All social structures are essentially power structures dependent on energy. The concept of power and the role of energy in social organization are crucial and timely concerns, especially in light of the current apprehension about future energy resources. In Energy and Structure, Richard N. Adams argues that social power affects humanity's approach to ecological, economic, and political problems, directing people to seek solutions that are often deceptively shortsighted.

Adams, an anthropologist, proposes that social power is directly derived from control over energy processes. He identifies how power and mentalistic structures constitute fundamental determinants that shape the lives of people at all stages of cultural development, forcing them to accept alternatives often far removed from their desires. His central thesis is that the amount of power in any system varies with the amount of control exercised over the environment and that increasing power and control lead to increasing centralization of decision-making, social marginalization, and environmental despoliation. Thus the more highly developed societies, by virtue of their greater controls, are responsible for the greater ultimate subordination and destruction of human potential, as humanity combines technological advances with a growing inability to exercise good judgment with respect to our own survival.

Energy and Structure begins with an examination of the basic theory of social power—what it is and how it works. Adams defines and differentiates between the concepts of power and control, authority and legitimacy, power domains and levels. He then examines the underlying metatheory of energetic and mentalistic structures and provides an analytic model of the evolution of power, from the primitive band to modern nations. He predicts the emergence of supranational blocs and discusses other future possibilities. Throughout, his theoretical points are solidly supported by examples drawn from a wide range of cultures.

Passionate and enlightening, Energy Never Dies uses the power of storytelling to show how optimism and courage fuel the dreams of Black Chicago.

Exploring the structure, motives, and meanings of humor in everyday life

Oring scrutinizes classic Jewish jokes, frontier humor, racist cartoons, blonde jokes, and Internet humor. He provides alternate ways of thinking about humorous expressions by examining their contexts--not just their contents. He also shows how the incongruity and absurdity essential to the production of laughter can serve serious communicative ends.

Engaging Humor examines the thoughts that underlie jokes, the question of racist motivation in ethnic humor, and the use of humor as a commentary on social interaction. The book also explores the relationship between humor and sentimentality and the role of humor in forging national identity. Engaging Humor demonstrates that when analyzed contextually and comparatively, humorous expressions emerge as communications that are startling, intriguing, and profound.

Colleges and universities in urban centers have often leveraged their locales to appeal to students while also taking a more active role in addressing local challenges. They embrace civic engagement, support service-learning, tailor courses to local needs, and even provide university-community collaborations such as lab schools and innovation hubs. Engaging Place, Engaging Practices highlights the significant role the academy, in general, and urban history, in particular, can play in fostering these critical connections.

The editors and contributors to this volume address topics ranging from historical injustices and affordable housing and land use to climate change planning and the emergence of digital humanities. These case studies reveal the intricate components of a city’s history and how they provide context and promote a sense of cultural belonging.

This timely book appreciates and emphasizes the critical role universities must play as intentional—and humble—partners in addressing the past, present, and future challenges facing cities through democratic community engagement.

Researchers often hope that their work will inform social change. The questions that motivate them to pursue research careers in the first place often stem from observations about gaps between the world as we wish it to be and the world as it is, accompanied by a deep curiosity about how it might be made different. Researchers view their profession as providing important information about what is, what could be, and how to get there. However, if research is to inform social change, we must first change the way in which research is done.

Engaging the Intersection of Housing and Health offers case studies of research that is interdisciplinary, stakeholder-engaged and intentionally designed for “translation” into practice. There are numerous ways in which housing and health are intertwined. This intertwining—which is the focus of this volume—is lived daily by the children whose asthma is exacerbated by mold in their homes, the adults whose mental illness increases their risk for homelessness and whose homelessness worsens their mental and physical health, the seniors whose home environment enhances their risk of falls, and the families who must choose between paying for housing and paying for healthcare.

This first significant collection of essays on women in China in more than two decades captures a pivotal moment in a cross-cultural—and interdisciplinary—dialogue. For the first time, the voices of China-based scholars are heard alongside scholars positioned in the United States. The distinguished contributors to this volume are of different generations, hold citizenship in different countries, and were trained in different disciplines, but all embrace the shared project of mapping gender in China and making power-laden relationships visible. The essays take up gender issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Chapters focus on learned women in the eighteenth century, the changing status of contemporary village women, sexuality and reproduction, prostitution, women's consciousness, women's writing, the gendering of work, and images of women in contemporary Chinese fiction.

