Best of
Sociology

1999

Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species


Sarah Blaffer Hrdy - 1999
    But is it? In this provocative, groundbreaking book, renowned anthropologist (and mother) Sarah Blaffer Hrdy shares a radical new vision of motherhood and its crucial role in human evolution.Hrdy strips away stereotypes and gender-biased myths to demonstrate that traditional views of maternal behavior are essentially wishful thinking codified as objective observation. As Hrdy argues, far from being "selfless," successful primate mothers have always combined nurturing with ambition, mother love with sexual love, ambivalence with devotion. In fact all mothers, in the struggle to guarantee both their own survival and that of their offspring, deal nimbly with competing demands and conflicting strategies.In her nuanced, stunningly original interpretation of the relationships between mothers and fathers, mothers and babies, and mothers and their social groups, Hrdy offers not only a revolutionary new meaning to motherhood but an important new understanding of human evolution. Written with grace and clarity, suffused with the wisdom of a long and distinguished career, Mother Nature is a profound contribution to our understanding of who we are as a species--and why we have become this way.

All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life


Winona LaDuke - 1999
    Hers is a beautiful and daring vision of political, spiritual, and ecological transformation."All Our Relations" features chapters on the Seminoles, the Anishinaabeg, the Innu, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Mohawks, among others."One of the pleasures of reading "All Our Relations" is discovering the unique voices of Native people, especially Native women, speaking in their own Native truths."-"Women's Review of Books"..".as Winona LaDuke describes, in moving and often beautiful prose, [these] misdeeds are not distant history but are ongoing degradation of the cherished lands of Native Americans."-"Public Citizen News"..".a rare perspective on Native history and culture."-"Sister to Sister/S2S""Hers is a beautiful and daring vision of political, spiritual, and ecological transformation. "All Our Relations" is essential reading for everyone who cares about the fate of the Earth and indigenous peoples."-"Winds of Change""No ragtag remnants of lost cultures here. Strong voices of old, old cultures bravely trying to make sense of an Earth in chaos."-"Whole Earth"

Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy


Kevin Bales - 1999
    Kevin Bales's disturbing story of contemporary slavery reaches from Pakistan's brick kilns and Thailand's brothels to various multinational corporations. His investigations reveal how the tragic emergence of a "new slavery" is inextricably linked to the global economy. This completely revised edition includes a new preface.All of the author's royalties from this book go to fund antislavery projects around the world.

The Cornel West Reader


Cornel West - 1999
    Whether he is writing a scholarly book or an article for Newsweek, whether he is speaking of Emerson, Gramsci, or Marvin Gaye, his work radiates a passion that reflects the rich traditions he draws on and weaves together: Baptist preaching, American transcendentalism, jazz, radical politics. This anthology reveals the dazzling range of West's work, from his explorations of ”Prophetic Pragmatism” to his philosophizing on hip-hop.The Cornel West Reader traces the development of West's extraordinary career as academic, public intellectual, and activist. In his essays, articles, books, and interviews, West emerges as America's social conscience, urging attention to complicated issues of racial and economic justice, sexuality and gender, history and politics. This collection represents the best work of an always compelling, often controversial, and absolutely essential philosopher of the modern American experience.

Liquid Modernity


Zygmunt Bauman - 1999
    This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human condition. The new remoteness and un-reachability of global systemic structure coupled with the unstructured and under-defined, fluid state of the immediate setting of life-politics and human togetherness, call for the rethinking of the concepts and cognitive frames used to narrate human individual experience and their joint history.This book is dedicated to this task. Bauman selects five of the basic concepts which have served to make sense of shared human life - emancipation, individuality, time/space, work and community - and traces their successive incarnations and changes of meanaing.Liquid Modernity concludes the analysis undertaken in Bauman's two previous books Globalization: The Human Consequences and In Search of Politics. Together these volumes form a brilliant analysis of the changing conditions of social and political life by one of the most original thinkers writing today.

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue


Samuel R. Delany - 1999
    Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, 42nd Street was once known for its peep shows, street corner hustlers and movie houses. Over the last two decades the notion of safety-from safe sex and safe neighborhoods, to safe cities and safe relationships-has overcome 42nd Street, giving rise to a Disney store, a children's theater, and large, neon-lit cafes. 42nd Street has, in effect, become a family tourist attraction for visitors from Berlin, Tokyo, Westchester, and New Jersey's suburbs.Samuel R. Delany sees a disappearance not only of the old Times Square, but of the complex social relationships that developed there: the points of contact between people of different classes and races in a public space. In Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, Delany tackles the question of why public restrooms, peepshows, and tree-filled parks are necessary to a city's physical and psychological landscape. He argues that starting in 1985, New York City criminalized peep shows and sex movie houses to clear the way for the rebuilding of Times Square. Delany's critique reveals how Times Square is being renovated behind the scrim of public safety while the stage is occupied by gentrification. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue paints a portrait of a society dismantling the institutions that promote communication between classes, and disguising its fears of cross-class contact as family values. Unless we overcome our fears and claim our community of contact, it is a picture that will be replayed in cities across America.

Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practice of Transformational Development


Bryant L. Myers - 1999
    "A masterpiece of integration and application that draws widely on the best Christian and scientific sources on development and draws solid conclusions from what we have learned from experience in ministries around the world." From the Foreword by Paul G. Hiebert"A book from which Christians of every church tradition can draw deeply and profit greatly. The practical wisdom found here can only be the result of what is expressed by its title: 'walking with the poor.'"� --Stephen B. Bevans, Catholic Theological UnionIn this revised and updated edition of a modern classic, Bryant Myers shows how Christian mission can contribute to dismantling poverty and social evil. Integrating the best principles and practice of the international development community, the thinking and experience of Christian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and a theological framework for transformational development, Myers demonstrates what is possible when we cease to treat the spiritual and physical domains of life as separate and unrelated.

Sidewalk


Mitchell Duneier - 1999
    Sociologist Duneier, author of Slim's Table, offers an accessible and compelling group portrait of several poor black men who make their livelihoods on the sidewalks of Greenwich Village selling secondhand goods, panhandling, and scavenging books and magazines.Duneier spent five years with these individuals, and in Sidewalk he argues that, contrary to the opinion of various city officials, they actually contribute significantly to the order and well-being of the Village. An important study of the heart and mind of the street, Sidewalk also features an insightful afterword by longtime book vendor Hakim Hasan. This fascinating study reveals today's urban life in all its complexity: its vitality, its conflicts about class and race, and its surprising opportunities for empathy among strangers.Sidewalk is an excellent supplementary text for a range of courses:INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY: Shows how to make important links between micro and macro; how a research project works; how sociology can transform common sense.RACE AND ETHNIC RELATIONS: Untangles race, class, and gender as they work together on the street.URBAN STUDIES: Asks how public space is used and contested by men and women, blacks and whites, rich and poor, and how street life and political economy interact.DEVIANCE: Looks at labeling processes in treatment of the homeless; interrogates the "broken windows" theory of policing.LAW AND SOCIETY: Closely examines the connections between formal and informal systems of social control.METHODS: Shows how ethnography works; includes a detailed methodological appendix and an afterword by research subject Hakim Hasan.CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: Sidewalk engages the rich terrain of recent developments regarding representation, writing, and authority; in the tradition of Elliot Liebow and Ulf Hannerz, it deals with age old problems of the social and cultural experience of inequality; this is a telling study of culture on the margins of American society.CULTURAL STUDIES: Breaking down disciplinary boundaries, Sidewalk shows how books and magazines are received and interpreted in discussions among working-class people on the sidewalk; it shows how cultural knowledge is deployed by vendors and scavengers to generate subsistence in public space.SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE: Sidewalk demonstrates the connections between culture and human agency and innovation; it interrogates distinctions between legitimate subcultures and deviant collectivities; it illustrates conflicts over cultural diversity in public space; and, ultimately, it shows how conflicts over meaning are central to social life.

Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds


David C. Pollock - 1999
    The book is rich with real-life anecdotes and examines the nature of the TCK kid experience and its effects on maturing, developing a sense of identity, and adjusting to one's passport country upon return. The authors give readers an understanding of the challenges and benefits of the TCK life and provide practical suggestions and advice on maximizing those benefits.

The New Spirit of Capitalism


Luc Boltanski - 1999
    They argue that from the middle of the 1970s onwards, capitalism abandoned the hierarchical Fordist work structure and developed a new network-based form of organization which was founded on employee initiative and autonomy in the workplace – a ‘freedom’ that came at the cost of material and psychological security.The authors connect this new spirit with the children of the libertarian and romantic currents of the late 1960s (as epitomised by dressed-down. cool capitalists such as Bill Gates and ‘Ben and Jerry’) arguing that they practice a more successful and subtle form of exploitation.In a work that is already a classic in Europe, Boltanski and Chiapello show how the new spirit triumphed thanks to a remarkable recuperation of the Left’s critique of the alienation of everyday life – a recuperation that simultaneously undermined the power of its social critique.

Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility: The Ideas Behind the World's Slowest Computer


Stewart Brand - 1999
    Here are the central questions it inspires: How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare? Discipline in thought allows freedom. One needs the space and reliability to predict continuity to have the confidence not to be afraid of revolutions Taking the time to think of the future is more essential now than ever, as culture accelerates beyond its ability to be measured Probable things are vastly outnumbered by countless near-impossible eventualities. Reality is statistically forced to be extraordinary; fiction is not allowed this freedom This is a potent book that combines the chronicling of fantastic technology with equally visionary philosophical inquiry.

Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication


John Durham Peters - 1999
    A sweeping history of communication, Speaking Into the Air illuminates our expectations of communication as both historically specific and a fundamental knot in Western thought."This is a most interesting and thought-provoking book. . . . Peters maintains that communication is ultimately unthinkable apart from the task of establishing a kingdom in which people can live together peacefully. Given our condition as mortals, communication remains not primarily a problem of technology, but of power, ethics and art." —Antony Anderson, New Scientist"Guaranteed to alter your thinking about communication. . . . Original, erudite, and beautifully written, this book is a gem." —Kirkus Reviews"Peters writes to reclaim the notion of authenticity in a media-saturated world. It's this ultimate concern that renders his book a brave, colorful exploration of the hydra-headed problems presented by a rapid-fire popular culture." —Publishers WeeklyWhat we have here is a failure-to-communicate book. Funny thing is, it communicates beautifully. . . . Speaking Into the Air delivers what superb serious books always do-hours of intellectual challenge as one absorbs the gradually unfolding vision of an erudite, creative author." —Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer

Sex and Social Justice


Martha C. Nussbaum - 1999
    Offering an internationalism informed by development economics and empirical detail, many essays take their start from the experiences of women in developing countries. Nussbaum argues for a universal account of human capacity and need, while emphasizing the essential role of knowledge of local circumstance. Further chapters take on the pursuit of social justice in the sexual sphere, exploring the issue of equal rights for lesbians and gay men. Nussbaum's arguments are shaped by her work on Aristotle and the Stoics and by the modern liberal thinkers Kant and Mill. She contends that the liberal tradition of political thought holds rich resources for addressing violations of human dignity on the grounds of sex or sexuality, provided the tradition transforms itself by responsiveness to arguments concerning the social shaping of preferences and desires. She challenges liberalism to extend its tradition of equal concern to women, always keeping both agency and choice as goals. With great perception, she combines her radical feminist critique of sex relations with an interest in the possibilities of trust, sympathy, and understanding.Sex and Social Justice will interest a wide readership because of the public importance of the topics Nussbaum addresses and the generous insight she shows in dealing with these issues. Brought together for this timely collection, these essays, extensively revised where previously published, offer incisive political reflections by one of our most important living philosophers.

Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis


Christian Parenti - 1999
    Its accessible and vivid prose makes clear the links between crime and politics in a period of gathering economic crisis.

Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring


Angela Valenzuela - 1999
    Valenzuela argues that schools subtract resources from youth in two major ways: firstly by dismissing their definition of education and secondly, through assimilationist policies and practices that minimize their culture and language. A key consequence is the erosion of students' social capital evident in the absence of academically oriented networks among acculturated, U.S.-born youth.

On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures


Noam Chomsky - 1999
    One of Chomsky's most accessible books, this succinct series of lectures lays out the parameters of his foreign policy analysis.

Prisons of Poverty


Loïc Wacquant - 1999
    The author argues that the policies have their roots in a network of Reagan-era conservative think tanks, which used them as weapons in their crusade to dismantle the welfare state and, in effect, criminalise poverty.

Breaking Free: Understanding Sexual Addiction and the Healing Power of Jesus


Russell Willingham - 1999
    We are bombarded with it everywhere we turn--TV, newspapers and magazines, music, movies and the Internet. When this ever-present temptation mixes with human weaknesses and unmet needs, many get pulled into addiction to sexually sinful behavior. They may detest their own habits, but they can't seem to break free. Is there any hope? Russell Willingham speaks from his own experience and that of the many he has counseled. His answer? Yes! There is hope. Jesus offers forgiveness and healing. True stories show how the principles in this book can be put into action. The essentials are spelled out in practical steps that can help people begin to break free. Willingham deals with such issues aswhat all addicts have in common the hunt of the malnourished heart where to find the courage to face the dark side wrestling with shame and grace the healing effect of radical honesty This realistic yet hopeful book offers a new way to see the world for every person who wants to understand and break free from sexual addiction.

White Is a State of Mind


Melba Pattillo Beals - 1999
    Her critically acclaimed and award-winning memoir Warriors Don't Cry chronicled her junior year in high school, the year President Eisenhower took unprecedented, historic action by sending federal troops to escort Melba and her eight black classmates into a previously all-white school. Now, in answer to the often repeated question "What happened next?" Melba has written White Is a State of Mind. Compelled to flee the violent rage percolating in her hometown, young Melba was brought by the NAACP to a safe haven in Santa Rosa, California. This is the story of how she survived - healed from the wounds inflicted on her by an angry country. It is the inspirational story of how she overcame that anger with the love and support of the white family who took her in and taught her she didn't have to yearn for the freedom she assumed she could never really have because of the color of her skin. They taught her that white is a state of mind - that she could alter her state of mind to claim fully her own freedom and equality.

The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America


Philip A. Klinkner - 1999
    Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University.American life is filled with talk of progress and equality, especially when the issue is that of race. But has the history of race in America really been the continuous march toward equality we'd like to imagine it has? This sweeping history of race in America argues quite the opposite: that progress toward equality has been sporadic, isolated, and surrounded by long periods of stagnation and retrenchment.

Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era


Adolph L. Reed Jr. - 1999
    He examines the rise of a new black political class in the aftermath of the civil rights era, and bluntly denounces black leadership that is not accountable to a black constituency; such leadership, he says, functions as a proxy for white elites. Reed debunks as myths the 'endangered black male" and the "black underclass, " and punctures what he views as the exaggeration and self-deception surrounding the black power movement and the Malcolm X revival. He chastises the Left, too, for its failure to develop an alternative politics, then lays out a practical leftist agenda and reasserts the centrality of political action.

Becoming One: Emotionally, Physically, Spiritually


Joe Beam - 1999
     With God's help you can make your marriage all it should be and all you crave it to be -- no matter what it's like now. (page 24) Men want action. Women want feeling. From day one they're set up to misunderstand each other. (page 12) Sometimes you must tell your mate the things you've done wrong, and sometimes you are much better off not to tell. The secret of a strong and intimate marriage is knowing what to share and what to leave buried. (page 108) If you're in conflict over sexual desires--one wants to do something other doesn't -- there is a logical and spiritual way to satisfy you both. (page 168) As you grow closer to God, you will grow closer to each other. (page 225)

Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times


Robert W. McChesney - 1999
    Robert McChesney, whom Marc Crispin Miller calls the greatest of our media historians, maintains that the major beneficiaries of the so-called Information Age are no more than a handful of enormous corporations, and that this concentrated corporate control is disastrous for any notion of participatory democracy.In a book that Noam Chomsky hails as a rich, penetrating study, McChesney combines historical sweep and unprecedented detail on current events as he chronicles the recent waves of media mergers and acquisitions, as well as the corrupt and secretive enactment of public policies surrounding the Internet, digital television, and public broadcasting. He also addresses the gradual and ominous adaptation of the First Amendment as a means of shielding corporate media power, and debunks the myth that the market compels media firms to give the people what they want.

Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression


James Sidanius - 1999
    Using social dominance theory, it is presumed that it is also a basic grammar of social power shared by all societies in common. We use social dominance theory in an attempt to identify the elements of this grammar and to understand how these elements interact and reinforce each other to produce and maintain group-based social hierarchy.

Unbending Gender


Joan C. Williams - 1999
    Concerned by what she finds--young women who flatly refuse to identify themselves as feminists and working-class and minority women who feel the movement hasn't addressed the issues that dominate their daily lives--she outlines a new vision of feminism that calls for workplaces focused on the needs of families and, in divorce cases, recognition of the value of family work and its impact on women's earning power. Williams shows that workplaces are designed around men's bodies and life patterns in ways that discriminate against women, and that the work/family system that results is terrible for men, worse for women, and worst of all for children. She proposes a set of practical policies and legal initiatives to reorganize the two realms of work in employment and households--so that men and women can lead healthier and more productive personal and work lives. Williams introduces a new 'reconstructive' feminism that places class, race, and gender conflicts among women at center stage. Her solution is an inclusive, family-friendly feminism that supports both mothers and fathers as caregivers and as workers.

Marx in Soho: A Play on History


Howard Zinn - 1999
    Through a bureaucratic error, though, Marx is sent to Soho in New York, rather than his old stomping ground in London, to make his case.Zinn introduces us to Marx's wife, Jenny, his children, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, and a host of other characters.Marx in Soho is a brilliant introduction to Marx's life, his analysis of society, and his passion for radical change. Zinn also shows how relevant Marx's ideas are for today's world.Historian and activist Howard Zinn is the author of the bestselling A People's History of the United States and numerous other writings. He recently received the Eugene V. Debs and Lannan Foundation awards for his writing and political activism. He is also the author of Emma, a play about Emma Goldman, in the anthology Playbook (South End Press).Praise for Marx in Soho:"An imaginative critique of our society's hypocrisies and injustices, and an entertaining, vivid portrait of Karl Marx as a voice of humanitarian justice - which is perhaps the best way to remember him."-Kirkus Reviews"A cleverly imagined call to reconsider socialist theory... Zinn's point is well made; his passion for history melds with his political vigor to make this a memorable effort and a lucid primer for readers desiring a succinct, dramatized review of Marxism."-Publishers Weekly"Even in heaven it seems, Karl Marx is a troublemaker. But in the deft and loving hands of activist/author/historian Howard Zinn, the historical figure... is also a father, a husband and a futurist possessing a grand sense of humor."-ForeWord"A witty delight that will engage both new and old acquaintances of the Marxian corpus.... Even conservatives will find Zinn's [book]... an intelligent and diverting read. Recommended for academic and public libraries alike."-Library Journal

Global Brain: The Evolution of the Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century


Howard Bloom - 1999
    He shows how plants and animals (including humans) have evolved together as components of a worldwide learning machine. He describes the network of life on Earth as one that is, in fact, a complex adaptive system, a global brain in which each of us plays a sometimes conscious, sometimes unknowing role. and he reveals that the World Wide Web is just the latest step in the development of this brain. These are theories as important as they are radical. Informed by twenty years of interdisciplinary research, Bloom takes us on a spellbinding journey back to the big bang to let us see how its fires forged primordial sociality. As he brings us back via surprising routes, we see how our earliest bacterial ancestors built multitrillion-member research and development teams a full 3.5 billion years ago. We watch him unravel the previously unrecognized strands of interconnectedness woven by crowds of trilobites, hunting packs of dinosaurs, feathered flying lizards gathered in flocks, troops of baboons making communal decisions, and adventurous tribes of protohumans spreading across continents but still linked by primitive forms of information networking. We soon find ourselves reconsidering our place in the world. Along the way, Bloom offers us exhilarating insights into the strange tricks of body and mind that have organized a variety of life forms: spiny lobsters, which, during the Paleozoic age, participated in communal marching rituals; and bees, which, during the age of dinosaurs, conducted collective brainwork. This fascinating tour continues on to the sometimes brutal subculture wars that have spurred the growth of human civilization since the Stone Age. Bloom shows us how culture shapes our infant brains, immersing us in a matrix of truth and mass delusion that we think of as reality.Global Brain is more than just a brilliantly original contribution to the ongoing debate on the inner workings of evolution. It is a grand vision, says the eminent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a work that transforms our very view of who we are and why.

The Greater Common Good


Arundhati Roy - 1999
    Non fiction piece on Sardar Sarovar (Narmada) Project published in 1999.

The Suffering of the Immigrant


Abdelmalek Sayad - 1999
    Sayad's book will be widely used in courses on race, ethnicity, immigration and identity in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, politics and geography. an outstanding and original work on the experience of immigration and the kind of suffering involved in living in a society and culture which is not one's own; describes how immigrants are compelled, out of respect for themselves and the group that allowed them to leave their country of origin, to play down the suffering of emigration; Abdelmalek Sayad, was an Algerian scholar and close associate of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu - after Sayad's death, Bourdieu undertook to assemble these writings for publication; this book will transform the reader's understanding of the issues surrounding immigration.

Eichmann Interrogated: Transcripts from the Archives of the Israeli Police


Adolf Eichmann - 1999
    In 1945 he escaped with a Vatican passport and fled to South America. In May 1960 the Israelis located and kidnapped Eichmann from Argentina, and brought him to trial in Israel, where he was convicted and hanged, his remains cremated and scattered. For nearly a year prior to his trial Eichmann was interrogated by Captain Avner W. Less, a German Jew whose father and numerous relatives perished in Nazi concentration camps. Eichmann Interrogated is a superbly edited condensation of their 275-hour exchange, representing ten percent of the 3,564-page total. Amid his lies, distortions, evasions, half-truths, and startling admissions, Eichmann fully acknowledges the reality of the Holocaust while attempting to minimize his central role in its execution. As his life from traveling salesman to mass murderer unfolds, Eichmann's defense becomes a chilling self-indictment and a warning of Evil's often unassuming visage.

Insult and the Making of the Gay Self


Didier Eribon - 1999
    Known internationally as the author of a pathbreaking biography of Michel Foucault, Eribon is a leading voice in French gay studies. In explorations of gay subjectivity as it is lived now and as it has been expressed in literary history and in the life and work of Foucault, Eribon argues that gay male politics, social life, and culture are transformative responses to an oppressive social order. Bringing together the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, and Erving Goffman, he contends that gay culture and political movements flow from the need to overcome a world of insult in the process of creating gay selves.Eribon describes the emergence of homosexual literature in Britain and France at the turn of the last century and traces this new gay discourse from Oscar Wilde and the literary circles of late-Victorian Oxford to André Gide and Marcel Proust. He asserts that Foucault should be placed in a long line of authors—including Wilde, Gide, and Proust—who from the nineteenth century onward have tried to create spaces in which to resist subjection and reformulate oneself. Drawing on his unrivaled knowledge of Foucault’s oeuvre, Eribon presents a masterful new interpretation of Foucault. He calls attention to a particular passage from Madness and Civilization that has never been translated into English. Written some fifteen years before The History of Sexuality, this passage seems to contradict Foucault’s famous idea that homosexuality was a late-nineteenth-century construction. Including an argument for the use of Hannah Arendt’s thought in gay rights advocacy, Insult and the Making of the Gay Self is an impassioned call for critical, active engagement with the question of how gay life is shaped both from without and within.

