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Advocacy and Archaeology
Urban Intersections
Britt, K. M. & George, D. F. (eds)
Archaeologists have a history of being prime agents of change, particularly in advocating for protection and preservation of historical resources. As more social issues intersect with archaeology and historical sites, we see archaeologists and others continuing to advocate for not only historic resources, but for the larger social justice issues that threaten the communities in which these resources reside. Inspired by the idea of revolution and excitement about the ways archaeology is being used in social justice arenas, this volume seeks to visualize archaeology as part of a movement by redefining what archaeology is and does for the greater good.
Subjects: Archaeology History (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
Area: North America
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Agent of Change
The Deposition and Manipulation of Ash in the Past
Roth, B. J. & Adams, E. C. (eds)
Ash is an important and yet understudied aspect of ritual deposition in the archaeological record of North America. Ash has been found in a wide variety of contexts across many regions and often it is associated with rare or unusual objects or in contexts that suggest its use in the transition or transformation of houses and ritual features. Drawn from across the U.S. and Mesoamerica, the chapters in this volume explore the use, meanings, and cross-cultural patterns present in the use of ash. and highlight the importance of ash in ritual closure, social memory, and cultural transformation.
Subjects: Archaeology Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion
Area: North America
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Carnivalizing Reconciliation
Contemporary Australian and Canadian Literature and Film beyond the Victim Paradigm
Teichler, H.
Transitional justice and national inquiries may be the most established means for coming to terms with traumatic legacies, but it is in the more subtle social and cultural processes of “memory work” that the pitfalls and promises of reconciliation are laid bare. This book analyzes, within the realms of literature and film, recent Australian and Canadian attempts to reconcile with Indigenous populations in the wake of forced child removal. As Hanna Teichler demonstrates, their systematic emphasis on the subjectivity of the victim is problematic, reproducing simplistic narratives and identities defined by victimization. Such fictions of reconciliation venture beyond simplistic narratives and identities defined by victimization, offering new opportunities for confronting painful histories.
Subjects: Memory Studies Literary Studies Film and Television Studies
Areas: North America Asia-Pacific
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Choreographies of Landscape
Signs of Performance in Yosemite National Park
Ness, S. A.
As an international ecotourism destination, Yosemite National Park welcomes millions of climbers, sightseers, and other visitors from around the world annually, all of whom are afforded dramatic experiences of the natural world. This original and cross-disciplinary book offers an ethnographic and performative study of Yosemite visitors in order to understand human connection with and within natural landscapes. By grounding a novel “eco-semiotic” analysis in the lived reality of parkgoers, it forges surprising connections, assembling a collective account that will be of interest to disciplines ranging from performance studies to cultural geography.
Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General)
Area: North America
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Dictionary of Authentic American Proverbs
Mieder, W.
Dictionary of Authentic American Proverbs offers a comprehensive reference guide for distinctly American proverbs. Compiled by Wolfgang Mieder, a key figure in the field of proverb studies, this compendium features nearly 1,500 proverbs with American origins, spanning the 17th century to present day, including a scholarly introduction exploring the history of proverbs in America, the structure and variants of these proverbs, known authors and sources, and cultural values expressed in these proverbs. Along with a comprehensive bibliography of proverb collections and interpretive scholarship, this dictionary offers a glimpse into the history of American social and cultural attitudes through uniquely American language.
Subjects: Literary Studies Heritage Studies Cultural Studies (General)
Area: North America
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The Experience of Neoliberal Education
Urciuoli, B. (ed)
The college experience is increasingly positioned to demonstrate its value as a worthwhile return on investment. Specific, definable activities, such as research experience, first-year experience, and experiential learning, are marketed as delivering precise skill sets in the form of an individual educational package.
Through ethnography-based analysis, the contributors to this volume explore how these commodified "experiences" have turned students into consumers and given them the illusion that they are in control of their investment. They further reveal how the pressure to plan every move with a constant eye on a demonstrable return has supplanted traditional approaches to classroom education and profoundly altered the student experience.
