Ellen Oxfeld
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520293519
- eISBN:
- 9780520966741
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520293519.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This book examines the value of food in rural China through an ethnographic study of a Hakka village in Meixian, a county in northeast Guangdong Province. By examining the role of food in the lives ...
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This book examines the value of food in rural China through an ethnographic study of a Hakka village in Meixian, a county in northeast Guangdong Province. By examining the role of food in the lives of one community, the book attempts to show how food in rural China is an essential building block of social relations and a source of value both within, but also beyond the market economy. It examines the role food plays in the organization of labor, the recollection and generational transfer of historical and personal memories, systems of exchange and relationships between humans, and between humans and the cosmos, moral discourses and judgements, and in sociality and emotion. It hopes to show how a focus on food provides a somewhat more complex and nuanced picture of contemporary rural China than accounts which emphasize only the decline of social cohesion, rise of individualism, and the end of all moral economies in the wake of industrialization and the global capitalist market. Rather, a focus on food provides a lens into the complex interplay between the forces of cultural continuity and rupture, ties to the land and the pull of the city, family duties, sociality, and the growth of individualism, and an economy based on money and profit versus older forms of exchange that privilege social obligations.Less
This book examines the value of food in rural China through an ethnographic study of a Hakka village in Meixian, a county in northeast Guangdong Province. By examining the role of food in the lives of one community, the book attempts to show how food in rural China is an essential building block of social relations and a source of value both within, but also beyond the market economy. It examines the role food plays in the organization of labor, the recollection and generational transfer of historical and personal memories, systems of exchange and relationships between humans, and between humans and the cosmos, moral discourses and judgements, and in sociality and emotion. It hopes to show how a focus on food provides a somewhat more complex and nuanced picture of contemporary rural China than accounts which emphasize only the decline of social cohesion, rise of individualism, and the end of all moral economies in the wake of industrialization and the global capitalist market. Rather, a focus on food provides a lens into the complex interplay between the forces of cultural continuity and rupture, ties to the land and the pull of the city, family duties, sociality, and the growth of individualism, and an economy based on money and profit versus older forms of exchange that privilege social obligations.
Lily Chumley
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691164977
- eISBN:
- 9781400881321
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164977.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The last three decades have seen a massive expansion of China's visual culture industries, from architecture and graphic design to fine art and fashion. New ideologies of creativity and creative ...
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The last three decades have seen a massive expansion of China's visual culture industries, from architecture and graphic design to fine art and fashion. New ideologies of creativity and creative practices have reshaped the training of a new generation of art school graduates. This is the first book to explore how Chinese art students develop, embody, and promote their own personalities and styles as they move from art school entrance test preparation, to art school, to work in the country's burgeoning culture industries. The book shows the connections between this creative explosion and the Chinese government's explicit goal of cultivating creative human capital in a new “market socialist” economy where value is produced through innovation. Drawing on years of fieldwork in China's leading art academies and art test prep schools, the book combines ethnography and oral history with analyses of contemporary avant-garde and official art, popular media, and propaganda. Examining the rise of a Chinese artistic vanguard and creative knowledge-based economy, the book sheds light on an important facet of today's China.Less
The last three decades have seen a massive expansion of China's visual culture industries, from architecture and graphic design to fine art and fashion. New ideologies of creativity and creative practices have reshaped the training of a new generation of art school graduates. This is the first book to explore how Chinese art students develop, embody, and promote their own personalities and styles as they move from art school entrance test preparation, to art school, to work in the country's burgeoning culture industries. The book shows the connections between this creative explosion and the Chinese government's explicit goal of cultivating creative human capital in a new “market socialist” economy where value is produced through innovation. Drawing on years of fieldwork in China's leading art academies and art test prep schools, the book combines ethnography and oral history with analyses of contemporary avant-garde and official art, popular media, and propaganda. Examining the rise of a Chinese artistic vanguard and creative knowledge-based economy, the book sheds light on an important facet of today's China.
Antina von Schnitzler
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691170770
- eISBN:
- 9781400882991
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691170770.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
In the past decade, South Africa's “miracle transition” has been interrupted by waves of protests in relation to basic services such as water and electricity. Less visibly, the postapartheid period ...
