Mainstream Scholarship Research Articles

Towards a Class-Struggle Anthropology

history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.- Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist ManifestoThe philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.- Karl Marx, Theses on FeuerrbachFor Marx social class is at the centre of understanding and organizing social change. As interpreted by Lenin the working class, organized by its politically advanced vanguard, constituted the path toward emancipation and the realization of human potential. Rosa Luxemburg emphasized-among other things-the critical power of the combined force of the working class, engaged in a general strike, in overthrowing capitalism. Trotsky, through his analysis of combined and uneven development and the thesis of permanent revolution, pointed the way forward toward a global socialist society (even if the revolution began in the most backward of countries).Anthropology, by contrast, has tended to draw upon the more conservative theoretical frameworks of mainstream scholars such as Emile Durkheim or Max Weber to construct models of society that highlight ways of building and or maintaining community connections and social functions (Patterson 2001). This is not, of course, to say that there are no important anthropological contributions which draw upon Marx-there are some.1 In this essay we detail in broad stroke the history of Marxist anthropology in North America (which for us includes Mexico, the United States, and Canada) and, in so doing, point the way forward towards a class-struggle anthropology, with the ultimate aim of achieving social justice and the elimination of a class-based society.To carry out the task that we have set for ourselves we balance between review and argument. For our review we have selected pieces that are critical for engaging in our project of a class-struggle anthropology. Because we are social activists engaged in the social justice movement and practising professional anthropologists engaged in the arcane world of publish or perish we have focussed on those anthropological writers and works that we have found contribute toward our project in terms of their intellectual and practical contributions.For our argument we draw upon the classical call for a class-struggle social science that is intent on reinvigorating hope for a better, more just world.2 This is a social science that places its analytical eye and its political hopes upon the working class as the pivotal social agent of change and upon the ruling class as the agent of reaction and deception. In so doing we draw directly from the corpus of theory inspired and informed by the writings and political engagements of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. In this essay we have attempted to avoid the endless internal debates within Marxism and focus instead upon the ways in which Marxism as theory and practice has informed anthropology. Nonetheless, it would be remiss if we did not at the very least lay out the core concepts of Marxist theory so as not to be waylaid later on in the paper over potentially unfamiliar phrases or concepts new to the 21st-century ear.First and foremost Marxism is a theory and a practice united in the objective of achieving a classless society. As a theory, Marxism is a body of conceptual tools that allows an informed analyst an effective mechanism by which to make sense of the myriad ways and means the ruling class of a particular society deploy to hold onto their privileged position in society (see, for example: Ollman 1971; Mandel 1969). Chief among Marxism's central concepts is that of social class-defined at its most basic as one's place relative to the means of production, the tools, machines, and knowledge used to transform the world around us into things usable by humans. While primarily focussed upon the workings of capitalism, Marxist theory has also been used to understand the workings of kin-ordered and tributary societies (Wolf 1982, 1999). …

Unpacking firm effects: modeling political alliances in variance decomposition of firm performance in turbulent environments

In this paper, firm heterogeneity in turbulent environments is addressed. It is argued that previous studies have not taken into account effects of a turbulent environment, like the Brazilian context, in which firms must face a weak and erratic government. In such an environment, the large portion of variance usually attributed to firm effects may be explained, not by the usual assumptions of mainstream scholars, but by a more political view of firm differences, namely, the ability to manage valuable political alliances. To account for these differences, a multivariate performance measure was construed and a new factor, politics effects, has been introduced to the usual model. Company donations for campaign funds in elections was used as a proxy for this factor. A sample of 607 observations, of 177 firms in 15 sectors was used. Results suggest that the presence of politics effects were found to be not significant (using COV and Hierarchical ANOVA). However, different from previous studies, transient industry effects appear to be more important than stable effects. Findings also indicate that a better model specification for turbulent environments is needed and highlight the importance of the cost of capital.

Pentecostal education

At the start of the 20th century, as denominational resources were accumulated, Pentecostals provided basic bible training for their ministers and missionaries. The narrative shows how simple training schemes blossomed in some cultures into universities and colleges and, in others, into accredited institutions attached to secular bodies or, in the developing world, into more innovative schemes, some of which were church‐based. The current challenge is for Pentecostalism to remain true to itself while incorporating mainstream scholarship.

