Social and cultural anthropology Books

Book SynopsisAgainst the gloomy forecast of The Vanishing Diaspora, the end of the second millennium saw the global emergence of a dazzling array of Jewish cultural initiatives, institutional modalities, and individual practices. These Jewish Revival and Jewish Renewal projects are led by Jewish NGOs and philanthropic organizations, the Orthodox Teshuva (return to the fold) movement and its well-known emissary Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism, and alternative cultural initiatives that promote what can be termed lifestyle Judaism. This range between institutionalized revival movements and ephemeral event-driven projects circumscribes a diverse space of creative agency, which calls for a bottom-up empirical analysis of cultural creativity and the re-invention of Jewish tradition worldwide. Indeed, the trope of a Jewish Renaissance has become both a descriptive category of an increasingly popular and scholarly discourse across the globe, and a prescriptive model for social action. This volume explores the gl

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Book SynopsisDrawing on the disarticulate figures in modern fictional works such as Billy Budd, The Sound and the Fury, Nightwood, White Noise, and The Echo Maker, among others, this book shows how these characters mark sites at which aesthetic, philosophical, ethical, political, medical, and scientific discourses converge.Trade Review[T]he book is a valuable contribution to disability studies both for its speculations and specific readings. It is a very thoughtful and thought-filled work, nuanced and wide-ranging, which should have an effect on the field. * Critical Inquiry *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Disarticulate and Dysarticulate 1. The Bearing Across of Language: Care, Catachresis, and Political Failure 2. Linguistic Impairment and the Default of Modernism: Totality and Otherness: Dys-/Disarticulate Modernity 3. Post-Modern Wild Children, Falling Towers, and the Counter-Linguistic Turn 4. Dys-/Disarticulation and Disability 5. Alterity Is Relative: Impairment, Narrative, and Care in an Age of Neuroscience Epilogue: "Language in Dissolution" and "A World without Words" Notes Works Cited Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisExplores the complex ideas about race, racism, and racial identity that have grown up among Afro-Brazilians in the black music sceneTrade Review"Burdick writes with an evocative clarity that allows the context and voices of his informants to shine through. His commitment to them and his passion for racial justice drive the account of his research." * Pneuma *"Overall, this work is an admirable achievement.-," -- David Lehmann * Cambridge University Press *"Reading John Burdicks The Color of Sound reminded me that the Queen of Gospel, Mahalia Jackson, sang the legendary hymn 'How I Got Over' just minutes after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I Have a Dream Speech' at the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Burdick delivers an evocative book full of fresh insights, analyzing how religious music makers and black gospel have the potential to create deeply meaningful and positive new politically engaged black and Afro-Brazilian identities in Brazil." -- Donna M. Goldstein,author of Laughter Out of Place"Reveals the little-studied, but vast realm of transnational Christian popular music that circulates outside of mainstream channels. Burdicks evocative study of the vibrant scene of black evangelical music in São Paulo invites us to rethink notions of sonic performance, its relation to the body, and its reverberations in a modern urban society fraught by durable racial and social inequalities. Combining a richly textured ethnography with novel theoretical insights, this book points to new directions in the study of race, space, and faith in Brazilian culture. " -- Christopher Dunn,Tulane UniversityTable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Something 'Bout the Name of Jesus: Racial Meanings in Evangelical Musical Scenes 1 We Are the Modern Levites: Three Gospel Music Scenes 2 We Are All One in the Periferia: Blackness, Place, and Poverty in Gospel Rap 3 The Flags of Jesus and Brazil: Body, History, and Nation in Samba Gospel 4 A Voice So Full of Pain and Power: Black Gospel and Blackness 5 The Bible Is Full of Prophecies: Black Evangelical Musicians and Black Politics Conclusion: Evangelicalism, Blackness, and Music in Brazil Notes References Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisExplores the complex ideas about race, racism, and racial identity that have grown up among Afro-Brazilians in the black music sceneTrade Review"Burdick writes with an evocative clarity that allows the context and voices of his informants to shine through. His commitment to them and his passion for racial justice drive the account of his research." * Pneuma *"Overall, this work is an admirable achievement.-," -- David Lehmann * Cambridge University Press *"Reading John Burdicks The Color of Sound reminded me that the Queen of Gospel, Mahalia Jackson, sang the legendary hymn 'How I Got Over' just minutes after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I Have a Dream Speech' at the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Burdick delivers an evocative book full of fresh insights, analyzing how religious music makers and black gospel have the potential to create deeply meaningful and positive new politically engaged black and Afro-Brazilian identities in Brazil." -- Donna M. Goldstein,author of Laughter Out of Place"Reveals the little-studied, but vast realm of transnational Christian popular music that circulates outside of mainstream channels. Burdicks evocative study of the vibrant scene of black evangelical music in São Paulo invites us to rethink notions of sonic performance, its relation to the body, and its reverberations in a modern urban society fraught by durable racial and social inequalities. Combining a richly textured ethnography with novel theoretical insights, this book points to new directions in the study of race, space, and faith in Brazilian culture. " -- Christopher Dunn,Tulane UniversityTable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Something 'Bout the Name of Jesus: Racial Meanings in Evangelical Musical Scenes 1 We Are the Modern Levites: Three Gospel Music Scenes 2 We Are All One in the Periferia: Blackness, Place, and Poverty in Gospel Rap 3 The Flags of Jesus and Brazil: Body, History, and Nation in Samba Gospel 4 A Voice So Full of Pain and Power: Black Gospel and Blackness 5 The Bible Is Full of Prophecies: Black Evangelical Musicians and Black Politics Conclusion: Evangelicalism, Blackness, and Music in Brazil Notes References Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisRedraws old definitions of what it means to be religious and Asian American.Trade ReviewProvides the most comprehensive coverage of Asian Americans' religious practices, cutting across different ethnic groups, religions, topics, and generations. It should be an essential reader for anyone interested in Asian Americans' religious practices. -- Pyong Gap Min,co-editor of Religions in Asian America: Building Faith CommunitiesThis anthology represents the cutting-edge research on Asian American religions from a social science standpoint. * The Journal of Asian Studies *This volume is an important contribution to a much needed recognition of the role of religion in American social and cultural life. * Multicultural Review *Asian American Religion makes an important sociological contribution to our understanding of the nature of the interplay between religious diversity and American culture. * Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion *

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Book SynopsisDrawing on archival material and contemporary analysis, this title provides an account of the prehistory of cultural studies in Britain. It offers a genealogy of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies which has its roots in adult education as well as in the work of Raymond Williams, E P Thompson, and Richard Hoggart.Trade ReviewThe five chapters of the book engage in a systematic analysis of key moments and texts that have shaped the field in its current form...represents a fine work of scholarship and a significant contribution ot the field of Asian American studies -- John Su * Journal of Asian Studies *Chiang directly challenges many shibboleths of Asian American Studies. For just this reason, The Cultural Capital of Asian American Studies is certain to be a watershed work in the field of Asian American literary and cultural studies. -- James Kyung-Jin Lee,University of California, Santa BarbaraTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Institutionalization and the Crisis of Representation 1 From Cultural Politics to Cultural Capital 2 Contradictions in the emergence of ethnic Studies 3 Disciplinarity and the Political Identity of Asian American Studies 4 The Political economy of Minority Literature 5 Asian American Cultural Capital and the Crisis of Legitimation Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisExamines how youth activism has emerged to address the persistent inequalities that affect urban youth of color. This book provides a detailed account of the strategies that youth activists use to frame their social justice agendas and organize in their local communities.Trade Review"The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back is a unique and important study of youth activism today. Clay skillfully uses the insights of young people to provide a detailed depiction and explanation of how young people are creating and engaging in social activism in the 21st century. This is an essential book to read for anyone interested in and concerned with youth organizing and activism." -- Cathy J. Cohen,author of Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics"Andreana Clay's insightful study of activism among youth of color masterfully shows the ways that teenagers are politically active in their schools and communities. Rejecting stereotypes of Black, Latino and Asian youth as apathetic and causing social problems, this book shows us their commitment to fight for social change. A profoundly optimistic book, The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back provides a fascinating glimpse of the optimism and resilience of the next generation of leaders who are essential to America's future." -- Patricia Hill Collins,author of From Black Power to Hip Hop"The very concept of youth culture and resistance has become such a sociological cliché that in the face of such resistance we often respond with cynicism. Clays important The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back cuts through this cynicism, allowing the hip-hop generation to speak for themselves about their humanity and the world that they are making for themselves and their communities." -- Mark Anthony Neal,editor of That’s the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader"We are left with a deeper appreciation of the imprint youths make in the grassroots world of social change." -- Amy L. Best * American Journal of Sociology *"[W]ell designed and deftly executed... Andreana Clay's fine study asks and answers important questions by drawing evidence and ideas from the imagination and insights of young people struggling to survive and thrive in a society that has largely abandoned them. Clay has chosen to write a book that is not merely a chronicle of oppressedpeoples suffering, but a call to action to join in their struggle." * Cultural Sociology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii 1. Youth Crisis, Rebellion, and Identity 1 2. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize The Contemporary Struggle 23 3. It's Gonna Get Hard Negotiating Race and Gender in Urban Settings 55 4. Hip-Hop for the Soul Kickin' Reality in the Local Scene 91 5. Queer Youth Act Up Tackling Homophobia Post-Stonewall 121 6. Big Shoes to Fill Activism Past and Present 153 7. Conclusion Sampling Activism 181 Appendix 191 Notes 199 Bibliography 215 Index 223 About the Author 230

