Andrew Zimmerman
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226983417
- eISBN:
- 9780226983462
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226983462.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
With the rise of imperialism, the centuries-old European tradition of humanist scholarship as the key to understanding the world was jeopardized. Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century ...
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With the rise of imperialism, the centuries-old European tradition of humanist scholarship as the key to understanding the world was jeopardized. Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there that the battle lines of today's “culture wars” were first drawn when anthropology challenged humanism as a basis for human scientific knowledge. Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of “freak shows,” the author demonstrates how German imperialism opened the door to antihumanism. As Germans interacted more frequently with peoples and objects from far-flung cultures, they were forced to reevaluate not just those peoples, but also the construction of German identity itself. Anthropologists successfully argued that their discipline addressed these issues more productively—and more accessibly—than humanistic studies.Less
With the rise of imperialism, the centuries-old European tradition of humanist scholarship as the key to understanding the world was jeopardized. Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there that the battle lines of today's “culture wars” were first drawn when anthropology challenged humanism as a basis for human scientific knowledge. Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of “freak shows,” the author demonstrates how German imperialism opened the door to antihumanism. As Germans interacted more frequently with peoples and objects from far-flung cultures, they were forced to reevaluate not just those peoples, but also the construction of German identity itself. Anthropologists successfully argued that their discipline addressed these issues more productively—and more accessibly—than humanistic studies.
Andrew D. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226222677
- eISBN:
- 9780226222691
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226222691.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
Between 1914 and 1918, German anthropologists conducted their work in the midst of full-scale war. The discipline was relatively new in German academia when World War I broke out, and, as this book ...
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Between 1914 and 1918, German anthropologists conducted their work in the midst of full-scale war. The discipline was relatively new in German academia when World War I broke out, and, as this book reveals, its development was profoundly altered by the conflict. As the war shaped the institutional, ideological, and physical environment for anthropological work, the discipline turned its back on its liberal roots and became a nationalist endeavor primarily concerned with scientific studies of race. Combining intellectual and cultural history with the history of science, this book examines both the origins and consequences of this shift. Evans locates its roots in the decision to allow scientists access to prisoner-of-war camps, which prompted them to focus their research on racial studies of the captives. Caught up in wartime nationalism, a new generation of anthropologists began to portray the country's political enemies as racially different. After the war ended, the importance placed on racial conceptions and categories persisted, paving the way for the politicization of scientific inquiry in the years of the ascendancy of National Socialism.Less
Between 1914 and 1918, German anthropologists conducted their work in the midst of full-scale war. The discipline was relatively new in German academia when World War I broke out, and, as this book reveals, its development was profoundly altered by the conflict. As the war shaped the institutional, ideological, and physical environment for anthropological work, the discipline turned its back on its liberal roots and became a nationalist endeavor primarily concerned with scientific studies of race. Combining intellectual and cultural history with the history of science, this book examines both the origins and consequences of this shift. Evans locates its roots in the decision to allow scientists access to prisoner-of-war camps, which prompted them to focus their research on racial studies of the captives. Caught up in wartime nationalism, a new generation of anthropologists began to portray the country's political enemies as racially different. After the war ended, the importance placed on racial conceptions and categories persisted, paving the way for the politicization of scientific inquiry in the years of the ascendancy of National Socialism.
Derek Pardue
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039676
- eISBN:
- 9780252097768
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039676.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
Musicians rapping in Kriolu—a hybrid of Portuguese and West African languages spoken in Cape Verde—have recently emerged from Lisbon's periphery. They popularize the struggles with identity and ...
