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A Decolonial Black Feminist Theory of Reading and Shade: Feeling the University by Andrea N. Baldwin This book uses a decolonial Black feminist lens to understand the contemporary significance of the practices and politics of indifference in United States higher education. It illustrates how higher education institutions are complicit in maintaining dominant social norms that perpetuate difference. It weaves together Black feminisms, affect and queer theory to demonstrate that the ways in which human bodies are classified and normalized in societal and scientific terms contribute to how the minoritized and marginalized feel White higher education spaces. The text espouses a Black Feminist Shad(e)y Theoretics to read the university, by considering the historical positioning of the modern university as sites in which the modern body is made and remade through empirically reliable truth claims and how contemporary knowledges and academic disciplinary inheritances bear the fingerprints of racist sexist science even as the academy tries to disavow its inheritance through so-called inclusive practices and policies today. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in Black feminism, Gender and women's studies, Black and ethnic studies, sociology, decoloniality, queer studies and affect theory. Call Number: E-book
Publication Date: 2021
Cultural Appropriation in Fashion and Entertainment by Yuniya Kawamura; Jung-Whan Marc de Jong Is it ever appropriate to "borrow" culturally inspired ideas? Who has ownership over intangible culture? What role does power inequality play? These questions are often at the center of heated public debates around cultural appropriation, with new controversies breaking seemingly every day. Cultural Appropriation in Fashion and Entertainment offers a sociological perspective on the debate, exploring appropriation of cultures embedded in race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and religion in entertainment as well as the clothing, textiles, jewelry, accessories, hairstyles, and tattoos we wear. Case studies are drawn from K-pop, Bollywood dance, J-pop, Bhangra music, Jamaican reggae, hip hop and EDM fashion to explore how, when, and why cultural borrowing or appreciation can become cultural appropriation. There's also discussion of subcultural territories that extend beyond geography, race and ethnicity, such as cosplay and LGBTQI+ communities. By providing a range of global perspectives on the adoption, adaptation, and application of both tangible and intangible cultural objects, Kawamura and de Jong help move the conversation beyond simply criticizing designers and creators to encourage nuanced discussion and raise awareness of diverse cultures in the creative industries. Call Number: E-book
Publication Date: 2022-07
Simply institutional ethnography: Creating a sociology for people by Smith, Dorothy E. Institutional ethnography (IE) originated as a feminist alternative to sociologies defining people as the objects of study. Instead, IE explores the social relations that dominate the life of the particular subject in focus. Simply Institutional Ethnography is written by two pioneers in the field and is grounded in decades of groundbreaking work. Dorothy E. Smith and Alison I. Griffith lay out the basics of how institutional ethnography proceeds as a sociology. Call Number: E-book
Publication Date: 2022
Sociology: The Basics by Ken Plummer A lively, accessible and comprehensive introduction to the diverse ways of thinking about social life, Sociology: The Basics has been translated into six languages. The volume is packed with thought-provoking summaries, questions, quotations and activities. It offers an absorbing narrative about what we mean by the social, and how we can think about it, weaving in discussions of the personal, the political and social change, along with concepts and vivid contemporary examples, and answering questions such as: What is the scope, history and purpose of sociology? How do we cultivate ways of understanding society and 'the social'? What is the state of the world we live in today? How do we analyse suffering and inequalities? What are key methods and tools for researching and thinking about society? How has digitalism reshaped sociology and its method? How might sociology help us understand the changes brought about by Covid-19? Does sociology have values? What is the role of sociology in making a better world? In this thoroughly revised and updated Third edition the reader is encouraged to think critically about the structures, meanings, histories and cultures found in the rapidly changing world we live in. With tasks to stimulate the sociological mind and suggestions for further reading both within the text and on an accompanying website, this book is essential reading for all those studying sociology and those with an interest in how the modern world works. Call Number: E-book
Publication Date: 2022
Border and rule: Global migration, capitalism, and the rise of racist nationalism by Harsha Walia; Robin D. G. Kelley (Foreword by); Nick Estes (Afterword by) In Border and Rule, one of North America's foremost thinkers and immigrant rights organizers delivers an unflinching examination of migration as a pillar of global governance and gendered racial class formation. Harsha Walia disrupts easy explanations for the migrant and refugee crises, instead showing them to be the inevitable outcomes of conquest, capitalist globalization, and climate change generating mass dispossession worldwide. Border and Rule explores a number of seemingly disparate global geographies with shared logics of border rule that displace, immobilize, criminalize, exploit, and expel migrants and refugees. With her keen ability to connect the dots, Walia demonstrates how borders divide the international working class and consolidate imperial, capitalist, ruling class, and racist nationalist rule. Ambitious in scope and internationalist in orientation, Border and Rule breaks through American exceptionalist and liberal responses to the migration crisis and cogently maps the lucrative connections between state violence, capitalism, and right-wing nationalism around the world. Illuminating the brutal mechanics of state formation, Walia exposes US border policy as a product of violent territorial expansion, settler-colonialism, enslavement, and gendered racial exclusion. Further, she compellingly details how Fortress Europe and White Australia are using immigration diplomacy and externalized borders to maintain a colonial present, how temporary labor migration in the Arab Gulf states and Canada is central to citizenship regulation and labor control, and how far-right nationalism is escalating deadly violence in the US, Israel, India, the Philippines, Brazil, and across Europe, while producing a disaster of statelessness for millions elsewhere. A must-read in these difficult times of war, inequality, climate change, and global health crisis, Border and Rule is a clarion call for revolution. The book includes a foreword from renowned scholar Robin D. G. Kelley and an afterword from acclaimed activist-academic Nick Estes. Call Number: JV 6225 W35 2021
Publication Date: 2021