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Showing 1 - 16 of 16 matches in All Departments
The Scots-English English-Scots Dictionary is a fascinating and up-to-date guide to the language that developed alongside English in the northern parts of the British Isles. As well as including such well-known words as dreich, sassenach, kirk and kittle, it contains thousands of the other words that have enriched Scotland's cultural heritage over the centuries.
Contemporary forms of capitalism and the state require close analytic attention to reveal the conditions of possibility for effective counter-politics. On the other hand the practice of collective politics needs to be studied through historical ethnography if we are to understand what might make people's actions effective. This book suggests a research agenda designed to maximize the political leverage of ordinary people faced with ever more remote states and technologies that make capitalism increasingly rapacious. Gavin Smith opens and closes this series of interlinked essays by proposing a concise framework for untangling what he calls "the society of capital" and subsequently a potentially controversial way of seeing its contemporary features. This book tackles the political conundrums of our times and asks what roles intellectuals might play therein.
Contemporary forms of capitalism and the state require close analytic attention to reveal the conditions of possibility for effective counter-politics. On the other hand the practice of collective politics needs to be studied through historical ethnography if we are to understand what might make people's actions effective. This book suggests a research agenda designed to maximize the political leverage of ordinary people faced with ever more remote states and technologies that make capitalism increasingly rapacious. Gavin Smith opens and closes this series of interlinked essays by proposing a concise framework for untangling what he calls "the society of capital" and subsequently a potentially controversial way of seeing its contemporary features. This book tackles the political conundrums of our times and asks what roles intellectuals might play therein.
Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras are a prominent, if increasingly familiar, feature of urbanism. They symbolize the faith that spatial authorities place in technical interventions for the treatment of social problems. CCTV was principally introduced to sterilize municipalities, to govern conducts and to protect properties. Vast expenditure has been committed to these technologies without a clear sense of how precisely they influence things. CCTV cameras might appear inanimate, but "Opening the Black Box "shows them to be vital mediums within relational circulations of supervision. The book principally excavates the social relations entwining the everyday application of CCTV. It takes the reader on a journey from living beneath the camera, to working behind the lens. Attention focuses on the labour exerted by camera operators as they source and process distanced spectacles. These workers are paid to scan monitor screens in search of disorderly vistas, visualizing stimuli according to its perceived riskiness and/or allurement. But the projection of this gaze can draw an unsettling reflection. It can mean enduring behavioural extremities as an impotent witness. It can also entail making spontaneous decisions that determine the course of justice. " Opening the Black Box," therefore, contemplates the seductive and traumatic dimensions of monitoring telemediated riskscapes through the prism of camera circuitry. It probes the positioning of camera operators as vicarious custodians of a precarious social order and engages their subjective experiences. It reveals the work of watching to be an ambiguous practice: as much about managing external disturbances on the street as managing internal disruptions in the self. "
Anthropologists study other people and worry about it. In the past
this took the form of a professional desire to make our politics
always somewhere else and to do with persons characterized as in
some way different from ourselves. Now distances shrink and old
forms of difference melt as global forces give rise to new
processes of differentiation and new possibilities for political
collectivities. How does this affect the way we might design a
politically relevant anthropology?
Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras are a prominent, if increasingly familiar, feature of urbanism. They symbolize the faith that spatial authorities place in technical interventions for the treatment of social problems. CCTV was principally introduced to sterilize municipalities, to govern conducts and to protect properties. Vast expenditure has been committed to these technologies without a clear sense of how precisely they influence things. CCTV cameras might appear inanimate, but Opening the Black Box shows them to be vital mediums within relational circulations of supervision. The book principally excavates the social relations entwining the everyday application of CCTV. It takes the reader on a journey from living beneath the camera, to working behind the lens. Attention focuses on the labour exerted by camera operators as they source and process distanced spectacles. These workers are paid to scan monitor screens in search of disorderly vistas, visualizing stimuli according to its perceived riskiness and/or allurement. But the projection of this gaze can draw an unsettling reflection. It can mean enduring behavioural extremities as an impotent witness. It can also entail making spontaneous decisions that determine the course of justice. Opening the Black Box, therefore, contemplates the seductive and traumatic dimensions of monitoring telemediated 'riskscapes' through the prism of camera circuitry. It probes the positioning of camera operators as 'vicarious' custodians of a precarious social order and engages their subjective experiences. It reveals the work of watching to be an ambiguous practice: as much about managing external disturbances on the street as managing internal disruptions in the self.
The London Borough of Islington stretches from Hornsey Lane and Highgate Hill in the north to the edge of the City of London. Created in 1964, the new borough brought together the old boroughs of Islington and Finsbury. The period of history covered by this collection of photographs begins in the 1860s and 1870s. We see here a very different world from our own, roads busy with horse-buses, motor-buses, trains and the occasional new-fangled motor-car. Children play in the streets as well as the parks. Buildings of a former age are still to be seen and architecture is on a human scale. From the 1860s and 1870s much progress was made in education and public health. Overcrowded courts and rookeries were swept away, new housing built, water supplies and drainage laid on. Medical services gradually improved. The story was not all hopeful. Islington suffered severe unemployment and poverty early this century. The Second World War brought widespread devastation. Post-war rebuilding changed the local landscape and improved living conditions. This book takes us on a journey through Islington's past, sometimes quite recognizable, sometimes unfamiliar, but in a time of rapid change, it is all the more interesting to look at what has gone before.
