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The Zuni and the American Imagination
by Eliza McfeelyA bold new study of the Zuni, of the first anthropologists who studied them, and of the effect of Zuni on America's sense of itselfThe Zuni society existed for centuries before there was a United States, and it still exists in its desert pueblo in what is now New Mexico. In the late nineteenth century, anthropologists-among the first in this new discipline-came to Zuni to study it and, they believed, to salvage what they could of its tangible culture before it was destroyed, which they were sure would happen. Matilda Stevenson, Frank Hamilton Cushing, and Stewart Culin were the three most important of these early students of Zuni, and although modern anthropologists often disparage and ignore their work-sometimes for good, sometimes for poor reasons-these pioneers gave us an idea of the power and significance of Zuni life that has endured into our time. They did not expect the Zuni themselves to endure, but they have, and the complex relation between the Zuni as they were and are and the Zuni as imagined by these three Easterners is at the heart of Eliza McFeely's important new book.Stevenson, Cushing, and Culin are themselves remarkable subjects, not just as anthropology's earliest pioneers but as striking personalities in their own right, and McFeely gives ample consideration, in her colorful and absorbing study, to each of them. For different reasons, all three found professional and psychological satisfaction in leaving the East for the West, in submerging themselves in an alien and little-known world, and in bringing back to the nation's new museums and exhibit halls literally thousands of Zuni artifacts. Their doctrines about social development, their notions of "salvage anthropology," their cultural biases and predispositions are now regarded with considerable skepticism, but nonetheless their work imprinted Zuni on the American imagination in ways we have yet to measure. It is the great merit of McFeely's fascinating work that she puts their intellectual and personal adventures into a just and measured perspective; she enlightens us about America, about Zuni, and about how we understand each other.
Zum Subjekt werden: Analysen vergeschlechtlichender Positionierungen im Sprechen über Zukunft
by Karen GeipelIm Fokus der qualitativ-empirischen Studie stehen Prozesse des Werdens zum Subjekt im Sprechen über Zukunft. Aus poststrukturalistischer Perspektive wird damit die zeitliche Dimension des Zukünftigen in den Fokus gerückt und anhand von Äußerungen junger Frauen in einer Gruppendiskussion analysiert, wie sich Prozesse vergeschlechtlichender Subjektbildung im Modus des Zukünftigen vollziehen. Auf methodologisch-methodischer Ebene kennzeichnet diese Studie eine diskurs- und subjektivierungstheoretische Perspektivierung sprachlicher Äußerungen in Gruppendiskussionen, die als diskursive subjektbildende Praktiken gefasst und mittels des Konzepts der Positionierung untersucht werden. Im Rahmen der Analysen zeigt Karen Geipel auf, wie normative Ordnungen in Antizipationen von Fürsorgeverantwortung und Konstruktionen eines zukünftig fürsorgenden Selbst hervorgebracht werden, die das Werden zum vergeschlechtlichten Subjekt sowohl ermöglichen als auch begrenzen. Mit Überlegungen zu bildungs- und sorgetheoretischen Gehalten der Befunde, einer Reflexion des Forschungsprozesses sowie Impulsen für die Pädagogik wird ein Ausblick in die Zukunft gegeben.
