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This book explores the cultural meanings of the criminal body in
the west through historical and multidisciplinary frameworks,
examining both how the criminal corpse was viewed as a repository
of power and how it held significant cultural meaning as material
relic. Authors situate the criminal body at different historical
junctures to examine ways in which the criminal corpse was
displayed and managed for social, political, magical and medicinal
powers and purposes. They explain how this legacy persists in
significant ways in the contemporary west, primarily through the
commodification of criminal bodies in popular and public displays.
The role of notorious criminal bodies in contemporary culture also
reverberates in political and scientific realms in which criminal
bodies often carry symbolic meanings related to ambivalence over
interpretations of death. Drawing on examples from history as well
as more contemporary criminal bodies, the book will be of interest
to those studying death and criminology, and show how the criminal
body can retain an iconic status in the collective memory of the
living. This book was originally published as a special issue of
Mortality.
This book explores the cultural meanings of the criminal body in
the west through historical and multidisciplinary frameworks,
examining both how the criminal corpse was viewed as a repository
of power and how it held significant cultural meaning as material
relic. Authors situate the criminal body at different historical
junctures to examine ways in which the criminal corpse was
displayed and managed for social, political, magical and medicinal
powers and purposes. They explain how this legacy persists in
significant ways in the contemporary west, primarily through the
commodification of criminal bodies in popular and public displays.
The role of notorious criminal bodies in contemporary culture also
reverberates in political and scientific realms in which criminal
bodies often carry symbolic meanings related to ambivalence over
interpretations of death. Drawing on examples from history as well
as more contemporary criminal bodies, the book will be of interest
to those studying death and criminology, and show how the criminal
body can retain an iconic status in the collective memory of the
living. This book was originally published as a special issue of
Mortality.
Appalachian legend describes a mysterious, multiethnic population
of exotic, dark-skinned rogues called Melungeons who rejected the
outside world and lived in the remote, rugged mountains in the
farthest corner of northeast Tennessee. The allegedly unknown
origins of these Melungeons are part of what drove this legend and
generated myriad exotic origin theories. Though nobody
self-identified as Melungeon before the 1960s, by the 1990s
"Melungeonness" had become a full-fledged cultural phenomenon,
resulting in a zealous online community and annual meetings where
self-identified Melungeons gathered to discuss shared genealogy and
history. Although today Melungeons are commonly identified as the
descendants of underclass whites, freed African Americans, and
Native Americans, this ethnic identity is still largely a social
construction based on local tradition, myth, and media. In Becoming
Melungeon, Melissa Schrift examines the ways in which the Melungeon
ethnic identity has been socially constructed over time by various
regional and national media, plays, and other forms of popular
culture. Schrift explores how the social construction of this
legend evolved into a fervent movement of a self-identified
ethnicity in the 1990s. This illuminating and insightful work
examines the shifting social constructions of race, ethnicity, and
identity both in the local context of the Melungeons and more
broadly in an attempt to understand the formation of ethnic groups
and identity in the modern world.
"Strangely moving. . . . While in China, Schrift] discovered a
subculture of people who collected buttons bearing portraits of the
Great Helmsman: thousands of varieties had been manufactured from
the Cultural Revolution, when they served as one of the few
permitted forms of personal adornment or aesthetic display. . . . I
found reading the book a surprisingly emotional
experience."-Newsday; Newsday Long Island "A wonderfully rich and
riveting account, Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge represents an
important contribution to our understanding of the Cultural
Revolution and its place in Chinese culture. Schrift provides an
informative examination of the Mao cult's recent transformation
into its present form of pop cultural campiness." -William
Jankowiak, author of Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City
"An excellent study of symbolism and factionalism in Maoist China.
Schrift shows how mundane objects were transformed into sacred
icons of revolutionary ideology. This book offers new insights into
the dynamics of the Cultural Revolution."- J. L. Watson, author of
Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia With the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966, the regime of Chairman Mao
Zedong launched a propaganda campaign aimed at disseminating
inspiring images of the chairman to a skeptical populace. Thus was
born the "Mao badge," a political icon in the form of a pin that
was widely distributed to create, sustain, and inflate the Mao
personality cult during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
Scholars estimate that over two billion Mao badges, featuring over
fifty thousand different designs and themes, were produced. As
China now enters an era in which people can more openly express
their views about the Cultural Revolution, these icons have taken
on new meanings, and people are wearing and talking about them in
subversive ways. Melissa Schrift suggests that the badges developed
"lives" that far surpass the intentions of their creators, as the
Chinese ironically commodified them, both during the Cultural
Revolution and today. During the Mao years, people wore the objects
to symbolize their unquestioned loyalty to Mao. Yet even then many
Chinese subverted the badges' symbolic meaning. Using them in
socially approved rituals, they gained a measure of political
credibility that masked their practice of prohibited customary
rites. Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge is a work of cultural
history that contributes to our understanding not only of Chinese
society but, more generally, of strategies people employ in
responding to and transforming the meaning of propaganda campaigns
and symbols. Melissa Schrift is an assistant professor of
anthropology and sociology at Marquette University.
How ritualized public ceremonies affirm or challenge cultural
identities associated with the American South W. J. Cash's 1941
observation that "there are many Souths and many cultural
traditions among them" is certainly validated by this book.
Although the Civil War and its "lost cause" tradition continues to
serve as a cultural root paradigm in celebrations, both uniting and
dividing loyalties, southerners also embrace a panoply of public
rituals--parades, cook-offs, kinship homecomings, church
assemblies, music spectacles, and material culture
exhibitions--that affirm other identities. From the Appalachian
uplands to the Mississippi Delta, from Kentucky bluegrass to
Carolina piedmont, southerners celebrate in festivals that showcase
their diverse cultural backgrounds and their mythic beliefs about
themselves. The ten essays of this cohesive, interdisciplinary
collection present event-centered research from various fields of
study--anthropology, geography, history, and literature--to
establish a rich, complex picture of the stereotypically "Solid
South." Topics include the Mardi Gras Indian song cycle as a means
of expressing African-American identity in New Orleans; powwow
performances and Native American traditions in southeast North
Carolina; religious healings in southern Appalachian communities;
Mexican Independence Day festivals in central Florida; and, in
eastern Tennessee, bonding ceremonies of melungeons who share
Indian, Scots Irish, Mediterranean, and African ancestry. Seen
together, these public heritage displays reveal a rich "creole" of
cultures that have always been a part of southern life and that
continue to affirm a flourishing regionalism. This book will be
valuable to students and scholars of cultural anthropology,
American studies, and southern history; academic and public
libraries; and general readers interested in the American South. It
contributes a vibrant, colorful layer of understanding to the
continuously emerging picture of complexity in this region
historically depicted by simple stereotypes.
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