Title: The white scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and poor whites in Texas cotton culture
Author: Foley, Neil
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: History | Ethnic Studies | American Studies
Publisher's Description: In a book that fundamentally challenges our understanding of race in the United States, Neil Foley unravels the complex history of ethnicity in the cotton culture of central Texas. This engrossing narrative, spanning the period from the Civil War through the collapse of tenant farming in the early 1940s, bridges the intellectual chasm between African American and Southern history on one hand and Chicano and Southwestern history on the other. The White Scourge describes a unique borderlands region, where the cultures of the South, West, and Mexico overlap, to provide a deeper understanding of the process of identity formation and to challenge the binary opposition between "black" and "white" that often dominates discussions of American race relations.In Texas, which by 1890 had become the nation's leading cotton-producing state, the presence of Mexican sharecroppers and farm workers complicated the black-white dyad that shaped rural labor relations in the South. With the transformation of agrarian society into corporate agribusiness, white racial identity began to fracture along class lines, further complicating categories of identity. Foley explores the "fringe of whiteness," an ethno-racial borderlands comprising Mexicans, African Americans, and poor whites, to trace shifting ideologies and power relations. By showing how many different ethnic groups are defined in relation to "whiteness," Foley redefines white racial identity as not simply a pinnacle of status but the complex racial, social, and economic matrix in which power and privilege are shared.Foley skillfully weaves archival material with oral history interviews, providing a richly detailed view of everyday life in the Texas cotton culture. Addressing the ways in which historical categories affect the lives of ordinary people, The White Scourge tells the broader story of racial identity in America; at the same time it paints an evocative picture of a unique American region. This truly multiracial narrative touches on many issues central to our understanding of American history: labor and the role of unions, gender roles and their relation to ethnicity, the demise of agrarian whiteness, and the Mexican-American experience.   [brief]
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Title: A Ming society: Tài-ho County, Kiangsi, fourteenth to seventeenth centuries 
Author: Dardess, John W 1937-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: History | Asian History | China
Publisher's Description: John Dardess has selected a region of great political and intellectual importance, but one which local history has left almost untouched, for this detailed social history of T'ai-ho county during the Ming dynasty. Rather than making a sweeping, general survey of the region, he follows the careers of a large number of native sons and their relationship to Ming imperial politics. Using previously unexplored primary sources, Dardess details the rise and development of T'ai-ho village kinship, family lineage, landscape, agriculture, and economy. He follows its literati to positions of prominence in imperial government. This concentration on the history of one county over almost three centuries gives rise to an unusually sound and immediate understanding of how Ming society functioned and changed over time.   [brief]
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Title: Inheriting madness: professionalization and psychiatric knowledge in nineteenth-century France
Author: Dowbiggin, Ian R
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: History | European History | Sociology | Psychiatry
Publisher's Description: Historically, one of the recurring arguments in psychiatry has been that heredity is the root cause of mental illness. In Inheriting Madness , Ian Dowbiggin traces the rise in popularity of hereditarianism in France during the second half of the nineteenth century to illuminate the nature and evolution of psychiatry during this period.In Dowbiggin's mind, this fondness for hereditarianism stemmed from the need to reconcile two counteracting factors. On the one hand, psychiatrists were attempting to expand their power and privileges by excluding other groups from the treatment of the mentally ill. On the other hand, medicine's failure to effectively diagnose, cure, and understand the causes of madness made it extremely difficult for psychiatrists to justify such an expansion. These two factors, Dowbiggin argues, shaped the way psychiatrists thought about insanity, encouraging them to adopt hereditarian ideas, such as the degeneracy theory, to explain why psychiatry had failed to meet expectations. Hereditarian theories, in turn, provided evidence of the need for psychiatrists to assume more authority, resources, and cultural influence. Inheriting Madness is a forceful reminder that psychiatric notions are deeply rooted in the social, political, and cultural history of the profession itself. At a time when genetic interpretations of mental disease are again in vogue, Dowbiggin demonstrates that these views are far from unprecedented, and that in fact they share remarkable similarities with earlier theories. A familiarity with the history of the psychiatric profession compels the author to ask whether or not public faith in it is warranted.   [brief]