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In the past decade, South Africa's “miracle transition” has been interrupted by waves of protests in relation to basic services such as water and electricity. Less visibly, the postapartheid period has witnessed widespread illicit acts involving infrastructure, including the non-payment of service charges, the bypassing of metering devices, and illegal connections to services. This book shows how such administrative links to the state became a central political terrain during the antiapartheid struggle and how this terrain persists in the postapartheid present. Focusing on conflicts surrounding prepaid water meters, the book examines the techno-political forms through which democracy takes shape. It explores a controversial project to install prepaid water meters in Soweto—one of many efforts to curb the non-payment of service charges that began during the antiapartheid struggle—and traces how infrastructure, payment, and technical procedures become sites where citizenship is mediated and contested. The book follows engineers, utility officials, and local bureaucrats as they consider ways to prompt Sowetans to pay for water, and shows how local residents and activists wrestle with the constraints imposed by meters. This investigation of democracy from the perspective of infrastructure reframes the conventional story of South Africa's transition, foregrounding the less visible remainders of apartheid and challenging readers to think in more material terms about citizenship and activism in the postcolonial world. The book examines how seemingly mundane technological domains become charged territory for struggles over South Africa's political transformation.Less
In the past decade, South Africa's “miracle transition” has been interrupted by waves of protests in relation to basic services such as water and electricity. Less visibly, the postapartheid period has witnessed widespread illicit acts involving infrastructure, including the non-payment of service charges, the bypassing of metering devices, and illegal connections to services. This book shows how such administrative links to the state became a central political terrain during the antiapartheid struggle and how this terrain persists in the postapartheid present. Focusing on conflicts surrounding prepaid water meters, the book examines the techno-political forms through which democracy takes shape. It explores a controversial project to install prepaid water meters in Soweto—one of many efforts to curb the non-payment of service charges that began during the antiapartheid struggle—and traces how infrastructure, payment, and technical procedures become sites where citizenship is mediated and contested. The book follows engineers, utility officials, and local bureaucrats as they consider ways to prompt Sowetans to pay for water, and shows how local residents and activists wrestle with the constraints imposed by meters. This investigation of democracy from the perspective of infrastructure reframes the conventional story of South Africa's transition, foregrounding the less visible remainders of apartheid and challenging readers to think in more material terms about citizenship and activism in the postcolonial world. The book examines how seemingly mundane technological domains become charged territory for struggles over South Africa's political transformation.
Thomas A. Borchert
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780824866488
- eISBN:
- 9780824875657
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824866488.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Educating Monks examines the education and training of novices and young Buddhist monks of a Tai minority group on China’s Southwest border. The Buddhists of this region, the Dai-lue, are Chinese ...
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Educating Monks examines the education and training of novices and young Buddhist monks of a Tai minority group on China’s Southwest border. The Buddhists of this region, the Dai-lue, are Chinese citizens but practice Theravada Buddhism and have long-standing ties to the Theravāda communities of Southeast Asia. The book shows how Dai-lue Buddhists train their young men in village temples, monastic junior high schools and in transnational monastic educational institutions, as well as the political context of redeveloping Buddhism during the Reform era in China. While the book focuses on the educational settings in which these young boys are trained, it also argues that in order to understand how a monk is made, it is necessary to examine local agenda, national politics and transnational Buddhist networks.Less
Educating Monks examines the education and training of novices and young Buddhist monks of a Tai minority group on China’s Southwest border. The Buddhists of this region, the Dai-lue, are Chinese citizens but practice Theravada Buddhism and have long-standing ties to the Theravāda communities of Southeast Asia. The book shows how Dai-lue Buddhists train their young men in village temples, monastic junior high schools and in transnational monastic educational institutions, as well as the political context of redeveloping Buddhism during the Reform era in China. While the book focuses on the educational settings in which these young boys are trained, it also argues that in order to understand how a monk is made, it is necessary to examine local agenda, national politics and transnational Buddhist networks.
Penny McCall Howard
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784994143
- eISBN:
- 9781526128478
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784994143.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Global
How do fishers extend their bodies and senses to work beneath the surface of the sea in places they cannot see, have never been, and could not survive in? And at what risk? This book explores how ...
