Despite the West's privileging of slenderness as an aesthetic ideal, the African Diaspora has historically displayed a resistance to the Western European and North American indulgence in 'fat anxiety.' The Embodiment of Disobedience explores the ways in which the African Diaspora has rejected the West's efforts to impose imperatives of slenderness and mass market fat-anxiety. Author Andrea Shaw explores the origins and contradictions of this phenomenon, especially the cultural deviations in beauty criteria and the related social and cultural practices. Unique in its examination of how both fatness and blackness interact on literary cultural planes, this book also offers a diasporic scope that develops previously unexamined connections among female representations throughout the African Diaspora.

This book analyzes how the increase in migration from other Latin American countries to countries of the American Southern Cone such as Brazil, Argentina and Chile has generated a crisis fueled by the emergence of hate discourses towards migrant populations. While extracontinental migration to Europe, North America and elsewhere has waned over the last decades, migration between Latin American countries has increased dramatically as a product of the differential development of the region's economies, violence, and political turmoil. This book sets out to explain the effects of these trends by analyzing statistical data, official documents and ethnographic material gathered over a long period of research carried out throughout South America. The volume is divided in two parts. In the first part, it presents a theoretical contribution, synthesizing particularities of intraregional migration in Latin America, as well as the emergence of hate discourses towards migrant populations, developing approaches oriented towards a critical gender perspective. It also underlines important contributions that Latin American migration studies can make to current debates about migration across the globe. In the second part, it presents case studies dedicated to Argentina, Brazil and Chile. The Migration Crisis in the American Southern Cone: Hate Speech and its Social Consequences will be a valuable resource to migration studies researchers by presenting fresh theoretical and empirical contributions to the field from a Latin American perspective.

Deconstructing Prehumanity is an investigation into the role of archaeological perception in the construction of race. It explores how social knowledge and disciplinary subjectivity have shaped our organization of the human past and how this organization and its lexicon have fueled racialism. The idea of an African prehuman hierarchy powers American race relations in a damaging way. Scientific physical distinctions used in ethnological studies quantified and qualified physical and "racial" differences among so-called African prehumans, all of which plague human social relations as they extend harmful ideas about peoples of African descent. This book delves into the evolution of terms and utilizes Africana studies to present the systematic reconstruction of a black past. By reviewing ethnological studies, nomenclature, and how such processes play a role in conceiving African origins, the multidisciplinary work supplies explanations about notions of African nature, culture, and race as prehuman. It explicates paleoanthropological categories and connects them to racialized inferences. Deconstructing Prehumanity is intended for readers looking to understand how perceptions about human origins add to racialization as it proffered a utilitarian past.

At one time there were almost as many different versions of the Quechan creation story as there were Quechan families. Now few people remember them. This volume, presented in the Quechan language with facing-column translation, provides three views of the origins of the Quechan people. One synthesizes narrator George Bryant's childhood memories and later research. The second is based upon J. P. Harrington's A Yuma Account of Origins (1908). The third provides a modern view of the origins of the Quechan, beginning with the migration from Asia to the New World and ending with the settlement of the Yuman tribes at their present locations.

What is depression? An "imagined sun, bright and black at the same time?" A "noonday demon?" In literature, poetry, comics, visual art, and film, we witness new conceptualizations of depression come into being. Unburdened by diagnostic criteria and pharmaceutical politics, these media employ imagery, narrative, symbolism, and metaphor to forge imaginative, exploratory, and innovative representations of a range of experiences that might get called "depression." Texts such as Julia Kristeva's Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia (1989), Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon (2000), Allie Brosh's cartoons, "Adventures in Depression" (2011) and "Depression Part Two" (2013), and Lars von Trier's film Melancholia (2011) each offer portraits of depression that deviate from, or altogether reject, the dominant language of depression that has been articulated by and within psychiatry. Most recently, Ann Cvetkovich's Depression: A Public Feeling (2012) has answered the author's own call for a multiplication of discourses on depression by positing crafting as one possible method of working through depression-as-"impasse." Inspired by Cvetkovich's efforts to re-shape the depressive experience itself and the critical ways in which we communicate this experience to others, Re/Imagining Depression: Creative Approaches to "Feeling Bad" harnesses critical theory, gender studies, critical race theory, affect theory, visual art, performance, film, television, poetry, literature, comics, and other media to generate new paradigms for thinking about the depressive experience. Through a combination of academic essays, prose, poetry, and interviews, this anthology aims to destabilize the idea of the mental health "expert" to instead demonstrate the diversity of affects, embodiments, rituals and behaviors that are often collapsed under the singular rubric of "depression."

