible and invisible realms, A Time of Lost Gods attends to profound rereadings of politics, religion, and madness in the cosmic accounts of spirit mediumship. Drawing on research across a temple, a psychiatric unit, and the home altars of spirit mediums in a rural county of China's Central Plain, it asks: What ghostly forms emerge after the death of Mao and the so-called end of history? The story of religion in China since the market reforms of the late 1970s is often told through its destruction under Mao and relative flourishing thereafter. Here, those who engage in mediumship offer a different history of the present. They approach Mao's reign not simply as an earthly secular rule, but an exceptional interval of divine sovereignty, after which the cosmos collapsed into chaos. Caught between a fading era and an ever-receding horizon,those left behind by labor outmigration refigure the evacuated hometown as an ethical-spiritual center to come, amidst a proliferation of madness-inducing spirits.Following pronouncements of China's rise, and in the wake of what Chinese intellectuals termed semicolonialism, the stories here tell of spirit mediums, patients, and psychiatrists caught in a shared dilemma, in a time when gods have lost their way. Trade Review"A Time of Lost Gods is a most welcome addition to our understandings of religion and psychiatry in contemporary China." * China Quarterly *"Ng has expertly offered an invaluable insight into the Chinese religious landscape. This volume should be read by all those with an interest in Chinese religion, especially those who favor the ethnographic approach." * Religious Studies Review *“Ng opens worlds. . . .This elegantly written monograph is a must-read for scholars of the medical humanities and the anthropology of medicine in China.” * Asian Medicine *Table of ContentsPrologue: We Never Should Have Met Introduction: The China of China 1. After the Storm 2. Ten Thousand Years 3. Spectral Collision 4. A Soul Adrift 5. Vertiginous Abbreviation Coda: Those Who Remain Acknowledgments Notes References Index
£27.00
University of California Press Tasting Qualities The Past and Future of Tea 5
Book SynopsisTrade Review"A stimulating account of Britain’s favourite drink." * Times Literary Supplement *"[Besky's] nuanced study of Indian tea . . . is a refreshing brew of botany, business and culture." * Nature *"Provides an unusual and rich understanding of the process of creating, reproducing, and evaluating the quality of tea." * American Anthropologist *"A wonderfully layered and immaculately researched exploration of the enduring tastes of empire." * Allegra Lab *"With a fine eye for detail and sparkling writing that makes the seemingly mundane fascinating . . . Tasting Qualities is a highly original, deeply researched, and theoretically sophisticated ethnography of Indian tea’s modernity, which adds to the scholarship on commodities and capitalism." * Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society *"Tasting Qualities will be a beneficial read to a broad range of scholars with interest in food, labor, and commodity studies, the intersection of food, nutrition, and health knowledge, science and technology." * Food, Culture & Society *"Engages deeply with the theoretical aspects of assessing the quality and value of commodities through the lens of tea." * CHOICE *"A fascinating view of the Indian tea industry. . . . Manages to easily deconstruct and demystify the space between the plantation and the cup of tea." * Tea Journey *"Tasting Qualities is a persuasive ethnography of quality and its many unseen constituents." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *"Combining ethnographic and archival description, Sarah Besky’s Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea cleverly turns an analytic lens on the dependable and standardized aesthetics of modern capitalism." * American Ethnologist *"Besky offers anthropologists and other interdisciplinary scholars an ethnography to teach, think with, and push their studies of work, agriculture, finance, and commodities a bit further toward our collective understanding of quality." * Exertions *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: The Production of Quality 1 • The Work of Taste 2 • The Auction and the Archive 3 • The Problem with Blending 4 • The Science of Quality 5 • The Quality of Cheap Tea 6 • The Quality of Markets Conclusion: The Endurance of Quality Notes Bibliography Index
£64.00
University of California Press Tasting Qualities
