Results by title

Media representations and practices that have emerged out of contemporary wars have been well documented by a wide array of books and articles. These treatments, however, have been less attentive to how cultural constructions of military personnel and war itself figure in the depiction of the incursions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Post-Feminist War, Mary Douglas Vavrus argues that all of these identity categories are integral to our understanding of those fighting, saved, or victimized by war. She considers two important questions: how the construction of gender, race, and class in media are productive of régimes of truth regarding war and military life, and how such constructions may also intensify militarism. By examining news and documentary media produced since September 11, 2001, Vavrus demonstrates that news narratives that include women use feminism selectively in gender equality narratives, which tend to reinforce historically resonant gender, race, and class identity constructions. She ultimately asserts that such reporting advances post-feminism, which, in tandem with banal militarism, subtly pushes military solutions for an array of problems women and girls face. 

Ten years after the Human Genome Project’s completion the life sciences stand in a moment of uncertainty, transition, and contestation. The postgenomic era has seen rapid shifts in research methodology, funding, scientific labor, and disciplinary structures. Postgenomics is transforming our understanding of disease and health, our environment, and the categories of race, class, and gender. At the same time, the gene retains its centrality and power in biological and popular discourse. The contributors to Postgenomics analyze these ruptures and continuities and place them in historical, social, and political context. Postgenomics, they argue, forces a rethinking of the genome itself, and opens new territory for conversations between the social sciences, humanities, and life sciences.

Contributors. Russ Altman, Rachel A. Ankeny, Catherine Bliss, John Dupré, Michael Fortun, Evelyn Fox Keller, Sabina Leonelli, Adrian Mackenzie, Margot Moinester, Aaron Panofsky, Sarah S. Richardson, Sara Shostak, Hallam Stevens

Posthegemony is an investigation into the origins, limits, and possibilities for contemporary politics and political analysis. Jon Beasley-Murray grounds his theoretical discussion with accounts of historical movements in Latin America, from Columbus to Chávez, and from Argentine Peronism to Peru's Sendero Luminoso.
 

Challenging dominant strains in social theory, Beasley-Murray contends that cultural studies simply replicates the populism that conditions it, and that civil society theory merely nourishes the neoliberalism that it sets out to oppose. Both end up entrenching the fiction of a social contract. In place of hegemony or civil society, Beasley-Murray presents a theory of posthegemony, focusing on affect, habit, and the multitude. This approach addresses an era of biopolitics and bare life, tedium and terror, in which state control is ever more pervasive but something always escapes.

In his thorough examination, Beasley-Murray undoes the dominant narrative of hegemonic projects and counterhegemonic resistance, of civilization and subalternity, to reveal instead a history of failed contracts and unpredicted insurgencies.

Latin America is experiencing a boom in graphic novels that are innovative in their conceptual play and their reworking of the medium. Drawing on a range of sophisticated work, these graphic novels experiment with questions of the representation of urban space, modes of perception and cognition, and new forms of ethics in the post-human world. As the first book-length study of the topic, this book argues that the graphic novel’s emergence in Latin America acts as a uniquely powerful force exploring the nature of twenty-first-century subjectivity, emphasizing the ways that humans are bound to their non-human environment.
 

As elected coroners came to be replaced by medical examiners with scientific training, the American public became fascinated with their work. From the grisly investigations showcased on highly rated television shows like C.S.I. to the bestselling mysteries that revolve around forensic science, medical examiners have never been so visible—or compelling. They, and they alone, solve the riddle of suspicious death and the existential questions that come with it. Why did someone die? Could it have been prevented? Should someone be held accountable? What are the implications of ruling a death a suicide, a homicide, or an accident? Can medical examiners unmask the perfect crime?

Postmortem goes deep inside the world of medical examiners to uncover the intricate web of pathological, social, legal, and moral issues in which they operate. Stefan Timmermans spent years in a medical examiner’s office, following cases, interviewing examiners, and watching autopsies. While he relates fascinating cases here, he is also more broadly interested in the cultural authority and responsibilities that come with being a medical examiner. Although these professionals attempt to remain objective, medical examiners are nonetheless responsible for evaluating subtle human intentions. Consequently, they may end—or start—criminal investigations, issue public health alerts, and even cause financial gain or harm to survivors. How medical examiners speak to the living on behalf of the dead, is Timmermans’s subject, revealed here in the day-to-day lives of the examiners themselves.

