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Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history
On 20 January 1973, the Bissau-Guinean revolutionary Amílcar Cabral was killed by militants from his own party. Cabral had founded the PAIGC in 1960 to fight for the liberation of Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde. The insurgents were Bissau-Guineans, aiming to get rid of the Cape Verdeans who dominated the party elite.
Despite Cabral’s assassination, Portuguese Guinea became the independent Republic of Guinea-Bissau. The guerrilla war that Cabral had started and led precipitated a chain of events that would lead to the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Lisbon, toppling the forty-year-old authoritarian regime. This paved the way for the rest of Portugal’s African colonies to achieve independence.
Written by a native of Angola, this biography narrates Cabral’s revolutionary trajectory, from his early life in Portuguese Guinea to his death. It details his quest for national sovereignty, beleaguered by the ethnic-based identity conflicts the national liberation movement struggled to overcome.
Genealogy and Social Status in the Enlightenment is at the
crossroads of the history of science and the social history of
cultural practices, and suggests the need for a new approach on the
significance of genealogies in the Age of Enlightenment. While
their importance has been fully recognised and extensively studied
in early modern Britain and in the Victorian period, the long
eighteenth century has been too often presented as a black hole
regarding genealogy. Enlightened values and urban sociability have
been presented as inimical to the praise of ancestry and birth. In
contrast, however, various studies on the continental or in the
American colonies, have shed light on the many uses of genealogies,
even beyond the landed elite. Whether it be in the publishing
industry, in the urban corporations, in the scientific discourses,
genealogy was used, not only as a resilient social practice, but
also as a form of reasoning, a language and a tool to include
newcomers, organise scientific and historical knowledge or to
express various emotions. This volume aims to reconsider the
flexibility of genealogical practices and their perpetual
reconfiguration to meet renewed expectations in the period. Far
from slowly vanishing under the blows of rationalism that would
have delegitimized an ancient world based on various forms of
hereditary determinism, the different contributions to this
collective work demonstrate that genealogy is a pervasive tool to
make sense of a fast-changing society.
A leading public intellectual’s timely reckoning with how Jews can and should make sense of their tradition and each other.
What does it mean to be a Jew? At a time of worldwide crisis, venerable answers to this question have become unsettled. In To Be a Jew Today, the legal scholar and columnist Noah Feldman draws on a lifelong engagement with his religion to offer a wide-ranging interpretation of Judaism in its current varieties. How do Jews today understand their relationship to God, to Israel, and to each other―and live their lives accordingly?
Writing sympathetically but incisively about diverse outlooks, Feldman clarifies what’s at stake in the choice of how to be a Jew, and discusses the shared “theology of struggle” that Jews engage in as they wrestle with who God is, what God wants, or whether God exists. He shows how the founding of Israel has transformed Judaism itself over the last century―and explores the ongoing consequences of that transformation for all Jews, who find the meaning of their Jewishness and their views about Israel intertwined, no matter what those views are. And he examines the analogies between being Jewish and belonging to a large, messy family―a family that often makes its members crazy, but a family all the same. Written with learning, empathy and clarity, To Be a Jew Today is a critical resource for readers of all faiths.
In the first twenty years of the twenty-first century, New York
City has been convulsed by terrorist attack, blackout, hurricane,
recession, social injustice, and pandemic. New Yorkers weaves the
voices of some of the city's best talkers into an indelible
portrait of New York in our time-and a powerful hymn to the
vitality and resilience of its people. Best-selling author Craig
Taylor has been hailed as "a peerless journalist and a beautiful
craftsman" (David Rakoff), acclaimed for the way he "fuses the
mundane truth of conversation with the higher truth of art" (Michel
Faber). In the wake of his celebrated book Londoners, Taylor moved
to New York and spent years meeting regularly with hundreds of New
Yorkers as diverse as the city itself. New Yorkers features 75 of
the most remarkable of them, their fascinating true tales arranged
in thematic sections that follow Taylor's growing engagement with
the city. Here are the uncelebrated people who propel New York each
day-bodega cashier, hospital nurse, elevator repairman, emergency
dispatcher. Here are those who wire the lights at the top of the
Empire State Building, clean the windows of Rockefeller Center, and
keep the subway running. Here are people whose experiences reflect
the city's fractured realities: the mother of a Latino teenager
jailed at Rikers, a BLM activist in the wake of police shootings.
