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New Books - March
Anthropology of Infectious Disease by Merrill Singer
This book synthesizes the flourishing field of anthropology of infectious disease in a critical, biocultural framework. Leading medical anthropologist Merrill Singer holistically unites the behaviors of microorganisms and the activities of complex social systems, showing how we exist with pathogenic agents of disease in a complex process of co-evolution. He also connects human diseases to larger ecosystems and various other species that are future sources of new human infections. Anthropology of Infectious Disease integrates and advances research in this growing, multifaceted area and offers an ideal supplement to courses in anthropology, public health, development studies, and related fields.
What Did the Poor Take with Them? an Investigation into Ancient Egyptian Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasty Grave Assemblages of the Non-Elite from Qau, Badari, Matmar and Gurob by Eileen Goulding
This study investigates the grave assemblages of the non-elite during the New Kingdom, using several different burial sites. Based on the author's database of over 3,000 artefacts, the statistical results will indicate if there was any noticeable shift in funerary practices from the early Eighteenth Dynasty to the end of the Nineteenth Dynasty, from an emphasis on replicating an earthly life after death by including practical, daily-life articles , to a more religious attitude, which necessitated the inclusion of a greater number of religious artefacts. Interpretation of the results may give some insight into the sociological and religious framework of the time, and if and why it changed.
Von der dämonologie Zum Unbewussten by Maren Sziede (Editor); Helmut Zander (Editor)
As the science of man, anthropology was among the most exciting disciplines during the period of intense change from the early modern era to modernity. Where demons had once wielded their power, after 1800, it was now the unlimited shoals of the subconscious that were disseminated. Or did they actually stay right next to each other and within one another?
Ancestors of Worthy Life by Teresa S. Moyer
"A tour de force. Moyer goes beyond critique to give us a richly contextualized study, demonstrating that inclusive interpretation of plantation and other historic house museum sites can be done and that the failure to do so is a political act rooted in systemic racism."--David T. Palmer, University of Louisiana at Lafayette "An uncommonly detailed, frank, and balanced discussion of racialized practice at a historic site museum."--Kirsti Uunila, historic preservation planner, Calvert County, Maryland Enslaved African Americans helped transform the United States economy, culture, and history. Yet these individuals' identities, activities, and sometimes their very existence are often all but expunged from historically preserved plantations and house museums. Reluctant to show and interpret the homes and lives of the enslaved, many sites have never shared the stories of the African Americans who once lived and worked on their land. One such site is Mount Clare near Baltimore, Maryland, where Teresa Moyer pulls no punches in her critique of racism in historic preservation. In her balanced discussion, Moyer examines the inextricably entangled lives of the enslaved, free blacks, and white landowners. Her work draws on evidence from archaeology, history, geology, and other fields to explore the ways that white privilege continues to obscure the contributions of blacks at Mount Clare. She demonstrates that a landscape's post-emancipation history can make a powerful statement about black heritage. Ultimately she argues that the inclusion of enslaved persons in the history of these sites would honor these "ancestors of worthy life," make the social good of public history available to African Americans, and address systemic racism in America.
Paper Cadavers by Kirsten Weld
In Paper Cadavers, an inside account of the astonishing discovery and rescue of Guatemala's secret police archives, Kirsten Weld probes the politics of memory, the wages of the Cold War, and the stakes of historical knowledge production. After Guatemala's bloody thirty-six years of civil war (1960-1996), silence and impunity reigned. That is, until 2005, when human rights investigators stumbled on the archives of the country's National Police, which, at 75 million pages, proved to be the largest trove of secret state records ever found in Latin America. The unearthing of the archives renewed fierce debates about history, memory, and justice. In Paper Cadavers, Weld explores Guatemala's struggles to manage this avalanche of evidence of past war crimes, providing a firsthand look at how postwar justice activists worked to reconfigure terror archives into implements of social change. Tracing the history of the police files as they were transformed from weapons of counterinsurgency into tools for post-conflict reckoning, Weld sheds light on the country's fraught transition from war to an uneasy peace, reflecting on how societies forget and remember political violence.
My Soul Is in Haiti by Bertin M. Louis
In the Haitian diaspora, as in Haiti itself, the majority ofHaitians have long practiced Catholicism or Vodou. However, Protestant forms ofChristianity now flourish both in Haiti and beyond. In the Bahamas, whereapproximately one in five people are now Haitian-born or Haitian-descended,Protestantism has become the majority religion for immigrant Haitians. In My Soul Is in Haiti, Bertin M. Louis, Jr. hascombined multi-sited ethnographic research in the United States, Haiti, and theBahamas with a transnational framework to analyze why Protestantism hasappealed to the Haitian diaspora community in the Bahamas. The volumeillustrates how devout Haitian Protestant migrants use their religiousidentities to ground themselves in a place that is hostile to them as migrants,and it also uncovers how their religious faith ties in to their belief in theneed to “save” their homeland, as they re-imagine Haiti politically and morallyas a Protestant Christian nation. This important look at transnational migration betweensecond and third world countries shows how notions of nationalism among Haitianmigrants in the Bahamas are filtered through their religious beliefs. Bystudying local transformations in the Haitian diaspora of the Bahamas, Louisoffers a greater understanding of the spread of Protestant Christianity, bothregionally and globally.