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Title: France and the cult of the Sacred Heart: an epic tale for modern times
Author: Jonas, Raymond Anthony
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: History | Religion | French Studies
Publisher's Description: In a richly layered and beautifully illustrated narrative, Raymond Jonas tells the fascinating and surprisingly little-known story of the Sacré-Coeur, or Sacred Heart. The highest point in Paris and a celebrated tourist destination, the white-domed basilica of Sacré-Coeur on Montmartre is a key monument both to French Catholicism and to French national identity. Jonas masterfully reconstructs the history of the devotion responsible for the basilica, beginning with the apparition of the Sacred Heart to Marguerite Marie Alacoque in the seventeenth century, through the French Revolution and its aftermath, to the construction of the monumental church that has loomed over Paris since the end of the nineteenth century. Jonas focuses on key moments in the development of the cult: the founding apparition, its invocation during the plague of Marseilles, its adaptation as a royalist symbol during the French Revolution, and its elevation to a central position in Catholic devotional and political life in the crisis surrounding the Franco-Prussian War. He draws on a wealth of archival sources to produce a learned yet accessible narrative that encompasses a remarkable sweep of French politics, history, architecture, and art.   [brief]
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Title: Blood road: the mystery of Shen Dingyi in revolutionary China
Author: Schoppa, R. Keith 1943-
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: History | Asian History | China | Politics
Publisher's Description: Blood Road is a complex mix of social history, literary analysis, political biography, and murder mystery. It explores and analyzes the social and cultural dynamics of the Chinese revolution of the 1920s by focusing on the mysterious 1928 assassination of Shen Dingyi - revolutionary, landlord, politician, poet, journalist, educator, feminist, and early member of both the Communist and Nationalist parties.The search for Shen's killer details the contours of revolutionary change in different spatial contexts - metropolitan Shanghai, the provincial capital Hangzhou, and Shen's home village of Yaqian. Several interrelated themes emerge in this dramatic story of revolution: the nature of social identity, the role of social networks, the political import of place, and the centrality of process in historical explanation. It contributes significantly to a new understanding of Chinese revolutionary culture and the 1920s revolution in particular. But Blood Road remains at base a story of people linked in various relationships who were thrust, often without choice, into treacherous revolutionary currents that shaped, twisted, and destroyed their lives.   [brief]
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Title: The Hellenistic settlements in Europe, the islands, and Asia Minor
Author: Cohen, Getzel M
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Classics | History | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: This compendium provides historical narratives, detailed references, citations, and commentaries on all the cities founded or refounded in Europe, The Islands, and Asia Minor during the Hellenistic period. Organized coherently in more than 180 entries, it is one of the most significant reference wor . . . [more]
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Title: Fulk Nerra, the neo-Roman consul, 987-1040: a political biography of the Angevin count
Author: Bachrach, Bernard S 1939-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: History | Medieval Studies | Medieval History
Publisher's Description: This is the first comprehensive biography of Fulk Nerra, an important medieval ruler, who came to power in his teens and rose to be master in the west of the French Kingdom. Descendant of warriors and administrators who served the French kings, Fulk in turn built the state that provided a foundation for the vast Angevin empire later constructed by his descendants.Bernard Bachrach finds the terms "constructed" and "built" more than metaphorical in relation to Fulk's career. He shows how Fulk and the Angevin counts who followed him based their long-term state building policy on Roman strategies and fortifications described by Vegetius. This creative adaptation of Roman ideas and tactics, according to Bachrach, was the key to Fulk's successful consolidation of political power. Students of medieval and military history will find here a colorful, impressively researched biography.   [brief]
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Title: Society and individual in Renaissance Florence
Author: Connell, William J
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: History | Renaissance History | European History
