This collection features books and book contributions written by faculty in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Fairfield University.
-
Sugarcane Labor Migration in Brazil
Terry-Ann Jones
This book examines the experiences of seasonal, migrant sugarcane workers in Brazil, analyzing the deep-seated inequalities pervasive in contemporary Brazil. Education, employment, income, health, and relative political power are forefront in this study of the living and working conditions of the transient population. Based on ten years of qualitative research dominated by in-depth interviews with migrant sugarcane workers, this project argues that the ills of the sugarcane industry are symptomatic of an overarching problem of unequal access to opportunities by all Brazilian citizens. The project is unique in its use of a single industry as an expression of the multifarious problems of socioeconomic, regional, and racial inequality. The author explores details of the labor migration experience with a central premise that the conditions are not a direct outcome of the industry, but rather a manifestation of fundamental inequalities rooted in Brazil’s colonial history.
-
Economic Cycles and Social Movements: Past, Present and Future
Eric Mielants and Katsiaryna Salavei Bardos
Economic Cycles and Social Movements: Past, Present and Future offers diverse perspectives on the complex interrelationship between social challenges and economic crises in the Modern World System. Written with a balance of quantitative, qualitative and theoretical contributions and insights, this volume provides a great opportunity to reflect upon the ongoing conceptual and empirical challenges when confronting the complex interrelations of various economic cycles and social movements. By engaging wide-ranging ideas and theoretical points of view from different disciplines, different countries and different perspectives, this study breaks new ground and offers novel insights into the way the capitalist world economy functions as well as the way social and political movements react to these constraints. Different chapters in this volume bring about novel interdisciplinary approaches to study business cycles, economic changes and social as well as political movements, offer new interpretations and, while examining the complexity of socioeconomic cycles in the long run, present epistemological challenges and a wide variety of empirical data that will increase our understanding of these complex interactions.
-
Child Exploitation in the Global South
Jerome Ballet, Augendra Bhukuth, and Alfred Babo
Alfred Babo is a contributing author, Eliminating Child Labor within Families in Rural Areas: Limits of Community-Based Approaches in South-Western Cote d’Ivoire," 65-90.
Book description:
This edited volume examines child exploitation in the Global South. It introduces several case studies and interviews articulated around two features: exploitation within the family and exploitation in relation to social contexts. The research shows that both of the features are linked and, generally, they are not separate. It makes several important arguments which challenge the most common view on how children are perceived and exploited in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Additionally, it explores the social representation of exploited children as well as their general well-being.
-
Intersectionality and Higher Education: Identity and Inequality on College Campuses
W Carson Byrd, Sarah Ovink, Rachelle Brunn-Bevel, and Terry-Ann Jones
Terry-Ann Jones is a contributing author, "More than Immigration Status: Undocumented Students in U.S. Jesuit Higher Education," Chapter 3.
Though colleges and universities are arguably paying more attention to diversity and inclusion than ever before, to what extent do their efforts result in more socially just campuses? Intersectionality and Higher Education examines how race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, age, disability, nationality, and other identities connect to produce intersected campus experiences. Contributors look at both the individual and institutional perspectives on issues like campus climate, race, class, and gender disparities, LGBTQ student experiences, undergraduate versus graduate students, faculty and staff from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, students with disabilities, undocumented students, and the intersections of two or more of these topics. Taken together, this volume presents an evidence-backed vision of how the twenty-first century higher education landscape should evolve in order to meaningfully support all participants, reduce marginalization, and reach for equity and equality.
-
Dealing with Privilege: Cannabis, Cocaine, and the Economic Foundations of Suburban Drug Culture
David Crawford
Dealing with Privilege: Cannabis, Cocaine, and the Economic Foundations of Suburban Drug Culture focuses on the careers of nine successfully retired drug dealers, offering a contrast to sociological, criminological, and other depictions of drug dealing as a realm of the desperate, dangerous, and poor. David Crawford tells the great untold story of drug dealing in America, where white, middle-class dealers are unlikely to suffer the enforcement of drug laws. Contrary to media portrayals, Crawford argues that suburban drug sales are not oriented primarily toward making money but at making friends and having fun. Using economic anthropology, classic sociology, and neuroscience to analyze the life trajectories of these dealers, Crawford touches on issues of crime, race, culture, aging, gender, privilege, illegal drugs, and the limits of conventional economics as a framework to understand economic behavior.
