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Title: The fabrication of labor: Germany and Britain, 1640-1914 
Author: Biernacki, Richard 1956-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: History | Sociology | Labor Studies | European History
Publisher's Description: This monumental study demonstrates the power of culture to define the meaning of labor. Drawing on massive archival evidence from Britain and Germany, as well as historical evidence from France and Italy, The Fabrication of Labor shows how the very nature of labor as a commodity differed fundamentally in different national contexts. A detailed comparative study of German and British wool textile mills reveals a basic difference in the way labor was understood, even though these industries developed in the same period, used similar machines, and competed in similar markets. These divergent definitions of the essential character of labor as a commodity influenced the entire industrial phenomenon, affecting experiences of industrial work, methods of remuneration, disciplinary techniques, forms of collective action, and even industrial architecture. Starting from a rigorous analysis of detailed archival materials, this study broadens out to analyze the contrasting developmental pathways to wage labor in Western Europe and offers a startling reinterpretation of theories of political economy put forward by Adam Smith and Karl Marx. In his brilliant cross-national study, Richard Biernacki profoundly reorients the analysis of how culture constitutes the very categories of economic life.   [brief]
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Title: The New cultural history: essays by Aletta Biersack ... [et al.]
Author: Biersack, Aletta
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Law
Publisher's Description: Across the humanities and the social sciences, disciplinary boundaries have come into question as scholars have acknowledged their common preoccupations with cultural phenomena ranging from rituals and ceremonies to texts and discourse. Literary critics, for example, have turned to history for a deepening of their notion of cultural products; some of them now read historical documents in the same way that they previously read "great" texts. Anthropologists have turned to the history of their own discipline in order to better understand the ways in which disciplinary authority was constructed. As historians have begun to participate in this ferment, they have moved away from their earlier focus on social theoretical models of historical development toward concepts taken from cultural anthropology and literary criticism.Much of the most exciting work in history recently has been affiliated with this wide-ranging effort to write history that is essentially a history of culture. The essays presented here provide an introduction to this movement within the discipline of history. The essays in Part One trace the influence of important models for the new cultural history, models ranging from the pathbreaking work of the French cultural critic Michel Foucault and the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz to the imaginative efforts of such contemporary historians as Natalie Davis and E. P. Thompson, as well as the more controversial theories of Hayden White and Dominick LaCapra. The essays in Part Two are exemplary of the most challenging and fruitful new work of historians in this genre, with topics as diverse as parades in 19th-century America, 16th-century Spanish texts, English medical writing, and the visual practices implied in Italian Renaissance frescoes. Beneath this diversity, however, it is possible to see the commonalities of the new cultural history as it takes shape. Students, teachers, and general readers interested in the future of history will find these essays stimulating and provocative.   [brief]
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Title: Antigonos the One-eyed and the creation of the Hellenistic state
Author: Billows, Richard A
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Classics | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: Called by Plutarch "the oldest and greatest of Alexander's successors," Antigonos the One-Eyed (382-301 BC) was the dominant figure during the first half of the Diadoch period, ruling most of the Asian territory conquered by the Macedonians during his final twenty years. Billows provides the first detailed study of this great general and administrator, establishing him as a key contributor to the Hellenistic monarchy and state. After a successful career under Philip and Alexander, Antigonos rose to power over the Asian portion of Alexander's conquests. Embittered by the persistent hostility of those who controlled the European and Egyptian parts of the empire, he tried to eliminate these opponents, an ambition which led to his final defeat in 301. In a corrective to the standard explanations of his aims, Billows shows that Antigonos was scarcely influenced by Alexander, seeking to rule West Asia and the Aegean, rather than the whole of Alexander's Empire.   [brief]
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Title: Berlin metropolis: Jews and the new culture, 1890-1918
Author: Bilski, Emily D 1956-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Art | History | Jewish Studies | German Studies
