|
Recent Faculty Books
Rogers Brubaker, Margit Feischmidt, Jon Fox, and Liana Grancea
Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town
Princeton University Press, 2006
For more information:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8312.html
Situated on the margins of two nations, yet imagined as central to each,
Transylvania has long been a site of nationalist struggles. Since the fall of communism, these struggles
have been particularly intense in Cluj, Transylvania’s cultural and political center.
Yet heated nationalist rhetoric has evoked only muted popular response.
The citizens of Cluj—the Romanian-speaking majority and the Hungarian-speaking minority—have been
largely indifferent to the nationalist claims made in their names.
Based on seven years of field research, this book examines not only
the sharply polarized fields of nationalist politics—in Cluj, Transylvania, and the wider region—but
also the more fluid terrain on which ethnicity and nationhood are experienced, enacted, and understood in everyday life. In doing so the book addresses fundamental questions about ethnicity: where it is, when it matters, and how it works. Bridging conventional divisions of academic labor, Brubaker and his collaborators employ perspectives seldom found together: historical and ethnographic, institutional and interactional, political and experiential. Developing further the argument of Brubaker's Ethnicity without Groups, this book demonstrates that it is ultimately in and through everyday experience—as much as in political contestation or cultural articulation—that ethnicity and nationhood are produced and reproduced as basic categories of social and political life.
Rogers Brubaker
Ethnicity without Groups
Harvard University Press, 2004
For more information:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/BRUETH.html
Despite a quarter-century of constructivist theorizing in the social sciences and humanities,
ethnic groups continue to be conceived as entities and cast as actors. Journalists, policymakers, and researchers
routinely frame accounts of ethnic, racial, and national conflict as the struggles of internally homogeneous,
externally bounded ethnic groups, races, and nations.
In doing so, they unwittingly adopt the language of participants in such struggles, and
contribute to the reification of ethnic groups.
The essays in this study challenge this pervasive and commonsense "groupism."
But they do not simply revert to standard constructivist tropes about the fluidity and
multiplicity of identity. Once a bracing challenge to the conventional wisdom,
constructivism has grown complacent, even clichéd. That ethnicity is constructed is commonplace;
this volume provides new insights into how it is constructed. By shifting the analytical focus from identity to identifications, from groups as entities to group-making projects, from shared culture to categorization and classification, from substances to processes, this book argues that ethnicity, race, and nation are not things in the world but perspectives on the world: ways of seeing, interpreting, and representing the social world.
Stefan Timmermans
POSTMORTEM: How Medical Examiners Explain Suspicious Deaths
The University of Chicago Press, 2006
As elected coroners came to be replaced by medical examiners with
scientific training, the American public became fascinated with their
work. From the grisly investigations showcased on highly rated
television shows like C.S.I. to the bestselling mysteries that revolve
around forensic science, medical examiners have never been so visibleor
compelling. They, and they alone, solve the riddle of suspicious death
and the existential questions that come with it. Why did someone die?
Could it have been prevented? Should someone be held accountable? What
are the implications of ruling a death a suicide, a homicide, or an
accident? Can medical examiners unmask the perfect crime? Postmortem
goes deep inside the world of medical examiners to uncover the intricate
web of pathological, social, legal, and moral issues in which they
operate. Stefan Timmermans spent years in a medical examiner’s office,
following cases, interviewing examiners, and watching autopsies. While
he relates fascinating cases here, he is also more broadly interested in
the cultural authority and responsibilities that come with being a
medical examiner. Although these professionals attempt to remain
objective, medical examiners are nonetheless responsible for evaluating
subtle human intentions. Consequently, they may endor startcriminal
investigations, issue public health alerts, and even cause financial
gain or harm to survivors. How medical examiners speak to the living on
behalf of the dead, is Timmermans’s subject, revealed here in the
day-to-day lives of the examiners themselves.
