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Notes from Elsewhere
Notes from Elsewhere: Travel and Other Matters follows author Monique Laton, a trained anthropologist, through some of lifes familiar experiences: introduction to new cultures, the pitfalls of language, regret for the past, and various types of travel. She shares her experiences and adventures in some of the planets most interesting places in colorful detail. From her childhood in Morocco to a time tinged with loneliness and isolation as she worked in mental hospitals and prisons, she kept an open mind and heart. She survived both the artificial, ephemeral culture of international conferences and attempts to create a semblance of a normal life while living abroad. As an academic, Layton conf...
Life at Sea
In Life at Sea, anthropologist Monique Layton draws on her experiences on modern cruise ships to examine the evolution of sailing from the Age of Exploration to the Age of Tourism. Using historical records and the reports of people who once went to sea through necessity, curiosity, or adventure, she shows the common events that have shaped their voyages and the ingenuity, courage, and determination that characterize mankind's connection with the all-surrounding sea. The book's topics range from the dependence on the wind and manpower through the invention of devices to determine location at sea to modern maritime technology, from the devastation of scurvy and starvation on early ships of exp...
The New Arcadia
SINCE BEING “DISCOVERED ” IN 1767, Tahiti has faced a profound cultural upheaval. From the start, she has been branded with the irresistible dual myth of the Noble Savage’s harmonious Arcadian life and of the vahine’s amorous favours freely granted. People (navigators, missionaries, whalers, slavers) and events (deadly epidemics, atomic testing, and now tourism), all have contributed over time to creating the modern Tahitian quandary: trying to recover an idealized past and losing the benefits of modern life, or continuing as a cog in the French administrative system and losing her soul. Based on historical records, sailors’ journals, Ma’ohi epic poetry, European paintings, folkloric events, the film industry, and novels by modern Tahitian writers, this book follows the passage from Otaheite’s paradisal way of life, through the disastrous encounter with European civilization, ending with French Polynesia’s modern prospects. Most remarkable of all is the enduring Ma’ohi culture’s survival into the twenty-first century.
Voices from the Lower Deck
Voices from the Lower Deck examines the role of folklore as the instrument of integration and bonding for the ordinary seafarer during the Age of Sail. Mainly based on contemporary sailors narratives and historical and folkloric texts, the book evokes common themes: the harsh environment, the cruel discipline, the brutal way of life, and the release of onshore carousing and whoring, but also the coordinated work and effort of daily tasks and the tremendous pride of seeing themselves as unique men against a background of landlubbers. The psychological and physical survival of these disparate men from many origins depended on their rapid integration into the common culture--the folklore and the folkways--of what historians have called "the wooden world."...
Everyday Evil
"Instead of the epic, alien force of our imagination, anthropologist Monique Layton argues that evil is intrinsic to our humanity, constantly evolving with modern notions of morality. Much of the world's suffering, she argues, can be traced back to the individual actions of ordinary people trying--and failing--to maintain a static social order. Drawing on anthropology, history, philosophy and popular culture, Layton provides a new lens through which to view contemporary issues, establishing connections between such disparate phenomena as: medieval law enforcement and the Trump Baby blimp; the Salem witch trials and female genital mutilation; body-snatching and surrogacy; slavery and fast fashion."--
Street Women and the Art of Bullshitting
Monique Layton was educated in Morocco, France, England, and Canada. At university, she studied Romance Studies, Comparative Literature, and Cultural Anthropology. After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia (1978), she worked at the Universities Council of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. While at SFU, she conducted research projects in Cuba and the Seychelles. She has five children, a large number of grand children, and is married to John, who has somehow accepted to cohabit with her may absorbing "projects" (from translating L vi-Strauss to two years of non-stop quilting). "The reader of Monique Layton's ethnography is invited into the oral tradition of prostitute drug addicts, is encouraged to think about them differently and to learn about their verbal creativity." - Dr. Elvi Whittaker
Paralyses
Modernity has long been equated with motion, travel, and change, from Marx's critical diagnoses of economic instability to the Futurists' glorification of speed. Likewise, metaphors of travel serve widely in discussions of empire, cultural contact, translation, and globalization, from Deleuze's "nomadology" to James Clifford's "traveling cultures." John Culbert, in contrast, argues that the key texts of modernity and postmodernity may be approached through figures and narratives of paralysis: motion is no more defining of modern travel than fixations, resistance, and impasse; concepts and figures of travel, he posits, must be rethought in this more static light. Focusing on the French and Fr...
Contesting Earth's Future
Radical ecology typically brings to mind media images of ecological activists standing before loggers' saws, staging anti-nuclear marches, and confronting polluters on the high seas. Yet for more than twenty years, the activities of organizations such as the Greens and Earth First! have been influenced by a diverse, less-publicized group of radical ecological philosophers. It is their work—the philosophical underpinnings of the radical ecological movement—that is the subject of Contesting Earth's Future. The book offers a much-needed, balanced appraisal of radical ecology's principles, goals, and limitations. Michael Zimmerman critically examines the movement's three major branches—dee...
The Daily Lives of Muslims
For many in the West, Islam has become a byword for terrorism. From 9/11 to the Paris attacks, our headlines are dominated by images of violence and extremism. Now, as the Western world struggles to cope with the refugee crisis, there is a growing obsession with the issue of Muslim integration. Those Muslims who fail to assimilate are branded the ‘enemy within’, with their communities said to provide a fertile breeding ground for jihadists. Such narratives, though, fail to take into account the actual lives of most Muslims living in the West, fixating instead on a minority of violent extremists. In The Daily Lives of Muslims, Nilüfer Göle provides an urgently needed corrective to this ...
The Spiritual Quest
This treatise argues that the quest for the spirit is not a rare mystical experience, but a frequent expression of basic human impulses, rooted in our biological, psychological and social nature. It presents the quest in the myths and religious practices of tribal people throughout the world.