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.

Just as a single pot starts with a lump of clay, the study of a piece’s history must start with an understanding of its raw materials. This principle is the foundation of Pottery Analysis, the acclaimed sourcebook that has become the indispensable guide for archaeologists and anthropologists worldwide. By grounding current research in the larger history of pottery and drawing together diverse approaches to the study of pottery, it offers a rich, comprehensive view of ceramic inquiry.

This new edition fully incorporates more than two decades of growth and diversification in the fields of archaeological and ethnographic study of pottery. It begins with a summary of the origins and history of pottery in different parts of the world, then examines the raw materials of pottery and their physical and chemical properties. It addresses ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological perspectives on pottery production; reviews the methods of studying pottery’s physical, mechanical, thermal, mineralogical, and chemical properties; and discusses how proper analysis of artifacts can reveal insights into their culture of origin. Intended for use in the classroom, the lab, and out in the field, this essential text offers an unparalleled basis for pottery research.

Pottery is one of the most important classes of artifacts available to archaeologists and anthropologists. Every year, volumes of data are generated detailing ceramic production, distribution, and consumption. How these data can be interpreted in relation to the social and cultural framework of prehistoric societies in Mesoamerica is the subject of this book.

Nine chapters written by some of the most well known and respected scholars in the field offer readers an in-depth look at key advances from the past fifteen years. These scholars examine ethnoarchaeological studies and the Preclassic/Formative, Classic, and Postclassic periods and cover geographic areas from eastern to central Mesoamerica. In a series of case studies, contributors address a range of new and developing theories and methods for inferring the technological, organizational, and social dimensions of pottery economics, and draw on a range of sociopolitical examples. Specific topics include the impacts and costs of innovations, the role of the producer in technological choices, the outcomes when errors in vessel formation are tolerated or rectified, the often undocumented multiple lives and uses of ceramic pieces, and the difficulties associated with locating and documenting ceramic production areas in tropical lowlands.

A compelling collection that clearly integrates and synthesizes a wide array of data, this book is the definitive text on pottery economics in Mesoamerica and an important contribution to the fields of anthropology, archaeology, ancient history, and the economics of pre-industrial societies.
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

1 . Conceptual Issues in Mesoamerican Pottery Economics
Christopher A. Pool and George J. Bey III

2 . An Ethnoarchaeological Perspective on Local Ceramic Production and Distribution in the Maya Highlands
Michael Deal

3 . Why Was the Potter’s Wheel Rejected? Social Choice and Technological Change in Ticul, Yucatán, Mexico
Dean E. Arnold, Jill Huttar Wilson, and Alvaro L. Nieves

4 . Ceramic Production at La Joya, Veracruz: Early Formative Techno Logics and Error Loads
Philip J. Arnold III

5 . Blanco Levantado: A New World Amphora
George J. Bey III

6 . Pottery Production and Distribution in the Gulf Lowlands of Mesoamerica
Barbara L. Stark

7 . Household Production and the Regional Economy in Ancient Oaxaca: Classic Period Perspectives from Hilltop El Palmillo and Valley-Floor Ejutla
Gary M. Feinman and Linda M. Nicholas

8 . Pottery Production and Exchange in the Petexbatun Polity, Petén, Guatemala
Antonia E. Foias and Ronald L. Bishop

9 . Aztec Otumba, AD 1200--1600: Patterns of the Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Ceramic Products
Thomas H. Charlton, Cynthia L. Otis Charlton, Deborah L. Nichols, and Hector Neff

References Cited
About the Contributors
Index
 

Although most ceramic studies describe vessel production and use, the causes and rates of pottery discard are often neglected in archaeological studies. Michael Shott presents analytical methods for determining pottery use life and demonstrates why use life should not be overlooked.
 
Over a five-year period Shott inventoried the household pottery of about twenty-five homes in five towns in Michoacán, Mexico, recording age and types of use. He also looked at a subsample on a monthly basis over two years to estimate the magnitude of early vessel failure that would go unnoticed in an annual census. His analysis of about 900 vessels clearly shows that context does not explain use life, but vessel size does. Bigger pots last longer. Consulting other ethnoarchaeological sources for comparison and cross-cultural perspectives, Shott shows that his results can be applied to other archaeological datasets for determining numbers of original whole vessels as well as site occupation span. 
 

