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Blood Revenge: Family Honor, Mediation and Outcasting
Joseph Ginat Manufacturer: Sussex Academic Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 1898723184 |
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Conjure In African American Society
Jeffrey E. Anderson Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover Similar Items:
ASIN: 0807130923 |
Book Description
From black sorcerers' client-based practices in the antebellum South to the postmodern revival of hoodoo and its tandem spiritual supply stores, the supernatural has been a key component of the African American experience. Jeffrey E. Anderson unfolds a fascinating story as he traces the origins and evolution of conjuring practices across the centuries. What began as a mixture of African, European, and Native American influences within slave communities finds expression today in a multi-million-dollar business.Though some may see the study of conjure as a perpetuation of old stereotypes that depict blacks as slaves to superstition, the truth, Anderson notes, is far more complex. Drawing on folklore, fiction and nonfiction, music, art, and oral interviews, he explores various portrayals of the conjurerbackward buffoon, rebel against authority, and symbol of racial pride. He also examines the actual work performed by conjurers, including the use of pharmacologically active herbs to treat illness, psychology to ease mental ailments, fear to bring about the death of enemies and acquittals at trials, and advice to encourage clients to succeed on their own.
Conjure's ability to merge supernaturalism and religionalong with a widespread belief in, fear of, or respect for conjure's effectivenesshas made it a force across generations, Anderson shows, and not only among blacks. New Age spiritualism, Afro-Caribbean syncretic faiths, and modern psychological understandings of magic have all contributed to a recent revival of conjure.
By critically examining the many influences that have shaped conjure over time, Anderson effectively redefines magic as a cultural power, one that has profoundly touched the arts, black Christianity, and American society overall.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent research.......2007-01-04
Tracing the evolution of rootwork. Great stuff!.......2006-05-08
The Conjure Reference Book of All Time!.......2006-04-20
Great Book.......2006-02-06
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Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley
Barry Levy Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0195049764 |
Book Description
This brilliant study shows the pivotal role the Quakers played in the origins and development of America's family ideology. Levy argues that the Quakers brought a new vision of family and social life to America--one that contrasted sharply with the harsh, formal world of the New England Puritans. The Quakers stressed affection, friendship and hospitality, the importance of women in the home, and the value of self-disciplined, non-coercive childrearing. This book explains how and why the Quakers have had such a profound cultural impact on America and what the Quakers' experience with their own radical family system tells us about American families.Customer Reviews:
An insightful study of early domesticity in American life.......2007-05-25
Quaker Origins of U.S. Ideal of Family Life.......2001-11-19
In spite of the mid-eighteenth-century crisis and subsequent decline of Quakerism in Pennsylvania after the American Revolution, the importance of domesticity in the lives of the Pennsylvania Quakers was fundamental to all other aspects of Quaker society, and has had a far-reaching impact on American family life well beyond the colonial era. Quakers (as opposed to New England Puritan emphasis on patriarchy, or the importance of public order and display for the Anglicans) intentionally created the model for the "modern" American family ideal of domesticity for the new republic. While this child-centered, economically and morally self-sufficient model thrived in Pennsylvania from 1681 until the 1750s, its influence extended well beyond the eastern seaboard colonies and the eighteenth century. It became the model for the later and larger national expansion of the American republic.
Quaker domesticity shaped Pennsylvania's tendencies towards pluralism and republicanism. But it is ironic that the universalization of the Quaker family model coincided with the decline of Quakerism and the rise of a secular republican ideology lauded by various Enlightenment philosophes. "While the separation of church and state was the dominant trend in Anglo-American society, the Quakers actually increased the conflation of Quaker church and Pennsylvania state during the eighteenth century" (p. 155). While political Whigs held Quakers and their pacifism in contempt during the American Revolution, the fall of Quaker political hegemony in Pennsylvania led to a correlation between the private virtue embodied in their form of family life, and the non-authoritarian public virtue of republican political ideology. Pennsylvania's commercial economy and "liberal" society were touted as the model for the new American republic, and it was hoped that it would spread to both New England and the South. In essence, Quaker family ideals were distilled into a source for American culture in general. "The Pennsylvania Quakers originated and established the institution of the morally self-sufficient household in American society" (p. 22). Hence, the modern, Western, child-centered, conjugal, nuclear family as idealized and desperately needed today.