Publisher's Description: Renaissance Florence has often been described as the birthplace of modern individualism, as reflected in the individual genius of its great artists, scholars, and statesmen. The historical research of recent decades has instead shown that Florentines during the Renaissance remained enmeshed in relationships of family, neighborhood, guild, patronage, and religion that, from a twenty-first-century perspective, greatly limited the scope of individual thought and action. The sixteen essays in this volume expand the groundbreaking work of Gene Brucker, the historian in recent decades who has been most responsible for the discovery and exploration of these pre-modern qualities of the Florentine Renaissance. Exploring new approaches to the social world of Florentines during this fascinating era, the essays are arranged in three groups. The first deals with the exceptionally resilient and homogenous Florentine merchant elite, the true protagonist of much of Florentine history. The second considers Florentine religion and Florence's turbulent relations with the Church. The last group of essays looks at criminals, expatriates, and other outsiders to Florentine society.   [brief]
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Title: Contentious traditions: the debate on Sati in colonial India
Author: Mani, Lata 1956-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: History | South Asia | Postcolonial Studies
Publisher's Description: Contentious Traditions analyzes the debate on sati , or widow burning, in colonial India. Though the prohibition of widow burning in 1829 was heralded as a key step forward for women's emancipation in modern India, Lata Mani argues that the women who were burned were marginal to the debate and that the controversy was over definitions of Hindu tradition, the place of ritual in religious worship, the civilizing missions of colonialism and evangelism, and the proper role of the colonial state. Mani radically revises colonialist as well as nationalist historiography on the social reform of women's status in the colonial period and clarifies the complex and contradictory character of missionary writings on India.The history of widow burning is one of paradox. While the chief players in the debate argued over the religious basis of sati and the fine points of scriptural interpretation, the testimonials of women at the funeral pyres consistently addressed the material hardships and societal expectations attached to widowhood. And although historiography has traditionally emphasized the colonial horror of sati , a fascinated ambivalence toward the practice suffused official discussions. The debate normalized the violence of sati and supported the misconception that it was a voluntary act of wifely devotion.Mani brilliantly illustrates how situated feminism and discourse analysis compel a rewriting of history, thus destabilizing the ways we are accustomed to look at women and men, at "tradition," custom, and modernity.   [brief]
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Title: Academic freedom and the Japanese imperial university, 1868-1939
Author: Marshall, Byron K
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | Asian History | Japan | Education
Publisher's Description: Byron K. Marshall offers here a dramatic study of the changing nature and limits of academic freedom in prewar Japan, from the Meiji Restoration to the eve of World War II.Meiji leaders founded Tokyo Imperial University in the late nineteenth century to provide their new government with necessary technical and theoretical knowledge. An academic elite, armed with Western learning, gradually emerged and wielded significant influence throughout the state. When some faculty members criticized the conduct of the Russo-Japanese War the government threatened dismissals. The faculty and administration banded together, forcing the government to back down. By 1939, however, this solidarity had eroded. The conventional explanation for this erosion has been the lack of a tradition of autonomy among prewar Japanese universities. Marshall argues instead that these later purges resulted from the university's 40-year fixation on institutional autonomy at the expense of academic freedom.Marshall's finely nuanced analysis is complemented by extensive use of quantitative, biographical, and archival sources.   [brief]
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Title: Anarchism in the Chinese revolution
Author: Dirlik, Arif
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: History | Asian History | China | Politics
Publisher's Description: Arif Dirlik's latest offering is a revisionist perspective on Chinese radicalism in the twentieth century. He argues that the history of anarchism is indispensable to understanding crucial themes in Chinese radicalism. And anarchism is particularly significant now as a source of democratic ideals within the history of the socialist movement in China.Dirlik draws on the most recent scholarship and on materials available only in the last decade to compile the first comprehensive history of his subject available in a Western language. He emphasizes the anarchist contribution to revolutionary discourse and elucidates this theme through detailed analysis of both anarchist polemics and social practice. The changing circumstances of the Chinese revolution provide the immediate context, but throughout his writing the author views Chinese anarchism in relation to anarchism worldwide.   [brief]
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Title: Into one's own: from youth to adulthood in the United States, 1920-1975 