Ruben Hernandez-Leon
New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States
Mexican immigration to the United States the oldest and largest immigration movement to this country is in the midst of a fundamental transformation. For decades, Mexican immigration was primarily a border phenomenon, confined to Southwestern states. But legal changes in the mid-1980s paved the way for Mexican migrants to settle in parts of America that had no previous exposure to people of Mexican heritage. New Destinations is the first scholarly assessment of Mexican migrants experience in the Midwest, Northeast, and deep South the latest settlement points for Americans largest immigrant group. This book brings together an inter-disciplinary team of scholars to examine demographic, social, cultural, and political changes in areas where the incorporation of Mexican migrants has deeply changed the preexisting ethnic landscape. This volume provides a starting point for scholarship on the new Mexican migration.
Cameron Campbell,
Life Under Pressure
MIT Press, 2004
This highly original book by Cameron Campbell and his collaborators -- the first in a series analyzing
historical population behavior in Europe and Asia -- pioneers a new approach to the comparative analysis of
societies in the past. Using techniques of event history analysis, the authors examine 100,000 life histories in
100 rural communities in Western Europe and Asia to analyze the demographic response to social and economic
pressures. In doing so they challenge the accepted Eurocentric
Malthusian view of population processes and demonstrate that population behavior has not been as uniform as
previously thought -- that it has often been determined by human agency, particularly social structure and
cultural practice.
The authors examine the complex relationship between human behavior and social and economic environment,
analyzing age, gender, family, kinship, social class and social organization, climate, food prices, and real
wages to compare mortality responses to adversity. Their research at the individual, household, and community
levels challenges the previously accepted characterizations of social and economic behavior in Europe and Asia
in the past. The originality of the analysis as well as the geographic breadth and historical depth of the data
make Life Under Pressure a significant advance in the field of historical demography. Its findings will be of
interest to scholars in economics, environmental studies, demography, history, and sociology as well as the
general reader interested in these subjects.
For more information: http://mitpress.mit.edu/
Cesar Ayala,
American Sugar Kingdom
University of North Carolina Press, Fall/Winter 1999
Engaging conventional arguments that the persistence of plantations is the cause of economic underdevelopment in
the Caribbean, this book focuses on the discontinuities in the development of plantation economies in Cuba,
Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic in the early twentieth century. César Ayala analyzes and compares the
explosive growth of sugar production in the three nations following the War of 1898--when the U.S. acquired Cuba
and Puerto Rico--to show how closely the development of the Spanish Caribbean's modern economic and social class
systems is linked to the history of the U.S. sugar industry during its greatest period of expansion and
consolidation.
Ayala examines patterns of investment and principal groups of investors, interactions between U.S. capitalists
and native planters, contrasts between new and old regions of sugar monoculture, the historical formation of the
working class on sugar plantations, and patterns of labor migration. In contrast to most studies of the Spanish
Caribbean, which focus on only one country, his account places the history of U.S. colonialism in the region,
and the history of plantation agriculture across the region, in comparative perspective.
For more information: http://uncpress.unc.edu
Duane Champagne
Native American Studies in Higher Education: Models for Collaboration between Universities and Indigenous
Nations
Altamira Press, 2002
In this collection, Champagne and Stauss demonstrate how the rise of Native studies in American and Canadian
universities exists as an extraordinary achievement in higher education. In the face of historically
assimilationist agendas, institutional racism, and structural opposition by Western educational institutions,
collaborative programs continue to grow and promote the values and goals of sovereign tribal communities. The
contributors show how many departments grew significantly following the landmark 1969 Senate report, "Indian
Education: A National Tragedy, A National Challenge." They evaluate the university efforts to offer Native
students intellectual and technical skills, and the long battle to represent Native cultures and world views in
the university curriculum. In twelve case studies, Indian and non-Indian teachers provide rich, contextual
histories of their programs through three decades of growth. They frankly discuss successes and failures as
innovative strategies and models are tested. Programs from University of California-Davis, Harvard,
Saskatchewan, Arizona and others provide detailed analyses of academic battles over curriculum content, the
marginalization of indigenous faculty and students, the pedagogical implications of integrating native
instructors, the vagaries of administrative support and funding, Native student retention, the vulnerability of
native language programs, and community collaborations. A vision of Indian education that emerges from these
pages that reveals the university's potential as a vehicle for Indian nation-building, one in which the
university curriculum also benefits from sustained contacts with tribal communities. As Native populations grow
and the demand for university training increases, this book will be a valuable resource for Native American
leaders, educators in Native American studies, race and ethnic studies, comparative education, minorities in
education, anthropology, sociology, higher education administration and educational policy.
