Softcover. San Jose CA, Permanent Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, glossy green paper wrappers, 272 pages plus ads in rear. Wilson and Michael Shea published a quarterly journal in the late eighties called TRAJECTORIES. It was a "newsletter of mind-blowing iconoclasm." This is a collection of the best articles from the first few issues. Contributors include Arlen Wilson, Scott Apel, Timothy Leary, Linus Pauling, George Carlin and Ed McMahon. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago, 1st, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, light green cloth stamped in dark green, 290 pages with index. Includes six life-histories of Chinese gentry families by Yung-teh Chow. Illustrations based on drawings by Hames K. Y. Kuo. Studies the social role of the scholar-gentry in imperial and modern China. Clean copy, no dust jacket.
Hardcover. Philadephia, Temple University Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 275 pages. Min Zhou examines how an ethnic enclave works to direct its members into American society, while at the same time shielding them from it. Focusing specifically on New York's Chinatown, a community established more than a century ago, Zhou offers a thorough and modern treatment of the enclave as a socioeconomic system, distinct form, but intrinsically linked with, the larger society. Zhou's central theme is that Chinatown does not keep immigrant Chinese from assimilating into mainstream society, but instead provides an alternative means of incorporation into society that does not conflict with cultural distinctiveness. Concentrating on the past two decades, Zhou maintains that community networks and social capital are important resources for reaching socioeconomic goals and social positions in the United States; in Chinatown, ethnic employers use family ties and ethnic resources to advance socially. Relying on her family's networks in New York's Chinatown and her fluency in both Cantonese and Mandarin, the author, who was born in the People's Republic of China, makes extensive use of personal interviews to present a rich picture of the daily work life in the community. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London ; Boston, Unwin Hyman, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 226 pages. Maroon cloth, gilt lettering to spine. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket, previous owner's signature in front, faint foxing to top edge, else a very neat, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, New York University Press, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket, 274 pages. Covers political and economic developments, particularly those involving unions and employment, from 1777 to 1965. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Architectural Press, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, in yellow linen boards with titling in gold. 156 pages illustrated in b&w and color. Civilia: The End of Sub Urban Man, addresses "urban living" in the mid- to late twentieth century with reference to the impact of technology, new town planning, the death of the automobile, and a tongue-in- cheek attitude towards the then contemporary issues informing the development of urbanism in both academic and public imagination. At times bitingly critical, and at others erudite if not wholly 'politically correct' Civilia: The End of Sub Urban Man is a refreshing look back at 'cutting edge' developments in architecture and urbanism from the 1970s, and is surprisingly relevant given our current situation. An uncommon title by the great promoter of modernism. the author edited Architectural Review and wrote several articles for it as well as books under the pseudonym, Ivor De Wolfe. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.
Hardcover. NY, Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 2nd pr., 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bound in publisher's black cloth ruled in blind with faded gilt title on the spine. Top edge stained black. Stated second printing, October 1930 on the copyright page. Translated by Alice Riviere. Ownership signature in pencil by Gertrude Franchot Tone, women's rights activist with her pencil marking in text. Owner's small embossed stamp on front fly leaf.
Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 366 pages. In this lively study, Rachel Sherman goes behind the scenes in two urban luxury hotels to give a nuanced picture of the workers who care for and cater to wealthy guests by providing seemingly unlimited personal attention. Drawing on in-depth interviews and extended ethnographic research in a range of hotel jobs, including concierge, bellperson, and housekeeper, Sherman gives an insightful analysis of what exactly luxury service consists of, how managers organize its production, and how workers and guests negotiate the inequality between them. She finds that workers employ a variety of practices to assert a powerful sense of self, including playing games, comparing themselves to other workers and guests, and forming meaningful and reciprocal relations with guests. Through their contact with hotel staff, guests learn how to behave in the luxury environment and come to see themselves as deserving of luxury consumption. These practices, Sherman argues, help make class inequality seem normal, something to be taken for granted. Throughout, Class Acts sheds new light on the complex relationship between class and service work, an increasingly relevant topic in light of the growing economic inequality in the United States that underlies luxury consumption. Clean, bright copy.
Softcover. New York, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 297 pages. Softcover. In very good condition, clean and bright inside. Wrapper has a slight yellowing at top edge, barely visable. Binding tight.
Softcover. London/NY, Routledge, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 236 pages. "Colonial Desire is a controversial study that breaks new ground in analysing how concepts of culture get formed, and how racialized assumptions continue to pervade them." In this study, the author argues that today's theories on post-colonialism and ethnicity are disturbingly close to the colonial discourse of the 19th century. Clean copy.
Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 196 pages. investigates the intersection between post-colonial and feminist criticism, via the Western fascination with veiled women of the Orient. Her original and compelling argument calls into question dualistic conceptions of identity and difference, West and East masculinist assumptions of Orientalism, and Western feminist discourses that seek to 'liberate' the veiled woman. Clean copy.
Hardcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 298 pages. Commodifying Communism is an ethnographic study of the role of personal ties between private entrepreneurs and local officials in the organization of China's emerging market economy. It is based on almost two years of fieldwork in Xiamen City, Fujian, one of China's five special economic zones. A close examination of how private business is conducted through these ties sheds light on the dynamism of China's market economy and its political consequences. Clean copy.
Softcover. Bloomington IN, Indiana University Press, 2nd pr., 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 263 pages. For members of Cairo's upper classes, cosmopolitanism is a form of social capital, deployed whenever they acquire or consume transnational commodities, or goods that are linked in the popular imagination to other, more "modern" places. In a series of thickly described and carefully contextualized case studies-of Arabic children's magazines, Pokemon, private schools and popular films, coffee shops and fast-food restaurants-Mark Allen Peterson describes the social practices that create class identities. He traces these processes from childhood into adulthood, examining how taste and style intersect with a changing educational system and economic liberalization. Peterson reveals how uneasy many cosmopolitan Cairenes are with their new global identities, and describes their efforts to root themselves in the local through religious, nationalist, or linguistic practices. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 318 pages. Between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Americans underwent a dramatic transformation in self-conception: having formerly lived as individuals or members of small communities, they now found themselves living in networks, which arose out of scientific and technological innovations. There were transportation and communication networks. There was the network of the globalized marketplace, which brought into the American home exotic goods previously affordable to only a few. There was the network of standard time, which bound together all but the most rural Americans. There was the public health movement, which joined individuals to their fellow citizens by making everyone responsible for the health of everyone else. There were social networks that joined individuals to their fellows at the municipal, state, national, and global levels. Previous histories of this era focus on alienation and dislocation that new technologies caused. This book shows that American individuals in this era were more connected to their fellow citizens than ever-but by bonds that were distinctly modern.
Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America, Wendy A. Woloson takes seriously the history of objects that are often cynically-made and easy to dismiss: things not made to last; things we don't really need; things we often don't even really want. Woloson does not mock these ordinary, everyday possessions but seeks to understand them as a way to understand aspects of ourselves, socially, culturally, and economically: Why do we--as individuals and as a culture--possess these things? Where do they come from? Why do we want them? And what is the true cost of owning them? Woloson tells the history of crap from the late eighteenth century up through today, exploring its many categories: gadgets, knickknacks, novelty goods, mass-produced collectibles, giftware, variety store merchandise. As Woloson shows, not all crap is crappy in the same way--bric-a-brac is crappy in a different way from, say, advertising giveaways, which are differently crappy from commemorative plates. Taking on the full brilliant and depressing array of crappy material goods, the book explores the overlooked corners of the American market and mindset, revealing the complexity of our relationship with commodity culture over time.
Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 306 pages, b&w illustrations. In Creating Country Music, Richard Peterson traces the development of country music and its institutionalization from Fiddlin' John Carson's pioneering recordings in Atlanta in 1923 to the posthumous success of Hank Williams. Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1st, 1923, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, gray wrappers with purple titles. With front endpaper map of "All Protestant Mission Stations in Japan, Korea, and Formosa". 248 pages, b&w plates. Details early Christian Japanese collaboration on social challenges and reforms. Related newspaper clippings laid in. Covers worn interior clean.
Hardcover. NY, Basic Books, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Credit-card debt is choking American prosperity off at the neck. In Credit Card Nation, Robert D. Manning tells a fascinating story about the present and future consequences of credit dependence across all strata of U.S. society. Through extensive interviews with consumers, Manning talks to debtors, and to average Americans, affected by what Manning describes as our "credit card nation": an American juggernaut of indebtedness that spans personal, corporate, and governmental debt. 406 pages, clean copy.
Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 191 pages. Matthews Hamabata got off to an unpromising start when he first arrived in Japan to study influential business families. An unmarried, third-generation Japanese-American graduate student, he was there to learn about business executives in their roles as male principals and heads of households. In this engaging and personal narrative, we watch Hamabata in the first disappointing six months of his fieldwork as he attempts to map the boundaries of culture, class, and sexuality. "I became my own biggest fieldwork problem," he writes. "Was I inside or out? When I thought I was in, I was actually out, but when I acknowledged the fact that I was out, I was let in." He soon recognized the importance of marital and filial relations in transmitting power in the business world, and he began to direct his study to examining the social and emotional lives of all members of the Japanese ie (household) and the way they affect business activity and ownership. He takes us behind the scenes of the family enterprise to see how the multiple "layers of reality"-biological, social, religious, emotional, and symbolic-relate and cause dilemmas for ie members. (Names, locations, and other details have been altered for the sake of anonymity.) Clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Basic Books, 1st pbk., 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 577 pages. In a panoramic history of our criminal justice system from Colonial times to today, one of our foremost legal thinkers shows how America fashioned a system of crime and punishment in its own image. Clean, like new.
Hardcover. London ; New York, Routledge, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 270 pages. Light foxing to top edge. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf. Minor wear to dust jacket. Else a clean, tight copy.