Social Transformations in American Anthropology – serie

Since the 1990s, Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) programs have experienced unprecedented expansion in American public schools. The program and its proliferation in poor, urban schools districts with large numbers of Latina/o and African American students is not without controversy. Public support is often based on the belief that the program provides much-needed discipline for "at risk" youth. Meanwhile, critics of JROTC argue that the program is a recruiting tool for the U.S. military and is yet another example of an increasingly punitive climate that disproportionately affect youth of color in American public schools. Citizen, Student, Soldier intervenes in these debates, providing critical ethnographic attention to understanding the motivations, aspirations, and experiences of students who participate in increasing numbers in JROTC programs. These students have complex reasons for their participation, reasons that challenge the reductive idea that they are either dangerous youths who need discipline or victims being exploited by a predatory program. Rather, their participation is informed by their marginal economic position in the local political economy, as well as their desire to be regarded as full citizens, both locally and nationally. Citizenship is one of the central concerns guiding the JROTC curriculum; this book explores ethnographically how students understand and enact different visions of citizenship and grounds these understandings in local and national political economic contexts. It also highlights the ideological, social and cultural conditions of Latina/o youth and their families who both participate in and are enmeshed in vigorous debates about citizenship, obligation, social opportunity, militarism and, ultimately, the American Dream.

Illuminates how food activism has been taking shape and where it is headedAs climate change, childhood obesity, and food insecurity accelerate at an alarming pace, activists around the country are working to address the pressing need for healthy and sustainable solutions to feed the population. Food Activism Today investigates the new approaches food activists are taking as they formulate alternatives to the current unsustainable agro-industrial food system.Drawing on ethnographic research conducted over an eleven-month period in both urban and rural North Carolina, the volume addresses questions about the moral visions of food activists, how class and racial hierarchies infuse some food activism movements, and how food activism relates to climate change and imminent ecological collapse. Exploring food activism around both local and sustainable food production and food security for lower-income people, the volume finds surprisingly little overlap, with the two movements seemingly remaining distinct approaches (at least for now) to issues around the food system, climate change, and access to healthy food choices.As the US moves into an era in which climate change and neoliberal tensions are conjoined in a looming political crisis, Food Activism Today looks at where food activism is headed, the ethics and issues surrounding alternative approaches to food production, and how food production is related to broader issues of climate change.

Illuminates how food activism has been taking shape and where it is headedAs climate change, childhood obesity, and food insecurity accelerate at an alarming pace, activists around the country are working to address the pressing need for healthy and sustainable solutions to feed the population. Food Activism Today investigates the new approaches food activists are taking as they formulate alternatives to the current unsustainable agro-industrial food system.Drawing on ethnographic research conducted over an eleven-month period in both urban and rural North Carolina, the volume addresses questions about the moral visions of food activists, how class and racial hierarchies infuse some food activism movements, and how food activism relates to climate change and imminent ecological collapse. Exploring food activism around both local and sustainable food production and food security for lower-income people, the volume finds surprisingly little overlap, with the two movements seemingly remaining distinct approaches (at least for now) to issues around the food system, climate change, and access to healthy food choices.As the US moves into an era in which climate change and neoliberal tensions are conjoined in a looming political crisis, Food Activism Today looks at where food activism is headed, the ethics and issues surrounding alternative approaches to food production, and how food production is related to broader issues of climate change.

2021 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine Shows how reproductive justice organizations' collaborative work across racial lines provides a compelling model for other groups to successfully influence changePatricia Zavella experienced firsthand the trials and judgments imposed on a working professional mother of color: her own commitment to academia was questioned during her pregnancy, as she was shamed for having children "too young." And when she finally achieved her professorship, she felt out of place as one of the few female faculty members with children. These experiences sparked Zavella's interest in the movement for reproductive justice. In this book, she draws on five years of ethnographic research to explore collaborations among women of color engaged in reproductive justice activism. While there are numerous organizations focused on reproductive justice, most are racially specific, such as the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum and Black Women for Wellness. Yet Zavella reveals that many of these organizations have built coalitions among themselves, sharing resources and supporting each other through different campaigns and struggles. While the coalitions are often regional—or even national—the organizations themselves remain racially or ethnically specific, presenting unique challenges and opportunities for the women involved. Zavella argues that these organizations provide a compelling model for negotiating across differences within constituencies. In the context of the war on women's reproductive rights and its disproportionate effect on women of color, and increased legal violence toward immigrants, and now incorporating an updated preface addressing the Dobbs decision which struck down Roe v. Wade, The Movement for Reproductive Justice demonstrates that a truly intersectional movement built on grassroots organizing, culture shift work, and policy advocating can offer visions of strength, resiliency, and dignity for all.

2021 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine Shows how reproductive justice organizations' collaborative work across racial lines provides a compelling model for other groups to successfully influence changePatricia Zavella experienced firsthand the trials and judgments imposed on a working professional mother of color: her own commitment to academia was questioned during her pregnancy, as she was shamed for having children "too young." And when she finally achieved her professorship, she felt out of place as one of the few female faculty members with children. These experiences sparked Zavella's interest in the movement for reproductive justice. In this book, she draws on five years of ethnographic research to explore collaborations among women of color engaged in reproductive justice activism. While there are numerous organizations focused on reproductive justice, most are racially specific, such as the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum and Black Women for Wellness. Yet Zavella reveals that many of these organizations have built coalitions among themselves, sharing resources and supporting each other through different campaigns and struggles. While the coalitions are often regional—or even national—the organizations themselves remain racially or ethnically specific, presenting unique challenges and opportunities for the women involved. Zavella argues that these organizations provide a compelling model for negotiating across differences within constituencies. In the context of the war on women's reproductive rights and its disproportionate effect on women of color, and increased legal violence toward immigrants, and now incorporating an updated preface addressing the Dobbs decision which struck down Roe v. Wade, The Movement for Reproductive Justice demonstrates that a truly intersectional movement built on grassroots organizing, culture shift work, and policy advocating can offer visions of strength, resiliency, and dignity for all.

