Book picks similar to
Tourist Attractions: Performing Race and Masculinity in Brazil's Sexual Economy by Gregory C. Mitchell
sociology
university-press
places-geography-community
queer-non-fiction
Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City
Laurent Gayer - 2014
It is also the most violent. Since the mid-1980s, it has endured endemic political conflict and criminal violence, which revolve around control of the city and its resources (votes, landand bhatta-protection money). These struggles for the city have become ethnicized. Karachi, often referred to as a Pakistan in miniature, has become increasingly fragmented, socially as well as territorially.Despite this chronic state of urban political warfare, Karachi is the cornerstone of the economy of Pakistan. Gayer's book is an attempt to elucidate this conundrum. Against journalistic accounts describing Karachi as chaotic and ungovernable, he argues that there is indeed order of a kind in thecity's permanent civil war. Far from being entropic, Karachi's polity is predicated upon organisational, interpretative and pragmatic routines that have made violence manageable for its populations. Whether such ordered disorder is viable in the long term remains to be seen, but for now Karachiworks despite-and sometimes through-violence.
Foundations of Earth Science
Frederick K. Lutgens - 1996
This highly visual, non- technical survey emphasizes broad, up-to-date coverage of basic topics and principles in geology, oceanography, meteorology, and astronomy. The text's flexible design lends itself to the diversity of Earth science courses in both content and approach. As in previous editions, the main focus is to foster student understanding of basic earth science principles.
Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry
Evan Wolfson - 2004
It is the work of one of the most influential attorneys in America, who has dedicated his life to the protection of individuals' rights and our Constitution's commitment to equal justice under the law. Above all, it is a clear, straightforward book that brings into sharp focus the very human significance of the right to marry in America—not just for some couples, but for all. Why is the word marriage so important? Will marriage for same-sex couples hurt the "sanctity" of the institution? How can people of different faiths reconcile their beliefs with the idea of marriage for same-sex couples? How will allowing gay couples to marry affect children? In this quietly powerful volume, the most authoritative and fairly articulated book on the subject, Wolfson demonstrates why the right to marry is important—indeed necessary—for all couples and for America's promise of equality.
Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Caroline B. Brettell - 1993
This book takes an accessible approach to the subject matter, making coverage appropriate for students from a variety of levels.
A Geography of Time: The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist, or How Every Culture Keeps Time Just a Little Bit Differently
Robert V. Levine - 1997
When we travel to a different country, or even a different city in the United States, we assume that a certain amount of cultural adjustment will be required, whether it's getting used to new food or negotiating a foreign language, adapting to a different standard of living or another currency. In fact, what contributes most to our sense of disorientation is having to adapt to another culture's sense of time.Levine, who has devoted his career to studying time and the pace of life, takes us on an enchanting tour of time through the ages and around the world. As he recounts his unique experiences with humor and deep insight, we travel with him to Brazil, where to be three hours late is perfectly acceptable, and to Japan, where he finds a sense of the long-term that is unheard of in the West. We visit communities in the United States and find that population size affects the pace of life--and even the pace of walking. We travel back in time to ancient Greece to examine early clocks and sundials, then move forward through the centuries to the beginnings of "clock time" during the Industrial Revolution. We learn that there are places in the world today where people still live according to "nature time," the rhythm of the sun and the seasons, and "event time," the structuring of time around happenings(when you want to make a late appointment in Burundi, you say, "I'll see you when the cows come in").Levine raises some fascinating questions. How do we use our time? Are we being ruled by the clock? What is this doing to our cities? To our relationships? To our own bodies and psyches? Are there decisions we have made without conscious choice? Alternative tempos we might prefer? Perhaps, Levine argues, our goal should be to try to live in a "multitemporal" society, one in which we learn to move back and forth among nature time, event time, and clock time. In other words, each of us must chart our own geography of time. If we can do that, we will have achieved temporal prosperity.
The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America
Eric Cervini - 2020
Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny, like countless gay men and women before him, was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back.Eric Cervini's The Deviant's War is the story of what followed. This book is an assiduously researched history of an early champion of gay liberation, one who fought for the right to follow his passion and serve his country in the wake of Joseph McCarthy's Lavender Scare. We follow Kameny as he explores the underground gay scenes of Boston and Washington, D.C., where he formulates his arguments against the U.S. Government's classification of gay men and women as "sexual perverts." At a time when staying in the closet remained the default, he exposed the hypocrisies of the American establishment, accelerated a broader revolution in sexual morals, and invented what we now know as Gay Pride.Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, The Deviant's War unfolds over the course of the 1960s, as the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded, became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay federal employees. It traces the forgotten ties that bound gay rights to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. Above all, it is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads; of public battles with Congress; of FBI informants; murder; betrayal; sex; love; and ultimately victory.
Leisure: The Basis of Culture
Josef Pieper - 1948
Pieper shows that the Greeks understood and valued leisure, as did the medieval Europeans. He points out that religion can be born only in leisure - a leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture.He maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture - and ourselves.These astonishing essays contradict all our pragmatic and puritanical conceptions about labor and leisure; Josef Pieper demolishes the twentieth-century cult of "work" as he predicts its destructive consequences.
Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices
Stuart Hall - 1997
Combining examples with activities and selected readings it offers a unique resource for teachers and students in cultural studies and related fields as an introduction to this complex and central theme.
Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class
Mary Pattillo - 1999
The result of living for three years in "Groveland," a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy has written a book that explores both the advantages and the boundaries that exist for members of the black middle class. Despite arguments that race no longer matters, Pattillo-McCoy shows a different reality, one where black and white middle classes remain separate and unequal.
The Rites of Passage
Arnold van Gennep - 1909
Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957) was the first anthropologist to note the regularity and significance of the rituals attached to the transitional stages in man's life, and his phrase for these, "the rites of passage," has become a part of the language of anthropology and sociology.
With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India
Gayatri Reddy - 2005
The subjects of this study are hijras or the "third sex" of India, individuals who occupy a unique, liminal space between male and female, sacred and profane. Hijras are men who sacrifice their genitalia to a goddess in return for the power to confer fertility on newlyweds and newborn children, a ritual role they are respected for, at the same time as they are stigmatized for their ambiguous sexuality. By focusing on the hijra community, Reddy sheds new light on Indian society and the intricate negotiations of identity across various domains of everyday life. Further, by reframing hijra identity through the local economy of respect, this ethnography highlights the complex relationships between local and global, sexual and moral, economies. This book will be regarded as the definitive work on hijras, one that will be of enormous interest to anthropologists, students of South Asian culture, and specialists in gender, queer, and sexuality studies.
Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans
Ronald Takaki - 1989
Through richly detailed vignettes--by turns bitter, funny, and inspiring--he offers a stunning panorama of a neglected part of American history. 16 pages of photographs.