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Northeast of modern-day Mexico City stand the remnants of one of the world's largest preindustrial cities, Teotihuacan. Monumental in scale, Teotihuacan is organized along a three-mile-long thoroughfare, the Avenue of the Dead, that leads up to the massive Pyramid of the Moon. Lining the avenue are numerous plazas and temples, which indicate that the city once housed a large population that engaged in complex rituals and ceremonies. Although scholars have studied Teotihuacan for over a century, the precise nature of its religious and political life has remained unclear, in part because no one has yet deciphered the glyphs that may explain much about the city's organization and belief systems.

In this groundbreaking book, Annabeth Headrick analyzes Teotihuacan's art and architecture, in the light of archaeological data and Mesoamerican ethnography, to propose a new model for the city's social and political organization. Challenging the view that Teotihuacan was a peaceful city in which disparate groups united in an ideology of solidarity, Headrick instead identifies three social groups that competed for political power—rulers, kin-based groups led by influential lineage heads, and military orders that each had their own animal insignia. Her findings provide the most complete evidence to date that Teotihuacan had powerful rulers who allied with the military to maintain their authority in the face of challenges by the lineage heads. Headrick's analysis also underscores the importance of warfare in Teotihuacan society and clarifies significant aspects of its ritual life, including shamanism and an annual tree-raising ceremony that commemorated the Mesoamerican creation story.

During the 1920s, the Chicago school of sociology developed an ecological orientation toward the study of the city. At the same time, other Chicago scholars developed the social psychological approach that was to be named symbolic interactionism. Over fifty years later, Gordon Ericksen examines the best of these two schools to present a revisionist human ecology. In The Territorial Experience, he gives us a fresh perspective on human ecology by reconstructing the discipline in a way that genuinely reflects the realities of our territorial life.
Ericksen's symbolic interactionist approach to the spatial world is based on the appreciation of humans as the creative artists they are, as designers and builders of their environment. Exploring the symbolic meanings attached to space and territory, he challenges the orthodox in human ecology by introducing hypotheses and conceptual tools of analysis which link spatial facts to human motivations and meanings. With people living in a habitat which they have largely shaped for themselves—a world of airports, shopping malls, retirement villages, where human spaces convey human messages—Ericksen demands that we examine what we have done with our environment in order to survive and prosper.

This major contribution to human ecology will be of importance to specialists and lay readers in the fields of sociology, social psychology, geography, city and regional planning, urban affairs, and economics. Showing how humankind speaks in and through its physical setting, The Territorial Experience is a bench mark in communications theory.

Born of thirteen years of field research, this interdisciplinary work explores the complex intersections of technology, class, gender, and ecology in the transnational milieu of Mexico's maquiladoras, foreign-owned assembly plants located along the U.S. border.

Devon Peña examines workplace and community struggles from the perspective of the women who work in the maquiladoras. He describes the workers' struggles for workplace democracy, social justice, and sustainable development. He also observes the circulation of struggle from the factory to the community, highlighting the efforts to establish worker-owned cooperatives in the border region during the 1970s and 1980s.

Female maquila workers are typically portrayed as passive, apolitical, and easily exploited. This book, however, presents an opposing view, investigating the "subaltern life of the shop floor"—the workers' informal methods of resistance to hazardous conditions, sexual harassment, and managerial tyranny. Using survey research, oral history, discourse analysis, and site ethnography, the author develops a cogent critique of labor-process theory, a critique grounded on his extensive study of actual workplace politics in the maquiladoras.

The Terror of the Machine is a trenchant analysis of the political, cultural, and environmental effects of maquila industrialization and an eloquent and persuasive call for alternatives in the direction of ecologically sustainable and culturally appropriate modes of development.

During the 1960s, the SNCC Freedom Singers, The Living Theatre, the Diggers, the Art Workers Coalition, and the Guerrilla Art Action Group fused art and politics by staging unexpected and uninvited performances in public spaces. Through their activism and the response it provoked, art, theater, and politics began to converge and assume a new visibility in everyday life. While their specific political visions varied, these groups shared the impulse to stage performances and actions publicly—"in the streets"—eschewing museums, theaters, and other conventional halls of culture. Bradford D. Martin offers detailed portraits of each of these groups and examines why they embraced public performance as a vehicle to express and advance their politics. 