Uncommon Learning: Thoreau on Education


Henry David Thoreau - 1999
    Ideas about education permeate Thoreau's writing. Uncommon Learning brings those ideas together in a single volume for the first time.

Masculinities


Raewyn W. Connell - 1999
    Exploring themes such as global gender relations and the practical uses of masculinity research, this text looks at the implications for the field, particularly with regard to understanding current world issues.

Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century


Hanchao Lu - 1999
    In this carefully researched study, Hanchao Lu weaves rich documentary data with ethnographic surveys and interviews to reconstruct the fabric of everyday life in China's largest and most complex city in the first half of this century.

Angry Young Men: How Parents, Teachers, and Counselors Can Help Bad Boys Become Good Men


Aaron R. Kipnis - 1999
    Angry Young Men offers specific, practical advice for parents, teachers, counselors, communityleaders, and justice professionals-- everyone who wants to helpat-risk boys become strong, productive, caring, and compassionatemen.Angry Young Men is an extremely important book that is especiallytimely now during our current epidemic of violence by and againstboys and young men . . . Aaron Kipnis has seen deeply, not onlyinto the souls of troubled boys and adolescents, but also intothose aspects of the spirit of our culture and our epoch that haveturned an unprecedentedly large portion of our boys and young meninto the perpetrators and victims of violence.--From the Forewordby James Gilligan, M.D., Department of Psychiatry, Harvard MedicalSchool

Pills-A-Go-Go: A Fiendish Investigation into Pill Marketing, Art, History & Consumption


Jim Hogshire - 1999
    To Hogshire, pills are the quintessence of Western culture, embodying our desires, fears, ambivalence about life and death, health and freedom -- as well as our faith in the quick fix.Hogshire muses on pill naming and marketing, presents up-to-the-minute pill news, and discusses celebrities and their pills of choice. Along the way, he provides histories of drug manufacturers and examines how pills are the product of decades of scientific exploration and the result of billions of dollars in research.

Leviticus as Literature


Mary Douglas - 1999
    Seen in an anthropological perspective Leviticus has a mystical structure which plots the book into three parts corresponding to the three parts of the deserttabernacle, both corresponding to the parts of Mount Sinai. This completely new reading transforms the interpretation of the purity laws. The pig and other forbidden animals are not abhorrent, they command the same respect due to all God's creatures. Boldly challenging several traditions of Biblecriticism, Mary Douglas claims that Leviticus is not the narrow doctrine of a crabbed professional priesthood but a powerful intellectual statement about a modern religion which emphasizes God's justice and compassion.

Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny


Robert Wright - 1999
    Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining the direction of evolution and human history–and discerning where history will lead us next.In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, ever since the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern. Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex by mastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright's narrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, from stone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering such surprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the useful stability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moral significance–a way of looking at our biological and cultural evolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality has improved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning may itself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, witty, profound, Nonzero offers breathtaking implications for what we believe and how we adapt to technology's ongoing transformation of the world.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Talkin That Talk: Language, Culture and Education in African America


Geneva Smitherman - 1999
    Discussing the inter-relationship between African American language, culture and education, Talkin' that Talk is divided into sections, each introduced by the author, which include: * African American language and education* Language theory, research and the Black intellectual tradition* Black language and culture* Black women's discourse* Language policy and global multilingualism.

The Racing Tribe


Kate Fox - 1999
    The personal story of interviewing half-naked jockeys in weighing rooms, overcoming a fear of the scary trainers and struggling to understand the tribe's strange dialect gives this book an endearing human dimension.

What Every Church Member Should Know about Poverty


Bill Ehlig - 1999
    Includes new chapter for assessing resources.

Wildflowers of the Appalachian Trail


Leonard M. Adkins - 1999
    thru-hickers who happen to be publishing pros, too.

High Priest of Harmful Matter


Jello Biafra - 1999
    Biafra on Tipper Gore & more.

The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture


Charles King - 1999
    The author•Highlights the political uses of culture—the ways in which language, history, and identity can be manipulated by political elites •Examines why some attempts to mold identity succeed where others fail •Reveals why, in the case of Moldova, a project of identity construction succeeded in creating a state but failed to make an independent nation

Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior


Christopher Boehm - 1999
    Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist whose fieldwork has focused on the political arrangements of human and nonhuman primate groups, postulates that egalitarianism is in effect a hierarchy in which the weak combine forces to dominate the strong.The political flexibility of our species is formidable: we can be quite egalitarian, we can be quite despotic. Hierarchy in the Forest traces the roots of these contradictory traits in chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, and early human societies. Boehm looks at the loose group structures of hunter-gatherers, then at tribal segmentation, and finally at present-day governments to see how these conflicting tendencies are reflected.Hierarchy in the Forest claims new territory for biological anthropology and evolutionary biology by extending the domain of these sciences into a crucial aspect of human political and social behavior. This book will be a key document in the study of the evolutionary basis of genuine altruism.

The Fiqh of Marriage in the Light of the Quran and Sunnah


صالح بن غانم السدلان - 1999
    al-Sadlaan of Muhammad Ibn Saud University covers the most important topics realated to the fiqh of Marriage. He discusses the topics found in traditional books of Fiqh, such as the place of the dower, the minimum and maximum amount of the dower, and when the woman is entitled to all, half or none of her dower. The book also discusses the rights of the husband and wife in Islam as well as sexual etiquette in Islam.

Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising


Jean Kilbourne - 1999
    Discusses the advertising establishment, revealing what advertisers know about human nature and how they exploit it to make a profit.

Mappings


Denis E. Cosgrove - 1999
    How have maps and mapping served to order and represent physical, social and imaginative worlds? How has the practice of mapping shaped modern seeing and knowing? In what ways do contemporary changes in our experience of the world alter the meanings and practice of mapping, and vice versa?In their diverse expressions, maps and the representational processes of mapping have constructed the spaces of modernity since the early Renaissance. The map's spatial fixity, its capacity to frame, control and communicate knowledge through combining image and text, and cartography's increasing claims to scientific authority, make mapping at once an instrument and a metaphor for rational understanding of the world.Among the topics the authors investigate are projective and imaginative mappings; mappings of terraqueous spaces; mapping and localism at the 'chorographic' scale; and mapping as personal exploration.With essays by Jerry Brotton, Paul Carter, Michael Charlesworth, James Corner, Wystan Curnow, Christian Jacob, Luciana de Lima Martins, David Matless, Armand Mattelart, Lucia Nuti and Alessandro Scafi

Social Determinants of Health


Richard G. Wilkinson - 1999
    Written by acknowledged experts in each field, it provides accessible summaries of the scientificjustification for isolating different aspects of social and economic life as the primary determinants of a population's health.The new edition takes account of the most recent research and also includes additional chapters on ethnicity and health, sexual behaviors, the elderly, housing and neighborhoods.Recognition of the power of socioeconomic factors as determinants of health came initially from research on health inequalities. This has led to a view of health as not simply about individual behavior or exposure to risk, but how the socially and economically structured way of life of a populationshapes its health. Thus exercise and accidents as as much about a society's transport system as about individual decisions; and the nation's diet involves agriculture, food manufacture, retailing, and personal incomes as much as individual choice. But a major new element in the picture we havedeveloped is the importance of the social, or psycho-social, environment to health. For example, health in the workplace for most employees - certainly for office workers - is less a matter of exposure to physical health hazards as of the social envrionment, of how supportive it is, whether peoplehave control over their work, whether their jobs are secure. A similar picture emerges in other areas ranging from the health importance of the emotional envrionment in early childhood to the need for more socially cohesive communities.Social Determinants of Health, 2E should be read by those interested in the wellbeing of modern societies. It is a must for public health professionals, for health promotion specialists, and for people working in the many fields of public policy which we now know make such an important contributionto health.

