Society and culture: general Books
The University of Chicago Press Life Out of Sequence
Book SynopsisLooks inside this landscape of digital scientific work. This title chronicles the emergence of bioinformatics - the mode of working across and between biology, computing, mathematics, and statistics - from the 1960s to the present, seeking to understand how knowledge about life is made in and through virtual spaces.Trade Review"What happens to biology with computerization? Hallam Stevens's compelling ethnographic and historical narrative shows how the nature of the biological experiment has changed with the increasing use of the tools of information technology in life science and biomedicine." (Hannah Landecker, University of California, Los Angeles)"
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Peasants Against the State The Politics of Market
Book SynopsisStephen Bunker challenges the image of peasants as passive victims and argues that coffee growers in the Bugisu District of Uganda, because they own land and may choose which crops to produce, maintain an unusual degree of economic and political independence. Focusing on peasant struggles for market control over coffee exports in Bugisu from colonial times through the reign and overthrow of Idi Amin, Bunker shows that these freeholding peasants acted collectively and used the state's dependence on coffee export revenues to effectively influence and veto government programs inimical to their interests. Bunker's work vividly portrays the small victories and great trials of ordinary people struggling to control their own economic destiny while resisting the power of the world economy.
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Manufacturing Consent Changes in the Labor
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£28.00
The University of Chicago Press The Social Life of Spirits
Book SynopsisSpirits can be haunters, informants, possessors, and transformers of the living, but more than anything anthropologists have understood them as representations of something else - symbols that articulate facets of human experience in much the same way works of art do. This book challenges this notion.Trade Review"The Social Life of Spirits makes the argument of the 'social life of things' go full circle, cogently arguing that immaterial spirits, just like material things, should be approached as social beings with a life and trajectory. Going beyond beliefs or representations, it proposes to describe spirits through their effects, asking how are spirits made to happen and what do they make happen. This is a brilliant book." (Roger Sansi, University of London)"
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Sexual Fields
Book SynopsisCoupling field theory with the ethnographic and theoretical expertise of some of the most important scholars of sexual life at work today, this book offers a game-changing approach that can revolutionize how sociologists will analyze and make sense of contemporary sexual life for years to come.Trade Review"In Adam Isaiah Green's introductory chapter, he lays out the evolution of his sexual fields formulation. This alone is worth the price of the book. But this volume also includes seven chapters written by real movers and shakers in the field of sexuality, each making interesting, substantive contributions. Sexual Fields is certainly a book that every scholar of sexuality should own, and I would not be surprised if this were to become one of the most cited volumes in the field of sexuality." (Verta Taylor, coauthor of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret)"
£26.00
The University of Chicago Press Tragic Spirits
Book SynopsisFollowing the travels of the nomadic Buryats, the author tells a story not only of economic devastation but also a remarkable Buryat response to it - the revival of shamanic practices after decades of socialist suppression. She offers a sophisticated analysis of the way economics, politics, gender, and other factors influence.
£79.80
The University of Chicago Press Tragic Spirits Shamanism Memory and Gender in
Book SynopsisFollowing the travels of the nomadic Buryats, the author tells a story not only of economic devastation but also a remarkable Buryat response to it - the revival of shamanic practices after decades of socialist suppression. She offers a sophisticated analysis of the way economics, politics, gender, and other factors influence.
