Colorado Press Research Articles

Metz, Brent E. (2022) Where Did the Eastern Mayas Go? The Historical, Relational, and Contingent Interplay of Ch'orti' Indigeneity, University of Colorado Press (Louisville, CO), xxvii + 389 pp. $94 hbk., $75 ebk., $37.50 30‐day e‐book rental.

Metz, Brent E. (2022) Where Did the Eastern Mayas Go? The Historical, Relational, and Contingent Interplay of Ch'orti' Indigeneity, University of Colorado Press (Louisville, CO), xxvii + 389 pp. $94 hbk., $75 ebk., $37.50 30‐day e‐book rental.

Living ruins: Native engagements with past materialities in contemporary Mesoamerica, Amazonia, and the Andes Edited by PhilippeErikson and ValentinaVapnarsky. Louisville: University of Colorado Press, 2022. 269 pp.

Living ruins: Native engagements with past materialities in contemporary Mesoamerica, Amazonia, and the Andes Edited by PhilippeErikson and ValentinaVapnarsky. Louisville: University of Colorado Press, 2022. 269 pp.

Ian Hodder (ed.): Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life. Louisville, CO: University of Colorado Press, 2018; pp. xiv + 293.

Ian Hodder (ed.): Religion, History, and Place in the Origin of Settled Life. Louisville, CO: University of Colorado Press, 2018; pp. xiv + 293.

Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labor by AllisonMickelLouisville: University of Colorado Press, 2021. 203 pp.

Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labor by AllisonMickelLouisville: University of Colorado Press, 2021. 203 pp.

Fisher zeros and correlation decay in the Ising model

We study the complex zeros of the partition function of the Ising model, viewed as a polynomial in the “interaction parameter”; these are known as Fisher zeros in light of their introduction by Fisher in 1965 [Fisher, M. E., “The nature of critical points,” in Lecture notes in Theoretical Physics, edited by Brittin, W. E. (University of Colorado Press, 1965), Vol. 7c]. While the zeros of the partition function as a polynomial in the “field” parameter have been extensively studied since the classical work of Lee and Yang, comparatively little is known about Fisher zeros for general graphs. Our main result shows that the zero-field Ising model has no Fisher zeros in a complex neighborhood of the entire region of parameters where the model exhibits correlation decay. In addition to shedding light on Fisher zeros themselves, this result also establishes a formal connection between two distinct notions of phase transition for the Ising model: the absence of complex zeros (analyticity of the free energy density or the normalized logarithm of the partition function) and decay of correlations with distance. We also discuss the consequences of our result for efficient deterministic approximation of the partition function. Our proof relies heavily on algorithmic techniques, notably Weitz’s self-avoiding walk tree, and as such belongs to a growing body of work that uses algorithmic methods to resolve classical questions in statistical physics.

Eleanor Harrison-Buck & Julia A. Hendon (ed.). 2018. Relational identities and other-than-human agency in archaeology. Boulder: University of Colorado Press; 978-1-60732-746-2 $73.

Eleanor Harrison-Buck & Julia A. Hendon (ed.). 2018. Relational identities and other-than-human agency in archaeology. Boulder: University of Colorado Press; 978-1-60732-746-2 $73. - Volume 93 Issue 368

Pre-Columbian and Colonial History - Texcoco: Prehispanic and Colonial Perspectives. Edited by Jongsoo Lee and Galen Brokaw. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2014. Pp. xi, 265. $70.00 cloth.

Pre-Columbian and Colonial History - Texcoco: Prehispanic and Colonial Perspectives. Edited by Jongsoo Lee and Galen Brokaw. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2014. Pp. xi, 265. $70.00 cloth. - Volume 75 Issue 3

Words & Worlds Turned Around, Indigenous Christianities in Colonial Latin America. Edited by David Tavárez with a forward by William B. Taylor. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-60732-683-0

Words & Worlds Turned Around, Indigenous Christianities in Colonial Latin America. Edited by David Tavárez with a forward by William B. Taylor. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-60732-683-0

Persistent Progressives: The Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, by John F.Freeman, Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016. 235 pp. $34.95 (cloth). ISBN: 978‐1‐60732‐432‐6.