-
Michelle Obama’s Impact on African American Women and Girls
Michelle Duster, Paula Marie Seniors, Rose C. Thevenin, Rachelle Brunn-Bevel, and Kristin Richardson
Rachelle Brunn-Bevel is a contributing author (with Kristin Richardson), "Let’s Move! with Michelle Obama."
Book description:
This edited collection explores how First Lady Michelle Obama gradually expanded and broadened her role by engaging in social, political and economic activities which directly and indirectly impacted the lives of the American people, especially young women and girls. The volume responds to the various representations of Michelle Obama and how the language and images used to depict her either affirmed, offended, represented or misrepresented her and its authors. It is an interdisciplinary evaluation by African American women and girls of the First Lady’s overall impact through several media, including original artwork and poetry. It also examines her political activities during and post-election 2016.
-
Waterfront Manhattan: From Henry Hudson to the High Line
Kurt Schlichting
For hundreds of years, the shorefront of Manhattan Island served as the country’s center of trade, shipping, and commerce. With its maritime links across the oceans, along the Atlantic coast, and inland to the Midwest and New England, Manhattan became a global city and home to the world’s busiest port. It was a world of docks, ships, tugboats, and ferries, filled with cargo and freight, a place where millions of immigrants entered the Promised Land. In Waterfront Manhattan, Kurt C. Schlichting tells the story of the Manhattan waterfront as a struggle between public and private control of New York’s priceless asset. Nature provided New York with a sheltered harbor but presented the city with a challenge: to find the necessary capital to build and expand the maritime infrastructure. From colonial times until after the Civil War, the city ceded control of the waterfront to private interests, excluding the public entirely and sparking a battle between shipping companies, the railroads, and ferries for access to the waterfront. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the City of New York regained control of the waterfront, but a whirlwind of forces beyond the control of either public or private interests—technological change in the form of the shipping container and the jet airplane—devastated the city’s maritime world. The city slowly and painfully recovered. Visionaries reimagined the waterfront, and today the island is almost completely surrounded by parkland, the world of piers and longshoremen gone, replaced by luxury housing and tourist attractions. Waterfront Manhattan is a wide-ranging history that will dazzle anyone who is fascinated by New York.
-
Undocumented and in College: Students and Institutions in a Climate of National Hostility
Terry-Ann Jones and Laura Nichols
The current daily experiences of undocumented students as they navigate the processes of entering and then thriving in Jesuit colleges are explored alongside an investigation of the knowledge and attitudes among staff and faculty about undocumented students in their midst, and the institutional response to their presence. Cutting across the fields of U.S. immigration policy, theory and history, religion, law, and education, Undocumented and in College delineates the historical and present-day contexts of immigration, including the role of religious institutions. This unique volume, based on an extensive two-year study (2010–12) of undocumented students at Jesuit colleges in the United States and with contributions from various scholars working within these institutions, incorporates survey research and in-depth interviews to present the perspectives of students, staff, and the institutions.
-
Citizenship-in-Question: Evidentiary Encounters with Blood, Birthright, and Bureaucracy
Benjamin N. Lawrance, Jacqueline Stevens, and Alfred Babo
Alfred Babo is a contributing author, “Ivoirité and Citizenship in Ivory Coast: The Controversial Policy of Ivorian Authenticité," p.200-216
BOOK DESCRIPTION Citizenship is often assumed to be a clear cut issue—either one has it—or one does not. However, as the contributors to Citizenship in Question demonstrate, citizenship is not self-evident; it emerges from often obscure written records and is interpreted through ambiguous and dynamic laws. In case studies that analyze the legal barriers to citizenship rights in over twenty countries, the contributors explore how states use evidentiary requirements to create and police citizenship, often based on fictions of racial, ethnic, class, and religious differences. Whether examining the United States’ deportation of its own citizens, the selective use of DNA tests and secret results in Thailand, or laws that have stripped entire populations of citizenship, the contributors emphasize the political, psychological, and personal impact of citizenship policies. Citizenship in Question incites scholars to revisit long-standing political theories and debates about nationality, free movement, and immigration premised on the assumption of clear demarcations between citizens and noncitizens.