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Book SynopsisProvides a rich new conceptual language to describe the movements of sex in nineteenth-century America before it solidified into the sexuality we knowTrade ReviewSucceeds at expanding the analytic vocabulary for describing intimate experience in the nineteenth century. Coviellos efforts to track the shifting meanings of time and sex will undoubtedly appeal to those with an interest in temporality, and anyone with an interest in Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson and the other subjects will appreciate Coviellos careful yet imaginative readings. * Lambda Literary *Coviello models a profoundly sensitive approach to nineteenth-century American literatures & & broken-off futuresone that is willing and ableto get caught up in these authors ardent optimism and depressive realism and to ask, along with Thoreau, & & What is that other kind of lifeto which I am thus continually allured? * Nineteenth-Century Literature *In Intimacy in America: Dreams of Affiliation in Antebellum Literature, Coviello (Bowdoin College) offered a rereading of canonical 19th-century authors, focused on the problematic role that race played in constructing a sense of Americanness. Coviello returns with an even more ambitious reexamination of 19th century literature, focused on exploring what counted as sexuality during this period. Considering works by Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, Emily Dickinson, and Frederick Douglass, and writing by Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Coviello aims to disrupt views of the 19th century as primarily anticipating the development of modern taxonomies of sexuality. Instead, he examines 'errant possibilities for imagining sex that have sunk into kind of muteness with the advent of modern sexuality.' Coviello explicates texts and passages in which sexuality is represented as distinctly different from the modern regime of sexual specification, whether it is Thoreau's descriptions of 'exquisite carnal ravishment by sound' or Smith's attempt to pursue 'enlargement' via plural marriage. This book breaks new ground in theorizations of temporality for those working in queer theory, gender studies, and 19th century literature * Choice *Integral to the books success is Coviellos masterful style; he does not overwhelm the text in question but suggests new historical frameworks for & reading sexuality so his subjects can more easily speak for themselves. * American Nineteenth Century History *In luminous readings of Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Joseph Smith, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Henry James, among others, Tomorrows Parties provides a glimpse of some of the unrealized possibilities of sex in the long, last moments before it might have known itself as & sexuality in its modern senses * American Literary History *Coviello combines historical analysis and contemporary interpretation of former famous worksqueer reading as we call it today. Coviello always mentions his main problem: it would be impolite and incorrect to apply modern sexualities to the Victorian era. In the gay movement, Walt Whitman had been renamed as a gay writerCoviello emphasizes, & gay hadnt existed in Whitmans days. So Coviello is far from easy deconstructivism. He takes readers on a 200-page journey into nineteenth-century livelihood. Modern theorists may assist in social analysis, but Coviello never misuses them for explanations of the past. [] Coviellos book is worth reading. He offers great description and interpretation of literary sexual discourse in 19th century America. * Sexuality and Culture *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Unspeakable Past Part One Lost Futures1 Disappointment, or, Thoreau in Love 2 Whitman at War Coda: A Little Destiny Part Two To Speak of the Woe That Is in Marriage3 Islanded: Jewett and the Uncompanioned Life 4 What Does the Polygamist Want? Frederick Douglass, Joseph Smith, and Marriage at the Edges of the Human Coda: Unceremoniousness Part Three Speech and Silence: Reckonings of the Queer FutureThe Tenderness of Beasts: Hawthorne at Blithedale 6 Made for Love: Olive Chancellor, Henry James, and The Bostonians Coda: The Turn Notes Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisDioramas and panoramas, freaks and magicians, waxworks and menageries, obscure relics and stuffed animals - a dazzling assortment of curiosities attracted the gaze of the nineteenth-century spectator at the dime museum. This title recaptures this ephemeral and scarcely documented institution of American culture from the margins of history.

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Book SynopsisPresents alternative and more empowering representations of Latinidad to help attain true political equity and intra-racial coalitionsTrade Review"Arlene Dávila depicts the frenzied efforts of post-industrial America to corral more than 40 million diverse Latinos into a single homogenized market. Whether its peddling consumer goods, monetizing art and culture, engineering barrio land development, or shaping a new political voting bloc, Latino Spin brilliantly dissects Hispanic-American reality in the 21st century." -- Juan Gonzalez,author of Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America"The finest, fiercest and most piercing of our public intellectuals . . . Dávila is a force of nature. In Latino Spin Dávila elegantly unravels the media driven sleight-of-hand that simultaneously celebrates an uber-American (and almost entirely manufactured) Latino middle class while demonizing recent Latino immigrants and the poor folks who resemble them. On a line by line, idea by idea basis Dávila is simply without peer, her scholarship essential to our understanding of our New America." -- Junot Díaz,author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Drown"A wonderfully written book that cuts through the & spin often used to typecast the U.S.s largest minority group. Offering a fresh and insightful take on race in America, Arlene Dávila addresses popular images of Latinos and shows us the limitations of both negative portrayals and the attempts to respond to them. In this tour de force, Dávila goes beyond simply describing bias to offer a transcendent vision of Latinos that challenges racism and captures the complexity of this diverse community." -- Mark Sawyer,author of Racial Politics in Post Revolutionary Cuba"Her invaluable scholarly treatment unearths the competing interests and race-inflected ideological tendencies behind characterizations of Latino political identity in the mainstream media." * Publishers Weekly *"A must read for students as well as a general public concerned with the future role of Latinos in U.S. society. Dávila also lays the foundation for understanding events that have occurred since the books publication." * Journal of American Ethnic History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I. The Politics of Latino Spin 1 Here Comes the Latino Middle Class 2 Latinos: "The New Republicans (They Just Don't Know It)" 3 The Hispanic Consumer: That's "A Lot of Dollars, Cars, Diapers, and Food" Part II. Political Economy: Spaces and Institutions 4 The Times-Squaring of El Barrio: On Mega-Projects, Spin, and "Community Consent" 5 From Barrio to Mainstream: On the Politics of Latino/a Art Museums 6 The "Disciplining" of Ethnic Studies: Or, Why It Will Take Goya Foods and J.Lo to Endow Latino Studies Conclusion: On the Dangers of Wishful Thinking Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisDrawing on the Athenian tradition of wielding citizenship as a weapon to defend a contingently defined polis,' Hector Amaya has crafted an elegant and sophisticated analysis of the contemporary policies designed to contain and criminalize Latina/os. Citizenship Excess demonstrates that he is one of the leading Latina/o Media Scholars today. Angharad N. Valdivia, General Editor of the International Encyclopedia of Media Studies and author of Latina/osDrawing on contemporary conflicts between Latino/as and anti-immigrant forces, Citizenship Excess illustrates the limitations of liberalism as expressed through U.S. media channels. Inspired by Latin American critical scholarship on the coloniality of power, Amaya demonstrates that nativists use the privileges associated with citizenship to accumulate power. That power is deployed to aggressively shape politics, culture, and the law, effectively undermining Latino/as who are marked by the ethno-racial and linguistic differenTrade ReviewAmayas book is crucial for anyone concerned about the position of Latinas/os in the US. -- K. Sorensen * Choice *Drawing on the Athenian tradition of & wielding citizenship as a weapon to defend a contingently defined polis, Hector Amaya has crafted an elegant and sophisticated analysis of the contemporary policies designed to contain and criminalize Latina/os.Citizenship Excess demonstrates that he is one of the leading Latina/o Media scholars today. -- Angharad N. Valdivia,author of A Latina in the Land of HollywoodTable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Latinas/os and Citizenship Excess Part I: Defending the Walls 1 Toward a Latino Critique of Public Sphere Theory 2 Nativism and the 2006 Pro-Immigration Reform Rallies 3 Hutto: Staging Transnational Justice Claims in the Time of Coloniality 4 English- and Spanish-Language Media Part II: Conditions of Inclusion 5 Labor and the Legal Structuring of Media Industries in the Case of Ugly Betty (ABC, 2006) 6 Mediating Belonging, Inclusion, and Death Conclusion: The Ethics of Nation Notes References Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisUses a queer, anti-racist feminist approach to explore the diversity of girlhoods in contemporary popular culture.Trade Review"Referring to her line of study as & Feminist girls media studies, Projansky focuses on the relationship between girls and the media. The book provides ample support for her chosen approaches, theories, and opinions. Indeed, the book is well-written and prolifically sourced...." * Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly *"The book provides useful material to help girls understand their lives better and to broaden peoples horizons. It provides a critical approach to the dominant media that gives us only certain, selected images of girls." * Libri & Liberi *"Spectacular Girlsaddresses both the insistent visibility of the contemporary girl in media culture and the elisions of race and class that make so many girls invisible. Providing an astute intervention into both girlhood studies and feminist media studies,Projanskyexplores multiple media manifestations of girlhood; from television and film to sports and activism,Spectacular Girlsbrings into critical view the mediation of the girl in postfeminist culture." -- Yvonne Tasker,University of East Anglia"Making her case with conviction and rigor, Projansky persuasively argues that popular cultures treatment of girls has vacillated between spectacularization and protectionism. Compelling and original,Spectacular Girlsis excellenta forceful and nuanced critique of the gender and age politics of our media culture." -- Diane Negra,co-editor of Gendering the Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity"Projanksy's push to change the ways girls are perceived within media, by the public, and within scholarship, from an expectation of white heteronormativity to a more intersectional vision that includes race and sexuality, using 'what Ella Shohat calls a polycentric, multicultural feminism,' is laudable. Projanksy wants 'to see beyond or around the 'mean girls' and the 'Taylor Swifts,' as she puts it, to develop a mediascape that presents more complicated understandings of girlhoodone that the public might embrace even if it's hesitantly, like a teenage girl, balking abit and looking in other directions." * Women's Review of Books *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Finding Alternative Girlhoods 1 Pint-Sized and Precocious: The Girl Star in Film History 2 "It's Like Floating" or Battling the World: Mass Magazine Cover Girls 3 What Is There to Talk About? Twenty-First-Century Girl Films 4 "I'm Not Changing My Hair": Venus Williams and Live TV's Racialized Struggle over Athletic Girlhood 5 Sakia Gunn Is a Girl: Queer African American Girlhood in Local and Alternative Media 6 "Sometimes I Say Cuss Words in My Head": The Complexity of Third-Grade Media Analysis Conclusion: Girlhood Rethought Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisLanguage is integral to oursocial being. But what is the status of those who stand outside of language?The mentally disabled, wild children, people with autism and otherneurological disorders, as well as animals, infants, angels, and artificialintelligences, have all engaged with language from a position at its borders.In the intricate verbal constructions of modern literature, thedisarticulate'those at the edges of languagehave, paradoxically, playedessential, defining roles. Drawing on the disarticulate figures inmodern fictional works such as Billy Budd, The Sound and the Fury,Nightwood, White Noise, and The Echo Maker, among others,James Berger shows in this intellectually bracing study how these charactersmark sites at which aesthetic, philosophical, ethical, political, medical, andscientific discourses converge. It is also the place of the greatest ethicaltension, as society confronts the needsTrade Review[T]he book is a valuable contribution to disability studies both for its speculations and specific readings. It is a very thoughtful and thought-filled work, nuanced and wide-ranging, which should have an effect on the field. * Critical Inquiry *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Disarticulate and Dysarticulate 1. The Bearing Across of Language: Care, Catachresis, and Political Failure 2. Linguistic Impairment and the Default of Modernism: Totality and Otherness: Dys-/Disarticulate Modernity 3. Post-Modern Wild Children, Falling Towers, and the Counter-Linguistic Turn 4. Dys-/Disarticulation and Disability 5. Alterity Is Relative: Impairment, Narrative, and Care in an Age of Neuroscience Epilogue: "Language in Dissolution" and "A World without Words" Notes Works Cited Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisSheds new light on the potential for the fair trade market to reshape the world into a more socially-just placeTrade Review"BrownsBuying into Fair Tradeis a thoughtful, articulate, critical, and compelling study of limitations of potentials of fair trade, ethical consumption, and the many forces that make certain kinds of consumers and activists in this day and age." * Political and Legal Anthropology Review Online *"Buying into Fair Trade provides readers with insights into how consumption trends shape food cultures... [The author] examines the potential of fair trade to create a more socially just world, drawing on interviews, reality tour experiences, interactions with fair-trade advocates, and volunteering at Ten Thousand Villages, a company dedicated to promoting the fair trade of products made by artisans in developing countries." * Contexts *"Brown's sociologically sophisticated treatment of the symbolic, moral and practical aspects of fair trade is a significant advance over much of the literature. Highly recommended" -- Juliet Schor,author of True Wealth"In Buying into Fair Trade, Keith Brown explores how global consumers and entrepreneurs invest products from organic coffee beans to handmade jewelry with morality and meaning. Along the way we meet Third World reality tourists, sustainable coffee bar owners, social-justice activists, and conscientious consumers, all of whom negotiate the confusing contradictions between charity and commerce, altruism and authenticity." -- David Grazian,author of Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs"Keith Brown turns a sympathetic yet critical eye on the new generation of consumers who want to buy morally rather than contribute to exploitation of indigenous producers and ruining the ecology. The ethical turn in markets is part social movement, part social construction of belief, part frontstage performance. Brown takes us inside the altruism and the contentions of this supply chain where emotions shape markets." -- Randall Collins,author of Interaction Ritual Chains and Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory"The first book-length social science work to focus exclusively on the consumption side of fair trade, and as such it represents a much-needed contribution." -- Daniel Jaffe * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsC o n t e n t sAcknowledgments vii1. A Taste of Life in the Nicaraguan Campo 12. "Just One Normal Coffee": Crafting Joe's Moral Reputation 313. "Buy More Coffee": Becoming a Promoter throughExtraordinary Experiences 554. "Who Are We Pillaging from This Time?": Managing Value Contradictions in Shopping 735. How to Appear Altruistic 956. The Great Recession and the Social Significance of Buyinginto Fair Trade 121Appendix: Research Methods 141Notes 155Bibliography 171Index 181About the Author 18