£31.00
The University of Chicago Press Economy of Words
Book SynopsisWorking at the intersection of anthropology, linguistics, and economics, the author shows how central bankers have been engaging in communicative experiments that predate the financial crisis and continue to be refined amid its unfolding turmoil - experiments that do not merely describe the economy, but actually create its distinctive features.Trade Review"This remarkable ethnography of monetary policy making by central bankers, and the academics with whom they engage intellectually, sets a new standard for the anthropology of finance. Up to now, we have lacked a careful, detailed account of how economic facts are performed that is rigorous and empirical enough to convince those whose intellectual propensities lie elsewhere. Economy of Words is such a book." (Annelise Riles, author of Collateral Knowledge)"
£26.00
The University of Chicago Press The Night is Young Sexuality in Mexico in the
Book SynopsisA Mexican native, Carrillo has written an insightful study of the relations between sexuality and social change in Mexico during the time of AIDS. Carrillo argues that there is a demand for a new approach to AIDS prevention and education in Mexico.Trade Review"This timely work offers a remarkable look at the sexual lives of both heterosexuals and homosexuals in contemporary Mexico. Hector Carrillo enters the complex worlds of masculinity, marriage, and dating in that country, and provides a rich and persuasive analysis of how AIDS and HIV have vastly transformed sexual culture." - Gilbert Herdt, author of Same Sex, Different Cultures
£23.00
University of Chicago Press The Brotherhood of Freemason Sisters Gender
Book SynopsisWomen - one of Freemasonry's best-kept secrets - are often upper class and highly educated but paradoxically antifeminist, and their self-cultivation through the Masonic path is an effort to embrace the deeply gendered ideals of fraternity. The author unravels this contradiction at the heart of Freemasonry.Trade Review"A riveting analysis of the women Freemasons in Italy that illuminates the debates about and paradoxes of women's inclusion into a controversial secret 'brotherhood.' Mahmud initiates us with wisdom into the contradictions of a liberal political philosophy that extols universal brotherhood but is embedded in exclusionary practices of community and ritual based on class, race, and gender. This feminist ethnography is sure to become a classic in the anthropology of Europe." (Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Do Muslim Women Need Saving?)"
£84.00
The University of Chicago Press The Brotherhood of Freemason Sisters
Book SynopsisFreemasonry has long been one of the most romanticized secret societies in the world. But a simple fact escapes most depictions of this elite brotherhood: there are women Freemasons, too. The author takes you inside Masonic lodges in contemporary Italy, where she observes the many ritualistic and fraternal bonds forged among women initiates.Trade Review"A riveting analysis of the women Freemasons in Italy that illuminates the debates about and paradoxes of women's inclusion into a controversial secret 'brotherhood.' Mahmud initiates us with wisdom into the contradictions of a liberal political philosophy that extols universal brotherhood but is embedded in exclusionary practices of community and ritual based on class, race, and gender. This feminist ethnography is sure to become a classic in the anthropology of Europe." (Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Do Muslim Women Need Saving?)"
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Sexual Discretion Black Masculinity and the
Book SynopsisAfrican American men who have sex with men while maintaining a heterosexual lifestyle in public are commonly referred to as "down low" or "DL" men. This book explores the DL phenomenon, offering an innovative analysis of the significance of media, space, and ideals of black masculinity in understanding down low communities.Trade Review"McCune's Sexual Discretion is an exciting, timely, and important study that blasts the now encrusted mythologies about the so-called down-low, advancing our understanding of the mass mediation and lived experiences of sexually nonconforming African American men while also stretching and challenging ethnographic methodology and racial theories of sexuality. This is a must-read." (Marlon Ross, University of Virginia)"
£25.00
The University of Chicago Press Improvising Theory
Book SynopsisScholars have long recognized that ethnographic method is bound up with the construction of theory in ways that are difficult to teach. This work argues that the reason for this is that ethnographic theorization is essentially improvisational in nature, conducted in real time and in necessarily unpredictable social situations.Trade Review"Improvising Theory represents the stupendous outcome of what should be an ordinary procedure - the interaction between a faculty member and her advisee in the field. What makes this book so remarkable is that both sides of this correspondence maintain a tone that is richly literary. Moreover, the exchange is a model for the kind of pedagogical relationship we should all aim to have with our students." - Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University"
£23.00
The University of Chicago Press Never Saw It Coming Cultural Challenges to
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£30.40
The University of Chicago Press Beyond Caring Hospitals Nurses and the Social
Book SynopsisDocumenting the real world of the contemporary hospital, its nurses, and their moral and ethical crises, this work provides an analysis of the forces that influence moral decisions in hospitals.