For more information: http://www.altamirapress.com
Steve Clayman, John Heritage
The News Interview
Cambridge University Press, July 2002
The news interview has become a major vehicle for presenting broadcast news and political commentary, and a
primary interface between the institutions of journalism and government. This much-needed work examines the
place of the news interview in Anglo-American society and considers its historical development in the United
States and Britain. The main body of the book discusses the fundamental norms and conventions that shape conduct
in the modern interview. It explores the particular recurrent practices through which journalists balance
competing professional norms that encourage both objective and adversarial treatment of public figures. Through
analyses of well-known interviews, the book explores the relationship between journalists and public figures and
also how, in the face of aggressive questioning, politicians and other public figures struggle to stay ‘on
message’ and pursue their own agendas. This comprehensive and wide-ranging book will be essential reading for
students and researchers in sociolinguistics, media and communication studies.
For more information: http://titles.cambridge.org
Adrian Favell
Philosophies of Integration
Palgrave, May 2001
A comprehensive comparative study of the distinct ideas and political arguments that have shaped French and
British policies towards their ethnic minorities, and the effects of these intellectual frameworks at local,
national and European levels. Charting the politics and events that brought the respective institutional
solutions together, the author sets out the divergent conceptualisations of citizenship, nationality, pluralism,
autonomy, public order and tolerance that make up the national 'philosophies' in the two countries - republican
integration in France and multicultural race relations in Britain. This new edition, published in paperback,
contains a new preface bringing the volume up-to-date in the light of new legislation and progress.
For more information: http://www.palgrave.com
David J. Halle
New York and Los Angeles
University of Chicago Press, Spring 2003
This volume presents advanced studies that consider this fundamental difference between New York and Los Angeles
while comparing and contrasting politics and culture in each region. An esteemed group of contributors from a
wide variety of disciplines considers issues that include immigration, the effects of race and class on
residence, the efficacy of public schools, the value of welfare reform, the meaning of mayoral politics, the
function of charter reform, and the respective roles of the cinema and art scenes in each city.
For more information: http://www.press.uchicago.edu
Darnell Hunt
O.J. Simpson Facts and Fictions
Cambridge University Press, April 199
Abundant popular discourses surround the O. J. Simpson double murder case. By contrast, Darnell M. Hunt
scrutinizes these very discourses in order to further our understanding of the interests underlying them.
Exploring the relationships between O. J.’s trial, the social location of television viewers (their race, gender
and class) and everyday consciousness of social issues, his textual and audience analyses consider the
incredible allure of the trial as ‘media event’. Looking beyond the obvious explanations of celebrity, scandal
and voyeurism, Dr Hunt asks: why was America so obsessed by this case? why were so many people intertested in
particular outcomes? and what are we to make of the apparent racial divide in attitudes about the case, as shown
in the opinion polls? O. J. Simpson Facts and Fictions incorporates insights from sociology and cultural studies
to examine the implications for race relations in the United States at the dawn of the new millennium.
