An unexpected and valuable critique of community that points out its complicity with capitalism
Community is almost always invoked as an unequivocal good, an indicator of a high quality of life, caring, selflessness, belonging. Into this common portrayal, Against the Romance of Community introduces an uncommon note of caution, a penetrating, sorely needed sense of what, precisely, we are doing when we call upon this ideal.
Miranda Joseph explores sites where the ideal of community relentlessly recurs, from debates over art and culture in the popular media, to the discourses and practices of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations, to contemporary narratives of economic transformation or "globalization." She shows how community legitimates the social hierarchies of gender, race, nation, and sexuality that capitalism implicitly requires. Joseph argues that social formations, including community, are constituted through the performativity of production. This strategy makes it possible to understand connections between identities and communities that would otherwise seem disconnected: gay consumers in the United States and Mexican maquiladora workers; Christian right "family values" and Asian "crony capitalism." Exposing the complicity of social practices, identities, and communities with capitalism, this truly constructive critique opens the possibility of genuine alliances across such differences.Contributors
Vincanne Adams
Nancy N. Chen
Stefan Ecks
Kathleen Erwin
Phuoc V. Le
Jennifer Liu
Aihwa Ong
Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner
Kaushik Sunder Rajan
Wen-Ching Sung
Charis Thompson
Ara Wilson
Starting where Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism left off, John E. Tropman develops the idea that there is another religious-based ethic permeating society, a Catholic ethic. Where Weber proposed that a Protestant ethic supported the development of capitalism, Tropman argues that there is a Catholic ethic as well, and that it is more caring and community-oriented.
Weber's notion of the Protestant ethic has become widely accepted, but until Tropman's work, beginning in the mid-1980s, there had been no discussion of another, religious-based ethic. He suggests that if the Protestant ethic is an "achievement" ethic, the Catholic ethic is a "helping" one. Tropman outlines a Catholic ethic that is distinctive in its sympathy and outreach toward the poor, and in its emphasis on family and community over economic success. This book fully explores the Catholic ethic and its differing focus by using both historical and survey research. It also points to the existence of other religious-based ethics.
This clearly written book, employing the tools of both sociology and religious thought, will appeal to a wide audience, including students and scholars in disciplines informed by the influence of religion on politics and on social and economic behavior.
Social scientists have long argued over the links between crime and place. The authors of Communities and Crime provide an intellectual history that traces how varying images of community have evolved over time and influenced criminological thinking and criminal justice policy.
The authors outline the major ideas that have shaped the development of theory, research, and policy in the area of communities and crime. Each chapter examines the problem of the community through a defining critical or theoretical lens: the community as social disorganization; as a system of associations; as a symptom of larger structural forces; as a result of criminal subcultures; as a broken window; as crime opportunity; and as a site of resilience.
Focusing on these changing images of community, the empirical adequacy of these images, and how they have resulted in concrete programs to reduce crime, Communities and Crime theorizes about and reflects upon why some neighborhoods produce so much crime. The result is a tour of the dominant theories of place in social science today.
For years environmentalists thought natural resources could be best protected by national legislation. But the poor outcomes of this top-down policy have led conservation professionals today to regard local communities as the agents of conservation efforts. According to a recent survey, more than fifty countries report that they pursue partnerships with local communities in an effort to protect their forests. Despite the recent popularity of a community-based approach, the concept of community rarely receives the attention it should get from those concerned with resource management. This balanced volume redresses the situation, demonstrating both the promise and the potential dangers of community action.
Although the contributors advocate community-based conservation, they examine the record with a critical eye. They pay attention to the concrete political contexts in which communities emerge and operate. Understanding the nature of community requires understanding the internal politics of local regions and their relationship to external forces and actors. Especially critical are issues related to ethnicity, gender, and the state.
Presenting the best work on the Johannine Epistles from a world-class gathering of scholars
This anthology includes papers presented at the McAfee School of Theology Symposium on the Johannine Epistles (2010). Contributions on the relationship between the Gospel of John and the Letters of John, Johannine theology and ethics, the concept of the Antichrist, and the role of the elder round out the collection. This is a must-have book for libraries and New Testament scholars.
