Berghahn Books
Above the death pit, beneath the flag; youth voyages to Poland and the performance of Israeli national identity.
Pilgrimages to Auschwitz and other Holocaust sites in Poland have become a rite of passage for Israeli as well as for diaspora Jewish youth. Drawing on participant observation, group discussions, student diaries, and questionnaires, Feldman (social anthropology, Ben Gurion U., Beersheba, Israel) examines how these survivor- accompanied trips and remembrance ceremonies at these sites have become a popular means of transmitting Holocaust memory in Israel and basis for triumphant group identity. Photographs feature sites, visitors, and survivors. This analysis, in global and recent Israeli historical context, contributes to the debates surrounding how to educationally/culturally treat this past in Israel and "witness" the Shoah after there are no surviving witnesses. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
An academic skating on thin ice.
His politics were too leftist, they said, and they denied him a life in anthropology. But Worsley (sociology emeritus, U. of Manchester) switched to sociology and finally got some brave souls to hire him into academia and other brave souls to publish his Introducing Sociology, which sold a half million copies. This memoir may do as well, judging from the gentle grace of Worsley's writing and his colorful remembrances of his life as a student, soldier, researcher, communist organizer and observer, friend of the aboriginal, activist and participant in radical politics, sojourns in Latin American, Africa, China and New York, and his not-so-easy retirement in London. The result gives significant insights into what it was like to speak what Worsley believed was truth to power. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Advancing refugee protection in South Africa.
Eleven chapters address the relatively new topic of the development and implementation of refugee protection policy in South Africa (relatively new because the Refugees Act only came into force as of 2000). Handmaker (Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, the Netherlands), Hunt (U. of Cape Town, South Africa), and Klaaren (law, U. of Witwatersrand, South Africa) first present chapters detailing the development of policy by discussing the political debates over refugee policy in South Africa, connections between refugee and migration policy, the legislative history of the Refugees Act, and the institutional model of refugee status determination. Policy implementation is explored in chapters that look at court challenges to the implementation of asylum procedure, the project to build departmental capacity for processing asylum applications, and current treatment of urban-based Angolan refugees in South Africa and the prospects for their repatriation. The remaining papers come in a section on special issues and include discussion of the confinement of asylum-seekers in reception centers, policy towards refugee children (particularly unaccompanied minors), gender guidelines for status determination officials, and health and welfare policies for refugees and asylum-seekers. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
All tomorrow's cultures; anthropological engagements with the future.
Collins (anthropology and cultural studies, Towson U.) reviews the future work of anthropology over the past two centuries, and suggests where the discipline's thinking about the future may take it. His interest is in anthropologists projecting into the future, but not much in science fiction writers who draw on anthropology, citing only H. G. Wells and Octavia Butler, but for some reason not Ursula Le Guin. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Alternative exchanges; second-hand circulations from the sixteenth century to the present.
Historians and anthropologists examine the role, significance, and functioning of the second-hand market, ferreting out forgotten circuits and uses of castaway items over the long term. Their topics include using things as money in late Renaissance Rome, the conventions of renewing and exchanging goods in French provincial aristocracy, overlooked aspects of modern collecting, and the second-hand car market as a form of resistance. Some of the 12 essays are recirculated seminar papers or conference presentations. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Austria, Germany, and the Cold War; from the Anschluss to the State Treaty 1938-1955.
Austria was the first to be conquered and by rights it should have been the first to be restored. However, Austria did not become fully free and independent until 1955. Steininger (contemporary history, U. of Innsbruck, etc.) examines the many reasons why history, philosophy, politics and reality, namely the dark cloud that was Germany and the Cold War, got in the way. Steininger provides an array of very telling illustrations as he works chronologically, describing the contexts created from 1918 to 1938 and the Anschluss, how Austria was cast as and assumed the role of victim, how it was largely an anomaly in the Allies' planning for after the war, how Austrians were found to be suspect in nazi atrocities and policies, how the resiliency of Austrian anti-Semitism became a factor in normalization efforts, connecting each to the extension of what amounted to the Allied control of the country. Over all, he links the eventual fate of Austria to the rapid advance of the Cold War and the strange role of Germany within it. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Border interrogations; questioning Spanish frontiers.
