Bøger i The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues serien

Anthropologist Carol J. Greenhouse offers an ethnographic study of attitudes toward conflict and law in a predominantly white, middle-class, suburban, principally Southern Baptist community.

What happens when persons of several Latin American national groups reside in the same neighborhood- Milagros Ricourt and Ruby Danta consider the stories of women of different nationalities-Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Puerto Rican, Uruguayan, and others-who live together in Corona, a working-class neighborhood in Queens. Corona has long been an arrival point for immigrants and is now made up predominantly of Spanish-speaking immigrants from the Caribbean and South and Central America, with smaller numbers from Asia, Africa, and Europe. There are also long-established populations of white Americans, mainly of Italian origin, and African Americans.The authors find that the new pan-Latin American community in Corona has emerged from the interactions of everyday living. Hispanas de Queens focuses on the places where women gather in Corona-bodegas, hospitals, schoolyards, and Roman Catholic and Protestant churches-to show how informal alliances arise from proximity.Ricourt and Danta document how a group of leaders, mainly women, consciously promoted this strong sense of community to build panethnic organizations and a Latino political voice. Hispanas de Queens shows how a new group identity-Hispanic or Latino-is formed without replacing an individual's identification as an immigrant from a particular country. Instead, an additional identity is created and can be mobilized by pan-Latino leaders and organizations.

Lord I'm Coming Home focuses on a small, white, rural fishing community on the southern reaches of the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina. By means of a new kind of anthropological fieldwork, John Forrest seeks to document the entire aesthetic experience of a group of people, showing the aesthetic to be an "e;everyday experience and not some rarefied and pure behavior reserved for an artistic elite."e;The opening chapter of the book is a vivid fictional narrative of a typical day in "e;Tidewater,"e; presented from the perspective of one fisherman. In the following two chapters the author sets forth the philosophical and anthropological foundations of his book, paying particular attention to problems of defining "e;aesthetic,"e; to methodological concerns, and to the natural landscape of his field site. Reviewing his own experience as both participant and observer, he then describes in scrupulous detail the aesthetic forms in four areas of Tidewater life: home, work, church, and leisure. People use these forms, Forrest shows, to establish personal and group identities, facilitate certain kinds of interactions while inhibiting others, and cue appropriate behavior. His concluding chapter deals with the different life cycles of men and women, insider-outsider relations, secular and sacred domains, the image and metaphor of "e;home,"e; and the essential role that aesthetics plays in these spheres. The first ethnography to evoke the full aesthetic life of a community, Lord I'm Coming Home will be important reading not only for anthropologists but also for scholars and students in the fields of American studies, art, folklore, and sociology.

By focusing on the social and cultural life of post-1965 Taiwan immigrants in Queens, New York, this book shifts Chinese American studies from ethnic enclaves to the diverse multiethnic neighborhoods of Flushing and Elmhurst. As Hsiang-shui Chen documents, the political dynamics of these settlements are entirely different from the traditional closed Chinese communities; the immigrants in Queens think of themselves as living in "e;worldtown,"e; not in a second Chinatown. Drawing on interviews with members of a hundred households, Chen brings out telling aspects of demography, immigration experience, family life, and gender roles, and then turns to vivid, humanistic portraits of three families. Chen also describes the organizational life of the Chinese in Queens with a lively account of the power struggles and social interactions that occur within religious, sports, social service, and business groups and with the outside world.

Providing an informed account of change and continuity in one town, Dismantling Apartheid is a compelling preview of future social relations in South Africa....

This volume brings together nine conceptual and theoretical essays by the influential anthropologist, Anthony Leeds (1925-1989), whose pioneering work in the anthropology of complex societies was built on formative personal and research experiences in both urban and rural settings in the US, Brazil, Venezuela, and Portugal.

Offering concrete suggestions for improving the quality of nursing-home life, Uneasy Endings will find a broad audience among those who work with the aged.

Many indigenous Hawaiians who have moved to the islands' cities languish at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale and are thought to have lost their cultural roots. Initially apolitical urban Hawaiians were often skeptical of activists who sought to...

Thirty-two million Americans have lost jobs because of permanent factory closings since 1970. Gregory Pappas here provides an intimate account of the economic, social, psychological, and medical consequences of one such closing.

A holistic portrait which reveals why Sikh high school students, despite language barriers, prejudice, and significant cultural differences, often outperform their majority peers and other United States minority groups.

In Upscaling Downtown, anthropologist Brett Williams provides an ethnography of a changing urban neighborhood that she calls "Elm Valley." Located in Washington, D.C., Elm Valley was one of the first neighborhoods to draw middle-class property owners back to the inner city, but a faltering housing industry halted what might have been the rapid...

St. Petersburg, Florida, has become virtually synonymous with retirement and old age. The city of green benches once courted its elderly population; now, however, it seeks to rejuvenate its image, to attract the young through urban revitalization. In this humane and sensitive book, Maria Vesperi, an anthropologist and journalist, looks at the...

Caribbean immigrants have now become part of the social landscape of many American cities. Few studies, however, have treated in detail the process of their integration in American society. American Odyssey assesses the development and adaptation in...

When a nursing facility for AIDS patients is planned for a city neighborhood, residents might be expected to respond, "Not in my backyard." But, as Jane Balin recounts in A Neighborhood Divided, when that community is known for its racial and ethnic...

Before the next century is out, Americans of African, Asian, and Latin American ancestry will outnumber those of European origin. In the Elmhurst-Corona neighborhood of Queens, New York City, the transition occurred during the 1970s, and the area's...

The first ethnographic study of life in Cuba to emerge in over twenty years, Inside the Revolution offers a rare, close view of how socialist ideology translates into everyday experience in one Cuban municipality. Mona Rosendahl draws on eighteen...

Korean immigrants to the United States establish their own small businesses at a rate exceeding that of immigrants from any other nation, with more than one third of all Korean immigrant adults involved in small businesses. Kyeyoung Park examines this...

This is the first book on New York's subway musicians-modern troubadours who perform on platforms, mezzanines, and even trains pounding through the city. Illustrating her account with captivating photos, Susie J. Tanenbaum draws on interviews with...

The recession of the 1980s triggered important economic and cultural changes in the United States, and working women were at the center of these changes. Sunbelt Working Mothers compares the experiences of Mexican-American and white mothers employed in apparel and electronics factories in Albuquerque and illuminates the ways in which individual...

Taking a novel anthropological approach to the issue of white ethnicity in the United States, this book challenges the model of uniform ethnic family and community culture, and argues for a reconsideration of the meaning of class, kinship, and gender in America's past and present.

Navigating the maze of modern American health care is rarely easy; those who enter it are confronted with a dizzying array of specialists, practitioners, and clinics from which to choose, and are forced to make decisions regarding drugs and treatments...

Since the 1960s the number of Indian immigrants and their descendants living in the United States has grown dramatically. During the same period, the make-up of this community has also changed-the highly educated professional elite who came to this...

Anna M. Kerttula, an anthropologist, offers a vivid portrayal of life in Sireniki, a Siberian village on the Bering Sea. Once a traditional Yup'ik community, it was by the final years of the Soviet Empire home to three cultural groups: the Yup'ik...

Civilized Women is concerned with the intersection of cultural constructions of gender and other systems of ranking among the Glebo people of Cape Palmas, in southeastern Liberia.

Kim Hopper has dedicated his career to trying to address the problem of homelessness in the United States. In this powerful book, he draws upon his dual strengths as anthropologist and advocate to provide a deeper understanding of the roots of homelessness.