For more information: http://titles.cambridge.org
Susan Gal and Gail Kligman
Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics and Everyday Life After Socialism
Princeton University Press, 2000
The striking fact that abortion was among the first issues raised, after 1989, by almost all of the newly formed
governments of East Central Europe points to the significance of gender and reproduction in the postsocialist
transformations. The fourteen studies in this volume result from a comparative, collaborative research project
on the complex relationship between ideas and practices of gender, and political economic change. The book
presents detailed evidence about women's and men's new circumstances in eight of the former communist countries,
exploring the intersection of politics and the life cycle, the differential effects of economic restructuring,
and women's public and political participation. Individual contributions on the former German Democratic
Republic, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria provide rich empirical
data and interpretive insights on postsocialist transformation analyzed from a gendered perspective. Drawing on
multiple methods and disciplines, these original papers advance scholarship in several fields, including
anthropology, sociology, women's studies, law, comparative political science, and regional studies. The analyses
make clear that practices of gender, and ideas about the differences between men and women, have been crucial in
shaping the broad social changes that have followed the collapse of communism.
For more information: http://pup.princeton.edu
Susan Gal and Gail Kligman
The Politics of Gender After Socialism
Princeton University Press. 2000
With the collapse of communism, a new world seemed to open for the peoples of East Central Europe. The
possibilities this world presented, and the costs it exacted, have been experienced differently by men and
women. Susan Gal and Gail Kligman explore these differences through a probing analysis of the role of gender in
reshaping politics and social relations since 1989.
The authors raise two crucial questions: How are gender relations and ideas about gender shaping political and
economic change in the region? And what forms of gender inequality are emerging as a result? The book provides a
rich understanding of gender relations and their significance in social and institutional transformations. Gal
and Kligman offer a systematic comparison of East Central European gender relations with those of western
welfare states, and with the presocialist, bourgeois past. Throughout this essay, the authors attend to
historical comparisons as well as cross regional interactions and contrasts. Their work contributes importantly
to the study of postsocialism, and to the broader feminist literature that critically examines how states and
political-economic processes are gendered, and how states and markets regulate gender relations.
For more information: http://pup.princeton.edu
Katz, Jack
How Emotions Work
The University of Chicago Press, 1999
Many of the ways in which we express and react to emotions make very little sense. From the tears that mark both
the best and worst moments in our lives to the rages sparked by the most trivial of traffic annoyances, emotions
surprise us-they lead us to act in ways contrary to our better judgment, and they always seem to lie just beyond
our control. In How Emotions Work, Jack Katz observes situations ranging from a criminal's interrogation-room
breakdown to a child's temper tantrum, and offers new approaches to understanding our emotions, their sources,
and the behavior they lead to, all with unprecedented clarity.
For more information, http://www.press.uchicago.edu/
Ivan Light
Ethnic Economies
Academic Press, 2000
The phenomenon of increasingly visible groups of immigrant entrepreneurs raises a host of questions. What are
the causes of immigrant entrepreneurship? What are its consequences, especially as regards upward mobility and
inter-ethnic relations? And what accounts for differences in entrepreneurship among ethnic groups? Ethnic
Economies provides a broad overview of ethnicity and entrepreneurship, connecting it with broader studies of
economic life.
For more information, www.books.elsevier.com
David Lopez
Latinos and Public Policy in California: An Agenda for Opportunity
Berkeley Public Policy Press
Despite California's Mexican origins, the Mexican/Latino presence represented no more than three percent of the
state's population at the beginning of the 20th century. While this presence grew slowly but steadily during the
state's postwar population boom, in the last three decades of the 20th century Latinos emerged as the most
dynamic sector of the state's population. In the 1990s Latinos accounted for 85 percent of all population growth
in the state. Currently Latinos are one-third of the population and the largest ethnic group among the state's
school children. If these demographic trends continue, Latinos will become the absolute majority of the state's
population before the middle of this century.
For more information, www.igs.berkeley.edu Michael
Mann
Incoherent Empire
Verso Books, 200
In this book noted sociologist Michael Mann argues that the “new American imperialism” is actually a new
militarism that will bring disaster to the US and the world.
