Reducing Bodies: Mass Culture and the Female Figure in Postwar America explores the ways in which women in the years following World War II refashioned their bodies-through reducing diets, exercise, and plastic surgery-and asks what insights these changing beauty standards can offer into gender dynamics in postwar America. Drawing on novel and untapped sources, including insurance industry records, this engaging study considers questions of gender, health, and race and provides historical context for the emergence of fat studies and contemporary conversations of the "obesity epidemic."

Based on a total of 18 months of fieldwork in Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi province), this is the first book-length ethnographic case study of the revival of a popular religious temple in contemporary rural China. The book reveals that doing popular religion is much more complex than praying to gods and burning incense. It examines the organizational and cultural logics that inform the staging of popular religious activities such as temple festivals. It also shows the politics behind the religious revival: the village-level local activists who seize upon temples and temple associations as a valuable political, economic, and symbolic resource, and the different local state agents who interact with temple associations and temple bosses. The study sheds unique light on shifting state-society relationships in the reform era, and is of interest to scholars and students in Asian Studies, the social sciences, and religious and ritual studies.

What it means to be a Jew lies at the very heart of Confessions of a Secular Jew, a provocative memoir and a thoughtful speculation on the nature of Jewish identity and experience in an increasingly secular world.The legacy bequeathed to Eugene Goodheart was a "progressive" secular Yiddish education which identified Jewish struggles against oppression with working class struggles against exploitation. In the vanguard was the Soviet Union. Goodheart's heroes were Moses, Bar Kochbah, Judah Maccabee, Karl Marx and that strange honorary Jew, Joseph Stalin, whose anti-Semitism would later become known to the world. Confessions of a Secular Jew is the story of Goodheart's disillusionment with the naive, even false, progressivism of that education. At the same time, it is an attempt to rescue and come to grips with the positive remains of that education and heritage.In the introduction to the new Transaction edition of his memoir, Goodheart addresses the themes of social justice, Zionism, chosenness, messianism, and alienation from a secular Jewish perspective. The memoir takes the reader from Goodheart's coming of age in Brooklyn to his higher education at Columbia College in the early fifties and beyond to his varied career as university teacher and literary critic. The memoir provides memorable characterizations of writers whom he knew, among them Lionel Trilling (his teacher), Saul Bellow, Richard Wright (whom he met in Paris), Hannah Arendt, and Philip Rahv.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In its assessment of the current "state of play" of ethnographic practice in social anthropology, this volume explores the challenges that changing social forms and changing understandings of "the field" pose to contemporary ethnographic methods. These challenges include the implications of the remarkable impact social anthropology is having on neighboring disciplines such as history, sociology, cultural studies, human geography and linguistics, as well as the potential 'costs' of this success for the discipline. Contributors also discuss how the ethnographic method is influenced by current institutional contexts and historical "traditions" across a range of settings. Here ethnography is featured less as a methodological "tool-box" or technique but rather as a subject on which to reflect.

Reducing Bodies: Mass Culture and the Female Figure in Postwar America explores the ways in which women in the years following World War II refashioned their bodies-through reducing diets, exercise, and plastic surgery-and asks what insights these changing beauty standards can offer into gender dynamics in postwar America. Drawing on novel and untapped sources, including insurance industry records, this engaging study considers questions of gender, health, and race and provides historical context for the emergence of fat studies and contemporary conversations of the "obesity epidemic."

Sexual Naturalization offers compelling new insights into the racialized constitution of American nationality. In the first major interdisciplinary study of Asian-white miscegenation from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, Koshy traces the shifting gender and racial hierarchies produced by antimiscegenation laws, and their role in shaping cultural norms. Not only did these laws foster the reproduction of the United States as a white nation, they were paralleled by extraterritorial privileges that facilitated the sexual access of white American men to Asian women overseas. Miscegenation laws thus turned sex acts into race acts and engendered new meanings for both. Koshy argues that the cultural work performed by narratives of white-Asian miscegenation dramatically transformed the landscape of desire in the United States, inventing new objects and relations of desire that established a powerful hold over U.S. culture, a capture of imaginative space that was out of all proportion to the actual numbers of Asian residents.

Based on a 500,000 word corpus of early sources collected from ex-slave narratives, ex-slave recordings, and interviews with hoodoo priests, this book reconstructs the English spoken by African Americans between 1830 and 1920. By means of detailed quantitative analyses, three linguistic features (negation patterns, copula usage, and relative marker choice) are interpreted along the lines of temporal change, regional diversity, and variation across gender. Additionally, some 300 non-standard letters written by African Americans in the 19th century are compared to the main corpus in order to identify differences between speech and writing.

"In the wake of considerable recent biographical attention to Marcel Mauss in English-language publications, it is fitting that works by him still available only in French appear in translation. The Manual of Ethnography has been expertly translated by Dominique Lussier, and appropriately edited and introduced by N. J. Allen. This historically important document, ... reflects the youthful moment of modern anthropology when the questions and subjects of this discipline came to depend on rigorous collection of material from field research... an important historical document in the context of Mauss's teaching of anthropology and in the originary hopes for ethnography. Highly recommended." . George Marcus in Choice

Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) was the leading social anthropologist in Paris between the world wars, and his Manuel d'ethnographie, dating from that period, is the longest of all his texts. Despite having had four editions in France, the Manuel has hitherto been unavailable in English. This contrasts with his essays, longer and shorter, many of which have long enjoyed the status of classics within anthropology. We are therefore pleased to present, in the English language for the first time, this extraordinary work that is based on the more than thirty lectures Mauss delivered each year under the title "Instructions in descriptive ethnography, intended for travelers, administrators and missionaries." Despite his dates, Mauss's treatment of fundamental questions, such as how to conceptualize and classify the range of social phenomena known to us from history and ethnography, has lost none of its freshness."

This collection focuses fresh attention on the relationships between "homeland" and "diaspora" communities in today's world. Based on in-depth anthropological studies by leading scholars in the field, the book highlights the changing character of homeland-diaspora ties. Homelands and Diasporas offers new understandings of the issues that these communities face and explores the roots of their fascinating, yet sometimes paradoxical, interactions. The book provides a keen look at how "homeland" and "diaspora" appear in the lives of both Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians and also explores how these issues influence Pakistanis who make their home in England, Armenians in Cyprus and England, Cambodians in France, and African-Americans in Israel. The critical views advanced in this collection should lead to a reorientation in diaspora studies and to a better understanding of the often contradictory changes in the relationships between people whose lives are led both "at home and away."

In this thoroughly revised fourth edition, with ten new chapters, the editors provide thought-provoking discussions on the importance of ethnicity in different cultural and social contexts. The authors focus especially on changing ethnic and national identities, on migration and ethnic minorities, on ethnic ascription versus self-definitions, and on shifting ethnic identities and political control. The international group of scholars examines ethnic identities, conflicts and accommodations around the globe, in Africa (including Zaire and South Africa), Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, the United States, Thailand, and the former Yugoslavia. It will serve as an excellent text for courses in race & ethnic relations, and anthropology and ethnic studies.

When analyzed in multilingual contexts, English is often treated as an entity that is separable from its linguistic environment. It is often the case, however, that multilinguals use English in hybrid and transcultural ways. This book explores how multilingual East Africans make use of English as a local resource in their everyday practices by examining a range of domains, including workplace conversation, beauty pageants, hip hop and advertising. Drawing on the Bakhtinian concept of multivocality, the author uses discourse analysis and ethnographic approaches to demonstrate the range of linguistic and cultural hybridity found across these domains, and to consider the constraints on hybridity in each context. By focusing on the cultural and linguistic bricolage in which English is often found, the book illustrates how multilinguals respond to the tension between local identification and dominant conceptualizations of English as a language for global communication.

Forensic Anthropology serves as a graduate level text for those studying and teaching forensic anthropology, as well as an excellent reference for forensic anthropologist libraries or for use in casework. Covers taphonomy, recovery and analysis, identification, statistical interpretation, and professional issues. Edited by a world-renowned leading forensic expert, the Advanced Forensic Science Series grew out of the recommendations from the 2009 NAS Report, Strengthening Forensic Science: A Path Forward, and is a long overdue solution for the forensic science community.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Brilliantly articulating the potent intersections of semiotic and linguistic anthropology, Signs and Society demonstrates how a keen appreciation of signs helps us better understand human agency, meaning, and creativity. Inspired by the foundational contributions of C. S. Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure, and drawing upon key insights from neighboring scholarly fields, noted anthropologist Richard J. Parmentier develops an array of innovative conceptual tools for ethnographic, historical, and literary research. His concepts of "transactional value," "metapragmatic interpretant," and "circle of semiosis," for example, illuminate the foundations and effects of such diverse cultural forms and practices as economic exchanges on the Pacific island of Palau, Pindar's Victory Odes in ancient Greece, and material representations of transcendence in ancient Egypt and medieval Christianity. Other studies complicate the separation of emic and etic analytical models for such cultural domains as religion, economic value, and semiotic ideology. Provocative and absorbing, these fifteen pioneering essays blaze a trail into anthropology's future while remaining firmly rooted in its celebrated past.

Today's world is one marked by the signs of digital capitalism and global capitalist expansion, and China is increasingly being integrated into this global system of production and consumption. As a result, China's immediate material impact is now felt almost everywhere in the world; however, the significance and process of this integration is far from understood. This study shows how the a priori categories of statistical reasoning came to be re-born and re-lived in the People's Republic - as essential conditions for the possibility of a new mode of knowledge and governance. From the ruins of the Maoist revolution China has risen through a mode of quantitative self-objectification. As the author argues, an epistemological rift has separated the Maoist years from the present age of the People's Republic, which appears on the global stage as a mirage. This study is an ethnographic investigation of concepts - of the conceptual forces that have produced and been produced by - two forms of knowledge, life, and governance. As the author shows, the world of China, contrary to the common view, is not the Chinese world; it is a symptomatic moment of our world at the present time.

Contrary to ingrained academic and public assumptions, wherein indigenous lowland South American societies are viewed as the product of historical emplacement and spatial stasis, there is widespread evidence to suggest that migration and displacement have been the norm, and not the exception. This original and thought-provoking collection of case studies examines some of the ways in which migration, and the concomitant processes of ecological and social change, have shaped and continue to shape human-environment relations in Amazonia. Drawing on a wide range of historical time frames (from pre-conquest times to the present) and ethnographic contexts, different chapters examine the complex and important links between migration and the classification, management, and domestication of plants and landscapes, as well as the incorporation and transformation of environmental knowledge, practices, ideologies and identities.

More than a quarter of a century has passed since the first Southeast Asian refugees arrived in this country, but because of their age and formidable language barriers, many elders have difficulty making their voices heard. Language barriers, family privacy, and social isolation have made it almost impossible for their experiences to be shared outside the family and community. Elder Voices helps to understand the family life of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, and Hmong refugees from the perspective of the oldest generation. Their stories are composed of complex family narratives that help us understand the ways in which migration and resettlement processes are experienced. The forty life histories of Southeast Asian elders gathered for this study collectively reveal personal perspectives on new immigrant family adaptation to American life at the end of the twentieth century. This volume is a great resource for anyone interested in Southeast Asian families in America.

In the 1990s, societies across the world were confronted with a sudden mass inflow of Chinese migrants. This publication investigates the global nature of Chinese migration by focusing on one of the fastest growing groups of new Chinese international migrants: those from Fujian province in southern China. It specifically focuses on Fujianese migration to Europe, where a broad range of immigration regimes has provided various incentives and disincentives that have influenced Fujianese migratory patterns across the continent. Applying intensive, multi-sited fieldwork research in the UK, Hungary, Italy, as well as sending areas in Fujian, the book investigates the origins and mechanics of recent Chinese migration by focusing on the work and life of Fujianese migrants in the United Kingdom, Hungary and Italy, and exploring the many transnational spaces that connect Fujianese across Europe, the United States and China.

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Read the Introduction.

"The excellent vignettes throughout the book further show, in striking detail, how immigrants from Fuzhou use the language and ideas of their faith traditions to make sense of their journeys and their daily lives in the United States. This book is a welcome addition to recent research about religion and the post-1965 immigrants."--"Contemporary Sociology"

""God in Chinatown" is useful for historians as well as those interested in the sociology of religion, the Chinese Diaspora, or New York City."--"Religious Studies Review"

""God in Chinatown" is an important study for historians and social scientists. Guest has...expanded the horizons of students of ethnic history."
--"Journal of American Ethnic History"

"In this volume Guest has succeeded in showing the importance of religion to the self-definition of immigrants from Fuzhou in their new home in New York's Chinatown and other cities across the United States. As a student of theology, he understands the importance of religion to human survival and flourishing in the face of tremendous obstacles, especially for the immigrants of Fuzhou in urban America."--"China Review international"

"There is no question that this book makes an important contribution to the emerging field of religion and immigration as well as to research on contemporary Asian religions. The information and perspective Guest provides not only substantially enhance our knowledge of these topics but help us view them in a new light."
--"The Journal of Religion"

"Guest does an excellent job of helping the reader understand the place of these religious institutions both within Chinatown andthe religious landscape in China. The book is so stimulating that it leads the reader to formulate more questions."--"Sociology of Religion"

"Students and scholars in the fields of church history, religion in the US, the history of religions, comparative religions, and Asian studies will find that this intriguing book suggests a variety of directions for further exploration."
-- "Choice"

