Tag: anthropology

Giving a Voice: Sharing Work of the Late Willem Assies

Renowned Dutch anthropologist Willem Assies’ lifework was a study of Latin American politics. Up to his unexpected death in 2010, Assies had made strides in bringing awareness to the situations of the downtrodden, those considered “voiceless.” In Dignity for the Voiceless: Willem Assies’s Anthropological Work in Context, editors Ton Salman, Salvador Marti i Puig, and Gemma van der Haar have given the political anthropologist his own voice once again. Following, the editors provide further insight into their recently published volume.

 

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In 2010, Willem Assies, an astute and prolific Latin Americanist and political anthropologist, died unexpectedly, at the age of 55. The book launched today brings together some of his finest writing. Assies would always gave central stage to the collective and multi-layered actor and not the system — but he would constantly do so within the context of restrictions, pressures, conditioning factors and contradictions, to provide the actor with a real setting of operation.

Continue reading “Giving a Voice: Sharing Work of the Late Willem Assies” →

Hot Off the Presses – New Journal Releases for June

Anthropology in Action
Volume 21, Issue 1
This is a special issue on Applied and Social Anthropology, Arts and Health.

Asia Pacific World
Volume 5, Issue 1
In this first issue of Volume 5, we have chosen to begin with two keynote presentations from the fourth IAAPS Annual Conference.

Contributions to the History of Concepts
Volume 9, Issue 1
This issue focuses on conceptual changes and political struggles around citizenship related to the challenges of Europeanization, as well as both migration and immigration after WWII.

German Politics & Society
Volume 32, Issue 2
This special issue is titled The 2013 Bundestag Election (Part 1). 

Journeys
Volume 15, Issue 1
This journal explores travel as a practice and travel writing as a genre, reflecting the rich diversity of travel and journeys as social and cultural practices as well as their significance as metaphorical processes.

Learning and Teaching
Volume 7, Issue 1
This special issue is titled Collusion, Complicity and Resistance: Theorising Academics, the University and the Neoliberal Marketplace.

Social Analysis
Volume 58, Issue 2
This journal encourages contributions that break away from the disciplinary bounds of anthropology and suggest innovative ways of challenging hegemonic paradigms through analysis based in original empirical research.

 

Simulated Shelves: Browse July’s New Books

We are delighted to present a selection of our newly published, and soon to be published, July titles from our core subjects of Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Film Studies, History and Medical Anthropology.

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AMERICANS IN TUSCANY
Charity, Compassion, and Belonging
Catherine Trundle

 

Since the time of the Grand Tour, the Italian region of Tuscany has sustained a highly visible American and Anglo migrant community. Today American women continue to migrate there, many in order to marry Italian men. Confronted with experiences of social exclusion, unfamiliar family relations, and new cultural terrain, many women struggle to build local lives. Continue reading “Simulated Shelves: Browse July’s New Books” →

Today In History

 

Statehood Day is a holiday that takes place on June 25th in Slovenia & Croatia to commemorate both countries’ declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.

On related subjects from Berghahn Central & Eastern Europe List:

 

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STRANGERS EITHER WAY
The Lives of Croatian Refugees in their New Home
Jasna Čapo Žmegač
Translated by Nina H. Antoljak and Mateusz M. Stanojević

 

Croatia gained the world’s attention during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. In this context its image has been overshadowed by visions of ethnic conflict and cleansing, war crimes, virulent nationalism, and occasionally even emergent regionalism. Instead of the norm, this book offers a diverse insight into Croatia in the 1990s by dealing with one of the consequences of the war: the more or less forcible migration of Croats from Serbia and their settlement in Croatia, their “ethnic homeland.” This important study shows that at a time in which Croatia was perceived as a homogenized nation-in-the-making, there were tensions and ruptures within Croatian society caused by newly arrived refugees and displaced persons from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Refugees who, in spite of their common ethnicity with the homeland population, were treated as foreigners; indeed, as unwanted aliens. Continue reading “Today In History” →

Looking at Tourism through Anthropology’s Lens

Just in time for summer vacation, Tourism Imaginaries: Anthropological Approaches will soon be available for purchase. This collection features a diverse group of scholars who dive deeper into the idea of “tourist” around the world, from Cambodia to Belize to the Netherlands. Following, editors Noel Salazar and Nelson H. H. Graburn give a glimpse into their work with the volume, their histories with the topic, and where they themselves like to “play tourist.”

 

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What drew you to study the seductive draw of tourism?

 

Salazar: It may sound odd, but I became interested in tourism (as an object of study) while working for an NGO specialized in aiding refugees. At the end of the 1990s, the organization sent me on a mission to a remote refugee camp in northern Uganda, on the border with Sudan.

Continue reading “Looking at Tourism through Anthropology’s Lens” →

Crisis, Power, and Policymaking in the New Europe

This is a special post written by guest editor Bilge Firat on the thematic focus for Volume 23, Issue 1 of Anthropological Journal of European Cultures.

 

How does power work as an analytic, as a relational reality, and as a capacity to impose and resist through policymaking processes in contemporary Europe, and why should anthropologists care about this line of inquiry? These questions constituted the main pivot for contemplation for the five contributors in AJEC’s new special issue “Culture, Power, and Policy in the New Europe”.

 

Continue reading “Crisis, Power, and Policymaking in the New Europe” →

Women in History

Eighty six years ago on June 18, 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger aboard a Fokker tri-motor aircraft that was piloted by Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon. Just four years later, in 1932 Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean. She completed her 2,026 mile journey in under 15 hours after departing from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland.

Forty five years later on same date, June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly to space as a crew member on space shuttle Challenger for STS-7.

To celebrate women in history we invite you to browse through some of our Gender Studies titles:

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GENDER HISTORY IN A TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Networks, Biographies, Gender Orders
Edited by Oliver Janz and Daniel Schönpflug Continue reading “Women in History” →

The Life of a Religious Movement: Steps in a Trajectory

Ruy Blanes’ A Prophetic Trajectory follows the life of Simão Toko and the dissemination of the religious movement he founded. While conducting his research, the author worked in Angola, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, where he gathered facts and a collection of photographs — which are introduced and displayed below.

 

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My recently published book, A Prophetic Trajectory, highlights the life and memory of an Angolan prophet, Simão Gonçalves Toko (1918-1984). Continue reading “The Life of a Religious Movement: Steps in a Trajectory” →

Cultivating Communication between Cultures

Later this month, Sonya Pritzker’s monograph Living Translation: Language and the Search for Resonance in U.S. Chinese Medicine will be published. Within this volume, Pritzker explains that translation is not a static exercise, but is instead a variable and experiential undertaking. Following, the author shares how she became enamored of Chinese culture and discovered the life of language.

 

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I went to China for the first time in 1995. I was 19. The skies in Beijing were blue then, and the remnants of a stark and closed era were everywhere. I look back on the things of that time with nostalgia, the ever-present red thermoses with flowers, cheap rubber shoes, mian bao che or “bread box” cars, flying pigeon bicycles. My passion for China, in particular the Chinese language, had arisen over time.

 

Continue reading “Cultivating Communication between Cultures” →

Simulated Shelves: Browse June’s New Books

We’re delighted to offer a selection of soon-to-be-published titles from our core subjects of Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, History, Sociology, Travel & Tourism and Urban Studies. The following list of new volumes is complete with brief descriptions of the books and a peek at each cover. 

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DIGNITY FOR THE VOICELESS

Willem Assies’s Anthropological Work in Context

Edited by Ton Salman, Salvador Marti i Puig, and Gemma van der Haar Continue reading “Simulated Shelves: Browse June’s New Books” →