Rural SociologyVolume 82, Issue 4 p. 800-802 Book Review Persistent Progressives: The Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, by John F. Freeman, Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016. 235 pp. $34.95 (cloth). ISBN: 978-1-60732-432-6. Michael Classens, Michael Classens Western UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Michael Classens, Michael Classens Western UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 03 December 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12199Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume82, Issue4December 2017Pages 800-802 RelatedInformation

As Precious as Blood: The Western Slope in Colorado’s Water Wars, 1900–1970. By Steven C. Schulte. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016. xv + 286 pp. Illustrations, map, bibliography, notes, and index. Cloth $41.00, e-book $33.00.

<i>As Precious as Blood: The Western Slope in Colorado’s Water Wars, 1900–1970</i>. By Steven C. Schulte. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016. xv + 286 pp. Illustrations, map, bibliography, notes, and index. Cloth $41.00, e-book $33.00.

Forest Conservation in the Anthropocene: Science, Policy, and Practice. Edited by V. Alaric Sample, R. Patrick Bixler, and Char Miller. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016. ix + 336 pp. Illustrations, maps, graphs, bibliography, and index. Paper $34.95.

<i>Forest Conservation in the Anthropocene: Science, Policy, and Practice</i>. Edited by V. Alaric Sample, R. Patrick Bixler, and Char Miller. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016. ix + 336 pp. Illustrations, maps, graphs, bibliography, and index. Paper $34.95.

Review of "Risk Communication and Miscommunication: Case Studies in Science, Technology, Engineering, Government, and Community Organizations," by Boiarsky, C. (2016). Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press

What if something as seemingly routine as an email or an interoffice memorandum could make the difference between preventing a crisis or allowing a dangerous situation to deteriorate? This is the question Carolyn Boiarsky asks her readers to grapple with in Risk Communication and Miscommunication: Case Studies in Science, Technology, Engineering, Government, and Community Organizations, as she presents analyses of communication artifacts in case studies from the last few decades of US history. In a year that brought catastrophic flooding in Louisiana and national controversy over a proposed oil pipeline's threats to drinking water and sacred sites on Native American land, Boiarsky's case studies---which include the 2010 BP/ Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, the 2011 opening of the Mississippi Spillway during river flooding, and the 2014 expansion of the Enbridge Pipeline after a leak in Michigan four years prior---are a timely addition to the literature on risk communication. Communication designers will find this book particularly useful because of its concrete, actionable strategies for practitioners and chapter summaries that lend themselves to quick access for future reference.

Making the White Man’s West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West . By Jason E. Pierce

Making the White Man’s West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West . By Jason E. Pierce. (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016. xxvi + 296 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00, £32.00; ebook.) From Manifest Destiny to Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis, the notion that the U.S. West was predestined to become a refuge for white men has long shaped the culture, politics, and demography of the region. Yet, until now, no author has produced a single coherent narrative that examines the relationship between whiteness and westward expansion across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jason E. Pierce fills this hole in the literature with a concise, readable, and trenchant cultural history of how the U.S. West came to be imagined as a “white man’s” country. Pierce … stacey.smith{at}oregonstate.edu

Thiefing a Chance: Factory Work, Illicit Labor, and Neoliberal Subjectivities in Trinidad by Rebecca Prentice