Book SynopsisTrade Review"A stimulating account of Britain’s favourite drink." * Times Literary Supplement *"[Besky's] nuanced study of Indian tea . . . is a refreshing brew of botany, business and culture." * Nature *"Provides an unusual and rich understanding of the process of creating, reproducing, and evaluating the quality of tea." * American Anthropologist *"A wonderfully layered and immaculately researched exploration of the enduring tastes of empire." * Allegra Lab *"Tasting Qualities will be a beneficial read to a broad range of scholars with interest in food, labor, and commodity studies, the intersection of food, nutrition, and health knowledge, science and technology." * Food, Culture & Society *"With a fine eye for detail and sparkling writing that makes the seemingly mundane fascinating . . . Tasting Qualities is a highly original, deeply researched, and theoretically sophisticated ethnography of Indian tea’s modernity, which adds to the scholarship on commodities and capitalism." * Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society *"Engages deeply with the theoretical aspects of assessing the quality and value of commodities through the lens of tea." * CHOICE *"A fascinating view of the Indian tea industry. . . . Manages to easily deconstruct and demystify the space between the plantation and the cup of tea." * Tea Journey *"Tasting Qualities is a persuasive ethnography of quality and its many unseen constituents." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *"Tasting Qualities is a persuasive ethnography of quality and its many unseen constituents." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *"With a fine eye for detail and sparkling writing that makes the seemingly mundane fascinating . . . Tasting Qualities is a highly original, deeply researched, and theoretically sophisticated ethnography of Indian tea’s modernity, which adds to the scholarship on commodities and capitalism." * Isis *"Combining ethnographic and archival description, Sarah Besky’s Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea cleverly turns an analytic lens on the dependable and standardized aesthetics of modern capitalism." * American Ethnologist *"Besky offers anthropologists and other interdisciplinary scholars an ethnography to teach, think with, and push their studies of work, agriculture, finance, and commodities a bit further toward our collective understanding of quality." * Exertions *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: The Production of Quality 1 • The Work of Taste 2 • The Auction and the Archive 3 • The Problem with Blending 4 • The Science of Quality 5 • The Quality of Cheap Tea 6 • The Quality of Markets Conclusion: The Endurance of Quality Notes Bibliography Index
£22.50
University of California Press How Chiefs Became Kings
Book SynopsisIn How Chiefs Became Kings, Patrick Vinton Kirch addresses a central problem in anthropological archaeology: the emergence of archaic states whose distinctive feature was divine kingship. Kirch takes as his focus the Hawaiian archipelago, commonly regarded as the archetype of a complex chiefdom. Integrating anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, traditional history, and theory, and drawing on significant contributions from his own four decades of research, Kirch argues that Hawaiian polities had become states before the time of Captain Cook's voyage (1778-1779). The status of most archaic states is inferred from the archaeological record. But Kirch shows that because Hawai`i's kingdoms were established relatively recently, they could be observed and recorded by Cook and other European voyagers. Substantive and provocative, this book makes a major contribution to the literature of precontact Hawai`i and illuminates Hawai`i's importance in the global theory and literature about divine kingship, archaic states, and sociopolitical evolution.Trade Review“Concise, but data-rich and sophisticated in its dissection of social theory.” -- Norman Yoffee * Times Literary Supplement (TLS) *“Rich and wideranging. . . . Kirch cements his reputation in this book. . . . Here we see the master at the top of his game.” -- Paul D’Arcy * Anthropos *“Complete and compelling. . . . This is an important book, and everyone with a serious interest in Hawaiian history should read it.” -- Thomas A. Woods, Executive Director, Mission Houses Museum * Hawaiian Jrnl Of History *Table of ContentsContents Preface 1. From Chiefdom to Archaic State: Hawai‘i in Comparative and Historical Context What Are Archaic States? Theories of Primary State Formation Hawai‘i as a Model System for State Emergence Marshall Sahlins’s Challenge A Phylogenetic Model for Polynesian Cultural Evolution The Nature of Ancestral Polynesian Society How Did Contact-Era Hawai‘i Differ from Ancestral Polynesia? Was Hawai‘i Unique in Polynesia? 