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Book SynopsisSheds new light on the potential for the fair trade market to reshape the world into a more socially-just placeTrade Review"BrownsBuying into Fair Tradeis a thoughtful, articulate, critical, and compelling study of limitations of potentials of fair trade, ethical consumption, and the many forces that make certain kinds of consumers and activists in this day and age." * Political and Legal Anthropology Review Online *"Buying into Fair Trade provides readers with insights into how consumption trends shape food cultures... [The author] examines the potential of fair trade to create a more socially just world, drawing on interviews, reality tour experiences, interactions with fair-trade advocates, and volunteering at Ten Thousand Villages, a company dedicated to promoting the fair trade of products made by artisans in developing countries." * Contexts *"Brown's sociologically sophisticated treatment of the symbolic, moral and practical aspects of fair trade is a significant advance over much of the literature. Highly recommended" -- Juliet Schor,author of True Wealth"In Buying into Fair Trade, Keith Brown explores how global consumers and entrepreneurs invest products from organic coffee beans to handmade jewelry with morality and meaning. Along the way we meet Third World reality tourists, sustainable coffee bar owners, social-justice activists, and conscientious consumers, all of whom negotiate the confusing contradictions between charity and commerce, altruism and authenticity." -- David Grazian,author of Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs"Keith Brown turns a sympathetic yet critical eye on the new generation of consumers who want to buy morally rather than contribute to exploitation of indigenous producers and ruining the ecology. The ethical turn in markets is part social movement, part social construction of belief, part frontstage performance. Brown takes us inside the altruism and the contentions of this supply chain where emotions shape markets." -- Randall Collins,author of Interaction Ritual Chains and Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory"The first book-length social science work to focus exclusively on the consumption side of fair trade, and as such it represents a much-needed contribution." -- Daniel Jaffe * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsC o n t e n t sAcknowledgments vii1. A Taste of Life in the Nicaraguan Campo 12. "Just One Normal Coffee": Crafting Joe's Moral Reputation 313. "Buy More Coffee": Becoming a Promoter throughExtraordinary Experiences 554. "Who Are We Pillaging from This Time?": Managing Value Contradictions in Shopping 735. How to Appear Altruistic 956. The Great Recession and the Social Significance of Buyinginto Fair Trade 121Appendix: Research Methods 141Notes 155Bibliography 171Index 181About the Author 18

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Book SynopsisA provocative exploration of the new modes of scholarly communicationTrade Review"Fitzpatrick is well qualified to discuss alternate forms of publishing and unexpected futures for the academy...Chapters titled 'Peer Review,' 'Authorship,' 'Texts,' 'Preservation,' and 'The University' methodically dismantle arguments for the status quo, with sections debating accepted beliefs and practices such as the anonymous basis of peer review; recognizable, individual authorship; for-profit university presses; and the rejection of open access as a tenable scholarly publishing model." * Library Journal *"[A] desire for pre-eminence, authority and disciplinary power is what blogs and the digital humanities stand against. The point is made concisely by Kathleen Fitzpatrick in her new book, Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy." * New York Times - Opinionator Blog *"[Fitzpatrick] is one of the more persuasive advocates for understanding digital scholarship, and she acknowledges that while tenure and academic career building are still tethered to being published, institutions are starting to rethink and redefine what form that scholarly work can take." -- Bret McCabe * John Hopkins Magazine *"At a time of great uncertainty about the future of the humanities, this informed and stimulating book buzzes with excitement for the opportunities that digital technology can offer to humanities researchers...Planned Obsolescence is a wonderfully clear and honest assessment of the present state of academic publishing and possible future directions. The digital age offers us a chance to exit the ivory tower and engage in more meaningful collaborations with peers and a more inclusive dialogue with readers. Fitzpatrick's study is a must-read, not just for all of those directly involved - academics, publishers, university administrators, librarians - but also for anybody interested in the future of the humanities." -- Alessandra Tosi * Times Higher Education *"The narrative arc of Planned Obsolescence is tight, coherent, eloquent--propulsively staking its territory from micro to macro, personal to global." -- Neil Baldwin, Creative Research Center at Montclair State University: Director's Blog"This primer on innovations in academic publishing is a must-read for all participants: university administrators, faculty authors, librarians, publishers, technologists, and informed general readers." -- P.E. Sandstrom * CHOICE *"Thoughtful...Fitzpatrick is well-qualified." -- Henrietta Thornton-Verma * Library Journal's "Xpress Reviews" *"Anyone who is serious about understanding the future of scholarly publishing--and anyone who cares about knowledge and society should share this concern--will find Fitzpatrick's book an essential, thought-provoking, and highly approachable introduction to the conversation." * A Thaumaturgical Compendium *"Fitzpatrick's Planned Obsolescenceits title a sardonic speculation on the future of the printed bookconsiders how academic publishing might best resolve this challenging dilemma. As co-founder of the digital scholarly network MediaCommmons, Fitzpatrickwho lectures in Media Studies at Pomona College in Californiais well placed to observe the development of digital culture in academia." * The Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Obsolescence 1 Peer Review Traditional Peer Review and Its Defenses The History of Peer Review The Future of Peer Review Anonymity Credentialing The Reputation Economy Community-Based Filtering MediaCommons and Peer-to-Peer Review Credentialing, Revisited 2 Authorship The Rise of the Author The Death of the Author From Product to Process From Individual to Collaborative From Originality to Remix From Intellectual Property to the Gift Economy From Text to ... Something More 3 Texts Documents, E-books, Pages Hypertext Database-Driven Scholarship Reading and the Communications Circuit CommentPress 4 Preservation Standards Metadata Access Cost 5 The University Publishing, Not for Profit New Collaborations Publishing and the University Mission The History of the University Press The Press as University Publisher Sustainability Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisA provocative exploration of the new modes of scholarly communicationTrade Review"Fitzpatrick is well qualified to discuss alternate forms of publishing and unexpected futures for the academy...Chapters titled 'Peer Review,' 'Authorship,' 'Texts,' 'Preservation,' and 'The University' methodically dismantle arguments for the status quo, with sections debating accepted beliefs and practices such as the anonymous basis of peer review; recognizable, individual authorship; for-profit university presses; and the rejection of open access as a tenable scholarly publishing model." * Library Journal *"[A] desire for pre-eminence, authority and disciplinary power is what blogs and the digital humanities stand against. The point is made concisely by Kathleen Fitzpatrick in her new book, Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy." * New York Times - Opinionator Blog *"[Fitzpatrick] is one of the more persuasive advocates for understanding digital scholarship, and she acknowledges that while tenure and academic career building are still tethered to being published, institutions are starting to rethink and redefine what form that scholarly work can take." -- Bret McCabe * John Hopkins Magazine *"At a time of great uncertainty about the future of the humanities, this informed and stimulating book buzzes with excitement for the opportunities that digital technology can offer to humanities researchers...Planned Obsolescence is a wonderfully clear and honest assessment of the present state of academic publishing and possible future directions. The digital age offers us a chance to exit the ivory tower and engage in more meaningful collaborations with peers and a more inclusive dialogue with readers. Fitzpatrick's study is a must-read, not just for all of those directly involved - academics, publishers, university administrators, librarians - but also for anybody interested in the future of the humanities." -- Alessandra Tosi * Times Higher Education *"The narrative arc of Planned Obsolescence is tight, coherent, eloquent--propulsively staking its territory from micro to macro, personal to global." -- Neil Baldwin, Creative Research Center at Montclair State University: Director's Blog"This primer on innovations in academic publishing is a must-read for all participants: university administrators, faculty authors, librarians, publishers, technologists, and informed general readers." -- P.E. Sandstrom * CHOICE *"Thoughtful...Fitzpatrick is well-qualified." -- Henrietta Thornton-Verma * Library Journal's "Xpress Reviews" *"Anyone who is serious about understanding the future of scholarly publishing--and anyone who cares about knowledge and society should share this concern--will find Fitzpatrick's book an essential, thought-provoking, and highly approachable introduction to the conversation." * A Thaumaturgical Compendium *"Fitzpatrick's Planned Obsolescenceits title a sardonic speculation on the future of the printed bookconsiders how academic publishing might best resolve this challenging dilemma. As co-founder of the digital scholarly network MediaCommmons, Fitzpatrickwho lectures in Media Studies at Pomona College in Californiais well placed to observe the development of digital culture in academia." * The Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Obsolescence 1 Peer Review Traditional Peer Review and Its Defenses The History of Peer Review The Future of Peer Review Anonymity Credentialing The Reputation Economy Community-Based Filtering MediaCommons and Peer-to-Peer Review Credentialing, Revisited 2 Authorship The Rise of the Author The Death of the Author From Product to Process From Individual to Collaborative From Originality to Remix From Intellectual Property to the Gift Economy From Text to ... Something More 3 Texts Documents, E-books, Pages Hypertext Database-Driven Scholarship Reading and the Communications Circuit CommentPress 4 Preservation Standards Metadata Access Cost 5 The University Publishing, Not for Profit New Collaborations Publishing and the University Mission The History of the University Press The Press as University Publisher Sustainability Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisExplores the ways that American writing between roughly 1850 and 1930 concerned itself, often intensely, with the racial implications of architectural space primarily, but not exclusively, through domestic architecture.Trade Review[A] fascinating book. -- T.Bonner Jr. * Choice *[The] book promises to invigorate critical conversations in the interdisciplinary study of literature and architecture. * Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment *Like the work of Dell Upton,Sites Unseenintertwines the study of vernacular architecture and social history; it brings an altogether original perspective to the subject of the imprint of race relations on the architectural landscape.... One cannot recommend this innovative interdisciplinary study too highly. * Michel Imbert, Transatlantica *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Race, Writing, Architecture: American Patterns 1 Cottage Desire: The Bondwoman's Narrative and the Politics of Antebellum Space 2 Piazza Tales: Architecture, Race, and Memory in Charles Chesnutt's Conjure Stories 3 Imperial Bungalow: Structures of Empire in Richard Harding Davis and Olga Beatriz Torres 4 Keyless Rooms: Frank Lloyd Wright and Charlie Chan Coda: Black Cabin, White House Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisArticulates a fresh understanding of how the Chicano movement contributed to the social and political currents of postwar America, and how the movement remains meaningful today.Trade Review[]In the Spirit of a New Peoplesucceeds in its argument for recuperating elements of Chicana/o cultural nationalism from the 1960s and the 1970s as it was and continues to be embedded in Chicana/o art as a framework and impetus for contemporary Chicana/o political action in the present. * MELUS *Elegantly demonstrates the Chicano movement's irrefutable influenceona politically astute and enduring legacy of expressive culture. Randy J.Ontiverospersuasively argues thatmovimiento-inspired art and literature offer a crucial dose of historical consciousness required for sustaining struggles for social justice. A game-changing intervention in Chicano/a and American studies,Ontiveross book moves us beyond reductionist claims and rehashed debates to reinvigorate Chicano movement scholarship. -- Richard T. Rodriguez,author of Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural PoliticsThe books strengths lie in its reading of cultural texts, especially the visual work of Barraza; performances of El Teatro Campesino; and the writing of Cisneros, Rodolfo & Corky Gonzales, Enriqueta Vasquez, and others. Analyses of these varied works offer compelling support for Ontiveross larger argument that at least culturally the Chicano movement & didnt die at all. Contextualized in a broader history that dates to the Mexican Revolution of 1910, these examples provide persuasive evidence for the movements legacy beyond just demographic and electoral politics. * The Journal of American History *In the Spirit of a New People provides a thoughtful analysis of how the Chicano movementand social justice struggles more generallycan influence politics and culture. * The Journal of American History *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: The Art and History of the Chicano Movement 1 Antennas and Mimeograph Machines: Postwar Mass Media and the Chicano/a Street Press 2 Green Aztlan: Environmentalism and the Chicano/a Visual Arts 3 Immigrant Actos: Citizenship and Performance in El Teatro Campesino 4 After Words: Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo and the Evolution of Chicano/a Cultural Politics Notes IndexAbout the Author

