We are delighted to present a selection of our newly published, and soon to be published, August titles from our core subjects of Anthropology, Environmental Studies, Film Studies, History and Politics, along with a selection of our New in Paperback titles.
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BLOOD AND FIRE
Toward a Global Anthropology of Labor
Edited by Sharryn Kasmir and August Carbonella
Volume 13, Dislocations Series
Based on long-term fieldwork, six vivid ethnographies from Colombia, India, Poland, Spain and the southern and northern U.S. address the dwindling importance of labor throughout the world. The contributors to this volume highlight the growing disconnect between labor struggles and the advancement of the greater common good, a phenomenon that has grown since the 1980s. The collection illustrates the defeat and unmaking of particular working classes, and it develops a comparative perspective on the uneven consequences of and reactions to this worldwide project. In Blood and Fire charts a course within global anthropology to address the widespread precariousness and the prevalence of insecure and informal labor in the twenty-first century.
VEHICLES
Cars, Canoes and other Metaphors of Moral Imagination
Edited by David Lipset and Richard Handler
Metaphor, as an act of human fancy, combines ideas in improbable ways to sharpen meanings of life and experience. Theoretically, this arises from an association between a sign—for example, a cattle car—and its referent, the Holocaust. These “sign-vehicles” serve as modes of semiotic transportation through conceptual space. Likewise, on-the-ground vehicles can be rich metaphors for the moral imagination. Following on this insight, Vehicles presents a collection of ethnographic essays on the metaphoric significance of vehicles in different cultures. Analyses include canoes in Papua New Guinea, pedestrians and airplanes in North America, lowriders among Mexican-Americans, and cars in contemporary China, Japan, and Eastern Europe, as well as among African-Americans in the South. Vehicles not only “carry people around,” but also “carry” how they are understood in relation to the dynamics of culture, politics and history.
TALKING STONES
The Politics of Memorialization in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland
Elisabetta Viggiani
Foreword by Hastings Donnan
If memory was simply about past events, public authorities would never put their ever-shrinking budgets at its service. Rather, memory is actually about the present moment, as Pierre Nora puts it: “Through the past, we venerate above all ourselves.” This book examines how collective memory and material culture are used to support present political and ideological needs in contemporary society. Using the memorialization of the Troubles in contemporary Northern Ireland as a case study, this book investigates how non-state, often proscribed, organizations have filled a societal vacuum in the creation of public memorials. In particular, these groups have sifted through the past to propose “official” collective narratives of national identification, historical legitimation, and moral justifications for violence.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
An Appraisal from the Gulf Region
Edited by Paul Sillitoe
Volume 19, Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology Series
With growing evidence of unsustainable use of the world’s resources, such as hydrocarbon reserves, and related environmental pollution, as in alarming climate change predictions, sustainable development is arguably the prominent issue of the 21st century. This volume gives a wide ranging introduction focusing on the arid Gulf region, where the challenges of sustainable development are starkly evident. The Gulf relies on non-renewable oil and gas exports to supply the world’s insatiable CO2 emitting energy demands, and has built unsustainable conurbations with water supplies dependent on energy hungry desalination plants and deep aquifers pumped beyond natural replenishment rates. Sustainable Development has an interdisciplinary focus, bringing together university faculty and government personnel from the Gulf, Europe, and North America — including social and natural scientists, environmentalists and economists, architects and planners — to discuss topics such as sustainable natural resource use and urbanization, industrial and technological development, economy and politics, history and geography.
BEYOND THE LOOKING GLASS
Narcissism and Female Stardom in Studio-Era Hollywood
Ana Salzberg
As living subjects rather than static icons, studio-era Hollywood actresses actively negotiated a balance between their public personas, film roles, and corporeal presence. The contemporary audience’s engagement with the experience of these actresses unsettles the traditional model of narcissistic identification, which divides the off-screen spectator from his/her on-screen ideal. Exploring the fan’s desire for a material connection to the performer – as well as the star’s own dialogue between embodied experience and idealized image – Beyond the Looking Glass traces on- and off-screen representations of narcissistic femininity in classical Hollywood through studies of stars like Greta Garbo, Ava Gardner, and Marilyn Monroe. Merging historical and theoretical concerns, with particular attention to the resonance of golden-age Hollywood in new media, this book explores the movie screen as a medium of shared experience between spectator and star.
A REVOLUTION OF PERCEPTION?