My 4 instead of 5 star rating (it rates a 4.5) is based on the
minor quibble that Levy ignores the downsides of 18th century Quaker family life, and does not explain why if everything was so nurturing and "free," so many Quaker children left the fold and out-married non-Quakers, and hence were banished from the Society of Friends.
For more on the long-term national cultural influence of colonial Quakerism readers should seek out David Hackett Fisher's book, "Albion's Seed."
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The Deshaney Case: Child Abuse, Family Rights, and the Dilemma of State Intervention (Landmark Law Cases and American Society)
Lynne Curry Manufacturer: University Press of Kansas ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0700614974 |
Book Description
"Poor Joshua!" lamented Justice Harry Blackmun in his famous dissent. "Victim of repeated attacks by an irresponsible, bullying, obviously cowardly, and intemperate father, and abandoned by respondents who placed him in a dangerous predicament and who knew or learned what was going on, and yet did essentially nothing. . . ." Even so, the Supreme Court, by a 6-to-3 margin, absolved Wisconsin officials of any negligence in a case that had left a young child profoundly damaged for the rest of his life.
Does the Constitution protect children from violent parents? As Lynne Curry shows, that was the central question at issue when Melody DeShaney initially sued Wisconsin for failing to protect her battered son Joshua from her estranged husband, thus violating her son's constitutional right to due process. The resulting case, DeShaney v. Winnebago County (1989), was a highly emotional one pitting the family against the state and challenging our views on domestic relations, child abuse, and the responsibilities-and limits-of state action regarding the private lives of citizens.
The Supreme Court's controversial decision ruled that the Constitution was intended to limit state action rather than oblige the state to interfere in private affairs. It viewed the Due Process Clause as a limitation on the state's power to act, not a guarantee of safety and security, not even for children who depend on the state for their survival. In this first book-length analysis of the case, Curry helps readers understand how considerations of "what should be" are not always reflected in legal reasoning.
Curry brings to light details that have been ignored or neglected and covers both the criminal and civil proceedings to retell a story that still shocks. Drawing on legal briefs and social work case files, she reviews the legal machinations of the state and includes personal stories of key actors: family members, social workers, police officers, child advocates, and opposing attorneys. She then clearly analyzes the majority and dissenting opinions from the Court, as well as reactions from the court of public opinion.
Joshua DeShaney depended on the state for protection but found no satisfaction in the courts when the state failed him. The DeShaney Case offers a much-needed perspective on the dilemmas his predicament posed for our legal system and fresh insight into our ambivalent views of the role that the state should play in our daily lives.
This book is part of the Landmark Law Cases and American Society series.
Customer Reviews:
Well written account of a tragic case........2007-06-28
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The Corporation as Family: The Gendering of Corporate Welfare, 1890-1930 (Luther Hartwell Hodges Series on Business, Society, and the State)
Nikki Mandell Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 0807853518 Release Date: 2001-12-02 |
Book Description
The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable growth of corporate welfare programs in American industry. By the mid-1920s, 80 percent of the nation's largest companies--firms including DuPont, International Harvester, and Metropolitan Life Insurance--engaged in some form of welfare work. Programs were implemented to achieve goals that ranged from improving basic workplace conditions, to providing educational, recreational, and social opportunities for workers and their families, to establishing savings and insurance plans.Employing the critical lens of gender analysis, Nikki Mandell offers an innovative perspective on the development of corporate welfare. She argues that its advocates sought to build a new relationship between labor and management by recasting the modern corporation as a Victorian family. Employers assumed the authoritative position of fathers, assigned their employees the subordinate role of children, and hired male and female welfare managers to act as "corporate mothers" charged with creating a harmonious household. But internal conflict and external pressures weakened the corporate welfare system, and it eventually gave way to a system of personnel management and employee representation. With the abandonment of the familial model, the form of corporate welfare changed; but, as Mandell demonstrates, its content left an enduring legacy for modern industrial relations.