-
Worldregions, migrations and identities: Political Economy of the World System Vol. 2
Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Manuela Boatca, Andrea Komlosy, and Eric Mielants
Eric Mielants (with Ramon Grosfoguel) is a contributing author, "Racialisation, Immigration and Identity Formation in Europe and the US in the Longue Duree".
-
LA CÔTE D'IVOIRE ET SES ÉTRANGERS
Fabio Viti and Alfred Babo
Alfred Babo is a contributing author, “Political Ethnicity and Alterity in Southern Cote d’Ivoire” / “Ethnicité politique et rapports d’altérité dans le Sud-Ouest de la Côte d’Ivoire."
BOOK DESCRIPTION Cet ouvrage travaille sur la question de la présence et du rôle des étrangers en Côte d'Ivoire. Le discours public autour de cette question y est analysé, ce qui permet de dégager une typologie de l'État et de la société ivoirienne. Véritable "société de sociétés", où différents rapports aux figures plurielles d'étrangers co-existent, la Côte d'Ivoire nous est présentée sous un jour différent. Un ouvrage collectif qui affine et complexifie le regard.
-
The Economics of Ecology, Exchange, and Adaptation: Anthropological Explorations (Research in Economic Anthropology, Volume 36)
Donald Wood and David Crawford
David Crawford is a contributing author, "Suburban drug dealing: a case study in ambivalent economics", pp. 197-219.
Book description: This volume consists of three sections connected by the elucidation of differences in perspective between people and polities. The first, concentrating on ecology, serves in part to further explore the theme of climate change. It looks into aquifer usage and ecology in the Midwestern United States, farming and climate shifts in Costa Rica and in Burkina Faso, and goat herding and conservation issues in the Himalayas. The second section focuses on exchange transactions and relations in a variety of situations and settings: among Nigerian immigrant business owners in New York City, along the path of the famous Koh-i-noor Diamond from India to the Tower of London, and between dealers and buyers in illegal narcotics markets in the Eastern, Midwestern, and Pacific Northwestern USA. Finally, papers in the third section share a concern with individual and group adaptations to certain conditions of life. Offered are investigations into relations between stock brokers and professional investors in Malaysia, attempts to foster innovation in Western Japan, women's farming strategies and autonomy in Western Kenya, and alternative healing decisions and practices in Brazil.
-
Intersectionality in Educational Research
Danielle Joy Davis, Rachelle Brunn-Bevel, and James L. Olive
The purpose of this work is to advance understanding of intersectional theory and its application to research in education. The scholars whose work appear in this volume utilize intersectional theory and research methods to work in fields and disciplines such as Education, Sociology, Women’s Studies, Africana Studies, Human Development, Higher Education Administration, Leadership Studies, and Justice Studies. The book illustrates how intersectional theory can be used in both quantitative and qualitative education research on college student access and success, faculty satisfaction and professional development, and K-12 educational issues such as high school dropouts and bullying. This book is unique, as no other book ties intersectionality to the research process.
-
Conditions pour la consolidation de la paix en Côte d’Ivoire
Rafael Grasa and Alfred Babo
Alfred Babo is a contributing author, "The Political Uses of Nationality and Risks for the Ivorian Society” /« Les usages politiques de la nationalité et ses risques pour la société ivoirienne," p.89-108
-
Recul démocratique et néo-présidentialisme en Afrique centrale et occidentale
Sergiu Miscoiu and Alfred Babo
Alfred Babo is a contributing author, "l’Afrique cinquantenaire : de la nécessité de rompre avec la mondialisation occidentalo-centrée," p.177-196
BOOK DESCRIPTION L'evolution des systemes politiques africains est un sujet particulierement passionnant. Ce livre nous propose une serie de regards croises dont le point focal est le concept de neo-presidentialisme aux temps du recul democratique. Les auteurs - qui sont des chercheurs de haut niveau de plusieurs pays africains et europeens - ont ete appeles a choisir entre deux possibles strategies de recherche : traiter les diverses facettes du neo-presidentialisme afin d'eclaircir l'existence, la specificite ou le fonctionnement de ce phenomene en Afrique Centrale et Occidentale francophone d'une maniere analytique et comparative, par pays ou par sous-region, ou bien evaluer les progres et notamment les elements de recul democratique dans les pays de la region, tout en testant l'hypothese de la regression institutionnelle et, inevitablement, le poids de la nouvelle vague de personnalisation du pouvoir. Un livre complexe et bien utile pour ceux qui s'interessent aux phenomenes politiques contemporains.