2. Hawaiian Archaic States on the Eve of European Contact Sources for Reconstructing Contact-Era Hawai‘i Hawaiian Polities: Size and Scale Class Stratifi cation and Divine Kingship Elite Art, Craft Specialization, and Wealth Finance Political, Administrative, and Settlement Hierarchies Systems of Production The Hierarchy of Priests and Temples The State Cults and the Ritual Cycle Land and Labor War Summary 3. Native Hawaiian Political History Genealogies of Renown, Traditions of Power Founding Traditions of Settlement and Voyaging Political Developments of the Fifteenth to Mid-sixteenth Centuries Usurpation and Political Consolidation in the Hawai‘i and Maui Kingdoms Dynastic Histories of the Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries Political Developments of the Contact Era Agency in History: Ali‘i Routes to Power 4. Tracking the Transformations: Population, Intensification, and Monumentality The Hawaiian Cultural Sequence Population and Demographic Trends Contrastive Agroecosystems Temporal Pathways of Intensifi cation Marine Resources and Aquaculture Monumentality and the Temple System Royal Centers and Elite Residence Patterns When Did the Hawaiian Archaic States Emerge? 5. The Challenge of Explanation Previous Explanations for Hawaiian Cultural Change Ultimate Causation: Population, Intensifi cation, and Surplus Proximate Causation: Status Rivalry, Alliance, and Conquest Why Did Archaic States Emerge First on Hawai‘i and Maui? Hawai‘i and Archaic State Emergence Notes Glossary of Hawaiian Terms References Index
£999.99
University of California Press Following the Leader
Book SynopsisWith unique access to Chinese leaders at all levels of the party and government, best-selling author David M. Lampton tells the story of China's political elites from their own perspectives. Based on over five hundred interviews, Following the Leader offers a rare glimpse into how the attitudes and ideas of those at the top have evolved over the past four decades. Here China's rulers explain their strategies and ideas for moving the nation forward, share their reflections on matters of leadership and policy, and discuss the challenges that keep them awake at night. As the Chinese Communist Party installs its new president, Xi Jinping, for a presumably ten-year term, questions abound. How will the country move forward as its explosive rate of economic growth begins to slow? How does it plan to deal with domestic and international calls for political reform and to cope with an aging population, not to mention an increasingly fragmented bureaucracy and society? In this insightful book Trade Review"Provides an exceptional explanation of the astounding changes that China has experienced, especially since the late 1970s, and offers a sober assessment of the challenges the nation currently faces. . . . This important work on understanding contemporary China is essential for all China watchers. Its concise and lucid treatment of the topic will serve as valuable reading to experts and novices alike." * Library Journal *"Beautifully written, and dotted with poetic passages unexpected in a book of political analysis." * Pacific Affairs *"An authoritative depiction of how China's leaders view their domestic and international environments . . . It is all too rare to have a single book address issues of elite politics, domestic governance, civil-military relations, and foreign policy, but Lampton does so effectively in this book." * Political Science Quarterly *"A cogent, in-depth analysis." * Choice *"Insightful analysis . . . . One of the most balanced scholarly accounts of China’s political development." * Journal of Chinese Political Science *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations and Tables Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Evolution in the Revolution Part One. China, a Wide-Angle View 2. Governance and Leadership 3. Policy Making 4. The World Part Two. China, an Up-Close View 5. Nightmares 6. Soldiers and Civilians 7. Negotiation Chinese Style Conclusion: Driving beyond the Headlights Appendix: The Interviews and Interviewing in China Notes Index
£20.70
University of California Press The Fifth Beginning What Six Million Years of