And here are those who capture the ineffable feeling of New York,
such as a balloon handler in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or
a security guard at the Statue of Liberty. Vibrant and bursting
with life, New Yorkers explores the nonstop hustle to make it; the
pressures on new immigrants, people of color, and the poor; the
constant battle between loving the city and wanting to leave it;
and the question of who gets to be considered a "New Yorker." It
captures the strength of an irrepressible city that-no matter what
it goes through-dares call itself the greatest in the world.
This book offers a new perspective on the making of Afro-Brazilian,
African-American and African studies through the interrelated
trajectory of E. Franklin Frazier, Lorenzo Dow Turner, Frances and
Melville Herskovits in Brazil. The book compares the style, network
and agenda of these different and yet somehow converging scholars,
and relates them to the Brazilian intellectual context, especially
Bahia, which showed in those days much less density and
organization than the US equivalent. It is therefore a double
comparison: between four Americans and between Americans and
scholars based in Brazil.
This special issue advances transnational feminist approaches to
the globally proliferating phenomenon of anti-Muslim racism. The
contributors trace the global circuits and formations of power
through which anti-Muslim racism travels, operates, and shapes
local contexts. The essays center attention on and explore the
gendered, sexualized, and racialized forms of anti-Muslim
oppression and resistance in modern social theory, law, protest
cultures, social media, art, and everyday life in the United States
and transnationally. The contributors illuminate the complex nature
of global anti-Muslim racism through various topics including
Islamophobia in the context of race, gender, and religion; hate
crimes; the sexualization of Islam in social media; queer Muslim
futurism; the connection between secularism and feminism in
Pakistan; the racialization of Muslims in the early Cold War
period; and anti-Muslim racism in Russia. Together the essays
provide a complex picture of the multifaceted nature of the
worldwide spread of anti-Muslim racism. Contributors. Evelyn
Alsultany, Natasha Bakht, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Taneem Husain, Amina
Jamal, Amina Jarmakani, Zeynep K. Korkman, Minoo Moellem, Nadine
Naber, Tatiana Rabinovich, Sherene H. Razack, Tom Joseph Abi Samra,
Elora Shehabuddin, Saiba Varma
As American Indian communities face the new century, they look to
the future armed with confidence in the indigenous perspectives
that have kept them together thus far. Now five premier scholars in
American Indian history, along with a tribal leader who has placed
an indelible mark on the history of her people, show how
understanding the past is the key to solving problems facing
Indians today.Edited by Albert L. Hurtado and introduced by Wilma
Mankiller, this book includes the insights of Colin G. Calloway, R.
David Edmunds, Laurence M. Hauptman, Peter Iverson, and Brenda J.
Child - scholars who have helped shape the way an entire generation
thinks about American Indian history. Writing broadly about
twentieth-century Native history, they focus on themes that drive
this field of study: Indian identity, tribal acknowledgment,
sovereignty, oral tradition, and cultural adaptation. Drawn from
the Wilma Mankiller Symposium on American History, these thoughtful
essays show how history continues to influence contemporary Native
life. The authors carve a broad geographic swath - from the
Oneidas' interpretation of the past, to the perseverance of the
jingle dress tradition among the Ojibwes, to community persistence
in the Southwest. Wilma Mankiller's essay on contemporary tribal
government adds a personal perspective to understanding the
situation of Indian people today.
The vanquished Taino Indians, the Spanish conquistadors, rebellious
slaves, common folk, foreign invaders, bloody dictators, gallant
heroes, charismatic politicians, and committed rebels - all have
left their distinct imprint on Dominican society and left behind
printed records. Nevertheless, the five-hundred-year history of the
people of the Dominican Republic has yet to be told through its
documents. Although there has been a considerable production of
documentary compilations in the Dominican Republic - particularly
during the Trujillo era - few of these are known outside the
country, and none has ever been translated into English. The
Dominican People: A Documentary History bridges this gap by
providing an annotated collection of documents related to the
history of the Dominican Republic and its people. The compilation
features annotated documents on some of the transcendental events
that have taken place on the island since pre-Columbian times: the
extermination of the Taino Indians, sugar and African slavery, the
establishment of French Saint Dominique, independence from Haiti
and from Spain, caudillo politics, U.S. interventionism, the
Trujillo dictatorship, and contemporary politics.
