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Introduces an analytic model for how archaeologists can work toward social justice

In this time of Black Lives Matter, the demands of NAGPRA, and climate crises, the field of American archaeology needs a radical transformation. It has been largely a white, male, privileged domain that replicates an entrenched patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist system. In Bending Archaeology toward Social Justice, Barbara J. Little explores the concepts and actions required for such a change, looking to peace studies, anthropology, sociology, social justice activism, and the achievements of community-based archaeology for helpful approaches in keeping with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. She introduces an analytic model that uses the strengths of archaeology to destabilize violence and build peace.

As Little explains, the Diachronic Transformational Action model and the peace/violence triad of interconnected personal, cultural, and structural domains of power can help disrupt the injustice of all forms of violence. Diachronic connects the past to the present to understand how power worked in the past and works now. Transformational influences power now by disrupting the stability of the violence triad. Action refers to collaborative work to diagnose power relations and transform toward social justice.

Using this framework, Little confronts the country’s founding and myth of liberty and justice for all, as well as the American Dream. She also examines whiteness, antiracism, privilege, and intergenerational trauma, and offers white archaeologists concepts to grapple with their own racialized identities and to consider how to relinquish white supremacy. Archaeological case studies examine cultural violence and violent direct actions against women, Indigenous peoples, African Americans, and Japanese Americans, while archaeologies of poverty, precarity, and labor are used to show how archaeologists have helped expose the roots of these injustices. Because climate justice is integral to social justice, Little showcases insights that archaeology can bring to bear on the climate crisis and how lessons from the past can inform direct actions today. Finally, Little invites archaeologists to embrace inquiry and imagination so that they can both imagine and achieve the positive peace of social justice.
 

Renowned for his fierce devotion to the people of Texas—as well as his equally fierce rages and unpredictable temper—Bob Bullock was the most powerful political figure in Texas at the end of the twentieth century. First elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1956, Bullock held several key statewide posts before capturing the lieutenant governor's office in 1990. Though nominally the state's number two official, Bullock in fact became Texas's top power broker, wielding tremendous influence over the legislative agenda and state budget through the 1990s while also mentoring and supporting a future president—George W. Bush.

In this lively, yet thoroughly researched biography, award-winning journalists Dave McNeely and Jim Henderson craft a well-rounded portrait of Bob Bullock, underscoring both his political adroitness and his personal demons. They trace Bullock's rise through state government as Assistant Attorney General, Secretary of State, State Comptroller, and Lieutenant Governor, showing how he increased the power of every office he held. The authors spotlight Bullock's substantial achievements, which included hiring an unprecedented number of women and minorities, instituting a performance review to increase the efficiency of state agencies, restructuring the public school funding system, and creating the state's first water conservation and management plan.