front cover of Feminist Organizations
Feminist Organizations
Harvest of the New Women's Movement
edited by Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin
Temple University Press, 1995

This collection of twenty-six original essays looks at contemporary feminist organizations, how they've survived, the effects of their work, the problems they face, the strategies they develop, and where the women's movement is headed. The contributors, leading feminist scholars from nine social science disciplines, examine a wide variety of local feminist organizations, past and preset, illuminating the struggles of feminist organizers and activists.


In the series Women in the Political Economy, edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg.
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The Harvest of American Racism
The Political Meaning of Violence in the Summer of 1967
Robert Shellow
University of Michigan Press, 2018

In the summer of 1967, in response to violent demonstrations that rocked 164 U.S. cities, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, a.k.a. the Kerner Commission, was formed. The Commission sought reasons for the disturbances, including the role that law enforcement played. Chief among its research projects was a study of 23 American cities, headed by social psychologist Robert Shellow. An early draft of the scientists’ analysis, titled “The Harvest of American Racism: The Political Meaning of Violence in the Summer of 1967,” provoked the Commission’s staff in November 1967 by uncovering political causes for the unrest; the team of researchers was fired, and the controversial report remained buried at the LBJ Presidential Library until now.

The first publication of the Harvest report half a century later reveals that many of the issues it describes are still with us, including how cities might more effectively and humanely react to groups and communities in protest. In addition to the complete text of the suppressed Harvest report, the book includes an introduction by Robert Shellow that provides useful historical context; personal recollections from four of the report’s surviving social scientists, Robert Shellow, David Boesel, Gary T. Marx, and David O. Sears; and an appendix outlining the differences between the unpublished Harvest analysis and the well-known Kerner Commission Report that followed it.

“The [Harvest of American Racism] report was rejected by Johnson administration functionaries as being far too radical—politically ‘unviable’… Social science can play an extremely positive role in fighting racial and other injustice and inequality, but only if it is matched with a powerful political will to implement the findings.  That will has never come from within an American presidential administration—that will has only been forged in black and other radical communities’ movements for justice. The political power for change, as incremental as it has been, has come from within those communities. Washington responds, it does not lead."
—from the Foreword by Michael C. Dawson

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Harvest of Blossoms
Poems from a Life Cut Short
Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger
Northwestern University Press, 2008
A rediscovered poetry collection from a lost voice of the Holocaust
 
Revealing an artist of remarkable talent and enduring hope, this collection of poetry will join Anne Frank's diary as a touching reminder of what the world has lost by a life cut short. The poems written by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger are astonishing for their beauty; it is equally astonishing that they have survived at all.
 
Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger was born in Czernowitz, Romania, now Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Czernowitz, known for its vibrant mix of languages and ethnicities, was famously described by Selma's cousin, poet Paul Celan, as a city "where human beings and books used to live." Her childhood friends speak of Selma's liveliness and irreverence, her sparkling and mischievous personality, her charming, careless appearance, and her independence. Selma was passionate about ideas, literature, music, and art.
As the storm of hatred gripping Europe broke in earnest, Selma expressed her desires and fears in poetry. Between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, Selma wrote fifty-two poems and five translations—two from French, two from Yiddish, one from Romanian—that are published here. Selma's verse addressed the longings of a young woman in love; in equal measure, it confronted the incomprehensible violence engulfing Europe. Selma found beauty in the fragility of chestnuts, comfort in the loneliness of rain, grief in rural poverty, and, with despairing courage, faced a diminishing and terrifying future.
 
Selma grew up during a time of rising anti-Semitic and nationalist sentiments. When the Germans and their Romanian allies entered Czernowitz in 1941, Jews faced the brutality associated with fascism: a cruelty that would have preferred that she--and her entire history and culture--be erased. After being quarantined to a ghetto in October, 1941, Jewish Romanians were deported to work camps by Romanian officials. In July of 1942, Selma and her family were sent to Michailowka, a labor camp in Ukraine, where they worked as slaves in unspeakable conditions. Remarkably, some records of Selma's experience have survived; because of them, we know that even in the camp Selma held the beauty of language in her heart along with an aching desire to return to her home. Selma's last piece of writing, a letter to her dear friend, Renee Abramvici-Michaeli, is a record of Selma's abiding courage and her bleak hope that a better world would follow. Selma died of typhus on December 16, 1942, her death reported in the diary of an artist who was with Selma in the labor camp. She was only eighteen.
 