Publisher's Description: Between 1890 and 1918 the city of Berlin evolved into a commercial and industrial hub that also became an international center for radical new ideas in the visual, performing, and literary arts. Jews were key leaders in developing this unique cosmopolitan culture. Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture, 1890-1918 vividly documents the many ways that Jewish artists and entrepreneurs participated in this burst of artistic creativity and promoted the emergence of modernism on the international scene.The book and exhibition at The Jewish Museum highlight leading cultural figures such as Max Liebermann, a founder of the Berlin Secession, and Herwarth Walden, who founded Der Sturm; artists such as Ludwig Meidner and Jakob Steinhardt; pioneers of cabaret, theater, and film, including Max Reinhardt and Ernst Lubitsch; art dealers, publishers, and writers; and leading intellectual and political figures such as Martin Buber and Georg Simmel. These and other fascinating individuals are represented by more than 200 diverse objects: paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, books, letters, posters, graphic arts, theater memorabilia, and film. The book includes eight essays by scholars of German and Jewish culture and art history that provide a truly interdisciplinary interpretation of the Berlin renaissance.The period represented in Berlin Metropolis was a time when Jews were traditionally restricted from participating in major areas of German public life such as the army, government, and the university. But by turning to the "alternative public spheres" characteristic of urban society - galleries, cafés, journals, theaters, cabarets - they emerged as innovative cultural leaders whose intellectual and artistic impact is still felt today.The exhibition, Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture, 1890-1918 , will be at The Jewish Museum, New York , from November 14, 1999, to March 5, 2000; and the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida , from April 1 to June 11, 2000.   [brief]
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Title: Inside the drama-house: Rama stories and shadow puppets in South India 
Author: Blackburn, Stuart H
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Anthropology | Asian Studies | South Asia | Cinema and Performance Arts | Hinduism
Publisher's Description: Stuart Blackburn takes the reader inside a little-known form of shadow puppetry in this captivating work about performing the Tamil version of the Ramayana epic. Blackburn describes the skill and physical stamina of the puppeteers in Kerala state in South India as they perform all night for as many as ten weeks during the festival season. The fact that these performances often take place without an audience forms the starting point for Blackburn's discussion - one which explores not only this important epic tale and its performance, but also the broader theoretical issues of text, interpretation, and audience.Blackburn demonstrates how the performers adapt the narrative and add their own commentary to re-create the story from a folk perspective. At a time when the Rama story is used to mobilize political movements in India, the puppeteers' elaborate recitation and commentary presents this controversial tale from another ethical perspective, one that advocates moral reciprocity and balance.While the study of folk narrative has until now focused on tales, tellers, and tellings, this work explores the importance of audience - absent or otherwise. Blackburn's elegant translations of the most dramatic and pivotal sequences of the story enhance our appreciation of this unique example of performance art.   [brief]
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Title: Balancing water: restoring the Klamath Basin
Author: Blake, Tupper Ansel
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Photography | Water
Publisher's Description: The Klamath Basin is a land of teeming wildlife, expansive marshes, blue-ribbon trout streams, tremendous stretches of forests, and large ranches in southern Oregon and northern California. Known to waterfowl, songbirds, and shorebirds, the Klamath Basin's marshlands are a mecca for birds along the Pacific Flyway. This gorgeously illustrated book is a paean to the beauty of the Klamath Basin and at the same time a sophisticated environmental case study of an endangered region whose story parallels that of watershed development throughout the west. A collaboration between two photographers and a writer, Balancing Water tells the story in words and pictures of the complex relationship between the human and natural history of this region. Spectacular images by Tupper Ansel Blake depict resident species of the area, migratory birds, and dramatic landscapes. Madeleine Graham Blake has contributed portraits of local residents, while archival photographs document the history of the area. William Kittredge's essay on the conjunction of conflicting interests in this wildlands paradise is by turns lyrically personal and brimming with historical and scientific facts. He traces the water flowing through the Klamath Basin, the human history of the watershed, and the land-use conflicts that all touch on the availability of water. Ranchers, loggers, town settlers, Native Americans, tourists, and environmentalists are all represented in the narrative, and their diverse perspectives form a complicated web like that of the interactions among organisms in the ecosystem. Kittredge finds hope in the endangered Klamath Basin, both in successful restoration projects recently begun there, and in the community involvement he sees as necessary for watershed restoration and biodiversity preservation. Emphasizing that we must take care of both human economies and the natural environment, he shows how the two are ultimately interconnected. The Klamath Basin can be a model for watershed restoration elsewhere in the west, as we search for creative ways of solving our intertwined ecological and social problems.   [brief]