Zum Bild des tirailleur sénégalais im französischen Comic: Repräsentation einer kolonialen Figur in der Erinnerungskultur des 1. Weltkriegs
by Jérôme SerriereDie Ausgangsfrage dieser Untersuchung ist, wie sich eine Gesellschaft an den 1. Weltkrieg erinnert und inwiefern sich diese Erinnerung mit der Zeit wandelt. Das Phänomen eines solchen „kollektiven Gedächtnisses“ und die verschiedenen Konzepte von Halbwachs, Nora („lieux de mémoire“), Jan Assmann („kulturelles Gedächtnis“) und Aleida Assmann („Funktions- und Speichergedächtnis“ des kulturellen Gedächtnisses) bilden den theoretischen Rahmen der Arbeit.Das Untersuchungsmedium zur Erforschung der französischen Erinnerungskultur zum 1. Weltkrieg bilden Comics („bande dessinées“), ein in Frankreich etabliertes und nachgefragtes Medium. Im Fokus der Betrachtung steht die Rolle der sogenannten „tirailleurs sénégalais“ in der Erinnerungskultur und wie sich die Kolonialzeit auf ihre Wahrnehmung in der französischen Gesellschaft auswirkte. Unterschieden wird dabei zwischen Tirailleurs als Kolonialsoldaten und der Figur des Tirailleurs als Konstrukt einer vergangenen Kolonialzeit. Den Kern der Arbeit bildet die Analyse zweier ausgewählter Comics. Nach festgelegten Kriterien (Deskription, Authentizität, Darstellung, Beitrag zur Erinnerungskultur) wird hier die Darstellung der Tirailleurs im Comic mit dem Bild der Tirailleurs in der Erinnerungskultur und in der Kolonialzeit verglichen. In den Comics werden aus erinnerungskulturellen Randfiguren und historischen Statisten Hauptfiguren des 1. Weltkriegs und selbstbestimmte Protagonisten postkolonialen Ausmaßes.
Zulu Journal: Field Notes of a Naturalist in South Africa
by Raymond B. CowlesThis title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1959.
Zukunftsweisende Teamsteuerung: Ambidextre Führung als eine neue Form organisatorischer Intelligenz (AutoUni – Schriftenreihe #151)
by Jessica GuthZweifelsfrei benötigen Organisationen vor allem in ‚turbulenten Zeiten‘ eine besonders überzeugende Lösung, wie einzelne Mitarbeiter ihr Potential entfalten können. Diese Arbeit zeigt auf, dass Teams eine neue Funktion bekommen, wenn sie in der Phase zwischen ‚nicht mehr‘ und noch nicht‘ vielversprechende Leistungen vollbringen können. Im Rahmen einer Erst- und Folgeuntersuchung führte Jessica Guth bei einem Großunternehmen der Automobilbranche zahlreiche Gruppendiskussionen und Experteninterviews durch. Ihre These: Kontextuell ambidextres Führungshandeln ist das Ziel, darf aber nicht an Paradoxien scheitern, denn nur so können Lernprozesse im Team Exploitation und Exploration auslösen. Das ermittelte 3L-Modell ambidextrer Führung (Lernen, Lenken, Leisten) wird in einem Rahmenmodell zusammengefasst, um auch Führung weiter zu denken. Insbesondere der Zusammenhang zwischen ambidextrer Führung und innovativer Ideengenerierung wird beleuchtet, so dass bedeutsame Anregungen zur Ideengenerierung in nachhaltigkeits- und lerntheoretischer Perspektive vorliegen.
Zukunftsforschung im Praxistest
by Reinhold Popp Axel ZweckWie funktioniert angewandte Zukunftsforschung bei der Allianz, bei BASF, der Deutschen Bahn, BMW, Siemens, aber auch in mittelständischen Unternehmen? Wie analysieren zwei Fraunhofer-Institute, das IZT, der Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, Z-Punkt und das Zentrum für Zukunftsstudien als Think Tank der Salzburger Sozialpartner wichtige Zukunftsthemen und Zukunftstechnologien? Die Antworten auf diese zukunftsweisenden Fragen finden sich in diesem Band. Renommierte ZukunftsexpertInnen zeigen, wie sich Unternehmen, Organisationen und Institutionen mit dem Wissen von heute auf die Welt von morgen vorbereiten.