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Book Synopsis10 years later, a unique look at Ground Zero from across the streetTrade Review"A very successful academic micro-study of one community's response to our nation's greatest shock." * Library Journal *"A compelling ethnographic account of how residents of Battery Park City in lower Manhattan came together to heal and rebuild their community after the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2011...commendable as a community study." * Contemporary Sociology *"Scientifically exacting and warmly personal, Smithsimon elucidates the residents struggles from survival to recovery, the coalescence of community groups, and the debates over redevelopment and the Ground Zero memorial. A well-illustrated, critical, yet sympathetic study of privilege and catastrophe that ultimately celebrates the vitality and diversity of a great city." * Booklist *"A valuable addition to the sociology of urban community development and inequality." -- D. A Chekki * CHOICE *"In addition to providing a rich ethnographic account of a neighborhood very much in the public eye over the last decade, September 12 introduces several concepts worth of other scholars' attention and study." -- Japonica Brown-Saracino * American Journal of Sociology *"A valuable study of economic privilege and spatial exclusion in the shadow of the Twin Towers and the heart of Americas biggest city." -- Sharon Zukin,author of Naked City"Smithsimon explores a basic truth: just as there is no community without politics, there is no democratic politics without a multiplicity of spaces in which people can engage each other in debate. This is an outstanding ethnography of the micro-politics of daily life." -- Robert Beauregard,author of When America Became Suburban"A fascinating book...[which] observes community life...through the prism of the months following 9/11." -- Matthew Fenton * Broadsheet *"What hes really after in September 12, his account of the history of Battery Park City, is a broad analysis of residents political actions to defend their most unusual home...Much of Smithsimons account focuses on that gulf, both geographic and psychological, and the political mobilization of Battery Park Citys resident professionals to keep their neighborhood isolated from those who might wander in across forbidding West Street." -- Alyssa Katz * The Nation *

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Book SynopsisThe initial success of a single product like X-Men, Star Trek, and Transformers led to a long-term embrace of media franchising. The author examines the corporate culture behind these production practices, as well as the collaborative and creative efforts involved in conceiving, sustaining, and sharing intellectual properties in media work worlds.Trade ReviewJohnson astutely reveals that franchises are not Borg-like assimilation machines, but, rather, complicated ecosystems within which creative workers strive to create compelling 'shared worlds.' This finely researched, breakthrough book is a must-read for anyone seeking a sophisticated understanding of the contemporary media industry. -- Heather Hendershot,author of What's Fair on the Air?: Cold War Right-Wing Broadcasting and the Public InterestMedia Franchising demonstrates that political economy and cultural studies can be systematically integrated, something many have called for but few have achieved as impressively as Derek Johnson. Building on an ideal mix of industrial, cultural, textual, and ethnographic research, Johnson pushes back against the popular view of franchises as monstrous, self-replicating programming bullies to show how contested and complex the industrial cultures are that now produce them. In this scheme, franchises are not the predictable top-down economic outcome of conglomeration, but rather a collective cultural solution to volatile economic and technological changes negotiated by cadres of largely anonymous contract media producers. Essential reading for anyone hoping to better understand the churning contemporary mediascape. -- John T. Caldwell,author of Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and TelevisionTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: An Industrial Way of Life 1. Imagining the Franchise: Structures, Social Relations, and Cultural Work 2. From Ownership to Partnership: The Institutionalization of Franchise Relations 3. Sharing Worlds: Difference, Deference, and the Creative Context of Franchising 4. "A Complicated Genesis": Transnational Production and Transgenerational Marketing 5. Occupying Industries: The Collaborative Labor of Enfranchised Consumers Conclusion: Future Exchanges and Iterations Notes Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisChallenges the believe that West Indian American girls are but assert agency in defining race through strategic consumption of popular cultureTrade ReviewShe's Mad Realcontributes to the ongoing conversation about transnational black migration and diasporic identities. By focusing on teenagers, however, LaBennett attempts to fill a gap in this field, which has usually neglected this group to focus on adult subjects. For this reason, LaBennett's is a commendable work, especially suited for undergraduate and graduate students interested in understanding why the study of popular culture is an excellent opportunity to look at broader social-political phenomena. -- Andreea Micu * Journal of Popular Culture *She's Mad Realprovides a panorama of theory, deep description, and praxis to understand these black teenage girls. LaBennett is writing against the grain, as urban black female adolescents are typecast by their race, age, gender, and presumed class position. Furthermore, as urban black teen girls, it is assumed that they are 'at risk' for becoming underage mothers with low educational aspirations and with little thought of how to becomes wage earners. LaBennett breaks that mold and brings other variables into the mix. -- A. Lynn Bolles * American Anthropologist *LaBennett offers a pivotal critique as she takes issue with national (US) and global imagery of black teenage girls...She's Mad Realreminds readers to appreciate that ethnicity, gender, class and inter-generational differences, along with the contexts in which they are set in motion, are critical to understanding the experiences and subjectivity of American and immigrant black youth. -- Aisha Khan * Anthropological Quarterly *LaBennett is deeply attuned to her subjects. Together, researcher and research subjects explore the wide world around them: hip-hop culture, opportunities for mobility, sexual life, issues of risk, relationships with momits all here! LaBennett develops incisive new interpretations of such concepts as & play-labor and & authenticity. Shes Mad Real both joins a rich ethnographic literature and expands it in revealing politically conscious and hip ways. A fantastic text for in-class use. -- Howard Winant,University of California, Santa Barbara"LaBennett rightfully inserts the experiences West Indian female youth into a transnationalism literature that has privilege the experiences of adult migrants, and which has generally focused on tensions between African Americans and West Indians, rather than acknowledging the complexity of this relationship. The author compellingly advocates for a youth-centered approach to transnationalism, inter-ethnic relations, and multiple conceptions of Blackness that goes beyond the context of the school; in particular, she showcases the consumption practices, fluid work-leisure lives, and critical approach to popular culture she noticed among the young Black women who occupy center stage in the ethnography. These are among the most significant and welcomed contributions of the volume." -- Ana Ramos-Zayas * Critique of Anthropology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 1 Consuming Identities: Toward a Youth Culture-Centered Approach to West Indian Transnationalism 2 "Our Museum": Mapping Race, Gender, and West Indian Transnationalism 3 Dual Citizenship in the Hip-Hop Nation: Gender and Authenticity in Black Youth Culture 4 "I Think They're Looking for a Skinny Chick!": Girls and Boys Consuming Racialized Beauty 5 Conclusion: Placing Gendered and Generational Notions of West Indian Success Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisHighlights the long history of African American-Asian American relationsTrade ReviewLee's close reading of the Plessy case speaks to her book's methodological interventions. It shows the importance of literary studies in not just historical analyses of texts that have been read heretofore as concerning only blacks and whites but also Afro-Asian critique....Quite simply, the reading practice developed in Lee's book is original and insightful, and it brings to light figures and forms in late-nineteenth century and early twentieth century literatures that have often been rendered as insignificant nonpresence unrelated to other racialized figures. -- Caroline H. Yang * Journal of Asian American Studies *Interracial Encounters is a striking and original study of the triangulation of race among whites, African Americans, and Asian Americans during the turn of the twentieth century. By examining discourses surrounding national identity, the railroad, and orientalism (among others), this book includes new material on the historical development of race and traces the relationship, mutual influence, coalition, and tension between members of the African and Asian diasporas. It shows through painstaking juxtaposition of historical context and literary analysis how both African American and Asian American writers are profoundly conscious of the other racial minority and how they negotiate nuanced political positions that go beyond the black and white binary. The book provides deep insights not only into the texts studied but also into the interracial dynamics during this period. In charting hitherto unexplored ways of talking about race, it fills a significant gap in American studies and paves the way for further interethnic research. -- King-Kok Cheung,University of California, Los AngelesLee's study is an invaluable addition to minority literature studies in large part because of her decision to have texts from two distinct traditions enter into conversation with one another. Her approach not only opens up these individual texts in new and exciting ways, but it also enriches and expands the understanding of race that is at their centers in ways that go beyond the traditional borders of a black and white binary. * Journal of American Culture *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 1 Introduction 2 The "Negro Problem" and the "Yellow Peril": Early Twentieth-Century America's Views on Blacks and Asians 3 Estrangement on a Train: Race and Narratives of American Identity in The Marrow of Tradition and America through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat 4 The Eaton Sisters Go to Jamaica 5 Quicksand and the Racial Aesthetics of Chinoiserie6 Nation, Narration, and the Afro-Asian Encounter in W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Princess and Younghill Kang's East Goes West 7 Coda Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisAn engaging and provocative analysis of the complex ways in which black masculinity has been read and misread through contemporary American popular cultureTrade ReviewLeroymines the contradiction between epistemologies and realness of self-making in relation to black men in popular culture. Neal has crafted an accessible text that creatively renders our understanding of black men as alien, offering complex connections between spatiality, cosmopolitanism, sound, and desire.-,r -- Jared Richardson * The Black Scholar *Looking for Leroyis a fascinating study of Black masculinity. -- Abdul Ali * The Crisis Magazine *Mark Anthony Neal is one of our most consistently interesting and inspiring critics of contemporary black popular culture and music, to whichLooking for Leroyis brilliant testament. It showcases Neals masterful ability to take iconic figures of black masculinity, from Avery Brookss neo-cool Hawk to Shawn Carters neo-queer Jay-Z, and show them to us in an entirely new light. This is an incredibly powerful little book, and readers will never look at R. Kelly or Luther Vandrossthe same way again.- -- John L. Jackson, Jr.,author of Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political CorrectnessMark Anthony Neal takes us on a fantastic journey searching for the meaning of black masculinity in the USA. As we join him inLooking for Leroy, we find queer and feminist answers to questions about legibility and illegibility, visibility and invisibility, violation and vulnerability. No one writes with more passion, power and speculative brilliance about black masculinity than Neal and no one but Neal would manage to produce a theory of black masculinity capable of explaining the smoothness of Luther Vandross, the cosmopolitan genius of Jay-Z, the enigma of Leroy fromFame, and the sheer brute force of Snoop fromThe Wire. Genius.- -- Jack Halberstam,author of Female Masculinity (1998) and Gaga Feminism (2012)Whiteness and White privilege, Jay Z's entrance into the Pace Gallery recalls a scene nearly 30 years earlier, when three young Black men, clad in black leather jackets and black brims walked into another art space and were told, 'You guys don't belong here.' Just as Run DMC was breaking down commercial barriersMTV then as resistant to Black bodies as any high-end art galleryJean-Michael Basquiat was breaking down barriers in the art world. Although Picasso is the signifier that brings every one togetherand to our worst fears about Picasso and appropriating, dare I say colonizing, spaceit is Basquiat who clearly haunts this space. -- Mark Anthony Neal * Art Papers *This is an important new book for gay and straight alike. * Windy City Times *Looking for Leroychallenges readers to view black masculinity outside the scope in which it is imagined...Neal achieves his goal of radically rescripting accepted notions of a heteronormative black masculinity. * American Studies *Looking for Leroyis very much an act of self-exploration; the men examined offer different variations of the type of black man Neal sees himself to be.This introspection adds to rather than detracts from an intriguing and thought-provoking addition to the growing research on black masculinity in the post-segregationist eraone that blurs the line and closes the gap between heteronormative scholarship and queer studies. * Cinema Journal *Looking for Leroycontinues Mark Anthony Neals work of offering a nuanced, critical understanding of African American culture, in particular the ways African American culture constructs masculinity * Journal of American Studies of Turkey *Neal's critique of black masculinity in the U.S. confronts the enormous pressure placed on black males by society's assumptions. Through a pop-culture lens, he shows how the perpetuation of racial stereotypes continues to neutralize the potential of black men and boys. * Ms. Magazine *Table of ContentsPreface: Waiting for Leroy ixAcknowledgments xiIntroduction 11 A Foot Deep in the Culture: The Thug Knowledge(s) of A Man Called Hawk 132 "My Passport Says Shawn": Toward a Hip-Hop Cosmopolitanism 353 The Block Is Hot: Legibility and Loci in The Wire 874 R. Kelly's Closet: Shame, Desire, and the Confessions of a (Postmodern) Soul Man 1175 Fear of a Queer Soul Man: The Legacy of Luther Vandross 143Postscript: Looking for Denzel, Finding Barack 169Notes 181Index 197About the Author 207