-
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, vol. 6
James D. Wright and Dennis G. Hodgson
Dennis Hodgson is a contributing author, "Demography: History Since 1900", pp. 176-181.
Book Description: Fully revised and updated, the second edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, first published in 2001, offers a source of social and behavioral sciences reference material that is broader and deeper than any other. It comprises over 3,900 articles, commissioned by 71 Section Editors, and includes 90,000 bibliographic references as well as comprehensive name and subject indexes.
-
Nostalgia for the Present: Ethnography and Photography in a Moroccan Berber Village
David Crawford and Bart Deseyn
Anthropology and photography have been linked since the 19th century, but their relationship has never been entirely comfortable - and has grown less so in recent years. "Nostalgia for the present" aims to repair that relationship by involving intentional participants in an inclusive conversation; it is the fruit of a collaboration among an ethnographer, a photographer, a group of Moroccan farmers, and Abdelkrim Bamouh - a native intellectual whose deep understanding of rural Morocco made him not merely a translator but a faciliator of the dialogue.
The result is an arresting portrait of everyday life in Tagharghist, a contemporary High Atlas village. The pictures are central, and the text built around them creates a dialogical form of visual ethnography. Nostalgia for the Present is both a memorialization of a people and a way of life, and a rich foray into the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration. The photos in this book evoke a sense of nostalgia, a longing, and the words explore the contexts and ambiguities that vitalize it. As the book concludes, nostalgia happens in our present, and is about our future. It is a call from our heart (or our liver, as villagers would say) to attend carefully to something we are leaving, something our gut tells us we ought to cherish and preserve, and bring with us on our inexorable march into the unknown.
The book is a co-production with Centre Jacques Berque in Morocco.
-
Critical Issues in Reproductive Health
Andrzej Kulczycki and Dennis G. Hodgson
Dennis Hodgson is a contributing author, "How problematic will liberal abortion policies be for pronatalist countries?" Chapter 8, pp 153.176.
Book description: In this book, leading academics and practitioners in the field of reproductive health address topics such as contraception, abortion, sexually transmitted infections, maternal and prenatal health, sexuality and reproductive rights by examining a number of critical issues in these areas. The authors describe new research, identify gaps and priorities in policy and practice, and illustrate innovative solutions. The book further addresses such current imperatives as understanding the social meanings of emergency contraception, measuring gender-based violence, improving reproductive health governance, strengthening health systems and services, and redressing institutional barriers. The book also assesses how reproductive health programs can be reconfigured to new challenges such as those posed by climate change, vulnerable youth in fragile states, and risks from new infertility treatments. Using a rich and varied set of cases, a broad public health and social science perspective, and novel methodological approaches, this book questions common assumptions, illustrates effective solutions and sets out research, policy, and programmatic agendas for the present and future. This is a comprehensive volume which provides a valuable resource to researchers, educators, practitioners, policymakers and students, as well as anyone studying or advocating for reproductive health.
-
Sociology of Education: An A-to-Z Guide
James Ainsworth, J. Geoffrey Golson, Rachelle Brunn-Bevel, and W. Carons Byrd
Rachelle Brunn (with W. Caron Byrd) is a contributing author, "Virginia."
DESCRIPTION: The sociology of education is a rich interdisciplinary field that studies schools as their own social world as well as their place within the larger society. The field draws contributions from education, sociology, human development, family studies, economics, politics and public policy. Sociology of Education: An A-to-Z Guide introduces students to the social constructions of our educational systems and their many players, including students and their peers, teachers, parents, the broader community, politicians and policy makers. The roles of schools, the social processes governing schooling, and impacts on society are all critically explored. Despite an abundance of textbooks and specialized monographs, there are few up-to-date reference works in this area.
-
L’étranger en Côte d’Ivoire: crises et controverses autour d’une categorie sociale/The Foreigner in Côte d'Ivoire: Crisis and Controversies about a Social Category
Alfred Babo
L'auteur revisite les aspects socio-anthropologiques, législatifs et administratifs de l'appel aux étrangers et analyse l'ambivalence de leurs droits. Il opte pour une approche multidisciplinaire pour mieux appréhender l'archéologie du concept de l'étranger en Côte d'Ivoire et examine les politiques publiques dans le contexte de constructions identitaires en Afrique postcoloniale.
