Out of War by 
Voices from Captivity by
Bringing together a range of first-hand testimonies of captives, this personal and arresting collection provides an overview of what life inside is actually like. Drawing on memoirs of captives - including those imprisoned for stealing money, murder, illegal protest or no reason at all - this book presents the universal experience of being incarcerated and brings to life the humanity of those behind locked doors. Tracing the career of the captive from the moment the door is first locked behind them, to analysis of the oddities of relationships developed in prison and how the deprivation of sex is dealt with, the book then reflects on the cruelties faced while inside, and concludes by looking at the problems faced when the supposedly happy day of release finally arrives. These insightful accounts help empathise and reflect on the impact of prison practices on inmates.
An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular by
There have been claims that meaninglessness has become epidemic in the contemporary world. One perceived consequence of this is that people increasingly turn against both society and the political establishment with little concern for the content (or lack of content) that might follow. Most often, encounters with meaninglessness and nothingness are seen as troubling. "Meaning" is generally seen as being a cornerstone of the human condition, as that which we strive towards. This was famously explored by Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning in which he showed how even in the direst of situations individuals will often seek to find a purpose in life. But what, then, is at stake when groups of people negate this position? What exactly goes on inside this apparent turn towards nothing, in the engagement with meaninglessness? And what happens if we take the meaningless seriously as an empirical fact?
Ethnographies of U. S. Empire by
How do we live in and with empire? The contributors to Ethnographies of U.S. Empire pursue this question by examining empire as an unequally shared present. Here empire stands as an entrenched, if often invisible, part of everyday life central to making and remaking a world in which it is too often presented as an aberration rather than as a structuring condition. This volume presents scholarship from across U.S. imperial formations: settler colonialism, overseas territories, communities impacted by U.S. military action or political intervention, Cold War alliances and fissures, and, most recently, new forms of U.S. empire after 9/11. From the Mohawk Nation, Korea, and the Philippines to Iraq and the hills of New Jersey, the contributors show how a methodological and theoretical commitment to ethnography sharpens all of our understandings of the novel and timeworn ways people live, thrive, and resist in the imperial present. Contributors: Kevin K. Birth, Joe Bryan, John F. Collins, Jean Dennison, Erin Fitz-Henry, Adriana María Garriga-López, Olívia Maria Gomes da Cunha, Matthew Gutmann, Ju Hui Judy Han, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Eleana Kim, Heonik Kwon, Soo Ah Kwon, Darryl Li, Catherine Lutz, Sunaina Maira, Carole McGranahan, Sean T. Mitchell, Jan M. Padios, Melissa Rosario, Audra Simpson, Ann Laura Stoler, Fa'anofo Lisaclaire Uperesa, David Vine
Inequalities of Aging by
The troubling dynamic of the American home care industry where increased independence for the elderly conflicts with the well being of caregivers Paid home care is one of the fastest growing occupations in the United States, and millions of Americans rely on these workers to help them remain at home as they grow older. However, the industry is rife with contradictions. The United States spends a fortune on medical care, yet devotes comparatively few resources on improving wages, thus placing home care providers in the ranks of the working poor. As a result, the work that enables some older Americans to live independently generates profound social inequalities. Inequalities of Aging explores the ways in which these inequalities play out on the ground as workers, who are disproportionately women of color and immigrants, earn poverty-level wages and often struggle to provide for themselves and their families. The ethnographic narrative reveals how two of the nation's most pressing concerns--rising social inequality and caring for an aging population--intersect to transform the lives of older adults, home care workers, and the world around them. The book takes readers inside the homes and offices of people connected to two Chicago area home care agencies serving low-income and affluent older adults, respectively. Through intimate portrayals of daily life, Elana D. Buch illustrates how diverse histories, care practices, and social policies overlap and contribute to social inequality. Illuminating the lived experience of both workers and their clients, Inequalities of Aging shows the different ways in which the idea of independence both connects and shapes the lives of the elderly and the working poor.
The Abuelos by
Dr. Jos B. Fern ndez was born in Sagua la Grande, Cuba. He is a former Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities and Pegasus Professor of History and Modern Languages at the University of Central Florida. He is an author of numerous books and articles on the Hispanic Heritage of the United States and Cuban history and literature. A former President of the Florida Historical Society and a former Chair of the Florida Folklife Council, Dr. Fern ndez served as a presidential appointee on the Commission to Study the Potential Creation of the National Museum of the American Latino. He received his doctorate in Spanish from the Florida State University. The book consists of a series of interviews with a heterogeneous group of elderly Cuban exiles representing all of the island's regions. Thematically arranged, it creates a kaleidoscopic portrayal of the Cuba inhabited by these individuals prior to their exodus, invariably depicted in a heart-rending fashion. The book is an invaluable tool of information for the historian, sociologist, ethnographer, folklorist and those interested in Cuban heritage and culture. Originally publish in Spanish in 1987 by Ediciones Universal.
Technology, Activism, and Social Justice in a Digital Age by
Technology, Activism, and Social Justice in a Digital Age offers a close look at both the present nature and future prospects for social change. In particular, the text explores the cutting edge of technology and social change, while discussing developments in social media, civic technology, and leaderless organizations -- as well as more traditional approaches to social change. It effectively assembles a rich variety of perspectives to the issue of technology and social change; the featured authors are academics and practitioners (representing both new voices and experienced researchers) who share a common devotion to a future that is just, fair, and supportive of human potential. They come from the fields of social work, public administration, journalism, law, philanthropy, urban affairs, planning, and education, and their work builds upon 30-plus years of research. The authors' efforts to examine changing nature of social change organizations and the issues they face will help readers reflect upon modern advocacy, social change, and the potential to utilize technology in making a difference.
Shariah by
Sharia is by now a term that most Americans and Europeans recognize, though few really understand what it means. Often portrayed as a medieval system used by religious zealots to oppress women and deny human rights, conservative politicians, media commentators, and hardline televangelistsstoke fear by promoting the idea that Muslims want to impose a repressive Sharia rule in America and Europe. Despite the breadth of this propaganda, a majority of Muslims - men and women - support Sharia as a source of law. In fact, for many centuries Sharia has functioned for Muslims as a positivesource of guidance, providing a moral compass for individuals and society. This critical new book by John L. Esposito and Natana Delong-Bas aims to serve as a guide for what everybody needs to know in the conversation about Sharia, responding to misunderstandings and distortions, and offeringanswers to questions about the origin, nature, and content of Sharia.
Tight Knit by
The coveted "Made in Italy" label calls to mind visions of nimble-fingered Italian tailors lovingly sewing elegant, high-end clothing. The phrase evokes a sense of authenticity, heritage, and rustic charm. Yet, as Elizabeth L. Krause uncovers in Tight Knit, Chinese migrants are the ones sewing "Made in Italy" labels into low-cost items for a thriving fast-fashion industry--all the while adding new patterns to the social fabric of Italy's iconic industry. Krause offers a revelatory look into how families involved in the fashion industry are coping with globalization based on longterm research in Prato, the historic hub of textile production in the heart of metropolitan Tuscany. She brings to the fore the tensions--over value, money, beauty, family, care, and belonging--that are reaching a boiling point as the country struggles to deal with the same migration pressures that are triggering backlash all over Europe and North America. Tight Knit tells a fascinating story about the heterogeneity of contemporary capitalism that will interest social scientists, immigration experts, and anyone curious about how globalization is changing the most basic of human conditions--making a living and making a life.
Different Perspectives on the Syrian Reality by
This unique collection from Syria presents research papers focusing on topics in cultural research that are relevant to the current Syrian situation, especially with regard to the fundamental changes in the relationship of Syrians to the society they live in and the dynamic transformations they are witnessing. Through these inside views, the volume offers a fascinating alternative narrative of the current societal context in Syria. It comprises of the following papers: 1. Features of the Home in a Refugee Camp: An Applied Study of the Al-Jarahiya Camp (by Alina Oueishek) 2. The Tormented Body Imagery in Contemporary Syrian Plastic Art (by Mohammad Omran) 3. Children in the Shadow of the Islamic State: Jihadi Schooling and Recruitment under the Darkness of the Islamic State (by Wasim Al-Salti) 4. Political Stereotypes during the Syrian Uprising (by Hani Al-Telfah).