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Musicians rapping in Kriolu—a hybrid of Portuguese and West African languages spoken in Cape Verde—have recently emerged from Lisbon's periphery. They popularize the struggles with identity and belonging among young people in a Cape Verdean immigrant community that shares not only the Kriolu language but its culture and history. Drawing on fieldwork and archival research in Portugal and Cape Verde, this book introduces Lisbon's Kriolu rap scene and the role of rap music in challenging metropolitan Portuguese identities. It demonstrates that Cape Verde, while relatively small within the Portuguese diaspora, offers valuable lessons about the politics of experience and social agency within a postcolonial context that remains poorly understood. As the book argues, knowing more about both Cape Verdeans and the Portuguese invites clearer assessments of the relationship between the experience and policies of migration. That in turn allows us to better gauge citizenship as a balance of individual achievement and cultural ascription.Less
Musicians rapping in Kriolu—a hybrid of Portuguese and West African languages spoken in Cape Verde—have recently emerged from Lisbon's periphery. They popularize the struggles with identity and belonging among young people in a Cape Verdean immigrant community that shares not only the Kriolu language but its culture and history. Drawing on fieldwork and archival research in Portugal and Cape Verde, this book introduces Lisbon's Kriolu rap scene and the role of rap music in challenging metropolitan Portuguese identities. It demonstrates that Cape Verde, while relatively small within the Portuguese diaspora, offers valuable lessons about the politics of experience and social agency within a postcolonial context that remains poorly understood. As the book argues, knowing more about both Cape Verdeans and the Portuguese invites clearer assessments of the relationship between the experience and policies of migration. That in turn allows us to better gauge citizenship as a balance of individual achievement and cultural ascription.
Valery Tishkov
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520238879
- eISBN:
- 9780520930209
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520238879.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
This book illuminates one of the world's most troubled regions from the perspective of a Russian intellectual, examining the evolution of the war in Chechnya that erupted in 1994, and untangling the ...
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This book illuminates one of the world's most troubled regions from the perspective of a Russian intellectual, examining the evolution of the war in Chechnya that erupted in 1994, and untangling the myths, long-held resentments, and ideological manipulations which have fueled the crisis. In particular, it explores the key themes of nationalism and violence that feed the turmoil there, combining extensive interview material, historical perspectives, and deep local knowledge. The book sheds light on Chechnya in particular and on how secessionist conflicts can escalate into violent conflagrations in general.Less
This book illuminates one of the world's most troubled regions from the perspective of a Russian intellectual, examining the evolution of the war in Chechnya that erupted in 1994, and untangling the myths, long-held resentments, and ideological manipulations which have fueled the crisis. In particular, it explores the key themes of nationalism and violence that feed the turmoil there, combining extensive interview material, historical perspectives, and deep local knowledge. The book sheds light on Chechnya in particular and on how secessionist conflicts can escalate into violent conflagrations in general.
Loring M. Danforth and Riki Van Boeschoten
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226135984
- eISBN:
- 9780226136004
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226136004.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
At the height of the Greek Civil War in 1948, thirty-eight thousand children were evacuated from their homes in the mountains of northern Greece. The Greek Communist Party relocated half of them to ...
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At the height of the Greek Civil War in 1948, thirty-eight thousand children were evacuated from their homes in the mountains of northern Greece. The Greek Communist Party relocated half of them to orphanages in Eastern Europe, while their adversaries in the national government placed the rest in children’s homes elsewhere in Greece. A point of contention during the Cold War, this controversial episode continues to fuel tensions between Greeks and Macedonians and within Greek society itself. The authors present here a comprehensive study of the two evacuation programs and the lives of the children they forever transformed. Marshalling archival records, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork, they analyze the evacuation process, the political conflict surrounding it, the children’s upbringing, and their fates as adults cut off from their parents and their homeland. The authors also give voice to seven refugee children who poignantly recount their childhood experiences and heroic efforts to construct new lives in diaspora communities throughout the world. A corrective to previous historical accounts, the book is also a searching examination of the enduring effects of displacement on the lives of refugee children.Less
At the height of the Greek Civil War in 1948, thirty-eight thousand children were evacuated from their homes in the mountains of northern Greece. The Greek Communist Party relocated half of them to orphanages in Eastern Europe, while their adversaries in the national government placed the rest in children’s homes elsewhere in Greece. A point of contention during the Cold War, this controversial episode continues to fuel tensions between Greeks and Macedonians and within Greek society itself. The authors present here a comprehensive study of the two evacuation programs and the lives of the children they forever transformed. Marshalling archival records, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork, they analyze the evacuation process, the political conflict surrounding it, the children’s upbringing, and their fates as adults cut off from their parents and their homeland. The authors also give voice to seven refugee children who poignantly recount their childhood experiences and heroic efforts to construct new lives in diaspora communities throughout the world. A corrective to previous historical accounts, the book is also a searching examination of the enduring effects of displacement on the lives of refugee children.
Melissa Caldwell
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520262843
- eISBN:
- 9780520947870
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520262843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
This book is a lively account of dacha life and how Russians experience this deeply rooted tradition of the summer cottage amid the changing cultural, economic, and political landscape of ...