The twelve chapters presented here by Vizcaya (colonial studies, Hofstra U.) and Doubleday (history, Hofstra U.) are united in their understanding of Spanish "borders" as historical and ideological construct that can be problematized and challenged but are otherwise diverse in topic and perspective. The papers discuss the artificial frontiers of the North African, yet Spanish, cities of Ceuta and Melilla; gender and border crossing in modern Spanish cinema; racism and Spanish opposition to multiculturalism; the art of Miquel Barceló and Spanish-African solidarity; transgression of borders in Philippine novelist José Rizal's El Filibusterismo; indigenous rebellions in 17th century Mexico and the frontiers of empire; the staging of borders in Cervantes's Numancia; and border crossing and identity consciousness in the Jews of medieval Spain. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
"Brothers" or others?; propriety and gender for Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt.
Sudanese ethnicity in Cairo follows from the ambiguous political, legal, symbolic, and social position Sudanese hold in Egyptian society, suggests Fábos (refugee studies, U. of East London), but also interacts with other social identities, particularly gender identifies, derived from historical processes, such as Egyptian control of the Nile Valley and Sudanese resistance to it. She conducted her research in Cairo, where she lived for 10 years and where her husband's family is from. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Culture and the changing environment; uncertainty, cognition and risk management in cross-cultural perspective.
German social scientists stalk the border between human cultures and their environments to investigate how changes in one affect the other. The underlying notion is that while natural sciences can describe the physical aspects of the environment and its change, the social sciences are needed to deal with the heavy influence of human behavior and values on environmental problems. The topics include risk management and morality in chemical and organic farming in Germany, a cultural response to the threat of open access fishing grounds, discourses on volcanic eruptions in Indonesia, and a comparison of biodiversity perspectives and environmental knowledge systems in Australia and Namibia. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Dancing at the crossroads; memory and mobility in Ireland.
Wulff (U. of Stockholm) concentrates on the Irish tradition of "dancing at the crossroads," where young people would often meet deep in the countryside to socialize on summer evenings. While this practice was banned by the Public Dance Hall Act of 1935, the influence of these informal gatherings stretches through history, touching on all aspects of modern Irish dance including the Riverdance. Aimed at students of Irish history, this book also shows how the crossroads dance influenced the modern club scene throughout Europe. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Difficult folk?; a political history of social anthropology.
For all the deep and often radical reflection by scholars over the past three decades into their intellectual role and contribution in the world, says Mills (pedagogy and social sciences, U. of Oxford), there has been little recognition or analysis of the university as an ecological niche that the social sciences and humanities cannot survive without. To begin filling that gap, he traces the emergence of social anthropology as a disciplinary identity, focusing particularly on Britain between the 1930s and the 1960s. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Economy's tension; the dialectics of community and market.
Gudeman (anthropology, U. of Minnesota) takes readers above the clouds of neoliberalism and globalization to consider how humans seek meaning in communities and how that relates to the tyranny of price that dominates market rationality. As he works through his concepts of economic thought, he calls for a shift in the way we think about the economy at a cultural level, and why we seem to rely so much on the concept of calculated choice. he also examines how this particular type of choice relates to the very real reciprocity that exists within societies and economies. He explains the various dichotomies that have formed as a result of that tension and the trajectory of the possibility of resolving it or using it. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Empathy and healing; essays in medical and narrative anthropology.
Skultans (social anthropology, U. of Bristol, UK) compiles 14 previously published essays she wrote between 1970 and 2005, that relate to the broad topic of empathy and healing. Essays examine women's use of menstrual and menopausal symbolism, Spiritualist beliefs about healing, the gendered nature of beliefs about madness in Maharashtra, anthropology and psychiatry, neurasthenia in post-Soviet Latvia, identity, and other topics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Empire, colony, genocide; conquest, occupation, and subaltern resistance in world history.