ISLAND ECOLOGIES AND CARIBBEAN LITERATURES1

ABSTRACT This paper examines the ways in which European colonialism positioned tropical island landscapes outside the trajectories of modernity and history by segregating nature from culture, and it explores how contemporary Caribbean authors have complicated this opposition. By tracing the ways in which island colonisation transplanted and hybridised both peoples and plants, I demonstrate how mainstream scholarship in disciplines as diverse as biogeography, anthropology, history, and literature have neglected to engage with the deep history of island landscapes. I draw upon the literary works of Caribbean writers such as Édouard Glissant, Wilson Harris, Jamaica Kincaid and Olive Senior to explore the relationship between landscape and power.

Faith and Society: The Making of a Christian America

Sitting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania's Long Park for a July 4th concert, I saw a man whose American flag-adorned T-shirt proclaimed God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in time of trouble. Therefore we will not fear. A few months later, the front page of the New York Times carried a headline that announced Evangelicals Sway White House on Human Rights Abroad.' impact of religion is evident everywhere in our public life, and yet mainstream scholars of American have been generally reluctant to explore the dynamic between faith and citizenship. Uneasy with how to document spiritual influence, often confusing zeal with fanaticism, authors of texts and monographs ignore what for many Americans has been at the core of their being. Even those who call for a return to the teaching of values often neglect the of faith. For example, specific references to religion are absent from the legislative discussions of what constitutes traditional American history in the valuable Teaching American initiative funded by Congress.2 Yet the relationship of faith to our political culture is precisely what Mark Noll grapples with in this far ranging and important study, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. Noll begins his study with a discussion of The Long Life and the Final Collapse of the Puritan Canopy, but greatly compresses the early portions of that life in getting to Jonathan Edwards, whose ideas and role mark the true start of the story. Many readers will be tempted to treat this book as an overview of American religious to the Civil War and to judge it accordingly. Looked at from that perspective Noll's relative neglect of the seventeenth century stands in marked contrast to works such as Sydney Ahlstrom's Religious History of the American People (1972) and E. Brooks Holifield's anticipated Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (2003). But Noll did not intend to write a broad survey and he is certainly entitled to begin his story when America is assuming a

Sunni Muslim Scholars on the Status of Logic, 1500-1800

AbstractIn the present article, I discuss Goldziher's contention (echoed in more recent literature) that from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Sunnī Muslim scholars ('ulamā') became increasingly hostile to rational sciences such as logic. On the basis of discussions and fatāwā by Sunni scholars in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I show that this idea is radically mistaken. Mainstream scholars in the Maghrib, Egypt and Turkey considered l ogic to be not only permissible but actually commendable or even a religious duty incumbent on the Muslim community as a whole (i.e. a fard˙ kifāyah). Though there were dissenting voices in the period, such as the Qād˙īzādelīs, this seems to have been the mainstream opinion of Sunni scholars until the rise of the Salafiyyah movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Semiotics of Civil Rights in Consumer Society: Race, Law, and Food

Cooking and constitutionalism. Food and racial equity. I intend the juxtaposition to be jarring, even humorous. I would like to view it as a subtle indication of a historical trend in which central aspects of legal memory have been repressed from contemporary civic practice and important intellectual questions, concerning semiotics in consumer society, have been neglected in mainstream legal scholarship. As I will explain, the story of Ollie's barbecue suggests not only that cooking and constitutionalism are intricately linked, but also that the expansion of postwar economic life formed a material basis for this hidden bond. Considering the history of Ollie's thus can both illuminate the deep historical meaning of the Civil Rights Act, and also point the way toward a more general field of research, the development of what might be called a legal semiotics of consumption.

Police science, British style: pub licensing and knowledges of urban disorder

In mainstream legal scholarship and political theory as well as in some governmentality studies, police is presented as an eighteenth-century form of power/knowledge with close links to the administrative sciences developed in absolutist states. Commentators often state that police regulation has not disappeared but has been largely replaced by liberal governance. This article argues that police powers and knowledges are not, as is generally thought, in a zero-sum, mutually exclusive relationship with liberal governance. The problem space of 'police' is that formed by the desire to prevent urban disorder and incivility. Because it is a field of governance, not a theory or a mentality, police projects can use both liberal and illiberal mechanisms. The legal technology of licensing, a very widely used but under-studied legal tool, allows an old police objective - the promotion of urban order and 'civility' through measures targeting spaces and activities - to be effected by turning the work of managing risks over to the private sector, hence avoiding direct state interference with citizens' liberties. Licensing governs the field of police with a liberal tool. This argument is empirically grounded in a sketch of the history of the rationalities used to justify and evaluate pub licensing in the UK, a history whose ending is taken to be New Labour's 2000 White Paper on liquor licensing and urban disorder.