£27.00
The University of Chicago Press A Memorandum for the President of the Royal
Book SynopsisConquered in 1492 and colonized by invading Castilians, the city and kingdom of Granada faced radical changes imposed by its occupiers throughout the first half of the sixteenth century. This title provides scholars in a range of fields with an example of resistance in the face of oppression.Trade Review"This is an original and audacious work that heightens the political import of Francisco Nunez Muley's Memorandum even as it highlights its relevance for modern readers interested in the current relations between Islam and the West. Scholars in the humanities will find these intercultural dialogues with Islam to be an extraordinary resource." (Maria Antonia Garces, Cornell University)"
£19.00
The University of Chicago Press Apologies to Thucydides
Book SynopsisPresents Thucydides' classic work on the history of the Peloponnesian War that is the root of Western conceptions of history - including the ethnocentric idea that Thucydides' historiography was universally valid, applicable to all societies at all times.Trade Review"This book is a paradigm of how history and anthropology might be brought together, to the mutual enrichment of both disciplines." (American Historical Review) "Marshall Sahlins's complex book... [addresses] questions of historical causation and agency using a wide variety of examples-including, at one point, Elian Gonzales and the 1951 New York Giants. The complete ramifications of Sahlins's argument will be appreciated best by anthropologists and historians. Even for the general reader, however, Apologies to Thucydides has much to offer, as an introduction to an unfamiliar culture and as a new perspective on our own." (New York Sun)"
£21.00
The University of Chicago Press Far Afield
Book SynopsisAnthropology has long had a vexed relationship with literature, and nowhere has this been more acutely felt than in France, where most ethnographers, upon returning from the field, write not one book, but two: a scientific monograph and a literary account. The author puzzles out this phenomenon.Trade Review"This remarkable and ambitious work expertly takes both a long-view and close-ups of the main currents of twentieth-century French anthropological research and thinking. Travel writing, anthropology's relation to surrealism, the dissolution of science-literature unity in belles-lettres, and structuralism into post-structuralism are all systematically addressed with great insights, great turns of phrase (caught well in translation), and fresh interpretations." (George Marcus, University of California, Irvine)"
£999.99
The University of Chicago Press AIDS Doesnt Show Its Face Inequality Morality and
Book SynopsisAIDS and Africa are indelibly linked in popular consciousness, but despite widespread awareness of the epidemic, much of the story remains hidden beneath a superficial focus on condoms, sex workers, and antiretrovirals. Africa gets lost in this equation. The author offers a powerful reversal, using AIDS as a lens through which to view Africa.Trade Review"Drawing on more than twenty years of fieldwork, Smith effectively uses popular reactions to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Nigeria as a lens through which to observe and analyze social change there. He successfully shows that things are not as simple as they might seem to outsiders-even the best-intentioned outsiders-and that much of the public health messaging that emphasizes individual responsibility is simply off the mark." (Adam Ashforth, University of Michigan)"
£25.00
The University of Chicago Press The First Year Out
Book SynopsisWild parties, late nights, and lots of sex, drugs, and alcohol. Many assume these are the things that define an American teenager's first year after high school. But the reality is quite different. This book reports that teenagers generally manage the responsibilities of everyday life immediately after graduation.Trade Review"This is an excellent book.... Tim Clydesdale's observations about stability and managing daily life tasks are fascinating and provide important contributions to our substantive understanding of this important piece of social life." - Christian Smith, author of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers"
£24.00
The University of Chicago Press Changing Order Replication and Induction in
Book SynopsisThis study in the sociology of science explores the way scientists conduct, and draw conclusions from, their experiments. The book is organized around three case studies: replication of the TEA-laser, detecting gravitational rotation, and some experiments in the paranormal.