Put together by Moses (history, U. of Sydney, Australia), this volume presents case studies of genocide in colonial and imperial contexts, as well as more overarching theoretical and analytical papers on the topic, in order to stimulate an underrepresented research agenda in the field of genocide studies. Opening chapters address intellectual history and conceptual questions surrounding the relationship between settler colonialism and genocide, colonial discourse and "indigenocide," and the colonial origins of the concept of genocide. Other papers discuss serial colonialism and genocide in 19th century Cambodia, genocide in Tasmania, settler imperialism and genocide in 19th century America and Australia, colonial genocide in German Southwest Africa and German East Africa, inter-imperial conflict and the Armenian genocide, genocidal impulses in Imperial Russia, and colonialism and genocide in Nazi-occupied Poland and Ukraine. The remaining three papers discuss subaltern genocide or genocide from below and include discussion of the Great Rebellion of 1780-82 in the Southern Andes and the brief genocide of Eurasians in Indonesia in 1945-46. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Exploring regimes of discipline; the dynamics of restraint.
Discipline tends to be thought of in context with punishment and many studies of discipline equate the two either favorably or with distaste. Dyck (social anthropology, Simon Fraser University) wishes to expand the limits of study. To that end, the essays in this collection address both externally applied discipline and self- discipline. Topics include the mandatory language training of immigrant children in Denmark, a rigidly followed rhythm method used by couples in Poland, Quaker discipline, discipline in governance and the training of trotting racehorses in Finland. Self-discipline is exemplified through the martial art of akido and, in another way, how hospital porters in Scotland have created their own form of power by manipulating knowledge of the hospital system and the ignorance of doctors. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The fateful alliance; German conservatives and Nazis in 1933; the Machtergreifung in a new light.
During the spring and winter of 1933, with the original Communist and Social opponents of Nazism repressed, and moderates neutralized, says Beck (German and modern European history, U. of Miami), the party turned its fury against its allies. He describes how traditional conservative political and social bastions were willfully destroyed and then, under different auspices, reconstructed only after they had fully acknowledged Nazi leadership. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A foreign affair; Billy Wilder's American films.
Gemünden (German studies, film studies, comparative literature, Dartmouth College) offers a clearly written and detailed critical study of the work of Billy Wilder, prolific award-winning American filmmaker. By critically reviewing Wilder's work, the author is able to provide a clearer, possibly more accurate, picture of him as he really was, including complications and contradictions, and his status as something of an "exile." Films discussed include Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, and others. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Globalization and the millennium development goals; negotiating the challenge.
Supporters of globalization argue that economic growth leads to social progress, while its detractors assert that it engenders an entirely new set of social problems. This collection of 12 articles focuses primarily on India and its experiences with development, specifically the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Topics include the role of the government and developmental strategies, world economic performance and social progress, agricultural trade liberalization in India, informal sector employment in Indian manufacturing, small to medium automobile component manufacturers in India, access to new drugs, treatment of AIDS (in terms of intellectual property for drugs, generic production and stable supply), reproductive health, universal primary education, and market-driven higher education. To very interesting articles detail African experiences with development and social progress, including an account of the challenge of developing an pan-African growth plan. Distributed by Berghahn Books. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
God-botherers and other true believers; Gandhi, Hitler, and the religious right.
Bailey (emeritus, anthropology, U. of California-San Diego) contributes to the argument that religion and other kinds of bigotry are intrinsically flawed, and that human life would be better without them. Faith must remain, of course, because civilization is not possible without it, he says, and because rationality is a hollow method unless faith provides substance and goal. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Journeys through fascism; Italian travel writing between the wars.
Burdett (Italian studies, Bristol U., UK) surveys a range of travel writings (and foreign correspondence) produced by Italians during the Fascist period, much of it produced by figures connected to the national dailies. He applies the critical perspectives of Edward Said's Orientalism and other post-colonial critical works in order to show how the texts in question were part of larger discursive frameworks of identity and demographic expansion and also to show how many of the concepts at the core of Italian Fascist ideology — the myth of Roman dominance, the supremacy of Italian civilization, the irresistibility of collective action, and the deification of the leader — were expressed and elaborated in these writings. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