Features:
Hard times are no stranger to the people of Appalachia and the South. Earlier books have documented the low wages of the textile industry, boom-and-bust cycles of coal mining, and debt peonage of Southern agriculture that have established a heritage of poverty that endures. This book is a unique collection of essays by people who are actively involved in the efforts to challenge economic injustice in these regions and to empower the residents to build democratic alternatives.
In the series Labor and Social Change, edited by Paula Rayman and Carmen Sirianni.
Here is a study of the essential Henry James, a study that delineates the development of his imagination, not in a strictly chronological way but by isolating patterns that can be applied to his work as a whole. Manfred Mackenzie analyzes James's social imagination, examining the kind of society and social structure he tended to portray and the motivations of his characters.
The experience of exposure, the author argues, is met with everywhere in James: identity and honor sought, won, or lost. Secrecy, or the use of secrecy in conspiracy, is a reaction to exposure, and cabal and conspiracy are consistently an element in the protagonists' quests. As James matured, however, he seemed to realize that identity and honor are ambiguous, and ultimately dehumanizing; a different set of values was needed. Mackenzie argues that a final plane of experience steadily emerges in James's work, that of love as manifested in the capacity to sacrifice identity and honor.
The first of the collection’s three sections explicitly examines the links between aesthetics and social and political experience. Here a new essay by Rancière posits art as a key site where disagreement can be staged in order to produce new communities of sense. In the second section, contributors investigate how sense was constructed in the past by the European avant-garde and how it is mobilized in today’s global visual and political culture. Exploring the viability of various models of artistic and political critique in the context of globalization, the authors of the essays in the volume’s final section suggest a shift from identity politics and preconstituted collectivities toward processes of identification and disidentification. Topics discussed in the volume vary from digital architecture to a makeshift museum in a Paris suburb, and from romantic art theory in the wake of Hegel to the history of the group-subject in political art and performance since 1968. An interview with Étienne Balibar rounds out the collection.
Contributors. Emily Apter, Étienne Balibar, Carlos Basualdo, T. J. Demos, Rachel Haidu, Beth Hinderliter, David Joselit, William Kaizen, Ranjanna Khanna, Reinaldo Laddaga, Vered Maimon, Jaleh Mansoor, Reinhold Martin, Seth McCormick, Yates McKee, Alexander Potts, Jacques Rancière, Toni Ross
Drawing on the perspectives of literary and cultural studies, science studies and feminist theory, radio history, and the new field of radio studies, these essays consider the development of radio as technology: how it was modeled on the telephone, early conflicts between for-profit and public uses of radio, and amateur radio (HAMS), local programming, and low-power radio. Some pieces discuss how radio gives voice to different cultural groups, focusing on the BBC and poetry programming in the West Indies, black radio, the history of alternative radio since the 1970s, and science and contemporary arts programming. Others look at radio’s influence on gender (and gender’s influence on radio) through examinations of Queen Elizabeth’s broadcasts, Gracie Allen’s comedy, and programming geared toward women. Together the contributors demonstrate how attention to the variety of ways radio is used and understood reveals the dynamic emergence and transformation of communities within the larger society.
Contributors. Laurence A. Breiner, Bruce B. Campbell, Mary Desjardins, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Nina Hunteman, Leah Lowe, Adrienne Munich, Kathleen Newman, Martin Spinelli, Susan Merrill Squier, Donald Ulin, Mark Williams, Steve Wurzler
The image of rural America portrayed in this illuminating study is one that is vibrant, regionally varied, and sometimes heroic. Communities of Work focuses on the ways in which rural people and places are affected by political, social, and economic forces far outside their control and how they sustain themselves and their communities in response.
Bringing together the two fundamental concepts of community—where the relationships and practices of daily life occur—and work, in which an elementary exchange occurs, Communities of Work bridges several fields of study. Presented here is the contextual and embedded nature of social relations and the complexity involved in understanding them. Through the use of multiple case studies, the authors apply diverse theories and methods in seeking an integrated outcome, one captured by “communities of work.”
