Browse

By Author

• February 2004

  Italy Between Europeanization and Domestic Politics

  Fabbrini, S. & Sala, V. Della (eds)

  In 2003, the government headed by Silvio Berlusconi attempted to take Italian public policy in a new direction. In social and labor market policy it challenged concertation; in foreign policy, it tried to transform the country’s traditional Europeanist position into a pro-Atlantic stance; within the European Union, it promoted an inter-governmental position. The government's plans to alter the status quo did not always succeed, due to tensions within the majority. The opposition, in the meantime, mobilized around the issue of peace and the Iraq war. European Commission President Romano Prodi responded to the Ulivo coalition’s fragmentation by proposing a unitary list for the 2004 European elections. There were also repeated attempts to change the features of public policy and political competition, countered by noteworthy forms of resistance.

  Subject: Postwar History

• March 2008

  'Brothers' or Others?

  Propriety and Gender for Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt

  Fábos, A. H.

  Muslim Arab Sudanese in Cairo have played a fundamental role in Egyptian history and society during many centuries of close relations between Egypt and Sudan. Although the government and official press describes them as "brothers" in a united Nile Valley, recent political developments in Egypt have underscored the precarious legal status of Sudanese in Cairo. Neither citizens nor foreigners, they are in an uncertain position, created in part through an unusual ethnic discourse which does not draw principally on obvious characteristics of difference. This rich ethnographic study shows instead that Sudanese ethnic identity is created from deeply held social values, especially those concerning gender and propriety, shared by Sudanese and Egyptian communities. The resulting ethnic identity is ambiguous and flexible, allowing Sudanese to voice their frustrations and make claims for their own uniqueness while acknowledging the identity that they share with the dominant Egyptian community.

  Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Gender Studies General Anthropology

• eBook available March 2016

  Protest Cultures

  A Companion

  Fahlenbrach, K., Klimke, M., & Scharloth, J. (eds)

  Protest is a ubiquitous and richly varied social phenomenon, one that finds expression not only in modern social movements and political organizations but also in grassroots initiatives, individual action, and creative works. It constitutes a distinct cultural domain, one whose symbolic content is regularly deployed by media and advertisers, among other actors. Yet within social movement scholarship, such cultural considerations have been comparatively neglected. Protest Cultures: A Companion dramatically expands the analytical perspective on protest beyond its political and sociological aspects. It combines cutting-edge synthetic essays with concise, accessible case studies on a remarkable array of protest cultures, outlining key literature and future lines of inquiry.

  Subjects: Sociology Postwar History

• eBook available February 2014

  Media and Revolt

  Strategies and Performances from the 1960s to the Present

  Fahlenbrach, K., Sivertsen, E. & Werenskjold, R. (eds)

  In what ways have social movements attracted the attention of the mass media since the sixties? How have activists influenced public attention via visual symbols, images, and protest performances in that period? And how do mass media cover and frame specific protest issues? Drawing on contributions from media scholars, historians, and sociologists, this volume explores the dynamic interplay between social movements, activists, and mass media from the 1960s to the present. It introduces the most relevant theoretical approaches to such issues and offers a variety of case studies ranging from print media, film, and television to Internet and social media.

  Subjects: Postwar History Media Studies

• August 2000

  Citizens and Aliens

  Foreigners and the Law in Britain and German States 1789-1870

  Fahrmeir, A.

  From the last decade of the 18th century, European states began to define nationality more rigorously. Regulations covering matters as diverse as passports, residence permits, taxes, and admission to university examinations made clear that nationality mattered more than rank. Drawing on the files of central and regional administrations and on individual case studies and travel accounts, the author offers a detailed examination of the practical consequences of alien status in liberal England and in the comparatively restrictive German states. In the latter all citizens of other German states were considered foreigners, whereas in the United Kingdom Irish immigrants were by law British subjects along with all other persons born on British soil. These differences in legal definition of citizenship should have far-reaching consequences for the development of modern nation states, consequences the effects of which can be felt to this day.

  Subjects: 18th/19th Century History Refugee & Migration Studies

• January 2003

  Migration Control in the North-atlantic World

  The Evolution of State Practices in Europe and the United States from the French Revolution to the Inter-War Period

  Fahrmeir, A., Faron, O. & Weil, P. (eds)

  The migration movements of the 20th century have led to an increased interest in similarly dramatic population changes in the preceding century. The contributors to this volume - legal scholars, sociologists, political scientist and historians - focus on migration control in the 19th century, concentrating on three areas in particular: the impact of the French Revolution on the development of modern citizenship laws and on the development of new forms of migration control in France and elsewhere; the theory and practice of migration control in various European states is examined, focusing on the control of paupers, emigrants and "ordinary" travelers as well as on the interrelationship between the different administrative levels - local, regional and national - at which migration control was exercised. Finally, on the development of migration control in two countries of immigration: the United States and France. Taken altogether, these essays demonstrate conclusively that the image of the 19th century as a liberal era during which migration was unaffected by state intervention is untenable and in serious need of revision.

  Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Archaeology

• November 2019

  Becoming Vaishnava in an Ideal Vedic City

  Fahy, J.

  Becoming Vaishnava in an Ideal Vedic City centers on a growing multinational community of ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) devotees in Mayapur, West Bengal. While ISKCON’s history is often presented in terms of an Indian guru ‘transplanting’ Indian spirituality to the West, this book focusses on the efforts to bring ISKCON back to India. Paying particular attention to devotees’ failure to consistently live up to ISKCON’s ideals, and the ongoing struggle to realize the utopian vision of an ‘ideal Vedic city’, this book argues that beyond a focus on virtue, the anthropology of ethics must account for how moral systems accommodate the problem of moral failure.

  Subjects: Religion General Anthropology

• March 2013

  Militant Lactivism?

  Attachment Parenting and Intensive Motherhood in the UK and France

  Faircloth, C.

  Following networks of mothers in London and Paris, the author profiles the narratives of women who breastfeed their children to full term, typically a period of several years, as part of an 'attachment parenting' philosophy. These mothers talk about their decision to continue breastfeeding as 'the natural thing to do': 'evolutionarily appropriate', 'scientifically best' and 'what feels right in their hearts'. Through a theoretical focus on knowledge claims and accountability, the author frames these accounts within a wider context of 'intensive parenting', arguing that parenting practices – infant feeding in particular – have become a highly moralized affair for mothers, practices which they feel are a critical aspect of their 'identity work'. The book investigates why, how and with what implications some of these mothers describe themselves as 'militant lactivists' and reflects on wider parenting culture in the UK and France. Discussing gender, feminism and activism, this study contributes to kinship and family studies by exploring how relatedness is enacted in conjunction to constructions of the self.

  Subjects: Medical Anthropology Gender Studies

• eBook available December 2006

  Andrzej Wajda

  History, Politics & Nostalgia In Polish Cinema

  Falkowska, J.