Selma left behind a powerful trace of her life and world in this poetry album. The album's survival is a story in itself. Selma gave the album to Renee to give to Selma's friend Leiser Fichman. Leiser passed the album on to Abramovici-Michaeli before he died when his boat to Palestine was torpedoed and sank. Renee Abramovici-Michaeli traveled to Israel across rivers, mountains, and political borders, losing every piece of luggage except for the backpack that held Selma's album. The album then remained with Renee for thirty years, until Czernowitzers in Israel and family abroad financed a private publication. Selma's work first reached a broader audience, however, after Paul Celan insisted that Selma's "Poem" be printed next to his piece in a 1968 German anthology. An interested journalist, after traveling to Israel to see if he could find out more, brought the poems back to Germany, where the first edition was published in 1980.
 
Now, in this first English translation, Selma's life and her magnificent album can reach out to a new audience that seeks a fuller picture of what was lost. A rich introduction explains the historical context and the story of Selma's life. That these poems exist is stunning enough; that they are as touching and universal as they are is a revelation.
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Harvest of Despair
Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule
Karel C. Berkhoff
Harvard University Press, 2008

“If I find a Ukrainian who is worthy of sitting at the same table with me, I must have him shot,” declared Nazi commissar Erich Koch. To the Nazi leaders, the Ukrainians were Untermenschen—subhumans. But the rich land was deemed prime territory for Lebensraum expansion. Once the Germans rid the country of Jews, Roma, and Bolsheviks, the Ukrainians would be used to harvest the land for the master race.

Karel Berkhoff provides a searing portrait of life in the Third Reich’s largest colony. Under the Nazis, a blend of German nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racist notions about the Slavs produced a reign of terror and genocide. But it is impossible to understand fully Ukraine’s response to this assault without addressing the impact of decades of repressive Soviet rule. Berkhoff shows how a pervasive Soviet mentality worked against solidarity, which helps explain why the vast majority of the population did not resist the Germans. He also challenges standard views of wartime eastern Europe by treating in a more nuanced way issues of collaboration and local anti-Semitism.

Berkhoff offers a multifaceted discussion that includes the brutal nature of the Nazi administration; the genocide of the Jews and Roma; the deliberate starving of Kiev; mass deportations within and beyond Ukraine; the role of ethnic Germans; religion and national culture; partisans and the German response; and the desperate struggle to stay alive. Harvest of Despair is a gripping depiction of ordinary people trying to survive extraordinary events.

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Harvest of Hazards
Family Farming, Accidents, and Expertise in the Corn Belt, 1940-1975
Derek S. Oden
University of Iowa Press, 2017
Farming has always been a dangerous occupation. In the middle of the twentieth century, as farmers adopted a wide array of new technologies, from tractors to pesticides and fertilizers, the dangers became more acute. The economic pressures that agriculture faced in this period compounded the perils of these powerful new tools, as farmers struggled to stay profitable in the face of widespread consolidation.

In this study of the farm safety movement in the Corn Belt, historian Derek Oden examines why agriculture was so dangerous and why improvements were so difficult to achieve. Because farmers were self-employed business owners whose employees were mainly family members; because they lived far from aid such as hospitals and fire stations; and because they had to manage such a diverse array of new technologies, they could not easily adopt the workplace safety and public health reforms designed for factories and urban settings. In response, beginning in the 1940s, farmers and a new breed of farm safety specialists relied upon an increasingly elaborate educational campaign to lessen injuries and illnesses on the farm.