Perth in Old Photographs is the most comprehensive title on its subject ever published. Through a lively and intimate mixture of rare photographs gleaned from private and public sources, this book presents a fascinating and wide-ranging record of life in a vibrant settlement which has frequently been at the centre of events in Scottish political history. King James I was murdered in Perth, which was effectively the early capital of Scotland. The book deals with dramatic historical events, along with the occupations and pastimes of the people, including important connections with the whiskey industry, glass-making and textiles. Not surprisingly, given its vast, rich agricultural hinterland, Perth has long had strong links with the farming community, and this relationship is reflected, as are its roles as an administrative centre and a popular tourist destination. The changing architectural face of the town is traced through photographs of varying ages, and due importance is given to the River Tay which flows through the 'Fair City' and which has played its own vital part in Perth's colourful history.
This book is part of the Images of England series, which uses old photographs and archived images to show the history of various local areas in England, through their streets, shops, pubs, and people.
The failure to plan for disaster recovery results in a process of rebuilding that often presages the next disaster. It also limits the collective maximization of governmental, nonprofit, and private resources, including those resources that are available at the community level. As individuals, groups, communities, and organizations routinely struggle to recover from disasters, they are beset by a duplication of efforts, poor interorganizational coordination, the development and implementation of policies that are not shaped by local needs, and the spread of misinformation. Yet investment in pre-event planning for post-disaster recovery remains low. Although researchers pointed to this problem at least twenty-five years ago, an unfortunate reality remains: disaster recovery is the least understood aspect of emergency management among both scholars and practitioners. In addition, the body of knowledge that does exist has not been effectively disseminated to those who engage in disaster recovery activities. Planning for Post-Disaster Recoveryblends what we know about disaster recovery from the research literature with an analysis of existing practice to uncover problems and recommend solutions. It is intended for hazard scholars, practitioners, and others who have not assimilated or acted upon the existing body of knowledge, or who are unexpectedly drawn into the recovery process following a disaster.
This superb historical and ethnographic study of the political economy of the Vega Baja region of Spain, one of the European Union's "Regional Economies," takes up the difficult question of how to understand the growing alienation ordinary working people feel in the face of globalization. Combining rich oral histories with a sophisticated and nuanced structural understanding of changing political economies, the authors examine the growing divide between government and its citizens in a region that has in the last four decades been transformed from a primarily agricultural economy to a primarily industrial one. Offering a new form of ethnography appropriate for the study of suprastate polities and a globalized economy, Immediate Struggles contributes to our understanding of one region as well as the way we think about changing class relations, modes of production, and cultural practices in a newly emerging Europe. The authors also consider how phenomena such as the "informal economy" and "black market" are not marginal to the normal operation of state and economic institutions but are intertwined with both.
Since the 1980s historians have been influenced by two anthropological concepts: cultural distance and awareness of small-scale interactions. Recent work, however, has shifted away from these notions. We now see that cultures cannot be studied as units with internal coherence and that the microcosm does not represent a cultural whole. This book proposes an alternative. Differentiation is the keyword that lets us focus on ruptures, contradiction, and change within a society. It drives us to recognize many different histories as opposed to one official history. The case studies in "Between History and Histories" use this new approach in historical anthropology to examine how certain events are silenced in the shadow of others that are commemorated by monuments, ceremonies, documents, and story-telling. The first set of studies explores cases around the world where the official construction of the past has been contested. The second set describes the silences voiced as a result of these disputes. For students, this collection provides a useful overview of interaction between two disciplines. For historians and anthropologists, it offers a new vision of how history is produced.
"Livelihood and Resistance" examines a Peruvian highland community where rural resistance has been endemic for over a century. Gavin Smith explores the way in which the villagers' daily economic interests and their political struggles contribute to their social and political identity.
Barking and Dagenham have been sister communities on the Thames shore since Saxon times. In their earliest days communication with other parts was mainly by water since inland the area was a wilderness of marsh passable only with the greatest difficulty. We must assume that these early settlers chose these sites to give good security from attack. Modern Barking and Dagenham have only come into being because of the success of entrepreneurs like Samuel Williams who created such improvements in these Thameside areas that it was possible to promote them as sites for potential industrial development. Following the arrival of the Ford Motor Company and the rapid growth. The village of Dagenham was soon swamped by housing developments like the huge Becontree estate which accomodated the new workforce, and the modern community that we know today began to take shape. This collection of old photographs and memorabilia of Barking and Dagenham illustrates many of these changes and the book will appeal to all who live and work in this famous Thameside area.
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