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German scholar Jörg Baberowski is one of the world's leading experts on the Stalin era, but his work has seldom been translated into English. This book, an unremitting indictment of the mad violence with which Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, depicts Stalinism as a cruel and deliberate attack on Russian society, driven by "totalitarian ambitions" and the goal of modernizing and rationalizing a backward people. Baberowski takes a twofold approach, emphasizing Stalin's personal role and responsibility as well as the continuity he sees in Communist aims and ideology since 1917. Unlike recent apologist accounts that focus on the challenges of modernization or on the operational complexities of managing the Soviet state, this hard-hitting analysis unequivocally locates the origins of the terror in the culture of violence and the techniques of power. Detailed, well-documented, and including many new details on the workings of the Stalinist state, this powerful work encompasses the dictator's brutal reign from his achievement of total power in 1929 to his death in 1953.--

Nike Davies is one of the few African women known internationally in contemporary art circles. The Woman with the Artistic Brush traces her life history and illustrates the strategies developed by women to mitigate male rule. Presenting a critique of the woman's place in contemporary Yoruba society from the perspective of a woman who lived it, this book covers Nike's life from the time of her mother's death when Nike was six to the culmination of her dream in the creation, against severe societal odds, of a center for arts and culture that has over 120 members. Along the way, The Woman with the Artistic Brush details how Nike ran away from home and joined a traveling theater group after her father tried to arrange her marriage, subsequently married and joined in the polygynous household of a noted artist from the popular Osogbo school, and finally broke clear of that situation after suffering sixteen years of domestic violence.

Introduction: grounding global climate change -- Part I: Interdisciplinarity, climate research and the role of the social sciences -- Ecological novelty: towards an interdisciplinary understanding of ecological change in the Anthropocene -- Predicting the past? Integrating climate and culture during historical famines -- Anthropology in the Anthropocene: sustainable development, climate change and interdisciplinary research -- Part II: Searching for the social facts of global climate change: ethnographic perspectives -- Climate and mobility in the West African Sahel: conceptualising the local dimensions of the environment and migration nexus -- Animal belongings: human-non human interactions and climate change in the Canadian Subarctic -- Part III: Spinning global webs of local knowledges: collaborative and comparative ethnographies -- The social facts of climate change: an ethnographic approach -- Comparing climate worlds: theorising across ethnographic fields -- Towards imagining the big picture and the finer details: exploring global applications of a local and scientific knowledge exchange methodology -- Part IV: Concluding statement -- You ain't seen nothing yet: a death-defying look at the future of the climate debate.

In this fascinating and erudite book, Bryan Cheyette throws new light on a wide range of modern and contemporary writers-some at the heart of the canon, others more marginal-to explore the power and limitations of the diasporic imagination after the Second World War. Moving from early responses to the death camps and decolonization, through internationally prominent literature after the Second World War, the book culminates in fresh engagements with contemporary Jewish, post-ethnic, and postcolonial writers. Cheyette regards many of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century luminaries he examines-among them Hannah Arendt, Anita Desai, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Primo Levi, Caryl Phillips, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Edward Said, Zadie Smith, and Muriel Spark-as critical exemplars of the diasporic imagination. Against the discrete disciplinary thinking of the academy, he elaborates and argues for a new comparative approach across Jewish and postcolonial histories and literatures. And in so doing, Cheyette illuminates the ways in which histories and cultures can be imagined across national and communal boundaries

Suicide is a puzzling phenomenon. Not only is its demarcation problematic but it also eludes simple explanation. The cultures in which suicide mortality is high do not necessarily have much else in common, and neither is a single mental illness such as depression sufficient to lead a person to suicide. In a word, despite its statistical regularity, suicide is unpredictable on the individual level. The main argument emerging from this collection is that suicide should not be understood as a separate realm of pathological behavior but as a form of human action. As such it is always dependent on the decision that the individual makes in a cultural, ethical and socio-economic context, but the context never completely determines the decision. This book also argues that cultural narratives concerning suicide have a problematic double function: in addition to enabling the community to make sense of self-inflicted death, they also constitute a blueprint depicting suicide as a solution to common human problems

1. Beyond the delusion : new histories of totalitarian dictatorship / Daniela Baratieri, Mark Edele, and Giuseppe Finaldi -- 2. Cold empathy : perpetrator studies and the challenges in writing a life of Reinhard Heydrich / Robert Gerwarth -- 3. The life and death of Colonel-General Blaskowitz / Christopher Clark -- 4. Stalin and the world of culture / Sheila Fitzpatrick -- 5. The great manipulator : Francisco Franco / Paul Preston -- 6. Blueblood and blacksmith : a comparative view of Churchill's and Mussolini's speeches / Giuseppe Finaldi -- 7. "A place in the sun" : the conquest of Ethiopia in 1935-1936 as seen in contemporary diaries / Christopher Duggan -- 8. "Wrapped in passionless impartiality?" Italian psychiatry during the Fascist regime / Daniela Baratieri -- 9. Coercion, consent, and accommodation in the Third Reich / Dick Geary -- 10. Peasants into nationals : violence, war, and the making of Turks and Greeks, 1912-1922 / Nicholas Doumanis -- 11. Learning from the enemy? Entangling histories of the German-Soviet war, 1941-1945 / Mark Edele -- 12. Genocide in a multiethnic town : event, origins, aftermath / Omer Bartov -- 13. Memories of an exodus : Istria, Fiume, Dalmatia, Trieste, Italy, 1943-2010 / John Foot.

