Polluted Promises

U.S. intervention in the Philippines began with the little-known 1899 Philippine-American War. Using the war as its departure point in analyzing U.S.—Philippine relations, Vestiges of War retrieves this willfully forgotten event and places it where it properly belongs—as the catalyst that led to increasing U.S. interventionism and expansionism in the Asia Pacific region. This seminal, multidisciplinary anthology examines the official American nationalist story of "benevolent assimilation" and fraternal tutelage in its half century of colonial occupation of the Philippines. Integrating critical and visual art essays, archival and contemporary photographs, dramatic plays, and poetry to address the complex Philippine and U.S. perspectives and experiences, the essayists compellingly recount the consequences of American colonialism in the Philippines. Vestiges of War will force readers to reshape their views on what has been a deliberately obscure but significant phase in the histories of both countries, one which continues to haunt the present. Contributors: Genara Banzon, Santiago Bose, Ben Cabrera, Renato Constantino, Doreen Fernandez, Eric Gamalinda, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Jessica Hagedorn, Reynaldo Ileto, Yong Soon Min, Manuel Ocampo, Paul Pfeiffer, Christina Quisumbing, Vicente Rafael, Daniel Boone Schirmer, Kidlat Tahimik, Mark Twain, and Jim Zwick.

Including suffragists, civil rights activists, and movers and shakers in politics and in the music industries of Nashville and Memphis, as well as many other notables, this collective portrait of Tennessee women offers new perspectives and insights into their dreams, their struggles, and their times. As rich, diverse, and wide-ranging as the topography of the state, this book will interest scholars, general readers, and students of southern history, women's history, and Tennessee history. Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times shifts the historical lens from the more traditional view of men's roles to place women and their experiences at center stage in the historical drama. The eighteen biographical essays, written by leading historians of women, illuminate the lives of familiar figures like reformer Frances Wright, blueswoman Alberta Hunter, and the Grand Ole Opry's Minnie Pearl (Sarah Colley Cannon) and less-well-known characters like the Cherokee Beloved Woman Nan-ye-hi (Nancy Ward), antebellum free black woman Milly Swan Price, and environmentalist Doris Bradshaw. Told against the backdrop of their times, these are the life stories of women who shaped Tennessee's history from the eighteenth-century challenges of western expansion through the nineteenth- and twentieth-century struggles against racial and gender oppression to the twenty-first-century battles with community degradation. Taken as a whole, this collection of women's stories illuminates previously unrevealed historical dimensions that give readers a greater understanding of Tennessee's place within environmental and human rights movements and its role as a generator of phenomenal cultural life.

Re-examining Mary Douglas' work on pollution and concepts of purity, this volume explores modern expressions of these themes in urban areas, examining the intersections of material and cultural pollution. It presents ethnographic case studies from a range of cities affected by globalization processes such as neoliberal urban policies, privatization of urban space, continued migration and spatialized ethnic tension. What has changed since the appearance of Purity and Danger? How have anthropological views on pollution changed accordingly? This volume focuses on cultural meanings and values that are attached to conceptions of 'clean' and 'dirty', purity and impurity, healthy and unhealthy environments, and addresses the implications of pollution with regard to discrimination, class, urban poverty, social hierarchies and ethnic segregation in cities.

The true story of an Alaska Native village destroyed by flooding and erosion caused by climate change—and how they fought for help. Warming Arctic temperatures have been making coastal areas of Alaska increasingly uninhabitable. In 2008, the small Alaska Native village of Kivalina filed a legal claim against some of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies for damaging their homeland and creating a false debate around climate change. Academic and former journalist Christine Shearer explores the history leading up to the lawsuit, its connections to disaster management and adaptation, and its relationship to past misinformation campaigns involving lead, asbestos, and tobacco. Kivalina’s struggle for safe relocation, the book argues, is part of our common struggle to acknowledge and address climate change before it is too late. 2012 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award (Honorable Mention) Praise for Kivalina “Moving, infuriating, ominous . . . . Shearer provides an impressively concise and comprehensive history of the growth of corporate power in America; its influence on, entwinement with, and corruption of government; [and] corporate obfuscation of industrial hazards.” —Publisher’s Weekly “Best book of 2011: one of the most timely and important books to be published in 2011—and in the past decade.” —Jeff Biggers, The Huffington Post “In novelistic detail, Shearer recounts the science, politics, legal battles, and human experience at one of the leading edges of climate change impact. In doing so, she . . . tells the story not just of one village in Alaska, but of us all.” —The Society of Environmental Journalists