Book SynopsisI have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow. This inscription in Tutankhamun's tomb summarizesThe Fifth Beginning. Here, archaeologist Robert L. Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity. In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive, no-turning-backchange for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls afifth beginning, one that started about AD 1500. Some might call it globalization, but the author places it in its larger context:a five-thousand-year arms race, capitalism's global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network. Kelly predicts that the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread shift toward world citizenship, and the rise of forms of cooperation that will end the near-sacred status of nation-states. It's the end of life as we have known it. However, the author is cautiously optimistic: he dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity's great potential. Trade Review"This closely argued and beautifully written book is a brilliant statement as to why archaeology, and an archaeological perspective, are of central importance in today’s world. . . . It’s a cliché these days to remark that a book belongs on everyone’s bookshelves, but in this case it’s the truth. Everyone interested in the past and the future will find this a wonderful starting point for their thinking. Above all, it talks about archaeology in fluent and jargon-free language that will appeal to a very broad audience indeed. This isn’t a book about the romance of archaeology or spectacular discoveries. It’s, quite simply, the best essay on archaeology I’ve ever read. I hope it becomes a classic." -- Brian Fagan * Current World Archaeology *Table of ContentsPreface 1. The End of the World as We Know It 2. How Archaeologists Think 3. Sticks and Stones: The Beginning of Technology 4. Beads and Stories: The Beginning of Culture 5. Bread and Beer: The Beginning of Agriculture 6. Kings and Chains: The Beginning of the State 7. Nothing Lasts Forever: The Fifth Beginning Notes Bibliography Index
£15.29
University of California Press The Streets Are Talking to Me
Book SynopsisThis sophisticated book presents new theoretical and analytical insights into the momentous events in the Arab world that began in 2011 and, more importantly, into life and politics in the aftermath of these events. Focusing on the qualities of the sensory world, Maria Frederika Malmström explores the dramatic differences after the Egyptian revolution and their implications for societythe lack of sound in the floating landscape of Cairo after the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, the role of material things in the sit-ins of 2013, the military evocation of masculinities (and the destruction of alternative ones), and how people experience pain, rage, disgust, euphoria, and passion in the body. While focused primarily on changes unfolding in Egypt, this study also investigates how materiality and affect provide new possibilities for examining societies in transition. A book of rare honesty and vulnerability, The Streets Are Talking to Me is a brilliant, unconventional, and self-consciouTrade Review"The book is written in an engaging style, rich with affect. The book contains fascinating ethnographic anecdotes, felt reflections on events and exchanges by the author, long stretches of elicited testimony from interlocutors, and compelling photographs that highlight different materialities. Thus, it might interest those seeking to explore less formal modes of ethnographic writing and presentation." * Anthropology Book Forum *
£22.50
University of California Press A Party for Lazarus
Book SynopsisA Party for Lazarus is the story of a Cuban family, six generations removed from slavery, struggling to honor its ancestors amid changing fortunes and a crumbling state. This intimate intergenerational account centers on an annual feast celebrating ancestors and orisásthe life-changing spirits at the heart of Black Atlantic religious life. Based on twenty years of fieldwork, Todd Ramón Ochoa's masterful ethnography shows how orisá praise and everyday life have changed in revolutionary Cuba over two decades of economic hardship.Trade Review"Much more than a traditional ethnography, this work is an affective journey, one that marks the rhythms and sensations of everyday life in a home where Catholic saints, African gods, and the Cuban dead comingle with family, friends, and neighbors." * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface PART ONE 1 • The Ring and the Altar 2 • La Sociedad Africana, 1880–1940: Chacha Cairo among the Dead and the Santos-Orisás 3 • Cucusa Sáez and Her Children PART TWO 4 • 1999: Return 5 • A Meal for the Dead 6 • Opening 7 • Slaughter 8 • A Bembé for San Lázaro–Babalú Ayé PART THREE 9 • 2005: Loss 10 • A Hole to Fill 11 • Dear Elégua 12 • 2006: Decay 13 • Oyá PART FOUR 14 • 2009: Deceit 15 • Voices of the Dead 16 • 2012: Prohibition 17 • Lázaro M. 18 • Two Bembés PART FIVE 19 • 2014: Despair 20 • Sovereigns of Affliction Epilogue • 2018: Recovery Notes Bibliography Index
£22.50