Several government, business, and nonprofit organizations—from the US Department of Agriculture to the National Safety Council and 4-H and the Future Farmers of America—worked together to publicize both the dangers of farming and the information farmers needed to stay safe while driving tractors, applying anhydrous ammonia, or repairing machinery. By the 1960s, however, the partnership began to break down, and by the 1970s the safety movement became increasingly contested as professional and policy divisions emerged. This groundbreaking study incorporates agriculture into the histories of occupational safety and public health.
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Harvest of the Palm
Ecological Change in Eastern Indonesia
James J. Fox
Harvard University Press, 1977

Paradoxically, at a time when hunting and gathering societies are almost a thing of the past, a subsistence system based on gathering is not only persisting but actually gaining ground in southeastern Indonesia. The economy of the small islands of Roti and Savu is centered on the intensive use of the lontar palm tree, whose juice is the staple of the people's diet and whose leaves, leafstalks, and trunks provide the wherewithal for their housing and most of their needs.

This economy, marvelously stable and adaptive, is described in detail by James Fox, and is contrasted with that of the large neighboring islands, Timor and Sumba; there slash-and-burn agriculture has led to steady ecological deterioration, in the wake of which the lontar economy of the smaller islands has gained a foothold and is gradually expanding. How these developments came about is revealed by an examination of the history of the islands over several hundred years and the effects of the policies of successive colonial governments. The historical perspective adds depth to the ethnographic presentation and is vital to the anthropological analysis of social change.

In preparation for the writing of this book the author spent three years in the Timor area, especially on Roti; learned Dutch, Indonesian, and several local island dialects; and had done intensive historical research in Indonesia and in archives in the Netherlands.

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Mayas in Postwar Guatemala
Harvest of Violence Revisited
Edited by Walter E. Little and Timothy J. Smith
University of Alabama Press, 2009
Like the original Harvest of Violence, published in 1988, this volume reveals how the contemporary Mayas contend with crime, political violence, internal community power struggles, and the broader impact of transnational economic and political policies in Guatemala. However, this work, informed by long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Mayan communities and commitment to conducting research in Mayan languages, places current anthropological analyses in relation to Mayan political activism and key Mayan intellectuals’ research and criticism. Illustrating specifically how Mayas in this post-war period conceive of their social and political place in Guatemala, Mayas working in factories, fields, and markets, and participating in local, community-level politics provide critiques of the government, the Maya movement, and the general state of insecurity and social and political violence that they continue to face on a daily basis. Their critical assessments and efforts to improve political, social, and economic conditions illustrate their resiliency and positive, nonviolent solutions to Guatemala’s ongoing problems that deserve serious consideration by Guatemalan and US policy makers, international non-government organizations, peace activists, and even academics studying politics, social agency, and the survival of indigenous people.
CONTRIBUTORS
Abigail E. Adams / José Oscar Barrera Nuñez / Peter Benson / Barbara Bocek / Jennifer L. Burrell / Robert M. Carmack / Monica DeHart / Edward F. Fischer / Liliana Goldín / Walter E. Little / Judith M. Maxwell / J. Jailey Philpot-Munson / Brenda Rosenbaum / Timothy J. Smith / David Stoll
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front cover of Tomorrow We're All Going to the Harvest
Tomorrow We're All Going to the Harvest
Temporary Foreign Worker Programs and Neoliberal Political Economy
By Leigh Binford
University of Texas Press, 2013

From its inception in 1966, the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) has grown to employ approximately 20,000 workers annually, the majority from Mexico. The program has been hailed as a model that alleviates human rights concerns because, under contract, SAWP workers travel legally, receive health benefits, contribute to pensions, are represented by Canadian consular officials, and rate the program favorably. Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest takes us behind the ideology and examines the daily lives of SAWP workers from Tlaxcala, Mexico (one of the leading sending states), observing the great personal and family price paid in order to experience a temporary rise in a standard of living. The book also observes the disparities of a gutted Mexican countryside versus the flourishing agriculture in Canada, where farm labor demand remains high.

Drawn from extensive surveys and nearly two hundred interviews, ethnographic work in Ontario (destination of over 77 percent of migrants in the author’s sample), and quantitative data, this is much more than a case study; it situates the Tlaxcala-Canada exchange within the broader issues of migration, economics, and cultural currents. Bringing to light the historical genesis of “complementary” labor markets and the contradictory positioning of Mexican government representatives, Leigh Binford also explores the language barriers and nonexistent worker networks in Canada, as well as the physical realities of the work itself, making this book a complete portrait of a provocative segment of migrant labor.

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