Small Animals by
"It might be the most important book about being a parent that you will ever read."--Emily Rapp Black,New York Times bestselling author ofThe Still Point of the Turning World "Brooks's own personal experience provides the narrative thrust for the book -- she writes unflinchingly about her own experience.... Readers who want to know what happened to Brooks will keep reading to learn how the case against her proceeds, but it's Brooks's questions about why mothers are so judgmental and competitive that give the book its heft." --NPR One morning, Kim Brooks made a split-second decision to leave her four-year old son in the car while she ran into a store. What happened would consume the next several years of her life and spur her to investigate the broader role America's culture of fear plays in parenthood. InSmall Animals, Brooks asks, Of all the emotions inherent in parenting, is there any more universal or profound than fear? Why have our notions of what it means to be a good parent changed so radically? In what ways do these changes impact the lives of parents, children, and the structure of society at large? And what, in the end, does the rise of fearful parenting tell us about ourselves? Fueled by urgency and the emotional intensity of Brooks's own story,Small Animals is a riveting examination of the ways our culture of competitive, anxious, and judgmental parenting has profoundly altered the experiences of parents and children. In her signature style--by turns funny, penetrating, and always illuminating--which has dazzled millions of fans and been called "striking" byNew York Times Book Review and "beautiful" by the National Book Critics Circle, Brooks offers a provocative, compelling portrait of parenthood in America and calls us to examine what we most value in our relationships with our children and one another.
How Families Matter by
The family remains the most contested institution in American society. How Families Matter: Simply Complicated Intersections of Race, Gender, and Work explores the ways adults make sense of their family lives in the midst of the complicated debates generated by politicians and social scientists. Given the rhetoric about the family, this book is a well overdue account of family life from the perspective of families themselves. The purpose of this book is to provide the reader with a whole view of different types of families. The chapters focus on contemporary issues such as who do we consider to be a part of our family, can anyone achieve family-life balance, and how do families celebrate when they get together? Relying on stories shared by a racially/ethnically diverse group of forty-six families, this book finds that parents and siblings cultivate a family identity that both defines who they are and influences who they become. It is a welcomed installment to conversations about the family, as families are finally viewed within a single study from a multicultural lens.
Regional Approaches to Society and Complexity by
This volume considers regional approaches to social complexity from a variety of perspectives and at a global scale. John F. Cherry has been a key figure in regional-scale inquiry and broader disciplinary interfaces throughout his career, producing, mentoring, and inspiring a remarkably diverse body of work, which nevertheless remains oriented around this central theme. While Cherry's work is the inspiration for this volume and the papers within it, this should not be seen as a traditional festschrift, or piecemeal homage to the honorand's career. Rather, it aims to explore this core concern of regional approaches to society and complexity in comparative perspective, first in the Aegean, then branching out to the wider Mediterranean, New World, and finally reflecting on relevant issues of concern to all archaeologists working at levels above the site.
Japanese-American Relocation in World War II by
In this revisionist history of the United States government relocation of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, Roger W. Lotchin challenges the prevailing notion that racism was the cause of the creation of these centers. After unpacking the origins and meanings of American attitudes toward the Japanese-Americans, Lotchin then shows that Japanese relocation was a consequence of nationalism rather than racism. Lotchin also explores the conditions in the relocation centers and the experiences of those who lived there, with discussions on health, religion, recreation, economics, consumerism, and theater. He honors those affected by uncovering the complexity of how and why their relocation happened, and makes it clear that most Japanese-Americans never went to a relocation center. Written by a specialist in US home front studies, this book will be required reading for scholars and students of the American home front during World War II, Japanese relocation, and the history of Japanese immigrants in America.
Melungeon Portraits by
 At a time when concepts of racial and ethnic identity increasingly define how we see ourselves and others, the ancestry of Melungeons--a Central Appalachian multiracial group believed to be of Native American, African and European origins--remains controversial. Who is Melungeon, how do we know and what does that mean? In a series of interviews with individuals who claim Melungeon heritage, the author finds common threads that point to shared history, appearance and values, and explores how we decide who we are and what kind of proof we need.
Life : a critical user's manual by
How can we think of life in its dual expression, matter and experience, the living and the lived? Philosophers and, more recently, social scientists have offered multiple answers to this question, often privileging one expression or the other - the biological or the biographical. But is it possible to conceive of them together and thus reconcile naturalist and humanist approaches? Using research conducted on three continents and engaging in critical dialogue with Wittgenstein, Benjamin, and Foucault, Didier Fassin attempts to do so by developing three concepts: forms of life, ethics of life, and politics of life. In the conditions of refugees and asylum seekers, in the light of mortality statistics and death benefits, and via a genealogical and ethnographical inquiry, the moral economy of life reveals troubling tensions in the way contemporary societies treat human beings. Once the pieces of this anthropological composition are assembled, like in Georges Perec's jigsaw puzzle, an image appears: that of unequal lives.
Living on the Edge by
A number of significant sites and areas of past human activity and inhabitation from the Iron Age, the Romano-British period, the medieval and early post-medieval periods have been recorded. The results follow broad regional patterns seen in the Severn Estuary Levels, with the more regularly planned farming landscapes and permanent settlement evidence from the Romano-British period onwards, developing from seasonal, episodic exploitation of this resource-rich salt-marsh landscape. It has also highlighted extensive continuities within the Steart Point landscape of land divisions and drainage patterns which have their inception at least as far back as the early medieval period and possibly the Romano-British period.
Anthropology As Social Critique - Its Public Role in the Globalized World by
This book contains chapters based on presentations and debates that were held during a panel session entitled "Anthropology as Opinion-Maker: A Dilemma of Analysis versus Application" as part of the "Anthropology in the World" conference in London (June 8-10, 2012). The aim of this book is to discuss the relevance of anthropological findings beyond disciplinary boundaries and to examine means of making these findings accessible and useful for a wider public, including decision makers. The book is founded on the belief that the world would benefit greatly from the application of anthropological knowledge and anthropological opinions and the concern that anthropologists are not doing enough to make their expertise heard and understood.
Brokers and boundaries : colonial exploration in indigenous territory by
Includes bibliographical references.
Summary Colonial exploration continues, all too often, to be rendered as heroic narratives of solitary, intrepid explorers and adventurers. This edited collection contributes to scholarship that is challenging that persistent mythology. With a focus on Indigenous brokers, such as guides, assistants and mediators, it highlights the ways in which nineteenth-century exploration in Australia and New Guinea was a collective and socially complex enterprise. Many of the authors provide biographically rich studies that carefully examine and speculate about Indigenous brokers' motivations, commitments and desires. All of the chapters in the collection are attentive to the specific local circumstances as well as broader colonial contexts in which exploration and encounters occurred.
Heritage and Rights of Indigenous Peoples by
In 2007, the United Nations adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, a landmark political recognition of indigenous rights. A decade later, this book looks at the status of those rights internationally. Written jointly by indigenous and non-indigenous scholars, the chapters feature case studies from four continents that explore the issues faced by Indigenous Peoples through three themes: land, spirituality, and self-determination.
Feminism, Women's Agency, and Communication in Early Twentieth-Century China by
Feminism, Women's Agency, and Communication in Early Twentieth-Century China focuses on a sensational elopement in the Yangzi Delta in the late 1920s to explore how middle- and lower-class members of society gained access to and appropriated otherwise alien and abstract enlightenment theories and idioms about love, marriage, and family. Via a network of communications that connected people of differing socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, non-elite women were empowered to display their new womanhood and thereby exercise their self-activating agency to mount resistance to China's patriarchal system. Qiliang He's text also investigates the proliferation of anti-feminist conservatisms in legal practice, scholarly discourses, media, and popular culture in the early Nanjing Decade (1927-1937). Utilizing a framework of interdisciplinary scholarship, this book traverses various fields such as legal history, women's history, popular culture/media studies, and literary studies to explore urban discourse and communication in 1920s China.
Edges of Global Transformation by
Through nine ethnographic case-studies, Edges of Global Transformation explores situations where global transformations associated with neoliberalism meet local realities. The "edge" of transformation is characterized by uncertainty, as old patterns are consumed and new formed. The nine case studies from Africa, Europe and the Middle East shed light on how uncertainty plays an inevitable and essential role in the grey zone between macro-transformations and local responses. Despite the tremendous difference in precariousness between these cases, each contributor explores ways in which transformations are conceived and acted upon within the space of possibility that is opened and apprehended locally. The role of uncertainty as an active force is explored throughout the book. While in some cases, uncertainty has a clear restricting effect; other cases illustrate its potential as a productive force. As a contribution to understanding the dynamic of the local realities of global change, the book will be valuable reading for anyone interested in globalization and the neoliberal world order.
Men, Masculinity and Contemporary Dating by
At a time when traditional dating practices are being replaced with new ways to meet potential partners, this book provides fresh insights into how are men responding to new ways of dating. Drawing upon original research, this book examines a wide range of contemporary dating practices that includes speed dating, holiday romances, use of dating apps, online sex seeking and dogging. It reveals the ways in which men draw upon traditional models of masculinity to negotiate these changes; but also, the extent to which men are responding by elaborating new masculinities. Through an investigation of the dynamics of heterosexuality and masculinity, this book highlights the importance attached to authenticity, and the increasing marketization and commodification of dating. It argues that in a post-truth world, men must also come to terms with a post-trust dating landscape. Combining rich empirical material with keen theoretical analysis, this innovative work will have interdisciplinary appeal for students and scholars of sociology, media studies, cultural studies, and gender studies.
