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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Ethnic studies
Benevolent Orders, The Sons of Ham, Prince Hall Freemasonry-these
and other African American lodges created a social safety net for
members across Tennessee. During their heyday between 1865 and
1930, these groups provided members numerous perks, such as sick
benefits and assurance of a proper burial, opportunities for
socialization and leadership, and an opportunity to work with local
churches and schools to create better communities. Many of these
groups gradually faded from existence, but left an enduring legacy
in the form of the cemeteries these lodges left behind. These Black
cemeteries dot the Tennessee landscape, but few know their history
or the societies of care they represent. To Care for the Sick and
Bury the Dead is the first book-length look at these cemeteries and
the lodges that fostered them. This book is a must-have for
genealogists, historians, and family members of the people buried
in these cemeteries.
For American Indians, tribal politics are paramount. They determine
the standards for tribal enrollment, guide negotiations with
outside governments, and help set collective economic and cultural
goals. But how, asks Raymond I. Orr, has history shaped the
American Indian political experience? By exploring how different
tribes' politics and internal conflicts have evolved over time,
Reservation Politics offers rare insight into the role of
historical experience in the political lives of American Indians.
To trace variations in political conflict within tribes today to
their different historical experiences, Orr conducted an
ethnographic analysis of three federally recognized tribes: the
Isleta Pueblo in New Mexico, the Citizen Potawatomi in Oklahoma,
and the Rosebud Sioux in South Dakota. His extensive interviews and
research reveal that at the center of tribal politics are
intratribal factions with widely different worldviews. These
factions make conflicting claims about the purpose, experience, and
identity of their tribe. Reservation Politics points to two types
of historical experience relevant to the construction of tribes'
political and economic worldviews: historical trauma, such as
ethnic cleansing or geographic removal, and the incorporation of
Indian communities into the market economy. In Orr's case studies,
differences in experience and interpretation gave rise to complex
worldviews that in turn have shaped the beliefs and behavior at
play in Indian politics. By engaging a topic often avoided in
political science and American Indian studies, Reservation Politics
allows us to see complex historical processes at work in
contemporary American Indian life. Orr's findings are essential to
understanding why tribal governments make the choices they do.
Making a living in the Caribbean requires resourcefulness and even
a willingness to circumvent the law. Women of color in Jamaica
encounter bureaucratic mazes, neighborhood territoriality, and
ingrained racial and cultural prejudices. For them, it requires
nothing less than a herculean effort to realize their
entrepreneurial dreams. In Higglers in Kingston, Winnifred
Brown-Glaude puts the reader on the ground in frenetic urban
Kingston, the capital and largest city in Jamaica. She explores the
lives of informal market laborers, called "higglers," across the
city as they navigate a corrupt and inaccessible "official"
Jamaican economy. But rather than focus merely on the present-day
situation, she contextualizes how Jamaica arrived at this point,
delving deep into the island's history as a former colony, a home
to slaves and masters alike, and an eventual nation of competing
and conflicted racial sectors. Higglers in Kingston weaves together
contemporary ethnography, economic history, and sociology of race
to address a broad audience of readers on a crucial economic and
cultural center.
Negotiation, understood simply as "working things out by talking
things through," is often anything but simple for Native nations
engaged with federal, state, and local governments to solve complex
issues, promote economic and community development, and protect and
advance their legal and historical rights. Power Balance builds on
traditional Native values and peacemaking practices to equip tribes
today with additional tools for increasing their negotiating
leverage. As cofounder and executive director of the Indian Dispute
Resolution Service, author Steven J. Haberfeld has worked with
Native tribes for more than forty years to help resolve internal
differences and negotiate complex transactions with governmental,
political, and private-sector interests. Drawing on that
experience, he combines Native ideas and principles with the
strategies of "interest-based negotiation" to develop a framework
for overcoming the unique structural challenges of dealing with
multilevel government agencies. His book offers detailed
instructions for mastering six fundamental steps in the negotiating
process, ranging from initial planning and preparation to hammering
out a comprehensive, written win-win agreement. With real-life
examples throughout, Power Balance outlines measures tribes can
take to maximize their negotiating power-by leveraging their
special legal rights and historical status and by employing
political organizing strategies to level the playing field in
obtaining their rightful benefits. Haberfeld includes a case study
of the precedent-setting negotiation between the Timbisha Shoshone
Tribe and four federal agencies that resolved disputes over land,
water, and other natural resource in Death Valley National Park in
California. Bringing together firsthand experience, traditional
Native values, and the most up-to-date legal principles and
practices, this how-to book will be an invaluable resource for
tribal leaders and lawyers seeking to develop and refine their
negotiating skills and strategies.