Honorable Mention, 2019 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, given by the Society for Humanistic AnthropologyHonorable Mention, 2019 Sharon Stephens Prize, given by the American Ethnological Society Examines the role that race played in the inception of the airline industryEmpire in the Air is at once a history of aviation, and an examination of how air travel changed lives along the transatlantic corridor of the African diaspora. Focusing on Britain and its Caribbean colonies, Chandra Bhimull reveals how the black West Indies shaped the development of British Airways.Bhimull offers a unique analysis of early airline travel, illuminating the links among empire, aviation and diaspora, and in doing so provides insights into how racially oppressed people experienced air travel. The emergence of artificial flight revolutionized the movement of people and power, and Bhimull makes the connection between airplanes and the other vessels that have helped make and maintain the African diaspora: the slave ships of the Middle Passage, the tracks of the Underground Railroad, and Marcus Garvey's black-owned ocean liner.As a new technology, airline travel retained the racialist ideas and practices that were embedded in British imperialism, and these ideas shaped every aspect of how commercial aviation developed, from how airline routes were set, to who could travel easily and who could not.The author concludes with a look at airline travel today, suggesting that racism is still enmeshed in the banalities of contemporary flight.

Since the 1990s, Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) programs have experienced unprecedented expansion in American public schools. The program and its proliferation in poor, urban schools districts with large numbers of Latina/o and African American students is not without controversy. Public support is often based on the belief that the program provides much-needed discipline for "at risk" youth. Meanwhile, critics of JROTC argue that the program is a recruiting tool for the U.S. military and is yet another example of an increasingly punitive climate that disproportionately affect youth of color in American public schools. Citizen, Student, Soldier intervenes in these debates, providing critical ethnographic attention to understanding the motivations, aspirations, and experiences of students who participate in increasing numbers in JROTC programs. These students have complex reasons for their participation, reasons that challenge the reductive idea that they are either dangerous youths who need discipline or victims being exploited by a predatory program. Rather, their participation is informed by their marginal economic position in the local political economy, as well as their desire to be regarded as full citizens, both locally and nationally. Citizenship is one of the central concerns guiding the JROTC curriculum; this book explores ethnographically how students understand and enact different visions of citizenship and grounds these understandings in local and national political economic contexts. It also highlights the ideological, social and cultural conditions of Latina/o youth and their families who both participate in and are enmeshed in vigorous debates about citizenship, obligation, social opportunity, militarism and, ultimately, the American Dream.

The Sounds of Latinidad explores the Latino music scene as a lens through which to understand changing ideas about latinidad in the New South. Focusing on Latino immigrant musicians and their fans in Charlotte, North Carolina, the volume shows how limited economic mobility, social marginalization, and restrictive immigration policies have stymied immigrants' access to the American dream and musicians' dreams of success. Instead, Latin music has become a way to form community, debate political questions, and claim cultural citizenship. The volume illuminates the complexity of Latina/o musicians' lives. They find themselves at the intersection of culture and politics, often pushed to define a vision of what it means to be Latino in a globalizing city in the Nuevo South. At the same time, they often avoid overt political statements and do not participate in immigrants' rights struggles, instead holding a cautious view of political engagement. Yet despite this politics of ambivalence, Latina/o musicians do assert intellectual agency and engage in a politics that is embedded in their musical community, debating aesthetics, forging collective solidarity with their audiences, and protesting poor working conditions. Challenging scholarship on popular music that focuses on famous artists or on one particular genre, this volume demonstrates how exploring the everyday lives of ordinary musicians can lead to a deeper understanding of musicians' role in society. It argues that the often overlooked population of Latina/o musicians should be central to our understanding of what it means to live in a southern U.S. city today.

The Sounds of Latinidad explores the Latino music scene as a lens through which to understand changing ideas about latinidad in the New South. Focusing on Latino immigrant musicians and their fans in Charlotte, North Carolina, the volume shows how limited economic mobility, social marginalization, and restrictive immigration policies have stymied immigrants' access to the American dream and musicians' dreams of success. Instead, Latin music has become a way to form community, debate political questions, and claim cultural citizenship. The volume illuminates the complexity of Latina/o musicians' lives. They find themselves at the intersection of culture and politics, often pushed to define a vision of what it means to be Latino in a globalizing city in the Nuevo South. At the same time, they often avoid overt political statements and do not participate in immigrants' rights struggles, instead holding a cautious view of political engagement. Yet despite this politics of ambivalence, Latina/o musicians do assert intellectual agency and engage in a politics that is embedded in their musical community, debating aesthetics, forging collective solidarity with their audiences, and protesting poor working conditions. Challenging scholarship on popular music that focuses on famous artists or on one particular genre, this volume demonstrates how exploring the everyday lives of ordinary musicians can lead to a deeper understanding of musicians' role in society. It argues that the often overlooked population of Latina/o musicians should be central to our understanding of what it means to live in a southern U.S. city today.