Social Theory: A Historical Introduction


Alex Callinicos - 1999
    No longer would human beings invoke the authority of tradition; instead, modern societies emerging in the West justified themselves by their success at increasing, through the application of scientific knowledge, human control over the world. Ever since this notion of modernity was formulated it has provoked intense debate. In this wide-ranging historical introduction to social theory, Alex Callinicos explores the controversies over modernity and examines the connections between social theory and modern philosophy, political economy and evolutionary biology. He offers clear and accesssible treatments of the thought of Montesquieu, Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment, Hegel, Marx, Tocqueville, Maistre, Gobineau, Darwin, Spencer, Kautsky, Nietzsche, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Freud, Lukacs, Gramsci, Heidegger, Keynes, Hayek, Parsons, the Frankfurt School, Levi-Strauss, Althusser, Foucault, Habermas and Bourdieu, and concludes by surveying the state of contemporary social thought. A remarkably comprehensive and lucid primer, Social Theoryis essential reading for students of politics, sociology and social and political thought.

Actor Network Theory and After


John Law - 1999
    This controversial and path-breaking volume extends ANT beyond studies of technology, power and organisation to the body, subjectivity, politics, and cultural difference, and puts it into cutting-edge dialogue with feminism, anthropology, psychology and economics.

Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader


Les BackTheodor W. Adorno - 1999
    It is divided into the following main sections:origins and transformations sociology, race and social theory racism and anti-Semitism colonialism, race and the other feminism, difference and identity changing boundaries and spaces.Each section begins with a brief editorial introduction, providing a guide to the readings by historically contextualizing them and relating them to other writings throughout the book. Cross-national in content, historical in scope and offering a variety of topical perspectives, Theories of Race and Racism will be an invaluable resource for undergraduates across a range of disciplines.

Lacan and the Political


Yannis Stavrakakis - 1999
    Yannis Stavrakakis clearly examines Lacan's challenging views on time, history, language, alterity, desire and sexuality from a political standpoint. It is the first book to provide an overview of the social and political implications of Lacan's work as a whole for students coming to Lacan for the first time.The first part of Lacan and the Political offers a straightforward and systematic assessment of the importance of Lacan's categories and theoretical constructions for concrete political analysis. The second half of the book applies Lacanian theory to specific examples of widely discussed political issues, such as Green ideology, the question of democracy and the hegemony of advertising in contemporary culture.

God of the Empty-Handed: Poverty, Power, and the Kingdom of God


Jayakumar Christian - 1999
    Extensive bibliography.

Tricking and Tripping: Prostitution in the Era of AIDS


Claire E. Sterk - 1999
    

The Japanese High School: Silence and Resistance


Shoko Yoneyama - 1999
    Recent violent events in schools, together with increasing drop-out rates and bullying are undermining stereotypes about the effectiveness of the Japanese education system. This incisive and original book looks at Japanese high school from a student perspective and contextualises this educational turmoil within the broader picture of Japans troubled economic and political life.

Queen Silver: The Godless Girl


Wendy McElroy - 1999
    A child prodigy and the daughter of famed socialist activist Grace Vern Silver, founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Queen Silver was the subject of Cecil B. De Mille's film The Godless Girl. She matured to become an international feminist, atheist, and socialist, living a remarkable and inspiring life, of which few feminists today are aware.Queen Silver: The Godless Girl is a fiery and profound biography of one of America's most amazing feminist thinkers, a woman who remained an active advocate of intellectual independence to the moment of her death in 1998 at the age of 86. Prolific feminist writer Wendy McElroy sympathetically chronicles the life of Queen Silver from personal interviews with her friends, published reports, letters, and a vast library of the family's personal papers. What emerges is a life like none other. A well-known thinker by the time she was 11-years-old, giving speeches titled "Pioneers of Freethought," "The Rights of Children," and "Science and the Workers," Queen challenged three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan to a debate on evolution (he declined); organized an atheist group at her high school; and left home at 15 to marry a doctor three-times her age, which later became the source of a highly publicized divorce.As a teenager, Queen once served as a defense lawyer for her mother and won. She founded the scholarly and well-reviewed Queen Silver Magazine, and overcame personal tragedy and political persecution during World War I's red scare. Queen worked as an extra in movies directed by D.W. Griffith, attended violent and controversial meetings of the IWW, and went into hiding at the advent of McCarthyism. In her later years, Queen received many freethought awards, remained active in the American Civil Liberties Union, and campaigned hard for public libraries.McElroy tells a complete story by profiling Queen's mother, lecturer and feminist writer Grace Vern Silver, whose struggles for justice in the IWW found her running for Congress, and whose personal education motivated her to inspire the genius in her daughter.

The Conquest of American Inflation


Thomas J. Sargent - 1999
    History reveals, however, that it has been conquered before and returned. In The Conquest of American Inflation, Thomas J. Sargent presents a groundbreaking analysis of the rise and fall of U.S. inflation after 1960. He examines two broad explanations for the behavior of inflation and unemployment in this period: the natural-rate hypothesis joined to the Lucas critique and a more traditional econometric policy evaluation modified to include adaptive expectations and learning. His purpose is not only to determine which is the better account, but also to codify for the benefit of the next generation the economic forces that cause inflation.Sargent begins with an explanation of how American policymakers increased inflation in the early 1960s by following erroneous assumptions about the exploitability of the Phillips curve--the inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment. In subsequent chapters, he connects a sequence of ideas--self-confirming equilibria, least-squares and other adaptive or recursive learning algorithms, convergence of least-squares learners with self-confirming equilibria, and recurrent dynamics along escape routes from self-confirming equilibria. Sargent synthesizes results from macroeconomics, game theory, control theory, and other fields to extend both adaptive expectations and rational expectations theory, and he compellingly describes postwar inflation in terms of drifting coefficients. He interprets his results in favor of adaptive expectations as the relevant mechanism affecting inflation policy.Providing an original methodological link between theoretical and policy economics, this book will engender much debate and become an indispensable text for academics, graduate students, and professional economists.

Dynamic Spiritual Leadership: Leading Like Paul


J. Oswald Sanders - 1999
    Oswald Sanders probes Scripture to elicit principles and factors that inspired the dynamic spiritual leadership of Paul and the other apostles in the halcyon days of the church. Paul's letters reveal a frail, fallible man--one who fell and rose again--someone who can speak to our need. Because spiritual principles are timeless, we can learn to apply them to our own situations.

In Search of Politics


Zygmunt Bauman - 1999
    How can most of us consider ourselves free and yet believe equally firmly that there is little we can change—singly, severally, or all together—in the ways the affairs of the world are being run? Why has the growth of individual freedom coincided with the growth of collective impotence, insofar as there is no easy and obvious way to translate private worries into public issues and, conversely, to pinpoint public issues in private troubles? What, under these circumstances, can bring us together?Occasionally, our impulses toward sociality are released in short-lived explosions, sometimes in carnivals of compassion and charity, sometimes by outbursts of beefed-up aggression against a freshly discovered enemy. The trouble with these occasions is that they run out of steam quickly, and when we return to our daily business the shared world, brightly illuminated for a moment, seems if anything darker than before.The chance of changing this condition hangs on the agora—the space neither private nor public, but more exactly private and public at the same time. In this space, private problems meet in a meaningful way—not just to draw narcissistic pleasures or in search of some therapy through public display, but to seek collective levers powerful enough to lift individuals from their private miseries and create "public good," a "just society," or "shared values." The trouble is that little is left today of the old-style private/public spaces.In this book, the author both explores these problems and sketches the outlines of a solution for them. We cannot, he argues, overcome our collective impotence without resorting to politics and using the vehicle of political agency. In the latter part of the book, the author focuses on three orientation points for a reconstruction of politics: the republican model of the state and of citizenship, basic income as a universal entitlement, and an attempt to re-enable the institutions of autonomous society by catching up with the extraterritorial powers wielding control in an age of globalization.

