UC Press - Anthropology New Titles

Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States, With a Foreword by Philippe Bourgois by Seth Holmes

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

This book is an ethnographic witness to the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants. Based on five years of research in the field (including berry-picking and traveling with migrants back and forth from Oaxaca up the West Coast), Holmes, an anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, uncovers how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care. Holmes' material is visceral and powerful--for instance, he trekked with his informants illegally through the desert border into Arizona, where they were apprehended and jailed by the Border Patrol....
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Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City by Kathryn Edin, Timothy J. Nelson

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Across the political spectrum, unwed fatherhood is denounced as one of the leading social problems of today. Doing the Best I Can is a strikingly rich, paradigm-shifting look at fatherhood among inner-city men often dismissed as deadbeat dads. Kathryn Edin and Timothy J. Nelson examine how couples in challenging straits come together and get pregnant so quickly--without planning. The authors chronicle the high hopes for forging lasting family bonds that pregnancy inspires, and pinpoint the fatal flaws that often lead to the relationship's demise....
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To Overcome Oneself: The Jesuit Ethic and Spirit of Global Expansion, 1520–1767 by J. Michelle Molina

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

To Overcome Oneself offers a novel retelling of the emergence of the Western concept of modern self, demonstrating how the struggle to forge a self was enmeshed in early modern Catholic missionary expansion. Examining the practices of Catholics in Europe and New Spain from the 1520s through the 1760s, the book treats Jesuit techniques of self-formation, namely spiritual exercises and confessional practices, and the relationships between spiritual directors and their subjects. Catholics on both sides of the Atlantic were folded into a dynamic that shaped new concepts of self and, in the process, fueled the global Catholic missionary movement....
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Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression, Updated Edition with a New Preface and Afterword by Dale Maharidge

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

In Someplace Like America, writer Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael S. Williamson take us to the working-class heart of America, bringing to life--through shoe leather reporting, memoir, vivid stories, stunning photographs, and thoughtful analysis--the deepening crises of poverty and homelessness. The story begins in 1980, when the authors joined forces to cover the America being ignored by the mainstream media--people living on the margins and losing their jobs as a result of deindustrialization....
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Rifle Reports: A Story of Indonesian Independence by Mary Margaret Steedly

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

On August 17, 1945, Indonesia proclaimed its independence from Dutch colonial rule. Five years later, the Republic of Indonesia was recognized as a unified, sovereign state. The period in between was a time of aspiration, mobilization, and violence, in which nationalists fought to expel the Dutch while also trying to come to grips with the meaning of independence. Rifle Reports is an ethnographic history of this extraordinary time as it was experienced on the outskirts of the nation among Karo Batak villagers in the rural highlands of North Sumatra....
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Wayward Shamans: The Prehistory of an Idea by Silvia Tomaskova

Fri, 03 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Wayward Shamans tells the story of an idea that humanity's first expression of art, religion and creativity found form in the figure of a proto-priest known as a shaman. Tracing this classic category of the history of anthropology back to the emergence of the term in Siberia, the work follows the trajectory of European knowledge about the continent's eastern frontier. The ethnographic record left by German natural historians engaged in the Russian colonial expansion project in the 18th century includes a range of shamanic practitioners, varied by gender and age....
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To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation by Paul Farmer, Jonathan L. Weigel

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Here, for the first time, is a collection of short speeches by the charismatic doctor and social activist Paul Farmer. One of the most passionate and influential voices for global health equity and social justice, Farmer encourages young people to tackle the greatest challenges of our times. Engaging, often humorous, and always inspiring, these speeches bring to light the brilliance and force of Farmer's vision in a single, accessible volume.A must-read for graduates, students, and everyone seeking to help bend the arc of history toward justice, To Repair the World:• Challenges readers to counter failures of imagination that keep billions of people without access to health care, safe drinking water, decent schools, and other basic human rights; • Champions the power of partnership against global poverty, climate change, and other pressing problems today; • Overturns common assumptions about health disparities around the globe by considering the large-scale social forces that determine who gets sick and who has access to health care;• Discusses how hope, solidarity, faith, and hardbitten analysis have animated Farmer's service to the poor in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, Russia, and elsewhere;• Leaves the reader with an uplifting vision: that with creativity, passion, teamwork, and determination, the next generations can make the world a safer and more humane place.
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