The Wide Lens in Archaeology by
This book honors the memory of Brian Hesse, a scholar of Near Eastern archaeology, a writer of alliterative and punned publication titles, and an accomplished amateur photographer. Hesse specialized in zooarchaeology, but he influenced a wider range of excavators and ancient historians with his broad interpretive reach. He spent much of his career analyzing faunal materials from different countries in the Middle East-including Iran, Yemen, and Israel, and his publications covered themes particular to animal bone studies, such as domestication, ancient market economics, as well as broader themes such as determining ethnicity in archaeology. The essays in this volume reflect the breadth of his interests. Most chapters share an Old World geographic setting, focusing either on Europe or the Middle East. The topics are diverse, with the majority discussing animal bones, as was Hesse's specialization, but some take a nonfaunal perspective related to the problems with which Hesse grappled. The volume is also broad in temporal scope, ranging from Neolithic Iran to early Medieval England, and it addresses theoretical matters as well as methodological innovations including taphonomy and the history of computers in zooarchaeology. Several of the essays are direct revisits to, inspirations from, or extensions of Hesse's own research. All the contributions reflect his intense interest in social questions about antiquity; the theme of social archaeology informed much of Brian Hesse's thinking, and it is why his work made such an impact on those working outside his own disciplinary research.
Aboriginal Biocultural Knowledge in South-Eastern Australia by
Indigenous Australians have long understood sustainable hunting and harvesting, seasonal changes in flora and fauna, predator-prey relationships and imbalances, and seasonal fire management. Yet the extent of their knowledge and expertise has been largely unknown and underappreciated by non-Aboriginal colonists, especially in the south-east of Australia where Aboriginal culture was severely fractured. Aboriginal Biocultural Knowledge in South-eastern Australiais the first book to examine historical records from early colonists who interacted with south-eastern Australian Aboriginal communities and documented their understanding of the environment, natural resources such as water and plant and animal foods, medicine and other aspects of their material world. This book provides a compelling case for the importance of understanding Indigenous knowledge, to inform discussions around climate change, biodiversity, resource management, health and education. It will be a valuable reference for natural resource management agencies, academics in Indigenous studies and anyone interested in Aboriginal culture and knowledge.
Land of the Fee by
Politicians, economists, and the media have put forth no shortage of explanations for the mounting problem of wealth inequality - a loss of working class jobs, a rise in finance-driven speculative capitalism, and a surge of tax policy decisions that benefit the ultra-rich, among others. Whilethese arguments focus on the macro problems that contribute to growing inequality, they overlook one innocuous but substantial contributor to the widening divide: the explosion of fees accompanying virtually every transaction that people make. As Devin Fergus shows in Land of the Fee, these perfectly legal fees are buried deep within the verbose agreements between vendors and consumers - agreements that few people fully read or comprehend. The end effect, Fergus argues, is a massive transfer of wealth from the many to the few: largebanking corporations, airlines, corporate hotel chains, and other entities of vast wealth. Fergus traces the fee system from its origins in the deregulatory wave of the late 1970s to the present, placing the development within the larger context of escalating income inequality. He organizes the bookaround four of the basics of existence: housing, work, transportation, and schooling. In each category, industry lobbyists successfully influenced legislatures into transforming the law until surreptitious fees became the norm. The average consumer is now subject to a dizzying array of charges in areas like mortgage contracts, banking transactions, auto insurance rates, college payments, and payday loans. The fees that accompany these transactions are not subject to usury laws and have effectively redistributed wealth fromthe lower and middle classes to ultra-wealthy corporations and the individuals at their pinnacles. By exposing this predatory and nearly invisible system of fees, Land of the Fee will reshape our understanding of wealth inequality in America.
Upper Middle Class Social Reproduction by
In the contemporary context of increasing inequality and various forms of segregation, this volume analyzes the transition to neoliberal politics in Santiago de Chile. Using an innovative methodological approach that combines georeferenced data and multi-stage cluster analysis, Méndez and Gayo study the old and new mechanisms of social reproduction among the upper middle class. In so doing, they not only capture the interconnections between macro- and microsocial dimensions such as urban dynamics, schooling demands, cultural repertoires and socio-spatial trajectories, but also offer a detailed account of elite formation, intergenerational accumulation, and economic, cultural, and social inheritance dynamics.
Gypsies by
Gypsies, Egyptians, Romanies, and - more recently - Travellers. Who are this marginal and mysterious people who first arrived in England in early Tudor times? Are tales of their distant origins on the Indian subcontinent true, or just another of the many myths and stories that have accretedaround them over time? In fact, can they even be regarded as a single people or ethnicity at all, or are they little more than a useful concept? Gypsies have frequently been vilified, and not much less frequently romanticized, by the settled population over the centuries, but social historian David Cressy now attempts to disentangle the myth from the reality of Gypsy life over more than half a millennium of English history. In this, thefirst comprehensive historical study of the doings and dealings of Gypsies in England, from their first appearance in early Tudor times to the present, he draws on original archival research, and a wide range of reading, to trace the many moments when Gypsy lives became entangled with those ofvillagers and townsfolk, religious and secular authorities, and social and moral reformers. Crucially, it is a story not just of the Gypsy community and its peculiarities, but also of England's treatment of that community, from draconian Elizabethan statutes, through various degrees of toleration and fascination, right up to the tabloid newspaper campaigns against Gypsy and Travellerencampments of more recent years.
Unearthing Childhood by
This is the first book to survey the "hidden half" of prehistoric societies as revealed by archaeology, from Australopithecines to advanced Stone Age foragers, from farming villages to the beginnings of civilisation. Prehistoric children can be seen in footprints and finger daubs, in imagespainted on rocks and pots, in the signs of play and the evidence of first attempts to learn practical crafts. The burials of those who did not reach adulthood reveal clothing, personal adornment, possession and status in society, while the bodies themselves provide information on diet, health andsometimes violent death. This book demonstrates the extraordinary potential for the study of childhood within the prehistoric record, and will suggest to those interested in childhood what can be learnt from the study of the deep past.
One Welfare by
Contemporary and thought-provoking, this book provides a definition of the concept of One Welfare: the interconnection between animal welfare, human wellbeing and the environment. The book establishes a conceptual framework, in five sections, resulting from a three month global consultation on a draft proposal comprising nine areas. The book contains: - A one welfare approach which complements and extends the existing one health approach - A range of prestigious contributions from key opinion leaders in the field of animal welfare which help to define the framework - A platform for the development of more collaborative and integrated animal welfare standards and policies One Welfare complements the One Health and Eco Health approaches, enabling full integration of animal welfare within other disciplines; a much needed tool to help improve animal welfare, human wellbeing and environmental components and support worldwide sustainable development goals. Integrating this concept into existing projects could help to foster collaboration to improve human and animal welfare globally. This text is of interest to those working in the fields of animal and human welfare, sustainability and conservation, international development and to all those keen to extend the one health approach to animal welfare and human wellbeing.
The Euromaidan's Effect on Civil Society by
Sophie Falsini presents a fascinating analysis of the current state and future prospects of Ukrainian civil society in light of the 2013-2014 events. Since then, the country has been shaken by both sociopolitical disorders and a deep humanitarian emergency, also exacerbated by the crisis of internally displaced people. Yet it is under these same premises that civil society emerged as a main actor in post-Euromaidan politics, development, and reform. Through its war relief work and the endeavors to lead Ukraine towards democratization, civil society has, to a considerable degree, offset the lack of an efficient state administration and activated vital components of Ukrainian social capital. Falsini explores the way and the extent to which the events occurring in Ukraine since late 2013--the Euromaidan revolution, the annexation of Crimea, and the war in the East--have contributed to the growth of social capital as well as to the resulting change in the shape and in the structure of civil society in the country. Through a multidimensional approach, combining theoretical interpretation with empirical analysis, the study examines Ukraine's transformed civil society in terms of its social relations, societal networks and resources, and collective action. Based on the theory of social capital after Lin Nan, the empirical analysis revolves around the case studies of 12 civil society organizations active in providing help to internally displaced people. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in Kiev, Dnipro, and Kharkiv aiming to confirm or discard the thesis of a post-Euromaidan civil society powered by increased levels of social capital. The collected data show that the 2013-2014 events did indeed contribute to the reshaping of the structure of Ukrainian civil society as they reversed people's preference for informal and cross-level networks, mistrust towards the system, and disappointment with public institutions. Compared to the past, Ukraine's "civil society 2.0" saw the rise of grassroots and voluntary movements which triggered social mobilization, and a long-term investment of resources for the benefit of the public good. These developments have significantly contributed to an increase of the level of social capital in post-Euromaidan Ukraine.