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Title: Family size and achievement 
Author: Blake, Judith
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Sociology | Demography
Publisher's Description: The children born since the end of the postwar baby boom are the first in American history to come primarily from small families - families of three or fewer children. Judith Blake calls this momentous change the sibsize revolution, and this book focuses on the cognitive and educational consequences . . . [more]
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Title: Inside organized racism: women in the hate movement
Author: Blee, Kathleen M
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Sociology | Gender Studies | Social Problems | Public Policy | Christianity
Publisher's Description: Kathleen M. Blee's disturbing and provocative look at the hidden world of organized racism focuses on women, the newest recruiting targets of racist groups and crucial to their campaign for racial supremacy. Through personal interviews with women active in the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups, Christian Identity sects, and white power skinhead gangs across the United States, Blee dispels many misconceptions of organized racism. Women are seldom pushed into the racist movement by any compelling interest, belief, or need, she finds. Most are educated. Only the rare woman grew up poor. Most were not raised in abusive families. Most women did not follow men into the world of organized racism. Inside Organized Racism offers a fascinating examination of the submerged social relations and the variety of racist identities that lie behind the apparent homogeneity of the movement. Following up her highly praised study of the women in the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, Blee discovers that many of today's racist women combine dangerous racist and anti-Semitic agendas with otherwise mainstream lives. Few of the women she interviews had strong racist or anti-Semitic views before becoming associated with racist groups. Rather, they learned a virulent hatred of racial minorities and anti-Semitic conspiratorial beliefs by being in racist groups. The only national sample of a broad spectrum of racist activists and the only major work on women racists, this well-written and important book also sheds light on how gender relationships shape participation in the movement as a whole.   [brief]
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Title: Women of the Klan: racism and gender in the 1920s
Author: Blee, Kathleen M
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | Sociology | Women's Studies | United States History | American Studies
Publisher's Description: Ignorant. Brutal. Male. One of these stereotypes of the Ku Klux Klan offer a misleading picture. In Women of the Klan , sociologist Kathleen Blee unveils an accurate portrait of a racist movement that appealed to ordinary people throughout the country. In so doing, she dismantles the popular notion that politically involved women are always inspired by pacifism, equality, and justice."All the better people," a former Klanswoman assures us, were in the Klan. During the 1920s, perhaps half a million white native-born Protestant women joined the Women's Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). Like their male counterparts, Klanswomen held reactionary views on race, nationality, and religion. But their perspectives on gender roles were often progressive. The Klan publicly asserted that a women's order could safeguard women's suffrage and expand their other legal rights. Privately the WKKK was working to preserve white Protestant supremacy.Blee draws from extensive archival research and interviews with former Klan members and victims to underscore the complexity of extremist right-wing political movements. Issues of women's rights, she argues, do not fit comfortably into the standard dichotomies of "progressive" and "reactionary." These need to be replaced by a more complete understanding of how gender politics are related to the politics of race, religion, and class.   [brief]
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Title: Gender and morality in Anglo-American culture, 1650-1800
Author: Bloch, Ruth H 1949-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: History | Christianity | Women's Studies | Intellectual History