Some of the liveliest disagreements over the usefulness of western feminist theory and scholarship on China take place between Chinese working in China and Chinese in temporary or longtime diaspora. Engendering China will appeal to a broad academic spectrum, including scholars of Asian studies, critical theory, feminist studies, cultural studies, and policy studies.

In 1999, Venezuela became the first country in the world to constitutionally recognize the socioeconomic value of housework and enshrine homemakers’ social security. This landmark provision was part of a larger project to transform the state and expand social inclusion during Hugo Chávez’s presidency. The Bolivarian revolution opened new opportunities for poor and working-class—or popular—women’s organizing. The state recognized their unpaid labor and maternal gender role as central to the revolution. Yet even as state recognition enabled some popular women to receive public assistance, it also made their unpaid labor and organizing vulnerable to state appropriation.

Offering the first comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon, Engendering Revolution demonstrates that the Bolivarian revolution cannot be understood without comprehending the gendered nature of its state-society relations. Showcasing field research that comprises archival analysis, observation, and extensive interviews, these thought-provoking findings underscore the ways in which popular women sustained a movement purported to exalt them, even while many could not access social security and remained socially, economically, and politically vulnerable.

Students and the public routinely consult various published college rankings to assess the quality of colleges and universities and easily compare different schools. However, many institutions have responded to the rankings in ways that benefit neither the schools nor their students. In Engines of Anxiety, sociologists Wendy Espeland and Michael Sauder delve deep into the mechanisms of law school rankings, which have become a top priority within legal education. Based on a wealth of observational data and over 200 in-depth interviews with law students, university deans, and other administrators, they show how the scramble for high rankings has affected the missions and practices of many law schools.

Engines of Anxiety tracks how rankings, such as those published annually by the U.S. News & World Report, permeate every aspect of legal education, beginning with the admissions process. The authors find that prospective law students not only rely heavily on such rankings to evaluate school quality, but also internalize rankings as expressions of their own abilities and flaws. For example, they often view rejections from “first-tier” schools as a sign of personal failure. The rankings also affect the decisions of admissions officers, who try to balance admitting diverse classes with preserving the school’s ranking, which is dependent on factors such as the median LSAT score of the entering class. Espeland and Sauder find that law schools face pressure to admit applicants with high test scores over lower-scoring candidates who possess other favorable credentials.

Engines of Anxiety also reveals how rankings have influenced law schools’ career service departments. Because graduates’ job placements play a major role in the rankings, many institutions have shifted their career-services resources toward tracking placements, and away from counseling and network-building. In turn, law firms regularly use school rankings to recruit and screen job candidates, perpetuating a cycle in which highly ranked schools enjoy increasing prestige. As a result, the rankings create and reinforce a rigid hierarchy that penalizes lower-tier schools that do not conform to the restrictive standards used in the rankings. The authors show that as law schools compete to improve their rankings, their programs become more homogenized and less accessible to non-traditional students.

The ranking system is considered a valuable resource for learning about more than 200 law schools. Yet, Engines of Anxiety shows that the drive to increase a school’s rankings has negative consequences for students, educators, and administrators and has implications for all educational programs that are quantified in similar ways.

A niece of Jane Austen and a novelist herself, Catherine Hubback was fifty-two years old when she left England for America. She travelled to California on the Transcontinental Railroad and settled in Oakland, on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay. Her son Edward shared her household and commuted by ferryboat to a wheat brokerage in the City.

In letters to her eldest son John and his wife Mary in Liverpool, Catherine conveys her delight – and her exasperation – at her new environment. She portrays her neighbours with a novelist's wry wit and brings her English sensibility to bear on gardening with unfamiliar plants and maintaining a proper wardrobe in a dry climate. She writes vividly of her adventures as she moves about a landscape recognizable to present-day residents, at a time when boats rather than bridges spanned the bay, and hot springs were the main attraction in the Napa Valley. In an atmosphere of financial unrest, she writes freely of her anxieties, while supplementing Edward's declining income by making lace and teaching the craft to other women. She recalls her 'prosperous days' in England, but finds pleasure in small things and assuredly takes her place in a society marked by great disparities in wealth.

In addition to transcriptions of the letters, this highly readable edition offers pertinent information on many of the people and places mentioned, explanatory notes, and striking illustrations. The introduction places the letters in context and tells the story of Catherine Hubback, whose life evolved in ways unprecedented in the Austen family.