Disrupting Shameful Legacies by
Much has been written in Canada and South Africa about sexual violence in the context of colonial legacies, particularly for Indigenous girls and young women. While both countries have attempted to deal with the past through Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and Canada has embarked upon its National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, there remains a great deal left to do. Across the two countries, history, legislation and the lived experiences of young people, and especially girls and young women point to a deeply rooted situation of marginalization. Violence on girls' and women's bodies also reflects violence on the land and especially issues of dispossession. What approaches and methods would make it possible for girls and young women, as knowers and actors, especially those who are the most marginalized, to influence social policy and social change in the context of sexual violence? Taken as a whole, the chapters in Disrupting Shameful Legacies: Girls and Young Women Speaking Back through the Arts to Address Sexual Violence which come out of a transnational study on sexual violence suggest a new legacy, one that is based on methodologies that seek to disrupt colonial legacies, by privileging speaking up and speaking back through the arts and visual practice to challenge the situation of sexual violence. At the same time, the fact that so many of the authors of the various chapters are themselves Indigenous young people from either Canada or South Africa also suggests a new legacy of leadership for change.
Fading Out Black and White by
What happens to a country that was built on race when the boundaries of black and white have started to fade? Not only is the literal face of America changing where white will no longer be the majority, but the belief in the firmness of these categories and the boundaries that have been drawn is also disintegrating. In a nuanced reading of culture in a post Obama America, this book asks what will become of the racial categories of black and white in an increasingly multi-ethnic, racially ambiguous, and culturally fluid country. Through readings of sites of cultural friction such as the media frenzy around 'transracial' Rachel Dolezal, the new popularity of racially ambiguous dolls, and the confusion over Obama's race, Fading Out Black and White explores the contemporary construction of race. This insightful, provocative glimpse at identity formation in the US reviews the new frontier of race and looks back at the archaism of the one-drop rule that is unique to America.
People in the Mountains: Current Approaches to the Archaeology of Mountainous Landscapes by
Mountain landscapes were first exploited by farming populations at the very beginning of the Neolithic. However, there are controversies regarding when and where these specific types of human behaviour developed as a result of adaptation processes to these special environments. The aim of People in the Mountains: Current Approaches to the Archaeology of Mountainous Landscapes is to present research results from different scientific contexts. To discuss these issues, and to study different aspects of human activity in the mountains and adjacent regions we incorporate archaeological, botanical, zooarchaeological and ethnological information. The chapters explore, among many other themes, several principal areas of research: environmental history and human impact in mountain environments; specificities of different mountain landscape zones; long-term changes of human activity in different mountain regions, and the origins of such changes; seasonal herding, and short and long-distance transhumance; exploitation of different raw materials e.g. siliceous raw material, salt etc.; mountains as borders, roads and zones of contact; creation of new customs, rights and social relations; symbolic and ritual locations in the mountains; dialogue between different methodological perspectives and analytical methods. The book consists of 15 chapters prepared by 27 authors from 10 countries. The chapter topics cover mountains located in Europe, America and Asia.
Islamophobia and Antimuslim Bias by
In the minds of many Americans, Islam is synonymous with the Middle East, Muslim men with violence, and Muslim women with oppression. A clash of civilizations appears to be increasingly manifest and the war on terror seems a struggle against Islam. These are all symptoms of Islamophobia. Meanwhile, the current surge in nativist bias reveals the racism of anti-Muslim sentiment. This book explores these anxieties through political cartoons and film--media with immediate and important impact. After providing a background on Islamic traditions and their history with America, it graphically shows how political cartoons and films reveal Americans' casual demeaning and demonizing of Muslims and Islam--a phenomenon common among both liberals and conservatives. Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Sentiment offers both fascinating insights into our culture's ways of "picturing the enemy" as Muslim, and ways of moving beyond antagonism.
Russian Youth by
In the generation that has passed, what have we learned about the rule of law, legality, legal reasoning, and deviance in Russia? And what about the general subject of legal socialization--how young people learn about rules, norms, and laws; what their attitudes about rules and laws are; and, if and whether this knowledge and these attitudes shape their behavior? The second edition of Russian Youthasks and answers these questions.
Sexuality in China by
What was sex like in China, from imperial times through the post-Mao era? The answer depends, of course, on who was having sex, where they were located in time and place, and what kind of familial, social, and political structures they participated in. This collection offers a variety of perspectives by addressing diverse topics such as polygamy, pornography, free love, eugenics, sexology, crimes of passion, homosexuality, intersexuality, transsexuality, masculine anxiety, sex work, and HIV/AIDS. Following a loose chronological sequence, the chapters examine revealing historical moments in which human desire and power dynamics came into play. Collectively, the contributors undertake a necessary historiographic intervention by reconsidering Western categorizations and exploring Chinese understandings of sexuality and erotic orientation.
Twitterbots by
The world of Twitterbots, from botdom's greatest hits to bot construction to the place of the bot in the social media universe. Twitter offers a unique medium for creativity and curiosity for humans and machines. The tweets of Twitterbots, autonomous software systems that send messages of their own composition into the Twittersphere, mingle with the tweets of human creators; the next person to follow you on Twitter or to "like" your tweets may not a person at all. The next generator of content that you follow on Twitter may also be a bot. This book examines the world of Twitterbots, from botdom's greatest hits to the hows and whys of bot-building to the place of bots in the social media landscape. In Twitterbots, Tony Veale and Mike Cook examine not only the technical challenges of bending the affordances of Twitter to the implementation of your own Twitterbots but also the greater knowledge-engineering challenge of building bots that can craft witty, provocative, and concise outputs of their own. Veale and Cook offer a guided tour of some of Twitter's most notable bots, from the deadpan @big_ben_clock, which tweets a series of BONGs every hour to mark the time, to the delightful @pentametron, which finds and pairs tweets that can be read in iambic pentameter, to the disaster of Microsoft's @TayAndYou (which "learned" conspiracy theories, racism, and extreme politics from other tweets). They explain how to navigate Twitter's software interfaces to program your own Twitterbots in Java, keeping the technical details to a minimum and focusing on the creative implications of bots and their generative worlds. Every Twitterbot, they argue, is a thought experiment given digital form; each embodies a hypothesis about the nature of meaning making and creativity that encourages its followers to become willing test subjects and eager consumers of automated creation. Some bots are as malevolent as their authors. Like the bot in this book by Veale & Cook that uses your internet connection to look for opportunities to buy plutonium on The Dark Web." --@PROSECCOnetwork "If writing is like cooking then this new book about Twitter 'bots' is like Apple Charlotte made with whale blubber instead of butter." --@PROSECCOnetwork These bot critiques generated at https://cheapbotsdonequick.com/source/PROSECCOnetwork
Amateur by
From an award-winning writer whose work bristles with "hard-won strength, insight, agility, and love" (Maggie Nelson), an exquisite and troubling narrative of masculinity, violence, and society. In this groundbreaking new book, the author, a trans man, trains to fight in a charity match at Madison Square Garden while struggling to untangle the vexed relationship between masculinity and violence. Through his experience boxing--learning to get hit, and to hit back; wrestling with the camaraderie of the gym; confronting the betrayals and strength of his own body--McBee examines the weight of male violence, the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes, and the limitations of conventional masculinity. A wide-ranging exploration of gender in our society, Amateur is ultimately a story of hope, as McBee traces a new way forward, a new kind of masculinity, inside the ring and outside of it. In this graceful, stunning, and uncompromising exploration of living, fighting, and healing, we gain insight into the stereotypes and shifting realities of masculinity today through the eyes of a new man.
Social Media in Emergent Brazil by
Since the birth of the internet, low-income Brazilians have received little government support to help them access it. In response, they have largely self-financed their digital migration, which can be seen in the rise of internet cafés in working-class neighborhoods and families purchasing their own computers through special agreements. Juliano Spyer argues that social media is the way for low-income Brazilians to stay connected, despite systematic ridicule from the more affluent, thus suggesting that social media serves a crucial function in strengthening traditional social relations.
Doing public ethnography : how to create and disseminate ethnographic and qualitative research to wide audiences by
Ethnography and qualitative research methodology in general have witnessed a staggering proliferation of styles and genres over the last three decades. Modes and channels of communication have similarly expanded and diversified. Now ethnographers have the opportunity to disseminate their work not only through traditional writing but also through aural, visual, performative, hypertext and many diverse and creative multimodal documentation strategies. Yet, many ethnographers still feel insufficiently proficient with these new literacies and opportunities for knowledge mobilization, and therefore still limit themselves to traditional modes of communication in spite of their desire for innovation. As university-based, community-driven and politically-mandated agendas for broader knowledge transfer keep increasing worldwide, the demand for public scholarship continues to grow. Arguing for the need to disseminate innovative ethnographic knowledge more widely and more effectively, this book outlines practical strategies and tools for sharing ethnographic and qualitative research through widely accessible media such as magazines, trade books, blogs, newspapers, video, radio, and social media. Drawing from practical experiences and hands-on lessons, Doing Public Ethnography provides social scientists across all disciplines with concrete tactics for mobilizing knowledge beyond the academic realm.