Zukünftige Medien: Eine Einführung (Medienwissenschaft: Einführungen kompakt)
by Christoph Ernst Jens SchröterDer Band bietet die erste Einführung in Konzepte der Imagination zukünftiger Medientechnologien. Ausgehend von der sozialen Transformation durch neue Medien wird die interdisziplinäre Debatte um die Vorstellbarmachung zukünftiger Medien vorgestellt. Im Durchgang durch etablierte Theorien aus Philosophie, Medientheorie, Sozialtheorie sowie Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung wird aufgezeigt, welchen breiten Einfluss Prozesse der Imagination, etwa in Gestalt von Narrativen wie in der Science Fiction, für die Diskursivierung und Konzeptualisierung von (digitalen) Medientechnologien haben.
Zukunft und Wissenschaft
by Reinhold PoppWissenschaftlich fundierte Zukunftsforschung findet insbesondere im deutschsprachigen Raum nur vereinzelt statt. In Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz gibt es insgesamt nur drei Hochschulen mit Professuren für Zukunftsforschung - dem steht jedoch eine wachsende Zahl von Unternehmensberatern und Trend-Gurus gegenüber, die sich selbst als Zukunftsforscher bezeichnen. Die Autoren des Sammelbands beschäftigen sich in ihren Beiträgen systematisch mit den bislang vernachlässigten wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen der Zukunftsforschung.
Zukunft denken und verantworten: Herausforderungen für Politik, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft im 21. Jahrhundert
by Wolfgang Roters Horst Gräf Hellmut WollmannDieses Buch untersucht in einem Querschnitt durch aktuelle und künftig zu erwartende Herausforderungen für Politik, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft (Finanzen, Digitales, Kultur, Stadtentwicklung, Wohnen, Verkehr, Bildung, usw.), ob und unter welchen Bedingungen Staat und Politik in der Lage sind, Zukunft zu denken und – noch wichtiger – zu gestalten. Als Referenzraum und -zeit ziehen zahlreiche Autor*innen die Stadtentwicklungspolitik der 1980er und 1990er Jahre in Nordrhein-Westfalen, vor allem für die Agglomeration Ruhr, heran. In der „Zeitenwende“ wurde der Band vor allem in seiner welt- und europapolitischen Dimension aktualisiert und erweitert.
Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
by Roger McNameeThe story of how a noted tech venture capitalist, an early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg and investor in his company, woke up to the serious damage Facebook was doing to our society and set out to try to stop it. <P><P>If you had told Roger McNamee even three years ago that he would soon be devoting himself to stopping Facebook from destroying our democracy, he would have howled with laughter. He had mentored many tech leaders in his illustrious career as an investor, but few things had made him prouder, or been better for his fund's bottom line, than his early service to Mark Zuckerberg. Still a large shareholder in Facebook, he had every good reason to stay on the bright side. Until he simply couldn't. <P><P>ZUCKED is McNamee's intimate reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world's most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing. It's a story that begins with a series of rude awakenings. First there is the author's dawning realization that the platform is being manipulated by some very bad actors. <P><P>Then there is the even more unsettling realization that Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are unable or unwilling to share his concerns, polite as they may be to his face. And then comes the election of Donald Trump, and the emergence of one horrific piece of news after another about the malign ends to which the Facebook platform has been put. To McNamee's shock, even still Facebook's leaders duck and dissemble, viewing the matter as a public relations problem. Now thoroughly alienated, McNamee digs into the issue, and fortuitously meets up with some fellow travelers who share his concern, and help him sharpen its focus. <P><P>Soon he and a dream team of Silicon Valley technologists are charging into the fray, to raise consciousness about the existential threat of Facebook, and the persuasion architecture of the attention economy more broadly -- to our public health and to our political order. Zucked is both an enthralling personal narrative and a masterful explication of the forces that have conspired to place us all on the horns of this dilemma. <P><P>This is the story of a company and its leadership, but it's also a larger tale of a business sector unmoored from normal constraints, just at a moment of political and cultural crisis, the worst possible time to be given new tools for summoning the darker angels of our nature and whipping them into a frenzy. <P><P>Like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, Roger McNamee happened to be in the right place to witness a crime, and it took him some time to make sense of what he was seeing and what we ought to do about it. The result of that effort is a wise, hard-hitting, and urgently necessary account that crystallizes the issue definitively for the rest of us. <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
Zoya's Story
by John Follain Rita CristofariKabul was always more beautiful in the snow. Even the piles of rotting rubbish in my street, the only source of food for the scrawny chickens and goats that our neighbors kept outside their mud houses, looked beautiful to me after the snow had covered them in white during the long night. Though she is only twenty-three, Zoya has witnessed and endured more tragedy and terror than most people experience in a lifetime. Born in a land ravaged by war, she was robbed of her parents when they were murdered by Muslim fundamentalists. Devastated, she fled Kabul with her grandmother and started a new life in exile in Pakistan. She joined the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an organization that challenged the crushing edicts of the Taliban government, and she took destiny into her own hands, joining a dangerous, clandestine war to save her nation. Direct and unsentimental, Zoya vividly brings to life the realities of growing up in a Muslim culture, the terror of living in a perpetual war zone, the pain of losing those she has loved, the horrors of a woman's life under the Taliban, and the discovered healing and transformation that lead her on a path of resistance.