By analyzing the pottery found at a well-known archaeological site, Hilgeman constructs the long-awaited timeline for the rise and decline of this ancient society.

Located near present-day Evansville, Indiana, the Angel site is one of the important archaeological towns associated with prehistoric Mississippian society. More than two million artifacts were collected from this site during excavations from 1939 to 1989, but, until now, no systematic survey of the pottery sherds had been conducted. This volume, documenting the first in-depth analysis of Angel site pottery, also provides scholars of Mississippian culture with a chronology of this important site.

Angel is generally thought to have been occupied from before A.D. 1200 to 1450, but scholars have been forced to treat this period as one chronological unit without any sense of the growth and decline of the society that occupied it. Using radiocarbon assays and an analysis of its morphological and stylistic attributes of pottery, Sherri Hilgeman is able to divide the occupation of Angel into a series of recognizable stages. She then correlates those stages with similar ones at other archaeological excavations—especially nearby Kincaid—making it possible to compare Angel society with other native cultures of the lower Ohio Valley. Through this important contribution to native pottery studies, Hilgeman opens a window into the lifeways of prehistoric Angel society and places that society in the larger context of Mississippian culture.

 

 

This volume emphasizes the complex interactions between ceramic containers and people in past and present contexts.

Pottery, once it appears in the archaeological record, is one of the most routinely recovered artifacts. It is made frequently, broken often, and comes in endless varieties according to economic and social requirements. Moreover, even in shreds ceramics can last almost forever, providing important clues about past human behavior.

The contributors to this volume, all leaders in ceramic research, probe the relationship between humans and ceramics. Here they offer new discoveries obtained through traditional lines of inquiry, demonstrate methodological breakthroughs, and expose innovative new areas for research. Among the topics covered in this volume are the age at which children begin learning pottery making; the origins of pottery in the Southwest U.S., Mesoamerica, and Greece; vessel production and standardization; vessel size and food consumption patterns; the relationship between pottery style and meaning; and the role pottery and other material culture plays in communication.

Pottery and People provides a cross-section of the state of the art, emphasizing the complete interactions between ceramic containers and people in past and present contexts. This is a milestone volume useful to anyone interested in the connections between pots and people.

This volume is compilation of individual papers from the Great Basin/California Pottery Workshop of April 1983. The papers include data reports, literature reviews, statements of theoretical positions, and analytical methodology. All address ceramics, primarily of undecorated wares, from the Great Basin and nearby areas. 

Poultry Science, Chicken Culture is a collection of engrossing, witty, and thought-provoking essays about the chicken-the familiar domestic bird that has played an intimate part in our cultural, scientific, social, economic, legal, and medical practices and concerns since ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Organized as a primer, the book reaches beyond narrow disciplines to discover why individuals are so fascinated with the humble, funny, overlooked, and omnipresent chicken.

          Spanning fascinating and diverse fields, Susan Merrill Squier assesses the chicken as the focus of film, photography, and visual art in many media; details some of the roles played by chickens and eggs in the development of embryology, biology, and regenerative medicine; traces the iconic figure of the chicken (and the chicken thief) in political discourse during the 2008 presidential election; demonstrates the types of knowledge that have been lost as food production moved from small-scale farming to industrial agriculture; investigates the connection between women and chickens; analyzes the fears and risks behind the panic around avian flu; and scrutinizes the role of chicken farming in international development. A combination of personal passion and surprising scholarly information, Poultry Science, Chicken Culture will change forever the way you think about chickens.