THE SECOND HALF OF THE JOURNEY: COMPANIONING ORGANIZATIONS THROUGH SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION.

Most of the focus in the burgeoning new field of spirituality in organizations is on how spirituality improves organizational performance. This is important work that needs to be done, especially to help this field be in dialogue with mainstream management scholars. At the same time, there are serious questions left unaddressed by this approach: If spirituality is ultimately about nonmaterialistic concerns, is it appropriate to focus on the material gains to be reaped by integrating spirituality into organizational life? If we seek to motivate an organization to adopt spiritual practices to improve its bottom line, have we trivialized spirituality? What happens when an organization that chooses to follow a spiritual path hits the inevitable bumps on the spiritual journey? This paper will address these questions by considering the process of individual spiritual transformation as articulated in the field of spirituality, and comparing it to organizational transformation through studying the case of Reell P...

Reply to Stephen Brooks

We would like to thank Professor Stephen Brooks for his insightful and considered reading of our paper. He has correctly identified the gist of our argument which, in its simplest form, is that Canadian nationalism is much louder and more abrasive than traditional myths would suggest. But some his comments prompt us to refine and clarify a few points. First, Professor Brooks wonders whether the phenomenon we identify is at all new, or whether Canadian nationalism has always been loud. Because a careful examination of past nationalist discourse in Canada was outside the scope of the paper, we relied upon the accounts offered by seminal works in a number of fields in this regard. Whether or not our sources give an accurate picture of Canadian nationalism over time, they clearly articulate the established understanding; that is, the myth of diffidence. This understanding was our primary target. If these sources have it wrong, that would damage some of our causal hypotheses, but not our central argument, which concerns the accuracy of the myth. We agree that the historical question is important. Part of what we sought to do in the paper was to show the extent to which such problems deserve to be investigated, rather than answered by assertion. As the paper explicitly states, ours is an exploratory and provisional endeavour, and historical applications of our approach would be very welcome. This raises a second concern: methodology. Here we should stake our claim more carefully. Brooks accepts corporate expressions of nationalism as relevant data for our purposes, but dismisses the significance of our more eclectic gatherings, such as the Internet, Parliamentary exchanges, or the Tragically Hip. In so saying, he is quite right: this is an impressionistic enterprise. And none of these examples, taken in isolation, would prove much. We argue, though--paraphrasing Lipset--that many small bits demonstrate a large pattern. Our diverse array of examples serves that point. It is true that many of our materials are of a sort traditionally bypassed by mainstream scholarship. But we maintain that they are crucial to understanding contemporary expressions of Canadian nationalism. One simply cannot engage with the Internet and other contemporary media manifestations without being struck by their sheer volume, in both senses of the word. The paper originated in our ongoing interest in popular culture and our sense that conventional models could not do justice to the everyday expression of Canadian nationalism. The unconventional nature of our resources may owe to their relative novelty, or at least, our comparatively new ease of access to them. Expanding media outlets, and the Internet in particular, provide a proliferation of voices and weaken mediation of the direct voice: we see more images, and those images are more direct. Voices that would historically have disappeared into the ether are now preserved, giving scholars an opportunity to analyze them. …

IR Studies East and West: Some Sociological Observations

Mainstream International Relations teaching and scholarship is often argued to be social scientific and therefore able to generate propositions about international life that have general (even universal) explanatory value. However, the methods and research questions of IR can in part be explained by the nature of the national academies in which they develop and by a range of national and regional sociological and political circumstances. Thus, following Ole Waever, the “American approach to the study of IR” and its predominance can be explained by reference to certain cultural and structural factors. Yet if the sociological underpinnings of teaching and researching in IR are inevitable and readily apparent, why is there no distinct ‘East Asian tradition’? Why is the East Asian IR community relatively weak? In fact, the relative weakness of indigenous national and regional East Asian IR approaches can be understood as an extension of national academic environments, historical circumstances, and national political traditions.

