front cover of Care without Pathology
Care without Pathology
How Trans- Health Activists Are Changing Medicine
Christoph Hanssmann
University of Minnesota Press, 2023

Examining trans- healthcare as a key site through which struggles for health and justice take shape

 

Over the past two decades, medical and therapeutic approaches to transgender patients have changed radically, from treating a supposed pathology to offering gender-affirming care. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in New York City and Buenos Aires, Care without Pathology moves across the Americas to show how trans- health activists have taken on the project of depathologization.

 

In New York, Christoph Hanssmann examines activist attempts to overturn bans on using public health dollars to fund trans- health care. In Argentina, he traces how trans- activists marshaled medical statistics and personal biographies to reveal state violence directed against trans- people and travestis. Hanssmann also demonstrates the importance of understanding transphobia in the broader context of gendered racism, ableism, and antipoverty, arguing for the rise of a thoroughly coalition-based mass mobilization.

 

Care without Pathology highlights the distributive arguments activists made to access state funding for health care, combating state arguments that funding trans- health care is too specialized, too expensive, and too controversial. Hanssmann situates trans- health as a crucible within which sweeping changes are taking place—with potentially far-reaching effects on the economic and racial barriers to accessing care.

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Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination
From Patriots to Victims
Rosen, David M
Rutgers University Press, 2015
When we hear the term “child soldiers,” most Americans imagine innocent victims roped into bloody conflicts in distant war-torn lands like Sudan and Sierra Leone. Yet our own history is filled with examples of children involved in warfare—from adolescent prisoner of war Andrew Jackson to Civil War drummer boys—who were once viewed as symbols of national pride rather than signs of human degradation.
 
In this daring new study, anthropologist David M. Rosen investigates why our cultural perception of the child soldier has changed so radically over the past two centuries. Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination reveals how Western conceptions of childhood as a uniquely vulnerable and innocent state are a relatively recent invention. Furthermore, Rosen offers an illuminating history of how human rights organizations drew upon these sentiments to create the very term “child soldier,” which they presented as the embodiment of war’s human cost.
 
Filled with shocking historical accounts and facts—and revealing the reasons why one cannot spell “infantry” without “infant”—Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination seeks to shake us out of our pervasive historical amnesia. It challenges us to stop looking at child soldiers through a biased set of idealized assumptions about childhood, so that we can better address the realities of adolescents and pre-adolescents in combat. Presenting informative facts while examining fictional representations of the child soldier in popular culture, this book is both eye-opening and thought-provoking.   
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Children of Six Cultures
A Psycho-Cultural Analysis
Beatrice Whiting and John W. M. Whiting
Harvard University Press, 1975

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The Civilization of Crime
Violence in Town and Country since the Middle Ages
Edited by Eric A. Johnson and Eric H. Monkkonen
University of Illinois Press, 1996
Along with most of the rest
        of Western culture, has crime itself become more "civilized"?
        This book exposes as myths the beliefs that society has become more violent
        than it has been in the past and that violence is more likely to occur
        in cities than in rural areas.
      The product of years of study
        by scholars from North America and Europe, The Civilization of Crime
        shows that, however violent some large cities may be now, both rural and
        urban communities in Sweden, Holland, England, and other countries were
        far more violent during the late Middle Ages than any cities are today.
      Contributors show that the
        dramatic change is due, in part, to the fact that violence was often tolerated
        or even accepted as a form of dispute settlement in village-dominated
        premodern society. Interpersonal violence declined in the seventeenth
        and eighteenth centuries, as dispute resolution was taken over by courts
        and other state institutions and the church became increasingly intolerant
        of it.
      The book also challenges a
        number of other historical-sociological theories, among them that contemporary
        organized crime is new, and addresses continuing debate about the meaning
        and usefulness of crime statistics.
      CONTRIBUTORS: Esther Cohen,
        Herman Diederiks, Florike Egmond, Eric A. Johnson, Michele Mancino, Eric
        H. Monkkonen, Eva Österberg, James A. Sharpe, Pieter Spierenburg,
        Jan Sundin, Barbara Weinberger
 
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front cover of Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence
Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence
Imagination, Empathy, and Resilience
Edited by Eve Monique Zucker and Laura McGrew
University of Michigan Press, 2020

Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence demonstrates how imagination, empathy, and resilience contribute to the processes of social repair after ethnic and political violence. Adding to the literature on transitional justice, peacebuilding, and the anthropology of violence and social repair, the authors show how these conceptual pathways—imagination, empathy and resilience—enhance recovery, coexistence, and sustainable peace. Coexistence (or reconciliation) is the underlying goal or condition desired after mass violence, enabling survivors to move forward with their lives. Imagination allows these survivors (victims, perpetrators, bystanders) to draw guidance and inspiration from their social and cultural imaginaries, to develop empathy, and to envision a future of peace and coexistence. Resilience emerges through periods of violence and its aftermaths through acts of survival, compassion, modes of rebuilding social worlds, and the establishment of a peaceful society.