Subjects: Educational Studies Anthropology (General)
Area: North America
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The Feeling of the Fall
An Ethnographic Writing Experiment between the Belize Barrier Reef and the Edges of Toronto, Ontario
Taccone, I.
As an inquiry into engagements with forces of loss and threat, this work explores experimental ways to write about climate crisis in anthropology. From Belize to Ontario and back, this ambitious piece of ethnographic writing set during a time “beyond ruin” in a fictional, ecotourist community in the year 2040. Here, loss is taken up through an inventive form of ethnographic storytelling that brings together people, animals, landscapes, and the weather in a world beyond the climate crisis right now where new entanglements with things which have fallen to ruin emerge in imagined milieus in which loss and life converge.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General) Urban Studies
Areas: North America Latin America and the Caribbean
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From Missionaries to Main Street
The Story of One Sgaw Karen Family in the United States
Gilhooly, D.
The Htoo family, who are Sgaw Karen and originally from Burma, resettled in Georgia in the United States refugee resettlement program in 2007. This book chronicles their life in their new country. While the Htoo family’s story is singular, the family’s experiences in Burma, Thai refugee camps, and their experiences in the US are representative of other refugees from Burma and beyond. The book provides historical and cultural information on the Sgaw Karen people against the backdrop of the Htoo family’s path from Burma to Thailand. It also explores the Htoo children’s home and school learning experiences and their relationship with the author as teacher, collaborator, and friend.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Anthropology (General) Sociology
Area: North America
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From Virtue to Vice
Negotiating Anorexia
O' Connor, R. A. & Esterik, P. van
The recovered possess the key to overcoming anorexia. Although individual sufferers do not know how the affliction takes hold, piecing their stories together reveals two accidental afflictions. One is that activity disorders—dieting, exercising, healthy eating—start as virtuous practices, but become addictive obsessions. The other affliction is a developmental disorder, which also starts with the virtuous—those eager for challenge and change. But these overachievers who seek self-improvement get a distorted life instead. Knowing anorexia from inside, the recovered offer two watchwords on helping those who suffer. One is "negotiate," to encourage compromise, which can aid recovery where coercion fails. The other is "balance," for the ill to pursue mind-with-body activities to defuse mind-over-body battles.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Food & Nutrition
Area: North America
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Grace after Genocide
Cambodians in the United States
Mortland, C. A.
Grace after Genocide is the first comprehensive ethnography of Cambodian refugees, charting their struggle to transition from life in agrarian Cambodia to survival in post-industrial America, while maintaining their identities as Cambodians. The ethnography contrasts the lives of refugees who arrived in America after 1975, with their focus on Khmer traditions, values, and relations, with those of their children who, as descendants of the Khmer Rouge catastrophe, have struggled to become Americans in a society that defines them as different. The ethnography explores America’s mid-twentieth-century involvement in Southeast Asia and its enormous consequences on multiple generations of Khmer refugees.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies
Areas: North America Asia
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Heading for the Scene of the Crash
The Cultural Analysis of America
Drummond, L.
American anthropologists have long advocated cultural anthropology as a tool for cultural critique, yet seldom has that approach been employed in discussions of major events and cultural productions that impact the lives of tens of millions of Americans. This collection of essays aims to refashion cultural analysis into a hard-edged tool for the study of American society and culture, addressing topics including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, abortion, sports doping, and the Jonestown massacre-suicides. Grounded in the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, the essays advance an inquiry into the nature of culture in American society.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
Area: North America
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Hunters, Predators and Prey
Inuit Perceptions of Animals
Laugrand, F. & Oosten, J.