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History: Fiction or Science? Dating methods as offered by mathematical statistics. Eclipses and zodiacs. Chronology Vol.I
Anatoly Fomenko Manufacturer: Delamere Resources ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 2913621074 Release Date: 2007-03-19 |
Product Description
History: Fiction or Science? is the most explosive tractate on history ever written - however, every theory it contains, no matter how unorthodox, is backed by solid scientific data. The book is well-illustrated, contains over 446 graphs and illustrations, copies of ancient manuscripts, and countless facts attesting to the falsity of the chronology used nowadays, which never cease to amaze the reader. Eminent mathematician proves that: Jesus Christ was born in 1153 and crucified in 1186 The Old Testament refers to mediaeval events. Apocalypse was written after 1486. Does this sound uncanny? This version of events is substantiated by hard facts and logic - validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources - to a greater extent than everything you may have read and heard about history before. The dominating historical discourse in its current state was essentially crafted in the XVI century from a rather contradictory jumble of sources such as innumerable copies of ancient Latin and Greek manuscripts whose originals had vanished in the Dark Ages and the allegedly irrefutable proof offered by late mediaeval astronomers, resting upon the power of ecclesial authorities. Nearly all of its components are blatantly untrue! For some of us, it shall possibly be quite disturbing to see the magnificent edifice of classical history to turn into an ominous simulacrum brooding over the snake pit of mediaeval politics. Twice so, in fact: the first seeing the legendary millenarian dust on the ancient marble turn into a mere layer of dirt - one that meticulous unprejudiced research can eventually remove. The second, and greater, attack of unease comes with the awareness of just how many areas of human knowledge still trust the three elephants of the consensual chronology to support them. Nothing can remedy that except for an individual chronological revolution happening in the minds of a large enough number of people.Customer Reviews:
Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03
Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19
Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09
Very Interesting.......2007-03-07
History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10
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Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society
Mary Beth Norton Manufacturer: Vintage ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
ASIN: 0679749772 Release Date: 1997-07-29 |
Amazon.com
Founding Mothers & Fathers is a scholarly study of the responsibilities and rewards New World colonists assigned to adults solely on the basis of gender. Historian Mary Beth Norton asserts that a changing world-view caused the limited power wielded by a handful of early colonial women to trickle away by the time the American Constitution was framed. Since nearly every moment of daily life was subject to intense scrutiny by the entire community, the court records and other public documents Norton diligently combed to make her case are anything but dull, and the offenses and punishments meted out speak loudly to the issues of gendered power.Crystallizing the inflexibility of gender roles in the American colonies is the tale of a servant known as Thomasine or Thomas Hall, alternately. Raised for two decades as a girl, Hall later switched several times between the clothes and roles of a man and those of a woman. Although outraged townswomen repeatedly assured colonial authorities that Hall was physically male, his feminine mannerisms and skill with a needle and thread so unnerved one regional commander that he demanded Hall "be putt in weomans apparell." Other stories include that of the ne'er-do-well Pinion family, who brawled through two generations of theft, adultery, and domestic squabbles in New England, and a man and woman brought up before a Virginia tribunal accused of "a great bussleling and juggling of the bed" judged unseemly in an unmarried couple. Founding Mothers & Fathers offers a full-bellied, incisive view of a developing social hierarchy and the slim margin of power that women held and lost within it. --Francesca Coltrera
Book Description
In this pioneering study of the ways in which the first settlers defined the power, prerogatives, and responsibilities of the sexes, one of our most incisive historians opens a window onto the world of Colonial America. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary documents, Mary Beth Norton tells the story of the Pinion clan, whose two-generation record of theft, adultery, and infanticide may have made them our first dysfunctional family. She reopens the case of Mistress Ann Hibbens, whose church excommunicated her for arguing that God had told husbands to listen to their wives. And here is the enigma of Thomas, or Thomasine Hall, who lived comfortably as both a man and a woman in 17th century Virginia. Wonderfully erudite and vastly readable, Founding Mothers & Fathers reveals both the philosophical assumptions and intimate domestic arrangements of our colonial ancestors in all their rigor, strangeness, and unruly passion.Customer Reviews:
This book is AWFUL.......2002-09-19
Book Review by Charles Michael Farley.......2002-04-23
From the time of the Pilgrims to present day, women have played more of a substantial role than they are commonly accredited for. In Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the forming of American Society, Mary Beth Norton parlays her idea that although woman did not have an independent role in the political arena of early American society there were many woman and groups of woman who knew the undisclosed sins of the community. This they used in the assumption of leadership roles among the communities.
Norton goes on to explain power inside the household as well as in the community. She connected Sir Robert Filmers' (The Filmerian view) and John Lockes' philosophies (the Lockean view) to both domestic life and the political structure and formation of early American society.