A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present


Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak - 1999
    A Critique of Postcolonial Reason tracks the figure of the native informant through various cultural practices--philosophy, history, literature--to suggest that it emerges as the metropolitan hybrid. The book addresses feminists, philosophers, critics, and interventionist intellectuals, as they unite and divide. It ranges from Kant's analytic of the sublime to child labor in Bangladesh. Throughout, the notion of a Third World interloper as the pure victim of a colonialist oppressor emerges as sharply suspect: the mud we sling at certain seemingly overbearing ancestors such as Marx and Kant may be the very ground we stand on.A major critical work, Spivak's book redefines and repositions the postcolonial critic, leading her through transnational cultural studies into considerations of globality.

How to Be: A Guide to Contemporary Living for African Americans


Harriette Cole - 1999
    Good manners are the rules that let us find our way in today's rapidly changing maze of lifestyles, customs, and relationships. Anyone who doesn't know these rules is living and working at a real disadvantage.In How to Be, noted author and editor Harriette Cole treats manners as a resource for the empowerment of the black community. She offers guidance drawn from the tried-and-true experience and wisdom of African American elders, as well as from European mainstream traditions in many areas of life, including: -Family—immediate, extended, and blended -New codes of dating, love, and sex -Entertaining family, friends, and coworkers in both casual and formal settings -Workplace issues -- from how to resign to what to wear on casual Fridays -Rites of passage, including weddings and funerals -Holiday celebrations like Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Juneteenth and much more

The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Expository Prose


John C. Brereton - 1999
    The editors' goals have always been the same: to collect the very best essays, by the very best writers, and place them between two covers. This new edition continues in that tradition, providing instructors with a wealth of selections, many of them new to this edition. The text also offers a flexible organization, an affordable price, and inventive, practical suggestions for improving reading and writing.

Internet, Mail, and Mixed-Mode Surveys: The Tailored Design Method


Don A. Dillman - 1999
    Now thoroughly updated and revised with information about all aspects of survey research?grounded in the most current research?the new edition provides practical ?how-to? guidelines on optimally using the Internet, mail, and phone channels to your advantage.

The Oracles of God: The Old Testament Canon


Andrew E. Steinmann - 1999
    Surveys the history of the formation of the Hebrew Bible.

Social Cognition


Ziva Kunda - 1999
    In this book Ziva Kunda provides a comprehensive and accessible survey of research and theory about social cognition at a level appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers in the field.The first part of the book reviews basic processes in social cognition, including the representation of social concepts, rules of inference, memory, hot cognition driven by motivation or affect, and automatic processing. The second part reviews three basic topics in social cognition: group stereotypes, knowledge of other individuals, and the self. A final chapter revisits many of these issues from a cross-cultural perspective.

Bodies and Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization


Ladelle McWhorter - 1999
    Categories of desire harden into stereotypes by which the forces of normalization hold us and judge us. In Bodies and Pleasures, Ladelle McWhorter reads Foucault from an original and personal angle, motivated by the differences this experience has made in her life. At the same time, her analysis advances discussion of key issues in Foucault scholarship: the genealogical critique, the status of the subject and humanism, essentialism versus social construction, and the relationships between identity, community, and political action. Weaving her own experience of coming to grips with her lesbian sexual identity into her readings of Foucault's most recent writings on sexuality and power, McWhorter argues compellingly that Foucault's texts should be read less for the arguments they advance and more for their transformative effect. By exploring bodies and pleasures--gardening, line dancing, or doing philosophy, for example--McWhorter shows that it isn't necessary to conform with socially recognized sexual identities. Bodies and Pleasures takes the reader beyond unexplored norms and imposed identities as it points the way toward a personal politics, ethics, and style that challenges our sexual selves.

The Dynamics of Fashion


Elaine Stone - 1999
    Featuring the latest facts, figures, and theories in fashion development, production, and merchandising, as well as a brand new chapter on the history of fashion, this book provides a broad foundation for students hoping to become a part of the industry. Apparel, accessories, cosmetics, home fashions, green design and more are explored in detail, while hundreds of examples make the business aspect fun. Fresh, forward, challenging and comprehensive, Elaine Stone’s classic text is for those in fashion who want to be both in the now and in the know.

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences


Geoffrey C. Bowker - 1999
    Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis.The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

The Self We Live by: Narrative Identity in a Postmodern World


James A. Holstein - 1999
    In the early part of the century, pragmatists like William James, Charles Horton Cooley, and George Herbert Mead turned away from the transcendental self of philosophical reflection to formulate the new concept of an empirical selfthe notion that who and what we are is established in everyday interaction. The self was now a social structure, as Mead put it, even if it was located within the individual.The story has changed dramatically since then. Today, according to some postmodern critics, the self has been cast adrift on a sea of disparate images. Its just one swirling representation among others, bandied about the frenzy of a media-driven society. At the turn of the 21st century, the self has lost its traditional groundings and fizzled empirically. The self's very existence is seriously being questioned.The Self We Live By resurrects the big story by taking issue with this account. Holstein and Gubrium have crafted a comprehensive discussion that traces a different course of development, from the early pragmatists to contemporary constructionist considerations, rescuing the self from the scrap-heap of postmodern imagery. Glimpses of renewal are located in a new kind of ending, centered in an institutional landscape of diverse narratives, articulated in relation to an expanding horizon of identities. Not only is there a new story of the self, but were told that the self, itself, is narratively constructed. Yet as varied and plentiful as narrative identity has become, its disciplined by its social practices, which the authors discuss and illustrate in terms of the everyday technology of self construction. The empirical self, it turns out, has become more complex and varied than its formulators could have imagined.

Black Society in Spanish Florida


Jane Landers - 1999
    Jane Landers’s pioneering study of people of the African diaspora under Spain’s colonial rule rewrites Florida history and enriches our understanding of the powerful links between race relations and cultural custom. As Landers shows, Spanish Florida was a sanctuary to Blacks fleeing enslavement on plantations. Castilian law, meanwhile, offered many avenues out of slavery. In St. Augustine and elsewhere, society accepted European-African unions, with families developing community connections through marriage, concubinage, and godparents. Assisted by Spanish traditions and ever-present geopolitical threats, people of African descent leveraged linguistic, military, diplomatic, and artisanal skills into citizenship and property rights. Landers details how Blacks became homesteaders, property owners, and entrepreneurs, and in the process enjoyed greater legal and social protection than in the two hundred years of Anglo history that followed.

We Are Coming: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women


Shirley Wilson Logan - 1999
    She analyzes not only speeches but also editorials, essays, and letters.Logan first focuses on the prophetic oratory of Maria Stewart, the first American-born black woman to speak publicly. Turning to Frances Harper, she considers speeches that argue for common interests between divergent communities. And she demonstrates that central to the antilynching rhetoric of Ida Wells is the concept of "presence," or the tactic of enhancing certain selected elements of the presentation.In her discussion of Fannie Barrier Williams and Anna Cooper, Logan shows that when speaking to white club women and black clergymen, both Williams and Cooper employ what Kenneth Burke called identification. To analyze the rhetoric of Victoria Matthews, she applies Carolyn Miller's modification of Lloyd Bitzer's concept of the rhetorical situation.Logan also examines the discourse of women associated with the black Baptist women's movement and those participating in college-affiliated conferences.The book includes an appendix with little-known speeches and essays by Anna Julia Cooper, Selena Sloan Butler, Lucy Wilmot Smith, Mary V. Cook, Adella Hunt Logan, Victoria Earle Matthews, Lucy C. Laney, and Georgia Swift King.

CRACK MOTHERS: PREGNANCY, DRUGS, AND THE MEDIA


Drew Humphries - 1999
    One treats drug users as patients, the other as criminals. However, beginning in the late 1980s, the "crack mother" scare led to an unprecedented alliance between doctors and prosecutors in same states, where doctors turned addicted pregnant women over to the police for arrest, trial, and incarceration. Humphries analyzes the public reaction to crack cocaine and the policies instituted to combat it. She shows us that more often than not, policies were generated by the fears that crack mothers were harbingers of even more serious social problems. The media's construction of the crack mother as a model of depravity is, she argues, a reflection of mainstream desires and fears, not a reflection of the truth. Humphries offers a more balanced view of the women who use crack and the policies that have been adopted to stop them.