  The work of Andrzej Wajda, one of the world’s most important filmmakers, shows remarkable cohesion in spite of the wide ranging scope of his films, as this study of his complete output of feature films shows. Not only do his films address crucial historical, social and political issues; the complexity of his work is reinforced by the incorporation of the elements of major film and art movements. It is the reworking of these different elements by Wajda, as the author shows, which give his films their unique visual and aural qualities.

  Subject: Film Studies

• April 1996

  The Political Films of Andrzej Wajda

  Dialogism in Man of Marble, Man of Iron, and Danton

  Falkowska, J.

  Andrzej Wajda is considered one of Poland's - many would say the world's - greatest film directors. During the thirty-five years of his activity in film, theatre or television, his work, whether strong or weak, always arouses strong emotions and provokes intense debates in the media. His films deal with historical and political issues concerning Polish character and the nature of political power. Controversial, painful, stimulating and cinematically beautiful, they never fail to fully engage the spectator. This is particularly true for his major political films, which form the basis of the study. Applying Bakhtin's concept of dialogism, the author shows how a creative interaction between the image on the screen and the viewer is established through Wajda's films. At the same time, she offers a detailed analysis of the historical events leading up to the collapse of the Socialist system in Poland.

  Subject: Film Studies

• eBook available June 2016

  Designing Worlds

  National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization

  Fallan, K. & Lees-Maffei, G. (eds)

  From consumer products to architecture to advertising to digital technology, design is an undeniably global phenomenon. Yet despite their professed transnational perspective, historical studies of design have all too often succumbed to a bias toward Western, industrialized nations. This diverse but rigorously curated collection recalibrates our understanding of design history, reassessing regional and national cultures while situating them within an international context. Here, contributors from five continents offer nuanced studies that range from South Africa to the Czech Republic, all the while sensitive to the complexities of local variation and the role of nation-states in identity construction.

  Subjects: General Cultural Studies General History

• December 2006

  Lela in Bali

  History through Ceremony in Cameroon

  Fardon, R.

  Lela in Bali tells the story of an annual festival of eighteenth-century kingdoms in Northern Cameroon that was swept up in the migrations of marauding slave-raiders during the nineteenth century and carried south towards the coast. Lela was transformed first into a mounted durbar, like those of the Muslim states, before evolving in tandem with the German colonial project into a festival of arms. Reinterpreted by missionaries and post-colonial Cameroonians, Lela has become one of the most important of Cameroonian festivals and a crucial marker of identity within the state. Richard Fardon’s recuperation of two hundred years of history is an essential contribution not only to Cameroonian studies but also to the broader understanding of the evolution of African cultures.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Performance Studies

• March 2015

  Bread from the Lion's Mouth

  Artisans Struggling for a Livelihood in Ottoman Cities

  Faroqhi, S. (ed)

  The newly awakened interest in the lives of craftspeople in Turkey is highlighted in this collection, which uses archival documents to follow Ottoman artisans from the late 15th century to the beginning of the 20th. The authors examine historical changes in the lives of artisans, focusing on the craft organizations (or guilds) that underwent substantial changes over the centuries. The guilds transformed and eventually dissolved as they were increasingly co-opted by modernization and state-building projects, and by the movement of manufacturing to the countryside. In consequence by the 20th century, many artisans had to confront the forces of capitalism and world trade without significant protection, just as the Ottoman Empire was itself in the process of dissolution.

  Subject: General History

• eBook available September 2016

  War Magic

  Religion, Sorcery, and Performance

  Farrer, D. S. (ed)

  This compelling volume explores how war magic and warrior religion unleash the power of the gods, demons, ghosts, and the dead. Documenting war magic and warrior religion as they are performed in diverse cultures and across historical time periods, this volume foregrounds embodiment, practice, and performance in anthropological approaches to magic, sorcery, shamanism, and religion. The authors go beyond what magic ‘represents’ to consider what magic does. From Chinese exorcists, Javanese spirit siblings, and black magic in Sumatra to Tamil Tiger suicide bombers, Chamorro spiritual re-enchantment, tantric Buddhist war magic, and Yanomami dark shamans, religion and magic are re-evaluated not just from the practitioner’s perspective but through the victim’s lived experience. These original investigations reveal a nuanced approach to understanding social action, innovation, and the revitalization of tradition in colonial and post-colonial societies undergoing rapid social transformation.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Religion General Cultural Studies

• eBook available May 2017

  The Mirror of the Medieval

  An Anthropology of the Western Historical Imagination

  Fazioli, K. P.

  Since its invention by Renaissance humanists, the myth of the “Middle Ages” has held a uniquely important place in the Western historical imagination. Whether envisioned as an era of lost simplicity or a barbaric nightmare, the medieval past has always served as a mirror for modernity. This book gives an eye-opening account of the ways various political and intellectual projects—from nationalism to the discipline of anthropology—have appropriated the Middle Ages for their own ends. Deploying an interdisciplinary toolkit, author K. Patrick Fazioli grounds his analysis in contemporary struggles over power and identity in the Eastern Alps, while also considering the broader implications for scholarly research and public memory.

  Subjects: General History Theory & Methodology in Anthropology Archaeology

• September 2011

  Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices

  Anthropological Reflections

  Fedele, A. & Blanes, R. L. (eds)

  Social scientists and philosophers confronted with religious phenomena have always been challenged to find a proper way to describe the spiritual experiences of the social group they were studying. The influence of the Cartesian dualism of body and mind (or soul) led to a distinction between non-material, spiritual experiences (i.e., related to the soul) and physical, mechanical experiences (i.e., related to the body). However, recent developments in medical science on the one hand and challenges to universalist conceptions of belief and spirituality on the other have resulted in “body” and “soul” losing the reassuring solid contours they had in the past. Yet, in “Western culture,” the body–soul duality is alive, not least in academic and media discourses. This volume pursues the ongoing debates and discusses the importance of the body and how it is perceived in contemporary religious faith: what happens when “body” and “soul” are un-separated entities? Is it possible, even for anthropologists and ethnographers, to escape from “natural dualism”? The contributors here present research in novel empirical contexts, the benefits and limits of the old dichotomy are discussed, and new theoretical strategies proposed.

  Subjects: Religion General Anthropology

• December 1999

  Transactions, Transgressions, Transformation

  American Culture in Western Europe and Japan

  Fehrenbach, H. & Poiger, U. (eds)

  American culture has been one of the most controversial exports of the United States: greeted with enthusiasm by some, with hostility by others. Yet, few societies escape its influence. However, not all changes should be interpreted simply as "Americanization." The shaping of the postwar world has been much more complex than this term implies as is shown in this volume that explores the links between Americanization and modernity in Western Europe and Japan. In considering the impact of products and images ranging from movies and music to fashion and architecture, a multi-disciplinary group of contributors asks how American culture has been employed internationally in the articulation of postwar identities - be they national or subnational,socially sanctioned or socially transgressive. Their essays on France, Italy, Germany and Japan move beyond the simple paradigms of colonization and democratic modernization, yet retain a sensitivity to the asymmetries in the postwar power relationships between these countries and the United States. An extensive introduction historically locates changing interpretations of American influences abroad and suggests the problems and promises of "Americanization" as an analytical tool. Its comparative focus and interdisciplinary scope will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars of cold war and post-cold war history.

