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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social groups & communities > General
In a globalizing and expanding world, the need for research
centered on analysis, representation, and management of landscape
components has become critical. By providing development strategies
that promote resilient relations, this book promotes more
sustainable and cultural approaches for territorial construction.
The Handbook of Research on Methods and Tools for Assessing
Cultural Landscape Adaptation provides emerging research on the
cultural relationships between a community and the ecological
system in which they live. This book highlights important topics
such as adaptive strategies, ecosystem services, and operative
methods that explore the expanding aspects of territorial
transformation in response to human activities. This publication is
an important resource for academicians, graduate students,
engineers, and researchers seeking a comprehensive collection of
research focused on the social and ecological components in
territory development.
Divided by the Word refutes the assumption that the entrenched ethnic divide between South Africa’s Zulus and Xhosas, a divide that turned deadly in the late 1980s, is elemental to both societies. Jochen Arndt reveals how the current distinction between the two groups emerged from a long and complex interplay of indigenous and foreign born actors, with often diverging ambitions and relationships to the world they shared and the languages they spoke.
The earliest roots of the divide lie in the eras of exploration and colonization, when European officials and naturalists classified South Africa’s indigenous population on the basis of skin color and language. Later, missionaries collaborated with African intermediaries to translate the Bible into the region’s vernaculars, artificially creating distinctions between Zulu and Xhosa speakers. By the twentieth century, these foreign players, along with African intellectuals, designed language-education programs that embedded the Zulu-Xhosa divide in South African consciousness.
Using archival sources from three continents written in multiple languages, Divided by the Word offers a refreshingly new appreciation for the deep historicity of language and ethnic identity in South Africa, while reconstructing the ways in which colonial forces generate and impose ethnic divides with long-lasting and lethal consequences for indigenous populations.
At a time when politicians place increasing importance on the role
of 'community' in overcoming social problems, "Searching for
Community" asks the vital question 'what is community, anyway?'. Is
it an answer to social problems or an illusion to be dismissed?
This insightful book is written from the perspective of the late
Jeremy Brent's thirty year involvement as a youth worker in
Southmead, a housing estate in Bristol and a place where discourses
of community run strong. "Searching for Community" presents a
variety of perspectives to challenge the ways in which areas of
poverty and disrepute are represented. It examines ways to
understand and engage with the troublesome concept of 'community',
vividly describing the collective actions of young people and
adults to show the way community is enacted as a combination of
dreams, actions and materiality.Providing a unique mix of practical
knowledge and a sophisticated analysis of popular, professional,
and theoretical ideas of community, "Searching for Community" makes
uneasy reading for those looking for simplistic solutions to issues
including youth crime, social marginalisation and community
empowerment. This accessible book is a must-read for students and
practitioners in the fields of community development, sociology and
youth work who wish to get beyond the rhetoric and engage with the
complexities of discourses of community.
Peculiar Whiteness: Racial Anxiety and Poor Whites in Southern
Literature, 1900-1965 argues for deeper consideration of the
complexities surrounding the disparate treatment of poor whites
throughout southern literature and attests to how broad such
experiences have been. While the history of prejudice against this
group is not the same as the legacy of violence perpetrated against
people of color in America, individuals regarded as ""white trash""
have suffered a dehumanizing process in the writings of various
white authors. Poor white characters are frequently maligned as
grotesque and anxiety inducing, especially when they are aligned in
close proximity to blacks or to people with disabilities. Thus, as
a symbol, much has been asked of poor whites, and various
iterations of the label (e.g., ""white trash,"" tenant farmers, or
even people with a little less money than average) have been
subject to a broad spectrum of judgment, pity, compassion, fear,
and anxiety. Peculiar Whiteness engages key issues in contemporary
critical race studies, whiteness studies, and southern studies,
both literary and historical. Through discussions of authors
including Charles Chesnutt, Thomas Dixon, Sutton Griggs, Erskine
Caldwell, Lillian Smith, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor,
we see how whites in a position of power work to maintain their
status, often by finding ways to recategorize and marginalize
people who might not otherwise have seemed to fall under the
auspices or boundaries of ""white trash.