Beginning with a description of the broad changes in work and economic activities across the United States, ranging from the Ohio River Valley to a western boomtown, the book shifts its focus to the interplay of work, family, and local networks in time and place. Activities range from fishing in the Mississippi Delta to farming and family life in the Midwest. The authors then highlight how rural people and places respond to extra-local, increasingly global forces in settings as diverse as rural South Carolina and Wisconsin.
A certain communitarian theme runs through Communities of Work. It is about people and communities not merely reacting, but instead responding in ways that reflect their local culture, while being cognizant of the larger world within which they live.
Brenton D. Faber’s spirited account of an academic consultant’s journey through banks, ghost towns, cemeteries, schools, and political campaigns explores the tenuous relationships between cultural narratives and organizational change.
Blending Faber’s firsthand experiences in the study and implementation of change with theoretical discussions of identity, agency, structure, and resistance within contexts of change, this innovative bookis among the first such communications studies to profile a scholar who is also a full participant in the projects. Drawing on theories of Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens, and Pierre Bourdieu, Faber notes that change takes place in the realm of narrative, in the stories people tell.
Faber argues that an organization’s identity is created through internal stories. When the organization’s internal stories are consistent with its external stories, the organization’s identity is consistent and productive. When internal stories contradict the external stories, however, the organization’s identity becomes discordant. Change is the process of realigning an organization’s discordant narratives.
Faber discusses the case studies of a change management plan he wrote for a city-owned cemetery, a cultural change project he created for a downtown trade school, and a political campaign he assisted that focused on creating social change. He also includes detailed reflections on practical ways academics can become more involved in their communities as agents of progressive social change. Featuring six illustrations, Faber’s unique study demonstrates in both style and substance how stories work as agents of change.
In this follow up to their widely read earlier volume, The Trouble with Community, Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport ask: 'Do notions of community remain central to our sense of who we are, in the dislocating context of globalization, or can we see beyond community closures to a human whole?'
This volume explores the variable nature of contemporary sociality. It focuses on the ethical, organizational and emotional claims and opportunities sought or fashioned for mobilizing and evading social collectivities in a world of mobile subjects. Here is an examination of the tensions and interactions between everyday forms of fluid fellowship, culturally normative claims to identity, and opportunities for realizing a universal humanity.
The book offers a new perspective on human commonality through a dialogue between two eminent anthropologists who come from distinct, but complementary positions.
Now available in paperback with a new preface by the author, this award-winning book breaks new ground by challenging traditional concepts of community in political theory. William Corlett brings the diverse (and sometimes contradictory) work of Foucault and Derrida to bear on the thought of Pocock, Burke, Lincoln, and McIntyre, among others, to move beyond the conventional dichotomy of "individual vs. community," arguing instead that community is best advanced within a politics of difference.
Economists celebrate the market as a device for regulating human interaction without acknowledging that their enthusiasm depends on a set of half-truths: that individuals are autonomous, self-interested, and rational calculators with unlimited wants and that the only community that matters is the nation-state. However, as Stephen A. Marglin argues, market relationships erode community. In the past, for example, when a farm family experienced a setback—say the barn burned down—neighbors pitched in. Now a farmer whose barn burns down turns, not to his neighbors, but to his insurance company. Insurance may be a more efficient way to organize resources than a community barn raising, but the deep social and human ties that are constitutive of community are weakened by the shift from reciprocity to market relations.
Marglin dissects the ways in which the foundational assumptions of economics justify a world in which individuals are isolated from one another and social connections are impoverished as people define themselves in terms of how much they can afford to consume. Over the last four centuries, this economic ideology has become the dominant ideology in much of the world. Marglin presents an account of how this happened and an argument for righting the imbalance in our lives that this ideology has fostered.