Since the Iraq war, the Middle East has been in continuous upheaval, resulting in the displacement of millions of people. Arriving from Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Syria in other parts of the world, the refugees show remarkable resilience and creativity amidst profound adversity. Through careful ethnography, this book vividly illustrates how refugees navigate regimes of exclusion, including cumbersome bureaucracies, financial insecurities, medical challenges, vilifying stereotypes, and threats of violence. The collection bears witness to their struggles, while also highlighting their aspirations for safety, settlement, and social inclusion in their host societies and new homes.

The Juan Fernandez Archipelago is located in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile at 33 Degrees S latitude. Robinson Crusoe Island is 667 km from the continent and approximately four million years old; Alejandro Selkirk Island is an additional 181 km west and only one million years old. The natural impacts of subsidence and erosion have shaped the landscapes of these islands, resulting in progressive changes to their subtropical vegetation. The older island has undergone more substantial changes, due to both natural causes and human impacts. After the discovery of Robinson Crusoe Island in 1574, people began cutting down forests for lumber to construct boats and homes, for firewood, and to make room for pastures. Domesticated plants and animals were introduced, some of which have since become feral or invasive, causing damage to the local vegetation. The wealth of historical records on these activities provides a detailed chronicle of how human beings use their environment for survival in a new ecosystem. This book offers an excellent case study on the impacts that people can have on the resources of an oceanic island.

The concept of Identity Crisis came into usage in the 1940s and it has continued to dominate the cultural zeitgeist ever since. In his exploration of the historical origins of this development, Frank Furedi argues that the principal driver of the 'crisis of identity' was and continues to be the conflict surrounding the socialisation of young people. In turn, the politicisation of this conflict provides a terrain on which the Culture Wars and the politicisation of identity can flourish. Through exploring the interaction between the problems of socialisation and identity, this study offers a unique account of the origins and rise of the Culture Wars.

Radio is the most widespread electronic medium in the world today. As a form of technology that is both durable and relatively cheap, radio remains central to the everyday lives of billions of people around the globe. It is used as a call for prayer in Argentina and Appalachia, to organize political protest in Mexico and Libya, and for wartime communication in Iraq and Afghanistan. In urban centres it is played constantly in shopping malls, waiting rooms, and classrooms. Yet despite its omnipresence, it remains the media form least studied by anthropologists. Radio Fields employs ethnographic methods to reveal the diverse domains in which radio is imagined, deployed, and understood. Drawing on research from six continents, the volume demonstrates how the particular capacities and practices of radio provide singular insight into diverse social worlds, ranging from aboriginal Australia to urban Zambia. Together, the contributors address how radio creates distinct possibilities for rethinking such fundamental concepts as culture, communication, community, and collective agency.

Drawing from ethnographic material based on long-term research, this volume considers competing forms of power at micro- and macro-levels in Guyana, where the local is marked by extensive migration, corruption, and differing levels of violence. It shows how the local is occupied and re-occupied by various powerful and powerless people and entities ("big ones" and "small ones"), and how it becomes the site of intense power negotiations in relation to external ideas of empowerment.