  Subject: 20th Century History

• March 2014

  Understanding Multiculturalism

  The Habsburg Central European Experience

  Feichtinger, J. & Cohen, G. B. (eds)

  Multiculturalism has long been linked to calls for tolerance of cultural diversity, but today many observers are subjecting the concept to close scrutiny. After the political upheavals of 1968, the commitment to multiculturalism was perceived as a liberal manifesto, but in the post-9/11 era, it is under attack for its relativizing, particularist, and essentializing implications. The essays in this collection offer a nuanced analysis of the multifaceted cultural experience of Central Europe under the late Habsburg monarchy and beyond. The authors examine how culturally coded social spaces can be described and understood historically without adopting categories formerly employed to justify the definition and separation of groups into nations, ethnicities, or homogeneous cultures. As we consider the issues of multiculturalism today, this volume offers new approaches to understanding multiculturalism in Central Europe freed of the effects of politically exploited concepts of social spaces.

  Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History

• April 2008

  Above the Death Pits, Beneath the Flag

  Youth Voyages to Poland and the Performance of Israeli National Identity

  Feldman, J.

  Israeli youth voyages to Poland are one of the most popular and influential forms of transmission of Holocaust memory in Israeli society. Through intensive participant observation, group discussions, student diaries, and questionnaires, the author demonstrates how the State shapes Poland into a living deathscape of Diaspora Jewry. In the course of the voyage, students undergo a rite de passage, in which they are transformed into victims, victorious survivors, and finally witnesses of the witnesses. By viewing, touching, and smelling Holocaust-period ruins and remains, by accompanying the survivors on the sites of their suffering and survival, crying together and performing commemorative ceremonies at the death sites, students from a wide variety of family backgrounds become carriers of Shoah memory. They come to see the State and its defense as the romanticized answer to the Shoah. These voyages are a bureaucratic response to uncertainty and fluidity of identity in an increasingly globalized and fragmented society. This study adds a measured and compassionate ethical voice to ideological debates surrounding educational and cultural forms of encountering the past in contemporary Israel, and raises further questions about the representation of the Holocaust after the demise of the last living witnesses.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Jewish Studies

• eBook available December 2004

  Networks of Nazi Persecution

  Bureaucracy, Business and the Organization of the Holocaust

  Feldman†, G. & Seibel, W. (eds)

  The persecution and mass-murder of the Jews during World War II would not have been possible without the modern organization of division of labor. Moreover, the perpetrators were dependent on human and organizational resources they could not always control by hierarchy and coercion. Instead, the persecution of the Jews was based, to a large extent, on a web of inter-organizational relations encompassing a broad variety of non-hierarchical cooperation as well as rivalry and competition. Based on newly accessible government and corporate archives, this volume combines fresh evidence with an interpretation of the governance of persecution, presented by prominent historians and social scientists.

  Subjects: WWII History Genocide Studies

• eBook available August 2013

  The Journey of G. Mastorna

  The Film Fellini Didn't Make

  Fellini, F.

  Federico Fellini’s script for perhaps the most famous unmade film in Italian cinema, The Journey of G. Mastorna (1965/6), is published here for the first time in full English translation. It offers the reader a remarkable insight into Fellini’s creative process and his fascination with human mortality and the great mystery of death. Written in collaboration with Dino Buzzati, Brunello Rondi, and Bernardino Zapponi, the project was ultimately abandoned for a number of reasons, including Fellini’s near death, although it continued to inhabit his creative imagination and the landscape of his films for the rest of his career.

  Marcus Perryman has written two supporting essays which discuss the reasons why the film was never made, compare it to the two other films in the trilogy La Dolce Vita and 8½, and analyze the script in the light of It’s a Wonderful Life and Fredric Brown’s sci-fi novel What Mad Universe. In doing so he opens up an entire world of connections to Fellini’s other films, writers and collaborators. It should be essential reading for students and academics studying Fellini’s work.

  Subject: Film Studies

• December 2007

  Sex, Thugs & Rock 'n' Roll

  Teenage Rebels in Cold-War East Germany

  Fenemore, M.

  A fascinating and highly readable account of what it was like to be young and hip, growing up in East Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. Living on the frontline of the Cold War, young people were subject to a number of competing influences. For young men from the working class, in particular, a conflict developed between the culture they inherited from their parents and the new official culture taught in schools. Merging with street gangs, new youth cultures took shape, which challenged authority and provided an alternative vision of modernity. Taking their fashion cues, music and icons from the West, they rapidly came into conflict with a didactic and highly controlling party-state. Charting the clashes which occurred between teenage rebels and the authorities, the book explores what happened when gender, sexuality, Nazism, communism and rock 'n' roll collided during a period, which also saw the building of the Berlin Wall.

  Subjects: Postwar History Gender Studies

• eBook available October 2010

  Latin America Facing China

  South-South Relations beyond the Washington Consensus

  Fernández Jilberto†, A. E. & Hogenboom, B. (eds)

  The last quarter of the twentieth century was a period of economic crises, increasing indebtedness as well as financial instability for Latin America and most other developing countries; in contrast, China showed amazingly high growth rates during this time and has since become the third largest economy in the world. Based on several case studies, this volume assesses how China’s rise – one of the most important recent changes in the global economy – is affecting Latin America’s national politics, political economy and regional and international relations. Several Latin American countries benefit from China’s economic growth, and China’s new role in international politics has been helpful to many leftist governments’ efforts in Latin America to end the Washington Consensus. The contributors to this thought provoking volume examine these and the other causes, effects and prospects of Latin America’s experiences with China’s global expansion from a South - South perspective.

  Subject: Postwar History

• April 2011

  After the Event

  The Transmission of Grievous Loss in Germany, China and Taiwan

  Feuchtwang, S.

  Two of the most destructive moments of state violence in the twentieth century occurred in Europe between 1933 and 1945 and in China between 1959 and 1961 (the Great Leap famine). This is the first book to bring the two histories together in order to examine their differences and to understand if there are any similar processes of transmission at work. The author expertly ties in the Taiwanese civil war between Nationalists and Communists, which included the White Terror from 1947 to 1987, a less well-known but equally revealing part of twentieth-century history. Personal and family stories are told, often in the individual’s own words, and then compared with the public accounts of the same events as found in official histories, commemorations, school textbooks and other forms of public memory. The author presents innovative and constructive criticisms of social memory theories in order to make sense both of what happened and how what happened is transmitted.

  Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology General History

• July 2011

  Playing Different Games

  The Paradox of Anywaa and Nuer Identification Strategies in the Gambella Region, Ethiopia

  Feyissa, D.