Reviewed by: Thiefing a Chance: Factory Work, Illicit Labor, and Neoliberal Subjectivities in Trinidad by Rebecca Prentice Samantha King Rebecca Prentice, Thiefing a Chance: Factory Work, Illicit Labor, and Neoliberal Subjectivities in Trinidad. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2015. 248 pp. There has been growing recognition in recent years that the pressures associated with neoliberal governance models are actually promoting and expanding participation in alternative, illicit, and informal economic practice in a variety of social contexts. This dynamic has raised new and reinvigorated enduring anthropological questions related to the cultural meanings of economic practice and the role of hegemonic formations in both shaping and being shaped by local livelihoods. Thiefing a Chance: Factory Work, Illicit Labor, and Neoliberal Subjectivities in Trinidad by Rebecca Prentice offers a significant and nuanced contribution to these debates. This book presents an engaging ethnographic exploration of how women garment workers are negotiating neoliberal economic restructuring from the particular cultural and historical perspective of the Caribbean—a region often characterized as being on the losing side of globalization. In Trinidad, IMF-backed restructuring began opening protected national markets to intense global competition in the 1990s, a process that substantially reconfigured production requirements and employment opportunities in the local garment industry. As production became more unstable and demanding, a significant portion of garment work shifted to the informal sector. Today, Trinidad’s garment industry is comprised of a variety of dispersed, heterogeneous sites including factories, illegal sweatshops, independent workshops, and home-based enterprises. In Thiefing a Chance, Prentice demonstrates how the agency and flexibility of women has facilitated these transitions and in many ways enabled the local garment industry to endure. Her conclusions and analysis [End Page 975] are based upon 15 months of ethnographic research in Trinidad, which included nine months working on the shop floor at Signature Fashions, a pseudonym for a local garment factory that produces high-end fashions for the regional clothing market. What Prentice uncovers in the factory is a hidden world of productive labor through which illicit and informal practices have become integral, yet unacknowledged, aspects of the neoliberal order of work. Through such practices, known collectively by workers as “thiefing a chance,” women utilize the factory as a resource to surreptitiously engage in entrepreneurial activities such as training themselves on new machines, professionally finishing homemade garments, and copying Signature Fashions patterns for outside use. These types of covert strategies reference a cultural discourse common throughout the Black Atlantic that valorizes opportunistic and flexible economic practice as an expression of individual independence and creativity. Such endogenously derived forms of economic self-expression are intimately informed by the persistent need for Caribbean people to continually negotiate and adapt to capitalism’s enduring influence in the region—from plantation slavery through neoliberal economic restructuring. Yet recent anthropological work has also noted a substantial overlap between this historically informed subaltern expression of flexible self-reliance and the entrepreneurial ethos venerated by the contemporary neoliberal order. In this important book, Prentice seeks to ethnographically document this convergence and consider what it means. Thiefing a chance, she argues, represents a metaphor for local life under neoliberalism as the “expression of an individualistic, enterprising subjectivity” embraced and embodied by workers that “both subverts and con-firms” contemporary capitalist discipline (90). The book is organized into eight chapters, each of which draws upon rich ethnographic detail to further the anthropological analysis. The introduction highlights the main arguments of the text (as described briefly above) and outlines the theoretical and methodological approaches of the book. Chapter 2 introduces the reader to the Signature Fashions factory and brand. Prentice begins by situating Signature Fashions within the political economic history of the garment industry in Trinidad and then moves to an analysis of the relations of production in the factory. This discussion interrogates the nature and practice of industrial flexibility, or the ability of production to respond to dynamic market conditions. While this has generally been theorized as a crucial achievement of the neoliberal [End Page 976] firm, Prentice convincingly demonstrates how, at Signature, flexibility is a complex and contested process that is often facilitated by the coordinated, covert actions of workers as opposed to the formal structure and deliberate planning...

Making the White Man’s West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West by Jason E. Pierce