The US is a military giant, better at devastating than pacifying countries. It is politically schizophrenic,
split between multilateralism, unilateralism, and an actual inability to rule over foreign lands or control its
own supposed client states. It is only a back-seat driver of the global economy, not steering but prodding
poorer countries toward an unproductive and unpopular neoliberalism. Finally, it is an ideological phantom,
proclaiming attractive values of freedom, democracy, and material plenty to the world, which its militarism
brutally contradicts.
Dissecting the military, economic, and political resources of the US, Mann concludes they are so lacking in
comparison to earlier empires, and so uneven, as to generate only an incoherent empire and increasing world
disorder.
For more information, www.versobooks.com
Ruth Milkman
Organizing Immigrants: The Challenge for Unions in Contemporary California
Cornell Univ. Press, 2000
Recruiting the growing numbers of immigrants into union ranks is imperative for the besieged U.S. labor
movement. Nowhere is this task more pressing than in California, where immigrants make up a quarter of the
population and hold many of the manual jobs that were once key strongholds of organized labor. The first book to
offer in-depth coverage of this timely topic, Organizing Immigrants analyzes the recent history of and prospects
for union organizing among foreign-born workers in the nation’s most populous state.
For more information: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu
William Roy
Making Societies: The Historical Construction of the World We Live In
Pine Forge Press, 2001
The only book written for undergraduates about the social construction of reality that is also historical and
comparative. In addition, it includes chapters on the social construction of time and space, as well as the more
traditional chapters on race, class, and gender.
- This book shows how these social constructions of time, space, race, gender and class intersect with each
other to produce particular social phenomena that are enduring and significant for our society. No other book
for undergraduate teaching has ever done this … this is a real first!
For more information: http://www.pineforge.com Abigail Saguy
What is Sexual Harassment? From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne.
University of California Press. 2003.
In France, a common notion is that the shared interests of graduate students and their professors could lead to
intimate sexual relations, and that regulations curtailing those relationships would be both futile and
counterproductive. By contrast, many universities and corporations in the United States prohibit sexual
relationships across hierarchical lines and sometimes among coworkers, arguing that these liaisons should have
no place in the workplace. In this age of globalization, how do cultural and legal nuances translate? And when
they differ, how are their subtleties and complexities understood? In comparing how sexual harassment--a concept
that first emerged in 1975--has been defined differently in France and the United States, Abigail Saguy explores
not only the social problem of sexual harassment but also the broader cultural concerns of cross-national
differences and similarities.
For more information: http://www.ucpress.edu/books
Roger Waldinger
How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor (with Michael Lichter)
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
How the Other Half Works solves the riddle of America's contemporary immigration puzzle: why an increasingly
high-tech society has use for so many immigrants who lack the basic skills that today's economy seems to demand.
In clear and engaging style, Waldinger and Lichter isolate the key factors that explain the presence of
unskilled immigrants in our midst. Focusing on Los Angeles, the capital of today's immigrant America, this
hard-hitting book elucidates the other side of the new economy, showing that hiring is finding not so much
"one's own kind" but rather the "right kind" to fit the demeaning, but indispensable, jobs many American workers
disdain.
For more information: http://www.ucpress.edu
Strangers at the Gates: New Immigrants in Urban America
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001
This book stresses the crucial importance of understanding that immigration today is fundamentally urban and the
equally important fact that immigrants are now flocking to places where low-skilled workers--regardless of
ethnic background--are in particular trouble. These two themes are at the heart of this book, which also covers
a range of provocative topics, often with surprising findings. Among the essayists, Nelson Lim enters the
controversy over whether and how immigrants affect the employment prospects for African Americans; Mark Ellis
investigates whether low immigrant wages depress other workers' salaries; William A.V. Clark contends that
immigrants seem to be experiencing downward mobility; and Min Zhou asserts that trends among second-generation
immigrants are decidedly more optimistic.