"[An] alarming report, a rigorous study packed with charts, tables, 1990 census data and [Jargowsky's] own extensive field work.... His careful analysis of enterprise zones, job-creation strategies, local economic development schemes and housing and tax policies rounds out an essential handbook for policy makers, a major contribution to public debate over ways to reverse indigence." —Publishers Weekly "A data-rich description and a conceptually innovative explanation of the spread of neighborhood poverty in the United States between 1970 and 1990. Urban scholars and policymakers alike should find Jargowsky's compelling arguments thought-provoking. "—Library Journal "A powerful book that allows us to really understand how ghettos have been changing over time and the forces behind these changes. It should be required reading of anyone who cares about urban poverty." —David Ellwood, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Poverty and Place documents the geographic spread of the nation's ghettos and shows how economic shifts have had a particularly devastating impact on certain regions, particularly in the rust-belt states of the Midwest. Author Paul Jargowsky's thoughtful analysis of the causes of ghetto formation clarifies the importance of widespread urban trends, particularly those changes in the labor and housing markets that have fostered income inequality and segregated the rich from the poor. Jargowsky also examines the sources of employment that do exist for ghetto dwellers, and describes how education and family structure further limit their prospects. Poverty and Place shows how the spread of high poverty neighborhoods has particularly trapped members of poor minorities, who account for nearly four out of five ghetto residents. Poverty and Place sets forth the facts necessary to inform the public understanding of the growth of concentrated poverty, and confronts essential questions about how the spiral of urban decay in our nation's cities can be reversed.

Many countries in Latin America have experienced both rapid urbanization and military involvement in politics. Yet few studies examine how military regimes react to the political pressures that wide-spread urban poverty creates or how the poor operate under authoritative rule. Henry Dietz investigates Lima’s poor during the “revolution” of General Juan Velasco (1968–1975). His study examines both the structural conditions promoting poverty and the individual consequences of being poor. The poor join together in several ways to resolve politicized communal needs; Dietz’s data indicate that the local neighborhood plays a crucial role in determining modes of involvement. Considerable attention is given to government attempts to encourage and control political activities by the poor. Dietz analyzes the failure of SINAMOS, the regime’s mobilization agency, and in so doing raises general questions about corporatist solutions to social problems. The wide range of original survey, informant, and ethnographic data provides much new information on elite-mass relationships in contemporary Latin America. Dietz’s research illuminates much that is of concern to scholars and planners dealing with urbanization, poverty, and social policy formation.

The Indian subdistrict of Shahabad, located in the dwindling forests of the southeastern tip of Rajasthan, is an area of extreme poverty. Beset by droughts and food shortages in recent years, it is the home of the Sahariyas, former bonded laborers, officially classified as Rajasthan’s only “primitive tribe.” From afar, we might consider this the bleakest of the bleak, but in Poverty and the Quest for Life, Bhrigupati Singh asks us to reconsider just what quality of life means. He shows how the Sahariyas conceive of aspiration, advancement, and vitality in both material and spiritual terms, and how such bridging can engender new possibilities of life.

Singh organizes his study around two themes: power and ethics, through which he explores a complex terrain of material and spiritual forces. Authority remains contested, whether in divine or human forms; the state is both despised and desired; high and low castes negotiate new ways of living together, in conflict but also cooperation; new gods move across rival social groups; animals and plants leave their tracks on human subjectivity and religiosity; and the potential for vitality persists even as natural resources steadily disappear. Studying this milieu, Singh offers new ways of thinking beyond the religion-secularism and nature-culture dichotomies, juxtaposing questions about quality of life with political theologies of sovereignty, neighborliness, and ethics, in the process painting a rich portrait of perseverance and fragility in contemporary rural India. 

After the Second World War, the idea that local community action was indispensable for the alleviation of poverty was broadly embraced by US policymakers, social scientists, international development specialists, and grassroots activists. Governmental efforts to mobilize community action in the name of democracy served as a volatile condition of possibility for poor people and dispossessed groups negotiating the tension between calls for self-help and demands for self-determination in the era of the Cold War and global decolonization. In Poverty in Common, Alyosha Goldstein suggests new ways to think about the relationship among liberalism, government, and inequality in the United States. He does so by analyzing historical dynamics including Progressive-era reform as a precursor to community development during the Cold War, the ways that the language of "underdevelopment" articulated ideas about poverty and foreignness, the use of poverty as a crucible of interest group politics, and radical groups' critical reframing of community action in anticolonial terms. During the mid-twentieth century, approaches to poverty in the United States were linked to the racialized and gendered negotiation of boundaries—between the foreign and the domestic, empire and nation, violence and order, and dependency and autonomy.