Zoya's Story: An Afghan Woman's Struggle for Freedom
by Zoya John Follain Rita CristofariZoya's Story is a young woman's searing account of her clandestine war of resistance against the Taliban and religious fanaticism at the risk of her own life. An epic tale of fear and suffering, courage and hope, Zoya's Story is a powerful testament to the ongoing battle to claim human rights for the women of Afghanistan. Though she is only twenty-three, Zoya has witnessed and endured more tragedy and terror than most people do in a lifetime. Zoya grew up during the wars that ravaged Afghanistan and was robbed of her mother and father when they were murdered by Muslim fundamentalists. Devastated by so much death and destruction, she fled Kabul with her grandmother and started a new life in exile in Pakistan. She joined the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, which challenged the crushing edicts of the Taliban government, and she made dangerous journeys back to her homeland to help the women oppressed by a system that forced them to wear the stifling burqa, condoned public stoning or whipping if they ventured out without a male chaperon, and forbade them from working. Zoya is our guide, our witness to the horrors perpetrated by the Taliban and the Mujahideen "holy warriors" who had defeated the Russian occupiers. She helped to secretly film a public cutting of hands in a Kabul stadium and to organize covert literacy classes, as schooling-branded a "gateway to Hell" -- was forbidden to girls. At an Afghan refugee camp she heard tales of heartrending suffering and worked to provide a future for families who had lost everything. The spotlight focused on Afghanistan after the New York and Washington terrorist attacks highlights the conditions of repression and fear in which Afghan women live and makes Zoya's Story utterly compelling. This is a memoir that speaks louder than the images of devastation and outrage; it is a moving message of optimism as Zoya struggles to bring the plight of Afghan women to the world's attention.
Zorro's Shadow: How a Mexican Legend Became America's First Superhero
by Stephen J. C. AndesLong before Superman or Batman made their first appearances, there was Zorro. Born on the pages of the pulps in 1919, Zorro fenced his way through the American popular imagination, carving his signature letter Z into the flesh of evildoers in Old Spanish California. Zorro is the original caped crusader, the first hero to have a band called the Avengers, and the character who laid the blueprint for the modern American superhero: the mask, the alter-ego, extraordinary physical skills, and a struggle against arch-villains. Famed comics pioneer Bob Kane even wrote that "Zorro was a major influence on my creation of Batman."In Zorro's Shadow, historian and Latin American studies expert Stephen J. C. Andes investigates the legends behind the mask of Zorro, revealing that the origin of America's first superhero lies in Latinx history and experience. Andes begins his investigation in Mexico City at a statue of William Lamport, the so-called "Irish Zorro," who was burned at the stake by the Mexican Inquisition. There, he discovers new documents at the Mexican National Archives and travels to the Sonoran desert to find the birthplace of Joaquín Murrieta, a California Gold Rush bandit who many claim inspired the creation of Zorro. Based on the never-before-seen letters of Zorro creator Johnston McCulley, Andes describes how the legends around Lamport and Murrieta influenced the development of the masked hero in black, and further, how Zorro went from a real life Mexican bandido to a distinctly white, aristocratic hero. Revealing the length of Zorro's shadow on the superhero genre is a reclamation of the legend of Zorro for a multiethnic and multicultural America.