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How do fishers extend their bodies and senses to work beneath the surface of the sea in places they cannot see, have never been, and could not survive in? And at what risk? This book explores how fishers make the sea productive through their labour, using technologies ranging from wooden boats to digital GPS plotters to extend their senses and range of effective work, in the process creating familiar places in a seemingly hostile environment. It shows how the lives of fishers are deeply affected by capitalist commodity relations. Drawing on years of participant observation at sea in the west of Scotland, the author worked on a Nephrops prawn trawler, lived on a boat in harbours and voyaged along the coast. The book makes a unique contribution to understanding human-environment relations, examining the places fishers create and name at sea, as well as fishers’ technologies and navigation practices. Combining anthropology, phenomenology and political economy, the ethnography offers new approaches for analyses of human-environment relations and technologies in a Marxist framework. It also contributes to the social studies of fisheries through an analysis of how deeply fishing practices and social relations are shaped by political economy.Less
How do fishers extend their bodies and senses to work beneath the surface of the sea in places they cannot see, have never been, and could not survive in? And at what risk? This book explores how fishers make the sea productive through their labour, using technologies ranging from wooden boats to digital GPS plotters to extend their senses and range of effective work, in the process creating familiar places in a seemingly hostile environment. It shows how the lives of fishers are deeply affected by capitalist commodity relations. Drawing on years of participant observation at sea in the west of Scotland, the author worked on a Nephrops prawn trawler, lived on a boat in harbours and voyaged along the coast. The book makes a unique contribution to understanding human-environment relations, examining the places fishers create and name at sea, as well as fishers’ technologies and navigation practices. Combining anthropology, phenomenology and political economy, the ethnography offers new approaches for analyses of human-environment relations and technologies in a Marxist framework. It also contributes to the social studies of fisheries through an analysis of how deeply fishing practices and social relations are shaped by political economy.
Joanne Randa Nucho
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691168968
- eISBN:
- 9781400883004
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691168968.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Middle Eastern Cultural Anthropology
What causes violent conflicts around the Middle East? All too often, the answer is sectarianism—popularly viewed as a timeless and intractable force that leads religious groups to conflict. This book ...
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What causes violent conflicts around the Middle East? All too often, the answer is sectarianism—popularly viewed as a timeless and intractable force that leads religious groups to conflict. This book shows how wrong this perspective can be. Through in-depth research with local governments, NGOs, and political parties in Beirut, the book demonstrates how sectarianism is actually recalibrated on a daily basis through the provision of essential services and infrastructures, such as electricity, medical care, credit, and the planning of bridges and roads. In a working-class, predominantly Armenian suburb in northeast Beirut called Bourj Hammoud, the author conducted extensive interviews and observations in medical clinics, social service centers, shops, banking coops, and municipal offices, and explores how group and individual access to services depends on making claims to membership in the dominant sectarian community. The author examines how sectarianism is not just tied to ethnoreligious identity, but also class, gender, and geography. Life in Bourj Hammoud makes visible a broader pattern in which the relationships that develop while procuring basic needs become a way for people to see themselves as part of the greater public. Illustrating how sectarianism in Lebanon is not simply about religious identity, as is commonly thought, this book offers a new look at how everyday social exchanges define and redefine communities and conflicts.Less
What causes violent conflicts around the Middle East? All too often, the answer is sectarianism—popularly viewed as a timeless and intractable force that leads religious groups to conflict. This book shows how wrong this perspective can be. Through in-depth research with local governments, NGOs, and political parties in Beirut, the book demonstrates how sectarianism is actually recalibrated on a daily basis through the provision of essential services and infrastructures, such as electricity, medical care, credit, and the planning of bridges and roads. In a working-class, predominantly Armenian suburb in northeast Beirut called Bourj Hammoud, the author conducted extensive interviews and observations in medical clinics, social service centers, shops, banking coops, and municipal offices, and explores how group and individual access to services depends on making claims to membership in the dominant sectarian community. The author examines how sectarianism is not just tied to ethnoreligious identity, but also class, gender, and geography. Life in Bourj Hammoud makes visible a broader pattern in which the relationships that develop while procuring basic needs become a way for people to see themselves as part of the greater public. Illustrating how sectarianism in Lebanon is not simply about religious identity, as is commonly thought, this book offers a new look at how everyday social exchanges define and redefine communities and conflicts.
Christy Kulz
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526116178
- eISBN:
- 9781526128430
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526116178.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This book draws on empirical research based at Dreamfields Academy, a celebrated secondary academy in a large English city, to explore how the heightened marketization and centralization of education ...