Reviewed by: Making the White Man’s West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West by Jason E. Pierce Michael Phillips Making the White Man’s West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West. By Jason E. Pierce. (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016. Pp. 312. Illustrations, bibliography, index.) In his skillful synthesis, Jason Pierce explores the myriad hopes and fears “white” elites projected upon the American West. Beginning with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, educated Anglos saw conflicting potential futures for the United States as they gazed at the lands beyond the Mississippi River. Some thought they saw a fertile paradise that guaranteed Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a republic built on the labor of free white yeoman farmers not beholden to corrupt Eastern money interests. Others feared that the West represented a dangerous trap: a tempting land that supposedly would poison Anglo-Saxons with Latin lethargy. “A salubrious climate could be detrimental to racial vigor, and indeed, early Anglo American visitors saw proof of the dangers of a pleasant climate in the allegedly lazy Indians and Hispanics of California and the Southwest,” Pierce says of writers like Richard Henry Dana (52). Finally, another set of thinkers perceived the West as an escape valve allowing “real” Americans (of Western and Northern European heritage) to escape filthy, crowded Atlantic seaboard cities infested with “lesser white” immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Nineteenth-century elites debated whether Anglo-Saxons had been created to thrive only in climates similar to their Northern European homeland and thus faced a natural barrier when they reached what was once called the “Great American Desert,” or whether their supposed superiority suited them to dominate any landscape. Meanwhile, conflicting schemes hatched to exploit the West as a racial dumping ground where American Indians and free African Americans could be exiled from the white-dominated East, even as railroads promoted the Northern European immigration to the western lands they offered for sale. Pierce’s work relies heavily on the innovative analyses of David Roediger and Richard Slotkin. His innovation is in laying out a clear chronology on how the West evolved as a racial project. He effectively uses the [End Page 395] colorful lives and brusque words of writers Charles Fletcher Lummis and Frank Bird Linderman, who both promoted white settlement of the West, to illustrate that evolution. Lummis in particular is a case study of the incoherence of nineteenth-century racial thought, advocating both white racial conquest of the West and protection of the indigenous people and their way of life. Also fascinating is his examination of how Mormons, because of their unconventional attitudes towards polygamy, came to be racialized as inferior whites. This exclusion from whiteness drips with irony given that the Mormons supported slavery and until the late nineteenth century excluded those of African descent from the priesthood because of the so-called Curse of Ham, which marked them forever to be “servants unto servants.” Pierce devotes much of one chapter to the use of violence to draw racial boundaries between whites and American Indians and Mexicans in Texas. Overall, this work is of great use to scholars of Texas history, the West, and the changing meaning of white identity. Michael Phillips Collin College Copyright © 2015 The Texas State Historical Association

Soils, Climate and Society: Archaeological Investigations in Ancient America. John D.Wingard and Sue EileenHayes (Ed.). 2013. University of Colorado Press, Boulder, 272 pp., B&amp;W, ISBN 978‐1‐60732‐203‐0, $70 (hardcover).

GeoarchaeologyVolume 30, Issue 5 p. 455-456 Book Review Soils, Climate and Society: Archaeological Investigations in Ancient America. John D. Wingard and Sue Eileen Hayes (Ed.). 2013. University of Colorado Press, Boulder, 272 pp., B&W, ISBN 978-1-60732-203-0, $70 (hardcover). Ronald Amundson, Ronald Amundson Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CaliforniaSearch for more papers by this author Ronald Amundson, Ronald Amundson Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CaliforniaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 20 September 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.21518Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume30, Issue5September/October 2015Pages 455-456 RelatedInformation

Lousy Sex: Creating Self in an Infectious World. By Gerald N.Callahan. 240 pp. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press. 2013. $19.95 (paper), $15.95 (e‐book).

American Journal of Human BiologyVolume 26, Issue 6 p. 867-868 Book Review Lousy Sex: Creating Self in an Infectious World. By Gerald N. Callahan. 240 pp. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press. 2013. $19.95 (paper), $15.95 (e-book). Tara J. Cepon-Robins, Tara J. Cepon-Robins Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OregonSearch for more papers by this author Tara J. Cepon-Robins, Tara J. Cepon-Robins Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OregonSearch for more papers by this author First published: 25 September 2014 https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.22631Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume26, Issue6November/December 2014Pages 867-868 RelatedInformation

Dinéj Na`nitin: Navajo Traditional Teachings and History by Robert S. McPherson (review)

