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For most people, grocery shopping is a mundane activity. Few stop to think about the massive, global infrastructure that makes it possible to buy Chilean grapes in a Philadelphia supermarket in the middle of winter. Yet every piece of food represents an interlocking system of agriculture, manufacturing, shipping, logistics, retailing, and nonprofits that controls what we eat—or don’t. The Problem with Feeding Cities is a sociological and historical examination of how this remarkable network of abundance and convenience came into being over the last century. It looks at how the US food system transformed from feeding communities to feeding the entire nation, and it reveals how a process t...
Nestled between Santa Monica and Marina del Rey, Venice is a Los Angeles community filled with apparent contradictions. There, people of various races and classes live side by side, a population of astounding diversity bound together by geographic proximity. From street to street, and from block to block, million dollar homes stand near housing projects and homeless encampments; and upscale boutiques are just a short walk from the (in)famous Venice Beach where artists and carnival performers practice their crafts opposite cafés and ragtag tourist shops. In Venice: A Contested Bohemia in Los Angeles, Andrew Deener invites the reader on an ethnographic tour of this legendary California beach ...
Naráyana’s best-seller gives its reader much more than “Friendly Advice.” In one handy collection—closely related to the world-famous Pañcatantra or Five Discourses on Worldly Wisdom —numerous animal fables are interwoven with human stories, all designed to instruct wayward princes. Tales of canny procuresses compete with those of cunning crows and tigers. An intrusive ass is simply thrashed by his master, but the meddlesome monkey ends up with his testicles crushed. One prince manages to enjoy himself with a merchant’s wife with her husband’s consent, while another is kicked out of paradise by a painted image. This volume also contains the compact version of King Víkrama’s Adventures, thirty-two popular tales about a generous emperor, told by thirty-two statuettes adorning his lion-throne. Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org
"Stereotypes of economically marginalized black and brown youth focus on drugs, gangs, violence, and teen parenthood. Families, schools, nonprofit organizations, and institutions in poor urban neighborhoods emphasize preventing such "risk behaviors." In The Making of a Teenage Service Class, Ranita Ray uncovers the pernicious consequences of concentrating on risk behaviors as key to targeting poverty. Having spent three years among sixteen black and Latina/o youth, Ray shares their stories of trying to beat the odds of living in poverty. Their struggles of hunger, homelessness, and untreated illnesses are juxtaposed with the perseverance of completing homework, finding jobs, and spending lon...
Change and Disruption: Sociology of the Future draws on classical and modern sociological theory to identify recent and emerging trends in the global system. The book probes the rise of authoritarian states, rifts in the relationship between humans and the rest of nature, the coming impact of artificial intelligence, and changes in work, cities, science, and the quality of life. These dynamics are explored through the animating question: will the positive potential of the modern world be realized or will the human condition spiral downward? Garner and Hancock employ sociological theory to tackle big questions about the societies of the present and the societies of the future. They use three ...
Explains how stock markets became automated through the work of invisible technologists, redefining the fabric of finance for the twenty-first century.
This collection brings together philosophers, sociologists, musicologists and students of culture who theorize music through cultural practices as diverse as opera and classical music, jazz and pop, avant-garde and DIY musical cultures, music festivals and isolated listening through the iPod, rock in urban heritage and the piano in East Asia.
An inside look at how craft beer makers and IPA devotees come together to brew, taste, and enjoy fine ale while also building a sense of community in Las Vegas Equally reviled and revered as Sin City, Las Vegas is both exceptional and emblematic of contemporary American cultural practices and tastes. Michael Ian Borer takes us inside the burgeoning Las Vegas craft beer scene to witness how its adherents use beer to create and foster not just a local culture but a locals’ culture. Through compelling, detailed first-hand accounts and interviews, Vegas Brews provides an unprecedented look into the ways that brewers, distributors, bartenders, and drinkers fight against the perceived and precon...
In 2001, the first of a series of ethnographic conferences took place in Los Angeles with an emphasis on fieldwork. Since then the field has gained a much larger disciplinary footprint. While the increase in substantial research in the field has risen dramatically, ethnographic styles of writing have emerged that fail to include much discernible fieldwork. This volume of The Annals broaches the subject of improving fieldwork in the ethnographic spectrum through old-fashioned or "shoe leather" fieldwork. At a more recent ethnographic conference at Yale University in 2010 with a follow-up in June 2011, emerging ethnographers were mentored by senior scholars in whichthey presented an informal, ...
In 1832, the arrival of cholera in the US created widespread panic throughout the country. For the rest of the century epidemics swept through American cities and towns like wildfire killing thousands. These cholera outbreaks raised questions about medical knowledge and its legitimacy, giving fuel to alternative medical sects that used the confusion of the epidemic to challenge both medical orthodoxy and the authority of the American Medical Association. Here, Whooley tells us the story of those dark days, centring his narrative on rivalries between medical and homeopathic practitioners.