In recent times, the science of ecology has been rejuvenated and has moved to a central position in biology. This volume contains eighteen original, major contributions by leaders in the field, all associates of the late Robert MacArthur, whose work has stimulated many of the recent developments in ecology. The intellectual ferment of the field is reflected in these papers, which offer new models for ecological processes, new applications of theoretical and quantitative techniques, and new methods for analyzing and interpreting a wide variety of empirical data.
The first five chapters explore the evolution of species abundance and diversity (R. Levins, E. Leigh, J. MacArthur, R. May, and M. Rosenzweig). The theory of loop analysis is newly applied to understanding stability of species communities under both mendelian and group selection. Species abundance relations, population fluctuations, and continental patterns of species diversity are illustrated and interpreted theoretically. The next section examines the competitive strategies of optimal resource allocation variously employed in plant life histories (W. Schaffer and M. Gadgil), bird diets and foraging techniques (H. Hespenheide), butterfly seasonal flights (A. Shapiro), and forest succession examined by the theory of Markov processes (H. Horn).
The seven chapters of the third section study the structure of species communities, by comparing different natural communities in similar habitats (M. Cody, J. Karr and F. James, E. Pianka, J. Brown, J. Diamond), or by manipulating field situations experimentally (R. Patrick, J. Connell). The analyses are of communities of species as diverse as freshwater stream organisms, desert lizards and rodents, birds, invertebrates, and plants. These studies yield insights into the assembly of continental and insular communities, convergent evolution of morphology and of ecological structure, and the relative roles of predation, competition, and harsh physical conditions in limiting species ranges.
Finally, the two remaining chapters illustrate how ecological advances depend on interaction of theory with field and laboratory observations (G. E. Hutchinson), and how ecological studies such as those of this volume may find practical application to conservation problems posed by man's accelerating modification of the natural world (E. Wilson and E. Willis).
Helena Wall shows what life was like in colonial America, a culture where individuals and family were subordinated to the demands of the community. Using local town, church, and especially court records from every colony, she examines the division of authority between family and community throughout colonial America.
Although this close relationship and its consequences for private life bred many tensions and conflicts, the premises and conditions of that interdependent association persisted even into the nineteenth century. Wall sketches the subsequent changes and outlines the new arrangements of family and community life as the colonies moved toward the formation of a new nation.
The continuing vitality of American thought stems, to a large extent, from the application of its historical roots embedded in contemporary problems and issues. Yet for some time the signal contributions of Josiah Royce (1855-1916) have been overlooked in the formulation and shaping of critical areas of public policy. In this brilliantly articulated new book, ethicist Jacquelyn Kegley carefully explicates and enlarges the scope of Roycean thought and shows that Royce's views on public philosophy have direct and valuable application to current social problems.
Working from the assumption that issues of family, education, and health care are not merely exigent political tempests but areas of genuine, long-lasting concern, Kegley opens fresh perspectives on Royce's philosophy by introducing and applying his ideas to discussions of how we care for ourselves and our society today. She analyzes Roycean criteria that can be successfully used to nourish developmental stages within families, promote intellectual and social growth in schooling and scholarship, and sustain physical and mental well-being throughout the life cycle.
Genuine Individuals and Genuine Communities should be a springboard for the reassessment of contemporary public policy and the reapplication of the American philosophical legacy to current issues and decisions. Kegley's work serves as a solid contribution both to public philosophy and to the continued vitality of American thought, and it extends the range of both.
How women-only communities provide spaces for new forms of culture, sociality, gender, and sexuality
Women’s lands are intentional, collective communities composed entirely of women. Rooted in 1970s feminist politics, they continue to thrive in a range of ways, from urban households to isolated rural communes, providing spaces where ideas about gender, sexuality, and sociality are challenged in both deliberate and accidental ways. Herlands, a compelling ethnography of women’s land networks in the United States, highlights the ongoing relevance of these communities as vibrant cultural enclaves that also have an impact on broader ideas about gender, women’s bodies, lesbian identity, and right ways of living.