-
Encountering Morocco: Fieldwork and Cultural Understanding
David Crawford and Rachel Newcomb
In addition to co-edting, David Crawford is a contributing author, "The Power of Babies".
Book description: Encountering Morocco introduces readers to life in this North African country through vivid accounts of fieldwork as personal experience and intellectual journey. We meet the contributors at diverse stages of their careers—from the unmarried researcher arriving for her first stint in the field to the seasoned fieldworker returning with spouse and children. They offer frank descriptions of what it means to take up residence in a place where one is regarded as an outsider, learn the language and local customs, and struggle to develop rapport. Moving reflections on friendship, kinship, and belief within the cross-cultural encounter reveal why study of Moroccan society has played such a seminal role in the development of cultural anthropology.
-
Routledge Handbook of World-Systems Analysis
Salvatore Babones, Christopher Chase-Dunn, and Eric Mielants
Eric Mielants is a contributing author, "The Great Transition Debate and World-Systems Analysis," p. 56-62.
Book description: World-systems analysis has developed rapidly over the past thirty years. Today's students and junior scholars come to world-systems analysis as a well-established approach spanning all of the social sciences. The best world-systems scholarship, however, is spread across multiple methodologies and more than half a dozen academic disciplines. Aiming to crystallize forty years of progress and lay the groundwork for the continued development of the field, the Handbook of World-Systems Analysis is a comprehensive review of the state of the field of world-systems analysis since its origins almost forty years ago.
The Handbook includes contributions from a global, interdisciplinary group of more than eighty world-systems scholars. The authors include founders of the field, mid-career scholars, and newly emerging voices. Each one presents a snapshot of an area of world-systems analysis as it exists today and presents a vision for the future.
-
World Society in the Global Economic Crisis
Mark Herkenrath, Christian Suter, Eric Mielants, Jeffrey Kentor, and Peter Grimes
Eric Mielants (with Jeffrey Kentor and Peter Grimes) is a contributing author, "The Current Economic Crisis, The Longue Durée, and Regional Hegemony," p. 71-88.
Book description: The global financial and economic crisis started in 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Four years later, despite massive national and international countermeasures, it is still not over. This volume examines the considerable economic, social and political consequences of the present global crisis for world society. In particular, the 16 contributions focus on three central issues: Firstly, crisis impacts on world society structures and evolutionary dynamics, secondly, crisis perceptions and public discourses with their social and political consequences and, thirdly, experience of the global crisis at local and regional levels, as well as the responses to it.
-
Encyclopedia of Global Studies
Mark Juergensmeyer, Helmut K. Anheier, and Eric Mielants
Eric Mielants is a contributing author, "Longue Duree, Long Wave Theories of Development," p. 1091-1094.
Book description: The Encyclopedia of Global Studies is *the* reference work for the emerging field of global studies. It covers both transnational topics and intellectual approaches to the study of global themes, including the globalization of economies and technologies; the diaspora of cultures and dispersion of peoples; the transnational aspects of social and political change; the global impact of environmental, technological and health changes; and the organizations and issues related to global civil society.
-
The Longue Durée and World-Systems Analysis
Richard E. Lee and Eric Mielants
Eric Mielants is a contributing author, "Long Term Problems for the Longue Durée in the Social Sciences," p. 201-224.
Book description: In his pathbreaking article “History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée,” Fernand Braudel raised a call for the social sciences to overcome their disciplinary isolation from one another. Commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the article’s publication, the contributors to this volume do not just acknowledge their debt to the past; they also bear witness to how the crisis Braudel recognized a half century ago is no less of a crisis today. The contributions included here, from scholars in history, sociology, and geography, reflect the spirit and practice of the intellectual agenda espoused by Braudel, coming together around the concept of the longue durée. Indeed, they are evidence of how the groundbreaking research originally championed by Braudel has been carried forward in world-systems analysis for a more socially relevant understanding of the planet and its future possibilities. The book concludes with a new translation of Braudel’s original article by famed sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein.