Philosophy and the Mixed Race Experience is a collection of essays by philosophers about the mixed race experience. Each essay is meant to represent one of three possible things: (1) what the philosopher sees as the philosopher's best work, (2) evidence of the possible impact of the philosopher's mixed race experience on the philosopher's work, or (3) the philosopher's philosophical take on the mixed race experience. The book has two primary goals: (1) to collect together for the first time the work of professional, academic philosophers who have had the mixed race experience, and (2) to bring these essays together for the purpose of adding to the conversation on the question of the degree to which factical identity and philosophical work may be related. The book also examines the possible relationship between the mixed race experience and certain philosophical positions.

In the first book on Aztec dance in the United States, Ernesto Colin combines cultural anthropology, educational theory, and postcolonial theory to create an innovative, interdisciplinary, long-term ethnography of an Aztec dance circle and makes a case for the use of the metaphor of palimpsest as an ethnographic research tool.

Devil worship, black magic, and witchcraft have long captivated anthropologists as well as the general public. In this volume, Jean La Fontaine explores the intersection of expert and lay understandings of evil and the cultural forms that evil assumes. The chapters touch on public scares about devil-worship, misconceptions about human sacrifice and the use of body parts in healing practices, and mistaken accusations of children practicing witchcraft. Together, these cases demonstrate that comparison is a powerful method of cultural understanding, but warns of the dangers and mistaken conclusions that untrained ideas about other ways of life can lead to.

Arguing against the postmodern claim that systematic theory is unable to account for difference, "Difference in Time: A Critical Theory of Culture" adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of cultural judgement and social change. With music as her model for theory, Hanrahan explores the role of time, the creation of meaning, the identification of difference, and the basis for judgements in cultural life, and in doing so provides a foundation for the critique of cultural objects and practices that avoids both the elitism of traditional aesthetics and the unwavering relativism of so much contemporary cultural analysis. A broad-ranging and deeply philosophical work building on the scholarship of the Frankfurt School, "Difference in Time: A Critical Theory of Culture "drives home the need for critique in the evaluation and revision of the social knowledge and institutions of democratic civic life.

In Hanrahan's analysis, the dualism of critique--that of universal judgement and relative standpoint--is false when critique is understood as a dynamic process in which both judgement and standpoint are emergent and contingent. Differences are not given or static but are articulated in time; therefore, both the categories of critique and of social theory in general must be temporalized. Hanrahan's musical model draws attention to the fundamental temporality of social life and social structure, and integrates that understanding into the structure of a new dynamic in which difference is compatible with both system and structure. Thus, Hanrahan demonstrates that it is possible to construct critical categories that do not become orthodoxies.

Follows the life of French anthropologist Francoise Heritier, who had a lasting impact on a generation of French anthropologists that continues to this day. A great intellectual figure, Francoise Heritier succeeded Claude Levi-Strauss as the Chair of Anthropology at the College de France in 1982. She was an Africanist, author of magnificent works on the Samo population, the scientific progenitor of kinship studies, the creator of a theoretical base to feminist thought and an activist for many causes. "I read this intellectual biography of Francoise Heritier with great pleasure. Though highly regarded in France, she is not yet well known in English-language academic circles, but she certainly should be. This book will be a revelation to many anthropologists and feminist scholars."-Adam Kuper, London School of Economics From the Forword by Michelle Perrot: I came to know her at the National Council for HIV, that she chaired from 1989 to 1994.... Her theoretical concerns were also crucial to the understanding of pandemics, but we did not then realise that HIV/AIDS was also a precursor and a warning of pandemics to come. She grasped the importance of conceptions of bodily 'humours'-blood, semen, milk-that seemed to play a role in the horrific spread of an epidemic of which we knew nothing, except that it resulted in an appalling mortality rate, particularly among young men.... she was a remarkable chair, concerned to share her insights into the illness and to anchor-necessary-interventions within a framework that would be respectful of human rights.

The practice of karo kari allows family, especially fathers, brothers and sons, to take the lives of their daughters, sisters and mothers if they are accused of adultery. This volume examines the central position of karo kari in the social, political and juridical structures in Upper Sindh, Pakistan. Drawing connections between local contests over marriage and resources, Nafisa Shah unearths deep historical processes and power relations. In particular, she explores how the state justice system and informal mediations inform each other in state responses to karo kari, and how modern law is implicated in this seemingly ancient cultural practice.

