For more than a decade a vicious civil war has torn the fabric of society in the West African country of Sierra Leone, forcing thousands to flee their homes for refugee camps and others to seek peace ...and asylum abroad. Sierra Leoneans have established new communities around the world, in London, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Yet despite the great geographic range of this diaspora and the diverse ethnic backgrounds among Sierra Leoneans settled in the same communities abroad, these Africans have come to understand and express their shared identity through religious rituals, social engagements, and material culture. InAn Imagined Geography, anthropologist JoAnn D'Alisera demonstrates persuasively that the long-held anthropological paradigms of separate, bounded, and unique communities, geographically located and neatly localized, must be reconsidered. Studying Sierra Leonean Muslims living in greater Washington, D.C., she shows how these immigrants maintain intense and genuine community ties through weddings, rituals, and travel, across both vast urban spaces and national boundaries. D'Alisera examines two primary issues: Sierra Leoneans' engagement with their homeland, to which they frequently traveled and often sent their children for upbringing until the outbreak of the civil war; and the Sierra Leonean interaction with a diverse, multicultural, increasingly global Muslim community that is undergoing its own search for identity. Sierra Leoneans in America, D'Alisera observes, express a longing for home and the pain of disconnection in powerful narratives about their country and about their own displacement. At the same time, however, self and communal identity are shaped by a pressing need to affiliate in their adopted country with Sierra Leoneans of all ethnic and religious backgrounds and with fellow Muslims from other parts of the world, a process that is played out against the complex social field of the American urban landscape.
The National Mall Benton-Short, Lisa
The National Mall,
2016, 20160808, 2016, 2016-08-12, 2016-08-08
eBook
"The National Mall in Washington, D.C. is one of the most important and highly visible urban public spaces in the U.S. It is considered by many Americans to be "the nation's front yard." Yet few have ...written about the role of this public space in the twenty-first century."--
"In The National Mall, Lisa Benton-Short explores the critical issues that are redefining and reshaping this extraordinary public space. Her work focuses on three contemporary and interrelated debates about public space: the management challenges faced by federal authorities, increased demands for access and security post 9/11, and the role of the public in the Mall's long-term planning and development plans. By taking a holistic view of the National Mall and analyzing the unique twenty-first century challenges it faces, Lisa Benton-Short provides a fluid, cohesive, and timely narrative that is as extraordinary as the Mall itself."--
As Karyn R. Lacy's innovative work in the suburbs of Washington, DC, reveals, there is a continuum of middle-classness among blacks, ranging from lower-middle class to middle-middle class to ...upper-middle class. Focusing on the latter two, Lacy explores an increasingly important social and demographic group: middle-class blacks who live in middle-class suburbs where poor blacks are not present. These "blue-chip black" suburbanites earn well over fifty thousand dollars annually and work in predominantly white professional environments. Lacy examines the complicated sense of identity that individuals in these groups craft to manage their interactions with lower-class blacks, middle-class whites, and other middle-class blacks as they seek to reap the benefits of their middle-class status.
In this book, Ashante M. Reese makes clear the structural forces that determine food access in urban areas, highlighting Black residents' navigation of and resistance to unequal food distribution ...systems. Linking these local food issues to the national problem of systemic racism, Reese examines the history of the majority-Black Deanwood neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Reese not only documents racism and residential segregation in the nation's capital but also tracks the ways transnational food corporations have shaped food availability. By connecting community members' stories to the larger issues of racism and gentrification, Reese shows there are hundreds of Deanwoods across the country. Reese's geographies of self-reliance offer an alternative to models that depict Black residents as lacking agency, demonstrating how an ethnographically grounded study can locate and amplify nuances in how Black life unfolds within the context of unequal food access.