"A well-researched, well-written, and timely ethnographic study of the importance of religious groups in the lives of Fuzhounese immigrants to the United States. It should be of great interest to scholars of contemporary Chinese religion, and to sociologists and anthropologists interested in religion and transnationalism. A readable and affordable monograph."--"Journal of Chinese Religions"

""God in Chinatown" is a pioneering ethnographic study....A must read for those interested in ethnic communities, immigration, and religion. It is a welcome addition to the growing number of studies that are recognizing the important connections between religion and immigration in the incorporation of immigrants and the reconstructions of what is America itself."
--"Journal of the American Academy of Religion"

"As a first ethnographic study to systematically examine the role of religious organizations and immigrant adaptations among the Fuzhounese, the book is a welcome edition to the existing literature of the sociology of religion. Guest devotes much of the book to describing the religious life that the Fuzhounese left behind in Fujian and the new one that they have rebuilt in New York. he shows clearly and unequivocally that ethnic religious institutions play a central and intrumental role inassisting disadvantaged immigrants to survive adverse circumstances. He also makes a nuanced point about the interconnectedness between ethnic religious institutions and ethnic economies in Chinatown and between Chinatown and its transnational networks."
--"Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion"

"The exceptionally rich ethnography is very interesting to read."
--"American Journal of Sociology"

"In this volume Guest has succeeded in showing the importance of religion in the self-definition of Fuzhounese immigrants in their new home in New York Chinatown and in the network of cities across the United States."
--" China News Update"

"This book fascinates by making what is familiar much more complicated and interesting. Recommended."
-- "CHOICE"

God in Chinatown is a path breaking study of the largest contemporary wave of new immigrants to Chinatown. Since the 1980s, tens of thousands of mostly rural Chinese have migrated from Fuzhou, on China's southeastern coast, to New York's Chinatown. Like the Cantonese who comprised the previous wave of migrants, the Fuzhou have brought with them their religious beliefs, practices, and local deities. In recent years these immigrants have established numerous specifically Fuzhounese religious communities, ranging from Buddhist, Daoist, and Chinese popular religion to Protestant and Catholic Christianity.

This ethnographic study examines the central role of these religious communities in the immigrant incorporation process in Chinatown's highly stratified ethnic enclave, as well as the transnational networks established between religious communities in New York and China. The author's knowledge of Chinese coupledwith his extensive fieldwork in both China and New York enable him to illuminate how these networks transmit religious and social dynamics to the United States, as well as how these new American institutions influence religious and social relations in the religious revival sweeping southeastern China.

God in Chinatown is the first study to bring to light religion's significant role in the Fuzhounese immigrants' dramatic transformation of the face of New York's Chinatown.

Through readings of literature, canonical history texts, studies of museum displays and media analysis, this work explores the historical formation of myths of Canadian national identity and then how these myths were challenged (and affirmed during the 1990 standoff at Oka. It draws upon history, literary criticism, anthropology, studies in nationalism and ethnicity and post-colonial theory.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Examines the issues facing indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, including their role in the nation's constitutional and legal developments, and makes a number of recommendations which would satisfy their demands without compromising the sovereignty of the state.

This new study powerfully asserts the pivotal importance of the interplay between language and ethnicity, which is often underestimated as a component for political stability. These leading scholars present five key case studies of South Africa, Algeria, Canada, Latvia and Senegal. All five countries are multilingual nations where language has been a central political issue that has challenged their unity and stability. These studies are underpinned by two general, comparative and theoretical discussions, which analyse how scholars consider social class and economic factors to be the primary sources for political cohesion or of malcontent with the system and the new avenues opened by a focus on issues of langauge. This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of linguistics, language, politics and sociology. This is a special issue of the leading journal Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

Beginning in the early 1980s Aboriginal Australians found in music, radio, and filmic media a means to make themselves heard across the country and to insert themselves into the center of Australian political life. In The Voice and Its Doubles Daniel Fisher analyzes the great success of this endeavor, asking what is at stake in the sounds of such media for Aboriginal Australians. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in northern Australia, Fisher describes the close proximity of musical media, shifting forms of governmental intervention, and those public expressions of intimacy and kinship that suffuse Aboriginal Australian social life. Today's Aboriginal media include genres of country music and hip-hop; radio requests and broadcast speech; visual graphs of a digital audio timeline; as well as the statistical media of audience research and the discursive and numerical figures of state audits and cultural policy formation. In each of these diverse instances the mediatized voice has become a site for overlapping and at times discordant forms of political, expressive, and institutional creativity.