Control and Subversion makes an important contribution to the study of Muslim societies in general, while also being a unique study of a neglected area – post-Soviet Tajikistan – a country gaining increasing importance in the international arena of Central Asia. The book presents an intimate view of this society, told through ethnographically collected life histories, unusually including men’s as well as women’s. Despite developing significant gender theories (notably reframing work of Judith Butler), and maintaining high academic standards, it remains as readable as a popular novel.
Control and Subversion investigates the relationship of gender to the inner workings of social control, such as exposing ways in which Tajik society threatens men’s masculinity, thereby bringing them to force family members into conformity, irrespective of the suffering this may cause. It examines how masculine and feminine gender characteristics influence personal relationships and explores gender relations at their most intimate – from the secret musings of adolescent girls, through the painful experiences of young men, to the trauma of sexual initiation. Although largely concentrating on contemporary life, the book also discusses historical materials and Soviet influence on Tajik society. Control and Subversion is essential reading for anyone interested in Central Asia, Muslim societies, the lives of Muslim women, or gender in a Muslim context.

Illegal migrants who evade detection, creators of value in insecure and precarious working conditions and those who refuse the constraints of sexual and biomedical classifications: these are the people who manage to subvert power and to craft unexpected sociabilities and experiences. Escape Routes shows how people can escape control and create social change by becoming imperceptible to the political system of Global North Atlantic societies.

The bandido, the harlot, the male buffoon, the female clown, the Latin lover, and the dark lady—these have been the defining, and demeaning, images of Latinos in U.S. cinema for more than a century. In this book, Charles Ramírez Berg develops an innovative theory of stereotyping that accounts for the persistence of such images in U.S. popular culture. He also explores how Latino actors and filmmakers have actively subverted and resisted such stereotyping.

In the first part of the book, Berg sets forth his theory of stereotyping, defines the classic stereotypes, and investigates how actors such as Raúl Julia, Rosie Pérez, José Ferrer, Lupe Vélez, and Gilbert Roland have subverted stereotypical roles. In the second part, he analyzes Hollywood's portrayal of Latinos in three genres: social problem films, John Ford westerns, and science fiction films. In the concluding section, Berg looks at Latino self-representation and anti-stereotyping in Mexican American border documentaries and in the feature films of Robert Rodríguez. He also presents an exclusive interview in which Rodríguez talks about his entire career, from Bedhead to Spy Kids, and comments on the role of a Latino filmmaker in Hollywood and how he tries to subvert the system.

Vegans and cyclists are often outsiders, negotiating food systems and built environments that tend to prioritize omnivores and motor vehicles by default. Pedaling Resistance: Sympathy, Subversion, and Vegan Cycling examines the relationship between veganism and cycling through the journeys, experiences, and reflections of a dozen vegan cyclists from the United States and beyond.
 
The essays in this collection explore the unity between cycling for health, work, competition, transport, and joy, and the issues of animal suffering, environmentalism, and speciesism inherent in veganism—all through lenses of class, race, gender, and disability. Pedaling Resistance illuminates themes of everyday resistance and boundary crossing to uncover the greater social and political issues that underlie the decisions to give up animal products and choose cycling over driving.
 

In spite of some scholars’ inclination to include the book of Jubilees as another witness to “Enochic Judaism,” the relationship of Jubilees to the apocalyptic writings and events surrounding the Maccabean revolt has never been adequately clarified. This book builds on scholarship on genre to establish a clear pattern among the ways Jubilees resembles and differs from other apocalypses. Jubilees matches the apocalypses of its day in overall structure and literary morphology. Jubilees also uses the literary genre to raise the issues typical of the apocalypses—including revelation, angels and demons, judgment, and eschatology—but rejects what the apocalypses typically say about those issues, subverting reader expectations with a corrected view. In addition to the main argument concerning Jubilees, this volume’s survey of what is fundamentally apocalyptic about apocalyptic literature advances the understanding of early Jewish apocalyptic literature and, in turn, of later apocalypses and comparable perspectives, including those of Paul and the Qumran sectarians.

In this impressive study, David Rich demonstrates how the modernization of Russia's general staff during the second half of the nineteenth century reshaped its intellectual and strategic outlook and equipped the staff to play a strong, and at times dominant, role in shaping Russian foreign policy.

Rich weaves together several levels of narrative to show how the increasingly sophisticated, scientific, and positivistic work attitudes and habits of the general staff acculturated younger officers, redefining their relationship with, and responsibilities to, the state. In time, this new generation of officers projected their characteristic notions onto the state and onto autocracy itself; professional concern for the security of the state eclipsed traditional unquestioning loyalty to the regime. Rich goes on to show how divergence between diplomatic and military aims among those responsible for making strategy cost the state dearly in terms of economic stability and international standing.

The author supports his findings with original research in Russian foreign policy and military archives and wide reading in published sources. The Tsar's Colonels contributes to a number of debates in Russian military and social history and offers new insights on the structural roots of the Great War, and on the theoretical problems of modernization and professionalization.