Metaphors of Confinement: The Prison in Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy offers a historical survey of imaginings of the prison as expressed in carceral metaphors in a range of texts about imprisonment from Antiquity to the present as well as non-penal situations described as confining or restrictive. These imaginings coalesce into a 'carceral imaginary' that determines the way we think about prisons, just as social debates about punishment and criminals feed into the way carceral imaginary develops over time. Examining not only English-language prose fiction but also poetry and drama from the Middle Ages to postcolonial, particularly African, literature, the book juxtaposes literary and non-literary contexts and contrasts fictional and nonfictional representations of (im)prison(ment) and discussions about the prison as institution and experiential reality. It comments on present-day trends of punitivity and foregrounds the ethical dimensions of penal punishment. The main argument concerns the continuity of carceral metaphors through the centuries despite historical developments that included major shifts in policy (such as the invention of the penitentiary). The study looks at selected carceral metaphors, often from two complementary perspectives, such as the home as prison or the prison as home, or the factory as prison and the prison as factory. The case studies present particularly relevant genres and texts that employ these metaphors, often from a historical perspective that analyses development through different periods.

This book offers a comprehensive and current look at the complex relationship between anthropology and activism. Activism has become a vibrant research topic within anthropology. Many scholars now embrace their own roles as engaged social actors, which has compelled reflexive attention to the anthropology/activism intersection and its implications. With contributions by emerging scholars as well as leading activist anthropologists, this volume illuminates the diverse ways in which the anthropology/activism relationship is being navigated. Chapters touch on key areas including environment and extraction, food sustainability and security, migration and human rights, health disparities and healthcare access, class and gender identities and empowerment, and the defense of democracy. Case studies (drawn mainly from North America) encourage readers to think through their own experiences and expectations and will serve as durable documentation of how movements develop and change. This timely survey of the activist anthropological landscape is valuable reading in an era of widely perceived ecological and political crisis, where disinterested data collection increasingly appears to be a luxury that neither the discipline nor the world can afford.

Life without Lead examines the social, political, and environmental dimensions of a devastating lead poisoning epidemic. Drawing from a political ecology of health perspective, the book situates the Uruguayan lead contamination crisis in relation to neoliberal reform, globalization, and the resurgence of the political Left in Latin America. The author traces the rise of an environmental social justice movement, and the local and transnational circulation of environmental ideologies and contested science. Through fine-grained ethnographic analysis, this book shows how combating contamination intersected with class politics, explores the relationship of lead poisoning to poverty, and debates the best way to identify and manage an unprecedented local environmental health problem.

A Companion to Urban Anthropology BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY A Companion to Urban Anthropology “The city is becoming the basic currency of human – and non-human – life: a pile of interconnections which makes a series of difficult wholes. This volume navigates the anthropology of this medium with the greatest aplomb.” Nigel Thrift, University of Warwick A Companion to Urban Anthropology presents original essays on central concepts in urban anthropology and ethnography. Featuring contributions from more than 25 leading international scholars in urban studies, the readings cover a wide variety of topics. Each essay explores a key phenomenon and is grounded in the author’s original research along with findings of other urbanists. Classic issues such as built structures and urban planning, community, markets, and race lead to emergent areas of study including borders, sexualities, nature, extralegality, and resilience and sustainability. A Companion to Urban Anthropology offers revealing insights into the complex forces that continue to shape the urban experience.