Inuit hunting traditions are rich in perceptions, practices and stories relating to animals and human beings. The authors examine key figures such as the raven, an animal that has a central place in Inuit culture as a creator and a trickster, and qupirruit, a category consisting of insects and other small life forms. After these non-social and inedible animals, they discuss the dog, the companion of the hunter, and the fellow hunter, the bear, considered to resemble a human being. A discussion of the renewal of whale hunting accompanies the chapters about animals considered ‘prey par excellence’: the caribou, the seals and the whale, symbol of the whole. By giving precedence to Inuit categories such as ‘inua’ (owner) and ‘tarniq’ (shade) over European concepts such as ‘spirit ‘and ‘soul’, the book compares and contrasts human beings and animals to provide a better understanding of human-animal relationships in a hunting society.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General)
Areas: North America Circumpolar
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Indigeneity and the Sacred
Indigenous Revival and the Conservation of Sacred Natural Sites in the Americas
Sarmiento, F. & Hitchner, S. (eds)
This book presents current research in the political ecology of indigenous revival and its role in nature conservation in critical areas in the Americas. An important contribution to evolving studies on conservation of sacred natural sites (SNS), the book elucidates the complexity of development scenarios within cultural landscapes related to the appropriation of religion, environmental change in indigenous territories, and new conservation management approaches. Indigeneity and the Sacred explores how these struggles for land, rights, and political power are embedded within physical landscapes, and how indigenous identity is reconstituted as globalizing forces simultaneously threaten and promote the notion of indigeneity.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Development Studies Anthropology (General) Heritage Studies
Areas: North America Latin America and the Caribbean
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Invisible Faces and Hidden Stories
Narratives of Vulnerable Populations and Their Caregivers
Obeng, C. S. & Obeng, S. G. (eds)
Dealing with narratives of vulnerable populations, this book looks at how they deal with dimensions of their social life, especially in regards to health. It reflects the socio-political ecologies like public hostility and stereotyping, neglect of their unique health needs, their courage to overcome adversity, and the love of family and healthcare providers in mitigating their problems. American society likes to give the impression that it is listening to the plight of vulnerable populations, but the stories in this volume prove otherwise.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Applied Anthropology Sociology
Area: North America
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Language and Identity Politics
A Cross-Atlantic Perspective
Späti, C. (ed)
In an increasingly multicultural world, the relationship between language and identity remains a complicated and often fraught subject for most societies. The growing political salience of questions relating to language is evident not only in the expanded implementation of new policies and legislation, but also in heated public debates about national unity, collective identities, and the rights of linguistic minorities. By taking a comprehensive approach that considers both the inclusive and exclusive dimensions of linguistic identity across Europe and North America, the studies assembled here provide a sophisticated look at one of the global era’s defining political dynamics.
Subjects: Sociology Anthropology (General)
Areas: Europe North America
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Living on Thin Ice
The Gwich'in Natives of Alaska
Dinero, S. C.
The Gwich’in Natives of Arctic Village, Alaska, have experienced intense social and economic changes for more than a century. In the late 20th century, new transportation and communication technologies introduced radically new value systems; while some of these changes may be seen as socially beneficial, others suggest a weakening of what was once a strong and vibrant Native community. Using quantitative and qualitative data gathered since the turn of the millennium, this volume offers an interdisciplinary evaluation of the developments that have occurred in the community over the past several decades.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Development Studies Urban Studies
Areas: North America Circumpolar
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Living Translation
Language and the Search for Resonance in U.S. Chinese Medicine
Pritzker, S. E.
Integrating theoretical perspectives with carefully grounded ethnographic analyses of everyday interaction and experience, Living Translation examines the worlds of international translators as well as U.S. teachers and students of Chinese medicine, focusing on the transformations that occur as participants engage in a “search for resonance” with foreign terms and concepts. Based on a close examination of heated international debates as well as specific texts, classroom discussions, and interviews with publishers, authors, teachers, and students, Sonya Pritzker demonstrates the “living translation” of Chinese medicine as a process unfolding through interaction, inscription, embodied experience, and clinical practice. By documenting the stream of conversations that together constitute this process, the book thus traces the translation of Chinese medicine from text to practice with an eye towards the social, political, historical, moral, and even personal dimensions involved in the transnational production of knowledge about health, illness, and the body.
Subject: Medical Anthropology
Areas: Asia-Pacific North America
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The Long Shore
Archaeologies and Social Histories of Californias Maritime Cultural Landscapes
Meniketti, M. (ed)
The archaeology of maritime cultural landscapes offers insights into cultural traditions, social transitions, and cultural relationships that reach beyond the narrow confines of waterfronts and beach strands and helps construct meaningful social histories. The long shore of California is not limited to the land that borders the Pacific Ocean, but includes the navigable waters that reach inland, the off-shore islands, and the riverways flow to the sea. Authors investigate the multifaceted character of maritime landscapes and maritime oriented communities in California’s equally diverse cultural landscape; viewed through an archaeological lens, and emphasizing social behavior and community as material culture in order to reveal intersections and commonalities.