Franz Boas: The Early Years, 1858-1906


Douglas Cole - 1999
    The text draws from the frank and informative letters of the Boas family.

Representations of Death: A Social Psychological Perspective


Mary Bradbury - 1999
    Illustrated with stunning photographs, this fascinating book makes a significant contribution to the growing literature in death studies.

Marx Went Away--But Karl Stayed Behind


Caroline Humphrey - 1999
    Through careful ethnographic work on two collective farms operated in Buryat communities in Siberia, the author presented an absorbing--if dispiriting--account of the actual functioning of a planned economy at the local level.Now this classic work is back in print in a revised edition that adds new material from the author's most recent research in the former Soviet Union. In two new chapters she documents what has happened to the two farms in the collapsing Russian economy. She finds that collective farms are still the dominant agricultural forms, not out of nostalgic sentiment or loyalty to the Soviet ideal, but from economic and political necessity.Today the collectives are based on households and small groups coming together out of choice. There have been important resurgences in "traditional" thinking about kinship, genealogy, shamanism and mountain cults; and yet all of this is newly formed by its attempt to deal with post-Soviet realities.Marx Went Away will appeal to students and scholars of anthropology, political science, economics, and sociology."The book should be on the shelf of every student of Soviet affairs." --Times Literary SupplementCaroline Humphrey is Fellow of King's College and Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

Aboriginal Law: Commentary, Cases and Materials


T.M. Thomas Isaac - 1999
    

Children's Television in Britain: History, Discourse and Policy


David Buckingham - 1999
    It looks at how broadcasters have defined the child audience, at the changing nature of children's programming and the impact of commercial competition and new technologies.

Taking Care of Men: Sexual Politics in the Public Mind


Anthony McMahon - 1999
    McMahon focuses on the pivotal issue of men's relationship to the daily work of caring for people, revealing much confusion about the extent and the interpretation of change. Using statistical data, interview transcripts and media analysis, McMahon draws insightful distinctions between pleasure and performance, assistance and responsibility, consumption and production.

Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag


Carolyn Marvin - 1999
    Using an anthropological theory, this groundbreaking book presents and explains the ritual sacrifices and regeneration that constitute American nationalism, the factors making particular elections or wars successful or unsuccessful rituals, the role of the mass media in the process, and the sense of malaise that has pervaded American society during the post-World War II period.

By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race


Barbara Diggs-Brown - 1999
    Beyond the rhetoric of politicians, the media, and the prevalent symbols of integration lies a very different reality: 70 percent of black children attend predominantly black schools; and an Hispanic or Asian American with a third grade education is more likely to live in an integrated neighborhood than is a black with a Ph.D. Fueled by these startling statistics, By the Color of Our Skin argues that integration does not exist now; that it never had a chance to exist in the past; and that it will never exist in the future.Leonard Steinhorn and Barbara Diggs-Brown would themselves like to see integration become a reality but find--through polls, statistics, interviews, and anecdotes--that the illusion of integration is more damaging than useful because it keeps society from having an honest dialogue about the problem of race. By the Color of Our Skin explodes powerful myths and outlines a new vision of race in America.

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing


Ted Conover - 1999
    When Conover’s request to shadow a recruit at the New York State Corrections Officer Academy was denied, he decided to apply for a job as a prison officer. So begins his odyssey at Sing Sing, once a model prison but now the state’s most troubled maximum-security facility. The result of his year there is this remarkable look at one of America’s most dangerous prisons, where drugs, gang wars, and sex are rampant, and where the line between violator and violated is often unclear.

The Rites of Christian Initiation: Their Evolution and Interpretation


Maxwell E. Johnson - 1999
    An overall and detailed introduction to the initiation rites.

American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom


Hanes Walton Jr. - 1999
    Through the use of two interrelated themes--the idea of universal freedom and the concept of minority-majority coalitions--the text demonstrates how the presence of Africans in the United States affected the founding of the Republic and its political institutions and processes. The authors show that through the quest for their own freedom in the United States, African Americans have universalized and expanded the freedoms for all Americans.

Material Culture


Henry Glassie - 1999
    Material culture records human intrusion in the environment. It is the way we imagine a distinction between nature and culture, and then rebuild nature to our desire, shaping, reshaping, and arranging things during life. We live in material culture, depend upon it, take it for granted, and realise through it our grandest aspirations. Thirty years ago, it seemed that material culture would become the realm within which relativistic and existential thinking would be extended to history and art, the issues of human significance and human excellence. Then the gears locked, the machine stopped, and began to run in reverse. We slid backward, rediscovering the energies of early modernism and naming our effort - in obeisance to the ideology of progress - postmodern. Humanist busied themselves with the reinvention of ideas they could have learned from the old masters of anthropology. Social scientists struggled to contrive ideas they could have learned by reading the great literature of the past. This retrograde motion was caused by more than adjustment to the conservative mood of the age. another. What has changed can change again; the moment at which I write will pass. Groping over old territory, relocating the critical purpose of scholarly endeavour, rediscovering subjectivity and situation, the diversity of orders and the interconnectedness of things, we will find points of convergence that will become the basis for a new transdisciplinary practice, at once humanistic and scientific. Renewed in oneness, we will be able to get on with our work, fashioning a view of humanity fit to the needs of the world's people. The concept of culture seems a secure achievement. In the future, history and art, as well as science and philosophy, will be understood to be, like culture, the creations of people who are alike in humanity, but different in tradition and predicament. Problematising is easy and endless. New ideas are a dime a dozen. What matters is how ideas fare in the world, what they yield in hard application. Our work will recognise the reality of the individual. traditions that unfold only within human control and among uncontrollable circumstances. It will expand through cross-cultural comparisons that bring us understanding at once of the universal and the particular. - Henry Glassie, from the Onward.

Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis


Lilie Chouliaraki - 1999
    It situates critical discourse analysis as a form of critical social research in relation to diverse theories from the philosophy of science to social theory and from political science to sociology and linguistics. First, the authors clarify the ontological and epistemological assumptions of critical discourse analysis - its view of what the social world consists of and how to study it - and, in so doing, point to the connections between critical discourse analysis and critical social scientific research more generally. Secondly, they relate critical discourse analysis to social theory, by creating a research agenda in contemporary social life on the basis of narratives of late modernity, particularly those of Giddens, Habermas, and Harvey as well as feminist and postmodernist approaches. Thirdly, they show the relevance of sociological work in the analysis of discursive aspects of social life, drawing on the work of Bourdieu and Bernstein to theorise the dialectic of social reproduction and change, and on post-structuralist, post-colonial and feminist work to theorise the dialectic of complexity and homogenisation in contemporary societies. Finally, they discuss the relationship between systemic-functional linguistics and critical discourse analysis, showing how the analytical strength of each can benefit from the other.* Sets out a new and distinctive theoretical grounding and research agenda for critical discourse analysis* Interdisciplinary in scope* Draws on a broad range of theories and approaches

Ethical Dilemmas in Feminist Research: The Politics of Location, Interpretation, and Publication


Gesa E. Kirsch - 1999
    By addressing ethical dilemmas in a wide range of situations--qualitative research studies, interview studies, studies of classroom practice, studies of student writing, and feminist work--Gesa Kirsch explores some important questions: Can researchers represent the experiences of others without misrepresenting, misappropriating, or distorting their realities? What are researchers' responsibilities toward research participants, students, and readers? What ethical principles can guide researchers when they encounter participants who share highly confidential information or work with institutions who wish to conceal relevant information?

Out of the Mouths of Slaves: African American Language and Educational Malpractice


John Baugh - 1999
    In this book, John Baugh, an authority on African American English, sets new parameters for the debate by dissecting and challenging many of the prevailing myths about African American language and its place in American society.Baugh's inquiry ranges from the origins of African American English among slaves and their descendants to its recent adoption by standard English speakers of various races. Some of the topics he considers include practices and malpractices for educating language minority students, linguistic discrimination in the administration of justice, cross-cultural communication between Blacks and whites, and specific linguistic aspects of African American English. This detailed overview of the main points of debate about African American language will be important reading for both scholars and the concerned public.