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This book is a lively account of dacha life and how Russians experience this deeply rooted tradition of the summer cottage amid the changing cultural, economic, and political landscape of postsocialist Russia. Simultaneously beloved and reviled, dachas wield a power that makes owning and caring for them an essential part of life. The book captures the their abiding traditions and demonstrates why Russians insist that these dwellings are key to understanding Russian life. It draws on literary texts as well as observations from dacha dwellers to highlight this enduring fact of Russian culture at a time when so much has changed. The book presents the dacha world in all its richness and complexity—a “good life” that draws inspiration from the natural environment in which it is situated.Less
This book is a lively account of dacha life and how Russians experience this deeply rooted tradition of the summer cottage amid the changing cultural, economic, and political landscape of postsocialist Russia. Simultaneously beloved and reviled, dachas wield a power that makes owning and caring for them an essential part of life. The book captures the their abiding traditions and demonstrates why Russians insist that these dwellings are key to understanding Russian life. It draws on literary texts as well as observations from dacha dwellers to highlight this enduring fact of Russian culture at a time when so much has changed. The book presents the dacha world in all its richness and complexity—a “good life” that draws inspiration from the natural environment in which it is situated.
John Cole and Eric Wolf
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520216815
- eISBN:
- 9780520922174
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520216815.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
This classic in the study of ethnicity, identity, and nation-building has a new introduction (on which Eric Wolf collaborated near the end of his life) that shows the continuing validity of the ...
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This classic in the study of ethnicity, identity, and nation-building has a new introduction (on which Eric Wolf collaborated near the end of his life) that shows the continuing validity of the book's approach to ethnography, ecology, culture, and politics. The chapters investigate two Alpine villages—the German-speaking community of St. Felix and Romance-speaking Tret—only a mile apart in the same mountain valley.Less
This classic in the study of ethnicity, identity, and nation-building has a new introduction (on which Eric Wolf collaborated near the end of his life) that shows the continuing validity of the book's approach to ethnography, ecology, culture, and politics. The chapters investigate two Alpine villages—the German-speaking community of St. Felix and Romance-speaking Tret—only a mile apart in the same mountain valley.
Susana Narotzky and Gavin Smith
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520245686
- eISBN:
- 9780520939011
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520245686.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
This historical and ethnographic study of the political economy of the Vega Baja region of Spain, one of the European Union's “Regional Economies,” takes up the question of how to understand the ...
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This historical and ethnographic study of the political economy of the Vega Baja region of Spain, one of the European Union's “Regional Economies,” takes up the question of how to understand the growing alienation ordinary working people feel in the face of globalization. Combining oral histories with a sophisticated and nuanced structural understanding of changing political economies, the chapters in this book examine the growing divide between government and its citizens in a region that has in the last four decades been transformed from a primarily agricultural economy into a primarily industrial one. Offering a form of ethnography appropriate for the study of suprastate polities and a globalized economy, the book contributes to our understanding of one region as well as the way we think about changing class relations, modes of production, and cultural practices in a newly emerging Europe. The chapters consider how phenomena such as the “informal economy” and “black market” are not marginal to the normal operation of state and economic institutions, but are intertwined with both.Less
This historical and ethnographic study of the political economy of the Vega Baja region of Spain, one of the European Union's “Regional Economies,” takes up the question of how to understand the growing alienation ordinary working people feel in the face of globalization. Combining oral histories with a sophisticated and nuanced structural understanding of changing political economies, the chapters in this book examine the growing divide between government and its citizens in a region that has in the last four decades been transformed from a primarily agricultural economy into a primarily industrial one. Offering a form of ethnography appropriate for the study of suprastate polities and a globalized economy, the book contributes to our understanding of one region as well as the way we think about changing class relations, modes of production, and cultural practices in a newly emerging Europe. The chapters consider how phenomena such as the “informal economy” and “black market” are not marginal to the normal operation of state and economic institutions, but are intertwined with both.
Lynne Haney
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520225718
- eISBN:
- 9780520936102
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520225718.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
This book offers a powerful, innovative analysis of welfare policies and practices in Hungary from 1948 to the last decade of the twentieth century. Using a compelling mix of archival, interview, and ...
