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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > Social & cultural anthropology > General
Thanks to Renzo Duin's annotated translation, the voice of Lodewijk
Schmidt-an Afrodiasporic Saramaka Maroon from Suriname-is finally
available for Anglophone audiences worldwide. More than anything
else, Schmidt's journals constitute meticulous ethnographic
accounts telling the tragic story of the Indigenous Peoples of the
Eastern Guiana Highlands (northern Brazil and southern French
Guiana and Suriname). Schmidt's is a story that takes account of
the pathological mechanisms of colonialism in which Indigenous
Peoples and African Diaspora communities-both victims of
colonialism-vilify each other, falling privy to the
divide-and-conquer mentality mechanisms of colonialism. Moreover,
silenced in the original 1942 publication, Schmidt was sent on a
covert mission to determine if the Nazis had established bases and
airfields at the southern border of Suriname. Schmidt described the
precariousness of the Amazonian forest and the Indigenous Peoples
and African Diasporic people who lived and continue to live there,
drawing on language that foreshadows our current anthropic and
ecological concerns. Duin's profound knowledge of the history,
geography, and ecology of the region contextualizes Schmidt's
accounts in a new introduction and in his analysis and afterthought
forces us to take account of the catastrophe that is deforestation
and ethnocide of the Indigenous Peoples of Amazonian Guiana.
Lodewijk J. Schmidt (1898-1992) Saramaka from Gansee (modern
Saamaka spelling: Ganze; pronounced Ganze), upper Suriname river,
Suriname, South America. The Saramaka are one of the largest
African Diaspora communities in Suriname. He was educated by the
Herrnhutters in the school of the Moravian Church, and during the
mid-twentieth century he took part in several momentous
expeditions, such as the 1935-38 Border Expedition between Suriname
and Brazil. The present work is the annotated translation of his
accounts of a tri-partite expedition conducted between 1940 and
1942 at and across the southern border of Suriname. Renzo S. Duin
(1974) obtained a PhD in Anthropology from the University of
Florida (USA). Between 1996 and 2019 he conducted over 40 months of
fieldwork in the Guianas (Suriname, French Guiana, and Guyana). His
research and publications cover a broad range of topics:
socio-political landscape studies; material culture; intangible
heritage; social memory; oral history; identity; ethno-astronomy;
historical ecology; decolonization; and the intertwining nature of
these topics, and as such offers an alternative to the twentieth
century model of tropical forest cultures in Amazonia.
This impressive and inspiring volume has as its modest origins the
documentation of a contemporary collecting project for the British
Museum. Informed by curators' critiques of uneven collections
accompanied by highly variable information, Sillitoe set out with
the ambition of recording the totality of the material culture of
the Wola of the southern highlands of Papua New Guinea, at a time
when the study of artefacts was neglected in university
anthropology departments. His achievements, presented in this
second edition of Made in Nuigini with a new contextualizing
preface and foreword, brought a new standard of ethnography to the
incipient revival of material culture studies, and opened up the
importance of close attention to technology and material
assemblages for anthropology. The `economy' fundamentally concerns
the material aspects of life, and as Sillitoe makes clear, Wola
attitudes and behaviour in this regard are radically different to
those of the West, with emphasis on `maker users' and egalitarian
access to resources going hand in hand with their stateless and
libertarian principles. The project begun in Made in Niugini, which
necessarily restricted itself to moveable artefacts, is continued
and extended by the newly published companion volume Built in
Niugini, which deals with immoveable structures and buildings. It
argues that the study of material constructions offers an
unparalleled opportunity to address fundamental philosophical
questions about tacit knowledge and the human condition.
Fitful Histories and Unruly Publics re-examines the relationship
between Eurasia's past and its present by interrogating the social
construction of time and the archaeological production of culture.
Traditionally, archaeological research in Eurasia has focused on
assembling normative descriptions of monolithic cultures that
endure for millennia, largely immune to the forces of historical
change. The papers in this volume seek to document forces of
difference and contestation in the past that were produced in the
perceptible engagements of peoples, things, and places. The
research gathered here convincingly demonstrates that these forces
made social life in ancient Eurasia rather more fitful and its
publics considerably more unruly than archaeological research has
traditionally allowed. Contributors are Mikheil Abramishvili, Paula
N. Doumani Dupuy, Magnus Fiskesjoe, Hilary Gopnik, Emma Hite,
Jean-Luc Houle, Erik G. Johannesson, James A. Johnson, Lori
Khatchadourian, Ian Lindsay, Maureen E. Marshall, Mitchell S.
Rothman, Irina Shingiray, Adam T. Smith, Kathryn O. Weber and Xin
Wu.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which
commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and
impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes
high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using
print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in
1985.
Dialogue and the New Cosmopolitanism: Conversations with Edward
Demenchonok stands in opposition to the doctrine that might makes
right and that the purpose of politics is to establish domination
over others rather than justice and the good life for all. In the
pursuit of the latter goal, the book stresses the importance of
dialogue with participants who take seriously the views and
interests of others and who seek to reach a fair solution. In this
sense, the book supports the idea of cosmopolitanism, which-by
contrast to empire-involves multi-lateral cooperation and thus the
quest for a just cosmopolis. The international contributors to this
volume, with their varied perspectives, are all committed to this
same quest. Edited by Fred Dallmayr, the chapters take the form of
conversations with Edward Demenchonok, a well-known practitioner of
international and cross-cultural philosophy. The conversations are
structured in parts that stress the philosophical, anthropological,
cultural, and ethical dimensions of global dialogue. In our
conflicted world, it is inspiring to find so many authors from
different places agreeing on a shared vision.