NAIS 1:1 SPRING 2014 Reviews 119 RICHARD T. MACE Dinéjí Nànitin: Navajo Traditional Teachings and History by Robert S. McPherson University of Colorado Press, 2012 HISTORIAN ROBERT MCPHERSON created Dinéjí Nànitin to share the insight he had gathered from over thirty years of speaking and meeting with Navajo elders . He explains that the elders have a “growing concern that the younger generation was losing its understanding of what their grandmothers and grand­ fathers” experienced (7). McPherson notes the “extreme anguish” felt by Navajo elders of having their traditional teachings and history lost as the younger generation is “buried in a contemporary blizzard of activities sponsored by white culture that has made the old ways seem arcane, outdated, and impractical” (ibid). Dinéjí Nànitin is composed of nine independent chapters whose intent is to present and preserve the important lessons and stories that the Navajo tribal elders are afraid of losing to time and the distraction of younger members of the tribe. In his first chapter, McPherson examines divination, explaining the concepts by which the Navajo perform ceremonies and come to answers through their religious worldview. Each form of divination—wind listening, star gazing , and hand trebling—differ from each other. Listening is auditory, gazing involves sight, and trembling involves touch. The Navajo believe the world is filled with invisible holy people who understand what has and what will happen and that supernatural power plays an important role in finding tribal members who have the ability to use divination. McPherson notes that the Navajo believe the power of divination comes at a cost. If these powers are abused by their practitioners, they are cursed with disease. In his second chapter, McPherson examines why the Navajo were so devastated by the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918–19. McPherson articulately explains the Navajo custom of leaving home after someone dies, as it is believed that the lonely spirit stays in the vicinity. He contends that after the Navajo left their warm winter hogans because of this practice, they became more susceptible to the elements and the flu, and greater numbers got sick and died. Another Navajo custom that exacerbated the problem was sweat lodges. Since the influenza is a respiratory illness, sweat lodges served to both spread the disease, as well as provided for a faster incubation. McPherson notes that the nearby Ute tribe’s ceremonies are not as communal, so they did not spread the disease as rampantly as did the Navajo, and subsequently did not suffer the same level of mortality. Reviews NAIS 1:1 SPRING 2014 120 Moving from the devastation of the flu, an evil foretold by the bad omen of a solar eclipse, according to sun gazing divination, McPherson explains ideas of medicine men and witchery. He highlights Clyde Kluckhohn’s study Navajo Witchcraft, which identifies the four types of “black magic”: witchery, sorcery , wizardry, and frenzy witchcraft. He notes that the Navajo do not draw a particular distinction between good and evil magic; it only matters how the magic is used. He explains that it is important for medicine men to have an understanding of dark magic. Otherwise, they would be unprepared to create countermagic to negate its effects. Balance is central in Navajo religion, even excessive good can be a negative by becoming out of control, but rituals provide “the means by which things out of bounds can be brought back to safety and order” (78). The second half of Dinéjí Nànitin focuses on language and traditional­ stories. McPherson explains that the struggle in maintaining traditional Navajo storytelling is that the younger generation does not appreciate traditional language. He points to Charlie Blueyes as an example of a repository of Navajo wisdom, whose grandson was fluent in English but his Navajo was almost nonexistent, as school and the dominant society replaced traditional learning. The significance of the dwindling numbers of those who can speak Navajo is that “only pure Navajo words are used in ceremonies” and that these words serve as a “major underlying tenet of the Navajo belief system” (215). With the passing of elders like Charlie Blueyes, traditional stories, wisdom , and ceremonies pass out of existence...

How “Gilded” and “Progressive” Were They Anyway? Revisiting Class Relations in the Industrializing United States - R. Todd Laugen. The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900–1930. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2010. 264 pp. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-60732-052-4. - Vanessa H. May Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-Class Reform in New York, 1870–1940. Chapel

How “Gilded” and “Progressive” Were They Anyway? Revisiting Class Relations in the Industrializing United States - R. Todd Laugen. The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900–1930. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2010. 264 pp. $28.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-55849-866-2. - Volume 13 Issue 1

Ethelia Ruiz Medrano and Susan Kellogg (eds.), Negotiation within Domination: New Spain's Indian Pueblos Confront the Spanish State (Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press, 2010), p. xvii + 264, $70.00, hb.

Ethelia Ruiz Medrano and Susan Kellogg (eds.), Negotiation within Domination: New Spain's Indian Pueblos Confront the Spanish State (Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press, 2010), p. xvii + 264, $70.00, hb. - Volume 44 Issue 4