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This book draws on empirical research based at Dreamfields Academy, a celebrated secondary academy in a large English city, to explore how the heightened marketization and centralization of education instigated through academisation is reproducing raced, classed and gendered inequalities. Over half of England’s secondary schools are now academies that receive funding directly from central government and operate as autonomous businesses. Academies’ impact on achievement levels has been hotly debated, but the social and cultural changes prompted by this model have received less scrutiny.Dreamfields’ ‘structure liberates’ ethos claims to free students from a culture of poverty through hard discipline. Its headteacher assumes the role of business executive, saviour, pioneering cowboy and military commander leading a redemptive troupe of teachers who act as ‘surrogate parents’ salvaging ‘urban children’. With its regimented routines and outstanding results, Dreamfields has received praise from across the political spectrum. This book examines the complex stories underlying the glossy veneer of success by exploring how persistent structural inequalities are concealed beneath the colour-blind rhetoric of aspirational citizenship. The book traces how students, teachers and parents navigate the everyday demands of Dreamfields’ results-driven conveyor belt as raced and classed inequalities are reshaped in new ways and spaces of democratic participation are foreclosed.The book explores how the hopes and dreams of students, parents and teachers are harnessed and mobilized to enact insidious forms of social control, as education develops new sites and discourses of surveillance.Less
This book draws on empirical research based at Dreamfields Academy, a celebrated secondary academy in a large English city, to explore how the heightened marketization and centralization of education instigated through academisation is reproducing raced, classed and gendered inequalities. Over half of England’s secondary schools are now academies that receive funding directly from central government and operate as autonomous businesses. Academies’ impact on achievement levels has been hotly debated, but the social and cultural changes prompted by this model have received less scrutiny.Dreamfields’ ‘structure liberates’ ethos claims to free students from a culture of poverty through hard discipline. Its headteacher assumes the role of business executive, saviour, pioneering cowboy and military commander leading a redemptive troupe of teachers who act as ‘surrogate parents’ salvaging ‘urban children’. With its regimented routines and outstanding results, Dreamfields has received praise from across the political spectrum. This book examines the complex stories underlying the glossy veneer of success by exploring how persistent structural inequalities are concealed beneath the colour-blind rhetoric of aspirational citizenship. The book traces how students, teachers and parents navigate the everyday demands of Dreamfields’ results-driven conveyor belt as raced and classed inequalities are reshaped in new ways and spaces of democratic participation are foreclosed.The book explores how the hopes and dreams of students, parents and teachers are harnessed and mobilized to enact insidious forms of social control, as education develops new sites and discourses of surveillance.
Noah Salomon
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691165158
- eISBN:
- 9781400884292
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691165158.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
For some, the idea of an Islamic state serves to fulfill aspirations for cultural sovereignty and new forms of ethical political practice. For others, it violates the proper domains of both religion ...
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For some, the idea of an Islamic state serves to fulfill aspirations for cultural sovereignty and new forms of ethical political practice. For others, it violates the proper domains of both religion and politics. Yet, while there has been much discussion of the idea and ideals of the Islamic state, its possibilities and impossibilities, surprisingly little has been written about how this political formation is lived. This book looks at the Republic of Sudan's twenty-five-year experiment with Islamic statehood. Focusing not on state institutions, but rather on the daily life that goes on in their shadows, the book examines the lasting effects of state Islamization on Sudanese society through a study of the individuals and organizations working in its midst. The book investigates Sudan at a crucial moment in its history—balanced between unity and partition, secular and religious politics, peace and war—when those who desired an Islamic state were rethinking the political form under which they had lived for nearly a generation. Countering the dominant discourse, the book depicts contemporary Islamic politics not as a response to secularism and Westernization but as a node in a much longer conversation within Islamic thought, augmented and reappropriated as state projects of Islamic reform became objects of debate and controversy. The book reveals both novel political ideals and new articulations of Islam as it is rethought through the lens of the nation.Less
For some, the idea of an Islamic state serves to fulfill aspirations for cultural sovereignty and new forms of ethical political practice. For others, it violates the proper domains of both religion and politics. Yet, while there has been much discussion of the idea and ideals of the Islamic state, its possibilities and impossibilities, surprisingly little has been written about how this political formation is lived. This book looks at the Republic of Sudan's twenty-five-year experiment with Islamic statehood. Focusing not on state institutions, but rather on the daily life that goes on in their shadows, the book examines the lasting effects of state Islamization on Sudanese society through a study of the individuals and organizations working in its midst. The book investigates Sudan at a crucial moment in its history—balanced between unity and partition, secular and religious politics, peace and war—when those who desired an Islamic state were rethinking the political form under which they had lived for nearly a generation. Countering the dominant discourse, the book depicts contemporary Islamic politics not as a response to secularism and Westernization but as a node in a much longer conversation within Islamic thought, augmented and reappropriated as state projects of Islamic reform became objects of debate and controversy. The book reveals both novel political ideals and new articulations of Islam as it is rethought through the lens of the nation.