David Rudner's richly detailed ethnographic and historical analysis
of a South Indian merchant-banking caste provides the first
comprehensive analysis of the interdependence among Indian business
practice, social organization, and religion. Exploring
noncapitalist economic formations and the impact of colonial rule
on indigenous commercial systems, Rudner argues that caste and
commerce are inextricably linked through formal and informal
institutions. The practices crucial to the formation and
distribution of capital are also a part of this linkage. Rudner
challenges the widely held assumptions that all castes are
organized either by marriage alliance or status hierarchy and that
caste structures are incompatible with the "rational" conduct of
business. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program,
which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek
out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach,
and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived
makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again
using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally
published in 1994.
Africa Reimagined is a passionately argued appeal for a rediscovery of our African identity. Going beyond the problems of a single country, Hlumelo Biko calls for a reorientation of values, on a continental scale, to suit the needs and priorities of Africans. Building on the premise that slavery, colonialism, imperialism and apartheid fundamentally unbalanced the values and indeed the very self-concept of Africans, he offers realistic steps to return to a more balanced Afro-centric identity.
Historically, African values were shaped by a sense of abundance, in material and mental terms, and by strong ties of community. The intrusion of religious, economic and legal systems imposed by conquerors, traders and missionaries upset this balance, and the African identity was subsumed by the values of the newcomers.
Biko shows how a reimagining of Africa can restore the sense of abundance and possibility, and what a rebirth of the continent on Pan-African lines might look like. This is not about the churn of the news cycle or party politics – although he identifies the political party as one of the most pernicious legacies of colonialism. Instead, drawing on latest research, he offers a practical, pragmatic vision anchored in the here and now.
By looking beyond identities and values imposed from outside, and transcending the divisions and frontiers imposed under colonialism, it should be possible for Africans to develop fully their skills, values and ingenuity, to build institutions that reflect African values, and to create wealth for the benefit of the continent as a whole.
Jan Ken Po, Ai Kono Sho"" ""Junk An'a Po, I Canna Show"" These
words to a simple child's game brought from Japan and made local,
the property of all of Hawaii's people, symbolize the cultural
transformation experienced by Hawaii's Japanese. It is the story of
this experience that Dennis Ogawa tells so well here.
Atlantic Crossings in the Wake of Frederick Douglass takes its
bearings from the Maryland-born former slave Frederick Douglass's
1845 sojourn in Ireland and Britain-a voyage that is understood in
editors Mark P. Leone and Lee M. Jenkins' collection as
paradigmatic of the crossings between American, African American,
and Irish historical experience and culture with which the
collection as a whole is concerned. In crossing the Atlantic,
Douglass also completed his journey from slavery to freedom, and
from political and cultural marginality into subjective and
creative autonomy. Atlantic Crossings traces the stages of that
journey in chapters on literature, archaeology, and spatial culture
that consider both roots and routes-landscapes of New World
slavery, subordination, and state-sponsored surveillance, and
narratives of resistance, liberation, and intercultural exchange
generated by transatlantic connectivities and the transnational
transfer of ideas. Contributors Lee M. Jenkins, Mark P. Leone,
Katie Ahern, Miranda Corcoran, Ann Coughlan, Kathryn H. Deeley,
Adam Fracchia, Mary Furlong Minkoff, Tracy H. Jenkins, Dan O'Brien,
Eoin O'Callaghan, Elizabeth Pruitt, Benjamin A. Skolnik and Stefan
Woehlke
In gay bars and nightclubs across America, and in gay-oriented
magazines and media, the buff, macho, white gay man is exalted as
the ideal-the most attractive, the most wanted, and the most
emulated type of man. For gay Asian American men, often viewed by
their peers as submissive or too 'pretty,' being sidelined in the
gay community is only the latest in a long line of
racially-motivated offenses they face in the United
States.Repeatedly marginalized by both the white-centric queer
community that values a hyper-masculine sexuality and a homophobic
Asian American community that often privileges masculine
heterosexuality, gay Asian American men largely have been silenced
and alienated in present-day culture and society. In Geisha of a
Different Kind, C. Winter Han travels from West Coast Asian drag
shows to the internationally sought-after Thai kathoey, or
"ladyboy," to construct a theory of queerness that is inclusive of
the race and gender particularities of the gay Asian male
experience in the United States. Through ethnographic observation
of queer Asian American communities and Asian American drag shows,
interviews with gay Asian American men, and a reading of current
media and popular culture depictions of Asian Americans, Han argues
that gay Asian American men, used to gender privilege within their
own communities, must grapple with the idea that, as Asians, they
have historically been feminized as a result of Western domination
and colonization, and as a result, they are minorities within the
gay community, which is itself marginalized within the overall
American society. Han also shows that many Asian American gay men
can turn their unusual position in the gay and Asian American
communities into a positive identity. In their own conception of
self, their Asian heritage and sexuality makes these men unique,
special, and, in the case of Asian American drag queens, much more
able to convey a convincing erotic femininity. Challenging
stereotypes about beauty, nativity, and desirability, Geisha of a
Different Kind makes a major intervention in the study of race and
sexuality in America.
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