Consequences and Echoes of 1968
Edited by Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey
Volume 5, New German Historical Perspectives Series
The year “1968” marked the climax of protests that simultaneously captured most industrialized Western countries. The protesters challenged the institutions of Western democracies, confronting powerful, established parties and groups with an opposing force and public presence that negated traditional structures of institutional authority and criticized the basic assumptions of the post-war order. Exploring the effects the protest movement of 1968 had on the political, social, and symbolic order of the societies they called into question, this volume focuses on the consequences and echoes of 1968 from different perspectives, including history, sociology, and linguistics.
MIXED MATCHES
Trangressive Unions in Germany from the Reformation to the Enlightenment
Edited by David M. Luebke and Mary Lindemann
Afterword by Joel Harrington
Volume 8, Spektrum Series: Publications of the German Studies Association
The significant changes in early modern German marriage practices included many unions that violated some taboo. That taboo could be theological and involve the marriage of monks and nuns, or refer to social misalliances as when commoners and princes (or princesses) wed. Equally transgressive were unions that crossed religious boundaries, such as marriages between Catholics and Protestants, those that violated ethnic or racial barriers, and those that broke kin-related rules. Taking as a point of departure Martin Luther’s redefinition of marriage, the contributors to this volume spin out the multiple ways that the Reformers’ attempts to simplify and clarify marriage affected education, philosophy, literature, high politics, diplomacy, and law. Ranging from the Reformation, through the ages of confessionalization, to the Enlightenment, Mixed Matches addresses the historical complexity of the socio-cultural institution of marriage.
UP, DOWN, AND SIDEWAYS
Anthropologists Trace the Pathways of Power
Edited by Rachael Stryker and Roberto González
Foreword by Laura Nader
Volume 7, Studies in Public and Applied Anthropology Series
Using a “vertical slice” approach, anthropologists critically analyze the relationship between undemocratic uses and abuses of power and the survival of the human species. The contributors scrutinize modern institutions in a variety of regions—from Russia and Mexico to South Korea and the U.S. Up, Down, and Sideways is an ethnographic examination of such phenomena as debtculture, global financial crises, food insecurity, indigenous land and resource appropriation, the mismanagement of health care, andcorporate surrogacy within family life. With a preface by Laura Nader, this isessential reading for anyone seeking solid theories and concrete methods to inform activist scholarship.
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New in Paperback:
MAPPING DIFFERENCE
The Many Faces of Women in Contemporary Ukraine
Edited by Marian J. Rubchak
Foreword by Catherine Wanner
Drawn from various disciplines and a broad spectrum of research interests, these essays reflect on the challenging issues confronting women in Ukraine today. The contributors are an interdisciplinary, transnational group of scholars from gender studies, feminist theory, history, anthropology, sociology, women’s studies, and literature. Among the issues they address are: the impact of migration, education, early socialization of gender roles, the role of the media in perpetuating and shaping negative stereotypes, the gendered nature of language, women and the media, literature by women, and local appropriation of gender and feminist theory. Each author offers a fresh and unique perspective on the current process of survival strategies and postcommunist identity reconstruction among Ukrainian women in their current climate of patriarchalism.
A DURKHEIMIAN QUEST
Solidarity and the Sacred
William Watts Miller
Durkheim, in his very role as a ‘founding father’ of a new social science, sociology, has become like a figure in an old religious painting, enshrouded in myth and encrusted in layers of thick, impenetrable varnish. This book undertakes detailed, up-to-date investigations of Durkheim’s work in an effort to restore its freshness and reveal it as originally created. These investigations explore his particular ideas, within an overall narrative of his initial problematic search for solidarity, how it became a quest for the sacred and how, at the end of his life, he embarked on a project for a new great work on ethics. A theme running through this is his concern with a modern world in crisis and his hope in social and moral reform. Accordingly, the book concludes with a set of essays on modern times and on a crisis that Durkheim thought would pass but which now seems here to stay.
INVESTIGATING SREBRENICA
Institutions, Facts, Responsibilities
Edited by Isabelle Delpla, Xavier Bougarel, and Jean-Louis Fournel
Volume 12, Contemporary European History Series
In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb Army commanded by General Ratko Mladic attacked the enclave of Srebrenica, a UN “safe area” since 1993, and massacred about 8,000 Bosniac men. While the responsibility for the massacre itself lays clearly with the Serb political and military leadership, the question of the responsibility of various international organizations and national authorities for the fall of the enclave is still passionately discussed, and has given rise to various rumors and conspiracy theories. Follow-up investigations by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and by several commissions have dissipated most of these rumors and contributed to a better knowledge of the Srebrenica events and the part played by the main local and international actors. This volume represents the first systematic, comparative analysis of those investigations. It brings together analyses from both the external standpoint of academics and the inside perspective of various professionals who participated directly in the inquiries, including police officers, members of parliament, high-ranking civil servants, and other experts.