Showcasing the work of more than 200 women writers of African descent, this major international collection celebrates their contributions to literature and international culture.
Twenty-five years ago, Margaret Busby’s groundbreaking anthology Daughters Of Africa illuminated the “silent, forgotten, underrated voices of black women” (Washington Post). Published to international acclaim, it was hailed as “an extraordinary body of achievement… a vital document of lost history” (Sunday Times).
New Daughters Of Africa continues that mission for a new generation, bringing together a selection of overlooked artists of the past with fresh and vibrant voices that have emerged from across the globe in the past two decades, from Antigua to Zimbabwe with numerous South African contributors. Key figures join popular contemporaries in paying tribute to the heritage that unites them. Each of the pieces in this remarkable collection demonstrates an uplifting sense of sisterhood, honours the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and addresses the common obstacles women writers of colour face as they negotiate issues of race, gender and class, and confront vital matters of independence, freedom and oppression.
Custom, tradition, friendships, sisterhood, romance, sexuality, intersectional feminism, the politics of gender, race, and identity—all and more are explored in this glorious collection of work from over 200 writers. New Daughters Of Africa spans a wealth of genres—autobiography, memoir, oral history, letters, diaries, short stories, novels, poetry, drama, humour, politics, journalism, essays and speeches—to demonstrate the diversity and remarkable literary achievements of black women.
New Daughters Of Africa features a number of well-known South African contributors including Gabeba Baderoon, Nadia Davids, Diana Ferrus, Vangile Gantsho, Barbara Masekela, Lebogang Mashile and Sisonke Msimang.
We often think identity is personal. But the identities that shape the
world, our struggles, and our hopes, are social ones, shared with
countless others. Our sense of self is shaped by our family, but also
by affiliations that spread out from there, like our nationality,
culture, class, race and religion.
Taking these broad categories as a starting point, Professor Appiah
challenges our assumptions about how identity works. In eloquent and
lively chapters, he weaves personal anecdote with historical, cultural
and literary example to explore the entanglements within the stories we
tell ourselves. We all know there are conflicts among identities; but
Professor Appiah explores how identities are created by conflict.
Identities are then crafted from confusions - confusions this book aims
to help us sort through. Religion, Appiah shows us, isn't primarily
about beliefs. The idea of national self-determination is incoherent.
Our everyday racial thinking is an artefact of discarded science. Class
is not a matter of upper and lower. And the very idea of Western
culture is a misleading myth. We will see our situation more clearly if
we start to question these mistaken identities. This is radical new
thinking from a master in the subject and will change forever the way
we think about ourselves and our communities.
Victory at Home is at once an institutional history of the federal
War Manpower Commission and a social history of the southern labor
force within the commission's province. Charles D. Chamberlain
explores how southern working families used America's rapid wartime
industrialization and an expanded federal presence to gain
unprecedented economic, social, and geographic mobility in the
chronically poor region. Chamberlain looks at how war workers,
black leaders, white southern elites, liberal New Dealers,
nonsouthern industrialists, and others used and shaped the federal
war mobilization effort to fill their own needs. He shows, for
instance, how African American, Latino, and white laborers worked
variously through churches, labor unions, federal agencies, the
NAACP, and the Urban League, using a wide variety of strategies
from union organizing and direct action protest to job shopping and
migration. Throughout, Chamberlain is careful not to portray the
southern wartime labor scene in monolithic terms. He discusses, for
instance, conflicts between racial groups within labor unions and
shortfalls between the War Manpower Commission's national
directives and their local implementation. An important new work in
southern economic and industrial history, Victory at Home also has
implications for the prehistory of both the civil rights revolution
and the massive resistance movement of the 1960s. As Chamberlain
makes clear, African American workers used the coalition of unions,
churches, and civil rights organizations built up during the war to
challenge segregation and disenfranchisement in the postwar South.
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