  Focusing on ethnicity and its relation to conflict, this book goes beyond sterile debates about whether ethnic identities are ‘natural’ or ‘socially constructed’. Rather, ethnic identity takes different forms. Some ethnic boundaries are perceived by the actors themselves as natural, while others are perceived to be permeable. The argument is substantiated through a comparative analysis of ethnic identity formation and ethnic conflict among the Anywaa and the Nuer in the Gambella region of western Ethiopia. The Anywaa and the Nuer are not just two ethnic groups but two kinds of ethnic groups. Conflicts between the Anywaa and Nuer are explained with reference to three variables: varying modes of identity formation, competition over resources and differential incorporation into the state system.

  Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology

• eBook available October 2018

  The Art of Resistance

  Cultural Protest against the Austrian Far Right in the Early Twenty-First Century

  Fiddler, A.

  Well before the far-right resurgence that has most recently transformed European politics, Austria’s 1999 parliamentary elections surprised the world with the unexpected success of the Freedom Party of Austria and its charismatic leader, Jörg Haider. The party’s perceived xenophobia, isolationism, and unabashed nationalism in turn inspired a massive protest movement that expressed opposition not only through street protests but also in novels, plays, films, and music. Through careful readings of this varied cultural output, The Art of Resistance traces the aesthetic styles and strategies deployed during this time, providing critical context for understanding modern Austrian history as well as the European protest movements of today.

  Subjects: Postwar History General Cultural Studies

• January 1998

  Enemy Images in American History

  Fiebig-von Hase, R. & Lehmkuhl, U. (eds)

  
  

  Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies

• eBook available March 2016

  Social Movement Studies in Europe

  The State of the Art

  Fillieule, O. & Accornero, G. (eds)

  Bringing together over forty established and emerging scholars, this landmark volume is the first to comprehensively examine the evolution and current practice of social movement studies in a specifically European context. While its first half offers comparative approaches to an array of significant issues and movements, its second half assembles focused national studies that include most major European states. Throughout, these contributions are guided by a shared set of historical and social-scientific questions with a particular emphasis on political sociology, thus offering a bold and uncommonly unified survey that will be essential for scholars and students of European social movements.

  Subjects: Postwar History Sociology

• eBook available December 2012

  Debating Authenticity

  Concepts of Modernity in Anthropological Perspective

  Fillitz, T. & Saris, A. J. (ed)

  The longing for authenticity, on an individual or collective level, connects the search for external expressions to internal orientations. What is largely referred to as production of authenticity is a reformulation of cultural values and norms within the ongoing process of modernity, impacted by globalization and contemporary transnational cultural flows. This collection interrogates the notion of authenticity from an anthropological point of view and considers authenticity in terms of how meaning is produced in and through discourses about authenticity. Incorporating case studies from four continents, the topics reach from art and colonialism to exoticism-primitivism, film, ritual and wilderness. Some contributors emphasise the dichotomy between the academic use of the term and the one deployed in public spaces and political projects. All, however, consider authenticity as something that can only be understood ethnographically, and not as a simple characteristic or category used to distinguish some behaviors, experiences or material things from other less authentic versions.

  Subject: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology

• February 2014

  Variations on Uzbek Identity

  Strategic Choices, Cognitive Schemas and Political Constraints in Identification Processes

  Finke, P.

  Throughout its history the concept of “Uzbekness,” or more generally of a Turkic-speaking sedentary population, has continuously attracted members of other groups to join, as being Uzbek promises opportunities to enlarge ones social network. Accession is comparatively easy, as Uzbekness is grounded in a cultural model of territoriality, rather than genealogy, as the basis for social attachments. It acknowledges regional variation and the possibility of membership by voluntary decision. Therefore, the boundaries of being Uzbek vary almost by definition, incorporating elements of local languages, cultural patterns and social organization. This book combines an historical analysis with thorough ethnographic field research, looking at differences in the conceptualization of group boundaries and the social practices they entail. It does so by analysing decision-making processes by Uzbeks on the individual as well as cognitive level and the political configurations that surround them.

  Subjects: General Anthropology General History

• August 1996

  Different Restorations

  Reconstruction and Wiederaufbau in the United States and Germany: 1865-1945-1989

  Finzsch, N. & Martschukat, J. (eds)

  This book responds to the frequently heard call for more comparative history .It does so by focusing on the problem of reconstruction in the national experience of the United States and Germany during three crucial periods: 1865-1945-1989. Accordingly, a group of internationally recognized experts was recruited to present their views on such themes as general problems of Reconstruction, on social issues such as race, class, and gender; on the question of war criminals and denazification and of national identity, sectionalism and regionalism.

  Subject: General History

• September 2015

  Narrating the City

  Histories, Space and the Everyday

  Fischer-Nebmaier, W., Berg, M. P., & Christou, A. (eds)

  In recent decades, the insight that narration shapes our perception of reality has inspired and influenced the most innovative historical accounts. Focusing on new research, this volume explores the history of non-elite populations in cities from Caracas to Vienna, and Paris to Belgrade. Narration is central to the theme of each contribution, whether as a means of description, a methodological approach, or basic story telling. This book brings together research that both asks classical socio-historical questions and takes narration seriously, engaging with novels, films, local history accounts, petitions to municipal authorities, and interviews with alternative cinema activists.

  Subjects: Urban Studies General History Sociology

• November 1996

  The Rise of National Socialism and the Working Classes in Weimar Germany

  Fischer, C. (ed)

  Before seizing power the Nazi movement assembled an exceptionally broad social coalition of activists and supporters. Many were working class, but there remains considerable disagreement over the precise size and structure of this constituency and still more over its ideology and politics. An indispensable work for scholars of interwar Germany and Nazism in general.

  Subject: 20th Century History

• eBook available March 2010

  Alsace to the Alsatians?

  Visions and Divisions of Alsatian Regionalism, 1870-1939

  Fischer, C. J.

  The region of Alsace, located between the hereditary enemies of France and Germany, served as a trophy of war four times between 1870–1945. With each shift, French and German officials sought to win the allegiance of the local populace. In response to these pressures, Alsatians invoked regionalism—articulated as a political language, a cultural vision, and a community of identity—not only to define and defend their own interests against the nationalist claims of France and Germany, but also to push for social change, defend religious rights, and promote the status of the region within the larger national community. Alsatian regionalism however, was neither unitary nor unifying, as Alsatians themselves were divided politically, socially, and culturally. The author shows that the Janus-faced character of Alsatian regionalism points to the ambiguous role of regional identity in both fostering and inhibiting loyalty to the nation. Finally, the author uses the case of Alsace to explore the traditional designations of French civic nationalism versus German ethnic nationalism and argues for the strong similarities between the two countries’ conceptions of nationhood.