New Books - March
Essential Trade by Ann Marie Leshkowich
This groundbreaking work of critical feminist economic anthropology provides a compelling account of postwar southern Vietnam as seen through the eyes of the dynamic women who have weathered four decades of political and economic transformation. Book jacket.
The Conservation of Subterranean Cultural Heritage by C. Saiz-Jimenez (Editor)
In recent years, a debate has arisen concerning the convenience of conserving subterranean cultural heritage and the necessary management models. There is often pressure from local authorities more interested in using the cultural heritage sites in order to develop the economy and the tourism industry rather than in the conservation of the cultural heritage itself. This has caused the managing bodies to reconsider reopening of sites closed due to serious conservation problems. This proceedings volume contains selected papers presented at the International Workshop "The Conservation of Subterranean Cultural Heritage", held 25-27 March 2014, in Seville, Spain. The workshop was organized by the Spanish Network of Science and Technology for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage (TechnoHeritage). The objective of the workshop was to promote an interdisciplinary forum for discussion of all aspects of the conservation of subterranean cultural heritage, providing at the same time an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of the most recent investigations. This book covers a wide range of scientific dimensions of the conservation and management of caves and necropolises. This state-of-the-art book will be of particular interest to archaeologists, historians, conservationists, cultural heritage specialists, architects, engineers and local and governmental policy-makers.
The Tomb of Meryneith at Saqqara by Maarten J. Raven; R. van Walsem
This funerary monument of a high Memphite official was discovered by a joint expedition of the Leiden Museum of Antiquities and Leiden University in 2001. Meryneith started his career as steward of the Memphite temple of the sun god Aten during the reign of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. During midlife, he may have joined the court set up by the Pharaoh at the new capital at Amarna. He ended his career under Tutankhamun as high-priest of the Aten in the Memphite temple again. Thereby, the importance of the tomb of Meryneith lies in the fact that for the first time it allows us to witness various stages in the rise and fall of the Amarna heresy from a Memphite point of view. Thus the tomb-owner was apparently forced to change his name from Meryneith - with its reference to the now proscribed goddess Neith - into Meryre. Several other variants of his name and some additional titles came to light, revealing various stages in his career. These stages mirror the ideological developments of the Amarna Period and its immediate aftermath, which are further illustrated by the different styles of the decoration of the tomb. This proved to be remarkably well preserved and consists of both wall-reliefs and paintings on mud plaster. Thanks to the evidence of the inscriptions, it can be observed how the tomb was built and decorated in various stages, each characterized by a marked change in style and iconography. The present report includes a full description of these wall scenes, as well as chapters on the career of the tomb-owner, on the double statue of Meryneith and his wife found in one of the west chapels, and on the objects, pottery, and skeletal material found in the course of the excavations.
Urban Youth and Photovoice by Melvin Delgado
The past decade brought forth a wave of excitement and promise for researchers and practitioners interested in community practice as an approach based on social justice principles and an embrace of community participatory actions. But, effective community practice is predicated on the availability and use of assessment methods that not only capture and report on conditions, but also simultaneously set the stage for social change efforts. This research, therefore, serves the dual purpose of generating knowledge and also being an integral part of social intervention. Research done in this way, however, requires new tools. Photovoice is one such tool - a form of visual ethnography that invites participants to represent their community or point of view through photographs, accompanied by narratives, to be shared with each other and with a broader community. Urban Youth and Photovoice focuses on the use of this method within urban settings and among adolescents and young adults - a group that is almost naturally drawn to the use of photography (especially digital and particularly in today's era of texting, facebook, and instagram) to showcase photovoice as an important qualitative research method for social workers and others in the social sciences, and providing readers with detailed theoretical and practical account of how to plan, implement, and evaluate the results of a photovoice project focused on urban youth.
The Cultural Politics of Reproduction by Maya Unnithan-Kumar (Editor); Sunil K. Khanna (Editor)
Charting the experiences of internally or externally migrant communities, the volume examines social transformation through the dynamic relationship between movement, reproduction, and health. The chapters examine how healthcare experiences of migrants are not only embedded in their own unique health worldviews, but also influenced by the history, policy, and politics of the wider state systems. The research among migrant communities an understanding of how ideas of reproduction and "cultures of health" travel, how healing, birth and care practices become a result of movement, and how health-related perceptions and reproductive experiences can define migrant belonging and identity.