"Extremely coherent and useful, this much needed volume is concerned with the current status of the poor in Western industrial states. Its closely linked essays allow comparisons between case studies and are often themselves cross-national comparisons....The essays also comment on the meaning of globalization for social policy." —Choice "Excellent and tightly integrated articles by a group of prominent international scholars....A timely and important book, which will surely become the basic reference point for all future research on inequality and social policy." —Contemporary Sociology The social safety net is under strain in all Western nations, as social and economic change has created problems that traditional welfare systems were not designed to handle. Poverty, Inequality, and the Future of Social Policy provides a definitive analysis of the conditions that are fraying the social fabric and the reasons why some countries have been more successful than others in addressing these trends. In the United States, where the poverty rate in the 1980s was twice that of any advanced nation in Europe, the social protection system—and public support for it—has eroded alarmingly. In Europe, the welfare system more effectively buffered the disadvantaged, but social expenditures have been indicted by many as the principal cause of high unemployment. Concluding chapters review the progress and goals of social welfare programs, assess their viability in the face of creeping economic, racial, and social fragmentation, and define the challenges that face those concerned with social cohesion and economic prosperity in the new global economy. This volume illuminates the disparate effects of government intervention on the incidence and duration of poverty in Western countries. Poverty, Inequality, and the Future of Social Policy is full of lessons for anyone who would look beyond the limitations of the welfare debate in the United States.

Higher education is the site of an ongoing conflict. At the heart of this struggle are the precariously employed faculty 'contingents' who work without basic job security, living wages or benefits. Yet they have the incentive and, if organized, the power to shape the future of higher education.

Power Despite Precarity is part history, part handbook and a wholly indispensable resource in this fight. Joe Berry and Helena Worthen outline the four historical periods that led to major transitions in the worklives of faculty of this sector. They then take a deep dive into the 30-year-long struggle by California State University lecturers to negotiate what is recognized as the best contract for contingents in the US.

The authors ask: what is the role of universities in society? Whose interests should they serve? What are the necessary conditions for the exercise of academic freedom? Providing strategic insight for activists at every organizing level, they also tackle 'troublesome questions' around legality, union politics, academic freedom and how to recognize friends (and foes) in the struggle.

Higher education is the site of an ongoing conflict. At the heart of this struggle are the precariously employed faculty 'contingents' who work without basic job security, living wages or benefits. Yet they have the incentive and, if organized, the power to shape the future of higher education.

Power Despite Precarity is part history, part handbook and a wholly indispensable resource in this fight. Joe Berry and Helena Worthen outline the four historical periods that led to major transitions in the worklives of faculty of this sector. They then take a deep dive into the 30-year-long struggle by California State University lecturers to negotiate what is recognized as the best contract for contingents in the US.

The authors ask: what is the role of universities in society? Whose interests should they serve? What are the necessary conditions for the exercise of academic freedom? Providing strategic insight for activists at every organizing level, they also tackle 'troublesome questions' around legality, union politics, academic freedom and how to recognize friends (and foes) in the struggle.

Like the complex systems of man-made power lines that transmit electricity and connect people and places, feminist alliances are elaborate networks that have the potential to provide access to institutional power and to transform relations. In Power Lines, Aimee Carrillo Rowe explores the formation and transformative possibilities of transracial feminist alliances. She draws on her conversations with twenty-eight self-defined academic feminists, who reflect on their academic careers, alliances, feminist struggles, and identifications. Based on those conversations and her own experiences as an Anglo-Chicana queer feminist researcher, Carrillo Rowe investigates when and under what conditions transracial feminist alliances in academia work or fail, and how close attention to their formation provides the theoretical and political groundwork for a collective vision of subjectivity.

Combining theory, criticism, and narrative nonfiction, Carrillo Rowe develops a politics of relation that encourages the formation of feminist alliances across racial and other boundaries within academia. Such a politics of relation is founded on her belief that our subjectivities emerge in community; our affective investments inform and even create our political investments. Thus experience, consciousness, and agency must be understood as coalitional rather than individual endeavors. Carrillo Rowe’s conversations with academic feminists reveal that women who restrict their primary allies to women of their same race tend to have limited notions of feminism, whereas women who build transracial alliances cultivate more nuanced, intersectional, and politically transformative feminisms. For Carrillo Rowe, the institutionalization of feminism is not so much an achievement as an ongoing relational process. In Power Lines, she offers a set of critical, practical, and theoretical tools for building and maintaining transracial feminist alliances.