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Book SynopsisAt a time when just about everyone knows that smoking is bad for you, why do so many college students smoke? Is it a short lived phase or do they continue throughout the college years? And what happens after college, when they enter the "real world"? This book deals with these questions.Trade Review"Why does college-age smoking persist at notable and alarming levels while smoking in the adult US population has significantly declined over the past four decades? Mimi Nichter disentangles and illuminates the lure and social gains of smoking on campus through rich ethnographic accounts. This book helps to unravel the complexity of incentives to smoke among college-age students." -- Linda A. Bennett,author of The Alcoholic Family"Anthropologist Nichter presents an important new contribution to the literature on youth smoking of interest to both tobacco researchers and general readers." * Choice *"Lighting Upbrings voice to the young adult college & smoker and nuanced meanings and interpretation of labels, exploring variations in smoking profile even within this defined population.Lighting Upis a good introduction to understanding the multiplicity of voices and the benefits of using alternative methods to reveal subtleties in meanings and identities of young adult smokers." * PsycCRITIQUES *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments ix 1. "It's No Big Deal" 1 2. Profiles and Progressions 24 3. Smoking and Drinking: "It's Like Milk and Cookies!" 45 4. What's Gender Got to Do with It? 74 5. Reconsidering Smoking as a Weight-Control Strategy 101 6. The Slippery Slope 120 7. Tipping Points: Stress, Boredom, and Romance 148 8. Quit Talk 169 9. Looking Forward: Uncertain Trajectories 194 Appendix: Methods 207 Notes 219 References 233 Index 253 About the Author 263

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Book SynopsisAt a time when just about everyone knows that smoking is bad for you, why do so many college students smoke? Is it a short lived phase or do they continue throughout the college years? And what happens after college, when they enter the real world? This book deals with these questions.Trade Review"Why does college-age smoking persist at notable and alarming levels while smoking in the adult US population has significantly declined over the past four decades? Mimi Nichter disentangles and illuminates the lure and social gains of smoking on campus through rich ethnographic accounts. This book helps to unravel the complexity of incentives to smoke among college-age students." -- Linda A. Bennett,author of The Alcoholic Family"Anthropologist Nichter presents an important new contribution to the literature on youth smoking of interest to both tobacco researchers and general readers." * Choice *"Lighting Upbrings voice to the young adult college & smoker and nuanced meanings and interpretation of labels, exploring variations in smoking profile even within this defined population.Lighting Upis a good introduction to understanding the multiplicity of voices and the benefits of using alternative methods to reveal subtleties in meanings and identities of young adult smokers." * PsycCRITIQUES *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments ix 1. "It's No Big Deal" 1 2. Profiles and Progressions 24 3. Smoking and Drinking: "It's Like Milk and Cookies!" 45 4. What's Gender Got to Do with It? 74 5. Reconsidering Smoking as a Weight-Control Strategy 101 6. The Slippery Slope 120 7. Tipping Points: Stress, Boredom, and Romance 148 8. Quit Talk 169 9. Looking Forward: Uncertain Trajectories 194 Appendix: Methods 207 Notes 219 References 233 Index 253 About the Author 263

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Book SynopsisExplores how Asian Americans figured in the effort to shape the credibility of American democracy during the Cold War, even while their perceived foreignness cast them as likely alien subversivesTrade ReviewCheng'sCitizens of Asian Americaplaces Asian Americans at the center of this story, showing how the project to highlight the superiority of U.S. democracy over Soviet communism involved removing long-standing barriers to immigration and naturalization for Asians and Asian Americans. . . . A solid addition to the literature on Cold War Civil Rights. * Pacific Historical Review *Citizens of Asian America offers a significant contribution to the scholarship on Cold War racial politics by highlighting the significance of political discourse about and by Asians, particularly those of Chinese and Korean ancestry in the U.S. from World War II to 1965. Cheng deftly analyzes how various political actors provided competing cultural narratives about race, nation, and identity. Her interpretation of government reports, sociological studies, court cases, and other sources related to housing integration, alien sedition, and immigration rights, will be of interest to scholars of the Cold War, U.S. race relations, U.S.-Asia relations, and immigration. -- Judy Tzu-Chun Wu,Associate Professor of History and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State UniversityIn these chapters, Cheng offers a number of new insights into an understudied period. In her discussion of 'firsts,' she presents the lives of her subjects with a rare warmth and complexity; she also persuasively shows that such people developed their own understanding of race, democracy, and Americanness distinct from media portrayals of the mas symbols of American superiority and freedom. Juxtaposing celebrations of Asian Americans' loyalty with probes into their alleged subversion, Cheng astutely observes that these apparently conflicting ideas were in fact not so contradictory after all. -- Charlotte Brooks * Political Science Quarterly *Through Cheng's work, Cold War civil rights become much more capacious than previously thought. -- Melissa Phruksachart * Journal of Asian American Studies *A marvelous and greatly-needed book, Chengs chronicle of Asian American battles against restrictive covenants, housing discrimination, and politically-inspired deportations as well as her accounts of battles for professional positions and honors, immigration reform, and civil rights adds important new ideas, evidence, and arguments to the social history of the U.S. by revealing the crucial role played by Asian American racial formation in shaping the broader racial imagination of the nation. -- George Lipsitz,author of How Racism Takes PlaceCheng casts her net widely to effectively prove the centrality of Asian Americans in Cold War politics and race relations. . . . Chengs greatly needed study demonstrates how Asian Americans were not only conscious of their political position but were also active participants who staked a claim to their place in the United States and, in so doing, shaped broader cultural imaginings of race and nation. -- Susie Woo,The Journal of American HistoryAccessible and well-structured,Citizens of Asian Americacould be generatively incorporated into graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on Asian American history, the Cold War, and post-1945 U.S. political and diplomatic history. * American Historical Review *While many other works have focused on Asian Americans as the & foreigners within the dominant order, this book breaks new ground by demonstrating the centrality of conflicts over the political status of Asian Americans during the Cold War itself. * American Historical Review *Citizens of Asian Americais a welcome addition to the scholarship on race and the Cold War. . . . Cheng certainly shows that there us a story to tell about the impact of Asian American civil rights on U.S. foreign relations during the Cold War. * American Politics *Cheng (history and Asian American studies, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison) illuminates matters of race during the Cold War that scholars often have overlooked as they focused on the plight of African American efforts to achieve civil rights during the era. * Choice *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Asian American Racial Formation and the Image of American Democracy Legislating Nonwhite Crossings into White Suburbia Living in the Suburbs, Becoming Americans Asian American Firsts and the Progress toward Racial Integration McCarran Act Persecutions and the Fight for Alien Rights Advancing Racial Equality and Internationalism through Immigration Reform Conclusion: Cold War America and the Appeal to See Past Race Notes BibliographyIndex About the Author