Tourism has become the world's largest industry, according to the World Tourism Organization; no surprise when one considers that it incorporates the world's oldest profession. In some developing regions, such as the Caribbean or the South Pacific, tourism is the primary sector in which significant economic growth takes place. In other regions, including areas of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and formerly communist eastern Europe, tourism is just beginning to take off. In all of these areas, tourisM's impact has been decidedly mixed. Nowhere is this more visible than in the context of women's roles in tourism. The contributors demonstrate the many ways in which gender determines the roles they play as both tourists and providers of tourism as product and service. A valuable contribution to tourism studies, women's studies, and the literature of economic development.

The premises of this unique collection of research are that women's roles in tourism are gendered, just as are their other roles in gendered societies; that tourism affects women differently than it affects men; and that women themselves are affected in different ways by tourism depending on such factors as race, region, and class (leisured consumer vs. working producer, or guest vs. host). The contributors cover theoretical perspectives, including those provided by feminists and economic development analysts; women's roles in tourism in the mature industries of the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific; women's roles in the less-developed tourist destinations of the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and eastern Europe; and implications for the future of economic development policy and of gender relations in tourism.

Exploring a hitherto unexamined aspect of San cosmology, Mathias Guenther's two volumes on human-animal relations in San cosmology link "new Animism" with Khoisan Studies, providing valuable insights for Khoisan Studies and San culture, but also for anthropological theory, relational ontology, folklorists, historians, literary critics and art historians. Building from the examinations of San myth and contemporary culture in Volume I, Volume II considers the experiential implications of a cosmology in which ontological mutability-ambiguity and inconstancy-hold sway. As he considers how people experience ontological mutability and deal with profound identity issues mentally and affectively, Guenther explores three primary areas: general receptiveness to ontological ambiguity; the impact of the experience of transformation (both virtual/vicarious and actual/direct); and the intersection of the mythic, spirit world with reality. Through a comparative consideration of animistic cosmology amongst the San, Bantu-speakers and the Inuit of Canada's eastern Arctic, alongside a discussion of animistic currents in Western humanities and ethology, Guenther clearly paints the relative strengths and weaknesses of New Animism discourse, particularly in relation to San ontology and cosmology, but with overarching relevance.

While Jews have long had a presence in Ethiopia and the Maghreb, Africa's newest Jewish community of note is in Nigeria, where upwards of twenty thousand Igbos are commonly claimed to have adopted Judaism. Bolstered by customs recalling an Israelite ancestry, but embracing rabbinic Judaism, they are also the world's first "Internet Jews."William Miles has spent over three decades conducting research in West Africa. In /Jews of Nigeria: An Afro-Judaic Odyssey, /he shares life stories from this spiritually passionate community, as well as his own Judaic reflections as he celebrates Hanukka and a bar mitzvah with "Jubos" in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. A concluding encounter with laureate Chinua Achebe reveals unexpected family connections to one of the most intriguing Jewish and African communities to emerge in modern times.

Minas Gerais is a state in southeastern Brazil deeply connected to the nation's slave past and home to many traditions related to the African diaspora. Addressing a wide range of traditions helping to define the region, ethnomusicologist Jonathon Grasse examines the complexity of Minas Gerais by exploring the intersections of its history, music, and culture. Instruments, genres, social functions, and historical accounts are woven together to form a tapestry revealing a cultural territory's development. The deep pool of Brazilian scholarship referenced in the book, with original translations by the author, cites over two hundred Portuguese-language publications focusing on Minas Gerais. This research was augmented by fieldwork, observations, and interviews completed over a twenty-five-year period and includes original photographs, many taken by the author. Hearing Brazil: Music and Histories in Minas Gerais surveys the colonial past, the vast hinterland countryside, and the modern, twenty-first-century state capital of Belo Horizonte, the metropolitan region of which is today home to over six million. Diverse legacies are examined, including an Afro-Brazilian heritage, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liturgical music of the region's "Minas Baroque," the instrument known as the viola, a musical profile of Belo Horizonte, and a study of the regionalist themes developed by the popular music collective the Clube da Esquina (Corner Club) led by Milton Nascimento with roots in the 1960s. Hearing Brazil champions the notion that Brazil's unique role in the world is further illustrated by regionalist studies presenting details of musical culture.

