Title: Starting at home: caring and social policy
Author: Noddings, Nel
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Politics | American Studies | Anthropology | Social and Political Thought | Political Theory | Public Policy | Social Problems | Public Policy | Sociology | Sociology
Publisher's Description: Nel Noddings, one of the central figures in the contemporary discussion of ethics and moral education, argues that caring--a way of life learned at home--can be extended into a theory that guides social policy. Tackling issues such as capital punishment, drug treatment, homelessness, mental illness, and abortion, Noddings inverts traditional philosophical priorities to show how an ethic of care can have profound and compelling implications for social and political thought. Instead of beginning with an ideal state and then describing a role for home and family, this book starts with an ideal home and asks how what is learned there may be extended to the larger social domain. Noddings examines the tension between freedom and equality that characterized liberal thought in the twentieth century and finds that--for all its strengths--liberalism is still inadequate as social policy. She suggests instead that an attitude of attentive love in the home induces a corresponding responsiveness that can serve as a foundation for social policy. With her characteristic sensitivity to the individual and to the vulnerable in society, the author concludes that any corrective practice that does more harm than the behavior it is aimed at correcting should be abandoned. This suggests an end to the disastrous war on drugs. In addition, Noddings states that the caring professions that deal with the homeless should be guided by flexible policies that allow practitioners to respond adequately to the needs of very different clients. She recommends that the school curriculum should include serious preparation for home life as well as for professional and civic life. Emphasizing the importance of improving life in everyday homes and the possible role social policy might play in this improvement, Starting at Home highlights the inextricable link between the development of care in individual lives and any discussion of moral life and social policy.   [brief]
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Title: Women without class: girls, race, and identity
Author: Bettie, Julie 1965-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Gender Studies | Women's Studies | Sociology | Chicano Studies | American Studies | Popular Culture | Education | Anthropology | Social Problems | Immigration
Publisher's Description: In this examination of white and Mexican-American girls coming of age in California's Central Valley, Julie Bettie turns class theory on its head and offers new tools for understanding the ways in which class identity is constructed and, at times, fails to be constructed in relationship to color, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Documenting the categories of subculture and style that high school students use to explain class and racial/ethnic differences among themselves, Bettie depicts the complex identity performances of contemporary girls. The title, Women Without Class, refers at once to young working-class women who have little cultural capital to enable class mobility, to the fact that class analysis and social theory has remained insufficiently transformed by feminist and ethnic studies, and to the fact that some feminist analysis has itself been complicit in the failure to theorize women as class subjects. Bettie's research and analysis make a case for analytical and political attention to class, but not at the expense of attention to other axes of identity and social formations.   [brief]
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Title: Restless dead: encounters between the living and the dead in ancient Greece
Author: Johnston, Sarah Iles 1957-
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: Classics | Classical Religions | Classical Literature and Language | Intellectual History | Folklore and Mythology | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: During the archaic and classical periods, Greek ideas about the dead evolved in response to changing social and cultural conditions - most notably changes associated with the development of the polis, such as funerary legislation, and changes due to increased contacts with cultures of the ancient Near East. In Restless Dead , Sarah Iles Johnston presents and interprets these changes, using them to build a complex picture of the way in which the society of the dead reflected that of the living, expressing and defusing its tensions, reiterating its values and eventually becoming a source of significant power for those who knew how to control it. She draws on both well-known sources, such as Athenian tragedies, and newer texts, such as the Derveni Papyrus and a recently published lex sacra from Selinous.Topics of focus include the origin of the goes (the ritual practitioner who made interaction with the dead his specialty), the threat to the living presented by the ghosts of those who died dishonorably or prematurely, the development of Hecate into a mistress of ghosts and its connection to female rites of transition, and the complex nature of the Erinyes. Restless Dead culminates with a new reading of Aeschylus' Oresteia that emphasizes how Athenian myth and cult manipulated ideas about the dead to serve political and social ends.   [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: Wide-open town: a history of queer San Francisco to 1965
Author: Boyd, Nan Alamilla 1963-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: American Studies | Anthropology | GayLesbian and Bisexual Studies | Ethnic Studies | United States History | Sociology | California and the West
