Beverly Bell
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801452123
- eISBN:
- 9780801468322
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801452123.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than a quarter-million people and leaving another two million Haitians homeless. This book is a searing account of the first ...
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On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than a quarter-million people and leaving another two million Haitians homeless. This book is a searing account of the first year after the earthquake. It explores how strong communities and an age-old gift culture have helped Haitians survive in the wake of an unimaginable disaster, one that only compounded the preexisting social and economic distress of their society. The book examines the history that caused such astronomical destruction, and draws in theories of resistance and social movements to scrutinize grassroots organizing for a more just and equitable country. The book offers rich perspectives rarely seen outside Haiti. It takes the reader through displaced persons camps, shantytowns, and rural villages, where they get a view that defies the stereotype of Haiti as a lost nation of victims. It also combines excerpts of more than one hundred interviews with Haitians, historical and political analysis, and investigative journalism. The book investigates and critiques U.S. foreign policy, emergency aid, standard development approaches, the role of nongovernmental organizations, and disaster capitalism. Woven through the text are comparisons to the crisis and cultural resistance in the city of New Orleans, when the levees broke in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Ultimately a tale of hope, the book will give readers a new understanding of daily life, structural challenges, and collective dreams in one of the world's most complex countries.Less
On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than a quarter-million people and leaving another two million Haitians homeless. This book is a searing account of the first year after the earthquake. It explores how strong communities and an age-old gift culture have helped Haitians survive in the wake of an unimaginable disaster, one that only compounded the preexisting social and economic distress of their society. The book examines the history that caused such astronomical destruction, and draws in theories of resistance and social movements to scrutinize grassroots organizing for a more just and equitable country. The book offers rich perspectives rarely seen outside Haiti. It takes the reader through displaced persons camps, shantytowns, and rural villages, where they get a view that defies the stereotype of Haiti as a lost nation of victims. It also combines excerpts of more than one hundred interviews with Haitians, historical and political analysis, and investigative journalism. The book investigates and critiques U.S. foreign policy, emergency aid, standard development approaches, the role of nongovernmental organizations, and disaster capitalism. Woven through the text are comparisons to the crisis and cultural resistance in the city of New Orleans, when the levees broke in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Ultimately a tale of hope, the book will give readers a new understanding of daily life, structural challenges, and collective dreams in one of the world's most complex countries.
Dominic Boyer
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451881
- eISBN:
- 9780801467356
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451881.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
News journalism is in the midst of radical transformation brought about by the spread of digital information and communication technology and the rise of neoliberalism. What does it look like, ...
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News journalism is in the midst of radical transformation brought about by the spread of digital information and communication technology and the rise of neoliberalism. What does it look like, however, from the inside of a news organization? This book offers the first anthropological ethnography of contemporary office-based news journalism. The result is an account of journalists struggling to maintain their expertise and authority, even as they find their principles and skills profoundly challenged by ever more complex and fast-moving streams of information. The book's findings challenge popular and scholarly images of journalists as roving truth-seekers, showing instead the extent to which sedentary office-based “screenwork” (such as gathering and processing information online) has come to dominate news journalism. To explain this phenomenon the book puts forth the notion of “digital liberalism”—a powerful convergence of technological and ideological forces over the past two decades that has rebalanced electronic mediation from the radial (or broadcast) tendencies of the mid-twentieth century to the lateral (or peer-to-peer) tendencies that dominate in the era of the Internet and social media. Under digital liberalism an entire regime of media, knowledge, and authority has become integrated around liberal principles of individuality and publicity, both unmaking and remaking news institutions of the broadcast era. The book offers scenarios for how news journalism will develop in the future and discusses how other intellectual professionals, such as ethnographers, have also become more screenworkers than fieldworkers.Less
News journalism is in the midst of radical transformation brought about by the spread of digital information and communication technology and the rise of neoliberalism. What does it look like, however, from the inside of a news organization? This book offers the first anthropological ethnography of contemporary office-based news journalism. The result is an account of journalists struggling to maintain their expertise and authority, even as they find their principles and skills profoundly challenged by ever more complex and fast-moving streams of information. The book's findings challenge popular and scholarly images of journalists as roving truth-seekers, showing instead the extent to which sedentary office-based “screenwork” (such as gathering and processing information online) has come to dominate news journalism. To explain this phenomenon the book puts forth the notion of “digital liberalism”—a powerful convergence of technological and ideological forces over the past two decades that has rebalanced electronic mediation from the radial (or broadcast) tendencies of the mid-twentieth century to the lateral (or peer-to-peer) tendencies that dominate in the era of the Internet and social media. Under digital liberalism an entire regime of media, knowledge, and authority has become integrated around liberal principles of individuality and publicity, both unmaking and remaking news institutions of the broadcast era. The book offers scenarios for how news journalism will develop in the future and discusses how other intellectual professionals, such as ethnographers, have also become more screenworkers than fieldworkers.
Christopher R. Duncan
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451584
- eISBN:
- 9780801469107
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451584.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Between 1999 and 2000, sectarian fighting fanned across the eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. What began as local conflicts ...
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Between 1999 and 2000, sectarian fighting fanned across the eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. What began as local conflicts between migrants and indigenous people over administrative boundaries, spiraled into a religious war pitting Muslims against Christians and continues to influence communal relationships more than a decade after the fighting stopped. This book examines how the individuals actually taking part in the fighting understood and experienced the conflict. Rather than dismiss religion as a facade for the political and economic motivations of the regional elite, the book explores how and why participants came to perceive the conflict as one of religious difference. It examines how these perceptions of religious violence altered the conflict, leading to large-scale massacres in houses of worship, forced conversions of entire communities, and other acts of violence that stressed religious identities. The book's analysis extends beyond the period of violent conflict and explores how local understandings of the violence have complicated the return of forced migrants, efforts at conflict resolution and reconciliation.Less
Between 1999 and 2000, sectarian fighting fanned across the eastern Indonesian province of North Maluku, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. What began as local conflicts between migrants and indigenous people over administrative boundaries, spiraled into a religious war pitting Muslims against Christians and continues to influence communal relationships more than a decade after the fighting stopped. This book examines how the individuals actually taking part in the fighting understood and experienced the conflict. Rather than dismiss religion as a facade for the political and economic motivations of the regional elite, the book explores how and why participants came to perceive the conflict as one of religious difference. It examines how these perceptions of religious violence altered the conflict, leading to large-scale massacres in houses of worship, forced conversions of entire communities, and other acts of violence that stressed religious identities. The book's analysis extends beyond the period of violent conflict and explores how local understandings of the violence have complicated the return of forced migrants, efforts at conflict resolution and reconciliation.