Publisher's Description: Ruth Bloch's stellar essays on the origins of Anglo-American conceptions of gender and morality are brought together in this valuable book, which collects six of her most influential pieces in one place for the first time and includes two new essays. The volume illuminates the overarching theme of her work by addressing a basic historical question: Why did the attitudes toward gender and family relations that we now consider traditional values emerge when they did? Bloch looks deeply into eighteenth-century culture to answer this question, highlighting long-term developments in religion, intellectual history, law, and literature, showing that the eighteenth century was a time of profound transformation for women's roles as wives and mothers, for ideas about sexuality, and for notions of female moral authority. She engages topics from British moral philosophy to colonial laws regarding courtship, and from the popularity of the sentimental novel to the psychology of religious revivalism. Lucid, provocative, and wide-ranging, these eight essays bring a revisionist challenge to both women's studies and cultural studies as they ask us to reconsider the origins of the system of gender relations that has dominated American culture for two hundred years.   [brief]
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Title: Misogyny, misandry, and misanthropy 
Author: Bloch, R. Howard
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: Literature | English Literature
Publisher's Description: These essays, originally comprising an issue of Representations , explore the relation between gender, eroticism, and violence through close analysis of a range of both high and popular cultural forms, from R. Howard Bloch on medieval theology to Carol Clover on contemporary slasher films. Does misogyny differ from misandry? Can author intention be separated from social context? Do good women counterbalance or reenforce the misogyny of negative examples? Is an obsession with women itself misogynistic? These questions are approached from various angles by Joel Fineman, Charles Bernheimer, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Frances Ferguson, Naomi Schor and Gillian Brown. In sum, the authors detail not only the ways in which gender is represented, but also the changes to which representation subjects questions of sexual difference.   [brief]
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Title: Postindustrial possibilities: a critique of economic discourse
Author: Block, Fred L
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Labor Studies | Sociology | Labor Studies | Public Policy
Publisher's Description: While it is often acknowledged that we live in a "postindustrial" age, our economic concepts have lagged far behind our postmodern sensibility. In this incisive new work, the well-known sociologist, Fred Block, sheds obsolete and shopworn economic analysis by presenting a bold, sweeping reconceptualization of the economy. Postindustrial Possibilities provides a fresh understanding of the dynamics of postindustrial change while offering a roadmap for future economic thinking.Block takes as his point of departure the tired concepts of neo-classical economics which, while still dominant, fall short as tools for comprehending contemporary economic forces. In Block's mind, the failure to revise the concepts of industrial economics means that the reality of today's economy is increasingly understood as "through a glass darkly." Intent on reinvigorating thinking in this area, Block masterfully critiques the central categories of neo-classical economics, such as the market, labor, and capital.Block argues that the neo-classical tradition has obscured the fact that capitalist prosperity has been built not on "free markets" but rather on systematic constraints on market freedom. He further suggests that measurements of capital have become increasingly problematic and that the concept obscures the critical sources of productivity within organizations. In his far-reaching analysis of the Gross National Product, Block shows that there is a growing divergence between the factors that determine people's well-being and trends in measured GNP. Postindustrial Possibilities sets forth a new intellectual paradigm that might be called "Qualitative Growth." One of its primary foci is a shift toward improved product quality and greater priority for various non-commodity satisfactions such as leisure, interesting work, economic security and a safe and clean environment. It also promotes a recognition that greater economic efficiency rests not on infusions of capital but on cooperative labor relations and on institutional reform.Wide-ranging, intellectually vibrant and lucid, Postindustrial Possibilities will engender controversy and debate. It is an enormous contribution that social scientists and policymakers will need to come to terms with.   [brief]
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Title: Flesh wounds: the culture of cosmetic surgery
Author: Blum, Virginia L 1956-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: American Studies | Gender Studies | Film | Psychology | Literary Theory and Criticism | Sociology | Anthropology | Television and Radio | Women's Studies