£27.00
The University of Chicago Press Rules and Processes
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£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Doing Time Together
Book SynopsisDescribes the ways that prisons shape and infiltrate the lives of women with husbands, fiances, and boyfriends on the inside. This book shows that with social welfare weakened, prisons are the most powerful public institutions available to women struggling to overcome untreated social ills and sustain relationships with marginalized men.Trade Review"The claim that prison can be a source of welfare provision, health care, and even romantic intimacy for people typically denied more adequate ways to meet these human needs will strike many readers as counterintuitive and politically problematic, but it is true nevertheless. Megan Comfort's beautifully written book does a brilliant job of tracing this, and other, complex truths in a detached, detailed, and thoroughly insightful manner." - David Garland, author of The Culture of Control"
£27.00
University of Chicago Press Ethnicity Inc.
Book SynopsisPresents an account of the ways in which ethnic populations are remaking themselves in the image of the corporation - while corporations coopt ethnic practices to open up fresh markets and regimes of consumption.Trade Review"The Comaroffs are among the very finest anthropologists working anywhere in the world today. As genuine leaders of the discipline, every new book they publish is an event and this one is no exception. Ethnicity, Inc. will be a watershed for anyone looking for new ways to explain our neoliberal world. This extraordinarily lucid book is one of the most ambitious, wide-ranging, and thought-provoking pieces of anthropological scholarship written over the last few decades; it sets a standard other scholars can only hope to emulate." - Matti Bunzl, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"
£76.00
The University of Chicago Press Imaginative Horizons
Book SynopsisVincent Crapanzano offers a powerful way to think about human experience: the nition of imaginative horizons. These horizons, he argues, deeply influence both how we experience our lives and how we interpret those experiences.
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Performing AfroCuba
Book SynopsisVisitors to Cuba will notice that Afro-Cuban figures and references are everywhere. In this book, the author examines how the animation of Cuba's colonial past and African heritage through such figures and performances not only reflects but also shapes the Cuban experience of Blackness.Trade Review"Performing Afro-Cuba is a remarkable achievement. To put Wirtz's argument in a nutshell would be to do a gross injustice to her sophisticated-and often quite elegant-exposition. She is simply the smartest and theoretically most sophisticated anthropologist doing research in Cuba these days. But aside from her contribution to the regionalist literature, the real value of her work is that it speaks to enduring anthropological questions, while raising a number of new ones that are relevant far beyond her specific field site. I enthusiastically recommend it." (Stephan Palmie, author of The Cooking of History: How Not to Study Afro-Cuban Religion)"
£26.00
The University of Chicago Press Feminism in TwentiethCentury Science Technology
Book SynopsisThe essays in this volume explore how feminist theory has had a direct impact on research in the biological and social sciences, in medicine, and in technology, often providing the impetus for fundamentally changing the theoretical underpinnings and practices of such research.
£89.30
The University of Chicago Press Feminism in TwentiethCentury Science Technology
Book SynopsisThe essays in this volume explore how feminist theory has had a direct impact on research in the biological and social sciences, in medicine, and in technology, often providing the impetus for fundamentally changing the theoretical underpinnings and practices of such research.
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Children of the Greek Civil War
Book SynopsisAt the height of the Greek Civil War in 1948, thirty-eight thousand children were evacuated from their homes. The Greek Communist Party relocated half of them to orphanages in Eastern Europe, while their adversaries placed the rest in children's homes elsewhere in Greece. This book presents a comprehensive study of the two evacuation programs.Trade Review"This remarkable study breaks new ground in several areas: in its methodology, its style, and its topic. Balanced to an impressive degree, Children of the Greek Civil War succeeds magnificently in showing the parallels between the experiences of the two sides in a way that is moving as well as analytically compelling." (Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University)"
£85.00
The University of Chicago Press Children of the Greek Civil War
Book SynopsisAt the height of the Greek Civil War in 1948, thirty-eight thousand children were evacuated from their homes. The Greek Communist Party relocated half of them to orphanages in Eastern Europe, while their adversaries placed the rest in children's homes elsewhere in Greece. This book presents a comprehensive study of the two evacuation programs.Trade Review"This remarkable study breaks new ground in several areas: in its methodology, its style, and its topic. Balanced to an impressive degree, Children of the Greek Civil War succeeds magnificently in showing the parallels between the experiences of the two sides in a way that is moving as well as analytically compelling." (Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University)"
£28.00
The University of Chicago Press Black Visions The Roots of Contemporary
Book SynopsisThis comprehensive analysis of the complex relationships between black political thought and black political identity and behaviour illuminates the history and role of this plays in shaping political debate in America.