Zoroastrian and Parsi Studies: Selected Works of John R.Hinnells (Routledge Revivals)
by John R. HinnellsThis title was first published in 2000: This volume collects articles from 30 years of John R. Hinnell's writings. The selection is intended to balance the different areas in which he has worked: the ancient tradition and its influence on Biblical imagery; Parsi history; the living religion; and diaspora communities.
The Zoot-Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation (CMAS Mexican American Monograph)
by Mauricio MazónLos Angeles, the summer of 1943. For ten days in June, Anglo servicemen and civilians clashed in the streets of the city with young Mexican Americans whose fingertip coats and pegged, draped trousers announced their rebellion. At their height, the riots involved several thousand men and women, fighting with fists, rocks, sticks, and sometimes knives. In the end none were killed, few were seriously injured, and property damage was slight and yet, even today, the zoot-suit riots are remembered and hold emotional and symbolic significance for Mexican Americans and Anglos alike. The causes of the rioting were complex, as Mazón demonstrates in this illuminating analysis of their psychodynamics. Based in part on previously undisclosed FBI and military records, this engrossing study goes beyond sensational headlines and biased memories to provide an understanding of the zoot-suit riots in the context of both Mexican American and Anglo social history.
Zoot Suit
by Kathy PeissZOOT SUIT (n.): the ultimate in clothes. The only totally and truly American civilian suit.--Cab Calloway, The Hepster's Dictionary, 1944Before the fashion statements of hippies, punks, or hip-hop, there was the zoot suit, a striking urban look of the World War II era that captivated the imagination. Created by poor African American men and obscure tailors, the "drape shape" was embraced by Mexican American pachucos, working-class youth, entertainers, and swing dancers, yet condemned by the U.S. government as wasteful and unpatriotic in a time of war. The fashion became notorious when it appeared to trigger violence and disorder in Los Angeles in 1943--events forever known as the "zoot suit riot." In its wake, social scientists, psychiatrists, journalists, and politicians all tried to explain the riddle of the zoot suit, transforming it into a multifaceted symbol: to some, a sign of social deviance and psychological disturbance, to others, a gesture of resistance against racial prejudice and discrimination. As controversy swirled at home, young men in other places--French zazous, South African tsotsi, Trinidadian saga boys, and Russian stiliagi--made the American zoot suit their own.In Zoot Suit, historian Kathy Peiss explores this extreme fashion and its mysterious career during World War II and after, as it spread from Harlem across the United States and around the world. She traces the unfolding history of this style and its importance to the youth who adopted it as their uniform, and at the same time considers the way public figures, experts, political activists, and historians have interpreted it. This outré style was a turning point in the way we understand the meaning of clothing as an expression of social conditions and power relations. Zoot Suit offers a new perspective on youth culture and the politics of style, tracing the seam between fashion and social action.
The Zoom: Drama at the Touch of a Lever (Techniques of the Moving Image)
by Nick HallFrom the queasy zooms in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to the avant-garde mystery of Michael Snow’s Wavelength, from the excitement of televised baseball to the drama of the political convention, the zoom shot is instantly recognizable and highly controversial. In The Zoom, Nick Hall traces the century-spanning history of the zoom lens in American film and television. From late 1920s silent features to the psychedelic experiments of the 1960s and beyond, the book describes how inventors battled to provide film and television studios with practical zoom lenses, and how cinematographers clashed over the right ways to use the new zooms. Hall demonstrates how the zoom brought life and energy to cinema decades before the zoom boom of the 1970s and reveals how the zoom continues to play a vital and often overlooked role in the production of contemporary film and television.