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Book SynopsisHonorable Mention for the 2015 Cultural Studies Best Book presented by the Association of Asian American StudiesWinner of the 2013 CLAGS Fellowship Award for Best First Book Project in LGBT StudiesA transnational study of Asian performance shaped by the homoerotics of orientalism, Brown Boys and Rice Queens focuses on the relationship between the white man and the native boy. Eng-Beng Lim unpacks this as the central trope for understanding colonial and cultural encounters in 20th and 21st century Asia and its diaspora. Using the native boy as a critical guide, Lim formulates alternative readings of a traditional Balinese ritual, postcolonial Anglophone theatre in Singapore, and performance art in Asian America.Tracing the transnational formation of the native boy as racial fetish object across the last century, Lim follows this figure as he is passed from the hands of the colonial empire to the postcolonial naTrade ReviewBrown Boys and Rice Queensskillfully exfoliates the layers of erotic, political, and cultural investments in inter-racial queer intimacies between the Western desiring male subject and the nubile Oriental boy figure brought about by colonial anddiasporicencounters between Asia and the West.Limelegantly dissects the spell-binding cultural effects of this dyad and conjures new critical perspectives about race, sexuality, and performance. A finely crafted, meticulously analyzed, and intensely provocative multi-sited research,Brown Boys and Rice Queenswill be a touchstone for future works and debates in queer andperformance studies. -- Martin F. Manalansan IV,University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignAll in all, this book manages to cast its own spells and seductions and in its rendering of the centrality of the erotic dyad of the white man/brown boy to colonial knowledge production, Lim makes significant and indelible contributions to the histories of global performance, the Asias, queer theory and cultural colonialism. -- Jack Halberstam * Emisferica *Brown Boys and Rice Queenstroubles the East/West binary relation that takes for granted the imperialist power of the West as absolute and the East as passive subjects to this power . . . . It proposes a rethinking of the meanings of native and ethnic by bridging the disparities in significance to postcolonial studies and ethnic studies. * Signs *This well-organized book is a crucial addition to the growing body of scholarship on contemporary Asian performance. Lim's writing is fluid and strikes a perfect balance among personal anecdotes, archival information, and theory, which makes the book an enjoyable and an engrossing read. * Theatre Journal *Lims book is invaluable, generatively opening spaces for survival within our field of inquiry, illuminating the already existent encounters between our disciplines, and staging the conditions that can make other encounters possible. * Women & Performance *Eng-Beng Lim is interested in many things, and they are all here inBrown Boys and Rice Queens. . . . Lim concludes that he has 'explored . . . the native boy and his transmogrifications in the queer Asias attuned to Orientalism, colonial homoerotics, and dyadic performance' and that he has. Alongside Katsuhiko Suganuma'sContact Momentsand Hoang Tan Nguyen'sA View From the Bottom, the queer Asian male is now getting to talk back. And he is not done * The Journal of Asian Studies *Eng-Beng-Lims Brown Boys and Rice Queensdoes something fresh with anthropologys usual suspects...Power relationships are finessed in a critical analysis of the racial and sexual implications of homoerotic desire between the rice queen and Asian boy coupling. * Anthropological Quarterly *Whereas most scholarship that examines this Orientalist fantasy focuses on the trope of the brown woman, Lim draws attention to the often forgotten brown boy. Lim expands upon and presses on the traditional colonial configuration of the East as an exotic, alluring locale that casts & spells deemed potentially seductive and also threatening to Western civility, thus requiring discipline and domination. In this respect, the majority of scholarship on the white man/Asian boy dyad has focused on the subjectivity of the colonizer. Lim, on the other hand, innovatively suggests that the dyadic encounter is mutually constitutive, where spells are cast in both directions from the East and the West. Lim shifts attention back to the Asian boy, who is typically taken as invisible and ubiquitous, in order to decipher latent legacies of colonialism still extant in queer modernity. * Amerasia *An important contribution to how to read, understand and & see Asia, especially where it concerns underlying power relations that still govern notions of agency, representation and identity. * Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology *This book not only provides a thorough and nuanced analyses of a number of performances and movies, it also generates a new set of language for the discussion of Asian masculinity and queerness in popular culture. * International Journal of Communication *Brown Boys and Rice Queens ought to be required reading for anyone working in theatre and performance studies, Asian and Asian American studies, queer studies, or at any of their complex interfaces: at once historical and theoretical; close and deep in parts of his reading, yet contextualizing and synoptic at others; charmingly playful if also soberly earnest, as he insists on what is both ludic and serious about camp, Lim manages to do what, as his book demonstrates, the most fascinating inhabitants of white man / Native boy dyad likewise accomplish: he casts a spell, and it binds. * Modern Drama *Brown Boys and Rice Queens is an impressive feat that utilizes and challenges tropes in postcolonial studies, inter-Asia cultural studies, ethnic American studies, and theorizations of race and sexuality. Lims nuanced reading exposes their blind spots and extends the theorization of these allied fields in his sophisticated analysis of Asian queer performances. This book is a significant contribution to its major fields of queer studies and performance studies. * Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism *Table of ContentsPreface: The Queer Genesis of a Project Acknowledgments Introduction: Tropic Spells, Performance, and the Native Boy 1. A Colonial Dyad in Balinese Performance 2. The Global Asian Queer Boys of Singapore 3. G.A.P. Drama, or The Gay Asian Princess Goes to the United States Conclusion: Toward a Minor-Native Epistemology in Transcolonial BorderzonesNotesIndex About the Author

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewSociologist Mose explores an emerging pattern of child-rearing within the context of declining use of public space, social class and the challenges busy urban families face building a sense of community. * Choice Connect *While carefully describing the social norms of playdates and birthday parties, and how these norms differ by social class, Mose also writes with a critical eye and welcome sense of humor. * American Journal of Sociology *The Playdateis a very engaging book . . . this work has deep implications for how we understand the reproduction of class inequality in American life. -- Emily W. Kane,author of The Gender TrapThis is an important book. Tamara Mose shines a piercing light on what we are doing forand toour children, and she effectively situates her analysis within the broader social contexts of race, gender, and class. -- Howard P. Chudacoff,author of Children at Play: An American HistoryA sociology professor at Brooklyn College, Ms. Mose examines the ritual of the playdate as if she were descending upon some strange tribe on a remote island. But she seems to belong to part of the world she discusses. * Wall Street Journal *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewOffers rich ethnographic insight into the social lives of South Asian American men and contributes significant observations about the South Asian Experience in the USA. * Social Anthropology *At the heart of Asian American masculinity may be this question: How can the so-called model minority ever effectively man up? Thangaraj pushes this conversation forward. He demonstrates with penetrating detail that some of the boldest attempts to do so fail because of the discriminatory practices within them. * Sociological Forum *Desi Hoop Dreams provides rich, detailed descriptions of basketball in South Asian American ('Desi') communities in the US and, in a few instances, Canada. -- Audrey Giles * Annals of Leisure Research *A must-read book for students and scholars of Asian American studies. * Journal of Asian American Studies *At the heart of Asian American masculinity may be this question: How can the so-called model minority ever effectively man up? Thangaraj pushes this conversation forward. He demonstrates with penetrating detail that some of the boldest attempts to do so fail because of the discriminatory practices within them. -- Pawan Dhingra * Sociological Forum *In this compelling, experiential ethnography of South Asian American men and sports, Thangaraj dribbles and shoots hoops with young men, exploring the performance of racialized masculinities on the basketball court that challenges the mainstream imagination of South Asian American bodies. This pioneering book is a refreshingly new window into questions of race, sexuality, and class that critically examines what it means to 'man up' and claim normative American masculinities while enacting multiple, yet sometimes exclusionary, identities. There is much to be learned from this thoughtful, nuanced, and frank analysis of the politics of sport and masculinity. -- Sunaina Maira,author of Desis in the House: Indian American Youth Culture in New York CityStanley Thangarajs argument in Desi Hoop Dreams hinges on the point that South Asian American men do basketball for a specific purpose: to claim identities as American citizens through their racialized masculinity as performed in and around basketball[Highly] valuable in this book are these complex class, educational, and racial factors that Thangaraj uses to explain the nonhomogeneity of South Asian American masculinity. -- Joanne Hill * Journal of American Studies *Thangaraj complicates discourses on race by moving the conversation away from the overdetermined black-white binaries that are exclusionary while also demonstrating the intimate connection the binary has to Desi mens engagement with multiple racialized bodies . . . Thangarajs work not only serves as an important resource for sport and South Asian American life but also contributes to conversations on race, gender, and sexuality . . . Desi Hoop Dreams is an important read for undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars of sport, postcolonial, gender, and race studies. -- Gabby Yearwood * American Anthropologist *The book is a revealing read that shatters many stereotypes of South Asian immigrants in the US and Canada and takes a scholarly look at how a subsection of thedesipopulation found solace in basketball at both the grassroots level as well as the national stage in Indo-Pak Tournaments. -- Karan Madhok * Hoopistani.com *This close reading of the meanings and embodied practices of competitive basketball playing by Desi young men in Atlanta illuminates how minoritized Americans negotiate racial, class and national belonging. Through vivid ethnography, Thangaraj supplements the critiques of emasculation that abound in Asian American studies, focusing instead on performances of athletic swagger, manning up, and homosociality. . . . A fresh narrative of racial crossing and masculinity making. -- Louisa Schein,Rutgers University[]Desi Hoop Dreams offers an important ethnographic exploration of the making of masculinity among South Asian American men from brown bodies to brown-out spacesThe authors use of multiple analytical lenses to examine the making of masculinity across social locations also sets an excellent example of ethnographic research. -- Hoching Jiang * Gender & Society *[I]t is interesting and worthwhileto learn how desi men handle the general problem of masculinity and the specific problem of being brown in what is still principally a black-and-white society. -- Jack David Eller * Anthropology Review Database *InDesi Hoop Dreams, Thangaraj effectively captures the complexity and nuance of the sport, masculinity, and race in America from the frequently overlooked perspective of South Asian American men. -- Reuben May * American Journal of Sociology *Thangarajs well-rounded accounts of men, their ideas, social groups, activities, and encounters reflect American socialization, assimilation, and the perpetuation of otheringOne is left more educated by having read ThangarajsDesi Hoop Dreamsbecause of the impressive intersectional ethnographic work produced through inquisitiveness, candid reporting, and knowledge of useful and relevant literaturesDesi Hoop Dreamsjumps fully into current debates regarding immigration and Americanness. -- Scott Brooks * Contemporary Sociology *ThangarajsDesi Hoop Dreamsis an important contribution to the undertheorized area of South Asian masculinity studies, and is ideal reading for courses related to gender, South Asia, and diaspora studies. It also enriches our understanding of the intersection of race and gender within mainstream sporting institutions, and is useful to the growing subgenres of the sociology and anthropology of sports. -- Harjant S. Gill * Anthropological Quarterly *Based on over four years of research among the South Asian Basketball leagues in Atlanta, Desi Hoop Dreamsis an insightful exploration into the processes of identity formation for young South Asian men growing up in suburban America. * Anthropological Quarterly *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Everyday Play: The Formation of Desi Pickup Basketball 27 2. "Who Is Desi?" Understanding Organized Brown Out Basketball 69 3. Racial Ambiguity: Hoopin' in Other Ethnic Leagues 111 4. Getting "Digits": Playing with Heterosexuality and Other Sites of Leisure 145 5. Breaking the Cycle: The Ballplayer Posture and Performances of Exclusion 171 Conclusion 203 Notes 219 Bibliography 235 Index 257 About the Author 267