At a time when the New Left and the counterculture were on the rise, these artists reflected the decade's political and cultural radicalism and helped to define a new aesthetic. Civil rights activists mobilized singing in the struggle for desegregation, introducing a vibrant musical form into the public space. The Living Theatre culminated an arduous quest to mesh artistic and political goals, leading audiences from theaters into the streets to begin the “beautiful nonviolent anarchist revolution.” The Diggers playfully engaged San Francisco's counterculture in politics with their carnivalesque public actions. The Art Workers Coalition and the Guerrilla Action Art Group sought to disrupt the conventional art world, mounting protests in and around New York City museums.

By questioning the values and assumptions that separated art from politics, these groups not only established public performance as a legitimate aesthetic but also provided a new creative vocabulary for future generations of artists. Their continued involvement with the women's liberation movement, rural communes, and political street theater into the 1970s and beyond challenges the popular myth that activists disengaged from politics after the 1960s.

Examines how the politics of the theater can illuminate the theatricality of politics

Theatricality is often dismissed as a distraction from “real” politics, as when cynical political gestures are derided as “pure theater” or “only theater.” But the artists and theater companies discussed in this book, including Back to Back Theatre, Tim Crouch, Rabih Mroué, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and Christoph Schlingensief, take a different approach. Theron Schmidt argues that they represent a “theatricalist turn” that explores and tests the conditions of the theater itself. Across diverse contexts of political engagement, ranging from disability rights to representations of violence, these theatrical conditions are interconnected with political struggles, such as those over who is seen and heard, how labor is valued, and what counts as “political” in the first place. In a so-called post-political era, The Theatricalists argues that an examination of theater’s internal politics can expand our understanding of the theatricality of politics more broadly.

Across the world anxiety, stress and depression are on the increase, a trend which looks set to continue as austerity measures bite. The official response tells people that unhappiness is just a personal problem, rather than a social one.

Written by a practising psychologist, with nearly thirty years' experience in the fields of mental health and learning disabilities, The Therapy Industry offers a concise, accessible and critical overview of the world of psychological practice in Britain and the USA. Paul Moloney argues that much therapy is geared towards compliance and acceptance of the status quo, rather than attempting to facilitate social change.

The Therapy Industry fundamentally challenges our conceptions of happiness and wellbeing. Moloney argues that therapeutic and applied psychology have little basis in science, that their benefits are highly exaggerated and they prosper because they serve the interests of power.

While women have struggled to gain recognition in the discipline of philosophy, there is no shortage of brilliant female thinkers. What can these women teach us about ethics, politics, and the nature of existence, and how might we relate these big ideas back to the smaller everyday concerns of domestic life, work, play, love, and relationships?
Australian novelist Julienne van Loon goes on a worldwide quest to answer these questions, by engaging with eight world-renowned thinkers who have deep insights on humanity and society: media scholar Laura Kipnis, novelist Siri Hustvedt, political philosopher Nancy Holmstrom, psychoanalytic theorist Julia Kristeva, domestic violence reformer Rosie Batty, peace activist Helen Caldicott, historian Marina Warner, and feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti. As she speaks to these women, she reflects on her own experiences. Combining the intimacy of a memoir with the intellectual stimulation of a theoretical text, The Thinking Woman draws novel connections between the philosophical, personal, and political. Giving readers a new appreciation for both the ethical complexities and wonder of everyday life, this book is inspiration to all thinking people.

Boilerplate language in contracts tends to stick around long after its origins and purpose have been forgotten. Usually there are no serious repercussions, but sometimes it can cause unexpected problems. Such was the case with the obscure pari passu clause in cross-border sovereign debt contracts, until a novel judicial interpretation rattled international finance by forcing a defaulting sovereign—for one of the first times in the market’s centuries-long history—to repay its foreign creditors. Though neither party wanted this outcome, the vast majority of contracts subsequently issued demonstrate virtually no attempt to clarify the imprecise language of the clause.

Created in Tepechpan, a relatively minor Aztec city in Central Mexico, the Tira de Tepechpan records important events in the city's history from 1298 through 1596. Most of the history is presented pictographically. A line of indigenous year signs runs the length of the Tira, with images above the line depicting events in Tepechpan and images below the line recording events at Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire and later the seat of Spanish rule. Written annotations amplify some of the images.

In this volume, which includes color plates of the entire Tira, Lori Boornazian Diel investigates the motives behind the creation and modification of the Tira in the second half of the sixteenth century. She identifies the Tira's different contributors and reconciles their various histories by asking why these painters and annotators, working at different times, recorded the events that they did. Comparing the Tira to other painted histories from Central Mexico, Diel demonstrates that the main goal of the Tira was to establish the antiquity, autonomy, and prestige of Tepechpan among the Central Mexican city-states that vied for power and status in the preconquest and colonial worlds. Offering the unique point of view of a minor city with grand ambitions, this study of the Tira reveals imperial strategy from the grassroots up, showing how a subject city negotiated its position under Aztec and Spanish control.