Author: Modell, John
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: History | United States History | Aging
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Title: Postwar Japan as history
Author: Gordon, Andrew 1952-
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: History | Politics | Japan | Asian History
Publisher's Description: Japan's catapult to world economic power has inspired many studies by social scientists, but few have looked at the 45 years of postwar Japan through the lens of history. The contributors to this book seek to offer such a view. As they examine three related themes of postwar history, the authors describe an ongoing historical process marked by unexpected changes, such as Japan's extraordinary economic growth, and unanticipated continuities, such as the endurance of conservative rule. A provocative set of interpretative essays by eminent scholars, this book will appeal to anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century Japan and the dilemmas facing Japan today.   [brief]
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Title: Pulp surrealism: insolent popular culture in early twentieth-century Paris
Author: Walz, Robin 1957-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: History | French Studies | Comparative Literature
Publisher's Description: In addition to its more well known literary and artistic origins, the French surrealist movement drew inspiration from currents of psychological anxiety and rebellion running through a shadowy side of mass culture, specifically in fantastic popular fiction and sensationalistic journalism. The provocative nature of this insolent mass culture resonated with the intellectual and political preoccupations of the surrealists, as Robin Walz demonstrates in this fascinating study. Pulp Surrealism weaves an interpretative history of the intersection between mass print culture and surrealism, re-evaluating both our understanding of mass culture in early twentieth-century Paris and the revolutionary aims of the surrealist movement. Pulp Surrealism presents four case studies, each exploring the out-of the-way and impertinent elements which inspired the surrealists. Walz discusses Louis Aragon's Le paysan de Paris, one of the great surrealist novels of Paris. He goes on to consider the popular series of Fantômes crime novels; the Parisan press coverage of the arrest, trial, and execution of mass-murderer Landru; and the surrealist inquiry "Is Suicide a Solution?", which Walz juxtaposes with reprints of actual suicide faits divers (sensationalist newspaper blurbs). Although surrealist interest in sensationalist popular culture eventually waned, this exploration of mass print culture as one of the cultural milieux from which surrealism emerged ultimately calls into question assumptions about the avant-garde origins of modernism itself.   [brief]
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Title: The last emperors: a social history of Qing imperial institutions
Author: Rawski, Evelyn Sakakida
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: History | Anthropology | China | Asian History
Publisher's Description: The Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was the last and arguably the greatest of the conquest dynasties to rule China. Its rulers, Manchus from the north, held power for three centuries despite major cultural and ideological differences with the Han majority. In this book, Evelyn Rawski offers a bold new interpretation of the remarkable success of this dynasty, arguing that it derived not from the assimilation of the dominant Chinese culture, as has previously been believed, but rather from an artful synthesis of Manchu leadership styles with Han Chinese policies.   [brief]
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Title: A history of modern Tibet, 1913-1951: the demise of the Lamaist state
Author: Goldstein, Melvyn C
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: History | Asian History | Tibet
Publisher's Description: The "Tibetan Question," the nature of Tibet's political status vis-à-vis China, has been the subject of often bitterly competing views while the facts of the issue have not been fully accessible to interested observers. While one faction has argued that Tibet was, in the main, historically independent until it was conquered by the Chinese Communists in 1951 and incorporated into the new Chinese state, the other faction views Tibet as a traditional part ofChina that split away at the instigation of the British after the fall of the Manchu Dynasty and was later dutifully reunited with "New China" in 1951. In contrast, this comprehensive study of modern Tibetan history presents a detailed, non-partisan account of the demise of the Lamaist state.Drawing on a wealth of British, American, and Indian diplomatic records; first-hand-historical accounts written by Tibetan participants; and extensive interviews with former Tibetan officials, monastic leaders, soldiers, and traders, Goldstein meticulously examines what happened and why. He balances the traditional focus on international relations with an innovative emphasis on the intricate web of internal affairs and events that produced the fall of Tibet. Scholars and students of Asian history will find this work an invaluable resource and interested readers will appreciate the clear explanation of highly polemicized, and often confusing, historical events.   [brief]