Focusing on society at the grass roots level, the authors discuss the myriad and little understood processes of social repair that allow ruptured societies and communities to move toward a peaceful and stable future. The volume also illustrates some of the ways in which imagination, empathy, and resilience may contribute to the prevention of future violence and the authors conclude with a number of practical and policy recommendations. The cases include Cambodia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Colombia, the Southern Cone, Iraq, and Bosnia.

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The Colors of Poverty
Why Racial and Ethnic Disparities Persist
Ann Chih Lin
Russell Sage Foundation, 2008
Given the increasing diversity of the nation—particularly with respect to its growing Hispanic and Asian populations—why does racial and ethnic difference so often lead to disadvantage? In The Colors of Poverty, a multidisciplinary group of experts provides a breakthrough analysis of the complex mechanisms that connect poverty and race. The Colors of Poverty reframes the debate over the causes of minority poverty by emphasizing the cumulative effects of disadvantage in perpetuating poverty across generations. The contributors consider a kaleidoscope of factors that contribute to widening racial gaps, including education, racial discrimination, social capital, immigration, and incarceration. Michèle Lamont and Mario Small grapple with the theoretical ambiguities of existing cultural explanations for poverty disparities.  They argue that culture and structure are not competing explanations for poverty, but rather collaborate to produce disparities. Looking at how attitudes and beliefs exacerbate racial stratification, social psychologist Heather Bullock links the rise of inequality in the United States to an increase in public tolerance for disparity. She suggests that the American ethos of rugged individualism and meritocracy erodes support for antipoverty programs and reinforces the belief that people are responsible for their own poverty. Sociologists Darren Wheelock and Christopher Uggen focus on the collateral consequences of incarceration in exacerbating racial disparities and are the first to propose a link between legislation that blocks former drug felons from obtaining federal aid for higher education and the black/white educational attainment gap. Joe Soss and Sanford Schram argue that the increasingly decentralized and discretionary nature of state welfare programs allows for different treatment of racial groups, even when such policies are touted as "race-neutral." They find that states with more blacks and Hispanics on welfare rolls are consistently more likely to impose lifetime limits, caps on benefits for mothers with children, and stricter sanctions. The Colors of Poverty is a comprehensive and evocative introduction to the dynamics of race and inequality. The research in this landmark volume moves scholarship on inequality beyond a simple black-white paradigm, beyond the search for a single cause of poverty, and beyond the promise of one "magic bullet" solution. A Volume in the National Poverty Center Series on Poverty and Public Policy
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Comparative Studies in Special Education
Kaz Mazurek
Gallaudet University Press, 1994
This unequaled collection of international programs will enable educators worldwide to investigate special education practice within its social context to enhance their own initiatives with new ideas. Comparative Studies divides into five sections, each with an introduction to the chapters within. This thorough text begins with limited special education in such venues as South Africa and Senegal. Section Two addresses emerging special education in Nigeria, Brazil, and several other locales. Segregated special education in Japan, Russia, and other countries makes up Section Three, and Section Four explores countries that are approaching integration, such as Poland and Australia. Integrated special education is described in Scandinavia, New Zealand and other nations in the final section. More than 50 noted scholars have contributed to this important work, offering an indispensable, detailed frame of reference for assessing education programs worldwide for all special populations -- blind, deaf, physically and mentally disabled, and all others. Kas Mazurek is Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, at the University of Lethbridge, in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Margret A. Winzer is Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, at the University of Lethbridge, in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. ISBN 1-56368-027-0, 7 x 10 casebound, 516 pages, photos, illustrations, tables, author index, subject index
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The Construction of Homosexuality
David F. Greenberg
University of Chicago Press, 1988
"At various times, homosexuality has been considered the noblest of loves, a horrible sin, a psychological condition or grounds for torture and execution. David F. Greenberg's careful, encyclopedic and important new book argues that homosexuality is only deviant because society has constructed, or defined, it as deviant. The book takes us over vast terrains of example and detail in the history of homosexuality."—Nicholas B. Dirks, New York Times Book Review
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Contemporary Marriage
Kingsley Davis
Russell Sage Foundation, 1985
This fascinating symposium is based on an assumption that no longer seems to need justification: that the institution of marriage is today experiencing profound changes. But the nature of those changes—their causes and consequences—is very much in need of explication. The experts contributing to this volume bring a wide range of perspectives—sociological, anthropological, economic, historical, psychological, and legal—to the problem of marriage in modern society. Together these essays help illuminate a form of relationship that is both vulnerable and resilient, biological and social, a reflection of and an influence on other social institutions. Contemporary Marriage begins with an important assessment of the revolution in marital behavior since World War II, tracing trends in marriage age, cohabitation, divorce, and fertility. The focus here is primarily on the United States and on idustrial societies in general. Later chapters provide intriguing case studies of particular countries. There is a recurrent interest in the impact on marriage of modernization itself, but a number of essays probe influences other than industrial development, such as strong cultural and historical patterns or legislation and state control. Beliefs and expectations about marriage are explored, and human sexuality and gender roles are also considered as factors in the nature of marriage. Contemporary Marriage offers a rich spectrum of approaches to a problem of central importance. The volume will reward an equally broad spectrum of readers interested in the meaning and future of marriage in our society.
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Cooperation and Collective Action
Archaeological Perspectives
David M. Carballo
University Press of Colorado, 2013
Past archaeological literature on cooperation theory has emphasized competition's role in cultural evolution. As a result, bottom-up possibilities for group cooperation have been under theorized in favor of models stressing top-down leadership, while evidence from a range of disciplines has demonstrated humans to effectively sustain cooperative undertakings through a number of social norms and institutions. Cooperation and Collective Action is the first volume to focus on the use of archaeological evidence to understand cooperation and collective action.