£26.00
The University of Chicago Press Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis
Book SynopsisThis collection of essays reconsiders the troubled relationship between same-sex desire and psychoanalysis, assessing homosexuality's status in psychoanalytic theory and practice, as well as the value of psychoanalytic ideas for queer theory. Works by Freud, Klein, Reich and Lacan are examined.
£34.20
The University of Chicago Press Feeding the Family The Social Organization of
Book SynopsisA study of the implications of "feeding the family" from the perspective of those who do that work. Drawing from interviews conducted in 1982-83 in a diverse group of American households, DeVault reveals the effort and skill behind the "invisible" work of shopping, cooking, and serving meals.
£24.00
The University of Chicago Press The Internationalization of Palace Wars Lawyers
Book SynopsisHow does globalization work? Focusing on Latin America the authors show that exports of expertise and ideals from the United States to Latin America have played a crucial role in transforming their state forms and economics since World War IITrade Review"The Internationalization of Palace Wars is an extraordinary book. A major contribution, it is original yet connected in multiple ways to several new research concerns and debates about law and globalization, the nature of the state today given globalization, and the formation of transnational elites." - Saskia Sassen, author of The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press Folklore and Folklife An Introduction
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£45.60
The University of Chicago Press Folktales Told Around the World Told Around the
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£49.40
The University of Chicago Press More Than Victims Battered Women the Syndrome
Book SynopsisDonald Downs offers an analysis of the injustices behind the logic of battered woman syndrome, concluding that this very logic harms those it is trying to protect. This work seeks to rethink the criminal justice system.
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Slims Table Race Respectability and Masculinity
Book SynopsisA profile of the black men who congregate at Slim's Table at the Valois "See Your Food" cafeteria on Chicago's South Side.
£15.80
The University of Chicago Press Kants Organicism Epigenesis and the Development
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£24.00
The University of Chicago Press Folktales of Egypt Folktales of the World
Book SynopsisIn this book Hasan M. El-Shamy has gathered the first authentic new collection of modern Egyptian folk narratives to appear in nearly a century. El-Shamy's English translations of these orally presented stories not only preserve their spirit, but give Middle Eastern lore the scholarly attention it has long deserved. This collection of seventy recently collected Egyptian tales is a major contribution to African studies and to international distribution studies of folktales. In the face of the recent anthropological trend to use folkloric materials for extra-folkloric purposes, the preeminence of the text must be asserted once more, and these are obviously authentic, straightforwardly translated, fully documented as to date of collection and social category of informant, and for all that . . . readable.Daniel J. Crowley, Research in African LiteraturesWestern knowledge of virtually all facets of contemporary Egyptian culture, much less the roots of that culture, is woefully inadequate. By providing an interesting, varied, and readable collection of Egyptian folktales and offering clear and sensible accounts of their background and meaning, this book renders a valuable service indeed.Kenneth J. Perkins, International Journal of Oral History
£34.20
The University of Chicago Press Women and War