As a participant-observer, Keridwen N. Luis brings unique insights to the lives and stories of the women living in these communities. While documenting the experiences of specific spaces in Massachusetts, Tennessee, New Mexico, and Ohio, Herlands also explores the history of women’s lands and breaks new ground exploring culture theory, gender theory, and how lesbian identity is conceived and constructed in North America. Luis also discusses how issues of race and class are addressed, the ways in which nudity and public hygiene challenge dominant constructions of the healthy or aging body, and the pervasive influence of hegemonic thinking on debates about transgender women. Luis finds that although changing dominant thinking can be difficult and incremental, women’s lands provide exciting possibilities for revolutionary transformation in society.
"Lesbian feminism began and has fueled itself with the rejection of liberalism.... In this rejection, lesbian feminists were not alone. They were joined by the New Left, by many blacks in the civil rights movement, by male academic theorists.... What all these groups shared was an intense awareness of the ways in which liberalism fails to account for the social reality of the world, through a reliance upon law and legal structure to define membership, through individualism, through its basis in a particular conception of rationality."
In tracing how lesbian feminism came to be defined in uneasy relationships with the Women’s Movement and gay rights groups, Shane Phelan explores the tension between liberal ideals of individual rights and tolerance and communitarian ideals of solidarity. The debate over lesbian sado-masochism—an expression of individual choice or pornographic, anti-feminist behavior?—is considered as a test case.
Phelan addresses the problems faced by "the woman-identified woman" in a liberal society that presumes heterosexuality as the biological, psychological, and moral standard. Often silenced by laws defining their sexual behavior as criminal and censured by a medical establishment that persists in defining homosexuality as perversion, lesbians, like blacks and other groups, have fought to have the same rights as others in their communities and even in their own homes. Lesbian feminists have also sought to define themselves as a community that would be distinctly different, a community that would disavow the traditional American obsession with individual advancement in the world as it is.
In this controversial study of political philosophy and the women’s movement, Phelan argues that "the failure to date to produce a satisfying theory and program for lesbian action is reflective of the failure of modern political thinking to produce a compelling, nonsuspect alternative to liberalism."
Creativity needs a platform. As technology consultant David Weinberger puts it, “A platform provides resources that lets other people build things.” The library is an ideal platform, and in this book Batykefer and Damon-Moore, creators of the Library as Incubator Project, share the experiences of numerous creative library workers and artists who are making it happen. Their stories will show you how to move beyond merely responding to community needs towards actively building a platform with your community. And best of all, you don’t need to start from scratch—rather, you amplify what’s already working. Filled with ideas and initiatives that can be customized to suit your library and its community, this book
By building on existing elements at your library and filling in the gaps with community-driven additions, your library can be a space that cultivates creativity in both its users and staff.
Most Americans—even those with significant disability—want to live in their homes and communities. Unpaid family members or friends often work as “informal” caregivers, helping those who need assistance— and many feel they have no option but to serve. In contrast, paid personal assistance services workers (PAS) provide a lifeline to those consumers with complex needs and limited social networks. However, there is a crisis looming in the increasing needs for paid PAS and the limited available PAS workforce.
Making Their Days Happen explores disability, health, and civil rights, along with relevant federal and state labor policies related to personal assistance services. Lisa Iezzoni addresses the legal context of paid PAS as well as financing mechanisms for obtaining home-based personal assistance. She also draws upon interviews she conducted with paid PAS consumers and PAS workers to explore PAS experiences and their perspectives about their work.
Offering recommendations for improving future experiences of PAS consumers and providers, Iezzoni emphasizes that people with disabilities want to be a part of society, and PAS workers who do this low-wage work find satisfaction in helping them achieve their goals.
A revision of the history of modern sports in late Ottoman Istanbul, showing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews created a shared sports culture that was simultaneously global, imperial, and local.