Subjects: Archaeology History (General) Anthropology (General)
Area: North America
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Neoliberalizing Diversity in Liberal Arts College Life
Urciuoli, B.
As neoliberalism has expanded from corporations to higher education, the notion of “diversity” is increasingly seen as the contribution of individuals to an organization. By focusing on one liberal arts college, author Bonnie Urciuoli shows how schools market themselves as “diverse” communities to which all members contribute. She explores how students of color are recruited, how their lives are institutionally organized, and how they provide the faces, numbers, and stories that represent schools as diverse. In doing so, she finds that unlike students’ routine experiences of racism or other social differences, neoliberal diversity is mainly about improving schools’ images.
Subjects: Educational Studies Anthropology (General) Sociology
Area: North America
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Nighttime Breastfeeding
An American Cultural Dilemma
Tomori, C.
Nighttime for many new parents in the United States is fraught with the intense challenges of learning to breastfeed and helping their babies sleep so they can get rest themselves. Through careful ethnographic study of the dilemmas raised by nighttime breastfeeding, and their examination in the context of anthropological, historical, and feminist studies, this volume unravels the cultural tensions that underlie these difficulties. As parents negotiate these dilemmas, they not only confront conflicting medical guidelines about breastfeeding and solitary infant sleep, but also larger questions about cultural and moral expectations for children and parents, and their relationship with one another.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Gender Studies and Sexuality
Area: North America
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The Potential for Anthropology and Urban Community Engagement
Lessons Learned from Twenty-Five Years in Milwaukee
Lackey, J. F. & Petrie, R.
The relationship between anthropology departments and their surrounding urban communities has been traditional limited by a number of factors. The Potential for Anthropology and Urban Community Engagement pushes past these limitations, developing a firm foundation from which applied anthropology can support grassroots research and lasting community programs. Using two partnering Milwaukee organizations as examples, this volume explores the need in urban neighborhoods for practicing anthropologists, how a high volume of asset-building programs can be developed by practicing anthropologists, and the potential efficacy of anthropology departments in partnering with urban neighborhoods.
Subjects: Applied Anthropology Urban Studies
Area: North America
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Pregnancy in Practice
Expectation and Experience in the Contemporary US
Han, S.
Babies are not simply born—they are made through cultural and social practices. Based on rich empirical work, this book examines the everyday experiences that mark pregnancy in the US today, such as reading pregnancy advice books, showing ultrasound “baby pictures” to friends and co-workers, and decorating the nursery in anticipation of the new arrival. These ordinary practices of pregnancy, the author argues, are significant and revealing creative activities that produce babies. They are the activities through which babies are made important and meaningful in the lives of the women and men awaiting the child’s birth. This book brings into focus a topic that has been overlooked in the scholarship on reproduction and will be of interest to professionals and expectant parents alike.
Subject: Medical Anthropology
Area: North America
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Resettled Iraqi Refugees in the United States
War, Refuge, Belonging, Participation, and Protest
Keyel, J.
The American war against Iraq has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and displaced millions of people. Between 20 March 2003 and 30 September 2017, more than 172,000 Iraqis resettled in the United States. This book explores the experiences of fifteen Iraqis who resettled in the US after 2003. It examines the long war against Iraq that began in 1991 and the decisions some Iraqis made to leave their homes and seek refuge in the United States. The book also delves into the possibilities for belonging and cultural exchange for this cohort of Iraqis and their political engagement with non-profit organizations, advocacy, and activism against the 2017 Travel Ban.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Political and Economic Anthropology Anthropology (General)
Area: North America
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Set to See Us Fail
Debating Inequalities in the Child Welfare System of New York
Castellano, V.