This book tries to answer the question how different communities in such an arid area as the Iranian central plateau could have shared their limited water resources in a perfect harmony and peace over the course of history. They invented some indigenous technologies as well as cooperative socio-economic systems in order to better adapt themselves to their harsh environment where the scarce water resources had to be rationed among the different communities as sustainably as possible. Those stories hold some lessons for us on how to adjust our needs to our geographical possibilities while living side by side with other people. This work gives insight into the indigenous adaptation strategies through the territorial water cooperation, and describes how water can appear as a ground for cooperation. It explains the water supply systems and social aspects of water in central Iran. Topics include the territorial water cooperation, qanat's, the traditional water management and sustainability, the socio-economic context, the sustainable management of shared aquifers system and more.

In this book Tatiana Zachar Podolinska explores how post-modern Marian devotion represents both the continuation and restoration of tradition in the modern world. Podolinska illuminates how Mary as a Great Enchantress has colonised the modern world and survived mandatory atheism in communist countries. The resilience of Marian devotion in the face of the secularising forces of modernity is due to how fluidly it mixes pre-modern and ultra-modern elements of beliefs and practices with the grassroot current of post-modern Christianity. At the same time, Podolinska elucidates how Mary has become the voice of peripheral ethnic groups and nations. This book specifically explains the devotion of the post-modern Mary among the Roma in Slovakia and explores how this community copes with marginalisation, creating islands of marginal centrality. By approaching the ethnicised and enculturated forms of the Virgin Mary (i.e. Chocolate Marys), the book illuminates her potential for helping the Slovak Roma on their own path from the periphery to the center.

This edited collection explores the multiple ways in which ethnography and health emerge and take form through the research process. There is now a plethora of disciplinary engagements with ethnography around the topic of health, including anthropology, sociology, geography, science and technology studies, and in health care professions such as nursing and occupational therapy. This dynamic and evolving landscape means ethnography and health are entangled in new and different ways, providing a timely opportunity to explore what these entanglements do and affect in the social production of knowledge. Rather than discussing the strengths (and limitations) of ethnography for engaging with health, the book asks: what does ethnography enable, make visible and possible for knowing and doing health in contemporary research settings and beyond?

Parodi shows that boundary disputes have and continue to play a major role in creating tensions in South America. Of the 25 international territorial boundaries that exist in South America, eight were marked with major wars, eight with lesser wars, and five with some level of violence. As recently as 1995, the armies of Ecuador and Peru were at war to define a boundary. In 1982 Argentina went to war, inspired by the call to restore a piece of its mutilated national territory. Venezuela and Guyana, Guyana and Suriname, and Suriname and French Guiana have not completed boundary demarcation agreements. Bolivia's insistence on its right for sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean is a source of tension with Chile and Peru. Colombia and Venezuela have unresolved boundary issues in the Gulf of Venezuela. Clearly, boundary disputes have and continue to play a major role in creating larger conflicts within South America.

Territorial boundaries are marks on the ground, but, as Parodi shows, their staying power or stability depends on their grip on consciousness. By examining the boundary theory of South American states and its implementation, he also explains how the symbolic system of South American boundaries is used to instill national identity, mobilize people to war, and control population and territory. This text will be of particular interest to scholars, students, and researchers involved with Latin American politics, diplomacy, and international relations.

While household archaeologists view the home as a social unit, few move their investigations ""beyond the walls"" when contextualizing a household in its community. Even exterior aspects of a dwelling-its plant life, yard spaces, and trash heaps-uncover issues of domination and resistance, gender relations, and the effects of colonialism. This innovative volume examines historical homes and their wider landscapes to more fully address social issues of the past. The contributors, leading archaeologists using various interpretive frameworks, analyze households across time periods and diverse cultures in North America. Including case studies of James Madison's Montpelier, George Washington's Ferry Farm, Chinese immigrants in a Nevada mining town, Hawaiian ranching communities, and Southern plantations, Beyond the Walls offers a new avenue for archaeological study of domestic sites.