On the little-known and darker side of shamanism there exists an ancient form of sorcery called kanaima, a practice still observed among the Amerindians of the highlands of Guyana, Venezuela, and Brazil, which involves the ritual stalking, mutilation, lingering death, and consumption of human victims. At once a memoir of cultural encounter and an ......
Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century
In a work that synthesises crucial developments in international relations at the close of the twentieth century, Bruce Cumings - a leading historian of contemporary East Asia - provides a nuanced understanding of how the United States has loomed over the modern history and culture of East Asia. By offering correctives to widely held yet largely ......
Although the body has been the focus of much contemporary cultural theory, the models that are typically applied neglect the most salient characteristics of embodied existence-movement, affect, and sensation-in favor of concepts derived from linguistic theory. In Parables for the Virtual Brian Massumi views the body and media such as television, ......
Japan's jazz community - both musicians and audience - has been begrudgingly recognised for its talent, knowledge, and level of appreciation. Underpinning this tentative admiration, however, has been a tacit agreement that, for cultural reasons, Japanese jazz "can't swing." In Blue Nippon E. Taylor Atkins shows how, strangely, Japan's own attitude ......
The Gloria Wekker Reader compiles articles, essays, interviews, poems, and letters by the Afro-Surinamese Dutch theorist and activist, Gloria Wekker. Wekker is a preeminent scholar in feminist Black diaspora studies, especially known for her developments in epistemology and methodology, conceptualizations of sexuality, and mapping of the ......
Histories of economic thought have generally focused on the development of economic theory, notably value and distribution. The activity of applying economic theory to the understanding of particular situations and the solution of specific problems, though a part of the work of economists for several generations, has received relatively little ......
Amber L. Hollibaugh is a lesbian sex radical, ex-hooker, incest survivor, gypsy child, poor-white-trash, high femme dyke. She is also an award-winning filmmaker, feminist, Left political organizer, public speaker and journalist. "My Dangerous Desires" presents over 20 years of Hollibaugh's writing, an introduction written especially for this book, ......
In "Haunted Media" Jeffrey Sconce examines American culture's persistent association of new electronic media - from the invention of the telegraph to the introduction of television and computers - with paranormal or spiritual phenomena. By offering an historical analysis of the relation between communication technologies, discourse of modernity ......
The partition of India into two countries, India and Pakistan, caused one of the most massive human convulsions in history. Within the space of two months in 1947 more than twelve million people were displaced. A million died. More than seventy-five thousand women were abducted and raped. Countless children disappeared. Homes, villages, ......