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Title: The power of position: Beijing University, intellectuals, and Chinese political culture, 1898-1929
Author: Weston, Timothy B 1964-
Published: University of California Press,  2004
Subjects: History | Asian Studies | China
Publisher's Description: Throughout the twentieth century, Beijing University (or Beida) has been at the center of China's greatest political and cultural upheavals - from the May Fourth Movement of 1919 to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s to the tragic events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Why this should be - how Beida's historical importance has come to transcend that of a mere institution of higher learning--is a question at the heart of this book. A study of intellectuals and political culture during the past century's tumultuous early decades, The Power of Position is the first to focus on Beida, China's oldest and best-known national university. Timothy B. Weston portrays the university as a key locus used by intellectuals to increase their influence in society. Weston analyzes the links between intellectuals' political and cultural commitments and their specific manner of living. He also compares Beijing's intellectual culture with that of the rising metropolis of Shanghai. What emerges is a remarkably nuanced and complex picture of life at China's leading university, especially in the decades leading up to the May Fourth Movement.   [brief]
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Title: Winners in peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and postwar Japan 
Author: Finn, Richard B
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: History | Asian History | Japan | Politics
Publisher's Description: Singular for its breadth and balance, Winners in Peace chronicles the American Occupation of Japan, an episode that profoundly shaped the postwar world. Richard B. Finn, who participated in the Occupation as a young naval officer and diplomat, tells the full story of the activities from 1945 to 1952. He focuses on the two main actors, General Douglas MacArthur and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, and details the era's major events, programs, and personalities, both American and Japanese.Finn draws on an impressive range of sources - American, Japanese, British, and Australian - including interviews with nearly one hundred participants in the Occupation. He describes the war crimes trials, constitutional reforms, and American efforts to rebuild Japan. The work of George Kennan in making political stability and economic recovery the top goals of the United States became critical in the face of the developing Cold War. Winners in Peace will aid our understanding of Japan today - its economic growth, its style of government, and the strong pacifist spirit of its people.   [brief]
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Title: Education and society in late imperial China, 1600-1900
Author: Elman, Benjamin A 1946-
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: History | Asian History | China
Publisher's Description: This comprehensive volume integrates the history of late imperial China with the history of education over three centuries, revealing the significance of education in Chinese social, political, and intellectual life. A collaboration between social and intellectual historians, these fifteen essays pr . . . [more]
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Title: My music is my flag: Puerto Rican musicians and their New York communities, 1917-1940
Author: Glasser, Ruth
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: History | American Studies | Music
Publisher's Description: Puerto Rican music in New York is given center stage in Ruth Glasser's original and lucid study. Exploring the relationship between the social history and forms of cultural expression of Puerto Ricans, she focuses on the years between the two world wars. Her material integrates the experiences of the mostly working-class Puerto Rican musicians who struggled to make a living during this period with those of their compatriots and the other ethnic groups with whom they shared the cultural landscape.Through recorded songs and live performances, Puerto Rican musicians were important representatives for the national consciousness of their compatriots on both sides of the ocean. Yet they also played with African-American and white jazz bands, Filipino or Italian-American orchestras, and with other Latinos. Glasser provides an understanding of the way musical subcultures could exist side by side or even as a part of the mainstream, and she demonstrates the complexities of cultural nationalism and cultural authenticity within the very practical realm of commercial music.Illuminating a neglected epoch of Puerto Rican life in America, Glasser shows how ethnic groups settling in the United States had choices that extended beyond either maintenance of their homeland traditions or assimilation into the dominant culture. Her knowledge of musical styles and performance enriches her analysis, and a discography offers a helpful addition to the text.   [brief]
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