Within the Asian American population, a new trend is emerging in which the second generation (children of immigrants, born in the United States) has redefined what being Asian American means to them. The notion of who Asian Americans are as a group has vastly shifted from the time the 1965 Immigration Act was passed. The definition of who is fit for inclusion within the Asian American category has been contested in recent years, and this book explores the experiences of those categorized as such at the dawn of the 21st century. Beyond the scope of how people are defined and categorized by the state, the central question explored in this book addresses how individuals themselves define what it means to be Asian American. "This book provides an insightful look into Asian American identity. It provides readers with a comprehensive overview of the historical, psychological, and social issues surrounding the development of the Asian American identity." - Professor Margaret Shih, University of Michigan

The Irish Potato Famine caused the migration of more than two million individuals who sought refuge in the United States and Canada. In contrast to previous studies, which have tended to focus on only one destination, this collection allows readers to evaluate the experience of transatlantic Famine refugees in a comparative context. Featuring new and innovative scholarship by both established and emerging scholars of Irish America and Irish Canada, it carefully dissects the connection that arose between Ireland and North America during the famine years (1845-1851).

In the more than 150 years since the onset of Ireland's Great Famine, historians have intensely scrutinized the causes, the year-by-year events, and the consequences of his human catastrophe. Who was to blame? Were the hunger and misery inevitable? Did the famine have revolutionary effects on the Irish economy? How did it change the nature of Irish religion? This new study complements the wealth of existing literature on the social, cultural, and political aspects of the Famine and invites the reader to consider the fate of the Irish refugees in their new home lands.

The longstanding European conception that Roma and non-Roma are separated by unambiguous socio-cultural distinctions has led to the construction of Roma as "non-belonging others." Challenging this conception, Textures of Belonging explores how Roma negotiate and feel belonging at the everyday level. Inspired by material culture, sensorial anthropology, and human geography approaches, this book uses ethnographic research to examine the role of domestic material forms and their sensorial qualities in nurturing connections with people and places that transcend socio-political boundaries.

This study asserts that conscious development of new ways of thinking about language had a crucial role in modern history, particularly the discovery of how differences between languages legitimated social inequalities. It claims that savages and ancients were judged alike because they used language similarly, in contrast to modern Europeans who used disciplined language in scientific, philosophical and legal projects.

This book explores the experiences of working-class women undergraduates at three universities in the North of England. The author examines the women's identities, choices and emotions in relation to higher education; and how they reframe their constrained university choices to maximise their chances of academic success. Highlighting differences in working-class women's learner identities, caring commitments and quests for upwards social mobility, the book offers an understanding of working-class female student journeys and their mixture of compromise, uncertainty and hope. It will be of interest and value to scholars of working-class women students, widening participation, and sociologists of education.

In "The Story-Time of the British Empire," author Sadhana Naithani examines folklore collections compiled by British colonial administrators, military men, missionaries, and women in the British colonies of Africa, Asia, and Australia between 1860 and 1950. Much of this work was accomplished in the context of colonial relations and done by non-folklorists, yet these oral narratives and poetic expressions of non-Europeans were transcribed, translated, published, and discussed internationally. Naithani analyzes the role of folklore scholarship in the construction of colonial cultural politics as well as in the conception of international folklore studies.

Since most folklore scholarship and cultural history focuses exclusively on specific nations, there is little study of cross-cultural phenomena about empire and/or postcoloniality. Naithani argues that connecting cultural histories, especially in relation to previously colonized countries, is essential to understanding those countries' folklore, as these folk traditions result from both internal and European influence. The author also makes clear the role folklore and its study played in shaping intercultural perceptions that continue to exist in the academic and popular realms today. "The Story-Time of the British Empire" is a bold argument for a twenty-first-century vision of folklore studies that is international in scope and that understands folklore as a transnational entity.

This book provides an in-depth study of Japanese whaling culture, emphasizing how the Japanese have considered whales and whaling in relation to their understanding of nature and religion. It examines why and how the Japanese have mourned the deaths of whales, treating them as if they were human beings, and assesses the relevance of this culture to nature conservation and management of sustainable use of natural resources. It also sheds new light on Japanese whaling, one of the most controversial issues in the contemporary world, by highlighting the hitherto unknown aspects of Japanese beliefs about whales and whaling, which constitute an integral part of their core concept of how they should coexist with nature. Through cross-examining previous studies of Japanese whaling, as well as analyzing new documents and conducting field research on location, this book presents a comprehensive survey of Japanese whaling culture and memorial rites for whales and offers viable insights on how the Japanese whaling culture can be applied to solving current global issues, including nature conservation, management of sustainable use of natural resources, and protection of wildlife and its habitats.