GOSPEL, CULTURE, AND CULTURES:LESSLIE NEWBIGIN’S MISSIONARY CONTRIBUTION

Lesslie Newbigin’s book Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture opens with an interesting observation. On the one hand, the relationship between the gospel and culture is not a new subject. One thinks, for example, of the classic study of H. Richard Niebuhr who proposed five models of the relation of Christ to culture, and of work of Paul Tillich who struggled toward, what he called, a ‘theology of culture’ (Niebuhr 1951; Tillich 1959). However, the majority of work has been done by scholars who have not had the missionary experience of communicating the gospel to a radically foreign culture. On the other hand, the last three decades have witnessed a spate of studies on the issue of gospel and culture within the discipline of missiology under the general rubric ‘contextualization studies.’1 Missionaries have become more aware of the western captivity of the gospel and have struggled fruitfully with the issues of gospel and culture, and gospel and cultures. Yet while “it has sought to explore the problems of contextualization in all the cultures of humankind from China to Peru, it has largely ignored the culture that is the most widespread, powerful, and persuasive among all contemporary cultures — namely . . . modern Western culture” (Newbigin 1986:2-3). To put Newbigin’s observation another way, the missionary experience and tradition has gained penetrating insight into the issues of gospel and culture, and gospel and cultures but this tradition has not been appropriated in mainstream western scholarship to shed light on the subject of gospel and culture, and more particularly on the relationship between the gospel and western culture. To my way of thinking, this is a great loss because the missionary experience of cross-cultural witness offers important insight into the gospel-culture relation.

Casaubon's ghosts: the haunting of legal scholarship

Much academic work continues to operate within the cramping and pervasive spirit of a black-letter mentality that encourages scholars and jurists to maintain legal study as an inward-looking and self-contained discipline. There is still a marked tendency to treat law as somehow a world of its own that is separate from the society within which it operates and purports to serve. This is a disheartening and disabling state of affairs. Accordingly, this article will offer both a critique of the present situation and suggest an alternative way of proceeding. The writer recommends a shift from philosophy to democracy so that legal academics will be less obsessed with abstraction and formalism and more concerned with relevance and practicality. In contrast to the hubristic and occasionally mystical aspirations of mainstream scholars, it presents a more humble depiction of the worth and efficacy of the jurisprudential and scholarly project in which ‘usefulness’ is given pride of place. Of course, these fundamental charges are not applicable to all legal scholars. Many scholars are engaged in work that not only challenges the prevailing paradigm of legal scholarship, but also explores exciting new directions for legal study. It will be part of the essay to acknowledge those contributions.

Star wars: voyaging into the unknown

Abstract The mainstream literature with respect to international organizations (IOs) generally concludes that the field suffers from the lack of significant scholarship addressed to the operations, management, and decision making within IOs. I contend that there is a great deal of scholarly work in the literature if one looks in the right places. I suggest that the seeming lack of scholarly literature is a result of misperception on the part of mainstream scholars as to where this literature can be found.

The scarlet mob of scribblers: rereading Hester Prynne

Jamie Barlowe finds it bitterly ironic that in literary criticism of The Scarlet Letter, a major American novel about a woman, the voices of female critics have been virtually excluded. Barlowe examines the causes and consequences of the continuing disregard for women's scholarship. To that end, she chronicles The Scarlet Letter's critical reception, analyzes the history of Hester Prynne as a cultural icon in literature and film, rereads the canonized criticism of the novel, and offers a new reading of Hawthorne's work by rescuing marginalized interpretations from the alternative canon of women critics. Despite the fervent protestations of scholars that women and minorities are no longer excluded from the arena of academic debate, Barlowe's investigation reveals that mainstream scholarship on The Scarlet Letterstudied as models by generations of students and teachersremains male-dominated in its comprising population and in its attitudes and practices, which function as the source of its truth-claims. Rather than celebrating the minimal handouts of the academy to women and minoritiesand of the culture that nurtures and supports the academy's continuing discriminationBarlowe constructs a case study that reveals the rather pitiful state of affairs at the close of the twentieth century.By interrogating canonized assumptions, Barlowe charts new directions for Hawthorne studies and American literary studies. Through this expose of ingrained institutional bias, perpetuated myths, and privileged critics, Barlowe provides a refigured perception of the field and state of contemporary literary scholarship.

