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Get PDFInformation relating to the publisher, publication frequency, editorial staff, purchase options, submission requirements, and contact information for the American Communal Societies Quarterly
Front Matter
Get PDFInformation relating to the publisher, publication frequency, editorial staff, purchase options, submission requirements, and contact information for the American Communal Societies Quarterly
Roti as Care, as Craft, as Community
Get PDFThrough a multidisciplinary feminist ethnography on roti, this submission showcases research by the Roti Collective research team and their study of roti as material culture, as embodied history, and as everyday care through complex histories of South Asian migration and displacement within the context of colonialism and empire. Based on multilayered storytelling and multimodal methods, the team aims to co-create a capacious dialogue to reveal the hidden insights of roti teaches us about identity, history, diaspora, and our relationships to each other. This project is an opportunity to highlight the voices of Indo-Guyanese migrants who have created community in New York, through food and other cultural practices. Roti making serves as a familiar routine for Indo-Guyanese diasporic women in NY. The act of producing and consuming roti is also a form of gendered labor that holds implicit meanings about the woman’s place in the family and the expectations of Indo-Guyanese women among the larger community. Though the act of making roti, and the messages that accompany it, have changed and been diluted throughout the migratory process, roti still serves as a strong cultural symbol and practice for Indo-Guyanese diasporic women in the United States. Roti Archaeology highlights roti in multicultural diasporas as a way of knowing and tracing underrepresented histories and labor migrations of Tamil people through South and Southeast Asia. It centers diasporic restaurants as archaeological excavation sites where these histories can be uncovered through the narratives told by their dishes as historic artifacts
Environmental Equity and the Cosmetics Industry: The Effect of Class Upon Toxic Exposure
Get PDFCosmetic products in the United States are unregulated and oftentimes toxic. It is well established that the threats that cosmetics pose disproportionately harm women and women of color. However, when the hazards of the cosmetic industry have been analyzed, the relationship between toxic exposure and financial means has been largely omitted. In this study I evaluate the link between poverty and toxic burden through cosmetic products through literature review and a data analysis of pre-existing online databases. Through the use of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics’ Red List and the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database, I investigate whether cosmetic products that are more expensive are less toxic than less expensive products. Products that are more expensive are less likely to be purchased by poor individuals due to their financial constraints. Products that were categorized as low hazard were found to be, on average, 72.86% more expensive than products that were categorized as high hazard. This price difference presents a clear financial barrier for low-income individuals attempting to purchase less toxic cosmetic products. Further, due to the intersectionality of class, race, and gender affecting toxic exposure through personal care products, poor women of color are at the greatest risk for elevated levels of toxic exposure
Mothers and Daughters at White Water Shaker Village
Get PDFOne of the core beliefs of the Shakers was that only by making a firm commitment to a life of purity and piety as a member of a community of Believers could an individual escape the sinfulness of the world and properly prepare for salvation. This required that individuals sever ties with their natural, biological families and become a member of a new spiritual family, which would offer the love and emotional support that natural family members had formerly provided.
It must also have been difficult for some to abide fully and faithfully by the rules designed to break down the bonds of natural families whose members had become Believers. Typically, an effort was made to place husband and wife in different Shaker families and their children in a separate Children’s Order. But in the smaller Shaker societies, such as White Water, which is the focus of this study, this was not always possible, and frequent interaction between natural family members was inevitable.
This article focuses on three ways in which the mother-daughter relationship was transformed when one or more family members joined a Shaker society. First, when a mother and one or more daughters became and remained Believers; second, when a mother became a Believer, but her daughter either left White Water or never joined; and third, when a daughter was a Shaker at White Water but her mother had either left the society or had died
Reconsidering the Shaker Tree of Life: Cultural Antecedents & Fresh Interpretations
Get PDFThe Tree of Life is one of the most iconic images to come out of Shaker material culture. It was created in 1854 by a sixty-six-year-old sister named Hannah Cohoon, who lived in the Shaker community of Hancock in western Massachusetts. It is one of a multitude of images created during a period in Shaker history known variously today as the New Era, Era of Manifestations, or era of Mother’s Work. This was an extraordinary phase of spiritual vitality that engulfed the entire Shaker world for at least two decades between 1837 and the end of the 1850s.
The artistic representations generated during this period are exceptionally diverse, bound together mainly by their surreal qualities. As a body of work, they stand in puzzling contrast to the general simplicity—even to the point of austerity—of the Shakers’ built environments and material culture. Dominated by a singular abstract figure (the tree) Cohoon’s Tree of Life is hardly typical of the gift drawings, many of which comprise vast assemblages of smaller elaborate objects and elements. But it is by far the most famous; as such it has come to represent this unusual period in Shaker history, as well as Shakerism more generally
Document Three: Massachusetts’ Shaker Communities Letter to the General Court of Massachusetts, January 1818
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Get PDFBack cover illustration: “Central Part of Pittsfield, Mass,” Drawn by J. W. Barber, Engraved by S. E. Brown, Boston. From John Warner Barber, Massachusetts Historical Collections (Worcester: Published by Dorr, Howland & Co., 1839)