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Constructive Feminism: Women's Spaces and Women's Rights in the American City

Daphne Spain

This book examines the deliberate and unintended spatial consequences of feminism’s second wave, a social movement dedicated to reconfiguring power relations between women and men. Placing the ... More

This book examines the deliberate and unintended spatial consequences of feminism’s second wave, a social movement dedicated to reconfiguring power relations between women and men. Placing the women’s movement of the 1970s in the context of other social movements that have changed the use of urban space, this book argues that reform feminists used the legal system to end the mandatory segregation of women and men in public institutions, while radical activists created small-scale places that gave women the confidence to claim their rights to the public sphere. Women’s centers, bookstores, health clinics, and domestic violence shelters established feminist places for women’s liberation in Boston, Los Angeles, and many other cities. Unable to afford their own buildings, radicals adapted existing structures to serve as women’s centers that fostered autonomy, health clinics that promoted reproductive rights, bookstores that connected women to feminist thought, and domestic violence shelters that protected their bodily integrity. Legal equal opportunity reforms and daily practices of liberation enhanced women’s choices in education and occupations. Once the majority of wives and mothers had joined the labor force, by the mid-1980s, new buildings began to emerge that substituted for the unpaid domestic tasks once performed in the home. Fast food franchises, childcare facilities, adult day centers, and hospices were among the inadvertent spatial consequences of the second wave.Less

Difference and Orientation: An Alexander Kluge Reader

Alexander Kluge

Richard Langston (ed.)

This book's author is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, who has also written ... More

This book's author is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, who has also written books and articles, and continues to make films. However, his reputation outside of the German-speaking world still largely rests on his films of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. This book assembles thirty of the author's essays, speeches, glossaries, and interviews, revolving around the capacity for differentiation and the need for orientation toward ways out of catastrophic modernity. The volume brings together some of the author's most fundamental statements on literature, film, pre- and post-cinematic media, and social theory, nearly all for the first time in English translation. Together, these works highlight a career-spanning commitment to unorthodox, essayistic thinking.Less

Food for All in Africa: Sustainable Intensification for African Farmers

Gordon Conway, Ousmane Badiane, and Katrin Glatzel

Africa requires a new agricultural transformation that is appropriate for Africa, that recognizes the continent's diverse environments and climates, and that takes into account its histories and ... More

Africa requires a new agricultural transformation that is appropriate for Africa, that recognizes the continent's diverse environments and climates, and that takes into account its histories and cultures while benefiting rural smallholder farmers and their families. This book describes the key challenges faced by Africa's smallholder farmers and presents the concepts and practices of sustainable intensification as opportunities to sustainably transform Africa's agriculture sector and the livelihoods of millions of smallholders. The way forward, the book indicates, will be an agriculture sector deeply rooted within sustainable intensification: producing more with less, using fertilizers and pesticides more prudently, adapting to climate change, improving natural capital, adopting new technologies, and building resilience at every stage of the agriculture value chain. This book envisions a virtuous circle generated through agricultural development rooted in sustainable intensification that results in greater yields, healthier diets, improved livelihoods for farmers, and sustainable economic opportunities for the rural poor that in turn generate further investment. It describes the benefits of digital technologies for farmers and the challenges of transforming African agricultural policies and creating effective and inspiring leadership. The book demonstrates why we should take on the challenge and provides ideas and methods through which it can be met.Less

Lovesick Japan: Sex * Marriage * Romance * Law

Mark D. West

This book explores an official vision of love, sex, and marriage in contemporary Japan. A comprehensive body of evidence describes a society characterized by a presupposed absence of physical and ... More

This book explores an official vision of love, sex, and marriage in contemporary Japan. A comprehensive body of evidence describes a society characterized by a presupposed absence of physical and emotional intimacy, affection, and personal connections. The book finds that Japanese judges frequently opine on whether a person is in love, what other emotions a person is feeling, and whether those emotions are appropriate for the situation. Sometimes judges' views about love, sex, and marriage emerge from their presentation of the facts of cases. Among the recurring elements are abortions forced by men, compensated dating, late-life divorces, termination fees to end affairs, sexless couples, Valentine's Day heartbreak, “soapland” bath-brothels, and home-wrecking hostesses. Sometimes the judges' analysis, decisions, and commentary are as revealing as the facts. Sex in the cases is a choice among private “normal” sex, which is male-dominated, conservative, dispassionate, or nonexistent; commercial sex, which caters to every fetish but is said to lead to rape, murder, and general social depravity; and a hybrid of the two, which commodifies private sexual relationships. Marriage is contractual; judges express the ideal of love in marriage and proclaim its importance, but virtually no one in the court cases achieves it. Love usually appears as a tragic, overwhelming emotion associated with jealousy, suffering, heartache, and death.Less

That the People Might Live: Loss and Renewal in Native American Elegy

Arnold Krupat

The word “elegy” comes from the Ancient Greek elogos, meaning a mournful poem or song, in particular a song of grief in response to loss. Because mourning and memorialization are so deeply embedded ... More

The word “elegy” comes from the Ancient Greek elogos, meaning a mournful poem or song, in particular a song of grief in response to loss. Because mourning and memorialization are so deeply embedded in the human condition, all human societies have developed means for lamenting the dead, and, this book surveys the traditions of Native American elegiac expression over several centuries. The book covers a variety of oral performances of loss and renewal, including the Condolence Rites of the Iroquois and the memorial ceremony of the Tlingit people known as koo'eex, examining as well a number of Ghost Dance songs, which have been reinterpreted in culturally specific ways by many different tribal nations. The book treats elegiac “farewell” speeches of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in considerable detail, and comments on retrospective autobiographies by Black Hawk and Black Elk. Among contemporary Native writers, it looks at elegiac work by Linda Hogan, N. Scott Momaday, Gerald Vizenor, Sherman Alexie, Maurice Kenny, and Ralph Salisbury, among others. Despite differences of language and culture, the book finds that death and loss are consistently felt by Native Americans both personally and socially: someone who had contributed to the People's well-being was now gone. Native American elegiac expression offered mourners consolation so that they might overcome their grief and renew their will to sustain communal life.Less