Disentangling the motivations and institutions that foster group cooperation among competitive individuals remains one of the few great conundrums within evolutionary theory. The breadth and material focus of archaeology provide a much needed complement to existing research on cooperation and collective action, which thus far has relied largely on game-theoretic modeling, surveys of college students from affluent countries, brief ethnographic experiments, and limited historic cases. In Cooperation and Collective Action, diverse case studies address the evolution of the emergence of norms, institutions, and symbols of complex societies through the last 10,000 years. This book is an important contribution to the literature on cooperation in human societies that will appeal to archaeologists and other scholars interested in cooperation research.

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Coronavirus Politics
The Comparative Politics and Policy of COVID-19
Scott L. Greer, Elizabeth J. King, Elize Massard da Fonseca, André Peralta-Santos, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2021
COVID-19 is the most significant global crisis of any of our lifetimes. The numbers have been stupefying, whether of infection and mortality, the scale of public health measures, or the economic consequences of shutdown. Coronavirus Politics identifies key threads in the global comparative discussion that continue to shed light on COVID-19 and shape debates about what it means for scholarship in health and comparative politics. Editors Scott L. Greer, Elizabeth J. King, Elize Massard da Fonseca, and André Peralta-Santos bring together over 30 authors versed in politics and the health issues in order to understand the health policy decisions, the public health interventions, the social policy decisions, their interactions, and the reasons. The book’s coverage is global, with a wide range of key and exemplary countries, and contains a mixture of comparative, thematic, and templated country studies. All go beyond reporting and monitoring to develop explanations that draw on the authors' expertise while engaging in structured conversations across the book.
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Corporate Futures
The Diffusion of the Culturally Sensitive Corporate Form
Edited by George E. Marcus
University of Chicago Press, 1998
As we approach the end of the century, cultural, institutional, and even geopolitical change becomes the norm rather than the exception. Late Editions, edited by George E. Marcus, is a series of annuals designed to probe these changes not through the familiar academic conventions of analysis but instead through in-depth, informed conversations and interviews with individuals at the sites of these transformations. The casts of other volumes in the series include artists, oncologists, Siberian medical leaders, warhead designers, and computer junkies, all of whom take the opportunity presented by Late Editions to reflect upon the great and often puzzling shifts occurring in the cultural landscape.

Late Editions 5, Corporate Futures, questions this idea of a "cultural landscape" by focusing on the the marked investment of corporations in the concept of culture, long the purview of anthropologists and, more recently, those involved in the humanistic disciplines. Emerging in the discourse of the workplace—and traveling beyond it to traditionally alternative associations—is the idea of a "corporate culture" with its own organization, management policies and practices, and ethos. How can we understand this culture of corporations, and to what extent does it reflect self-contained communities or fragmented human existence in groups under conditions of postmodernity? Corporate Futures tackles these issues and questions through conversations with managers, financial and risk analysts, and other participants in national and international organizations.

The results—engaging, intriguing, speculative, current—continue the work begun in earlier volumes to map the terrain of the present and navigate the uncertain future.

Praise for Late Editions: "If the succeeding volumes are as compassionate and informed as the first, this series could become an essential postmodern guidebook to the world's changing cultural terrain. I plan on letting it ease me into the next century."—Catherine Gysin, Utne Reader

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front cover of Crime and Justice, Volume 31
Crime and Justice, Volume 31
Youth Crime and Youth Justice: Comparative and Cross-national Perspectives
Edited by Michael Tonry and Anthony N. Doob
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2004
Volume 31 of Crime and Justice presents a global view on youth justice systems, examining Canada, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and an aggregation of Western countries. The systems are addressed in five sections, which discuss the relevance of a separate youth justice system, age limitations, historical stability and changes, welfare concerns, and a comparative look at current laws as written and administered.