  Subject: General History

• eBook available October 2008

  Indigenous Peoples, Civil Society, and the Neo-liberal State in Latin America

  Fischer, E. F. (ed)

  In recent years the concept and study of “civil society” has received a lot of attention from political scientists, economists, and sociologists, but less so from anthropologists. A ground-breaking ethnographic approach to civil society as it is formed in indigenous communities in Latin America, this volume explores the multiple potentialities of civil society’s growth and critically assesses the potential for sustained change. Much recent literature has focused on the remarkable gains made by civil society and the chapters in this volume reinforce this trend while also showing the complexity of civil society - that civil society can itself sometimes be uncivil. In doing so, these insightful contributions speak not only to Latin American area studies but also to the changing shape of global systems of political economy in general.

  Subjects: General Anthropology

• April 2020

  Resettlers and Survivors

  Bukovina and the Politics of Belonging in West Germany and Israel, 1945–89

  Fisher, G.

  Located on the border of present-day Romania and Ukraine, the historical region of Bukovina was the site of widespread displacement and violence as it passed from Romanian to Soviet hands and back again during World War II. This study focuses on two groups of “Bukovinians”—ethnic Germans and German-speaking Jews—as they navigated dramatically changed political and social circumstances in and after 1945. Through comparisons of the narratives and self-conceptions of these groups, Resettlers and Survivors gives a nuanced account of how they dealt with the difficult legacies of World War II, while exploring Bukovina’s significance for them as both a geographical location and a “place of memory.”

  Subjects: Postwar History Jewish Studies Refugee & Migration Studies

• 2020

  Not Even Past

  How the United States Ends Wars

  Fitzgerald, D., Ryan, D., & Thompson, J. M. (eds)

  Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan: Taken together, these conflicts are the key to understanding more than a half century of American military history. In addition, they have shaped, in profound ways, the culture and politics of the United States—as well as the nations in which they have been fought. This volume brings together international experts on American history and foreign affairs to assess the cumulative impact of the United States’ often halting and conflicted attempts to end wars. It offers essential perspectives on the Cold War and post-9/11 eras and explores the troubling implications of the American tendency to fight wars without end.

  Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Postwar History General History

• September 2008

  Liberal Imperialism in Germany

  Expansionism and Nationalism, 1848-1884

  Fitzpatrick, M. P.

  In a work based on new archival, press, and literary sources, the author revises the picture of German imperialism as being the brainchild of a Machiavellian Bismarck or the "conservative revolutionaries" of the twentieth century. Instead, Fitzpatrick argues for the liberal origins of German imperialism, by demonstrating the links between nationalism and expansionism in a study that surveys the half century of imperialist agitation and activity leading up to the official founding of Germany’s colonial empire in 1884.

  Subject: 18th/19th Century History

• February 2018

  Doing Conceptual History in Africa

  Fleisch, A. & Stephens, R. (eds)

  Employing an innovative methodological toolkit, Doing Conceptual History in Africa provides a refreshingly broad and interdisciplinary approach to African historical studies. The studies assembled here focus on the complex role of language in Africa’s historical development, with a particular emphasis on pragmatics and semantics. From precolonial dynamics of wealth and poverty to the conceptual foundations of nationalist movements, each contribution strikes a balance between the local and the global, engaging with a distinctively African intellectual tradition while analyzing the regional and global contexts in which categories like “work,” “marriage,” and “land” take shape.

  Subject: General History

• eBook available February 2018

  Soup, Love, and a Helping Hand

  Social Relations and Support in Guangzhou, China

  Fleischer, F.

  Despite growing affluence, a large number of urban Chinese have problems making ends meet. Based on ethnographic research among several different types of communities in Guangzhou, China, Soup, Love and a Helping Hand examines different modes and ideologies of help/support, as well as the related issues of reciprocity, relatedness (kinship), and changing state-society relations in contemporary China. With an emphasis on the subjective experience, Fleischer’s research carefully explores people’s ideas about moral obligations, social expectations, and visions of urban Chinese society.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Sociology

• December 2005

  Traditions of East Asian Travel

  Fogel, J.

  Although the topic of travel and travel writing by Chinese and Japanese writers has recently begun to attract more interest among scholars in the West, it remains largely virgin terrain with vast tracts awaiting scholarly examination. This book offers insights into how East Asians traveled in the early modern and modern periods, what they looked for, what they felt comfortable finding, and the ways in which they wrote up their impressions of these experiences.

  Subjects: Travel & Tourism General Anthropology

• April 2008

  Alternative Exchanges

  Second-Hand Circulations from the Sixteenth Century to the Present

  Fontaine, L (ed)

  Exchanges have always had more than economic significance: values circulate and encounters become institutionalized. This volume explores the changing meaning of the circulation of second-hand goods from the Renaissance to today, and thereby examines the blurring of boundaries between market, gifts, and charity. It describes the actors of the market - official entities such as corporations, recognized professions, and established markets but also the subterranean circulation that develops around the need for money. The complex layers that not only provide for numerous intermediaries but also include the many men and women who, as sellers or buyers, use these circulations on countless occasions are also examined.

  Subject: Economic History

• December 2004

  A New Look At Thai Aids

  Perspectives from the Margin

  Fordham, G.

  Following the detection of the first HIV infections in the early 1980s, by the 1990s Thailand was routinely depicted as having the world’s fastest moving HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, by the early 2000’s the bulk of scholarly and medical AIDS literature portrayed the epidemic as being largely under control, and claimed that Thai AIDS prevention efforts during the 1990s had been successful. Based on long-term ethnographic research conducted in Northern Thailand this book makes an in-depth study of the social construction of Thailand’s HIV/AIDS epidemic over this period. In addition to his own field research the author draws on an extensive corpus of English and Thai language social science and medical HIV/AIDS literature to examine the modeling of Thailand’s AIDS epidemic, and addresses concepts and issues such as risk groups, risk behaviour, alcohol use, gender and class, masculinity, the scapegoating of female prostitutes and men in the underclass, the reporting of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Thailand’s indigenous Thai language media, and sexual activity amongst Thai youth. The analysis demonstrates the contribution of anthropology as an interpretative social science, and the use of anthropological theory and research methods, to finding alternative ways of framing the problems of Thai AIDS and of posing new questions that will lead to more effective points of intervention. It emphasises the necessity for critically reflexive approaches that question the ‘taken for granted’ and demonstrates how qualitative research techniques guided by social theory have the potential to take account of local meanings in complex social contexts where traditional values and cultural practices are rapidly transforming due to economic and social change. The book offers a sustained and powerful criticism of the limitations of the normative model of the Thai AIDS epidemic and, in its aim of promoting critically reflexive AIDS research techniques in order to produce a better understanding of issues ‘on the ground’ and hence better health policy and more effective AIDS interventions, speaks not only to the Thai AIDS epidemic but to AIDS epidemics throughout Southeast Asia and elsewhere.