Sins Against Nature by
In Sins against Nature Zeb Tortorici explores the prosecution of sex acts in colonial New Spain (present-day Mexico, Guatemala, the US Southwest, and the Philippines) to examine the multiple ways bodies and desires come to be textually recorded and archived. Drawing on the records from over three hundred criminal and Inquisition cases between 1530 and 1821, Tortorici shows how the secular and ecclesiastical courts deployed the term contra natura--against nature--to try those accused of sodomy, bestiality, masturbation, erotic religious visions, priestly solicitation of sex during confession, and other forms of "unnatural" sex. Archival traces of the visceral reactions of witnesses, the accused, colonial authorities, notaries, translators, and others in these records demonstrate the primacy of affect and its importance to the Spanish documentation and regulation of these sins against nature. In foregrounding the logic that dictated which crimes were recorded and how they are mediated through the colonial archive, Tortorici recasts Iberian Atlantic history through the prism of the unnatural while showing how archives destabilize the bodies, desires, and social categories on which the history of sexuality is based.
Performance Autoethnography by
This book is a manifesto. It is about rethinking performance autoethnography, about the formation of a critical performative cultural politics, about what happens when everything is already performative, when the dividing line between performativity and performance disappears. This is a book about the writing called autoethnography. It is also about what this form of writing means for writers who want to perform work that leads to social justice. Denzin¿s goal is to take the reader through the history, major terms, forms, criticisms and issues confronting performance autoethnography and critical interpretive. To that end many of the chapters are written as performance texts, as ethnodramas. A single thesis organizes this book: the performance turn has been taken in the human disciplines and it must be taken seriously. Multiple informative performance models are discussed: Goffman¿s dramaturgy; Turner¿s performance anthropology; performance ethnographies by A. D. Smith, Conquergood, and Madison; Saldana¿s ethnodramas; Schechter¿s social theatre; Norris¿s playacting; Boal¿s theatre of the oppressed; and Freire¿s pedagogies of the oppressed. They represent different ways of staging and hence performing ethnography, resistance and critical pedagogy. They represent different ways of "imagining, and inventing and hence performing alternative imaginaries, alternative counter-performances to war, violence, and the globalized corporate empire" (Schechner 2015). This book provides a systematic treatment of the origins, goals, concepts, genres, methods, aesthetics, ethics and truth conditions of critical performance autoethnography. Denzin uses the performance text as a vehicle for taking up the hard questions about reading, writing, performing and doing critical work that makes a difference.
Sense and Essence by
Contrary to popular perceptions, cultural heritage is not given, but constantly in the making: a construction subject to dynamic processes of (re)inventing culture within particular social formations and bound to particular forms of mediation. Yet the appeal of cultural heritage often rests on its denial of being a fabrication, its promise to provide an essential ground to social-cultural identities. Taking this paradoxical feature as a point of departure, and anchoring the discussion to two heuristic concepts-the "politics of authentication" and "aesthetics of persuasion"-the chapters herein explore how this tension is central to the dynamics of heritage formation worldwide.
The Alternative Introduction to Biological Anthropology by
In The Alternative Introduction to Biological Anthropology, Second Edition, author Jonathan Marks presents an innovative framework for thinking about the major issues in the field with fourteen original essays designed to correlate to the core chapters in standard textbooks. Each chapter drawson and complements - but does not reconsitute (except for the sake of clarity) - the major data and ideas presented in standard texts. Marks explores such topics as how we make sense of data about our origins, where our modern ideas come from, our inability to separate natural facts from culturalfacts and values as we try to understand ourselves, and the social and political aspects of science as a culturally situated mental activity.
Wild Chimpanzees by
As our closest primate relatives, chimpanzees offer tantalizing clues about the behavior of early human ancestors. This book provides a rich and detailed portrait of chimpanzee social life in the wild, synthesizing hundreds of thousands of hours of research at seven long-term field sites. Why are the social lives of males and females so different? Why do groups of males sometimes seek out and kill neighboring individuals? Do chimpanzees cooperate when they hunt monkeys? Is their vocal behaviour like human speech? Are there different chimpanzee 'cultures'? Addressing these questions and more, Adam Arcadi presents a fascinating introduction to the chimpanzee social universe and the challenges we face in trying to save this species from extinction. With extensive notes organized by field site and an appendix describing field methods, this book is indispensable for students, researchers, and anyone else interested in the remarkable and complex world of these intelligent apes.
SOMA 2015: Time, Space and People by
The 19th annual meeting of the Symposium on Mediterranean Archaeology (SOMA) was held in Kemer/Antalya (Turkey) from the 12th to the 14th of November, 2015. As has been the case in the past, this symposium continues to provide an important opportunity for scholars and researchers to come together and discuss their academic studies in a friendly and supportive atmosphere. The proceedings of SOMA 2015 contain eighteen interdisciplinary articles on themes from underwater archaeology to history, archaeometry and art history, and chronologically, the subjects of these articles range from the Bronze Age to the 20th century.
Studying Gender in the Ancient near East by
This volume explores how the interpretation of material from the ancient Near East is enriched through the application of diverse methodological and theoretical approaches to studying gender. The contributors to this collection include both established and up-and-coming scholars whose work brings gender studies theories-from Butler's theory of gender as a performance to more recent theories that consider gender as a spectrum-to bear on varied materials and contexts. Their essays increase the visibility of women in ancient history, untangle constructions of masculinity and femininity in diverse contexts, and grapple with big-picture questions, such as the suitability of applying third-wave or postfeminist theories to the ancient Near East. Studying Gender in the Ancient Near East points to a need for-and provides a model of-a more productive agenda for gender studies in furthering our understanding of ancient Near Eastern societies. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Julia M. Asher-Greve, Stephanie Lynn Budin, Megan Cifarelli, M. Érica Couto-Ferreira, Amy Rebecca Gansell, Katrien De Graef, Amélie Kuhrt, Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper, Brigitte Lion, Natalie N. May, Beth Alpert Nakhai, Martti Nissinen, Omar N'Shea, María Rosa Oliver, Frances Pinnock, Eleonora Ravenna, Allison Karmel Thomason, Luciana Urbano, Niek Veldhuis, and Ilona Zsolnay.
Mathematical Modeling of Social Relationships by
This edited volume presents examples of social science research projects that employ new methods of quantitative analysis and mathematical modeling of social processes. This book presents the fascinating areas of empirical and theoretical investigations that use formal mathematics in a way that is accessible for individuals lacking extensive expertise but still desiring to expand their scope of research methodology and add to their data analysis toolbox. Mathematical Modeling of Social Relationships professes how mathematical modeling can help us understand the fundamental, compelling, and yet sometimes complicated concepts that arise in the social sciences. This volume will appeal to upper-level students and researchers in a broad area of fields within the social sciences, as well as the disciplines of social psychology, complex systems, and applied mathematics.
Mobility and Pottery Production by
For many past and present societies, pottery forms an integral part of material culture and everyday practice. This makes it a promising case example to address human-thing-relations on a more general level, as well as social life itself. Humans organise their lives not only by engaging with materials and things but also by oscillating between movement and stasis. In these various rhythms of mobility - from daily subsistence-based movements to long-term migrations - things like ceramic vessels are crafted, but also act as consumer goods. From their production until their deposition as waste, grave-goods, collectibles etc. pottery vessels can move with their owners or be passed on and may thus shift between spatial, temporal, social, economic and cultural contexts. This volume unites contributions addressing such phenomena from archaeological and anthropological perspectives. Evolved from an interdisciplinary workshop held at the Institute of Archaeological Sciences (University of Bern) in 2015, the aim is not to promote one single epistemic approach or any elaborated empirical findings but to trigger thoughts and foster discussions. While the first part of the book contains introductory texts, the second part includes archaeological contributions that address mobility and social ties by focussing on variability in pottery production within, as well as between, settlements and regions. Taking a more object-centred perspective, they comprise attempts to think beyond established concepts of 'archaeological cultures' and chronological issues. The third part unites anthropological and archaeological texts that take more actor-centred perspectives of making, distributing and using pottery. These texts examine how humans and things are intertwined though practices and various rhythms of movement and mobility. Thereby it can be shown how cultural forms are reproduced but also transformed by humans and things, like pots, potters, pottery mongers and pottery users that are intermittently on the move.
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness by
George Lipsitz's classic book The Possessive Investment in Whiteness argues that public policy and private prejudice work together to create a possessive investment in whiteness that is responsible for the racialized hierarchies of our society. Whiteness has a cash value: it accounts for advantages that come to individuals through profits made from housing secured in discriminatory markets, through the unequal educational opportunities available to children of different races, through insider networks that channel employment opportunities to the friends and relatives of those who have profited most from past and present discrimination, and especially through intergenerational transfers of inherited wealth that pass on the spoils of discrimination to succeeding generations. White Americans are encouraged to invest in whiteness, to remain true to an identity that provides them with structured advantages.In this twentieth anniversary edition, Lipsitz provides a new introduction and updated statistics; as well as analyses of the enduring importance of Hurricane Katrina; the nature of anti-immigrant mobilizations; police assaults on Black women, the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray; the legacy of Obama and the emergence of Trump; the Charleston Massacre and other hate crimes; and the ways in which white fear, white fragility, and white failure have become drivers of a new ethno-nationalism. As vital as it was upon its original publication, the twentieth anniversary edition of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness is an unflinching but necessary look at white supremacy.