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This book offers a powerful, innovative analysis of welfare policies and practices in Hungary from 1948 to the last decade of the twentieth century. Using a compelling mix of archival, interview, and ethnographic data, the book shows that three distinct welfare regimes succeeded one another during that period and that they were based on divergent conceptions of need. The welfare society of 1948–1968 targeted social institutions, the maternalist welfare state of 1968–1985 targeted social groups, and the liberal welfare state of 1985–1996 targeted impoverished individuals. Because they reflected contrasting conceptions of gender and of state-recognized identities, these three regimes resulted in dramatically different lived experiences of welfare. This book's approach bridges the gaps in scholarship that frequently separate past and present, ideology and reality, and state policies and local practices. A wealth of case histories gleaned from the archives of welfare institutions brings to life the interactions between caseworkers and clients and the ways they changed over time. In one of its most provocative findings, the book argues that female clients' ability to use the state to protect themselves in everyday life diminished over the fifty-year period. As the welfare system moved away from linking entitlement to clients' social contributions and toward their material deprivation, the welfare system, and those associated with it, became increasingly stigmatized and pathologized. With its focus on shifting inventions of the needy, this broad historical ethnography brings new insights to the study of welfare state theory and politics.Less
This book offers a powerful, innovative analysis of welfare policies and practices in Hungary from 1948 to the last decade of the twentieth century. Using a compelling mix of archival, interview, and ethnographic data, the book shows that three distinct welfare regimes succeeded one another during that period and that they were based on divergent conceptions of need. The welfare society of 1948–1968 targeted social institutions, the maternalist welfare state of 1968–1985 targeted social groups, and the liberal welfare state of 1985–1996 targeted impoverished individuals. Because they reflected contrasting conceptions of gender and of state-recognized identities, these three regimes resulted in dramatically different lived experiences of welfare. This book's approach bridges the gaps in scholarship that frequently separate past and present, ideology and reality, and state policies and local practices. A wealth of case histories gleaned from the archives of welfare institutions brings to life the interactions between caseworkers and clients and the ways they changed over time. In one of its most provocative findings, the book argues that female clients' ability to use the state to protect themselves in everyday life diminished over the fifty-year period. As the welfare system moved away from linking entitlement to clients' social contributions and toward their material deprivation, the welfare system, and those associated with it, became increasingly stigmatized and pathologized. With its focus on shifting inventions of the needy, this broad historical ethnography brings new insights to the study of welfare state theory and politics.
Heather Paxson
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520223714
- eISBN:
- 9780520937130
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520223714.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, European Cultural Anthropology
In Greece, women speak of mothering as “within the nature” of a woman. But this durable association of motherhood with femininity exists in tension with the highest incidence of abortion and one of ...
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In Greece, women speak of mothering as “within the nature” of a woman. But this durable association of motherhood with femininity exists in tension with the highest incidence of abortion and one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. In this setting, how do women think of themselves as proper individuals, mothers, and Greek citizens? In this anthropological study of reproductive politics and ethics in Athens, Greece, the text tracks the effects of increasing consumerism and imported biomedical family planning methods, showing how women's “nature” is being transformed to meet crosscutting claims of the contemporary world. Locating profound ambivalence in people's ethical evaluations of gender and fertility control, the book offers a far-reaching analysis of conflicting assumptions about what it takes to be a good mother and a good woman in modern Greece, where assertions of cultural tradition unfold against a backdrop of European Union integration, economic struggle, and national demographic anxiety over a falling birth rate.Less
In Greece, women speak of mothering as “within the nature” of a woman. But this durable association of motherhood with femininity exists in tension with the highest incidence of abortion and one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. In this setting, how do women think of themselves as proper individuals, mothers, and Greek citizens? In this anthropological study of reproductive politics and ethics in Athens, Greece, the text tracks the effects of increasing consumerism and imported biomedical family planning methods, showing how women's “nature” is being transformed to meet crosscutting claims of the contemporary world. Locating profound ambivalence in people's ethical evaluations of gender and fertility control, the book offers a far-reaching analysis of conflicting assumptions about what it takes to be a good mother and a good woman in modern Greece, where assertions of cultural tradition unfold against a backdrop of European Union integration, economic struggle, and national demographic anxiety over a falling birth rate.
Secrets from the Greek Kitchen
Royal Fever
National Ideology Under Socialism
Rationalizing Culture