Book SynopsisThis study examines how the myths of man as "Just Warrior" and woman as "Beautiful Soul" serve to recreate/secure women's social position as noncombatants and men's identity as warriors. It demonstrates how these myths are undermined by the reality of female bellicosity and sacrificial male love.Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Introduction: Beautiful Souls/Just Warriors: The Seduction of War 1: Not-a-Soldier's Story: An Exemplary Tale A Child of the 1950s: Images of War and Martyrdom The Growing Up of a Political Theorist 2: The Discourse of War and Politics: From the Greeks to Today Taming Homer's Warrior: Plato and Aristotle The Ideal Republic: Machiavelli and Rousseau The Nation-State The Revolutionary Alternative: Marx and Engels The "Science" of War and Politics: International Relations Becomes an Academic Discipline 3: Exemplary Tales of Civic Virtue Women and the Civil War The First World War: "My Nation-State, of Thee I Shout" 4: The Attempt to Disarm Civic Virtue The Christian Conundrum: From Pacifists to Reluctant Warriors Just War, Holy War, and the Witness of Peace Female Privatization: The Beautiful Soul Implications of the Just-War Tradition 5: Women: The Ferocious Few/The Noncombatant Many The Historic Cleavage Female Group Violence The Ferocious Few The Noncombatant Many 6: Men: The Militant Many/The Pacific Few The Militant Many The Pacific Few The Literature of War Structures of Experience: The Good Soldier/The Good Mother 7: Neither Warriors nor Victims: Men, Women, and Civic Life The Liberal Conscience Uncertain Trumpet: Feminism's War with War Women as Warriors: "You're in the Army Now" Beyond War and Peace Epilogue Notes Index
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press How It Works
Book SynopsisOf the some sixty thousand vacant properties in Philadelphia, half of them are abandoned row houses. Street-level entrepreneurs re purposing hundreds of these empty houses as facilities for recovering addicts and alcoholics. This book presents a study of this recovery house movement and its place in the new urban order wrought by welfare reform.
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press They Make Themselves Work and Play among the
Book SynopsisThis study describes the daily existence of the Baining people of Papua New Guinea, who present a challenge to anthropologists because of their apparent lack of a cultural or social structure; but Jane Fajans argues that the Baining define themselves by their own productive and reproductive work.
£30.00
The University of Chicago Press Collaborative Circles
Book SynopsisThis study looks at group dynamics in six collaborative circles: the French Impressionists; Sigmund Freud and his friends; C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings; social reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; the Fugitive poets; and writers Joseph Conrad and Ford Maddox Ford.
£34.20
The University of Chicago Press Formations of Violence The Narrative of the Body
Book SynopsisAn analysis of political violence based on the narratives provided by Northern Irish subjects.
£88.00
The University of Chicago Press Shared Fantasy
Book SynopsisThis study analyzes the, often misunderstood, subculture of fantasy role-playing games such as 'Dungeons and Dragons'.Gary Alan Fine immerses himself in several different gaming systems, offering insightful details on the nature of the games and the behaviour of the players.Trade Review"Fine's analysis of the intricacies of role-playing in context carries an authority and acuteness denied to mere observers.... His inside knowledge enables him to make fine distinctions in the strategies and functions of these games that are lost to most outside analysts." - Bill Ellis, Journal of American Folklore "As an ethnography of fantasy role-playing games and gamers, Fine's book respects his subjects and honors the complexity of their enterprise. And as an analysis of the overlap between that world and other more familiar worlds, Fine's book both honors and clarifies the still incredible skills we nevertheless take so much for granted." - Prue Rains, Sociology and Social Research
£30.40
The University of Chicago Press Authors of the Storm
Book SynopsisOffers an inside look at how meteorologists and forecasters predict the weather. Through field observation and interviews, this work shows that weather forecasts are often shaped as much by social and cultural factors inside local offices as they are by approaching cumulus clouds.Trade Review"Fine engages his reader by skillfully describing the human side of weather forecasters who must contend with having to produce timely, accurate forecasts under the stress of meeting a complexity of organizational demands.... A highly recommended book for both scholars and everyone who has an interest in the weather." - "Choice"
£28.00
University of Chicago Press Advocacy after Bhopal Environmentalism Disaster
Book SynopsisIn exploring the worldwide political and environmental aftermath of the Bhopal disaster in 1984, this text discusses various differing claims by focusing on the dynamics and paradoxes of advocacy in competing power domains.
£31.35
