Artifacts of Loss Jane E. Dusselier
Rutgers University Press, December 2008
In Artifacts of Loss, Jane E. Dusselier looks at the lives of Japanese
American internees through the lens of their art. Dusselier urges her
readers to consider these often overlooked folk crafts as meaningful
political statements which are significant as material forms of protest
and as representations of loss. According to Roger Daniels (University
of Cincinnati). "Dusselier has given us an excellent thick description
of the ways that Japanese American prisoners of both generations used
arts and crafts as tools of survival. Future camp studies will have
to take her work into account." Jane E. Dusselier is an assistant
professor of anthropology and Asian American studies at Iowa State University.
Her previously published works include Does Food Make Place? Food
Protests in Japanese American Concentration Camps.(3/09)
Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives:
Sex, Gender, and Material Culture Rosemary A. Joyce
Thames and Hudson, May 2008 (Hardcover); March 2009 (Paperback)
There has never been a single way that social life has heen organized
by sex. Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives is the first book written
by an archaeologist to explain not only what archaeologists know about
the lives of men and women in the past, but how they know it, and why
the stories they can tell are important to hear today. Oxbow Books
describes it as "an accessible, though tightly argued book,
which shows the importance of an open mind when dealing with the archaeology
of sex and gender. All too often, Rosemary Joyce claims, reconstructions
of sex and sexual identity have been shaped by perceptions that a heterosexual
model with defined gender roles is the norm and that practice which
differs from this is deviant." Writing in the Daily Scotsman,
Michael Kerrigan argues that "all the scientific rigour in the
world won't avail us if the evidence is going to be read according to
wildly anachronistic modern assumptions. Nowhere, suggests Rosemary
A Joyce in a lively and thought-provoking essay, is the scope for miscomprehension
greater than in the areas of sex and gender – so central to our
lives, yet so sketchily represented archaeologically." Reviewing
the book for American Antiquity, Barb Voss of Stanford University
says "While Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives will certainly
garner a broad readership among archaeologists, my hope is that it will
be read even more widely by non-archaeologists. Its true impact lies
in forging a conversation between archaeological studies of gender in
the past and contemporary research on the gender politics of the present."
Showing the critical role of the material world-- the things we make,
use, and discard, and the buildings in which we live and work-- in forming
our experiences of and concepts about sex, this book connects archaeology
firmly to contemporary studies of material culture and identity.(2/09)
Sex Work and the City: The Social
Geography of Health and Safety in Tijuana, Mexico Yasmina Katsulis University of Texas Press, January 2009
A gateway at the U.S.–Mexico border, Tijuana is a complex urban
center with a sizeable population of sex workers. An in-depth case study
of the trade, Sex Work and the City is the first major ethnographic
publication on contemporary prostitution in this locale, providing a
detailed analysis of how sex workers’ experiences and practices
are shaped by policing and regulation. Contextualizing her research
within the realm of occupational risk, Yasmina Katsulis examines the
experiences of a diverse range of sex workers in the region and explores
the implications of prostitution, particularly regarding the spheres
of class hierarchies, public health, and other broad social effects.
Based on eighteen months of intensive fieldwork and nearly 400 interviews
with sex workers, customers, city officials, police, local health providers,
and advocates, Sex Work and the City describes the arenas of
power and the potential for disenfranchisement created by municipal
laws designed to regulate the trade. Providing a detailed analysis of
this subculture’s significance within Tijuana and its implications
for debates over legalization of “vice” elsewhere in the
world, Katsulis draws on powerful narratives as workers describe the
risks of their world, ranging from HIV/AIDS and rape (by police or customers)
to depression, work-related stress, drug and alcohol addiction, and
social stigma. Insightful and compelling, Sex Work and the City
captures the lives (and deaths) of a population whose industry has broad
implications for contemporary society at large. (2/09)
Domestic Goddesses: Maternity,
Globalization and Middle-class Identity in Contemporary India
Henrike Donner
Ashgate 2008
Based on extensive fieldwork in Calcutta, this book provides the first
ethnography of how middle-class women in India understand and experience
economic change through transformations of family life. It explores
their ideas, practices and experiences of marriage, childbirth, reproductive
change and their children's education, and addresses the impact that
globalization is having on the new middle classes in Asia more generally
from a domestic perspective. By focusing on maternity, the book explores
subjective understandings of the way intimate relationships and the
family are affected by India's liberalization policies and the neo-liberal
ideologies that accompany through an analysis of often competing ideologies
and multiple practices. And by drawing attention to women's agency as
wives, mothers and grandmothers within these new frameworks, Domestic
Goddesses discusses the experiences of different age groups affected
by these changes. Through a careful analysis of women's narratives,
the domestic sphere is shown to represent the key site for the remaking
of Indian middle-class citizens in a global world (10/08).
Strange Reciprocity: Mainstreaming
Women's Work in Tepoztlán in "the Decade of the New Economy"
Sidney Perutz
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Littlefield Books Division, 2008
Residing in one of the earliest regions to be colonized industrially
and residentially, women of the ancient Mexican community of Tepoztlán
were one of the first New Spain populations to structurally adjust their
labor processes to this first wave of the technology/ideology of “global
feminization through flexible labor” (Standing 1989). Barred by
laws and customs from most new industries, by targeting diasporas of
foreign and indigenous men in need of care, Tepoztecas contrived to
invent the type of consumption-led economy now globally dominant. Into
the 21st century, Tepoztecas never stopped adjusting to waves (undertows,
really) of dominant orders that depend on gender inequality at work
to be global. The social actors-economic agents of this anthropology
of women’s complex of value/values creation processes are then
members of a venerable, vulnerable, and truly globally feminized working
class. Made explicit as workplace exchanges are “knowing”
women’s struggles to transform profoundly gendered global economy
constraints into profoundly gendered global economy strategies of their
own. Or not. The research backing this feminist standpoint study began
when the author worked in the for-profit and non-profit sectors of the
global economy alongside women of the developed and developing worlds.
Based on long term fieldwork in Tepoztlán, the book describes,
analyzes, and gives a history to women’s work processes across
the 1990 to 2000 period that Mexicans (increasingly ironically) call
“the Decade of the New Economy.” To June Nash, “the
author’s astute knowledge of economic paradigms and the feminist
and economic development literature” makes the book “a methodological
advance in the field of economics and anthropology [that] could provide
a text for courses in anthropology, women’s studies, or development.”
Eminent historian of Mexico William B. Taylor describes Strange
Reciprocity as “an unforgettable extension” to the
literature. “Not just a restudy; it is also a reconfiguration”;
and, “a multifaceted study with several layers of context, including
a historical context that is sustained and well done.” (8/08)