At the foot of the snow-capped Cascade Mountains on the forested shores of Puget Sound, Seattle is set in a location of spectacular natural beauty. Boosters of the city have long capitalized on this ...splendor, recently likening it to the fairytale capital of L. Frank Baum'sThe Wizard of Oz, the Emerald City. But just as Dorothy, Toto, and their traveling companions discover a darker reality upon entering the green gates of the imaginary Emerald City, those who look more closely at Seattle's landscape will find that it reveals a history marked by environmental degradation and urban inequality.
This book explores the role of nature in the development of the city of Seattle from the earliest days of its settlement to the present. Combining environmental history, urban history, and human geography, Matthew Klingle shows how attempts to reshape nature in and around Seattle have often ended not only in ecological disaster but also social inequality. The price of Seattle's centuries of growth and progress has been paid by its wildlife, including the famous Pacific salmon, and its poorest residents. Klingle proposes a bold new way of understanding the interdependence between nature and culture, and he argues for what he calls an "ethic of place." Using Seattle as a compelling case study, he offers important insights for every city seeking to live in harmony with its natural landscape.
Hailed by Oprah as a "warrior woman for our times," reviled by teachers unions as the enemy, Michelle Rhee, outgoing chancellor of Washington DC public schools, has become the controversial face of ...school reform. She has appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, and is currently featured as a hero in the documentary "Waiting for Superman." This is the story of her journey from good-girl daughter of Korean immigrants to tough-minded political game-changer. When Rhee first arrived in Washington, she found a school district that had been so broken for so long, that everyone had long since given up. The book provides an inside view of the union battles, the school closings, and contentious community politics that have been the subject of intense public interest and debate along with a rare look at Rhee's upbringing and life before DC. This book includes an insert with photos from Rhee's personal and professional life, and an "exit" interview that sheds light on what she's learned and where the future might take her. Contents include: (1) An (Asian) American Life; (2) Learn, Teach, Rinse, Repeat; (3) Going National; (4) Welcome to the Nation's Education Superfund Site; (5) Closing Schools; (6) Randi and Michelle; (7) New Hires, New Fires; (8) Up from the Foundations: The Challenge of High School Reform; (9) Rhee's Critics Find a Winning Storyline; (10) The Mayor's Race; (11) Lessons Learned; and (12) What's Next? Notes and an index are also included.
While Washington, D.C., is still often referred to as "Chocolate City," it has undergone significant demographic, political, and economic change in the last decade. In D.C., no place represents this ...shift better than the H Street corridor. In this book, Brandi Thompson Summers documents D.C.'s shift to a "post-chocolate" cosmopolitan metropolis by charting H Street's economic and racial developments. In doing so, she offers a theoretical framework for understanding how blackness is aestheticized and deployed to organize landscapes and raise capital. Summers focuses on the continuing significance of blackness in a place like the nation's capital, how blackness contributes to our understanding of contemporary urbanization, and how it laid an important foundation for how Black people have been thought to exist in cities. Summers also analyzes how blackness-as a representation of diversity-is marketed to sell a progressive, "cool," and authentic experience of being in and moving through an urban center. Using a mix of participant observation, visual and media analysis, interviews, and archival research, Summers shows how blackness has become a prized and lucrative aesthetic that often excludes D.C.'s Black residents.
At the heart of digital scholarship are universal questions, lessons, and principles relating both to the mission of higher education and the shared values that make an academic library culture. But ...while global in aspirations, digital scholarship starts with local culture drawn from the community.
Residents and visitors in today's Seattle would barely recognize the landscape that its founding settlers first encountered. As the city grew, its leaders and inhabitants dramatically altered its ...topography to accommodate their changing visions. InToo High and Too Steep, David B. Williams uses his deep knowledge of Seattle, scientific background, and extensive research and interviews to illuminate the physical challenges and sometimes startling hubris of these large-scale transformations, from the filling in of the Duwamish tideflats to the massive regrading project that pared down Denny Hill.
In the course of telling this fascinating story, Williams helps readers find visible traces of the city's former landscape and better understand Seattle as a place that has been radically reshaped.
Watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af51FU8hHLI