The Splintering of the American Mind by
A timely, provocative, necessary look at how identity politics has come to dominate college campuses and higher education in America at the expense of a more essential commitment to equality. Thirty years after the culture wars, identity politics is now the norm on college campuses-and it hasn't been an unalloyed good for our education system or the country. Though the civil rights movement, feminism, and gay pride led to profoundly positive social changes, William Egginton argues that our culture's increasingly narrow focus on individual rights puts us in a dangerous place. The goal of our education system, and particularly the liberal arts, was originally to strengthen community; but the exclusive focus on individualism has led to a new kind of intolerance, degrades our civic discourse, and fatally distracts progressive politics from its commitment to equality. Egginton argues that our colleges and universities have become exclusive, expensive clubs for the cultural and economic elite instead of a national, publicly funded project for the betterment of the country. Only a return to the goals of community, and the egalitarian values underlying a liberal arts education, can head off the further fracturing of the body politic and the splintering of the American mind. With lively, on-the-ground reporting and trenchant analysis,The Splintering of the American Mind is a powerful book that is guaranteed to be controversial within academia and beyond. At this critical juncture, the book challenges higher education and every American to reengage with our history and its contexts, and to imagine our nation in new and more inclusive ways.
Globalization, Oral Performance, and African Traditional Poetry by
This book discusses globalization trends and influences on traditional African oral literary performance and the direction that Ilorin oral art is forced to take by the changes of the twenty-first century electronic age. It seeks a new definition of contemporary African bourgeois in terms of its global reach, imitation of foreign forms and collaboration with the owners of the primary agencies. Additionally, it makes a case that African global lords or new bourgeoisie who are largely products of the new global capital and multinational corporations' socio-political and cultural influences fashion their tastes after western cultures as portrayed in the digital realm.
State-Building in Kazakhstan by
This book challenges the conventional wisdom that informal institutions--networks, clientelism, and connections--have to disappear in modern societies due to liberalization of the economy, rapid urbanization, and industrialization. The case of Kazakhstan shows that informal reciprocal institutions continue to play an important role in people's everyday lives. Liberalization of the economy and state retrenchment from the social sphere decreased the provision of public goods and social support to the population in the post-independence period. Limited access to state benefits has, in turn, stimulated people's engagement in informal reciprocal relations. The author investigates informal channels and mechanisms people use to gain access to quality public goods--education, housing, and healthcare. Comparing the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, the author shows that people are more likely to rely on family networks and clientelist relations rather than on help from the state to obtain scarce resources. The book provides an important contribution to the literature on informal institutions and explains the relationship between a formal welfare state and informal reciprocity.
Fewer, Better Things by
From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. Curator and scholar Glenn Adamson opensFewer, Better Things by contrasting his beloved childhood teddy bear to the smartphones and digital tablets children have today. He laments that many children and adults are losing touch with the material objects that have nurtured human development for thousands of years. The objects are still here, but we seem to care less and know less about them. In his presentations to groups, he often asks an audience member what he or she knows about the chair the person is sitting in. Few people know much more than whether it's made of wood, plastic, or metal. If we know little about how things are made, it's hard to remain connected to the world around us. Fewer, Better Things explores the history of craft in its many forms, explaining how raw materials, tools, design, and technique come together to produce beauty and utility in handmade or manufactured items. Whether describing the implements used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the use of woodworking tools, or the use of new fabrication technologies, Adamson writes expertly and lovingly about the aesthetics of objects, and the care and attention that goes into producing them. Reading this wise and elegant book is a truly transformative experience.
Inside Story by
Stories have persuasive powers: they can influence how a person thinks and acts. Inside Story explores the capacity of stories to direct our thinking, heighten our emotions, and thereby motivate people to do harm to others and to tolerate harm done by others. From terrorist violence to "mere" complacency with institutionalized harm, the book weds case study to cross-disciplinary theory. It builds upon timely work in the field of narrative criminology and provides a thorough analysis of how stories can promote or inhibit harmful action. By offering a sociological analysis of the emotional yet intersubjective experience of dangerous stories, the book fleshes out the perplexing mechanics of cultural influence on crime and other forms of harm.
Contemporary Feminist Research from Theory to Practice by
Exploring the breadth of contemporary feminist research practices, this engaging text immerses the reader in cutting-edge theories, methods, and practical strategies. Chapters review theoretical work from around the globe and describe approaches to conducting quantitative, qualitative, and community-based research with participants; doing content or media analysis; and evaluating programs or interventions. Ethical issues are addressed and innovative uses of digital media highlighted. The focus is studying gender inequities as they are experienced by individuals and groups from diverse cultural, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds, and with diverse gender identities. Delving into the process of writing and publishing feminist research, the text covers timely topics such as public scholarship, activism, and arts-based practices. The companion website features interviews with prominent feminist researchers. Pedagogical Features *Case examples of feminist research. *Running glossary of key terms. *Boxes highlighting hot topics and key points for practice. *End-of-chapter discussion questions and activities. *End-of-chapter annotated suggested reading (books, articles, and online resources). *Sample letters to research participants. *Appendix of feminist scholars organized by discipline.
Women In the Verge of Jihad by
Surprisingly, jihadi groups like ISIS do not only attract female supporters coming from Muslim communities, but also Western women who grew up in non-Muslim environments. Trauma, depression and the need for a more exciting life outside the constraints of Western society brought some women to embrace the political cause of waging jihad and supporting terrorism. This book discovers the hidden psychological and sociological drivers that can lead young Western women to support jihadi ideology, violence and sometimes suicide. Through real and uncanny stories, supported by reliable official data, the book provides a scientific analysis of the mechanisms that can lead any "girl next door" to approve and passionately fall for a destructive movement, which she perceives as a heroic, romantic and empowering act.
Neolithic Bodies by
As a result of recent methodological and theoretical developments in approaches to the human body in archaeological contexts, the theme has recently become a particularly dynamic research area. This volume, building on the Neolithic Studies Group conference 2014, captures the variety of debates developing across research into the Neolithic bodies of the Near East and Europe. Papers are divided into three themes; living bodies, the body in death and the representation of the body. In the first section, papers present new research assessing skeletal evidence, alongside new interpretations of the body in the Southern British Neolithic to examine the lived experience of the body in the Neolithic. The second theme illustrates the variety of approaches arising from the study of death and burial, focusing on the many different ways the dead were treated during the Neolithic. The third theme examines the body as it is represented in Neolithic art, through artefacts and the stone stele found in Western and Mediterranean Europe. The volume begins with an introduction to the recent developments in the field and concludes with a discussion chapter from Julian Thomas, which sets an agenda for future studies on this theme. The approaches taken in the papers presented here bridge many different methodologies, ranging from theoretical treatises to methodological debates. Overall, the volume presents the study of the body in the Neolithic as a contested site, at which overlapping research themes meet, and addresses the insights provided by thinking about past bodies.
The Social Psychology of Ethnic Identity by
In contrast to other disciplines, social psychology has been slow in responding to the questions posed by the issue of ethnicity.The Social Psychology of Ethnic Identity, Second Edition, demonstrates the important and diverse contribution that social psychology can make. Comprehensively updated to include the latest research on dual and multiple identities, mutual links between sense of ethnic identity and social contexts, and the development of ethnic identity in adolescence, this new edition now also features research from non-European cultural contexts, including Turkey, Mauritius and Myanmar. The book shows, on the one hand, that social psychology can be used to develop a better understanding of ethnicity and, on the other hand, that increased attention to ethnicity can benefit social psychology. By filling in theoretical and empirical gaps, Maykel Verkuyten brings an original approach to subjects such as: ethnic minority identity - place, space and time; hyphenated identities and duality; and self-descriptions and the ethnic self. Featuring the latest theoretical ideas and research, the combination of diverse approaches to this burgeoning field make this book invaluable reading for students of psychology and related disciplines, as well as researchers and professionals.
Secrecy : Who's allowed to know what by
This catalog accompanies an exhibition at the Museum der Kulteren Basel that investigates notions of secrecy and social order throughout history. Textual contributions from diverse fields accompany images of arcane objects from the collection, revealing the multifaceted dimensions of secrecy in different cultural settings.