‘Friedliche imperialisten,’ Deutsche auslandsvereine und auswaertige kulturpolitik, 1906-1918. 2 vols

Historians of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American history, as well as historians of ethnic cultures in geographic diasporas, need to pay serious attention to Juergen Kloosterhuis’s two-volume book entitled German Ethnic Organizations Abroad and Foreign Cultural Policy 1906–1918. This published Ph.D. dissertation represents a major departure from mainstream scholarship as it asks a new and important question about German war guilt: What role did cultural politics play in German efforts to reach great power status between 1871 and 1920? The result is a nuanced, sophisticated micro study that examines how the ideas and practices of German cultural policy evolved in the context of Great Power competition.Kloosterhuis pays particular attention to Kurt Rietzler, the close adviser of German chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. Rietzler argued in favor of a third, nonviolent path toward Great Power status for Germany: economic imperialism. This, according to Kloosterhuis, represents an overlooked alternative that needs to be wedged between the other two political options that are by now very familiar: the apocalyptic yearnings of class warfare by German communists and socialists, and the racial madness of German fascists. Rietzler insisted on the possibility of peaceful imperialism based on economic competition, a prescription from which several ingredients where finally taken after 1945.Next follows a gem of a chapter. Whereas until 1914 German cultural policy had evolved into a professionalized “quiet tool” through ongoing interactions between German governments and ethnic German clubs abroad, this changed once World War I broke out. Kloosterhuis masterfully demonstrates how the maelstrom of war itself turned governmental cultural policy into a new, distinct process that militarized previous authentic expressions of diaspora culture into a propaganda tool that had to be dominated by the German state. This militarization of cultural policy, unlike the policy of economic imperialism, left no room for diaspora self-definition or self-expression. Because Germany had to win the war, cultural policy and ethnic groups abroad had to be reshaped aggressively to fit the self-destructive needs of war propaganda; the Ger-man loss of World War I changed the function of cultural policy once again. In the midst of the collapse of the monarchic political system, German diplomatic bureaucrats earmarked once again the “weapon of culture” as one of the few real remaining tools that Germany could deploy in the new international order created through the 1919 Peace Treaty of Versailles.In the second volume Kloosterhuis provides an impressive, probably exhaustive catalog, that lists all ethnic clubs abroad in the geographical regions of Latin America, North America, Europe, Africa, Near East, and the Far East. Australia is not included. More important, this catalog lists the year and place of publications for each organization.This impressive scholarly achievement is a thrilling invitation to move beyond the painful clichés of Polka and Gemuetlichkeit when it comes to the study of German ethnic communities abroad. Kloosterhuis creates an intellectual and bibliographical foundation on which we can stand and ask deeper questions. For example, his findings beg for a comparative study of other ethnicities abroad. How did the experiences, expressions, and practices of Japanese, Chinese, French, British, Italian, Spanish, U.S. and Syrian ethnic organizations in Latin America compare to those of Germans? Another future research topic would be a comparison between the cultural policy practices of the German monarchy, the Weimar Period, the Third Reich and Federal Republic of Germany (1949–89). There can be no better foundation to study the repeated instrumen-talization and manipulation of European and Asian cultural diasporas for the purposes of Great Power politics in the twentieth century. Unfortunately the book has not yet been translated into English or Spanish.

Home-Grown IR: The Canadianization of International Relations

Over the quarter-century since T.H.B. Symons issued his report on Canadian studies, the discipline of international relations (IR) and Canadian, foreign policy studies - found to be so meagre and Americanized by Symons - has been transformed. In English-speaking universities, the discipline has been Canadianized in a number of ways, including the development of a vibrant literature and a national approach distinct from the American mainstream. Most important, however, the IR professoriate has been progressively Canadianized, not simply in terms of citizenship, but also in doctoral training. Moreover, the pattern of IR hirings altered how international relations is taught in Canada, creating a theoretical pluralism that, again, is distinct from the American academy. In short, the vision articulated by Symons and other Canadian nationalists in the early 1970s has been almost perfectly realized in the case of international relations and Canadian foreign policy studies. The very success of the push for Canadianization has, however, given rise to the growth in postmodern theoretical approaches that are not unquestioningly nationalistic. As these perspectives increasingly take over mainstream scholarship, the pursuit of such overtly national projects as Canadian foreign policy studies will become more problematic.

Healing Identities: Black Feminist Thought and the Politics of Groups (review)