  This is the only English language study of Thailand’s HIV/AIDS epidemic to draw on long-term qualitative research in Northern Thailand as well as on a broad range of Thai (and some Khmer language) materials. Its contextualised and subtly nuanced analysis of the AIDS epidemic and of the impact of AIDS control initiatives, in concert with the theoretical and methodological contributions it makes to AIDS research and policy and behavioural interventions, makes it a timely publication of vital interest to scholars in the social sciences, as well as to the members of non-governmental organisations and international organisations working in the HIV/AIDS, health and development fields.

  Subjects: Medical Anthropology Development Studies

• November 1996

  The Link with Nature and Divine Meditations in Asia

  Formoso, B. (ed)

  Peasant societies in many parts of the world regulate their relationship with the natural environment through earth gods who anchor a group of families not in genealogical terms, as in the case of ancestors, but in ecological terms. The articles in this volume illustrate the role of, and the cultural activities surrounding, the earth gods in rural communities in Asian societies. More specifically, they show that, within the Asian context, it is possible to differentiate between two modes representing the earth gods and the relationship with nature, i.e., one that corresponds to state societies and the other to tribal ones.

  Subjects: Environmental Studies Religion

• March 1997

  Regime Changes

  Macroeconomic Policy and Financial Regulation in Europe from the 1930s to the 1990s

  Forsyth, D. & Notermans, T. (eds)

  During the 1930s and 1940s, and again in the 1970s and 1980s, most European nations, indeed most industrial nations, undertook major changes in macroeconomic policy orientation and financial regulation. The contributors to this volume, historians, political scientists, and economists, identify the forces which drove these major policy shifts, and explore their implications for other areas of economic and social policy.

  Subject: 20th Century History

• eBook available March 2014

  Arab Spring

  Uprisings, Powers, Interventions

  Fosshagen, K. (ed)

  The events of the Arab Spring presented a dramatic reconstitution of politics and the public sphere through their aesthetic and performative uses of public space. Mass demonstrations have become a new global political form, grounded in the localization of globalizing processes, institutions, and relationships. This volume delves beneath the seemingly chaotic nature of events to explore the structural dynamics underpinning popular resistance and their support or suppression. It moves beyond what has usually been defined as Arab Spring nations to include critical views on Bahrain, the Palestinian territories, and Turkey. The research and analysis presented explores not just the immediate protests, but also the historical realization, appropriation, and even institutionalization of these critical voices, as well as the role of international criminal law and legal exceptionalism in authorizing humanitarian interventions. Above all, it questions whether the revolutions have since been hijacked and the broad popular uprisings already overrun, suppressed, or usurped by the upper classes.

  Subject: General Anthropology

• July 2009

  Encounter, Transformation, and Identity

  Peoples of the Western Cameroon Borderlands, 1891-2000

  Fowler, I. & Fanso, V. (eds)

  Bringing together key historical and innovative ethnographic materials on the peoples of the South-West Province of Cameroon and the Nigerian borderlands, this volume presents critical and analytical approaches to the production of ethnic, political, religious, and gendered identities in the region. The contributors examine a range of issues relating to identity, including first encounters and conflict as well as global networking, trans-national families, enculturation, gender, resistance, and death. In addition to a number of very striking illustrations of ethnographic and material culture, this volume contains key maps from early German sources and other original cartographical materials.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Colonialism

• July 1996

  African Crossroads

  Intersections between History and Anthropology in Cameroon

  Fowler, I. & Zeitlyn, D. (eds)

  Cameroon is characterized by an extraordinary geographical, cultural, and linguistic diversity. This collection of essays by eminent historians and anthropologists summarizes three generations of research in Cameroon that began with the collaboration of Phyllis Kaberry and E. M. Chilver soon after the Second World War and continues to this day. The idea for this book arose from a concern to recognize the continuing influence of E. M. Chilver on a wide variety of social, historical, political and economic studies. The result is a volume with a broad historical scope yet one that also focuses on major contemporary theoretical issues such as the meaning and construction of ethnic identities and the anthropological study of historical processes.

  For more information on this title and related publications, go to
  http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/Chilver/index.html

  Subjects: General Anthropology Colonialism

• eBook available June 2013

  Slavery and Antislavery in Spain's Atlantic Empire

  Fradera, J. M. & Schmidt-Nowara†, C. (eds)

  African slavery was pervasive in Spain’s Atlantic empire yet remained in the margins of the imperial economy until the end of the eighteenth century when the plantation revolution in the Caribbean colonies put the slave traffic and the plantation at the center of colonial exploitation and conflict. The international group of scholars brought together in this volume explain Spain’s role as a colonial pioneer in the Atlantic world and its latecomer status as a slave-trading, plantation-based empire. These contributors map the broad contours and transformations of slave-trafficking, the plantation, and antislavery in the Hispanic Atlantic while also delving into specific topics that include: the institutional and economic foundations of colonial slavery; the law and religion; the influences of the Haitian Revolution and British abolitionism; antislavery and proslavery movements in Spain; race and citizenship; and the business of the illegal slave trade.

  Subjects: Colonialism General History

• December 2002

  Tibetans in Nepal

  The Dynamics of International Assistance among a Community in Exile

  Frechette, A.

  Based on eighteen months of field research conducted in exile carpet factories, settlement camps, monasteries, and schools in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, as well as in Dharamsala, India and Lhasa, Tibet, this book offers an important contribution to the debate on the impact of international assistance on migrant communities. The author explores the ways in which Tibetan exiles in Nepal negotiate their norms and values as they interact with the many international organizations that assist them, and comes to the conclusion that, as beneficial as aid agency assistance often is, it also complicates the Tibetans' efforts to define themselves as a community.

  Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Development Studies

• eBook available August 2019

  In Search of European Liberalisms

  Concepts, Languages, Ideologies

  Freeden, M., Fernández-Sebastián, J. & Leonhard, J. (eds)

  Since the Enlightenment, liberalism as a concept has been foundational for European identity and politics, even as it has been increasingly interrogated and contested. This comprehensive study takes a fresh look at the diverse understandings and interpretations of the idea of liberalism in Europe, encompassing not just the familiar movements, doctrines, and political parties that fall under the heading of “liberal” but also the intertwined historical currents of thought behind them. Here we find not an abstract, universalized liberalism, but a complex and overlapping configuration of liberalisms tied to diverse linguistic, temporal, and political contexts.

  Subject: General History

• February 2014

  Silence, Screen, and Spectacle

  Rethinking Social Memory in the Age of Information

  Freeman, L. A., Nienass, B., & Daniell, R. (eds)

  In an age of information and new media the relationships between remembering and forgetting have changed. This volume addresses the tension between loud and often spectacular histories and those forgotten pasts we strain to hear. Employing social and cultural analysis, the essays within examine mnemonic technologies both new and old, and cover subjects as diverse as U.S. internment camps for Japanese Americans in WWII, the Canadian Indian Residential School system, Israeli memorial videos, and the desaparecidos in Argentina. Through these cases, the contributors argue for a re-interpretation of Guy Debord’s notion of the spectacle as a conceptual apparatus through which to examine the contemporary landscape of social memory, arguing that the concept of spectacle might be developed in an age seen as dissatisfied with the present, nervous about the future, and obsessed with the past. Perhaps now “spectacle” can be thought of not as a tool of distraction employed solely by hegemonic powers, but instead as a device used to answer Walter Benjamin’s plea to “explode the continuum of history” and bring our attention to now-time.