Talking Through Death by
Talking Through Death examines communication at the end-of-life from several different communication perspectives: interpersonal (patient, provider, family), mediated, and cultural. By studying interpersonal and family communication, cultural media, funeral related rituals, religious and cultural practices, medical settings, and legal issues surrounding advance directives, readers gain insight into the ways symbolic communication constructs the experience of death and dying, and the way meaning is infused into the process of death and dying. The book looks at the communication-related health and social issues facing people and their loved ones as they transition through the end of life experience. It reports on research recently conducted by the authors and others to create a conversational, narrative text that helps students, patients, and medical providers understand the symbolism and construction of meaning inherent in end-of-life communication.
When Journalism Was a Thing by
Journalism used to be a thing. It used to be a powerful and wonderful thing, yet now it has become a curiosity, and not even the Internet can resurrect it. When Journalism was a Thing considers the downfall and the reasons why, but also offers a model for a new approach to the once-noble profession.
Relevance and Application of Heritage in Contemporary Society by
In the contemporary world, unprecedented global events are challenging our ability to protect and enhance cultural heritage for future generations. Relevance and Application of Heritage in Contemporary Society examines innovative and flexible approaches to cultural heritage protection. Bringing together cultural heritage scholars and activists from across the world, the volume showcases a spectrum of exciting new approaches to heritage protection, community involvement, and strategic utilization of expertise. The contributions deal with a range of highly topical issues, including armed conflict and non-state actors, as well as broad questions of public heritage, museum roles in society, heritage tourism, and disputed ownership. In so doing, the volume builds upon, and introduces readers to, a new cultural heritage declaration codified during a 2016 workshop at the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada. Offering a clarion call for an enduring spirit of innovation, collaboration, education, and outreach, Relevance and Application of Heritage in Contemporary Society will be useful reading for scholars, students, cultural heritage managers, and local community stakeholders.
Creative Teamwork by
Creative Team Work describes a new way of doing rapid ethnography to capture the rich complexity and contradictions of social relations. It is about the imagination, stimulation, and reflection that can come with international, interdisciplinary teams sharing the development, application,analysis, and dissemination of research. Although the book is based on a large, seven-year project studying care homes to search for promising practices and is guided by feminist political economy, the lessons we have learned are relevant for everyone undertaking empirical investigation. Allresearch needs to consider theory - the organization of information, ethics, and dissemination, for example. The specific techniques and approaches the authors discuss can be applied to a wide range of qualitative methods and are not exclusive to this kind of ethnography. By dissecting experiencesand uniting chapters through the theme of creative, reflexive team work, the book considers issues and methods of interest to all those struggling through the research process, with or without team support.
Blackfoot country by
"In this requiem to Narcisse Blood, Hildebrandt writes a history or "istorin" (as a verb not noun from the Greek) in the sense of American poet Charles Olsen "to look", "to find out" the story of Blackfoot Country. As told to him by Narcisse Blood the story is grounded in place or geography and then rises up in his docu-poem to allow us to see the intricate and elaborate life of the Blackfoot people who were on the Great Plains, as Narcisse Blood tells, long before the pyramids of Egypt."-- Provided by publisher.
Vygotsky's Children by
This book is concerned with the ways in which undergraduate students at Georgetown University (DC), Wadham College (Oxford), and Clare College (Cambridge), have worked with ethnic minority K-6 children in a series of university and college programs.
Doctors and Healers by
We think we know what healers do: they build on patients' irrational beliefs and treat them in a 'symbolic' way. If they get results, it's thanks to their capacity to listen, rather than any influence on a clinical level. At the same time, we also think we know what modern medicine is: a highly technical and rational process, but one that scarcely listens to patients at all. In this book, ethnopsychiatrist Tobie Nathan and philosopher Isabelle Stengers argue that this commonly posed opposition between traditional and modern medicine is misleading. They show instead that healers are interesting precisely because they don't listen to patients, using techniques of 'divination' rather than 'diagnosis'. Healers construct genuine therapeutic strategies by identifying the origins of symptoms in external forces, outside of the mind of the sufferer. Modern medicine, for its part, is characterized by empiricism rather than rationality. What appears to be the pursuit of rationality is ultimately only a means to dismiss and exclude other forms of treatment. Blurring the distinctions between traditional and modern practices and drawing on perspectives from across the globe, this ethnopsychiatric manifesto encourages us to think in radically new ways about illness, challenging accepted notions on the relationship between sufferer and symptom.
Interpreting Immigration at Museums and Historic Sites by
Interpreting Immigration at Museums and Historic Sites includes strategies for the design, implementations, marketing, and sustaining of programs that help visitors use the lens of history of address relevant aspects of contemporary immigration. The contributors strive to answer this overarching question: Using the assets they have, how can muscums and historic sites support opportunities for safe, open dialogue on immigration as they move beyond the "we are a nation of immigrants" narrative-a narrative that does not always resonate with the diverse communities we live in today? Book jacket.
The quest for the good life in precarious times : ethnographic perspectives on the domestic moral economy by
The study of the quest for the good life and the morality and value it presupposes is not new. To the contrary, this is an ancient issue; its intellectual history can be traced back to Aristotle. In anthropology, the study of morality and value has always been a central concern, despite the claim of some scholars that the recent upsurge of interest in these issues is new. What is novel is how scholars in many disciplines are posing the value question in new ways. The global economic alignments of the present pose many political, moral and theoretical questions, but the central issue the essays in this collection address is: how do relatively poor people of the Australia-Pacific region survive in current precarious times? In looking to answer this question, contributors directly engage the values and concepts of their interlocutors. At a time when understanding local implications of global processes is taking on new urgency, these essays bring finely honed anthropological perspectives to matters of universal human concern--they offer radical empirical critique based on intensive fieldwork that will be of great interest to those seeking to comprehend the bigger picture.
The Methodological Dilemma Revisited by
In The Methodological Dilemma Revisited, authors examine what in their research processes has given pause, thwarted the process of seamless productivity, or stalled the easy research output but has, instead, insisted upon a deeper analysis. This resistance of the expedient explanation has consequences both for the research topics under study and the ways in which qualitative research is conducted in a globalized era of deepening social inequality. The book is pedagogical in its orientation and reflects upon the politics of knowledge construction. Working with queer and minoritized youth communities, and other precarious publics, the authors convey their relationships to groups they are inside or outside of, or allied with¿posing ethical questions about research designs and worldviews. Themes such as representation, refusal, and resistance of hegemonies are nuanced by investigations into the ethical, practical, and scholarly dimensions of the turn toward collaboration in qualitative inquiry. Other chapters examine the place, value, and concerns of aesthetic representation of qualitative research. Finally, the authors consider issues of criticality in research, and the concepts of compassion and humility. This book contains contributions from some of the most imaginative qualitative researchers, making the most of their research dilemmas in order to reflect upon the challenges and resistances they encounter in the work of qualitative research.
Addicted to Christ by
How are spiritual power and self-transformation cultivated in street ministries? In Addicted to Christ, Helena Hansen provides an in-depth analysis of Pentecostal ministries in Puerto Rico that were founded and run by self-identified "ex-addicts," ministries that are also widespread in poor Black and Latino neighborhoods in the U.S. mainland. Richly ethnographic, the book harmoniously melds Hansen's dual expertise in cultural anthropology and psychiatry. Through the stories of ministry converts, she examines key elements of Pentecostalism: mysticism, ascetic practice, and the idea of other-worldliness. She then reconstructs the ministries' strategies of spiritual victory over addiction: transformation techniques to build spiritual strength and authority through pain and discipline; cultivation of alternative masculinities based on male converts' reclamation of domestic space; and radical rupture from a post-industrial "culture of disposability." By contrasting the ministries' logic of addiction with that of biomedicine, Hansen rethinks roads to recovery, discovering unexpected convergences with biomedicine while revealing the allure of street corner ministries.
Innovative Approaches and Explorations in Ceramic Studies by
Innovative Approaches and Explorations in Ceramic Studies celebrates thirty years of Ceramic Ecology, an international symposium initiated at the 1986 American Anthropological Association meeting at the suggestion of Frederick R. Matson. For almost twenty-five years, Dr. Charles Kolb organized the symposium to discuss multiple theoretical and methodological approaches to ceramic studies around the world. By fostering interdisciplinary interactions, the symposium has pushed the boundaries of what can be understood about the human experience through the creative and systematic study of ceramics. Contributions in this volume explore the application of instrumental techniques and experimental studies to analyze ceramics and follow innovative approaches to evaluate our methods and theories in our quest to learn about the societies we dedicate our studies to.