Publisher's Description: Wide-Open Town traces the history of gay men and lesbians in San Francisco from the turn of the century, when queer bars emerged in San Francisco's tourist districts, to 1965, when a raid on a drag ball changed the course of queer history. Bringing to life the striking personalities and vibrant milieu that fueled this era, Nan Alamilla Boyd examines the culture that developed around the bar scene and homophile activism. She argues that the communities forged inside bars and taverns functioned politically and, ultimately, offered practical and ideological responses to the policing of San Francisco's queer and transgender communities. Using police and court records, oral histories, tourist literature, and manuscript collections from local and state archives, Nan Alamilla Boyd explains the phenomenal growth of San Francisco as a "wide-open town" - a town where anything goes. She also relates the early history of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement that took place in San Francisco prior to 1965. Wide-Open Town argues that police persecution forged debates about rights and justice that transformed San Francisco's queer communities into the identity-based groups we see today. In its vivid re-creation of bar and drag life, its absorbing portrait of central figures in the communities, and its provocative chronicling of this period in the country's most transgressive city, Wide-Open Town offers a fascinating and lively new chapter of American queer history.   [brief]
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Title: Colonial subjects: Puerto Ricans in a global perspective
Author: Grosfoguel, Ramón
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Sociology | American Studies | Anthropology | Ethnic Studies | Latin American History | Postcolonial Studies | Urban Studies | Immigration | Urban Studies | Urban Studies
Publisher's Description: Colonial Subjects is the first book to use a combination of world-system and postcolonial approaches to compare Puerto Rican migration with Caribbean migration to both the United States and Western Europe. Ramón Grosfoguel provides an alternative reading of the world-system approach to Puerto Rico's history, political economy, and urbanization processes. He offers a comprehensive and well-reasoned framework for understanding the position of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, the position of Puerto Ricans in the United States, and the position of colonial migrants compared to noncolonial migrants in the world system.   [brief]
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Title: Working-class heroes: protecting home, community, and nation in a Chicago neighborhood
Author: Kefalas, Maria
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Sociology | American Studies | Anthropology | Urban Studies | Ethnic Studies | Gender Studies | Politics | Social Problems | Urban Studies | Urban Studies
Publisher's Description: Chicago's Southwest Side is one of the last remaining footholds for the city's white working class, a little-studied and little-understood segment of the American population. This book paints a nuanced and complex portrait of the firefighters, police officers, stay-at-home mothers, and office workers living in the stable working-class community known as Beltway. Building on the classic Chicago School of urban studies and incorporating new perspectives from cultural geography and sociology, Maria Kefalas considers the significance of home, community, and nation for Beltway residents.   [brief]
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Title: Race and the invisible hand: how white networks exclude black men from blue-collar jobs
Author: Royster, Deirdre A. (Deirdre Alexia) 1966-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Sociology | American Studies | Anthropology | Economics and Business | Urban Studies | Public Policy | African American Studies | Urban Studies | Public Policy
Publisher's Description: From the time of Booker T. Washington to today, and William Julius Wilson, the advice dispensed to young black men has invariably been, "Get a trade." Deirdre Royster has put this folk wisdom to an empirical test - and, in Race and the Invisible Hand, exposes the subtleties and discrepancies of a workplace that favors the white job-seeker over the black. At the heart of this study is the question: Is there something about young black men that makes them less desirable as workers than their white peers? And if not, then why do black men trail white men in earnings and employment rates? Royster seeks an answer in the experiences of 25 black and 25 white men who graduated from the same vocational school and sought jobs in the same blue-collar labor market in the early 1990s. After seriously examining the educational performances, work ethics, and values of the black men for unique deficiencies, her study reveals the greatest difference between young black and white men - access to the kinds of contacts that really help in the job search and entry process.   [brief]
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Title: What justice? whose justice?: fighting for fairness in Latin America
Author: Eckstein, Susan 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Sociology | Economics and Business | Conservation | Latin American Studies | Politics | Postcolonial Studies | Anthropology | Social Problems
Publisher's Description: The new millennium began with the triumph of democracy and markets. But for whom is life just, how so, and why? And what is being done to correct persisting injustices? Blending macro-level global and national analysis with in-depth grassroots detail, the contributors highlight roots of injustices, how they are perceived, and efforts to alleviate them. Following up on issues raised in the groundbreaking best-seller Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements (California, 2001), these essays elucidate how conceptions of justice are socially constructed and contested and historically contingent, shaped by people's values and institutionally grounded in real-life experiences. The contributors, a stellar coterie of North and Latin American scholars, offer refreshing new insights that deepen our understanding of social justice as ideology and practice.   [brief]