A century ago, as the United States prepared to enter World War I, the military chaplaincy included only mainline Protestants and Catholics. Today it counts Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Christian Scientists, Buddhists, Seventh-day Adventists, Hindus, and evangelicals among its ranks. Enlisting Faith traces the uneven processes through which the military struggled with, encouraged, and regulated religious pluralism over the twentieth century.

Moving from the battlefields of Europe to the jungles of Vietnam and between the forests of Civilian Conservation Corps camps and meetings in government offices, Ronit Y. Stahl reveals how the military borrowed from and battled religion. Just as the state relied on religion to sanction war and sanctify death, so too did religious groups seek recognition as American faiths. At times the state used religion to advance imperial goals. But religious citizens pushed back, challenging the state to uphold constitutional promises and moral standards.

Despite the constitutional separation of church and state, the federal government authorized and managed religion in the military. The chaplaincy demonstrates how state leaders scrambled to handle the nation’s deep religious, racial, and political complexities. While officials debated which clergy could serve, what insignia they would wear, and what religions appeared on dog tags, chaplains led worship for a range of faiths, navigated questions of conscience, struggled with discrimination, and confronted untimely death. Enlisting Faith is a vivid portrayal of religious encounters, state regulation, and the trials of faith—in God and country—experienced by the millions of Americans who fought in and with the armed forces.

A unique study of an Andean community’s water rituals and the extraordinary document describing how they should be performed

In the dry season in the Andes, water from springs, lakes, reservoirs, and melting glaciers feeds irrigation canals that have sustained communities for thousands of years. Managing and maintaining these water infrastructures is essential, and in 1921, in the village of San Pedro de Casta, Peru, local authorities recorded their ritual canal-cleaning duties in a Spanish-language document called the Entablo. It is only the second book (along with the Huarochirí Manuscript) ever seen by scholars in which an Andean community explains its customs and ritual laws in its own words.

Sarah Bennison offers a critical introduction to the Entablo, a Spanish transcription of the document, and an English translation. Among its other revelations, the Entablo delves into the use of khipu boards, devices that meld the traditional knotted strings known as khipus with a written alphabet. Only in the Entablo do we learn that there were multiple khipu boards associated with a single canal-cleaning ritual, or that there were separate khipu records for men and women. The Entablo manuscript furnishes unparalleled insights into Andean rituals, religion, and community history at a historical moment when rural highland communities were changing rapidly.

Entangled Objects threatens to dislodge the cornerstone of Western anthropology by rendering permanently problematic the idea of reciprocity. All traffic, and commerce, whether economic or intellectual, between Western anthropologists and the rest of the world, is predicated upon the possibility of establishing reciprocal relations between the West and the indigenous peoples it has colonized for centuries.

Drawing on his work on contemporary postcolonial Pacific societies, Nicholas Thomas takes up three issues central to modern anthropology: the cultural and political dynamics of colonial encounters, the nature of Western and non-Western transactions (such as the gift and the commodity), and the significance of material objects in social life. Along the way, he raises doubts about any simple “us/them” dichotomy between Westerners and Pacific Islanders, challenging the preoccupation of anthropology with cultural difference by stressing the shared history of colonial entanglement.

Thomas integrates general issues into a historical discussion of the uses Pacific Islanders and Europeans have made of each other’s material artifacts. He explores how nineteenth- and twentieth-century islanders, and visitors from the time of the Cook voyages up to the present day, have fashioned identities for themselves and each other by appropriating and exchanging goods. Previous writers have explored museums and the tribal art market, but this is the first book to concentrate on the distinct interests of European collectors and the islanders. In its comparative scope, its combination of historical and ethnographic scholarship, and its subversive approach to anthropological theory and traditional understandings of colonial relationships, Entangled Objects is a unique and challenging book. It will be tremendously interesting to all those working in the fields of cultural studies, from history to literature.

With the appearance of the urban, modern, diverse "New Negro" in the Harlem Renaissance, writers and critics began a vibrant debate on the nature of African-American identity, community, and history. Martha Jane Nadell offers an illuminating new perspective on the period and the decades immediately following it in a fascinating exploration of the neglected role played by visual images of race in that debate.

After tracing the literary and visual images of nineteenth-century "Old Negro" stereotypes, Nadell focuses on works from the 1920s through the 1940s that showcased important visual elements. Alain Locke and Wallace Thurman published magazines and anthologies that embraced modernist images. Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men, with illustrations by Mexican caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias, meditated on the nature of black Southern folk culture. In the "folk history" Twelve Million Black Voices, Richard Wright matched prose to Farm Security Administration photographs. And in the 1948 Langston Hughes poetry collection One Way Ticket, Jacob Lawrence produced a series of drawings engaging with Hughes's themes of lynching, race relations, and black culture. These collaborations addressed questions at the heart of the movement and in the era that followed it: Who exactly were the New Negroes? How could they attack past stereotypes? How should images convey their sense of newness, possibility, and individuality? In what directions should African-American arts and letters move?