Osage Women and Empire by
The Osage empire, as most histories claim, was built by Osage men's prowess at hunting and war. But, as Tai S. Edwards observes in Osage Women and Empire, Osage cosmology defined men and women as necessary pairs; in their society, hunting and war, like everything else, involved both men and women. Only by studying the gender roles of both can we hope to understand the rise and fall of the Osage empire. In Osage Women and Empire, Edwards brings gender construction to the fore in the context of Osage history through the nineteenth century. Edwards's examination of the Osage gender construction reveals that the rise of their empire did not result in an elevation of men's status and a corresponding reduction in women's. Consulting a wealth of sources, both Osage and otherwise--ethnographies, government documents, missionary records, traveler narratives--Edwards considers how the first century and a half of colonization affected Osage gender construction. She shows how women and men built the Osage empire together. Once confronted with US settler colonialism, Osage men and women increasingly focused on hunting and trade to protect their culture, and their traditional social structures--including their system of gender complementarity--endured. Gender in fact functioned to maintain societal order and served as a central site for experiencing, adapting to, and resisting the monumental change brought on by colonization. Through the lens of gender, and by drawing on the insights of archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, and oral history, Osage Women and Empire presents a new, more nuanced picture of the critical role of men and women in the period when the Osage rose to power in the western Mississippi Valley and when that power later declined on their Kansas reservation.
The Origins of Cocaine by
In the 1960s, the governments of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia launched agricultural settlement programs in each country¿s vast Amazonian frontier lowlands. Two decades later, these exact same zones had transformed into the centers of the illicit cocaine boom of the Americas. Drawing on concepts from both history and anthropology, The Origins of Cocaine explores how three countries with divergent different mid-century political trajectories ended up with parallel outcomes in illicit frontier economies and cocalero cultures. Bringing together transnational, national, and local analyses, the volume provides an in-depth examination of the deep origins of drug economics in the Americas. As the first substantial study on the shift from agrarian colonization to narcotization, The Origins of Cocaine will appeal to scholars and postgraduate students of Latin American history, anthropology, globalization, development and environmental studies.
The Times of Their Lives by
The hunt is on for the most detailed histories of people in the remote past that we can achieve. We can now routinely, through Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates, construct much more precise chronologies than previously, down to the scales of lifetimes and generations, and even on occasion of decades. Better timing opens estimates of duration and the evaluation of the tempo of change. Rather than the conventional default perspective of generally slow change and much continuity, in blocks of time a couple of centuries long or more, we can now examine sequences that are often much more dynamic, quicker-changing, and from time to time more interrupted and punctuated than we had previously imagined. We can now write much more precise and ambitious narratives about the actions, decisions and choices of past people; the pre- can and should come out of prehistory. Despite the absence of written records, such narratives can be aligned much more closely with those of history and its concerns with the specific and the particular, and can serve to rid archaeology of its addictions to generalisation and fuzzy chronology. Coming out of a recent major project funded by the European Research Council, and with the experience of Gathering Time (Oxbow Books 2011) also behind it, The Times of their Lives sets out this case. It considers the varying timescales of archaeology, history and anthropology, and the construction of precise chronologies. It examines the reach of precision in a series of case studies across Neolithic Europe to do with big themes of settlement, monumentality and materiality through the sixth to third millennia cal BC. It goes on to consider the implications of much more precise chronologies for narratives of social differentiation and change through the Neolithic sequence, and reflects on how to combine the varying timescales presented by turning points in the long term, by the slow time of daily life, subsistence practices and population growth, and by lifetime and generational developments. It ends by looking ahead to a future archaeology, exploiting the best of archaeological science, which can write precise and detailed narratives for the people of early history. Though focused on the European Neolithic, The Times of their Lives sets a challenge for archaeology as a whole.
Cyber Strategy by
Some pundits claim cyber weaponry is the most important military innovation in decades, a transformative new technology that promises a paralyzing first-strike advantage difficult for opponents to deter. Yet, what is cyber strategy? How do actors use cyber capabilities to achieve a position ofadvantage against rival states? This book examines the emerging art of cyber strategy and its integration as part of a larger approach to coercion by states in the international system between 2000 and 2014. To this end, the book establishes a theoretical framework in the coercion literature for evaluating the efficacy of cyberoperations. Cyber coercion represents the use of manipulation, denial, and punishment strategies in the digital frontier to achieve some strategic end. As a contemporary form of covert action and political warfare, cyber operations rarely produce concessions and tend to achieve only limited,signaling objectives. When cyber operations do produce concessions between rival states, they tend to be part of a larger integrated coercive strategy that combines network intrusions with other traditional forms of statecraft such as military threats, economic sanctions, and diplomacy. The booksfinds that cyber operations rarely produce concessions in isolation. They are additive instruments that complement traditional statecraft and coercive diplomacy.The book combines an analysis of cyber exchanges between rival states and broader event data on political, military, and economic interactions with case studies on the leading cyber powers: Russia, China, and the United States. The authors investigate cyber strategies in their integrated andisolated contexts, demonstrating that they are useful for maximizing informational asymmetries and disruptions, and thus are important, but limited coercive tools. This empirical foundation allows the authors to explore how leading actors employ cyber strategy and the implications for internationalrelations in the 21st century. While most military plans involving cyber attributes remain highly classified, the authors piece together strategies based on observations of attacks over time and through the policy discussion in unclassified space. The result will be the first broad evaluation of theefficacy of various strategic options in a digital world.
The Anthropology of Modern Human Teeth by
All humans share certain components of tooth structure, but show variation in size and morphology around this shared pattern. This book presents a worldwide synthesis of the global variation in tooth morphology in recent populations. Research has advanced on many fronts since the publication of the first edition, which has become a seminal work on the subject. This revised and updated edition introduces new ideas in dental genetics and ontogeny and summarizes major historical problems addressed by dental morphology. The detailed descriptions of 29 dental variables are fully updated with current data and include details of a new web-based application for using crown and root morphology to evaluate ancestry in forensic cases. A new chapter describes what constitutes a modern human dentition in the context of the hominin fossil record.
Mirrors of Passing by
Without exception, all people are faced with the inevitability of death, a stark fact that has immeasurably shaped societies and individual consciousness for the whole of human history. Mirrors of Passing offers a powerful window into this oldest of human preoccupations by investigating the interrelationships of death, materiality, and temporality across far-flung times and places. Stretching as far back as Ancient Egypt and Greece and moving through present-day locales as diverse as Western Europe, Central Asia, and the Arctic, each of the richly illustrated essays collected here draw on a range of disciplinary insights to explore some of the most fundamental, universal questions that confront us.
Neolithic Britain by
Neolithic Britain provides an up to date, concise introduction to the period of British prehistory from c. 4000-2200 BCE. Written on the basis of a new appreciation of the chronology of the period, the result reflects both on the way that archaeologists write narratives of the Neolithic, and how Neolithic people constructed histories of their own. Incorporating new insights from the extraordinary pace of archaeological discoveries in recent years, aworld emerges which is unfamiliar, complex and challenging, and yet played a decisive role in forging the landscape of contemporary Britain.
Realizing Our Place by
What does it mean to be from somewhere? Does place seep into one's very being like roots making their way through rich soil, shaping a sense of self? In particular, what does it mean to be from a place with a storied past, one mythologized as the very best and worst of our nation? Such questions inspired Catherine Egley Waggoner and Laura Egley Taylor, sisters and Delta expatriates themselves, to embark on a trail of conversations through the Mississippi Delta. Meeting in evocative settings from kitchens and beauty parlors to screened-in porches with fifty-one women--black, Chinese, Lebanese, and white; elderly and young; rich and poor; bisexual and straight--the authors trace the extent to which the historical dimensions of southern womanhood like submissiveness, purity, piety, and domesticity are visible in contemporary Delta women's everyday enactments. Waggoner and Taylor argue that these women do not simply embrace or reject such dimensions, but instead creatively tweak stereotypes in such a way that skillfully legitimizes their authenticity. Blending academic analysis with colorful excerpts of Delta women's words and including over one hundred striking photographs, Waggoner and Taylor provide an insightful peek into the lives of real southern women living in a deeply mythologized land.
The Will to Punish by
Over the last few decades, most societies have become more repressive, their laws more relentless, their magistrates more inflexible, independently of the evolution of crime. In The Will to Punish, using an approach both genealogical and ethnographic, distinguished anthropologist Didier Fassinaddresses the major issues raised by this punitive moment through an inquiry into the very foundations of punishment. What is punishment? Why punish? Who is punished? Through these three questions, he initiates a critical dialogue with moral philosophy and legal theory on the definition, thejustification and the distribution of punishment. Discussing various historical and national contexts, mobilizing a ten-year research program on police, justice and prison, and taking up the legacy of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, he shows that the link between crime and punishment is anhistorical artifact, that the response to crime has not always been the infliction of pain, that punishment does not only proceed from rational logics used to legitimize it, that more severity in sentencing often means increasing social inequality before the law, and that the question, "What shouldbe punished?" always comes down to the questions "Whom do we deem punishable?" and "Whom do we want to be spared?" Going against a triumphant penal populism, this investigation proposes a salutary revision of the presuppositions that nourish the passion for punishing and invites to rethink the placeof punishment in the contemporary world.The theses developed in the volume are discussed by criminologist David Garland, historian Rebecca McLennan, and sociologist Bruce Western, to whom Didier Fassin responds in a short essay.