This book takes food parcels as a vehicle for exploring relationships, intimacy, care, consumption, exchange, and other fundamental anthropological concerns, examining them in relation to wider transnational spaces. As the contributors to this volume argue, food and its related practices offer a window through which to examine the reconciliation of people's localised intimate experiences with globalising forces. Their analyses contribute to an embodied and sensorial approach to social change by examining migrants and their families' experiences of global connectedness through familiar objects and narratives. By bringing in in-depth ethnographic insights from different social and economic contexts, this book widens the understanding of the lived experiences of mobility and goes beyond the divide between origin and destination countries, therefore contributing to new ways of thinking about migration and transnationalism that take into consideration the materiality of global connections and the way such connections are embodied and experienced at the local level.

Across the life course, new forms of community, ways of keeping in contact, and practices for engaging in work, healthcare, retail, learning and leisure are evolving rapidly. Breaking new ground in the study of technology and aging, this book examines how developments in smart phones, the internet, cloud computing, and online social networking are redefining experiences and expectations around growing older in the twenty-first century. Drawing on contributions from leading commentators and researchers across the world, this book explores key themes such as caregiving, the use of social media, robotics, chronic disease and dementia management, gaming, migration, and data inheritance, to name a few.

This book reinvigorates the philosophical treatment of the nature, purpose, and meaning of thought in today's universities. The wider discussion about higher education has moved from a philosophical discourse to a discourse on social welfare and service, economics, and political agendas. This book reconnects philosophy with the central academic concepts of thought, reason, and critique and their associated academic practices of thinking and reasoning. Thought in this context should not be considered as a merely mental or cognitive construction, still less a cloistered college, but a fully developed individual and social engagement of critical reflection and discussion with the current pressing disciplinary, political, and philosophical issues. The editors hold that the element of thought, and the ability to think in a deep and groundbreaking way is, still, the essence of the university. But what does it mean to think in the university today? And in what ways is thought related not only to the epistemological and ontological issues of philosophical debate, but also to the social and political dimensions of our globalised age? In many countries, the state is imposing limitations on universities, dismissing or threatening academics who speak out critically. With this volume, the editors ask questions such as: What is the value of thought? What is the university's proper relationship to thought? To give the notion of thought a thorough philosophical treatment, the book is divided into in three parts. The focus moves from an epistemological perspective in Part I, to a focus on existence and values in higher education in Part II, and then to a societal-oriented focus on the university in Part III. All three parts, in their own ways, debate the notion of thought in higher education and the university as a thinking form of being.

The first book to address the classic anthropological theme of property through the ethnography of Amazonia, Ownership and Nurture sets new and challenging terms for anthropological debates about the region and about property in general. Property and ownership have special significance and carry specific meanings in Amazonia, which has been portrayed as the antithesis of Western, property-based, civilization. Through carefully constructed studies of land ownership, slavery, shamanism, spirit mastery, aesthetics, and intellectual property, this volume demonstrates that property relations are of central importance in Amazonia, and that the ownership of persons plays an especially significant role in native cosmology.

While typically the victims of war, civilians are not necessarily passive recipients of violence. What options are available to civilians in times of war? This book suggests three broad strategies - flight, support, and voice. It focuses on three conflicts: Aceh, Indonesia; Patani, southern Thailand; and Mindanao, southern Philippines.

In this book, scholars from across the world explore the appearance, portrayal and significance of the suburb on film. By the mid-20th Century, supported by changes in transportation, suburbs became the primary location of entire national populations and films about the suburbs began to concertedly reflect those suburbs' significance as well as their increasingly lively cultures! Suburbia very soon became filmurbia, as films of the suburbs and those made in the suburbs reflected both the positive and the negative aspects of burgeoning suburban life. Film-makers explored the existences of new suburbanites, their interests, their newly emerging neighbourhood practices, their foibles, their fantasies and their hopes. Whether depicting love, ambition, commerce, family, home or horror, whether traveling to or living in suburban spaces, whether exhibiting beauty, brazenness or brutality, the films of suburbia capture human life in all its diverse guises.