A historian/anthropologist amongst the Garos of Bangladesh / Ellen Bal -- Power and authority in the field / Ali Khan -- Story of my research in Bhutan / A.C. Sinha -- Remembering fieldwork histories / Mandy Sadan -- Fields of working knowledge / Ben Campbell -- Reflections on fieldwork in three cultures / Arjun Guneratne -- Return to Rengsanggri / Robbins Burling -- Researching Garo death rites / Erik de Maaker -- Memories and reflections on ethnographic fieldwork in "conflict" setting / Debojyoti Das -- In search of storytellers among the Khiamniungan Nagas / Anungla Aier -- Experiencing mortuary practices in an anthropological journey / Gautam Kumar Bera -- Making senses of the organizations and the experiences of anthropological practices in a university of India / Arnab Das -- Tales of everyday politics in West Bengal / Suman Nath and Bhaskar Chakrabarti -- Doing fieldwork and discovering Harijan art in Madhubani / Neel Rekha -- Memories of my third visit to the Nicobar archipelago / Vijoy S. Sahay -- Discovering the self and others in Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh / Abeer Gupta -- Dialogue on indigenous studies and fieldwork in India / Daniel J. Rycroft and Ganesh Devy

1. Rumor, gossip, and conspiracy theories : pathologies of testimony and the principal of publicity / Axel Gelfert -- 2. Have you heard? : the rumor as reliable / Matthew Dentith -- 3. Triangle of death : strategic communication, counterinsurgency, and the rumor mill / Daniel Bernardi and Scott Ruston -- 4. The politics of informal communication : conspiracy theories and rumors in the 2009 (post-)electoral Iranian public sphere / Babak Rahimi -- 5. Rumors, religion, and political mobilization : Indonesian cases, 1965-98 / Mark Woodward -- 6. Rumors of terrorism : social cognitive structures, collective sensemaking, and the emergence of rumor / Greg Dalziel -- 7. Rumor, culture, and strategic communication across old and new media in Southeast Asia : the case of terrorist Noordin Top / Chris Lundry and Pauline Hope Cheong -- 8. Anxiety and rumor : exploratory analysis of Twitter posts during the Mumbai terrorist attack / Onook Oh, Manish Agrawal, and H. Raghav Rao -- 9. Rumor, the evil twin of strategic communication : what "white" propaganda can learn from "gray" / Anthony Olcott.

"In this fiercely urgent book, Matthew Pratt Guterl focuses on how and why we come to see race in very particular ways. What does it mean to see someone as a color? As racially mixed or ethnically ambiguous? What history makes such things possible? Drawing creatively from advertisements, YouTube videos, and everything in between, Guterl redirects our understanding of racial sight away from the dominant categories of color--away from brown and yellow and black and white--and instead insists that we confront the visual practices that make those same categories seem so irrefutably important. Zooming out for the bigger picture, Guterl illuminates the long history of the practice of seeing--and believing in--race, and reveals that our troublesome faith in the details discerned by the discriminating glance is widespread and very popular. In so doing, he upends the possibility of a postracial society by revealing how deeply race is embedded in our culture, with implications that are often matters of life and death"--

Death and suffering are ubiquitous - they know no boundaries, no restrictions of culture or religion, and yet people attempt to compartmentalize the problems and solutions, whether talking about AIDS in Africa, or obesity in the West, or a religious response to suffering. This book looks at the issue of evil and suffering from a global and holistic perspective, and it develops a position which considers the response of the major faith groups towards the global AIDS crisis. In recognizing that the problem is entwined in an interconnected world consisting of diverse people with diverse belief systems, it is the book's contention that the problem of HIV/AIDS can only be approached from a multi-religious and multi-cultural perspective; that a true theology of HIV/AIDS can only be developed if that theology reflects the interconnectedness of the world in which we live. It is postulated that such a theology can lead to an enhanced global response to evil and suffering and, by using practical examples, this is demonstrated in response to HIV/AIDS.

