Imagining Latinidad examines how Latin American migrants use technology for public engagement, social activism, and to build digital, diasporic communities. Thanks to platforms like Facebook and YouTube, immigrants from Latin America can stay in contact with the culture they left behind. Members of these groups share information related to their homeland through discussions of food, music, celebrations, and other cultural elements. Despite their physical distance, these diasporic virtual communities are not far removed from the struggles in their homelands, and migrant activists play a central role in shaping politics both in their home country and in their host country. Contributors are: Amanda Arrais, Karla Castillo Villapudua, David S. Dalton, Jason H. Dormady, Carmen Gabriela Febles, Alvaro Gonzalez Alba, Yunuen Ysela Mandujano-Salazar, Anna Marta Marini, Diana Denisse Merchant Ley, Covadonga Lamar Prieto, Maria del Pilar Ramirez Groebli, David Ramirez Plascencia, Jessica Retis, Nancy Rios-Contreras, and Patria Roman-Velazquez.

Provides a detailed look at how war affects human life and health far beyond the battlefield Since 2010, a team of activists, social scientists, and physicians have monitored the lives lost as a result of the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan through an initiative called the Costs of War Project. Unlike most studies of war casualties, this research looks beyond lives lost in violence to consider those who have died as a result of illness, injuries, and malnutrition that would not have occurred had the war not taken place. Incredibly, the Cost of War Project has found that, of the more than 1,000,000 lives lost in the recent US wars, a minimum of 800,000 died not from violence, but from indirect causes. War and Health offers a critical examination of these indirect casualties, examining health outcomes on the battlefield and elsewhere-in hospitals, homes, and refugee camps-both during combat and in the years following, as communities struggle to live normal lives despite decimated social services, lack of access to medical care, ongoing illness and disability, malnutrition, loss of infrastructure, and increased substance abuse. The volume considers the effect of the war on both civilians and on US service members, in war zones-where healthcare systems have been destroyed by long-term conflict-and in the United States, where healthcare is highly developed. Ultimately, it draws much-needed attention to the far-reaching health consequences of the recent US wars, and argues that we cannot go to war-and remain at war-without understanding the catastrophic effect war has on the entire ecosystem of human health.

The State and the Awajun: Frontier Expansion in the Upper Amazon, 1541-1990 demonstrates how the indigenous people of Amazonia have been subjected to a series of regional, national, and international socioeconomic and political processes that have shaped their lives. The text explores how extractive economies in Amazonia have provided fleeting periods of elite prosperity, but ultimately at the expense of the regions biocultural diversity. Beginning in 1541 and progressing chronologically, the text details significant instances of conquest, resistance, development, and policy. Students learn about the Awajun people and the indigenous policies that have impacted their lives and land since early encounters with explorers and missionaries. The text addresses colonial social control, Juan de Salinas Loyola and the conquest of the upper Amazon, the emergence of the Peruvian nation-state, and the geo-politics of Amazonian frontier expansion. The effect of populism on indigenous policy, military colonization, and the dynamics of contemporary Awajun society are also addressed, among other critical topics. The State and the Awajun is an ideal text for courses in anthropology and South American history, especially those with focus on the social and political effects of frontier expansion.