Berghahn Books
Global ambitions and local identities; an Israeli-American high tech merger.
Ailon (sociology and anthropology, Bar-Ilan U., Israel) describes the results of a yearlong ethnographic study of shifting identity constructions at an Israeli high-tech company after its merger with an American competitor based in New York. In the study, she explores both how the merger impacted the day-to-day social construction of the organizational identity of "Isrocom" (a pseudonym) and interconnected issues of national, occupational, and hierarchical identities through analysis of communication events between members of "Isrocom" and "Amerotech" and communications in which members of "Isrocom" talked amongst themselves about their merger partners. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Going first class?; new approaches to privileged travel and movement.
Amit (anthropology, Concordia U., Canada) assembles nine chapters that consider different hierarchies and criteria of status and privilege as travelers move from one context to another. Chapters address different types of travel, such as occupational journeys, migration, corporate-sponsored expatriacy, and life-cycle transition, and commonalities between them, like voluntary movement and resources and middle class status. Individual chapters explore migration and immigrants from Brazil and the Caribbean, expatriate professionals, extended and retirement travel, and mobile cinematographers. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
History of the Low Countries, rev. ed.
Blom (Netherlands Institute for War Documentation and Dutch history, U. of Amsterdam) and Lamberts (modern history, Leuven U., Belgium) provide the first comprehensive history of the Low Countries translated into English for students and general readers. Historians from the Netherlands and Belgium contribute eight chapters of a chronological history of the two countries, discussing political and economic developments, social relations, cultural similarities and differences, and religion. This edition has been revised and expanded, and a new author wrote the chapter on the Southern Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The English translation is a slightly amended version of the original, Geschiedenis van de Nederlanden. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Identity and networks; fashioning gender and ethnicity across cultures.
The essays in this text were written in honor of the work done by anthropologist Shirley Ardener (gender and ethnicity studies, Oxford U., UK) on issues of identity formation and social networks. The first six chapters presented by editors Fahy (International Gender Studies and African Studies Centres, Oxford U.), Okeley (deputy director, International Gender Studies Centre, Oxford U.), and Webber (Jewish and interfaith studies, U. of Birmingham, UK) focus on identities. They discuss the fluidity of individual and collective cultural identities, self-identity as it emerged in Renaissance theater, transformation of social identity in post-communist Poland, language and Welsh identity, historical consciousness and Jewish identity, and academic colleagueship as a form of social identity. The next eight contributions discuss gender agency and social networks, specifically addressing the formation of the women's movement; gender and chiefship in Southern Africa; gender, ethnicity, and job expectations on an automobile factory assembly line; and gender experiences in academic institutions, among other topics. The academic articles are followed by 12 short academic and personal reflections in celebration of Ardener. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Identity matters; ethnic and sectarian conflict.
Peacock (anthropology and comparative literature, U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Thornton (political science, Trinity College), and Inman (a freelance academic editor and independent historian) present work on sectarian, ethnic, and cultural conflict around the world that was conducted under the auspices of the Fulbright Foundation's New Century Scholars Program. Topics addressed by an international group of contributors include social identity, prejudice, and violence in Western Europe; national and ethnic identities and violence in Crimea; European attitudes towards immigrants; Tibetan identity in contemporary China; cross-cutting identities in Singapore; sectarian violence and the Chinese state; and a Pakistani perspective on relations between Islam and the West. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Intersected identities; strategies of visualisation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Mexican culture.
Segre (Hispanic studies, U. of Cambridge, UK) examines the ways in which the interdisciplinary, the eclectic and the combinatory have served a strategic purpose in the development of a self-aware and identity-conscious visual discourse in Mexico, from the formative 19th century to the post-national 1990s. The analysis considers a broad array of creative forms — observational writing, illustrated periodicals, graphic art, painting, photography and film — in a series of linked studies examining the construction and interrogation of visual identities in reproductive media. In particular , it looks at ways in which discourses concerning ethnicity and cultural hybridity have been echoed and transformed in Mexican visual culture, resulting in fields of visual discourse which are eclectic and increasingly self-reflexive. Illustrated throughout in b&w. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Launching the grand coalition; the 2005 Bundestag election and the future of German politics.
In the view of Langenbacher (government, Georgetown U.), German political life in 2005 witnessed some of the most dramatic events since unification, what with the coming to power of Angela Merkel's grand coalition uniting the Social Democratic Party and her own Christian Democratic Union in the Bundestag, as well as dramatic events in the rest of German party politics. He presents nine chapters reviewing some of these developments and their likely impact, including the behind the scenes party maneuvering of Angela Merkel, the interplay of long-term trends and short-term factors in the election outcomes, the political mobilization and electoral failures of the extreme right, the influence of interest groups on Chancellor Merkel's European Union policy, the surprising success of the successor party of the East German Communists, and the influence of the change of government on transatlantic relations. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The power of perspective; social ontology and agency on Ambrym Island, Vanuatu.
Asking the venerable question of how people create social orders and meanings around themselves, Rio (social anthropology, U. of Bergen) seeks answers in his insight from fieldwork on the South Pacific island 1995-96 and 1999-2000. His topics include kinship and sand drawing, of yams and men, and displaying life after death. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Resistance and the state; Nepalese experiences, rev.ed.
Mostly European social scientists specializing in Nepal examine the formation of the state and resistance to it by local activists, ethnic groups, and the Maoist insurgency. All but one of the 10 chapters are revised from presentations at a South Asian studies conference in Edinburgh in September 2000. For the 2002 first edition, they were updated in early 2001, before the declaration of a State of Emergency in November 2001, and few changes beyond expanded bibliographies are introduced here. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Starstruck; cosmic visions in science, religion, and folklore.
From often disparate, sometimes parallel, and occasionally even intersecting approaches and worldviews, says Harrison (emeritus psychology, U. of California-Davis) people try to locate contemporary humanities in the greatest of all possible contexts, usually one that goes beyond the physical earth, everyday consciousness, or both. He samples some, considering the mix of observation and belief. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