  Subjects: Media Studies General Cultural Studies Sociology

• July 2003

  Exiles From European Revolutions

  Refugees in Mid-Victorian England

  Freitag, S. & Muhs, R. (eds)

  Studies on exile in the 19th century tend to be restricted to national histories. This volume is the first to offer a broader view by looking at French, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Czech and German political refugees who fled to England after the European revolutions of 1848/49. The contributors examine various aspects of their lives in exile such as their opportunities for political activities, the forms of political cooperation that existed between exiles from different European countries on the one hand and with organizations and politicians in England on the other and, finally, the attitude of the host country towards the refugees, and their perceptions of the country which had granted them asylum.

  Subjects: 18th/19th Century History Refugee & Migration Studies

• March 2015

  Urban Violence in the Middle East

  Changing Cityscapes in the Transition from Empire to Nation State

  Freitag, U., Fuccaro, N., Ghrawi, C., & Lafi, N., (eds)

  Covering a period from the late eighteenth century to today, this volume explores the phenomenon of urban violence in order to unveil general developments and historical specificities in a variety of Middle Eastern contexts. By situating incidents in particular processes and conflicts, the case studies seek to counter notions of a violent Middle East in order to foster a new understanding of violence beyond that of a meaningless and destructive social and political act. Contributions explore processes sparked by the transition from empires — Ottoman and Qajar, but also European — to the formation of nation states, and the resulting changes in cityscapes throughout the region.

  Subjects: Urban Studies General History

• eBook available July 2014

  Nationalism and the Cinema in France

  Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945-1995

  Frey, H.

  It is often taken for granted that French cinema is intimately connected to the nation’s sense of identity and self-confidence. But what do we really know about that relationship? What are the nuances, insider codes, and hidden history of the alignment between cinema and nationalism? Hugo Frey suggests that the concepts of the ‘political myth’ and ‘the film event’ are the essential theoretical reference points for unlocking film history. Nationalism and the Cinema in France offers new arguments regarding those connections in the French case, examining national elitism, neo-colonialism, and other exclusionary discourses, as well as discussing for the first time the subculture of cinema around the extreme right Front National. Key works from directors such as Michel Audiard, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Marcel Pagnol, Jean Renoir, Jacques Tati, François Truffaut, and others provide a rich body of evidence.

  Subjects: Film Studies 20th Century History

• eBook available May 2013

  Postwall German Cinema

  History, Film History and Cinephilia

  Frey, M.

  Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there has been a proliferation of German historical films. These productions have earned prestigious awards and succeeded at box offices both at home and abroad, where they count among the most popular German films of all time. Recently, however, the country’s cinematic take on history has seen a significant new development: the radical style, content, and politics of the New German Cinema. With in-depth analyses of the major trends and films, this book represents a comprehensive assessment of the historical film in today’s Germany. Challenging previous paradigms, it takes account of a postwall cinema that complexly engages with various historiographical forms and, above all, with film history itself.

  Subjects: Film Studies General History

• eBook available July 2019

  Peace at All Costs

  Catholic Intellectuals, Journalists, and Media in Postwar Polish–German Reconciliation

  Frieberg, A. E.

  Although it was characterized by simmering international tensions, the early Cold War also witnessed dramatic instances of reconciliation between states, as former antagonists rebuilt political, economic, and cultural ties in the wake of the Second World War. And such efforts were not confined to official diplomacy, as this study of postwar rapprochement between Poland and West Germany demonstrates. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Peace at All Costs follows Polish and German non-state activists who attempted to establish dialogue in the 1950s and 1960s, showing how they achieved modest successes and media attention at the cost of more nuanced approaches to their national histories and identities.

  Subjects: Postwar History Peace & Conflict Studies

• eBook available July 2019

  PC Worlds

  Political Correctness and Rising Elites at the End of Hegemony

  Friedman, J.

  This provocative work offers an anthropological analysis of the phenomenon of political correctness, both as a general phenomenon of communication, in which associations in space and time take precedence over the content of what is communicated, and at specific critical historical conjunctures at which new elites attempt to redefine social reality. Focusing on the crises over the last thirty years of immigration and multiculturalist politics in Sweden, the book examines cases, some in which the author was himself involved, but also comparative material from other countries.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Media Studies

• eBook available July 2011

  Imagining the Post-Apartheid State

  An Ethnographic Account of Namibia

  Friedman, J. T.

  In northwest Namibia, people’s political imagination offers a powerful insight into the post-apartheid state. Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork, this book focuses on the former South African apartheid regime and the present democratic government; it compares the perceptions and practices of state and customary forms of judicial administration, reflects upon the historical trajectory of a chieftaincy dispute in relation to the rooting of state power and examines everyday forms of belonging in the independent Namibian State. By elucidating the State through a focus on the social, historical and cultural processes that help constitute it, this study helps chart new territory for anthropology, and it contributes an ethnographic perspective to a wider set of interdisciplinary debates on the State and state processes.

  Subjects: General Anthropology

• October 2001

  Germany and America

  Essays in Honor of Gerald R. Kleinfeld

  Friedrich, W.-U. (ed)

  Leading experts on German-American relations, German politics and German Studies from both sides of the Atlantic are contributing to this volume in honor of Gerry Kleinfeld, founder and executive director of the German Studies Association, founder and long-time editor of the German Studies Review. The essays cover a broad spectrum of German-American political, economic, and cultural relations, offering an up-to-date survey of recent developments in this highly topical field.

  Subject: General History

• December 2002

  Identities

  Time, Difference and Boundaries

  Friese, H. (ed)

  "Identity" has become a core concept of the social and cultural sciences. Bringing together perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and literary criticism, this book offers a comprehensive and critical overview on how this concept is currently used and how it relates to memory and constructions of historical meaning.

  Subjects: General History General Cultural Studies General Anthropology Sociology

• May 2013

  Homemade Men in Postwar Austrian Cinema

  Nationhood, Genre and Masculinity

  Fritsche, M.

  Despite the massive influx of Hollywood movies and films from other European countries after World War II, Austrian film continued to be hugely popular with Austrian and German audiences. By examining the decisive role that popular cinema played in the turbulent post-war era, this book provides unique insights into the reconstruction of a disrupted society. Through detailed analysis of the stylistic patterns, narratives and major themes of four popular genres of the time, costume film, Heimatfilm, tourist film and comedy, the book explains how popular cinema helped to shape national identity, smoothed conflicted gender relations and relieved the Austrians from the burden of the Nazi past through celebrating the harmonious, charming, musical Austrian man.

