George Gmelch – författare

Behind the Smile is an inside look at the world of Caribbean tourism as seen through the lives of the men and women in the tourist industry in Barbados. The workers represent every level of tourism, from maid to hotel manager, beach gigolo to taxi driver, red cap to diving instructor. These highly personal accounts offer insight into complex questions surrounding tourism: how race shapes interactions between tourists and workers, how tourists may become agents of cultural change, the meaning of sexual encounters between locals and tourists, and the real economic and ecological costs of development through tourism. This updated edition updates the text and includes several new narratives and a new chapter about American students' experiences during summer field school and home stays in Barbados.

While anthropologists often have been accused of failing to "study up," this book turns an anthropological lens on an elite activity – wine tasting. Five million people a year, from the US and abroad, travel to California's Napa Valley to experience the "good life": to taste fine wines, eat fine food, and immerse themselves in other sophisticated pleasures while surrounded by bucolic beauty. Written in a highly readable style by anthropologists George and Sharon Gmelch, Tasting the Good Life examines who wine tourists are and what the "tasting" experience is all about. It also examines the growth of wine tourism in the valley and the impact it is having on the landscape and the lives of the people who live there. In addition to the authors' own analysis, they present the personal narratives of 17 people who work in Napa tourism — from winemaker to vineyard manager, from celebrity chef to wait staff, from hot air balloonist to masseuse. Their stories provide unexpected and entertaining insights into this new form of tourism, the people who engage in it, its impact on a now iconic place, and American consumer culture in the 21st century.

Double Passage presents, in their own words, the lives and experiences of thirteen men and women from the island of Barbados who emigrated to North America and Britain and then years later returned home. They tell of their decisions to leave the familiarity and security of home for an uncertain future in cities of the industrial world; they explain what it is like to be black and immigrant in the predominantly white societies they settled in; and they reveal their struggles to find work and decent housing, to develop new relationships, and to save enough money to be able to return home and assume the affluent lifestyle expected of returnees. Double Passage is an extraordinary book that is able both to inform and to entertain.

One of the first things any visitor to Barbados notices is Barbadian youths wearing baseball caps and T-shirts sporting the logos of North American teams; and these days, one is more likely to find an American sitcom on television than a Caribbean program. The Parish behind God's Back describes the social fabric and everyday life of one rural parish on the island, St. Lucy, including its many links to the outside world. It is a contemporary ethnography of the local that takes into account the enormous influence of global factors such as tourism, television, foreign travel, and return migrants. Written with students in mind, the book contains several unique features. Each chapter blends descriptions of Barbadian culture with comparisons to North America; throughout, the authors include tales of not only their own fieldwork experiences but those of their undergraduate students; and personal narratives are emphasized to engage interest in individuals. This highly readable and thought-provoking account should appeal to general readers with an interest in the Caribbean as well as to students of anthropology. George Gmelch is Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, Union College. Sharon Bohn Gmelch is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Women's Studies, Union College.

This book offers an invaluable look at what cultural anthropologists do when they are in the field. Through fascinating and often entertaining accounts of their lives and work in varied cultural settings, the authors describe the many forms fieldwork can take, the kinds of questions anthropologists ask, and the common problems they encounter. From these accounts and the experiences of the student field workers the authors have mentored over the years, In the Field makes a powerful case for the value of the anthropological approach to knowledge.

This book offers an invaluable look at what cultural anthropologists do when they are in the field. Through fascinating and often entertaining accounts of their lives and work in varied cultural settings, the authors describe the many forms fieldwork can take, the kinds of questions anthropologists ask, and the common problems they encounter. From these accounts and the experiences of the student field workers the authors have mentored over the years, In the Field makes a powerful case for the value of the anthropological approach to knowledge.

A televised baseball game from Puerto Rico, Japan, or even Cuba might look a lot like the North American game. Beneath the outward similarities, however—the uniforms and equipment and basic rules—there is usually a very different history and culture influencing the nuances of the sport. These differences are what interest the authors of Baseball without Borders, a book about America's national pastime going global and undergoing instructive, entertaining, and sometimes curious changes in the process. The contributors, leading authorities on baseball in the fourteen nations under consideration, look at how the game was imported—how it took hold and developed, how it is organized, played, and followed—and what these local and regional trends and features say about the sport's place in particular cultures. Organized by region—Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Pacific—and written by journalists, historians, anthropologists, and English professors, these original essays reflect diverse perspectives and range across a refreshingly wide array of subjects: from high school baseball in Japan and Little League in Taiwan to fan behavior in Cuba and the politics of baseball in China and Korea.

In the Ballpark is a collection of interviews with twenty-one people who work in all parts of Major and Minor League Baseball: usher and broadcaster, beer vendor and sportswriter, clubhouse attendant and field manager, ticket seller and owner, scout and general manager, mascot and player. Organized by setting—the stands, the field, the press box, and the front office—the accounts yield a wealth of insight into little-known aspects of the game. The new concluding chapter provides updates on the subjects since they were interviewed ten years ago as well as updates on how their jobs and the game itself has changed since In the Ballpark was first published.

From the spark of ambition to play baseball professionally to the necessity of reinventing life after baseball, the anthropologist and former Minor Leaguer George Gmelch describes the lives of the men who work at America's national game. Twenty-four years after his own final road trip as a minor leaguer, Gmelch went back on the road with ballplayers, this time with a pen and pad to record the details of life around the diamond. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with Major and Minor League players, coaches, and managers, Gmelch explores players' experiences throughout their careers: being scouted, becoming a rookie, moving through or staying in the Minors, preparing mentally and physically to play day after day, coping with slumps and successes, and facing retirement. He examines the ballplayers' routines and rituals, describes their joys and frustrations, and investigates the roles of wives, fans, and groupies in their lives. Based on his own experience as a player in the 1960s, Gmelch charts the life cycle of the modern professional ballplayer and makes perceptive comparisons to a previous generation of players.

In 1965 George Gmelch signed a contract to play professional baseball with the Detroit Tigers organization. Gmelch grew up sheltered in an all-white, affluent San Francisco suburb, and he knew little of the world outside. Over the next four seasons, he came of age in baseball’s Minor Leagues through experiences ranging from learning the craft of the professional game to becoming conscious of race and class for the first time.               Playing with Tigers is not a typical baseball memoir. Now a well-known anthropologist, Gmelch recounts a baseball education unlike any other as he got to know small-town life across the United States against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, civil rights protests, and the emergence of counterculture. The social and political turmoil of the times spilled into baseball, and Gmelch experienced the consequences firsthand as he played out his career in the Jim Crow South. Playing with Tigers immerses the reader in the life of the Minor Leagues, capturing the gritty, insular, and humorous life and culture of Minor League baseball during a period when both the author and the country were undergoing profound changes.

Baseball Beyond Our Borders celebrates the globalization of the game while highlighting the different histories and cultures of the nations in which the sport is played.This collection of essays tells the story of America’s national pastime as it has spread across the world and undergone instructive, entertaining, and sometimes quirky changes in the process. Covering nineteen countries and a U.S. territory, the contributors show how each country imported baseball, how baseball took hold and developed, how it is organized, played, and followed, and what local and regional traits tell us about the sport’s place in each culture. But what lies in store as baseball’s passport fills up with far-flung stamps? Will the international migration of players homogenize baseball? What role will the World Baseball Classic play? These are just a few of the questions the authors pose.