This book starts with a simple premise: there is a price behind each choice that we make, whether we're deciding to have a baby, drive a car, or buy a book. We often fail to appreciate just how critical prices are as motivating forces shaping our lives, but their power becomes clear when distorted prices steer our decisions the wrong way. Eduardo Porter takes us on a global economic adventure, from comparing the relative prices of a vote in corrupt São Tomé and in the ostensibly aboveboard United States to assessing the cost of happiness in Bhutan to deducing the dollar value we assign to human life. He weaves together the constant--and often unconscious--cost and value assessments we all make every day. While exploring the story behind the price of everything from marriage and death to mattresses and horsemeat, Porter draws unexpected connections that bridge a wide range of disciplines and cultures.--From publisher description

Front Cover -- Title page -- Half Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Indigenous Studies: Research, Identity and Resistance - Brendan Hokowhitu -- Identity -- Chapter 1: Mixed Ancestry or Métis? - Chris Andersen -- Chapter 2: 'My Poetry is a Fire' - Alice Te Punga Somerville -- Chapter 3: Culture: Compromise or Perish! - Poia Rewi -- Chapter 4: piko ka-sôhki-nitohtaman ka-nisitohtaman nêhiyawêwin - You Must Listen Very Hard to Understand the Cree Language - Naomi McIlwraith -- Chapter 5: Resisting Language Death: A Personal Exploration - Hana O'Regan -- Chapter 6: Towards a Model for Indigenous Research - Jim Williams -- Chapter 7: Rediscovering the Hidden Heritage from Ancient Mangaia - Michael P.JReilly -- Resistance -- Chapter 8: Indigenous Political Representation and Comparative Research - Janine Hayward -- Chapter 9: Urban Indigenous Governance Practices - Shalene Jobin Vandervelde -- Chapter 10: The Nationalist Gaze of an Aboriginal Artist - Nathalie Kermoal -- Chapter 11: The Fiction of Post-Colonial Pacific Writers - Sina Vaai -- Chapter 12: Neoliberalism, Racialised Gender and Indigeneity - Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez -- Chapter 13: A Genealogy of Indigenous Resistance - Brendan Hokowhitu -- Notes -- Glossary of Maori Words -- List of Contributors

Changing temporalities and the internationalization of memory cultures / Daniel Levy -- Misremembering the Holocaust : universal symbol, nationalist icon or moral kitsch? / Ross Poole -- Memory and history from past to future : a dialogue with Dori Laub on trauma and testimony / Dori Laub and Federico Finchelstein -- Remembering yesterday to protect tomorrow : the internationalization of a new commemorative paradigm / Louis Bickford and Amy Sodaro -- The role of conversations in shaping individual and collective memory, attitudes and behavior / Jonathan Koppel and William Hirst -- Re-presenting victim and perpetrator : the role of photographs in US service members' testimony against war / Kimberly Spring -- How shall we remember Srebrenica? Will the language of law structure our memory? / Selma Leydesdorff -- Refugees from utopia : remembering, forgetting and the making of The feminist memoir project / Ann Snitow -- Happy memories under the mushroom cloud : utopia and memory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee / Lindsey A. Freeman -- Authorizing death : memory politics and states of exception in contemporary El Salvador / Gema Santamaria-Balmaceda -- Memories of war and enacting the future at Yasukuni Shrine, Japan / David P. Janes

The title of this volume appears to suggest that modernity is somehow devoid of something of utmost importance. Sixteen years after the death of Leo Strauss, certainly one of the most profound thinkers in the twentieth century, the model of liberal democracy has been declared victorious, not to say final and true. Due to unrestrained acceptance of such a perspective, a real tension between human beings disappears as there is only one way of being 'correct'. Having taken it into consideration, we point toward something that goes beyond the discussion about the pros and cons of liberal democracy. It would be presumptuous to believe that the current embrace of the liberal-democratic model of culture has definitely settled the question, 'How to live?' And if modernity threatens to silence this most important question, or to neglect its importance as seen by common sense, it seems all the more important to show that the contemporary answers fall short of being self-evident

Twin recorders -- Reunion -- Truman balcony -- Culture clashes: from Bosnia to a haircut -- Passages: NAFTA, China, Whitewater -- Mother's death and the special prosecutor -- Clinton and the press -- Missiles in Baghdad -- Supreme Court choices -- Foreign travels -- Hillary's dream -- Haiti: the brink of war -- Yeltsin and the Gingrich revolution -- Tirades: "I really let them have it" -- Bailout, bombs, and recovery -- Oklahoma City -- Girding for showdown -- Pope John Paul II: "Tell me how you see the world" -- Murder of Rabin -- Triumph and fury: "You live to have only a few days like that" -- Family feuds: from Greenspan to Saddam Hussein -- Primary season -- Terrorism, welfare reform, and the Chicago convention -- Reelection 1996 -- Bittersweet renewal -- Whitewater tapes: on the high wire -- "I think they're pretty good rumors" -- Jones case -- Chinese land mines-- Buddy and Socks -- Lewinsky -- Impeached -- Trial -- Kosovo, Columbine, and Kashimir -- To the Millennium: peacemakers and treason -- On to New Hampshire -- Camp David -- Jerusalem and the three Ps -- Deadlock 200: "This election is tight as a tick" -- Farewell