  Subjects: Film Studies General History Gender Studies

• October 2013

  Peripheral Vision

  Politics, Technology, and Surveillance

  Frois, C.

  In Portugal between 2005 and 2010, “modernization through technology” was the major political motto used to develop and improve the country’s peripheral and backward condition. This study reflects on one of the resulting, specific aspects of this trend—the implementation of public video surveillance. The in-depth ethnography provides evidence of how the political construction of security and surveillance as a strategic program actually conceals intricate institutional relationships between political decision-makers and common citizens. Essentially, the detailed account of the major actors, as well as their roles and motivations, serves to explain phenomena such as the confusion between objective data and subjective perceptions or the lack of communication between parties, which as this study argues, underlies the idiosyncrasies and fragilities of Portugal’s still relatively young democratic system.

  Subject: General Anthropology

• eBook available September 2018

  Travelling towards Home

  Mobilities and Homemaking

  Frost, N. & Selwyn, T. (eds)

  As we grapple with a growing refugee crisis, a hardening of anti-immigration sentiment, and deepening communal segregation in many parts of the developed world, questions of the nature of home and homemaking are increasingly critical. This collection brings ethnographic insight into the practices of homemaking, exploring a diverse range of contexts ranging from economic migrants to new Chinese industrial cities, Jewish returnees from Israel to Ukraine, and young gay South Asians in London. While negotiating widely varying social-political contexts, these studies suggest an unavoidably multiple understanding of home, while provoking new understandings of the material and symbolic process of making oneself “at home.”

  Subjects: General Anthropology General Mobility Studies

• February 2015

  Objects and Imagination

  Perspectives on Materialization and Meaning

  Fuglerud, Ø. & Wainwright, L. (eds)

  Despite the wide interest in material culture, art, and aesthetics, few studies have considered them in light of the importance of the social imagination - the complex ways in which we conceptualize our social surroundings. This collection engages the “material turn” in the arts, humanities, and social sciences through a range of original contributions on creativity in diverse global and contemporary social settings. The authors engage with everyday objects, art, rituals, and ethnographic exhibitions to analyze the relationship between material culture and the social imagination. What results is a better understanding of how the material embodies and influences our idea of the social world.

  Subjects: General Anthropology General Cultural Studies

• May 2015

  Imperial Projections

  Screening the German Colonies

  Fuhrmann, W.

  The beginning of filmmaking in the German colonies coincided with colonialism itself coming to a standstill. Scandals and economic stagnation in the colonies demanded a new and positive image of their value for Germany. By promoting business and establishing a new genre within the fast growing film industry, films of the colonies were welcomed by organizations such as the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society). The films triggered patriotic feelings but also addressed the audience as travelers, explorers, wildlife protectionists, and participants in unique cultural events. This book is the first in-depth analysis of colonial filmmaking in the Wilhelmine Era.

  Subjects: Film Studies Colonialism

• eBook available May 2009

  Power and Society in the GDR, 1961-1979

  The 'Normalisation of Rule'?

  Fulbrook, M. (ed)

  The communist German Democratic Republic, founded in 1949 in the Soviet-occupied zone of post-war Germany is, for many people, epitomized by the Berlin Wall; Soviet tanks and surveillance by the secret security police, the Stasi, appear to be central. But is this really all there is to the GDR¹s history? How did people come to terms with their situation and make new lives behind the Wall? When the social history of the GDR in the 1960s and 1970s is explored, new patterns become evident. A fragile stability emerged in a period characterized by 'consumer socialism', international recognition and détente. Growing participation in the micro-structures of power, and conformity to the unwritten rules of an increasingly predictable system, suggest increasing accommodation to dominant norms and conceptions of socialist 'normality'. By exploring the ways in which lower-level functionaries and people at the grass roots contributed to the formation and transformation of the GDR ­ from industry and agriculture, through popular sport and cultural life, to the passage of generations and varieties of social experience ­ the contributors collectively develop a more complex approach to the history of East Germany.

  Subject: Postwar History

• eBook available September 2013

  Becoming East German

  Socialist Structures and Sensibilities after Hitler

  Fulbrook, M. & Port, A. I. (eds)

  For roughly the first decade after the demise of the GDR, professional and popular interpretations of East German history concentrated primarily on forms of power and repression, as well as on dissent and resistance to communist rule. Socio-cultural approaches have increasingly shown that a single-minded emphasis on repression and coercion fails to address a number of important historical issues, including those related to the subjective experiences of those who lived under communist regimes. With that in mind, the essays in this volume explore significant physical and psychological aspects of life in the GDR, such as health and diet, leisure and dining, memories of the Nazi past, as well as identity, sports, and experiences of everyday humiliation. Situating the GDR within a broader historical context, they open up new ways of interpreting life behind the Iron Curtain – while providing a devastating critique of misleading mainstream scholarship, which continues to portray the GDR in the restrictive terms of totalitarian theory.
   

  Subject: Postwar History

• eBook available November 2013

  Japanese Tourism

  Spaces, Places and Structures

  Funck, C. & Cooper, M.

  The changing patterns of Japanese tourism and the views of the Japanese tourist since the Meiji Restoration, in 1868, are given an in-depth historical, geographical, economic and social analysis in this book. As well as providing a case study for the purpose of investigating the changing face of global tourism from the 19th to the 21st Century, this account of Japanese tourism explores both domestic social relations and international geographical, political and economic relations, especially in the northeast Asian context. Socio-cultural and geographical analysis form the research framework for the book, in three ways: first, there is an emphasis on scale as tourism phenomena and their implications are discussed both in a global context and at the national, regional and local levels; second, the discussion is informed by primary data sources such as censuses and surveys; and third, the incorporation of fieldwork and case studies adds concreteness to the overall picture of Japanese tourism. This book is a significant addition to an area of study currently under-represented in the literature.

  Subjects: Travel & Tourism Sociology

• November 2014

  Still Waiting for the Transformation

  Fusaro, C. & Kreppel, A. (eds)

  Italy in 2013 seemed to be continually on the cusp of substantive reform and forward motion, but never quite achieved it. The previous two years had seen the fall of the Berlusconi government and the beginning of the end of the Second Republic, followed by the predominance of technocrats in office. In contrast, 2013 proved to be a year of incomplete transitions, marked by a period during which the Italian political and institutional system reached a near complete stalemate. Grand coalitions were incapable of substantive decision-making, bold initiatives languished in the legislature, foreign policy actions faltered and failed, and the government showed a continued inability to effectively tackle the real economic and social issues that faced the country. Thus, in many ways, Italy has been muddling through as it did following the fall of the First Republic. Although some of the political developments that took place in the waning months of the year may prove to be the foundation for future momentous changes, it is very likely that 2014 will prove to be a further continuation of the seemingly endless transitional period in Italy.

  Subject: Postwar History