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Title: Strangers at the gates: new immigrants in urban America
Author: Waldinger, Roger David
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Sociology | American Studies | Anthropology | Urban Studies | African American Studies | Asian American Studies | Latino Studies | Labor Studies | Social Problems | Immigration
Publisher's Description: Immigration is remaking the United States. In New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Chicago, the multiethnic society of tomorrow is already in place. Yet today's urban centers appear unlikely to provide newcomers with the same opportunities their predecessors found at the turn of the last century. Using the latest sources of information, this hard-hitting volume of original essays looks at the nexus between urban realities and immigrant destinies in these American cities. Strangers at the Gates tells the real story of immigrants' prospects for success today and delineates the conditions that will hinder or aid the newest Americans in their quest to get ahead. This book stresses the crucial importance of understanding that immigration today is fundamentally urban and the equally important fact that immigrants are now flocking to places where low-skilled workers--regardless of ethnic background--are in particular trouble. These two themes are at the heart of this book, which also covers a range of provocative topics, often with surprising findings. Among the essayists, Nelson Lim enters the controversy over whether and how immigrants affect the employment prospects for African Americans; Mark Ellis investigates whether low immigrant wages depress other workers' salaries; William A.V. Clark contends that immigrants seem to be experiencing downward mobility; and Min Zhou asserts that trends among second-generation immigrants are decidedly more optimistic. These well-integrated and well-organized essays sit squarely at the intersection of sociology and economics, and along the way they point out both the strengths and the weaknesses of these two disciplines in understanding immigration. Providing a theoretically and empirically comprehensive overview of the economic fate of immigrants in major American cities, this book will make a major contribution to debates over immigration and the American future.   [brief]
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Title: Jazz, rock, and rebels: cold war politics and American culture in a divided Germany
Author: Poiger, Uta G 1965-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: German Studies | Cultural Anthropology | European History | United States History | American Music | Jazz | Gender Studies | American Studies
Publisher's Description: In the two decades after World War II, Germans on both sides of the iron curtain fought vehemently over American cultural imports. Uta G. Poiger traces how westerns, jeans, jazz, rock 'n' roll, and stars like Marlon Brando or Elvis Presley reached adolescents in both Germanies, who eagerly adopted the new styles. Poiger reveals that East and West German authorities deployed gender and racial norms to contain Americanized youth cultures in their own territories and to carry on the ideological Cold War battle with each other. Poiger's lively account is based on an impressive array of sources, ranging from films, newspapers, and contemporary sociological studies, to German and U.S. archival materials. Jazz, Rock, and Rebels examines diverging responses to American culture in East and West Germany by linking these to changes in social science research, political cultures, state institutions, and international alliance systems. In the first two decades of the Cold War, consumer culture became a way to delineate the boundaries between East and West. This pathbreaking study, the first comparative cultural history of the two Germanies, sheds new light on the legacy of Weimar and National Socialism, on gender and race relations in Europe, and on Americanization and the Cold War.   [brief]
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Title: Rule of experts: Egypt, techno-politics, modernity
Author: Mitchell, Timothy 1955-
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Politics | Middle Eastern Studies | Cultural Anthropology | Postcolonial Studies | Economics and Business | Middle Eastern History | Sociology
Publisher's Description: Can one explain the power of global capitalism without attributing to capital a logic and coherence it does not have? Can one account for the powers of techno-science in terms that do not merely reproduce its own understanding of the world? Rule of Experts examines these questions through a series of interrelated essays focused on Egypt in the twentieth century. These explore the way malaria, sugar cane, war, and nationalism interacted to produce the techno-politics of the modern Egyptian state; the forms of debt, discipline, and violence that founded the institution of private property; the methods of measurement, circulation, and exchange that produced the novel idea of a national "economy," yet made its accurate representation impossible; the stereotypes and plagiarisms that created the scholarly image of the Egyptian peasant; and the interaction of social logics, horticultural imperatives, powers of desire, and political forces that turned programs of economic reform in unanticipated directions. Mitchell is a widely known political theorist and one of the most innovative writers on the Middle East. He provides a rich examination of the forms of reason, power, and expertise that characterize contemporary politics. Together, these intellectually provocative essays will challenge a broad spectrum of readers to think harder, more critically, and more politically about history, power, and theory.   [brief]