The history of sports in Turkey is deeply contested. Over the decades, journalists, pundits, non-professional historians, and everyday people have offered competing narratives about the origins of modern sports in the late Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman World of Sports tells the story of how Istanbul’s Muslims, Christians, and Jews—gymnastics teachers, football coaches, weightlifters, journalists, athletes, and fans—created a gendered and class-stratified civic project that promoted athletics as a source of fun, beauty, and moral education. Influenced by the emerging global vogue for organized sports, all boys from the expanding middle class of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century imperial capital were expected to exercise and compete on the playing field in order to develop into moral men. Yet even as the embrace of modern athletics transcended ethno-religious divisions, it did not erase them. Drawing on a wide range of archival research in multiple languages, historian Murat Yıldız shows that sportsmen created new communal boundaries in team affiliations, fandom, and sports media. Adeptly reconstructing Istanbul’s imperial culture as it was experienced more than a century ago, The Ottoman World of Sports recovers a lived imperial culture whose defining features were shaped by its multiethnic, multireligious, and multilingual sportsmen.
The peoples of the American Southwest during the 13th through the 17th centuries witnessed dramatic changes in settlement size, exchange relationships, ideology, social organization, and migrations that included those of the first European settlers. Concomitant with these world-shaking events, communities of potters began producing new kinds of wares—particularly polychrome and glaze-paint decorated pottery—that entailed new technologies and new materials. The contributors to this volume present results of their collaborative research into the production and distribution of these new wares, including cutting-edge chemical and petrographic analyses. They use the insights gained to reflect on the changing nature of communities of potters as they participated in the dynamic social conditions of their world.
Focusing on the specific case of Acolhuacan in the eastern Basin of Mexico, Pueblos within Pueblos is the first book to systematically analyze tlaxilacalli history over nearly four centuries, beginning with their rise at the dawn of the Aztec empire through their transformation into the “pueblos” of mid-colonial New Spain. Even before the rise of the Aztecs, commoners in pre-Hispanic central Mexico set the groundwork for a new style of imperial expansion. Breaking free of earlier centralizing patterns of settlement, they spread out across onetime hinterlands and founded new and surprisingly autonomous local communities called, almost interchangeably, tlaxilacalli or calpolli.
Tlaxilacalli were commoner-administered communities that coevolved with the Acolhua empire and structured its articulation and basic functioning. They later formed the administrative backbone of both the Aztec and Spanish empires in northern Mesoamerica and often grew into full and functioning existence before their affiliated altepetl, or sovereign local polities. Tlaxilacalli resembled other central Mexican communities but expressed a local Acolhua administrative culture in their exacting patterns of hierarchy. As semiautonomous units, they could rearrange according to geopolitical shifts and even catalyze changes, as during the rapid additive growth of both the Aztec Triple Alliance and Hispanic New Spain. They were more successful than almost any other central Mexican institution in metabolizing external disruptions (new gods, new economies, demographic emergencies), and they fostered a surprising level of local allegiance, despite their structural inequality. Indeed, by 1692 they were declaring their local administrative independence from the once-sovereign altepetl. Administration through community, and community through administration—this was the primal two-step of the long-lived Acolhua tlaxilacalli, at once colonial and colonialist.
Pueblos within Pueblos examines a woefully neglected aspect of pre-Hispanic and early colonial Mexican historiography and is the first book to fully demonstrate the structuring role tlaxilacalli played in regional and imperial politics in central Mexico. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American ethnohistory, history, and anthropology.
