The Cultural Politics Of Fur

Emberley documents the 1980s confrontations between animal rights activists and native peoples that pitted Lynx, the organization responsible for the high-profile anti-fur ads in Great Britain, against Inuit and Dene societies' claims for a livelihood based on the selling and trading, consumption and production of animal fur. From colonial fur trading to twentieth-century globalization of the fur industry, Emberley analyzes the cultural, political, material, and libidinal values ascribed to fur.

Fur has been sparking controversies ever since sumptuary laws marked it as a luxury item & as a sign of medieval class privilege. Drawing on wide-ranging sources, Emberley explains how a material good has become both a symbol of wealth & sexuality, & a symptom of class, gender, & imperial antagonisms. Documents the 1980s confrontations between animal rights activists & native peoples. Shows that the fetishization of fur extends from early modern paintings & etchings to late 19th-cent. literary & psychoanalytical narratives of sexual fantasy, such as Venus in Furs.Ó Contemporary ads & fashion photos & films reveal the ongoing fetishistic practices of the fashion world. Analyzes the cultural, political, material, & libidinal values ascribed to fur. Illus.

The 'personal' was once something to be put to one side in the work place: a 'professional manner' entailed the suppression of private life and feelings. Now many large corporations can be found exhorting their employees to simply be themselves. This book critically investigates the increasing popularity of personal authenticity in corporate ideology and practice. Rather than have workers adhere to depersonalising bureaucratic rules or homogenous cultural norms, many large corporations now invite employees to simply be themselves. Alternative lifestyles, consumption, ethics, identity, sexuality, fun, and even dissent are now celebrated since employees are presumed to be more motivated if they can just be themselves. Does this freedom to express one's authenticity in the workplace finally herald the end of corporate control? To answer this question, the author places this concern with authenticity within a political framework and demonstrates how it might represent an even more insidious form of cultural domination. The book especially focuses on the way in which private and non-work selves are prospected and put to work in the firm. The ideas of Hardt and Negri and the Italian autonomist movement are used to show how common forms of association and co-operation outside of commodified work are the inspiration for personal authenticity. It is the vibrancy, energy and creativity of this non-commodified stratum of social life that managerialism now aims to exploit. Each chapter explores how this is achieved and highlights the worker resistance that is provoked as a result. The book concludes by demonstrating how the discourse of freedom underlying the managerial version of authenticity harbours potential for a radical transformation of the contemporary corporate form.

Emotions work to define who we are as well as shape what we do and this is no more powerfully at play than in the world of politics. Ahmed considers how emotions keep us invested in relationships of power, and also shows how this use of emotion could be crucial to areas such as feminist and queer politics. Debates on international terrorism, asylum and migration, as well as reconciliation and reparation, are explored through topical case studies. In this book the difficult issues are confronted head on. The Cultural Politics of Emotion is in dialogue with recent literature on emotions within gender studies, cultural studies, sociology, psychology and philosophy. Throughout the book, Ahmed develops a theory of how emotions work, and the effects they have on our day-to-day lives. New for this editionA substantial 15,000-word Afterword on 'Emotions and Their Objects' which provides an original contribution to the burgeoning field of affect studiesA revised BibliographyUpdated throughout.

More than an ancient means of transportation and trade, the canoe has come to be a symbol of Canada itself. In Canoe Nation, Bruce Erickson argues that the canoe's sentimental power has come about through a set of narratives that attempt to legitimize a particular vision of Canada that overvalues the nation's connection to nature. From Alexander Mackenzie to Grey Owl to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the canoe authenticates Canada's reputation as a tolerant, environmentalist nation, even when there is abundant evidence to the contrary. Ultimately, the stories we tell about the canoe need to be understood as moments in the ever-contested field of cultural politics.

A definitive account of one of the most dominant trends in recent historical writing, The Cultural Turn in U.S. History takes stock of the field at the same time as it showcases exemplars of its practice. The first of this volume’s three distinct sections offers a comprehensive genealogy of American cultural history, tracing its multifaceted origins, defining debates, and intersections with adjacent fields. The second section comprises previously unpublished essays by a distinguished roster of contributors who illuminate the discipline’s rich potential by plumbing topics that range from nineteenth-century anxieties about greenback dollars to confidence games in 1920s Harlem, from Shirley Temple’s career to the story of a Chicano community in San Diego that created a public park under a local freeway. Featuring an equally wide ranging selection of pieces that meditate on the future of the field, the final section explores such subjects as the different strains of cultural history, its relationships with arenas from mass entertainment to public policy, and the ways it has been shaped by catastrophe. Taken together, these essays represent a watershed moment in the life of a discipline, harnessing its vitality to offer a glimpse of the shape it will take in years to come.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Jews on trial concentrates on Inquisitorial activity during the period which historians have argued was the most active in the Inquisition's history: the first forty years of the tribunal in Modena, from 1598 to 1638, the year of the Jews' enclosure in the ghetto.Scholars have in the past tended to group trials of Jews and conversos in Italy together. This book emphasises the fundamental disparity in Inquisitorial procedure, as well as the evidence examined, and argues that this was especially true in Modena where the secular authority did not have the power during the period in question to reject, or even significantly monitor, Inquisitorial trial procedure. It draws upon the detailed testimony to be found in trial transcripts to analyse Jewish interaction with Christian society in an early modern community.This book will appeal to scholars of inquisitorial studies, social and cultural interaction in early modern Europe, Jewish Italian social history and anti-Semitism.