Honorable Mention, 2020 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding
Research in Theatre History, given by the American Society for
Theatre Research Argues that Ricanness operates as a continual
performance of bodily endurance against US colonialism In 1954,
Dolores "Lolita" Lebron and other members of the Puerto Rican
Nationalist Party led a revolutionary action on the chambers of
Congress, firing several shots at the ceiling and calling for the
independence of the island. Ricanness: Enduring Time in
Anticolonial Performance begins with Lebron's vanguard act,
distilling the relationship between Puerto Rican subjectivity,
gender, sexuality, and revolutionary performance under colonial
time. Ruiz argues that Ricanness-a continual performance of bodily
endurance against US colonialism through different measures of
time-uncovers what's at stake politically for the often unwanted,
anticolonial, racialized and sexualized enduring body. Moving among
theatre, experimental video, revolutionary protest, photography,
poetry, and durational performance art, Ricanness stages scenes in
which the philosophical, social, and psychic come together at the
site of aesthetics, against the colonization of time. Analyzing the
work of artists and revolutionaries like ADAL, Lebron, Papo Colo,
Pedro Pietri, and Ryan Rivera, Ricanness imagines a Rican future
through the time travel extended in their aesthetic interventions,
illustrating how they have reformulated time itself through
nonlinear aesthetic practices.
The Jewish practice of bar mitzvah dates back to the twelfth
century, but this ancient cultural ritual has changed radically
since then, evolving with the times and adapting to local
conditions. For many Jewish-American families, a child's bar
mitzvah or bat mitzvah is both a major social event and a symbolic
means of asserting the family's ongoing connection to the core
values of Judaism. Coming of Age in Jewish America takes an inside
look at bar and bat mitzvahs in the twenty-first century, examining
how the practices have continued to morph and exploring how they
serve as a sometimes shaky bridge between the values of
contemporary American culture and Judaic tradition. Interviewing
over 200 individuals involved in bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies,
from family members to religious educators to rabbis, Patricia Keer
Munro presents a candid portrait of the conflicts that often emerge
and the negotiations that ensue. In the course of her study, she
charts how this ritual is rife with contradictions; it is a private
family event and a public community activity, and for the child, it
is both an educational process and a high-stakes performance.
Through detailed observations of Conservative, Orthodox, Reform,
and independent congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Munro
draws intriguing, broad-reaching conclusions about both the current
state and likely future of American Judaism. In the process, she
shows not only how American Jews have forged a unique set of bar
and bat mitzvah practices, but also how these rituals continue to
shape a distinctive Jewish-American identity.
The disastrous Buffalo Creek Treaty of 1838 called for the Senecas'
removal to Kansas (then part of the Indian Territory). From this
low point, the Seneca Nation of Indians, which today occupies three
reservations in western New York, sought to rebound. Beginning with
events leading to the Seneca Revolution in 1848, which transformed
the nation's government from a council of chiefs to an elected
system, Laurence M. Hauptman traces Seneca history through the New
Deal. Based on the author's nearly fifty years of archival
research, interviews, and applied work, Coming Full Circle shows
that Seneca leaders in these years learned valuable lessons and
adapted to change, thereby preparing the nation to meet the
challenges it would face in the post-World War II era, including
major land loss and threats of termination. Instead of emphasizing
American Indian decline, Hauptman stresses that the Senecas were
actors in their own history and demonstrated cultural and political
resilience. Both Native belief, in the form of the Good Message of
Handsome Lake, and Christianity were major forces in Seneca life;
women continued to play important social and economic roles despite
the demise of clan matrons' right to nominate the chiefs; and
Senecas became involved in national and international competition
in long-distance running and in lacrosse. The Seneca Nation also
achieved noteworthy political successes in this period. The Senecas
resisted allotment, and thus saved their reservations from breakup
and sale. They recruited powerful allies, including attorneys,
congressmen, journalists, and religious leaders. They saved their
Oil Spring Reservation, winning a U.S. Supreme Court case against
New York State on the issue of taxation and won remuneration in
their Kansas Claims case. These efforts laid the groundwork for the
Senecas' postwar endeavor to seek compensation before the Indian
Claims Commission and pursuit of a series of land claims and tax
lawsuits against New York State.
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