Draws directly on insights from teens to reframe our understanding of bullying in the age of social media and why anti-bullying campaigns have been unsuccessful in combating it.
 
Fitting in and standing out is an eternal rite of passage for teenagers. Increasingly, their struggles to establish hierarchies and regulate social norms are labeled under the umbrella of “bullying.” This phenomenon is considered such a significant problem that all fifty states have passed anti-bullying legislation, and many schools now engage prevention programs that promote tolerance, kindness, and active bystander interventions. Despite these efforts, bullying remains as widespread as ever. Why is that? The answer lies in a unique challenge faced by teens today: social media.

In The Tolerance Generation, sociologist Sarah Miller explores how youth grapple with bullying in the digital age alongside the anti-bullying industry. Drawing on two school years with students at a Northeastern high school, Miller reveals how institutional efforts to curb bullying are no match for the many online interactions in which bullying thrives. She charts teens’ experiences as they confront not only bullying, but also sexting exposures, school shooting threats, and viral cancel culture, illustrating the escalating pressures social media places on youth. Yet the school’s anti-bullying campaigns are a mismatch. They are engineered to address individual instances of explicit conflict, not to change the culture that contributes to bullying, nor to help marginalized students who are most likely to be targeted. Miller captures how exclusion and harm spread through the interplay of teens’ on and offline lives and shows how this is due, in part, to school practices that both reinforce—and fail to address—bullying as a systemic problem. 

But while social media can foster conflict, it can also be a tool for building a youth culture of care. Miller shows how many teens harness digital culture to develop their own prevention strategies, going beyond tolerance to use social media as a site for education, conflict resolution, and resistance. Ultimately, Miller argues that the anti-bullying movement is an inadequate training ground for youth to learn how to deal with American inequalities. However, by addressing the structural factors that produce bullying, and by listening to teens’ wisdom on how best to handle it, schools can create a more effective curriculum. 
 

The Total Black Experience is the first book to chronicle the history and social significance of Positively Black, one of the longest-running public affairs shows in the history of television. Spurred on by the findings of the Kerner Commission, executives at WNBC-TV greenlit the show and turned production over to a small but dedicated team of storytellers who quickly made it their mission to carve out a space for serious and nuanced discussion of issues important to the Black community and to celebrate all aspects of Black culture. They believed that accurate representation of their experiences was a right, not a privilege. The show’s first cohosts included the well-known Harlem-based activist Rev. Eugene Callender and Gus Heningburg, activist, successful consultant and mediator, and advocate for organized labor. Callender had founded Harlem Prep to equip young Black people for college, while Heningburg played a key role in stabilizing life in Newark following the rebellion there in the late 1960s. Both were adept at using the media to reach their constituencies. Combining in-depth interviews with painstaking archival research, The Total Black Experience introduces readers to key members of the Positively Black production team and analyzes thematic shifts in the show’s content. The book celebrates Positively Black’s longevity and challenges readers to explore the current state of Black representation on television.

Everyone wants to visit New York at least once. The Big Apple is a global tourist destination with a dizzying array of attractions throughout the five boroughs. The only problem is figuring out where to start—and that’s where the city’s tour guides come in.

These guides are a vital part of New York’s raucous sidewalk culture, and, as The Tour Guide reveals, the tours they offer are as fascinatingly diverse—and eccentric—as the city itself. Visitors can take tours that cover Manhattan before the arrival of European settlers, the nineteenth-century Irish gangs of Five Points, the culinary traditions of Queens, the culture of Harlem, or even the surveillance cameras of Chelsea—in short, there are tours to satisfy anyone’s curiosity about the city’s past or present. And the guides are as intriguing as the subjects, we learn, as Jonathan R. Wynn explores the lives of the people behind the tours, introducing us to office workers looking for a diversion from their desk jobs, unemployed actors honing their vocal skills, and struggling retirees searching for a second calling. Matching years of research with his own experiences as a guide, Wynn also lays bare the grueling process of acquiring an official license and offers a how-to guide to designing and leading a tour.

Touching on the long history of tour-giving across the globe as well as the ups and downs of New York’s tour guide industry in the wake of 9/11, The Tour Guide is as informative and insightful as the chatty, charming, and colorful characters at its heart.