Publisher's Description: When did cosmetic surgery become a common practice, the stuff of everyday conversation? In a work that combines a provocative ethnography of plastic surgery and a penetrating analysis of beauty and feminism, Virginia L. Blum searches out the social conditions and imperatives that have made ours a culture of cosmetic surgery. From diverse viewpoints, ranging from cosmetic surgery patient to feminist cultural critic, she looks into the realities and fantasies that have made physical malleability an essential part of our modern-day identity. For a cultural practice to develop such a tenacious grip, Blum argues, it must be fed from multiple directions: some pragmatic, including the profit motive of surgeons and the increasing need to appear young on the job; some philosophical, such as the notion that a new body is something you can buy or that appearance changes your life. Flesh Wounds is an inquiry into the ideas and practices that have forged such a culture. Tying the boom in cosmetic surgery to a culture-wide trend toward celebrity, Blum explores our growing compulsion to emulate what remain for most of us two-dimensional icons. Moving between personal experiences and observations, interviews with patients and surgeons, and readings of literature and cultural moments, her book reveals the ways in which the practice of cosmetic surgery captures the condition of identity in contemporary culture.   [brief]
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Title: The other modernism: F.T. Marinetti's futurist fiction of power
Author: Blum, Cinzia Sartini
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Art | Literary Theory and Criticism | Women's Studies
Publisher's Description: Drawing on recent feminist and psychoanalytic criticism, Cinzia Sartini Blum provides the first analysis of the rhetoric, politics, and psychology of gender in the avant-garde writings of the Italian Futurist F.T. Marinetti. Her book explores the relations between the seemingly unrelated goals of Italian Futurism: technical revolution, espousal of violence, avowed misogyny, and rejection of literary tradition.Blum argues for the centrality of the rhetoric of gender in Marinetti's work. She also investigates a diverse array of his futurist textual practices that range from formal experimentation with "words in freedom" to nationalist manifestos that advocate intervention in World War I and anticipate subsequent fascist rhetoric of power and virility. A major contribution to the study of the twentieth-century avant-garde and the first full-length study of Marinetti in English, The Other Modernism will interest all those concerned with twentieth-century literature, culture, and society and the problem of modern subjectivity.   [brief]
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Title: Early Gothic Saint-Denis: restorations and survivals 
Author: Blum, Pamela Z
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Art | Architectural History | Art History | Medieval Studies | Archaeology
Publisher's Description: quality. Indeed, the well-preserved sculptural passages provide a key to the Early Gothic style as well as revealing the distinct imprints of three artists and their influences on each other. Blum's penetrating analyses of the restorative techniques and materials are accompanied by telling photograph-diagrams that distinguish the original work from that done later.Pamela Blum's investigation has relevance not only for students and scholars of medieval art but for curators and collectors as well. Anyone concerned with survivals from the past will appreciate her scrupulous detection in studying one of France's greatest monuments.   [brief]
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Title: Between feminism and labor: the significance of the comparable worth movement 
Author: Blum, Linda M
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Sociology | Gender Studies | Economics and Business
Publisher's Description: "Equal pay for equal work" has long been a forceful slogan of the feminist and labor movements. Now, however, as the American economy depends more and more on "women's work," it has become clear that this objective does not benefit the majority of women, who are employed in sex-segregated jobs. In Between Feminism and Labor , Linda M. Blum examines the movement for comparable worth, or equal pay for comparable work, as a strategy to raise wages for the "pink-collar" jobs that are most frequently occupied by women. She explores the larger political implications of the movement and provides the first study of pay equity to focus directly on the mobilization of the female work force at the grass-roots level.Through two case studies of local comparable worth movements - in San Jose and Contra Costa County, California - Blum probes several important issues. She asks whether comparable worth can contribute to the formation of active labor-feminist alliances, and after a nuanced, intelligent analysis of the complexities and contradictions of comparable worth, endorses its radical potential to improve women's wages and forge links between gender- and class-based politics. Between Feminism and Labor also situates comparable worth in the context of the limitations of affirmative action, a strategy seeking to move women into male jobs as opposed to raising the value of women's work. It is the first study to contrast these two strategies and to place them within the theoretical and political debates over the validation of gender difference versus the requirement of gender neutrality. As such, the book should stimulate debate among those concerned with the future of the feminist movement, as well as those interested in the future of organized labor and progressive politics in America.   [brief]