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Title: Working families: the transformation of the American home
Author: Hertz, Rosanna
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Gender Studies | Women's Studies | Sociology | Social Problems | Anthropology | Economics and Business | Urban Studies | Ethnic Studies | Politics | Politics
Publisher's Description: The dynamics of work and parenthood are in the midst of a revolutionary shift in the United States. Focused around a major factor in this shift - the rise of dual-income families - this groundbreaking volume provides a highly informative snapshot of the intricate fabric of work and family in the United States. With selections written by leading scholars both inside and outside academia, Working Families offers intimate stories of how families manage and how children respond to the rigors of their parents' lives, as well as broad overviews developed from survey and census data. Taken together, these essays present an updated and integral view of the revolutionary changes in patterns of work and family life occurring today. Using a broad range of methodologies, the contributors reach across gender, age, and class differences. They discuss working-class as well as affluent dual-career couples and work sites ranging from factories to offices. Straddling racial divides, the essays range from studies of white day care providers to a close look at a Mexican maid's daughter. The collection as a whole refutes the assumption that there is one normal type of family or workplace. These readable essays capture our attention as they build, cumulatively, to an absorbing picture of today's families and workplaces.   [brief]
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Title: In the beginning: the Navajo genesis
Author: Levy, Jerrold E 1930-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Native American Studies | Native American Ethnicity | California and the West | Anthropology | Folklore and Mythology | Religion | American Literature
Publisher's Description: Jerrold E. Levy's masterly analysis of Navajo creation and origin myths shows what other interpretations often overlook: that the Navajo religion is as complete and nuanced an attempt to answer humanity's big questions as the religions brought to North America by Europeans. Looking first at the historical context of the Navajo narratives, Levy points out that Navajo society has never during its known history been either homogeneous or unchanging, and he goes on to identify in the myths persisting traditions that represent differing points of view within the society. The major transformations of the Navajo people, from a northern hunting and gathering society to a farming, then herding, then wage-earning society in the American Southwest, were accompanied by changes not only in social organization but also in religion. Levy sees evidence of internal historical conflicts in the varying versions of the creation myth and their reflection in the origin myths associated with healing rituals. Levy also compares Navajo answers to the perennial questions about the creation of the cosmos and why people are the way they are with the answers provided by Judaism and Christianity. And, without suggesting that they are equivalent, Levy discusses certain parallels between Navajo religious ideas and contemporary scientific cosmology. The possibility that in the future Navajo religion will be as much altered by changing conditions as it has been in the past makes this fascinating account all the more timely.   [brief]
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Title: Hanging out in the virtual pub: masculinities and relationships online 
Author: Kendall, Lori 1958-
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Sociology | Gender Studies | American Studies | Technology and Society | Anthropology | Electronic Media | Media Studies | Men and Masculinity
Publisher's Description: Lori Kendall is one of the first to explore the brave new world of social relations as they have evolved on the Internet. In this highly readable ethnography, she examines how men and women negotiate their gender roles on an online forum she calls BlueSky. The result is a first-rate analysis of the emerging social phenomenon of Internet-mediated communication and a ground-breaking study of the social and cultural effects of a medium that allows participants to assume identities of their own choosing. Despite the common assumption that the personas these men and women craft for themselves bear little resemblance to reality, Kendall discovers that the habitués of BlueSky stick surprisingly close to the facts of their actual lives and personalities.   [brief]
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Title: Latinos: remaking America
Author: Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo M 1956-
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: American Studies | Anthropology | Ethnic Studies | Latino Studies | Gender Studies | Latin American Studies | Sociology | Urban Studies | Immigration