Zoological Surrealism: The Nonhuman Cinema of Jean Painlevé
by James Leo CahillAn archive-based, in-depth analysis of the surreal nature and science movies of the pioneering French filmmaker Jean PainlevéBefore Jacques-Yves Cousteau, there was Jean Painlevé, a pioneering French scientific and nature filmmaker with a Surrealist’s eye. Creator of more than two hundred films, his studies of strange animal worlds doubled as critical reimaginations of humanity. With an unerring eye for the uncanny and unexpected, Painlevé and his assistant Geneviève Hamon captured oneiric octopuses, metamorphic crustaceans, erotic seahorses, mythic vampire bats, and insatiable predatory insects. Zoological Surrealism draws from Painlevé’s early oeuvre to rethink the entangled histories of cinema, Surrealism, and scientific research in interwar France. Delving deeply into Painlevé’s archive, James Leo Cahill develops an account of “cinema’s Copernican vocation”—how it was used to forge new scientific discoveries while also displacing and critiquing anthropocentric viewpoints. From Painlevé’s engagements with Sergei Eisenstein, Georges Franju, and competing Surrealists to the historiographical dimensions of Jean Vigo’s concept of social cinema, Zoological Surrealism taps never-before-examined sources to offer a completely original perspective on a cutting-edge filmmaker. The first extensive English-language study of Painlevé’s early films and their contexts, it adds important new insight to our understanding of film while also contributing to contemporary investigations of the increasingly surreal landscapes of climate change and ecological emergency.
Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida
by Matthew CalarcoZoographies challenges the anthropocentrism of the Continental philosophical tradition and advances the position that, while some distinctions are valid, humans and animals are best viewed as part of an ontological whole. Matthew Calarco draws on ethological and evolutionary evidence and the work of Heidegger, who called for a radicalized responsibility toward all forms of life. He also turns to Levinas, who raised questions about the nature and scope of ethics; Agamben, who held the "anthropological machine" responsible for the horrors of the twentieth century; and Derrida, who initiated a nonanthropocentric ethics. Calarco concludes with a call for the abolition of classical versions of the human-animal distinction and asks that we devise new ways of thinking about and living with animals.
Zooarchaeology in Practice
by Christina M. Giovas Michelle J. LeFebvreZooarchaeology in Practice advances the methodological discussion beyond its present strictures by addressing the development of analytically sound practices through a collection of seminal essays authored by leading figures in the field. Offering a level of depth and breadth not readily found in the available literature, this volume examines how zooarchaeological data and interpretation are shaped by its method of practice, exploring the impact of these effects at all levels of zooarchaeological investigation. Employing a geographically and taxonomically diverse set of case studies, contributing authors provide instructive approaches to problems in traditional and emerging areas of methodological concern. Readers, from specialists to students, will gain an extensive, sophisticated look at important disciplinary issues, sure to provoke critical reflection on the nature and importance of sound methodology. With implications for how archaeologists reconstruct human behavior and paleoecology, and broader relevance to fields such as paleontology and conservation biology, Zooarchaeology in Practice makes an enduring contribution to the methodological advancement of the discipline.
Zooarchaeology and Modern Human Origins: Human Hunting Behavior during the Later Pleistocene
by Jamie L. Clark John D. SpethRecent genetic data showing that Neanderthals interbred with modern humans have made it clear that deeper insight into the behavioral differences between these populations will be critical to understanding the rapid spread of modern humans and the demise of the Neanderthals. This volume, which brings together scholars who have worked with faunal assemblages from Europe, the Near East, and Africa, makes an important contribution to our broader understanding of Neanderthal extinction and modern human origins through its focus on variability in human hunting behavior between 70-25,000 years ago--a critical period in the later evolution of our species.
Zooarchaeology
by Elizabeth J. Reitz Elizabeth S. WingThis book includes new sections on enamel ultra structure and incremental analysis, stable isotopes and trace elements, ancient genetics and enzymes, environmental reconstruction, people as agents of environmental change etc.