Featuring many compelling contemporary illustrations, Enter the New Negroes restores a critical visual aspect to African-American culture as it evokes the passion of a community determined to shape its own identity and image.

The first Earth Day in 1970 marked environmentalism’s coming-of-age in the United States. More than four decades later, does the green movement remain a transformative force in American life? Presenting a new account from a legal perspective, Environment in the Balance interprets a wide range of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, along with social science research and the literature of the movement, to gauge the practical and cultural impact of environmentalism and its future prospects.

Jonathan Z. Cannon demonstrates that from the 1960s onward, the Court’s rulings on such legal issues as federalism, landowners’ rights, standing, and the scope of regulatory authority have reflected deep-seated cultural differences brought out by the mass movement to protect the environment. In the early years, environmentalists won some important victories, such as the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision allowing them to sue against barriers to recycling. But over time the Court has become more skeptical of their claims and more solicitous of values embodied in private property rights, technological mastery and economic growth, and limited government.

Today, facing the looming threat of global warming, environmentalists struggle to break through a cultural stalemate that threatens their goals. Cannon describes the current ferment in the movement, and chronicles efforts to broaden its cultural appeal while staying connected to its historical roots, and to ideas of nature that have been the source of its distinctive energy and purpose.

Viewing turn-of-the-century African American history through the lens of cinema, Envisioning Freedom examines the forgotten history of early black film exhibition during the era of mass migration and Jim Crow. By embracing the new medium of moving pictures at the turn of the twentieth century, black Americans forged a collective—if fraught—culture of freedom.

In Cara Caddoo’s perspective-changing study, African Americans emerge as pioneers of cinema from the 1890s to the 1920s. Across the South and Midwest, moving pictures presented in churches, lodges, and schools raised money and created shared social experiences for black urban communities. As migrants moved northward, bound for Chicago and New York, cinema moved with them. Along these routes, ministers and reformers, preaching messages of racial uplift, used moving pictures as an enticement to attract followers.

But as it gained popularity, black cinema also became controversial. Facing a losing competition with movie houses, once-supportive ministers denounced the evils of the “colored theater.” Onscreen images sparked arguments over black identity and the meaning of freedom. In 1910, when boxing champion Jack Johnson became the world’s first black movie star, representation in film vaulted to the center of black concerns about racial progress. Black leaders demanded self-representation and an end to cinematic mischaracterizations which, they charged, violated the civil rights of African Americans. In 1915, these ideas both led to the creation of an industry that produced “race films” by and for black audiences and sparked the first mass black protest movement of the twentieth century.

This volume brings together studies of Ephesos—a major city in the Greco-Roman period and a primary center for the spread of Christianity into the Western world—by an international array of scholars from the fields of classics, fine arts, history of religion, New Testament, ancient Christianity, and archaeology. The studies were presented at a spring 1994 Harvard Divinity School symposium on Ephesos, focusing on the results of one hundred years of archaeological work at Ephesos by members of the Austrian Archaeological Institute.

The contributors to this volume discuss some of the most interesting and controversial results of recent investigations: the Processional Way of Artemis, the Hadrianic Olympieion and the Church of Mary, the so-called Temple of Domitian, and the heroes Androkolos and Arsinoe.

Since very little about the Austrian excavations at Ephesos has been published in English, this volume should prove useful in introducing the archaeology of this metropolis to a wider readership.

The pandemic presented religion as a paradox: faith is often crucial for helping people weather life’s troubles and make difficult decisions, but how can religion continue to deliver these benefits and provide societal structure without social contact?  The topical volume, An Epidemic among My People explains how the COVID-19 pandemic stress tested American religious communities and created a new politics of religion centered on public health.

The editors and contributorsconsider how the virus and government policy affected religion in America. Chapters examine the link between the prosperity gospel and conspiracy theories, the increased purchase of firearms by evangelicals, the politics of challenging public health orders as religious freedom claims, and the reactions of Christian nationalists, racial groups, and female clergy to the pandemic (and pandemic politics). As sharp lines were drawn between people and their governments during this uncertain time, An Epidemic among My People provides a comprehensive portrait of religion in American public life.