As you probably know, the practice of bearing children was most likely the primary focus of 17th century colonial woman. Lacking in birth control, a woman would go through a constant cycle of becoming pregnant and giving birth. Norton points out that these regular childbearing sessions excluded men from attending. It is very important to understand the role of the midwife. She could be the necessary one in keeping the woman and child alive during birth. She could, as well, expose any form of bastardization, premarital sex, adultery, and infanticide. The power of the midwives and the ignorance of men on the subject of childbearing gave way to many cases in which women could bend around the "man-made" laws.
It is probably demeaning these days to say that woman "gossip." Well, according to Norton, this did indeed go on during colonial times. The reader will discover the "gossip networks." Due to the fact that woman were separated from men in many social aspects led to these networks. Rumors of criminal activities would travel this way to the Colonial Magistrate and would very often result in punishment for the crime.
I found the two different philosophies on gender power to be very interesting. Should the most power come from the parent most represented, whichever that may be? This idea would bring more power to widows and present them with a greater role in the community. However, the people of this enlightened area would demand that the power of a woman's authority was inexistent outside the home.
Mary Beth Norton is a very accredited historian. This book gives remarkable incite to the power of woman in colonial times. Anyone interested in the social history of our country would enjoy this book and feel enriched after reading it. Many of the woman's roles discussed were unknown to me. Norton puts them across in a very intelligent and unquestionable way using many actual cases of the times to back up her theories.
This book, although written by a scholarly author, is not a difficult reading. Since it deals with many aspects of colonial life unknown to many people the readers interest should withstand through its entirety. Indeed, woman played an immense, although not formal or independent, role in the formation of our country as it is today.
-Charles Michael Farley-
Founding Mothers & Fathers.......2000-05-05
However, this Filmerian system did create opportunities for women to wield some power. High-ranking widows were the rulers of their households and were deferred to by both males and females of lower ranks. Problems arose when these high-ranking widows failed to fall in with the male consensus, such as Anne Hutchinson.
In the Chesapeake region, the Filmerian system was much less successful than in New England because the Chesapeake settlers were predominantly single men. The family-based power system failed in this region because it had very few traditional family households. Although power remained gender-based in the Chesapeake region, it became more like a "Lockian system" in which power in the family was differentiated from political power.
Mary Beth Does Again!.......1998-11-30
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To the Latest Posterity: Pennsylvania-German Family Registers in the Fraktur Tradition (Publications of the Pennsylvania German Society (2001), V. 37.)
Corinne P. Earnest , and Russell D. Earnest Manufacturer: Pennsylvania State University Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 0271023686 |
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Relative Intimacy: Fathers, Adolescent Daughters, and Postwar American Culture (Gender and American Culture)
Rachel Devlin Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
Accessories:
ASIN: 0807856053 Release Date: 2006-09-26 |
Book Description
Celebrated as new consumers and condemned for their growing delinquencies, teenage girls emerged as one of the most visible segments of American society during and after World War II. Contrary to the generally accepted view that teenagers grew more alienated from adults during this period, Rachel Devlin argues that postwar culture fostered a father-daughter relationship characterized by new forms of psychological intimacy and tinged with eroticism.According to Devlin, psychiatric professionals turned to the Oedipus complex during World War II to explain girls' delinquencies and antisocial acts. Fathers were encouraged to become actively involved in the clothing choices and makeup practices of their teenage daughters, thus domesticating and keeping under paternal authority their sexual maturation. In Broadway plays, girls' and women's magazines, and works of literature, fathers often appeared as governing figures in their daughters' sexual coming-of-age. It became the common sense of the era that adolescent girls were fundamentally motivated by their Oedipal needs, dependent upon paternal sexual approval, and interested in their fathers' romantic lives. As Devlin demonstrates, the pervasiveness of depictions of father-adolescent daughter eroticism on all levels of culture raises questions about the extent of girls' independence in modern American society and the character of fatherhood during America's fabled embrace of domesticity in the 1940s and 1950s.
Customer Reviews:
FASCINATING ANALYSIS OF AN INVISIBLE TREND.......2005-06-18
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From Fireplace to Cookstove: Technology and the Domestic Ideal in America
Priscilla J. Brewer Manufacturer: Syracuse University Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover ASIN: 0815606508 |
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