Frock Rock: Women Performing Popular Music


Mavis Bayton - 1999
    from the punk era until today. The author, an academic and musician, carried out over 100 interviews with women playing in British bands from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. Although the book is primarily sociological, it is easily accessible to the general reader and rich with quotations. It explains the shortage of female instrumentalists and explores the routes and life experiences that have been taken by those exceptional women who do play in bands.

Telling Is Risky Business: The Experience of Mental Illness Stigma


Otto F. Wahl - 1999
    Not only must they cope with disabling disorders, but they also must contend with the negative attitudes of the public toward those disorders. To truly understand the full extent of this stigma, we need to hear from the consumers (the term used in this book for people with mental illnesses) themselves. Telling Is Risky Business is the first book to examine what these people have to say about their own experiences of stigma. The center of Wahl's research was a nationwide survey in which mental health consumers across the United States were asked, both through questionnaires and interviews, to tell about their experiences of stigma and discrimination. The research comes to life as many of the over 1,300 respondents offer perceptive observations, in their own words, of how our society treats people with mental illness. As Laura Lee Hall, director of research, NAMI, writes in the Foreword, " This book] presents the voices of people who have mounted the struggle and hopefully will lead you to the belief that we cannot as a people tolerate further cruelty and discrimination against these, our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, neighbors, and fellow citizens."

Race, Money, and the American Welfare State


Michael K. Brown - 1999
    Michael K. Brown contends that our welfare system has in fact denied them the social provision it gives white citizens while stigmatizing them as recipients of government benefits for low income citizens. In his provocative history of America's safety net from its origins in the New Deal through much of its dismantling in the 1990s, Brown explains how the forces of fiscal conservatism and racism combined to shape a welfare state in which blacks are disproportionately excluded from mainstream programs.Brown describes how business and middle class opposition to taxes and spending limited the scope of the Social Security Act and work relief programs of the 1930s and the Great Society in the 1960s. These decisions produced a welfare state that relies heavily on privately provided health and pension programs and cash benefits for the poor. In a society characterized by pervasive racial discrimination, this outcome, Michael Brown makes clear, has led to a racially stratified welfare system: by denying African Americans work, whites limited their access to private benefits as well as to social security and other forms of social insurance, making welfare their main occupation. In his conclusion, Brown addresses the implications of his argument for both conservative and liberal critiques of the Great Society and for policies designed to remedy inner-city poverty.

Exploring Disability: A Sociological Introduction


Colin Barnes - 1999
    As well as providing an excellent overview of the existing literature in the area, the book also develops an understanding of disability that has implications for both sociology and society.

A Politics of the Ordinary


Thomas Dumm - 1999
    Combining poststructuralist analysis with a sympathetic reading of a strain of American thought that begins with Emerson and culminates in the work of Stanley Cavell, A Politics of the Ordinary investigates incidents from everyday life, political spectacles, and popular culture. Whether juxtaposing reflections about boredom in rural New Mexico with Emerson's theory of constitutional amendment, Richard Nixon's letter of resignation with Thoreau's writings to overcome quiet desperation, or demonstrating how Disney's Toy Story allegorizes the downsizing of the American white-collar work force, Dumm's constant concern is to show how the ordinary is the primary source of the democratic political imagination.

Portals and Corridors: A Guide to Hyperspace Travel


Gary L. Whitney - 1999
    Through the admittedly imperfect tools of our minds and 'imaginality' they have glimpsed the inhabitants of that domain known as hyperspace, subspace, or the astral realm; and they have presented us with their remarkable portraits and words. The beings in this book live far from us in actual time-space and are hard to see, but their destinies and ours are intertwined, and they bear critical messages for all inhabitants of the Earth.

Las Vegas: The Social Production of an All-American City


Mark Gottdiener - 1999
    This book is different.Written by two renowned urban studies scholars and a local Las Vegas journalist, combining scholarly research with investigative reporting First academic book to provide a synthesis on the recent growth of Las Vegas Appropriate for courses in urban studies, economic development and tourism, communities and cultural studies

How Social Movements Matter


Marco Giugni - 1999
    But to truly understand their impact over time, in different countries, and on various segments of society requires the kind of rare insight this book provides. Bringing together several well-known scholars, this volume offers an assessment of the consequences of social movements in Western countries.Policy, institutional, cultural, short- and long-term, and intended and unintended outcomes are among the types of consequences the authors consider in depth. They also compare political outcomes of several contemporary movements -- specifically, women's, peace, ecology, and extreme-rights movements -- in different countries.

The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment, and Other Macroaggressions


Katheryn K. Russell - 1999
    In the minds of many, these two problems are inextricably linked. Yet opinions and beliefs about race and crime are often informed as much by myth and preconception as by fact and reality.In this important book, Katheryn K. Russell surveys the landscape of American crime and identifies some of the country's most significant racial pathologies. Why do Black and White Americans perceive police actions so differently? Is White fear of Black crime justified? Do African Americans really "protect their own"? Should they?Perhaps the most explosive and troublesome phenomenon at the nexus of race and crime is the racial hoax--a contemporary version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Examining both White-on-Black hoaxes such as Susan Smith's and Charles Stuart's claims that Black men were responsible for crimes they themselves committed, and Black-on-White hoaxes such as the Tawana Brawley episode, Russell illustrates the formidable and lasting damage that occurs when racial stereotypes are manipulated and exploited for personal advantage. She shows us how such hoaxes have disastrous consequences and compellingly argues for harsher punishments for offenders.Stressing that journalists, scholars, and policymakers alike have an ethical imperative to disregard and refute inflammatory or wrong-headed work on race, The Color of Crime is a lucid and forceful book, impossible to ignore.

A Handbook for the Study of Mental Health: Social Contexts, Theories, and Systems


Allan V. Horwitz - 1999
    Divided into three sections, the chapters cover the general perspectives in the field, the social determinants of mental health, and current policy areas affecting mental health services. A Handbook for the Study of Mental Health is designed for classroom use in sociology, social work, human relations, human services, and psychology. With its useful definitions, overview of the historical, social, and institutional frameworks for understanding mental health and illness, and nontechnical style, the text is suitable for advanced undergraduate or lower level graduate students.

The Demography of Corporations and Industries


Glenn R. Carroll - 1999
    Many analysts also study corporations primarily in terms of their internal organizational structures or as complex systems of financial contracts. Glenn Carroll and Michael Hannan bring fresh insight to our understanding of corporations and the industries they comprise by looking beyond prototypical structures to focus on the range and diversity of organizations in their social and economic setting. The result is a rich rendering of analysis that portrays whole populations and communities of corporations. The Demography of Corporations and Industries is the first book to present the demographic approach to organizational studies in its entirety. It examines the theory, models, methods, and data used in corporate demographic research. Carroll and Hannan explore the processes by which corporate populations change over time, including organizational founding, growth, decline, structural transformation, and mortality. They review and synthesize the major theoretical mechanisms of corporate demography, ranging from aging and size dependence to population segregation and density dependence. The book also explores some selected implications of corporate demography for public policy, including employment and regulation.In this path-breaking book, Carroll and Hannan demonstrate why demographic research on corporations is important; describe how to conduct demographic research; specify fruitful areas of future research; and suggest how the demographic perspective can enrich the public discussion of issues surrounding the corporation in our constantly evolving industrial society. All researchers and analysts with an interest in this topic will find The Demography of Corporations and Industries an invaluable resource.

Cognition And Material Culture: The Archaeology Of Symbolic Storage


Colin Renfrew - 1999
    A collection of 15 papers that explore how human beliefs have been externalized and 'stored' in material form, thus making very intangible ideas that exist in a permanent, tangible form.