These well-integrated and well-organized essays sit squarely at the intersection of sociology and economics, and
along the way they point out both the strengths and the weaknesses of these two disciplines in understanding
immigration. Providing a theoretically and empirically comprehensive overview of the economic fate of immigrants
in major American cities, this book will make a major contribution to debates over immigration and the American
future.
For more information: http://www.ucpress.edu
Andreas Wimmer
Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflicts. Shadows of Modernity
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Andreas Wimmer argues that nationalist and ethnic politics have shaped modern societies to a far greater extent
than has been acknowledged by social scientists. The modern state governs in the name of a people defined in
ethnic and national terms. Democratic participation, equality before the law and protection from arbitrary
violence were offered only to the ethnic group in a privileged relationship with the emerging nation-state.
Depending on circumstances, the dynamics of exclusion took on different forms. Where nation building was
‘successful’, immigrants and ‘ethnic minorities’ are excluded from full participation; they risk being targets
of xenophobia and racism. In weaker states, political closure proceeded along ethnic, rather than national lines
and leads to corresponding forms of conflict and violence. In chapters on Mexico, Iraq and Switzerland, Wimmer
provides extended case studies that support and contextualise this argument.
For more information: http://titles.cambridge.org
Andreas Wimmer
et al. (eds.).
Facing Ethnic Conflicts: Toward a New Realism
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc 2004
Ethnic conflict is the major form of mass political violence in the
world today, and it has been since World War II. Dramatic acts of
terrorism and calculated responses to them may distract the attention of
policymakers and the public, but ethnic and nationalist conflict
continues to pose the greatest challenge to peace and security across
the globe. Causes of such conflict and ideas about how to address it are
hotly debated in the literature that has emerged over the past fifteen
years.
This volume offers a unique overview of research and policy approaches
to ethnic conflicts. It is the first book to bring together experienced
policymakers and key scholars from all disciplines. They debate how to
best understand the rise and escalation of ethnic conflict, assess
different strategies for peacemaking, mediation, and reconciliation, and
evaluate the prospects for conflict management through institutional
design.
In contrast with a more enthusiastic assessment of the willingness and
capacity to successfully intervene in ethnic conflict, this volume
documents the new realism that has emerged over the past decade. It
recognizes the complex and protracted nature of such conflicts and
demands a multifaceted, case-by-case approach sustained by long-term
political engagement.
For more information:
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Maurice Zeitlin, Judith Stepan-Norris
Left Out: Reds and America's Industrial Unions (with Judith Stepan-Norris)
Cambridge University Press, 2003
This study discusses the legacy of the Communists in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) from the
1930s through the 1950s. How did the Communists win and hold power in the CIO unions, and what did they do with
it once they had it? Did they subordinate the needs of workers to those of the Soviet regime? Stepan-Norris and
Zeitlin find that Communists were more egalitarian and most progressive on class, race and gender issues. They
were also leading fighters in exemplary workplace struggles to enlarge the freedom and enhance the human dignity
of America's workers.
For more information: http://titles.cambridge.org
Min Zhou
Contemporary Asian America: A Multidisciplinary Reader
New York University Press, 2002
The edited volume attempts to provide an introductory Asian American Studies reader for undergraduate education.
It focuses on issues and trends, evolving from "classic" themes and research and predominating Asian American
Studies today. In doing so, we seek to ground students with a larger theoretical orientation to the discipline,
exposing them not only to those readings fundamental to their understanding of Asian American Studies, but also
to development of the Asian American Studies project over time. More importantly, we want to make the reader
reflexive (and personally meaningful), showing students how the central concerns of the discipline have changed
as contemporary immigration has redefined the field over the last forty years and as newer generations of Asian
Americans have come of age and redefined the concerns facing them in contemporary American society.
For more information: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/zhou/book3.htm
|
