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Jewel of the desert: Japanese American internment at Topaz
No full textIn the spring of 1942, under the guise of "military necessity," the U.S. government evacuated 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast. About 7,000 people from the San Francisco Bay Area - the vast majority of whom were American citizens - were moved to an assembly center at Tanforan Racetrack and then to a concentration camp in Topaz, Utah. Dubbed the "jewel of the desert," the camp remained in operation until October 1945. This compelling book tells the history of Japanese Americans of San Francisco and the Bay Area, and of their experiences of relocation and internment.Sandra C. Taylor first examines the lives of the Japanese Americans who settled in and around San Francisco near the end of the nineteenth century. As their numbers grew, so, too, did their sense of community. They were a people bound together not only by common values, history, and institutions, but also by their shared status as outsiders. Taylor looks particularly at how Japanese Americans kept their sense of community and self-worth alive in spite of the upheavals of internment.The author draws on interviews with fifty former Topaz residents, and on the archives of the War Relocation Authority and newspaper reports, to show how relocation and its aftermath shaped the lives of these Japanese Americans. Written at a time when the United States once again regards Japan as a threat, Taylor's study testifies to the ongoing effects of prejudice toward Americans whose face is also the face of "the enemy.
Exits from the labyrinth: culture and ideology in the Mexican national space
No full textCan we address the issue of nationalism without polemics and restore it to the domain of social science? Claudio Lomnitz-Adler takes a major step in that direction by applying anthropological tools to the study of national culture. His sweeping and innovative interpretation of Mexican national ideology constructs an entirely new theoretical framework for the study of national and regional cultures everywhere. With an analysis of culture and ideology in internally differentiated regional spaces - in this case Morelos and the Huasteca in Mexico - Exits from the Labyrinth links rich ethnographic and historical research to two specific aspects of Mexican national ideology and culture: the history of legitimacy and charisma in Mexican politics, and the relationship between the national community and racial ideology
The protocol of the gods: a study of the Kasuga cult in Japanese history
No full textThe Protocol of the Gods is a pioneering study of the history of relations between Japanese native institutions (Shinto shrines) and imported Buddhist institutions (Buddhist temples). Using the Kasuga Shinto shrine and the Kofukuji Buddhist temple, one of the oldest and largest of the shrine-temple complexes, Allan Grapard characterizes what he calls the combinatory character of pre-modern Japanese religiosity. He argues that Shintoism and Buddhism should not be studied in isolation, as hitherto supposed. Rather, a study of the individual and shared characteristics of their respective origins, evolutions, structures, and practices can serve as a model for understanding the pre-modern Japanese religious experience.Spanning the years from a period before historical records to the forcible separation of the Kasuga-Kofukuji complex by the Meiji government in 1868, Grapard presents a wealth of little-known material. He includes translations of rare texts and provides new, accessible translations of familiar documents
Mobilizing against nuclear energy: a comparison of Germany and the United States
No full textIn the past two decades young people, environmentalists, church activists, leftists, and others have mobilized against nuclear energy. Anti-nuclear protest has been especially widespread and vocal in Western Europe and the United States. In this lucid, richly documented book, Christian Joppke compares the rise and fall of these protest movements in Germany and the United States, illuminating the relationship between national political structures and collective action. He analyzes existing approaches to the study of social movements and suggests an insightful new paradigm for research in this area. Joppke proposes a political process perspective that focuses on the interrelationship between the state and social movements, a model that takes into account a variety of forces, including differential state structures, political cultures, movement organizations, and temporal and contextual factors.This is an invaluable work for anyone studying the dynamics of social movements around the world
Robert Maynard Hutchins: a memoir
No full textAt age 28, he was dean of Yale Law School; at 30, president of the University of Chicago. By his mid-thirties, Robert Maynard Hutchins was an eminent figure in the world of educational innovation and liberal politics. And when he was 75, he told a friend, "I should have died at 35."Milton Mayer, Hutchins's colleague, and friend, gives an intimate picture of the remarkably outstanding, and fallible, man who participated in many of this century's most important social and political controversies. He captures the energy and intellectual fervor Hutchins could transmit to others, and which the man brought to the fields of law, politics, civil rights, and public affairs.Rich in detail and anecdote, this memoir vividly brings to life both a man and an age
Yorick's world: science and the knowing subject
No full textPeter Caws provides a fresh and often iconoclastic treatment of some of the most vexing problems in the philosophy of science: explanation, induction, causality, evolution, discovery, artificial intelligence, and the social implications of technological rationality.Caws's work has been shaped equally by the insights of Continental philosophy and a concern with scientific practice. In these twenty-eight essays spanning more than a quarter of a century, he ranges from discussions of the work of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, to relations between science and surrealism, to the concept of intentionality, to the limits of quantitative description. A lively mix of history, theory, speculation, and analysis, Yorick's World presents a vision of science that includes human history and social life. It will interest professional philosophers and scientists, and at the same time its directness will make it readily accessible to nontechnical readers
Window shopping: cinema and the postmodern
No full textDeparting from those who define postmodernism in film merely as a visual style or set of narrative conventions, Anne Friedberg develops the first sustained account of the cinema's role in postmodern culture. She explores the ways in which nineteenth-century visual experiences - photography, urban strolling, panorama and diorama entertainments - anticipate contemporary pleasures provided by cinema, video, shopping malls, and emerging "virtual reality" technologies.Comparing the visual practices of shopping, tourism, and film-viewing, Friedberg identifies the experience of "virtual" mobility through time and space as a key determinant of postmodern cultural identity. Evaluating the theories of Jameson, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and others, she adds critical insights about the role of gender and gender mobility in the configurations of consumer culture.A strikingly original work, Window Shopping challenges many of the existing assumptions about what exactly post modern is. This book marks the emergence of a compelling new voice in the study of contemporary culture
The fragmented metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850-1930
No full textHere with a new preface, a new foreword, and an updated bibliography is the definitive history of Los Angeles from its beginnings as an agricultural village of fewer than 2,000 people to its emergence as a metropolis of more than 2 million in 1930 - a city whose distinctive structure, character, and culture foreshadowed much of the development of urban America after World War II
The long peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861-1920
No full textLong notorious as one of the most turbulent areas of the world, Lebanon nevertheless experienced an interlude of peace between its civil war of 1860 and the beginning of the French Mandate in 1920. Engin Akarli examines the sociopolitical changes resulting from the negotiations and shifting alliances characteristic of these crucial years.Using previously unexamined documents in Ottoman archives, Akarli challenges the prevailing view that attributes modernization in government to Western initiative while blaming stagnation on reactionary local forces. Instead, he argues, indigenous Lebanese experience in self-rule as well as reconciliation among different religious groups after 1860 laid the foundation for secular democracy. European intervention in Lebanese politics, however, hampered efforts to develop a correspondingly secular notion of Lebanese nationality.As ethnic and religious strife increases throughout much of eastern Europe and the Middle East, the Lebanese example has obvious relevance for our own time
Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and reform
No full textGasparo Contarini (1483-1542) was a major protagonist in the Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century. A worldly Venetian patrician, he later became an ascetic advocate of Church reform and, as a Catholic cardinal, was sent to the important Colloquy of Regensburg. He failed in his mission to bring about an agreement between Lutherans and Catholics; nevertheless, his life and thought, as well as his friendships with the most vocal proponents of concord, peace, and toleration, make him an impressive and significant historical figure.In the first biography of Contarini since 1885, Elisabeth Gleason greatly broadens our understanding of the man and his times. As a result, scholars and students will come to see Cardinal Gasparo Contarini as a reminder of alternative concepts of authority and liberty in both church and state