In the late 1990s, when California's deregulation of the production and sale of electric power created massive energy shortages, a group of environmental justice activists blocked construction of a power plant in their working-class Mexican and Central American neighborhoods. Why did they choose this battle? And how did the largely high school student activists come to prevail in the face of statewide political opinion?

Power Politics is a rich and readable study of a grassroots campaign where longtime labor and environmental allies found themselves on opposite sides of a conflict that pitted good jobs against good air. Karen Brodkin analyzes how those issues came to be opposed and in doing so unpacks the racial and class dynamics that shape Americans' grasp of labor and environmental issues. Power Politics' activists stood at the forefront of a movement that is building broad-based environmental coalitions and placing social justice at the heart of a new and robust vision.

This important new work is a study of the everyday lives of the inhabitants of São Paulo in the nineteenth century. Full of vivid detail, the book concentrates on the lives of working women--black, white, Indian, mulatta, free, freed, and slaves, and their struggles to survive. Drawing on official statistics, and on the accounts of travelers and judicial records, the author paints a lively picture of the jobs, both legal and illegal, that were performed by women. Her research leads to some surprising discoveries, including the fact that many women were the main providers for their families and that their work was crucial to the running of several urban industries. This book, which is a unique record of women’s lives across social and race strata in a multicultural society, should be of interest to students and researchers in women’s studies, urban studies, historians, geographers, economists, sociologists, and anthropologists.

This important new work is a study of the everyday lives of the inhabitants of São Paulo in the nineteenth century. Full of vivid detail, the book concentrates on the lives of working women--black, white, Indian, mulatta, free, freed, and slaves, and their struggles to survive. Drawing on official statistics, and on the accounts of travelers and judicial records, the author paints a lively picture of the jobs, both legal and illegal, that were performed by women. Her research leads to some surprising discoveries, including the fact that many women were the main providers for their families and that their work was crucial to the running of several urban industries. This book, which is a unique record of women’s lives across social and race strata in a multicultural society, should be of interest to students and researchers in women’s studies, urban studies, historians, geographers, economists, sociologists, and anthropologists.

The contributions to this volume represent a diverse array of Mesoamerican archaeological studies that are all theo-retically rooted to larger, global debates concerning issues of power and identity—two logically paired concepts. While social identity has been the focus of more critical analysis in recent years, the concept of power has received far less attention. Most studies focus on large-scale, institutional forms of power and the ruling body. Here, the focus is on relations of power, addressing broader segments of society outside the dominant group, that often are ignored in traditional reconstructions of past societies.

Harrison-Buck has compiled works that address a common criticism of social theory in the field of anthropological archaeology—the lack of strong case studies and corroborating facts supporting the abstract and often complex social theoretical concepts presented by scholars. Each contributor offers innovative method and theory and provides alternative and varied approaches to understanding power and identity in the archaeological record. They draw from a wide range of related disciplines and theoretical frameworks, including feminism, queer theory, cognitive studies, and postcolonial theory. The provocative case studies and exciting theoretical applications presented here will stimulate lively debate among scholars working both in and outside of Mesoamerica.
 

Published in 1982, John Gaventa’s award-winning Power and Powerlessness examined the dominance of the absentee coal industry in Central Appalachia. Gaventa and Gabe Schwartzman update the story through coal’s decline and into the present while focusing on how power relations and community mobilizing have changed and evolved during this era of transition. Their analysis tracks the impact on a place where a fossil fuel–based economy shaped political and social structures for over a century. As they show, new forms of power emerged while old ones remained, and both affected the popular struggle for a future that’s both just and more inclusive. Original and timely, Power and Just Transitions merges historical perspective with interviews and engagement to look at how coal’s decline impacted power and resistance in an Appalachian community.

In 1985 Johannes Fabian, while engaged in fieldwork in the Shaba province of Zaire, first encountered this saying. Its implications—for the charismatic religious movements Fabian was examining, for the highly charged political atmosphere of Zaire, and for the cultures of the Luba peoples—continued to intrigue him, though its meaning remained elusive.  On a later visit, he mentioned the saying to a company of popular actors, and triggered an ethnographic brainstorm.  “Spontaneously, they decided it would be just the right topic for their next play.  On the spot they began planning—suggestions for a plot were made, problems of translating the French term ‘pouvoir’ were debated, several actors cited sayings and customs from their home villages. . . .” 