New Books - March
Tenahaha and the Wari State by Justin Jennings (Editor, Contribution by); Alcides Gavilán Vargas (Contribution by); Oscar Huamán López (Contribution by); Corina M. Kellner (Contribution by); Martha Palma Malaga (Contribution by); Pablo Mendoza (Contribution by); Eduardo Montoya (Contribution by); Franco Mora (Contribution by); Amanda Mummert (Contribution by); Guadalupe Ochoa (Contribution by); Marco Ubillús (Contribution by); Willy Yépez Álvarez (Editor, Contribution by); Irela Vallejo (Contribution by); Luz Antonio Vargas (Contribution by); Maria D. Velarde (Contribution by); Elina Alvarado Sánchez (Contribution by); Stefanie Bautista (Contribution by); Patricia Bedregal (Contribution by); Ingrid Berg (Contribution by); Camila Capriata Estrada (Contribution by); Isabel Collazos (Contribution by); Matthew J. Edwards (Contribution by)
The Middle Horizon period (A.D. 600–1000) was a time of sweeping cultural change in the Andes. Archaeologists have long associated this period with the expansion of the Wari (Huari) and Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) states in the south-central Andes and the Pacific coasts of contemporary Peru and Chile.   Tenahaha and the Wari State contains a series of essays that challenge current beliefs about the Wari state and suggest a reassessment of this pivotal era in Andean history. In this collection, a picture emerges of Wari power projected across the region’s rugged and formidable topography less as a conquering empire than as a source of ideas, styles, and material culture voluntarily adopted by neighboring peoples.   Much of the previous fieldwork on Wari history took place in the Wari heartland and in Wari strongholds, not areas where Wari power and influence were equivocal. In Tenahaha and the Wari State, editors Justin Jennings and Willy Yépez Álvarez set out to test whether current theories of the Wari state as a cohesive empire were accurate or simply reflective of the bias inherent in studying Wari culture in its most concentrated centers. The essays in this collection examine instead life in the Cotahuasi Valley, an area into which Wari influence expanded during the Middle Horizon period.   Drawing on ten years of exhaustive field work both at the ceremonial site of Tenahaha and in the surrounding valley, Jennings and Yépez Álvarez posit that Cotahuasinos at Tenahaha had little contact with the Wari state. Their excavations and survey in the area tell the story of a region in flux rather than of a people conquered by Wari. In a time of uncertainty, they adopted Wari ideas and culture as ways to cope with change.
Aboriginal Populations by Frank Trovato (Editor); Anatole Romaniuk (Editor)
"The overarching theme of this volume is that Canada's Aboriginal population has reached a critical stage of transition, from a situation in the past characterized by delayed modernization, extreme socio-economic deficit, and minimal control over their demography, to a point of social, political, economic, and demographic ascendancy." -from the Preface Experts from around the world review and extend the research on Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the circumpolar North, mapping recent changes in their demography, health, and sociology and comparing their conditions with that of Aboriginal Peoples in other countries. Contributors point to policies and research needed to meet the challenges Aboriginal Peoples are likely to face in the 21st century. This substantial volume will prove indispensable and timely to researchers, policy analysts, students, and teachers of social demography and Native Studies. Contributors: Chris Andersen, Nicholas Biddle, Michael J. Chandler, Stewart Clatworthy, Senada Delic, James Frideres, Gustave J. Goldmann, Eric Guimond, Malcolm King, Brenda Kobayashi, Tahu H. Kukutai, Ron F. Laliberté, Roger C.A. Maaka, Mary Jane Norris, Evelyn J. Peters, Andrey N. Petrov, Ian Pool, Sarah Prout, Norbert Robitaille, Anatole Romaniuk, Sacha Senécal, C. Matthew Snipp, John Taylor, Frank Trovato, Ravi B.P. Verma, Cora J. Voyageur, Paul C. Whitehead, Mandy L.M. Yap, T. Kue Young.
Smithsonian Stories by Wilton S. Dillon; Robert D. Sullivan (Foreword by)
Why is the Smithsonian more than the "Nation's Attic?" Or more than a museum complex? As Wilton S. Dillon shows, the Smithsonian came to be the institution we know today under the twenty-year leadership of "Sun King" S. Dillon Ripley. Ripley aspired to reinvent the Smithsonian as a great university--with museums. Although little understood by the public at large, it began as a basic research center. The Smithsonian remains a key contributor to the world of higher learning and functions diplomatically as the ministry of culture for the United States. Dillon provides backstage insights into Ripley's quest for the wholeness of knowledge. He describes how he inspired its role as a "theater of ideas as well as artifacts." Under his tutelage, the National Mall became a playground for world intelligentsia, an "intellectual free trade zone" in the shadow of the nation's political capital. Dillon reminds us that interdisciplinary, international Smithsonian symposia foreshadowed twenty-first-century issues and trends. His descriptions of the educational rewards of balancing tradition with the avant-garde are inspiring. As Dillon reminds us, Ripley's twenty-year reign may well have helped spark the waning embers of the Enlightenment.