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Book SynopsisExamines the concept of community in the United States: how communities are experienced and understood, the complex relationship between human beings and their social and physical landscapes - and how the term community is sometimes conjured to feign a cohesiveness that may not actually exist.Trade Review"Mieka Polanco makes clearer the complexities of the past and the present through the articulation of various interest groups stances. She adeptly draws from anthropologys intellectual geneaology to reposition simplistic notions of history-making and uncovers the cartographies of one community in ways that eloquently raise questions about race, space, histories and the business of making historically designated communities." * Dana Davis, Queens College, City University of New York *"This book provides a fine historically informed ethnography of Union, Virginia, and it also gives readers indispensable conceptual tools to better understand 'communities' in a non-essentialist way, both in terms of ongoing processes, and as products of specific histories that have unfolded in contexts always structured racially and spatially." * Jean Muteba Rahier, Director of African & African Diaspora Studies, Florida International University *"Polanco delivers a powerful ethnography of community life among residents living in rural African American historic district in Central Virginia. . . . The text touches on many social aspects of community, and readers will feel as though they are part of the conversation as they read residents' narrative histories." * Choice *"There are so few current works on small black-identified communities that Polancos book is welcome reading for those of us who study such locales. The work is timely and should garner greater attention in anthropology." * American Anthropologist *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. Gating Union: The Politics of "Protecting" Community 3. Thick Histories: Producing Community through Historical Narratives4. "Not to Scale": Cartographic Productions of Community Conclusion: Unfolding Communities: Union Road as a "Uniter of People"?Notes Bibliography IndexAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisExamines the contemporary experiences of people of mixed descent in nations around the world, moving beyond US borders to explore the dynamics of racial mixing and multiple descent in Zambia, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Okinawa, Australia, and New Zealand.Trade ReviewGlobal Mixed Race is a comprehensive compilation of world mixed-race identities, histories, and issues. The editors have expertly prepared for comparison and intrinsic interest contemporary and timely discussions of mixed race as an increasingly recognized dimension of racial and ethnic diversity in the 21st century. From post-modern popular culture to academic race theory, this exciting, ground-breaking collection will be a standard resource and reference for general readers, multidisciplinary scholars, and specialists of race, ethnicity, culture, and mixed race. -- Naomi Zack,author of Race and Mixed RaceGlobal Mixed Race is a very welcome addition to the literature on race and mixedness. Its vibrant case studies, comparative frame and historical grounding offer a useful guide for understanding what contemporary concepts and experiences of 'mixed race' owe to global trends and local specificities. A must-read for anyone interested in racialization in its many forms. -- Kimberly Dacosta,author of Making Multiracials: State, Family, and Market in the Redrawing of the Color LineThis superb volume lays the groundwork for an emergent and exciting global comparative framework for understanding mixed race categories and identities. By decentering U.S. mixed race histories and experiences, these essays make us attentive to how notions such as nation and class, and processes such as colonization and migration, are fundamentally complicit in shaping the very definition and meaning of 'mixed race.' -- Michael Omi,co-author of Racial Formation in the United StatesMixtureracial, national, ethnicwhile not a new phenomenon is increasingly evident in todays globalized world. The authors of these 12 absorbing essays examine and discuss the status, identity, and life experiences of mixed-decent individuals and communities in different cultural and political environment. . . . This fine book makes valuable contributions to the study of race, ethnicity, and gender in a period of unprecedented global change.Summing up: Highly recommended. * Choice *Table of ContentsAn IntroductionPart I: Societies with Established Populations of Mixed Descent 1. Multiraciality and Census Classification in Global Perspective 2. "Rider of Two Horses": Eurafricans in Zambia Juliette Bridgette 3. "Split Me in Two": Gender, Identity, and "Race Mixing" in the Trinidad and Tobago Nation 4. In the Laboratory of Peoples' Friendship: Mixed People in Kazakhstan from the Soviet Era to the Present 5. Competing Narratives: Race and Multiraciality in the Brazilian Racial Order 6. Antipodean Mixed Race: Australia and New Zealand 7. Negotiating Identity Narratives among Mexico's Cosmic RacePart II: Places with Newer Populations of Mixed Descent 8. Multiraciality and Migration: Mixed-Race American Okinawans, 1945-1972 9. The Curious Career of the One-Drop Rule: Multiraciality and Membership in Germany Today 10. Capturing "Mixed Race" in the Decennial UK Censuses: Are Current Approaches Sustainable in the Age of Globalization and Superdiversity? 11. Exporting the Mixed-Race Nation: Mixed-Race Identities in the Canadian ContextA ConclusionBibliography About the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisRe-envisions racial mixture as a vehicle for pride and a way for citizens to examine mixed America as a better AmericaTrade Review"This provocative, ambitious, and important book rewrites U.S. history, placing foundational leaders, unheralded prophets, insurgent social movements, pivotal judicial decisions, and central cultural values within an unfolding story of ongoing appeals to interracialmixing as a positive good. Deeply researched, deftly argued, and impressively able to move beyond the two categories of black and white, The United States of the United Races makes the mixed race movements of the recent past resonate with their many antecedents, showing the complex ways in which an emphasis on mixture has both deployed and destabilized racial categories." -- David Roediger,co-author of The Production of Difference"Because Carter highlights both positive and negative assumptions of race mixture, the book often challenges and troubles conventional understandings of such key figures as Thomas Jefferson and Frederick Douglass, highlighting both mens personal relationships with women that challenged societal norms of the day." * Journal of American Culture *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction 1 Thomas Jefferson's Challengers 2 Wendell Phillips, Unapologetic Abolitionist, Unreformed Amalgamationist 3 Plessy v. Racism 4 The Color Line, the Melting Pot, and the Stomach5 Say It Loud, I'm One Drop and I'm Proud 6 The End of Race as We Know It 7 Praising Ambiguity, Preferring Certainty Conclusion Notes Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisA radical defense of a solitary lifeWhat single person hasn''t suffered? Everyone, it seems, must be (or must want to be) in a couple. To exist outside of the couple is to assume an antisocial position that is ruthlessly discouraged because being in a couple is the way most people bind themselves to the social. Singles might just be the single most reviled sexual minorities today.Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled offers a polemic account of this supremacy of thecouple form, and how that supremacy blocks our understanding of the single. Michael Cobb reads the figurative language surrounding singleness as it traverses an eclectic set of literary, cultural, philosophical, psychoanalytical, and popular culture objects from Plato, Freud, Ralph Ellison, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, Barack Obama, Emily Dickinson, Morrissey, Georgia O''Keeffe, and Hannah Arendt to the Bible, Sex and the City, Bridget Jones'' Diary, Beyoncé''s Single LadiesTrade ReviewUsing the rhythms of banter, suggestion, and willful claims, even hyperbolic, assertive pronouncements, Cobb creates a unique vantage point from which to assess a remarkable topic, one he nearly makes his own. Loneliness has been much discussed of late, but singleness has not, not in this way. The result is an unforgettable mix of witty analysis of pop culture and a targeted dropping of deep, decisive anchors in a few canonical but unexpected texts. Most impressive, therefore, is Cobbs deployment of deft transitions that make his switches back and forth between and among discursive registers workand matter. With these artfully crafted links, Cobb guides the reader to each new perch. And if there is a unifying style that paradoxically lubricates and glues together his dynamics, I would call it conversational lyric: a personal tone and direct engagement of the reader that slightly slips that bond to slant past where you thought that Cobb was holding you. * Queer Theory *The author offers a smart and stunning look at the 'moribund desperation' of coupledom. * Advocate.com *Although the book is deliberately provocative, with its evocations of the couples 'steely, enduring logic' and 'toxic emotional restraints,' its most helpful to see Cobbs radical critique not as an ode to unattached monasticism but as suggestions for how the single perspectives solitude, privacy, and freedom can open up vistaseven in the lives of the happily coupled. * Publishers Weekly *Singleis impressive because its focus is original and discreet and so is his arguments which center heavily on details, at times even the use of single words or on an interpretation. * Metapsychology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Bitter Table for One 11 The Inevitable Fatality of the Couple 412 The Probated Couple, or Our Polygamous Pioneers 693 The Shelter of Singles 1054 Welcome to the Desert of Me 157Notes 203Index 217About the Author 227

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Book SynopsisA radical defense of a solitary lifeWhat single person hasn''t suffered? Everyone, it seems, must be (or must want to be) in a couple. To exist outside of the couple is to assume an antisocial position that is ruthlessly discouraged because being in a couple is the way most people bind themselves to the social. Singles might just be the single most reviled sexual minorities today.Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled offers a polemic account of this supremacy of thecouple form, and how that supremacy blocks our understanding of the single. Michael Cobb reads the figurative language surrounding singleness as it traverses an eclectic set of literary, cultural, philosophical, psychoanalytical, and popular culture objects from Plato, Freud, Ralph Ellison, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, Barack Obama, Emily Dickinson, Morrissey, Georgia O''Keeffe, and Hannah Arendt to the Bible, Sex and the City, Bridget Jones'' Diary, Beyoncé''s Single LadiesTrade ReviewUsing the rhythms of banter, suggestion, and willful claims, even hyperbolic, assertive pronouncements, Cobb creates a unique vantage point from which to assess a remarkable topic, one he nearly makes his own. Loneliness has been much discussed of late, but singleness has not, not in this way. The result is an unforgettable mix of witty analysis of pop culture and a targeted dropping of deep, decisive anchors in a few canonical but unexpected texts. Most impressive, therefore, is Cobbs deployment of deft transitions that make his switches back and forth between and among discursive registers workand matter. With these artfully crafted links, Cobb guides the reader to each new perch. And if there is a unifying style that paradoxically lubricates and glues together his dynamics, I would call it conversational lyric: a personal tone and direct engagement of the reader that slightly slips that bond to slant past where you thought that Cobb was holding you. * Queer Theory *The author offers a smart and stunning look at the 'moribund desperation' of coupledom. * Advocate.com *Although the book is deliberately provocative, with its evocations of the couples 'steely, enduring logic' and 'toxic emotional restraints,' its most helpful to see Cobbs radical critique not as an ode to unattached monasticism but as suggestions for how the single perspectives solitude, privacy, and freedom can open up vistaseven in the lives of the happily coupled. * Publishers Weekly *Singleis impressive because its focus is original and discreet and so is his arguments which center heavily on details, at times even the use of single words or on an interpretation. * Metapsychology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Bitter Table for One 11 The Inevitable Fatality of the Couple 412 The Probated Couple, or Our Polygamous Pioneers 693 The Shelter of Singles 1054 Welcome to the Desert of Me 157Notes 203Index 217About the Author 227