Power and Performance examines traditional proverbs about power as it illustrates how the performance of Le pouvoir se mange entier was created, rehearsed, and performed. The play deals with the issue of power through a series of conflicts between villagers and their chief. Both rehearsal and performance versions of the text of this drama are included, in Swahili and in English translation.

“Constitutes an important and timely addition to the literature on peasant rebellion; wisely, the editors have been eclectic in drawing from some of the leading historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists active in the field an analysis of the forms that rural violence has taken through the past three centuries.”—Pacific Affairs

Who has ruled New York? Has power become more concentrated—or more widely and democratically dispersed—in American cities over the past one hundred years? How did New York come to have its modern physical and institutional shape? Focusing on the period when New York City was transformed from a nineteenth-century mercantile center to a modern metropolis, David C. Hammack offers an entirely new view of the history of power and public policy in the nation's largest urban community. Opening with a fresh and original interpretation of the metropolitan region's economic and social history between 1890 and 1910, Hammack goes on to show how various population groups used their economic, social, cultural, and political resources to shape the decisions that created the modern city. As New York grew in size and complexity, its economic and social interests were forced to compete and form alliances. No single group—not even the wealthy—was able to exercise continuing control of urban policy. Building on his account of this interplay among numerous elites, Hammack concludes with a new interpretation of the history of power in New York and other American cities between 1890 and 1950. This book makes a major contribution to the study of community power, of urban and regional history, and of public policy. And by taking the meaning and distribution of power as his theme, Hammack is able to reintegrate economic, social, and political history in a rich and comprehensive work.   "Lucid, instructive, and discerning....The most commanding analysis of its subject that I know." —John M. Blum, professor of history, Yale University "A powerful and persuasive treatment of a marvelous subject." —Nelson W. Polsby, professor of political science, University of California, Berkeley

Even in its heyday European rule of Africa had limits. Whether through complacency or denial, many colonial officials ignored the signs of African dissent. Displays of opposition by Africans, too indirect to counter or quash, percolated throughout the colonial era and kept alive a spirit of sovereignty that would find full expression only decades later.
    In Power in Colonial Africa: Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870–1960, Elizabeth A. Eldredge analyzes a panoply of archival and oral resources, visual signs and symbols, and public and private actions to show how power may be exercised not only by rulers but also by the ruled. The BaSotho—best known for their consolidation of a kingdom from the 1820s to 1850s through primarily peaceful means, and for bringing colonial forces to a standstill in the Gun War of 1880–1881—struggled to maintain sovereignty over their internal affairs during their years under the colonial rule of the Cape Colony (now part of South Africa) and Britain from 1868 to 1966. Eldredge explores instances of BaSotho resistance, resilience, and resourcefulness in forms of expression both verbal and non-verbal. Skillfully navigating episodes of conflict, the BaSotho matched wits with the British in diplomatic brinksmanship, negotiation, compromise, circumvention, and persuasion, revealing the capacity of a subordinate population to influence the course of events as it selectively absorbs, employs, and subverts elements of the colonial culture.


“A refreshing, readable and lucid account of one in an array of compositions of power during colonialism in southern Africa.”—David Gordon, Journal of African History

“Elegantly written.”—Sean Redding, Sub-Saharan Africa

“Eldredge writes clearly and attractively, and her studies of the war between Lerotholi and Masupha and of the conflicts over the succession to the paramountcy are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand those crises.”—Peter Sanders, Journal of Southern African Studies

Women’s status in rural Java can appear contradictory to those both inside and outside the culture. In some ways, women have high status and broad access to resources, but other situations suggest that Javanese women lack real power and autonomy. Javanese women have major responsibilities in supporting their families and controlling household finances. They may also own and manage their own property. Yet these symbols and potential sources of independence and influence are determined by a culturally prescribed, state-reinforced, patriarchal gender ideology that limits women’s autonomy. Power, Change, and Gender Relations in Rural Java examines this contradiction as well as sources of stability and change in contemporary Javanese gender relations.

The authors conducted their research in two rural villages in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, during three important historical and political periods: the end of the New Order regime; the transitional period of reformation; and the subsequent establishment of a democratic government. Their collaboration brings a unique perspective, analyzing how gender is constructed and reproduced and how power is exercised as Indonesia faces the challenges of building a new social order.