Told for the first time from their perspective, the story of
children who survived the chaos and trauma of the Holocaust How can
we make sense of our lives when we do not know where we come from?
This was a pressing question for the youngest survivors of the
Holocaust, whose prewar memories were vague or nonexistent. In this
beautifully written account, Rebecca Clifford follows the lives of
one hundred Jewish children out of the ruins of conflict through
their adulthood and into old age. Drawing on archives and
interviews, Clifford charts the experiences of these child
survivors and those who cared for them-as well as those who studied
them, such as Anna Freud. Survivors explores the aftermath of the
Holocaust in the long term, and reveals how these children-often
branded "the lucky ones"-had to struggle to be able to call
themselves "survivors" at all. Challenging our assumptions about
trauma, Clifford's powerful and surprising narrative helps us
understand what it was like living after, and living with,
childhoods marked by rupture and loss.
This unique book is the first ever written in isiZulu by a Zulu author. Magema Fuze wrote it in the early 1900s, and published it privately in 1922 under the title Abantu Abamnyama, Lapa Bavela Ngakona.
In this fascinating work, the author gives his views on racial origins and differences, and describes the settlement of the black people throughout Natal. He records the traditional customs of the Zulu people, and gives an overview of Zulu history during the turbulent period of the nineteenth century, from the perspective of the black people who lived through it.
Integrated with this is Bishop Colenso’s account of Natal history, which Fuze reproduces and comments on. Of added interest is Hlonipha Mokoena’s foreword that offers insightful commentary on the contextual realities and challenges of the time.
Abantu Abamnyama is a resource to be valued, providing unique source material on Zulu history and Zulu life in the time of Shaka and beyond. It will be of interest to anyone who has ever asked themselves, 'Where did the black people come from?'.
When Muslim rule in Kashmir ended in 1820, Sikh and later Hindu
Dogra Rulers gained power, but the country was still largely
influenced by Sunni religious orthodoxy. This book traces the
impact of Sunni power on Shi'i society and how this changed during
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book identifies a
distinctive Kashmiri Shi'i Islam established during this period.
Hakim Sameer Hamdani argues that the Shi'i community's religious
and cultural identity was fostered through practices associated
with the martyrdom of Imam Husayn and his family in Karbala, as
well as other rituals of Islam, in particular, the construction and
furore surrounding M'arak, the historic imambada (a Shi'i house for
mourning of the Imam) of Kashmir's Shi'i. The book examines its
destruction, the ensuing Shi'i -Sunni riot, and the reasons for the
Shi'i community's internal divisions and rifts at a time when they
actually saw the strong consolidation of their identity.
While the resonance of Giambattista Vico's hermeneutics for
postcolonialism has long been recognised, a rupture has been
perceived between his intercultural sensibility and the actual
content of his philological investigations, which have often been
criticised as being Eurocentric and philologically spurious. China
is a case in point. In his magnum opus New Science, Vico portrays
China as backward and philosophically primitive compared to Europe.
In this first study dedicated to China in Vico's thought, Daniel
Canaris shows that scholars have been beguiled by Vico's value
judgements of China without considering the function of these value
judgements in his theory of divine providence. This monograph
illustrates that Vico's image of China is best appreciated within
the contemporary theological controversies surrounding the Jesuit
accommodation of Confucianism. Through close examination of Vico's
sources and intellectual context, Canaris argues that by refusing
to consider Confucius as a "filosofo", Vico dismantles the
rationalist premises of the theological accommodation proposed by
the Jesuits and proposes a new functionalist valorisation of
non-Christian religion that anticipates post-colonial critiques of
the Enlightenment.
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