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Book SynopsisA stimulating, smart book on what it means to live in a brand cultureBrands are everywhere. Branding is central to political campaigns and political protest movements; the alchemy of social media and self-branding creates overnight celebrities; the self-proclaimed greening of institutions and merchant goods is nearly universal. But while the practice of branding is typically understood as a tool of marketing, a method of attaching social meaning to a commodity as a way to make it more personally resonant with consumers, Sarah Banet-Weiser argues that in the contemporary era, brands are about culture as much as they are about economics. That, in fact, we live in a brand culture.Authentic maintains that branding has extended beyond a business model to become both reliant on, and reflective of, our most basic social and cultural relations. Further, these types of brand relationships have become cultural contexts for everyday living, individual identity, and peTrade ReviewBanet-Weiser success in her important project to show that branding is much more than commodification or marketingit is a co-production of culture, and in dismissing it we risk dismissing a pervasive and essential set of discourses on contemporary society. * Media International Australia *Each chapter stands on its own, making this a useful text to use in classroom. * Choice *Authentic by Sarah Banet-Weiser, is an interesting book, because it makes it its business to find the halfway point between this so-called infantilizing commerce and the world of the authentic and realthus that 'ambivalence.' * Slate.com *We all search for spaces where we can express ourselves or find others we value, but what happens when all those spaces are already aligned by the self-interested productivity of brands? No one has followed those searches more attentively than Sarah Banet-Weiser. As inherited politics falters, Banet-Weiser's major new book is an indispensable guide to an ambivalent future. -- Nick Couldry,author of Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After NeoliberalismIn this lively and penetrating analysis of the ubiquity and consequences of non-stop branding in the 21st century, Sarah Banet-Weiser pushes us to think beyond the false distinctions between consumer culture on the one hand and & authenticity on the other, and instead to contemplate what is at stake in living in branded culturesespecially for our very core identities and values. A stimulating, smart, and extremely timely book. -- Susan J. Douglas,University of Michigan and author of The Rise of Enlightened SexismThis profound and powerful book is replete with perceptive insights and persuasive arguments. Authentic ™ reveals how the pervasiveness of branding culture requires us to rethink our investments in authenticity and our understandings of citizenship and social membership. Banet-Weiser offers us the first fully theorized analysis of how the hegemony of branding culture and the eclipse of typographic culture by digital culture combine to make us fundamentally new kinds of social subjects. -- George Lipsitz,author of Time PassagesTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Branding the Authentic 1. Branding Consumer Citizens Gender and the Emergence of Brand Culture 2. Branding the Postfeminist Self The Labor of Femininity 3. Branding Creativity Creative Cities, Street Art, and "Making Your Name Sing" 4. Branding Politics Shopping for Change? 5. Branding Religion "I'm Like Totally Saved" Conclusion: The Politics of Ambivalence Notes Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisPatterns of migration and the forces of globalization have brought the issues of mixed race to the public in far more visible, far more dramatic ways than ever before. Global Mixed Race examines the contemporary experiences of people of mixed descent in nations around the world, moving beyond US borders to explore the dynamics of racial mixing and multiple descent in Zambia, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Okinawa, Australia, and New Zealand. In particular, the volume's editors ask: how have new global flows of ideas, goods, and people affected the lives and social placements of people of mixed descent? Thirteen original chapters address the ways mixed-race individuals defy, bolster, speak, and live racial categorization, paying attention to the ways that these experiences help us think through how we see and engage with social differences. The contributors also highlight how mixed-race people can sometimes be used as emblems of mulTrade ReviewGlobal Mixed Race is a comprehensive compilation of world mixed-race identities, histories, and issues. The editors have expertly prepared for comparison and intrinsic interest contemporary and timely discussions of mixed race as an increasingly recognized dimension of racial and ethnic diversity in the 21st century. From post-modern popular culture to academic race theory, this exciting, ground-breaking collection will be a standard resource and reference for general readers, multidisciplinary scholars, and specialists of race, ethnicity, culture, and mixed race. -- Naomi Zack,author of Race and Mixed RaceGlobal Mixed Race is a very welcome addition to the literature on race and mixedness. Its vibrant case studies, comparative frame and historical grounding offer a useful guide for understanding what contemporary concepts and experiences of 'mixed race' owe to global trends and local specificities. A must-read for anyone interested in racialization in its many forms. -- Kimberly Dacosta,author of Making Multiracials: State, Family, and Market in the Redrawing of the Color LineThis superb volume lays the groundwork for an emergent and exciting global comparative framework for understanding mixed race categories and identities. By decentering U.S. mixed race histories and experiences, these essays make us attentive to how notions such as nation and class, and processes such as colonization and migration, are fundamentally complicit in shaping the very definition and meaning of 'mixed race.' -- Michael Omi,co-author of Racial Formation in the United StatesMixtureracial, national, ethnicwhile not a new phenomenon is increasingly evident in todays globalized world. The authors of these 12 absorbing essays examine and discuss the status, identity, and life experiences of mixed-decent individuals and communities in different cultural and political environment. . . . This fine book makes valuable contributions to the study of race, ethnicity, and gender in a period of unprecedented global change.Summing up: Highly recommended. * Choice *Table of ContentsAn IntroductionPart I: Societies with Established Populations of Mixed Descent 1. Multiraciality and Census Classification in Global Perspective 2. "Rider of Two Horses": Eurafricans in Zambia Juliette Bridgette 3. "Split Me in Two": Gender, Identity, and "Race Mixing" in the Trinidad and Tobago Nation 4. In the Laboratory of Peoples' Friendship: Mixed People in Kazakhstan from the Soviet Era to the Present 5. Competing Narratives: Race and Multiraciality in the Brazilian Racial Order 6. Antipodean Mixed Race: Australia and New Zealand 7. Negotiating Identity Narratives among Mexico's Cosmic RacePart II: Places with Newer Populations of Mixed Descent 8. Multiraciality and Migration: Mixed-Race American Okinawans, 1945-1972 9. The Curious Career of the One-Drop Rule: Multiraciality and Membership in Germany Today 10. Capturing "Mixed Race" in the Decennial UK Censuses: Are Current Approaches Sustainable in the Age of Globalization and Superdiversity? 11. Exporting the Mixed-Race Nation: Mixed-Race Identities in the Canadian ContextA ConclusionBibliography About the Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2014 Bonnie Ritter Book AwardWinner of the 2013 James W. Carey Media Research AwardAs unprecedented waves of young, rural women journey to cities in China, not only to work, but also to see the world and gain some autonomy, they regularly face significant institutional obstacles as well as deep-seated anti-rural prejudices. Based on immersive fieldwork, Cara Wallis provides an intimate portrait of the social, cultural, and economic implications of mobile communication for a group of young women engaged in unskilled service work in Beijing, where they live and work for indefinite periods of time.While simultaneously situating her work within the fields of feminist studies, technology studies, and communication theory, Wallis explores the way in which the cell phone has been integrated into the transforming social structures and practices of contemporary China, and the ways in which mobile technology enables rural young wTrade ReviewInTechnomobility in China, Wallis brings the story of young female migrant labourers to public attention. Their aspirations and the different strategies they use to & get by in the city cuts through the stereotype that they are passive vessels waiting for instruction. The thick descriptions accompanying Wallis arguments of the ideological, social and economic barriers that tend to limit the success of migrant workers efforts drive this point home: these barriers are neither necessary nor deterministic. Perhaps, just as Wallis gave back to the community while conducting her ethnography, her book will contribute to the improvement of the social and political conditions migrant labourers face. * Pacific Affairs *Wallis decision to study mobile phone use among the worlds largest migrant population possesses a natural affinity, which seems destined from the outset to deliver noteworthy findings. The resultant volume is made all the more remarkable owing to the surprising discovery that her participants young rural migrant women working in Beijings service sector are in fact defined by their experience of numerous forms of immobility. * Social Anthropology *An interesting, well-researched, and well-supported study. -- A. Heaphy * Choice *Cara Wallis has contributed a significant and unique piece of scholarship that enriches, sharpens, and humanizes our understanding of the techno-social and cultural transformations of our era and the concomitant grand narratives of Chinas rise and its attainment of globalized modernity. The work is not only highly sophisticated in its theoretical conceptualization, but also extremely rich in its empirical description. The analysis is careful, nuanced and always well-contextualized. This is a superb, insightful, and self-reflexive piece of scholarship. -- Yuezhi Zhao,Professor and Canada Research Chair in Political Economy of Global Communication, Simon Fraser UniveAn ethnographically rich and empathetic portrayal of the intricacies of life among young female migrants navigating the experience of & immobile mobility. Bringing together the best of cultural studies, communication and feminist scholarship, Wallis theoretically sophisticated ethnography is a welcome and valuable addition to our understanding of communication, mobility and contemporary China. -- Heather A. Horst,Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and co-author of The Cell PhoneCara Wallis is the perfect observer to help us understand mobile phone use among young Chinese working class women, dagongmei, who live and work in the major cities far away from their rural homes. Through rigorous field work, excellent access, and a sensitive ear, she offers unique insight into how mobile phones both liberate and subjugate these young women. This supple and theoretically grounded work demands our attention. -- Rich Ling,author of The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone's Impact on SocietyTable of Contents1. Market Reforms, Global Linkages, and (Dis)continuity in Post-Socialist China 2. "My First Big Urban Purchase": Mobile Technologies and Modern Subjectivity3. Navigating Mobile Networks of Sociality and Intimacy 4. Picturing the Self, Imagining the World 5. Mobile Communication and Labor Politics

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Book SynopsisTurkey now ranks among the top countries worldwide with the highest number of cosmetic procedures, and with its cultural and economic capital, Istanbul has become a regional centre for the beauty and fashion industries. This book shows the profound effects of this growing market on urban residents’ body images, gendered norms, and practices.

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Book SynopsisTakes an insightful look at how entire households, families, and individuals "cope," negotiate their lives, and plan to achieve goals in Occupied Palestine. This book posits that household dynamics cannot be fully grasped unless linked to the traumas of the past and worries of the present.Table of Contents Modernity Aborted and Reborn: Ways of Being Urban in Palestine, Lisa Taraki and Rita Giacamen "Living Together in a Nation in Fragments: Dynamics of Kin, Place, and Nation," Penny Johnson "Six Families: Survival and Mobility in Times of Crisis," Lamis Abu Nahleh "Emigration, Conservation, and Class Formation in West Bank and Gaza Strip Communities," Jamil Kuttab

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisCalls for a renewed definition of Palestinian writing, one that includes Anglophone, Nordic, Latinate, and Hebrew language literary works. Although most of the works discussed here are steeped in the historic injustices committed against Palestinians, Ebileeni’s intention is to yield a richer understanding of Palestinian literary texts.

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Book SynopsisCalls for a renewed definition of Palestinian writing, one that includes Anglophone, Nordic, Latinate, and Hebrew language literary works. Although most of the works discussed here are steeped in the historic injustices committed against Palestinians, Ebileeni’s intention is to yield a richer understanding of Palestinian literary texts.

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Book SynopsisOpens an essential window into the lives of Kurds in Turkey, generating meaningful insights not only into the political interactions with the Turkish state and society, but also the informal ways in which they negotiate within society that will be crucial in developing peace and reconciliation.

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Book SynopsisOpens an essential window into the lives of Kurds in Turkey, generating meaningful insights not only into the political interactions with the Turkish state and society, but also the informal ways in which they negotiate within society that will be crucial in developing peace and reconciliation.

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Book SynopsisOpens a window onto the lives of Palestinians, exploring specifically the experience of giving birth. Drawing upon oral histories, Wick follows the stories of mothers, nurses, and midwives in villages and refugee camps. She maps the ways in which individuals narrate and experience birth, calling attention to the genre and form of these stories.

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