The life of Mary Heaton Vorse (1874-1966) reads like a chronology of American radicalism in the first half of the twentieth century. The foremost pioneer of labor journalism in the U.S. and a prominent participant in the women’s universal suffrage movement, Vorse spent her life actively struggling for libertarian socialism, feminism, and world peace. Her friends and colleagues were among the …
On paper, the Occupation Health and Safety Act (OSHA) required employers to reduce the risks of illness and injury on the job regardless of the cost. Department of Labor health and safety inspectors could now show up unannounced at factories, construction sites, and offices and levy fines against employers who failed to comply. OSHA never lived up to its promises, however. Within a decade of th…
Labor Education for Women Workers was first published in 1981, a year that marked a significant shift in labor-movement history. When Barbara Wertheimer, working with a team of leading labor educators, published this essential text, it raised awareness of the importance of creating space for women workers to have solid labor education. They also identified a major gap in the literature on labor…
In The Early Colombian Labor Movement, David Sowell traces the history of artisan labor organizations in Bogotá and examines long-term political activity of Colombian artisans in the century after independence. Relying on contemporary newspapers, political handouts, broadsides, and public petitions, Sowell analyzes the economic, social, and political history of the capital's artisan class, a m…
One of the most troubling but least studied features of mass political violence is why mass violence often recurs in the same place over long periods of time. Douglas Kammen explores this pattern in Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor, studying East Timor's tragic past, and focusing on the small district of Maubara. This book combines an archival trail and rich oral interviews to reconstr…
From biometrics to predictive policing, contemporary security relies on sophisticated scientific evidence-gathering and knowledge-making focused on the human body. Bringing together new anthropological perspectives on the complexities of security in the present moment, the contributors to Bodies as Evidence reveal how bodies have become critical sources of evidence that is organized and deploye…
In a world where the notion of home is more traumatizing than it is comforting, artists are using this literal and figurative space to reframe human responses to trauma. Building on the scholarship of key art historians and theorists such as Judith Butler and Mieke Bal, Claudette Lauzon embarks upon a transnational analysis of contemporary artists who challenge the assumption that ‘homeâ…
Operation Dixie—the attempt by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to unionize the postwar South—was on the defensive almost as soon as it began in 1946. Although the South had a longstanding reputation for being particularly unreceptive to organized labor, the CIO decided that a Southern drive was necessary to consolidate the considerable gains unions had made during the war and…
Hijab: Unveiling Queer Muslim Lives is the first known collection of South African Muslim stories relating to Islam and sexual diversity. This anthology shares reallife stories of people that have struggled, or may still be struggling, to reconcile their spirituality and their sexuality. These are stories that illustrate the oneness of being and reflect on how some interpretations of the script…
With a clear statement of the theoretical issues in the debates about secularization and post-secularism, Religion and the State: A Comparative Sociology considers a number of major case studies from China, Europe, Singapore and South Asia in order to understand the rise of public religions in the modern state. By distinguishing between political secularization the separation of state and relig…