Translated by Carl Ipsen. This short book provides a succinct and masterly overview of the history of migration, from the earliest movements of human beings out of Africa into Asia and Europe to the present day, exploring along the way those factors that contribute to the successes and failures of migratory groups. Separate chapters deal with the migration flows between Europe and the rest of the world in the 19th and 20th centuries and with the turbulent and complex migratory history of the Americas. Livi Bacci shows that, over the centuries, migration has been a fundamental human prerogative and has been an essential element in economic development and the achievement of improved standards of living. The impact of state policies has been mixed, however, as states have each established their own rules of entry and departure – rules that today accentuate the differences between the interests of the sending countries, the receiving countries, and the migrants themselves. Lacking international agreement on migration rules owing to the refusal of states to surrender any of their sovereignty in this regard, the positive role that migration has always played in social development is at risk. This concise history of migration by one of the world's leading demographers will be an indispensable text for students and for anyone interested in understanding how the movement of people has shaped the modern world.
The Nature of Heritage: The New South Africa is unique in revealing the conflicts inherent in preserving both natural and cultural heritage, by examining the archaeological, ethnographic and economic evidence of a nation's attempts to master its past and its future. Provides a classic example of how nations attempt to overcome a negative heritage through past mastering of their histories Evaluates the continuing dominance of nature and conservation over concerns for cultural heritage Employs ethnographic and archaeological methodologies to reveal how the past is processed into a new national heritage Identifies heritage as therapy, exemplified in the strategy for repairing legacies of racial and ethnic difference in post-apartheid South Africa Highlights the role of archaeological heritage sites, national parks and protected areas in economic development and social empowerment Explores how nature trumps culture and the global implications of the new configurations of heritage
The idea of progress guided human expectations and actions for over two centuries. From the Enlightenment onwards, it was widely believed that the condition of humankind could be radically improved. History had embarked on an unstoppable forward trajectory, realizing the promise of freedom and reason. The scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and the French Revolution, in some views also the socialist revolution, were milestones on this march of progress. But since the late twentieth century the idea of progress has largely disappeared from public debate. Sometimes it has been explicitly declared dead. The wide horizon of future possibilities has closed. The best we can hope for, some say, is to avoid regress. What happened to progress? Why did we stop believing in it, if indeed we did? This book offers answers to these questions. It reviews both the conceptual history of progress and the social and political experiences with progress over the past two centuries, and it comes to a surprising conclusion: The idea of progress was misconceived from its beginnings, and the failure of progress in practice was a result of this flawed conception. The experiences of the past half century, in turn, has allowed us to rethink progress in a more adequate way. Rather than the end of progress, they may herald the beginning of a new, reconstructed idea of progress.
The images of migrants and refugees arriving in precarious boats on the shores of southern Europe, and of the makeshift camps that have sprung up in Lesbos, Lampedusa, Calais and elsewhere, have become familiar sights on television screens around the world. But what do we know about the border places – these liminal zones between countries and continents – that have become the focus of so much attention and anxiety today, and what do we know about the individuals who occupy these places? In this timely book, anthropologist Michel Agier addresses these questions and examines the character of the borderlands that emerge on the margins of nation-states. Drawing on his ethnographic fieldwork, he shows that borders, far from disappearing, have acquired a new kind of centrality in our societies, becoming reference points for the growing numbers of people who do not find a place in the countries they wish to reach. They have become the site for a new kind of subject, the border dweller, who is both 'inside' and 'outside', enclosed on the one hand and excluded on the other, and who is obliged to learn, under harsh conditions, the ways of the world and of other people. In this respect, the lives of migrants, even in the uncertainties or dangers of the borderlands, tell us something about the condition in which everyone is increasingly living today, a 'cosmopolitan condition' in which the experience of the unfamiliar is more common and the relation between self and other is in constant renewal.
This is an innovative contribution to the study of popular culture, focusing on the youth cultures that revolve around dance clubs and raves.
This new book integrates material drawn from a variety of sources – feminist theory, cultural and literary analysis, sociology and art history – in an original discussion of women's relationship to modern and post-modern culture. The essays in the book challenge the continuing separation of sociological from textual analysis in cultural (and feminist) theory and enquiry. They address critically the question of women's writing, exploring the idea that women may begin to define their own lives and construct their identities in a patriarchal culture through the very process of writing. They also present a cogent defence of a feminist cultural politics, including a politics of the body.
Democracy is the central political issue of our age, yet debates over its nature and goals rarely engage with feminist concerns. Now that women have the right to vote, they are thought to present no special problems of their own. But despite the seemingly gender-neutral categories of individual or citizen, democratic theory and practice continues to privilege the male. This book reconsiders dominant strands in democratic thinking – focusing on liberal democracy, participatory democracy, and twentieth century versions of civic republicanism – and approaches these from a feminist perspective. Anne Phillips explores the under-representation of women in politics, the crucial relationship between public and private spheres, and the lessons of the contemporary women's movement as an experience in participatory democracy.
In this important new book the leading philosopher Jacques Rancière continues his reflections on the representative power of works of art. How does art render events that have spanned an era? What roles does it assign to those who enacted them or those who were the victims of such events? Rancière considers these questions in relation to the works of Claude Lanzmann, Goya, Manet, Kandinsky and Barnett Newman, among others, and demonstrates that these issues are not only confined to the spectator but have greater ramifications for the history of art itself. For Rancière, every image, in what it shows and what it hides, says something about what it is permissible to show and what must be hidden in any given place and time. Indeed the image, in its act of showing and hiding, can reopen debates that the official historical record had supposedly determined once and for all. He argues that representing the past can imprison history, but it can also liberate its true meaning.
This much-needed book is a concise and accessible account of the contribution of feminist thinking to the study of crime. Tracing the intellectual history of criminology from its scientific foundations in the nineteenth century to its recent encounters with postmodernism, Naffine discusses the ways in which the discipline has established its priorities and values, and shows how men became and remain the central interest of the discipline. Criminologists, she argues, are still reluctant to engage with feminist scholarship which questions their agenda. Naffine argues that for several decades feminists from a variety of disciplines have been studying crime, producing increasingly refined and sophisticated understandings of the phenomenon. Their interests have ranged widely, from the effects of masculinity and femininity on the propensity to offend, to the ways in which class and race affect the gender dimension of crime. They have pursued difficult questions about the nature of knowledge and the meanings of human behaviour in men and women. Naffine analyses the treatment of women offenders by the criminal justice system, and women as victims of crime – especially violent crime – and argues for a different understanding of sexual relations between men and women within the crime of rape. Finally, she examines how feminist detective fiction can enliven and enhance the study of crime. Provocative and well-argued, this timely book will be welcomed by students and researchers in women's studies, gender studies, criminology, sociology and law.
The relationship between feminism and ecology has grown in importance in recent years. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the ecofeminist movement and its history, as well as an extended analysis of the main perspectives within it. Mellor examines the connections between feminism and the green movement, and outlines the contributions of the major participants, while contextualizing them within a wider range of debates. She re-examines classic feminist texts from an ecofeminist perspective, and explores the relationship between ecofeminism and other ecological movements, such as 'deep' ecology, social ecology and ecosocialism. Mellor discusses the association of women with biology and 'nature', and argues that the relationship between women and the environment can help us to understand the relationship between humanity and the natural world. Against the trends towards radical economic liberalism, global capitalism and postmodernist pluralism, she argues that there is within the feminist and green movements the basis of a new radical movement which draws on the principles of both. A useful and engaging account of feminist perspectives on ecology, the book will be welcomed by students and researchers in feminism and gender studies, sociology and political theory.