"Race in the Schoolyard is a wonderful book for social scientists studying race, education, and childhood studies. The book showcases the talents of a gifted fieldworker whose theoretically rich work sits on the cutting edge of a growing body of scholarship examining the social worlds of children. School officials, parents, and, most especially, a new generation of teachers will benefit from these lessons on race."-American Journal of Sociology
"Instructors may recommend this book to students to whom the topic is surely vital and engrossing and for whom the text will be lively and engaging."-Contemporary Sociology
"Lewis moves beyond traditional research methods used to examine achievement gaps and differences in test scores to look closely at the realities of schooling. I highly recommend this work for every person involved in teaching and learning."-Multicultural Review
"Through eloquent case studies of three California elementary schools-a white-majority 'good' school, a mostly minority 'tough' school, and an integrated 'alternative' school-[Lewis] demonstrates that schools promote racial inequalities through their daily rituals and practices. Even the notion of a "color-blind" America-an especially popular ideal in the white school-perpetuates racism, Lewis argues, because it denies or dismisses the very real constraints that schools place on minorities. Lewis is nevertheless an optimist, insisting that schools can change ideas of race. . . . Highly recommended. Undergraduate collections and above."-Choice
"In this pioneering ethnography in elementary schools, Lewis shows brilliantly how racism is taught and learned in the small places of everyday life."-Joe Feagin, University of Florida and author of Racist America
"A wonderful and timely book. Ethnographically rich, theoretically sophisticated, and clearly written, this book addresses the ubiquitous issue of race in all its complexity."-Michèle Foster, author of Black Teachers on Teaching
"A compelling ethnography of the racial landscape of contemporary schools."-Barrie Thorne, author of Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School
Could your kids be learning a fourth R at school: reading, writing, 'rithmatic, and race?
Race in the Schoolyard takes us to a place most of us seldom get to see in action¾ our children's classrooms¾ and reveals the lessons about race that are communicated there. Amanda E. Lewis spent a year observing classes at three elementary schools, two multiracial urban and one white suburban. While race of course is not officially taught like multiplication and punctuation, she finds that it nonetheless insinuates itself into everyday life in schools.
Lewis explains how the curriculum, both expressed and hidden, conveys many racial lessons. While teachers and other school community members verbally deny the salience of race, she illustrates how it does influence the way they understand the world, interact with each other, and teach children. This eye-opening text is important reading for educators, parents, and scholars alike.
Cartography has a troubled history as a technology of power. The production and distribution of maps, often understood to be ideological representations that support the interests of their developers, have served as tools of colonization, imperialism, and global development, advancing Western notions of space and place at the expense of Indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities. But over the past two decades, these marginalized populations have increasingly turned to participatory mapping practices to develop new, innovative maps that reassert local concepts of place and space, thus harnessing the power of cartography in their struggles for justice.
In twelve essays written by community leaders, activists, and scholars, Radical Cartographies critically explores the ways in which participatory mapping is being used by Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and other traditional groups in Latin America to preserve their territories and cultural identities. Through this pioneering volume, the authors fundamentally rethink the role of maps, with significant lessons for marginalized communities across the globe, and launch a unique dialogue about the radical edge of a new social cartography.
As members of various and often conflicting communities, how do we reconcile what we have come to understand as our human rights with our responsibilities toward one another? With the bright thread of individualism woven through the American psyche, where can our sense of duty toward others be found? What has happened to our love—even our concern—for our neighbor?
In this revised edition of his magisterial exploration of these critical questions, renowned ethicist Arthur Dyck revisits and profoundly hones his call for the moral bonds of community. In all areas of contemporary life, be it in business, politics, health care, religion—and even in family relationships—the "right" of individuals to consider themselves first has taken precedence over our responsibilities toward others. Dyck contends that we must recast the language of rights to take into account our once natural obligations to all the communities of which we are a part.
Rethinking Rights and Responsibilities, at the nexus of ethics, political theory, public policy, and law, traces how the peculiarly American formulations of the rights of the individual have assaulted our connections with, and responsibilities for, those around us. Dyck critically examines contemporary society and the relationship between responsibilities and rights, particularly as they are expressed in medicine and health care, to maintain that while indeed rights and responsibilities form the moral bonds of community, we must begin with the rudimentary task of taking better care of one another.
Collected essays by a leading philosopher situating the question of the animal in the broader context of a relational ontology
There is a revolution under way in our thinking about animals and, indeed, life in general, particularly in the West. The very words man, animal, and life have turned into flimsy conceptual husks—impediments to thinking about the issues in which they are embroiled. David Wood was a founding member of the early 1970s Oxford Group of philosophers promoting animal rights; he also directed Ecology Action (UK). Thinking Plant Animal Human is the first collection of this major philosopher’s influential essays on “animals,” bringing together his many discussions of nonhuman life, including the classic “Thinking with Cats.”