Contributors:
Hans-Jörg Albrecht
Anthony Bottoms
James Dignan
Anthony N. Doob
Carl-Gunnar Janson
Josine Junger-Tas
Britta Kyvsgaard
Allison Morris
Julian V. Roberts
Jane B. Sprott
Lode Walgrave
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front cover of Crime and Justice, Volume 33
Crime and Justice, Volume 33
Crime and Punishment in Western Countries, 1980-1999
Edited by Michael Tonry and David P. Farrington
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2006
The eight essays in this volume provide comprehensive, up-to-date summaries of crossnational crime trends in Australia, Canada, England, Wales, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. This book is an essential resource for sociologists, psychologists, criminal lawyers, justice scholars, and political scientists who seek an interdisciplinary approach to crime, its causes, and its repercussions. The contributors to this volume are Marcelo F. Aebi, Catrien C. J. H. Bijleveld, Alfred Blumstein, Carlos Carcach, Philip J. Cook, Mark Irving, Darrick Jolliffe, Nataliya Khmilevska, Martin Killias, Philippe Lamon, Patrick A. Langan, Asheley Van Ness, Paul R. Smit, David J. Smith, and Brandon Welsh.
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front cover of Crime and Justice, Volume 36
Crime and Justice, Volume 36
Crime, Punishment, and Politics in Comparative Perspective
Edited by Michael Tonry
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2008
The goal of Crime and Justice, Volume 36 is to advance the understanding of the determinants of penal policies in developed countries. The contributors explore the distinctive national differences in policy in responses to rising crime rates, rapid social change, economic dislocation and increased ethnic diversity. Countries covered include Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Japan, France, Norway and the United States.
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Cultural Boundaries of Science
Credibility on the Line
Thomas F. Gieryn
University of Chicago Press, 1998
Why is science so credible? Usual answers center on scientists' objective methods or their powerful instruments. In his new book, Thomas Gieryn argues that a better explanation for the cultural authority of science lies downstream, when scientific claims leave laboratories and enter courtrooms, boardrooms, and living rooms. On such occasions, we use "maps" to decide who to believe—cultural maps demarcating "science" from pseudoscience, ideology, faith, or nonsense.

Gieryn looks at episodes of boundary-work: Was phrenology good science? How about cold fusion? Is social science really scientific? Is organic farming? After centuries of disputes like these, Gieryn finds no stable criteria that absolutely distinguish science from non-science. Science remains a pliable cultural space, flexibly reshaped to claim credibility for some beliefs while denying it to others. In a timely epilogue, Gieryn finds this same controversy at the heart of the raging "science wars."




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Cultural Persistence
Continuity in Meaning and Moral Responsibility Among the Bearlake Athapaskans
Scott Rushforth
University of Arizona Press, 1991
The Bearlake Athapaskan-speaking Indians of Canada's Northwest Territories have valued industriousness, generosity, individual autonomy, and emotional restraint for many generations. They also highly esteem "control" in human thought and behavior. The latter value integrates the others in a coherent framework of moral responsibility that persists as a central feature of Bearlake culture. Rushforth here provides an ethnographic description and analysis of these beliefs and values, which considers their relationship to examples of Bearlake social behavior.
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Cultural Styles of Knowledge Transmission
Essays in Honour of Ad Borsboom
Edited by Jean Kommers and Eric Venbrux
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
Anthropologist Dr Ad Borsboom, chair of Pacific Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, devoted his academic career from 1972 onwards to the transmission of cultural knowledge. Borsboom handed the insights he acquired during many years of fieldwork among Australian Aborigines on to other academics, students and the general public. This collection of essays by his colleagues, specializing in cultures from across the globe, focuses on knowledge transmission. The contributions deal with local forms of education or pedagogics, the learning experiences of fieldwork and the nexus of status and education. Whereas some essays are reflexive, others are personal in nature. But all of the authors are fascinated by the divergent ways in which people handle ‘knowledge’. The volume provides readers with respectful representations of other cultures and their distinct epistemologies.
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Culture and Well-Being
Anthropological Approaches to Freedom and Political Ethics
Alberto Corsin Jimenez
Pluto Press, 2008
The concept of well-being has emerged as a key category of social and political thought, especially in the fields of moral and political philosophy, development studies, and economics.



This book takes a critical look at the notion of well-being by examining what well-being means, or could mean, to people living in a number of different regions including Sudan, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, India, Sierra Leone, and the UK.



The contributors take issue with some of the assumptions behind Western concepts of well-being. They explore what characterizes a "good life" and how this idea has been affected by globalization and neoliberalism.



The book makes a major contribution to social theory by presenting new analytical models that make sense of the changing shapes of people's life and ethical values.

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