Reviews
Social & Behavioral Sciences
Jamaicans, Liberians, Dominicans, and Mexicans—none of which
dominates the immigrant population, even though the most diverse
county (Queens) in the US serves as the home base for those groups.
Editor Foner employs noted scholars and experts as chapter authors,
presenting original essays and case studies in terms of both macro and
micro levels of analysis and trends and developments in the context of
historical roots, impact of immigration policies, demographics, cultural
and social patterns, transnational relationships, human capital and
economic incorporation, race, ethnic identity, religion, legal status,
neighborhoods and communities, popular culture, English language
proficiency, conflict and amicable relations among immigrant groups, and
mainstream institutions. The book effectively enhances and broadens
perspectives perhaps not yet fully captured and crystallized within the
contemporary US immigration debate, and provides both optimistic
and pessimistic assessments relative to the role of the second generation.
Summing Up: Recommended. HH Upper-division undergraduate and
graduate students, researchers and faculty, and professionals.—A. A.
Sisneros, University of Illinois at Springfield
51-1796 HQ1787 2011-29526 CIP
Perspectives on feminism from Africa, ed. by ‘Lai Olurode. Carolina
Academic, 2013. 192p bibl indexes afp ISBN 9781611630114 pbk,
$28.00
This book disappoints on a number of different levels. While editor
Olurode (sociology, Univ. of Lagos, Nigeria) claims to provide perspectives
on feminism in Africa, with one or two exceptions, the authors tend to
hypostatize “feminism” and “gender” derived without question from
“Northern” theory. Except for an early historical essay excerpted from an
already published work, and an interesting final essay on female-headed
households, the various contributions regurgitate selected concepts and
studies of gender from the global North without nuance, and then provide
bland statistical evidence on gender differences from Nigeria that hardly
advances knowledge of “feminism from Africa.” The general conclusion—
that unequal treatment of women is common on various fronts in Nigeria
(and by implication in other parts of Africa)—is quite unsurprising. What
is needed is wider discussion of the African context and more nuanced
theoretical (and historical) imagination. Thus, empirically, theoretically,
and geographically, the book fails to deliver on the promise of its very
interesting title. Summing Up: Not recommended.—T. D. Moodie, Hobart
and William Smith Colleges
51-1797 HM656 2012-29515 CIP
Rosa, Hartmut. Social acceleration: a new theory of modernity,
tr. by Jonathan Trejo-Mathys. Columbia, 2013. 470p bibl index afp
ISBN 9780231148344, $35.00; ISBN 9780231519885 e-book, contact
publisher for price
Rosa (sociology, Friedrich-Schiller Univ. Jena, Germany) has produced
a dense, erudite work on the pace of life. Informed by Luhmann and
Bourdieu and rooted in the Frankfurt School of cultural studies, the
framework is not particularly original. Things are faster now: economic
fluctuations and changes in culture, jobs, work, and products. The author
offers a great deal of synthetic work, but nothing that moves forward
critical analysis of society and culture beyond work done by Castells and
Harvey. Rosa identifies three “motors” that feed the accelerations shaping
social life—economic, cultural, and sociostructural (based on functional
differentiation). Technology allows for faster flows and shorter horizons on
returns; cultural practices and expectations demand instant communication
and gratification; and fads come and go with alacrity. Progress is noted
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as nearly synonymous with “acceleration,” and this ideological linkage,
which requires explanation, is merely lamented. Framing these issues in
late modernity rather than postmodernity signals blindness as to the role
of ideology. Rosa does not ask the resolutely Marxist question, in whose
benefit is acceleration promoted and produced? Though offering no new
empirical demands or opportunities, this is an interesting piece of social
philosophy. Summing Up: Optional. H Graduate students/faculty.—J. L.
Croissant, University of Arizona
51-1798 JV6565 2012-49334 MARC
Shapira, Harel. Waiting for José: the Minutemen’s pursuit of Amer-
ica. Princeton, 2013. 176p bibl index afp ISBN 9780691152158,
$27.95
Univ. of Texas sociologist Shapira, a young ethnographer from Israel,
discovered the US-Mexico border in Arizona and was clearly taken by the
Minutemen, self-appointed vigilantes who patrol the border to look for
illegal Mexicans. He tries so hard to capture who they are at the core that
he ends up accepting too much at their word, including perpetuating the
fundamentally racist construction of the Mexican immigrant as “José.”
Though urging readers not to readily accept the common stereotype
that these so-called patriots are nativists and racists, Shapira still found
himself characterizing them as “mostly old, working-class, white men who
used to be in the military,” mainly from the Midwest and South. But by
asserting that they are drawn to the border less by negative beliefs about
Mexicans than by “a sense of nostalgia for days long past when their lives
had purpose and meaning ...,” he records their stubborn adherence to
a white supremacist US that allegedly won wars throughout the world
while keeping the US “safe.” In the end, Shapira cannot entirely disabuse
readers of the fundamentally racist and nativist world view of these aging
vigilantes, thereby confirming much of the stereotype of right-wing
fanatics after all. Summing Up: Recommended. HH Upper-division
undergraduates and above.—E. Hu-DeHart, Brown University
51-1799 GV714 MARC
Taylor, Michael. Contesting constructed Indian-ness: the intersec-
tion of the frontier, masculinity, and whiteness in Native American
mascot representatives. Lexington Books, 2013. 147p bibl index afp
ISBN 9780739178645, $60.00; ISBN 9780739178652 e-book, $59.99
Careful. Deliberate. Thoughtful. Nuanced. Revealing.
Anthropologist and Native American studies scholar Taylor (Colgate Univ.)
delivers an important contribution with this artfully crafted examination
of Native American mascots. His analytical skill resituates the debate
about how Native Americans are represented in the broader US culture in
a multilayered discussion connecting gender, race, and place, noting how
Native voices are opposed to, defend against, and are drowned out by a
white majority intent on reinforcing the boundaries between the conquered
and the conquerors. The mythic frontier serves as a backdrop, the dynamics
of which are played out on football fields around the US. Taylor begins and
ends his book with an account of sitting in his own high school bleachers
watching a Seneca student don buckskin and headdress to dance as the
team mascot, and sensing the shared confusion of other Seneca students
amid a majority white crowd and their realization of the magnitude of
self-betrayal in which they are being asked to participate. It is an arresting,
haunting depiction of the painful and complicated pathways that young
Native students travel in a white world, making choices that may appear
to be their own but are actually those that others have set before them.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. HHH All levels/libraries.—E. J.
Staurowsky, Drexel University
November 2013
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