Zoo Renewal
by Lisa UddinWhy do we feel bad at the zoo? In a fascinating counterhistory of American zoos in the 1960s and 1970s, Lisa Uddin revisits the familiar narrative of zoo reform, from naked cages to more naturalistic enclosures. She argues that reform belongs to the story of cities and feelings toward many of their human inhabitants. In Zoo Renewal, Uddin demonstrates how efforts to make the zoo more natural and a haven for particular species reflected white fears about the American city--and, pointedly, how the shame many visitors felt in observing confined animals drew on broader anxieties about race and urban life. Examining the campaign against cages, renovations at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. and the San Diego Zoo, and the cases of a rare female white Bengal tiger and a collection of southern white rhinoceroses, Uddin unpacks episodes that challenge assumptions that zoos are about other worlds and other creatures and expand the history of U.S. urbanism. Uddin shows how the drive to protect endangered species and to ensure larger, safer zoos was shaped by struggles over urban decay, suburban growth, and the dilemmas of postwar American whiteness. In so doing, Zoo Renewal ultimately reveals how feeling bad, or good, at the zoo is connected to our feelings about American cities and their residents.
Zoning China: Online Video, Popular Culture, and the State (Information Policy)
by Luzhou LiAn examination of “cultural zoning” in China considers why government regulation of online video is so much more lenient than regulation of broadcast television. In Zoning China, Luzhou Li investigates why the Chinese government regulates online video relatively leniently while tightly controlling what appears on broadcast television. Li argues that television has largely been the province of the state, even as the market has dominated the development of online video. Thus online video became a space where people could question state media and the state's preferred ideological narratives about the nation, history, and society. Li connects this relatively unregulated arena to the “second channel” that opened up in the early days of economic reform—piracy in all its permutations. She compares the dual cultural sphere to China's economic zoning; the marketized domain of online video is the cultural equivalent of the Special Economic Zones, which were developed according to market principles in China's coastal cities.Li explains that although the relaxed oversight of online video may seem to represent a loosening of the party-state's grip on media, the practice of cultural zoning in fact demonstrates the the state's strategic control of the media environment. She describes how China's online video industry developed into an original, creative force of production and distribution that connected domestic private production companies, transnational corporations, and a vast network of creative labor from amateurs to professional content creators. Li notes that China has increased state management of the internet since 2014, signaling that online and offline censorship standards may be unified. Cultural zoning as a technique of cultural governance, however, will likely remain.
The Zong: A Massacre, the Law & the End of Slavery
by James Walvin&“A lucid, fluent and fascinating account of the Zong. The book details the horror of the mass killing of enslaved Africans on board the ship in 1781.&”—Gad Heuman, co-editor of The Routledge History of Slavery On November 29, 1781, Captain Collingwood of the British ship Zong commanded his crew to throw overboard one-third of his cargo: a shipment of Africans bound for slavery in America. The captain believed his ship was off course, and he feared there was not enough drinking water to last until landfall. This book is the first to examine in detail the deplorable killings on the Zong, the lawsuit that ensued, how the murder of 132 slaves affected debates about slavery, and the way we remember the infamous Zong today. Historian James Walvin explores all aspects of the Zong&’s voyage and the subsequent trial—a case brought to court not for the murder of the slaves but as a suit against the insurers who denied the owners&’ claim that their &“cargo&” had been necessarily jettisoned. The scandalous case prompted wide debate and fueled Britain&’s awakening abolition movement. Without the episode of the Zong, Walvin contends, the process of ending the slave trade would have taken an entirely different moral and political trajectory. He concludes with a fascinating discussion of how the case of the Zong, though unique in the history of slave ships, has come to be understood as typical of life on all such ships. &“Engaging . . . [Walvin&’s] expertise shines through with surgical use of statistics and absorbing deviations into subjects such as Turner&’s masterpiece The Slave Ship and the slave-fueled growth of Liverpool.&”—Daily Mail