Publisher's Description: Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States and will comprise a quarter of the country's population by mid-century. The process of Latinization, the result of globalization and the biggest migration flow in the history of the Americas, is indeed reshaping the character of the U.S. This landmark book brings together some of the leading scholars now studying the social, cultural, racial, economic, and political changes wrought by the experiences, travails, and fortunes of the Latino population. It is the most definitive and comprehensive snapshot available of Latinos in the United States today. How are Latinos and Latinas changing the face of the Americas? What is new and different about this current wave of migration? In this pathbreaking book social scientists, humanities scholars, and policy experts examine what every citizen and every student needs to know about Latinos in the U.S., covering issues from historical continuities and changes to immigration, race, labor, health, language, education, and politics. Recognizing the diversity and challenges facing Latinos in the U.S., this book addresses what it means to define the community as such and how to move forward on a variety of political and cultural fronts. All of the contributions to Latinos are original pieces written especially for this volume.   [brief]
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Title: Legacies: the story of the immigrant second generation
Author: Portes, Alejandro 1944-
Published: University of California Press,  2001
Subjects: Sociology | Ethnic Studies | Anthropology | Asian American Studies | Chicano Studies | Postcolonial Studies | Politics | Latino Studies | Social Problems | Immigration
Publisher's Description: One out of five Americans, more than 55 million people, are first-or second-generation immigrants. This landmark study, the most comprehensive to date, probes all aspects of the new immigrant second generation's lives, exploring their immense potential to transform American society for better or worse. Whether this new generation reinvigorates the nation or deepens its social problems depends on the social and economic trajectories of this still young population. In Legacies, Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut - two of the leading figures in the field - provide a close look at this rising second generation, including their patterns of acculturation, family and school life, language, identity, experiences of discrimination, self-esteem, ambition, and achievement. Based on the largest research study of its kind, Legacies combines vivid vignettes with a wealth of survey and school data. Accessible, engaging, and indispensable for any consideration of the changing face of American society, this book presents a wide range of real-life stories of immigrant families - from Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, the Philippines, China, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam - now living in Miami and San Diego, two of the areas most heavily affected by the new immigration. The authors explore the world of second-generation youth, looking at patterns of parent-child conflict and cohesion within immigrant families, the role of peer groups and school subcultures, the factors that affect the children's academic achievement, and much more. A companion volume to Legacies, entitled Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America, was published by California in Fall 2001. Edited by the authors of Legacies, this book will bring together some of the country's leading scholars of immigration and ethnicity to provide a close look at this rising second generation. A Copublication with the Russell Sage Foundation   [brief]
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Title: Annihilating difference: the anthropology of genocide
Author: Hinton, Alexander Laban
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: Anthropology | African Studies | Asian Studies | Ethnic Studies | Gender Studies | History | Sociology | Media Studies | Religion | Religion
Publisher's Description: Genocide is one of the most pressing issues that confronts us today. Its death toll is staggering: over one hundred million dead. Because of their intimate experience in the communities where genocide takes place, anthropologists are uniquely positioned to explain how and why this mass annihilation occurs and the types of devastation genocide causes. This ground breaking book, the first collection of original essays on genocide to be published in anthropology, explores a wide range of cases, including Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Bosnia.   [brief]
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Title: I heard it through the grapevine: rumor in African-American culture
Author: Turner, Patricia 1955-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Ethnic Studies | Sociology | African American Studies | Anthropology | American Studies | Folklore and Mythology | Popular Culture
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Title: What is sexual harassment?: from Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne
Author: Saguy, Abigail Cope 1970-
Published: University of California Press,  2003
Subjects: Gender Studies | American Studies | Anthropology | Ethnic Studies | European Studies | Men and Masculinity | Women's Studies | Law | Sociology
Publisher's Description: In France, a common notion is that the shared interests of graduate students and their professors could lead to intimate sexual relations, and that regulations curtailing those relationships would be both futile and counterproductive. By contrast, many universities and corporations in the United States prohibit sexual relationships across hierarchical lines and sometimes among coworkers, arguing that these liaisons should have no place in the workplace. In this age of globalization, how do cultural and legal nuances translate? And when they differ, how are their subtleties and complexities understood? In comparing how sexual harassment - a concept that first emerged in 1975 - has been defined differently in France and the United States, Abigail Saguy explores not only the social problem of sexual harassment but also the broader cultural concerns of cross-national differences and similarities.   [brief]
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