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Title: Same-sex affairs: constructing and controlling homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest
Author: Boag, Peter
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Gender Studies | History | Men and Masculinity | Californian and Western History | Urban Studies | GayLesbian and Bisexual Studies | Sociology
Publisher's Description: At the turn of the twentieth century, two distinct, yet at times overlapping, male same-sex sexual subcultures had emerged in the Pacific Northwest: one among the men and boys who toiled in the region's logging, fishing, mining, farming, and railroad-building industries; the other among the young urban white-collar workers of the emerging corporate order. Boag draws on police logs, court records, and newspaper accounts to create a vivid picture of the lives of these men and youths--their sexual practices, cultural networks, cross-class relations, variations in rural and urban experiences, and ethnic and racial influences.   [brief]
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Title: Environment and experience: settlement culture in nineteenth-century Oregon 
Author: Boag, Peter G
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | United States History | Californian and Western History | Environmental Studies
Publisher's Description: The pioneer battling with a hostile environment - whether it be arid land, drought, dust storms, dense forests, or harsh winters - is a staple of western American history. In this innovative, multi-disciplinary work, Peter Boag takes issue with the image of the settler against the frontier, arguing that settlers viewed their new surroundings positively and attempted to create communities in harmony with the landscape. Using Oregon's Calapooia Valley as a case study, Boag presents a history of both land and people that shows the process of change as settlers populated the land and turned it to their own uses.By combining local sources, ranging from letters and diaries to early maps and local histories, and drawing upon the methods of geography, natural history, and literary analysis, Boag has created a richly detailed grass-roots portrait of a frontier community. Most significantly, he analyzes the connections among environmental, cultural, and social changes in ways that illuminate the frontier experience throughout the American west.   [brief]
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Title: The Society of Six: California colorists
Author: Boas, Nancy 1934-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Art | Art History | California and the West | Californian and Western History
Publisher's Description: Six plein-air painters in Oakland, California, joined together in 1917 to form an association that lasted nearly fifteen years. The Society of Six - Selden Connor Gile, Maurice Logan, William H. Clapp, August F. Gay, Bernard von Eichman, and Louis Siegriest - created a color-centered modernist idiom that shocked establishment tastes but remains the most advanced painting of its era in Northern California. Nancy Boas's well-informed and sumptuously illustrated chronicle recognizes the importance of these six painters in the history of American Post-Impressionism.The Six found themselves in the position of an avant garde not because they set out to reject conventionality, but because they aspired to create their own indigenous modernism. While the artists were considered outsiders in their time, their work is now recognized as part of the vital and enduring lineage of American art. Depression hardship ended the Six's ascendancy, but their painterliness, use of color, and deep alliance with the land and the light became a beacon for postwar Northern California modern painters such as Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. Combining biography and critical analysis, Nancy Boas offers a fitting tribute to the lives and exhilarating painting of the Society of Six.   [brief]
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Title: The view from Bald Hill: thirty years in an Arizona grassland
Author: Bock, Carl E 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Environmental Studies | Conservation | California and the West | Ecology | Natural History | Science | Biology | Botany | Zoology
Publisher's Description: In 1540 Francisco Vasquez de Coronado introduced the first domestic livestock to the American Southwest. Over the subsequent four centuries, cattle, horses, and sheep have created a massive ecological experiment on these arid grasslands, changing them in ways we can never know with certainty. The Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch in the high desert of southeastern Arizona is an 8,000-acre sanctuary where grazing has been banned since 1968. In this spirited account of thirty years of research at the ranch, Carl and Jane Bock summarize the results of their fieldwork, which was aimed at understanding the dynamics of grasslands in the absence of livestock. The View from Bald Hill provides an intimate look at the natural history of this unique site and illuminates many issues pertaining to the protection and restoration of our nation's grasslands.   [brief]
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