Exploring our connections with cats, goats, and sand crabs, Thinking Plant Animal Human introduces the idea of “kinnibalism” (the eating of mammals is eating our own kin), reflects on the idea of homo sapiens, and explores the place of animals both in art and in children’s stories. Finally, and with a special focus on trees, the book delves into remarkable contemporary efforts to rescue plants from philosophical neglect and to rethink and reevaluate their status. Repeatedly bubbling to the surface is the remarkable strangeness of other forms of life, a strangeness that extends to the human.
Wood shows that the best way of resisting simplistic classification is to attend to our manifold relationships with other living beings. It is not anthropocentric to focus on such relationships; they cast light in complex ways on the living communities of which we are part, and exploring them recoils profoundly on our understanding of ourselves.
In summer 2014, a surge of unaccompanied child migrants from Central America to the United States gained mainstream visibility—yet migration from Central America has been happening for decades. U.S. Central Americans explores the shared yet distinctive experiences, histories, and cultures of 1.5-and second-generation Central Americans in the United States.
While much has been written about U.S. and Central American military, economic, and political relations, this is the first book to articulate the rich and dynamic cultures, stories, and historical memories of Central American communities in the United States. Contributors to this anthology—often writing from their own experiences as members of this community—articulate U.S. Central Americans’ unique identities as they also explore the contradictions found within this multivocal group.
Working from within Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Maya communities, contributors to this critical study engage histories and transnational memories of Central Americans in public and intimate spaces through ethnographic, in-depth, semistructured, qualitative interviews, as well as literary and cultural analysis. The volume’s generational, spatial, urban, indigenous, women’s, migrant, and public and cultural memory foci contribute to the development of U.S. Central American thought, theory, and methods. Woven throughout the analysis, migrants’ own oral histories offer witness to the struggles of displacement, travel, navigation, and settlement of new terrain. This timely work addresses demographic changes both at universities and in cities throughout the United States.
U.S. Central Americans draws connections to fields of study such as history, political science, anthropology, ethnic studies, sociology, cultural studies, and literature, as well as diaspora and border studies. The volume is also accessible in size, scope, and language to educators and community and service workers wanting to know about their U.S. Central American families, neighbors, friends, students, employees, and clients.
Contributors:
Leisy Abrego
Karina O. Alvarado
Maritza E. Cárdenas
Alicia Ivonne Estrada
Ester E. Hernández
Floridalma Boj Lopez
Steven Osuna
Yajaira Padilla
Ana Patricia Rodríguez
Winner of the 2008 Honor Book by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities
Utopia. New Jersey. For most people—even the most satisfied New Jersey residents—these words hardly belong in the same sentence. Yet, unbeknown to many, history shows that the state has been a favorite location for utopian experiments for more than a century. Thanks to its location between New York and Philadelphia and its affordable land, it became an ideal proving ground where philosophical and philanthropical organizations and individuals could test their utopian theories.
In this intriguing look at this little-known side of New Jersey, Perdita Buchan explores eight of these communities. Adopting a wide definition of the term utopia—broadening it to include experimental living arrangements with a variety of missions—Buchan explains that what the founders of each of these colonies had in common was the goal of improving life, at least as they saw it.
In every other way, the communities varied greatly, ranging from a cooperative colony in Englewood founded by Upton Sinclair, to an anarchist village in Piscataway centered on an educational experiment, to the fascinating Physical Culture City in Spotswood, where drugs, tobacco, and corsets were banned, but where nudity was widespread.
Despite their grand intentions, all but one of the utopias—a single-tax colony in Berkeley Heights—failed to survive. But Buchan shows how each of them left a legacy of much more than the buildings or street names that remain today—legacies that are inspiring, surprising, and often outright quirky.
Jessica Gordon Nembhard is Assistant Professor and Economist, African American Studies Department, and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her work on the history of black cooperatives is well known in progressive circles.
Ngina Chiteji is Associate Professor of Economics, Skidmore College. She was a Visiting Assistant Research Scholar at The Democracy Collaborative, University of Maryland, College Park.
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