How are ethnographic knowledge and anthropological theory created out of field experiences? Working in the Field explores emplacement and experience-centered narratives as the modes in working in places brings anthropology to life. Stewart and Strathern show how first impressions of an area carry depths of meanings which can gradually be unpacked in later analysis and how the fieldworker's memories may become blended with those of the people studied as a result of long-term engagement with them. Spanning Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, and Scotland, and Ireland, Stewart and Strathern show how fieldwork in apparently different areas can lead to unexpected comparisons and discoveries of similarities in human cross-cultural patterns of behavior.

The core of the research reported in this study was a survey of men and women 55 years and older sampled from a comprehensive list of residents. The authors asked questions about social networks, control over household assets, household composition, life satisfaction, and subjective health, among other things. The social network questions had been used in an earlier study done in Kentucky. Nearly everything else had been developed for the Delhi study. The findings were similar to those in the earlier study: the size of people's networks does not decline materially until they are older (80 plus). Age itself did not seem that important, but health was crucial. Persons who reported they were healthy had larger networks.

As one might expect, joint family life has great impact on the nature of social life among older people. This has to do with the big difference in the situation of men and women in India. In addition to being patrilineal kin groups, joint families are dominated by male economic interests. The males as a collective group inherit property. Women have much less control of household assets. This ethnographic fact appeared very clearly in the answers to questions about participation in household decision making. High involvement in decisions, which the authors construed as a measure of power, spilled over into other aspects of the social aging process. Persons who were powerful in their households tended to have large networks, better subjective health, and much higher life satisfaction. They also tended to be men. The women tended to have small networks, low life satisfaction, lower subjective health, and less power. These differences between men and women were all substantial and highly significant. Gender is an extraordinarily important factor in the outcomes of social aging processes in India.

Due to changing climates and demographics, questions of policy in the circumpolar north have focused attention on the very structures that people call home. Dwellings lie at the heart of many forms of negotiation. Based on years of in-depth research, this book presents and analyzes how the people of the circumpolar regions conceive, build, memorialize, and live in their dwellings. This book seeks to set a new standard for interdisciplinary work within the humanities and social sciences and includes anthropological work on vernacular architecture, environmental anthropology, household archaeology and demographics.

This book examines how computer-based programs can be used to acquire 'big' digital cultural heritage data, curate, and disseminate it over the Internet and in 3D visualization platforms with the ultimate goal of creating long-lasting "digital heritage repositories.' The organization of the book reflects the essence of new technologies applied to cultural heritage and archaeology. Each of these stages bring their own challenges and considerations that need to be dealt with. The authors in each section present case studies and overviews of how each of these aspects might be dealt with. While technology is rapidly changing, the principles laid out in these chapters should serve as a guide for many years to come. The influence of the digital world on archaeology and cultural heritage will continue to shape these disciplines as advances in these technologies facilitate new lines of research. serif">The book is divided into three sections covering acquisition, curation, and dissemination (the major life cycles of cultural heritage data). Acquisition is one of the fundamental challenges for practitioners in heritage and archaeology, and the chapters in this section provide a template that highlights the principles for present and future work that will provide sustainable models for digital documentation. Following acquisition, the next section highlights how equally important curation is as the future of digital documentation depends on it. Preservation of digital data requires preservation that can guarantee a future for generations to come. The final section focuses on dissemination as it is what pushes the data beyond the shelves of storage and allows the public to experience the past through these new technologies, but also opens new lines of investigation by giving access to these data to researchers around the globe. Digital technology promises significant changes in how we approach social sciences, cultural heritage, and archaeology. However, researchers must consider not only the acquisition and curation, but also the dissemination of these data to their colleagues and the public. Throughout the book, many of the authors have highlighted the usefulness of Structure from Motion (SfM) work for cultural heritage documentation; others the utility and excitement of crowdsourcing as a 'citizen scientist' tool to engage not only trained students and researchers, but also the public in the cyber-archaeology endeavor. Both innovative tools facilitate the curation of digital cultural heritage and its dissemination. Together with all the chapters in this volume, the authors will help archaeologists, researchers interested in the digital humanities and scholars who focus on digital cultural heritage to assess where the field is and where it is going.