Carolyn Sufrin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520288669
- eISBN:
- 9780520963559
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520288669.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
Thousands of pregnant women pass through our nation's jails every year. What happens to them as they carry their pregnancies in a space of punishment? In this time when the public safety net is ...
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Thousands of pregnant women pass through our nation's jails every year. What happens to them as they carry their pregnancies in a space of punishment? In this time when the public safety net is frayed, incarceration has become a central and racialized strategy for managing the poor. This book explores how jail has, paradoxically, become a place where women can find care. Focusing on the experiences of incarcerated pregnant women as well as on the practices of the jail guards and health providers who care for them. The book describes the contradictory ways that care and maternal identity emerge within a punitive space presumed to be devoid of care. It argues that jail is not simply a disciplinary institution that serves to punish, rather, when understood in the context of the poverty, addiction, violence, and racial oppression that characterize these women's lives and their reproduction, jail can become a safety net for women on the margins of society.Less
Thousands of pregnant women pass through our nation's jails every year. What happens to them as they carry their pregnancies in a space of punishment? In this time when the public safety net is frayed, incarceration has become a central and racialized strategy for managing the poor. This book explores how jail has, paradoxically, become a place where women can find care. Focusing on the experiences of incarcerated pregnant women as well as on the practices of the jail guards and health providers who care for them. The book describes the contradictory ways that care and maternal identity emerge within a punitive space presumed to be devoid of care. It argues that jail is not simply a disciplinary institution that serves to punish, rather, when understood in the context of the poverty, addiction, violence, and racial oppression that characterize these women's lives and their reproduction, jail can become a safety net for women on the margins of society.
Katharine Dow
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691167480
- eISBN:
- 9781400881062
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691167480.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This book takes a timely look at the ideas and values that inform how people think about reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies. In an era of heightened scrutiny about parenting and ...
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This book takes a timely look at the ideas and values that inform how people think about reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies. In an era of heightened scrutiny about parenting and reproduction, fears about environmental degradation, and the rise of the biotechnology industry, the book delves into the reproductive ethics of those who do not have a personal stake in assisted reproductive technologies, but who are building lives inspired and influenced by environmentalism and concerns about the natural world's future. Moving away from experiences of infertility treatments tied to the clinic and laboratory, the book instead explores reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies as topics of public concern and debate, and examines how people living in a coastal village in rural Scotland make ethical decisions and judgments about these matters. In particular, it engages with people's ideas about nature and naturalness, and how these relate to views about parenting and building stable environments for future generations. Taking into account the ways by which daily responsibilities and commitments are balanced with moral values, it suggests that there is still much to uncover about reproductive ethics. The book offers a new approach to researching, thinking, and writing about nature, ethics, and reproduction.Less
This book takes a timely look at the ideas and values that inform how people think about reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies. In an era of heightened scrutiny about parenting and reproduction, fears about environmental degradation, and the rise of the biotechnology industry, the book delves into the reproductive ethics of those who do not have a personal stake in assisted reproductive technologies, but who are building lives inspired and influenced by environmentalism and concerns about the natural world's future. Moving away from experiences of infertility treatments tied to the clinic and laboratory, the book instead explores reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies as topics of public concern and debate, and examines how people living in a coastal village in rural Scotland make ethical decisions and judgments about these matters. In particular, it engages with people's ideas about nature and naturalness, and how these relate to views about parenting and building stable environments for future generations. Taking into account the ways by which daily responsibilities and commitments are balanced with moral values, it suggests that there is still much to uncover about reproductive ethics. The book offers a new approach to researching, thinking, and writing about nature, ethics, and reproduction.
Abandoned in the Heartland
Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America
Above the Clouds
The Accompaniment
The Adventure of the Real
Affective Circuits
Affliction
African Futures
After Heaven