Reviewed by: Healing Identities: Black Feminist Thought and the Politics of Groups Patricia Hill Collins (bio) Healing Identities: Black Feminist Thought and the Politics of Groups. Cynthia Burack . Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004. In Healing Identities, Cynthia Burack brings together the tools of psychoanalysis and political theory with the theoretical work of modern Black feminism in order to shed light on the workings of groups. The six chapters in Healing Identities render difficult concepts in all three discourses accessible to readers who may be unfamiliar with psychoanalysis, political theory, or Black feminist thought. Burack believes that all three theoretical traditions have important things to say about developing the kinds of groups that will be adequate to social justice projects. Chapters 1 and 2 explore the connections between psychoanalysis and political theory, in order to introduce the repressive nature of groups. They also survey how race and racism appear in both discourses. Chapter 3, titled "Reparative Group Leadership" is in many ways the heart of Healing Identities. Burack introduces Black feminist thought, which she describes as both an academic and identity group discourse that is produced by Black women scholars for a primary audience of Black women. Burack perceives Black feminist scholars so defined as comparable to the leaders of other identity group discourses, and sees them as group leaders. Burack uses the term "reparative," which she suggests has a positive and healthy meaning within Black feminist thought. Burack [End Page 227] understands reparative groups to be those that "collectively work through issues that routinely plague groups without giving in to the worst, most destructive and unfortunately most common group possibilities" (59). When applied to groups, the term "reparation" suggests a group's ability to mend harms done or desired, possible or imagined to other groups. With psychoanalytic theory and Black feminist thought so defined, Burack proceeds to examine the differences between group psychoanalytic expectations associated with group leadership and the actual reparative group leadership of Black feminist thought. Using Black feminist thought as a touchstone for analysis, chapters 4 and 5, titled "Conflict and Authenticity" and "Bonding and Solidarity," respectively, take up different dimensions of Burack's model of repressive and reparative leadership. Chapter 6, "Coalitions and Reparative Politics," explores the implications for mainstream scholarship of Black feminist thought's reparative leadership: "Black feminist theorizing about groups violates pessimistic expectations about group life that are widely held by social and political theorists. The reparativeness of Black feminist thought is most plainly revealed precisely by the dimension that is so often celebrated by scholars and commentators of Black feminism: coalition-building and coalition politics" (159). Despite its good intentions, Healing Identities raised two sets questions for me. For one, there is the question of how Burack's intended audience affects the overall organization and arguments of this volume. Healing Identities does not seem designed for African American readers. Instead, this book appears to be written to appeal to White feminist readers who are engaged in debates about the merits of interpretive uses of psychoanalytic theory and of political theory for Western feminist projects, especially those that might build feminist coalitions. As the author points out, "black feminist thought . . . evokes emotion in many of its readers. I am convinced that, like much passion in political life, this emotion is defensive—an attempt to fend off guilt, self-examination, and genuine confrontation with otherness" (5). Just who exactly are the readers who would engage Black feminist thought as a site of otherness? Certainly not Black women. In a similar vein, the author's goal to "refine a set of theoretical uses of psychoanalysis for feminists and other interested in the social production of groups" (4) seems undermined by her parallel claim that "black feminists are more likely to bypass than to debate psychoanalytic explanations" (8). If this is the case, one might wonder why Black women who are so involved in building reparative groups would reject psychoanalytic frameworks. Some Black women readers might see the treatment of healing and reparations in Healing Identities as violating the very spirit of Black feminist thought. Burack seems unaware of how the thesis of the damaged Black psyche renders her focus on healing suspicious. Healing...

Book Review: The Embodiment and Ecology of Language and Literacy

Most, if not perhaps all, models of language and literacy in mainstream scholarship are constructed exclusively within human parameters, whether this is done through claims to representation, or through interpretation, construction, or deconstruction. The road one walks with David Abram, however, takes a different path to the very grounding of language in a sensuous world that exists as more than human. Abram takes us directly into the realms of sensuous perception within reciprocal relations with one's surroundings, relations that give rise to utterances, to language, to literacy. Reading Abram's award-winning book, the reader is in for a treat of superb quality. (Abram is an ecologist and philosopher, who received a doctorate in philosophy from SUNY-Stony Brook.

An Annotated Bibliography of Reference Sources On African American Women

The history of African American women in the United States is a history of courage, perseverance, and achievement in a society that continues to be polluted by racial and gender discrimination. This history, particularly the record of contributions and accomplishments by notable African American women, has been neglected by most mainstream scholars, coming to light largely only after the 1960s. The weight of the civil rights and women's rights movements forced many universities to begin offering courses on African American women. Currently, major scholarly works have begun to appear on a wide range of issues with regard to African American women, including Black feminism, Black women in religion and religious institutions, Black women in the literary world and in institutions of higher learning. This annotated bibliography illustrates a sample of the materials currently available on African American women, using the holdings of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection of Temple University. The collection is one of the largest and most renowned in the northeastern region of the United States. This article does not include biographical works, diaries, journals, or the like; nor does it cover ephemera such as pamphlets produced by and/or about African American women. It focuses instead on sources that conveniently provide biographical data as well as various types of anthologies.