Examining the interaction between families and professionals in the child welfare system of New York, this book focuses on how inequalities are reproduced, measured, managed, and contested. The book describes how state institutions and neoliberal governance police the groups which are most represented in the child welfare system, including low income, female-headed families living in racialized neighborhoods. The book also shows how these forms of policing produce unstable terrains, and give rise to contestation among families, communities, and professionals. It questions and re-thinks how state welfare and protection is administered.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology
Area: North America
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Theoretical Scholarship and Applied Practice
Pink, S., Fors, V., & O'Dell, T. (eds)
Academics across the globe are being urged by universities and research councils to do research that impacts the world beyond academia. Yet to date there has been very little reflection amongst scholars and practitioners in these fields concerning the relationship between the theoretical and engaged practices that emerge through such forms of scholarship. Theoretical Scholarship and Applied Practice investigates the ways in which theoretical research has been incorporated into recent applied practices across the social sciences and humanities. This collection advances our understanding of the ethics, values, opportunities and challenges that emerge in the making of engaged and interdisciplinary scholarship.
Subject: Applied Anthropology
Areas: Europe North America
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Transatlantic Parallaxes
Toward Reciprocal Anthropology
Raulin, A. & Rogers, S. C. (eds)
Anthropological inquiry developed around the study of the exotic. Now that we live in a world that seems increasingly familiar, putatively marked by a spreading sameness, anthropology must re-envision itself. The emergence of diverse national traditions in the discipline offers one intriguing path. This volume, the product of a novel encounter of American anthropologists of France and French anthropologists of the United States, explores the possibilities of that path through an experiment in the reciprocal production of knowledge. Simultaneously native subjects, foreign experts, and colleagues, these scholars offer novel insights into each other’s societies, juxtaposing glimpses of ourselves and a familiar “others” to productively unsettle and enrich our understanding of both.
Subject: Anthropology (General)
Areas: France North America
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Voices of Long-Term Care Workers
Elder Care in the Time of COVID-19 and Beyond
Freidus, A. & Shenk, D.
There were many challenges, successes, and concerns in providing long-term care to older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking at central North Carolina, the authors highlight the implications of providing long-term care to older Americans, with an emphasis on the importance of communication, resilience of staff, and value of human infrastructure.
Based on extensive interviews, this collection of essays reflects on the participants’ individual experiences and represents the voices of staff and caregivers working in long-term residential care communities, in-home and community-based programs, as well as regional aging service providers and advocates.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Sociology Applied Anthropology
Area: North America
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Weary Warriors
Power, Knowledge, and the Invisible Wounds of Soldiers
Moss, P. & Prince, M. J.
As seen in military documents, medical journals, novels, films, television shows, and memoirs, soldiers’ invisible wounds are not innate cracks in individual psyches that break under the stress of war. Instead, the generation of weary warriors is caught up in wider social and political networks and institutions—families, activist groups, government bureaucracies, welfare state programs—mediated through a military hierarchy, psychiatry rooted in mind-body sciences, and various cultural constructs of masculinity. This book offers a history of military psychiatry from the American Civil War to the latest Afghanistan conflict. The authors trace the effects of power and knowledge in relation to the emotional and psychological trauma that shapes soldiers’ bodies, minds, and souls, developing an extensive account of the emergence, diagnosis, and treatment of soldiers’ invisible wounds.
Subjects: Sociology History (General) Peace and Conflict Studies
Areas: North America Europe
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Where Have All the Homeless Gone?
The Making and Unmaking of a Crisis
Marcus, A.
For a decade, from 1983 to 1993, homelessness was a major concern in the United States. In 1994, this public concern suddenly disappeared, without any significant reduction in the number of people without proper housing. By examining the making and unmaking of a homeless crisis, this book explores how public understandings of what constitutes a social crisis are shaped.
Drawing on five years of ethnographic research in New York City with African Americans and Latinos living in poverty, Where Have All the Homeless Gone? reveals that the homeless “crisis” was driven as much by political misrepresentations of poverty, race, and social difference, as the housing, unemployment, and healthcare problems that caused homelessness and continue to plague American cities.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Urban Studies Sociology
Area: North America