Political systems of highland Burma

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Carol Flake

New Orleans, home of the great American blowout bash - Mardi Gras - is the exotic city on the Bayou that thumbs its nose at the conservative spirit of the rest of the South. And Mardi Gras, that wild, uninhibited, frenzied festival of multiculturalism, music, sex, and the outer limits of debauchery, is the city's annual and legendary celebration of itself. But what really lies behind the masks and myths of a "pagan" festival older than baseball but less purely American than any other celebration? Despite all the glamour and popularity of Mardi Gras, few people know the real New Orleans - a city that is still socially stratified, racially divided, constrained by secrets. A city whose shocking double life was tragically exposed when national headlines publicized a proposal to desegregate the krewes, the quasi-cabalistic organizations that control the carnival and much of the town. Carol Flake returned to New Orleans, after more than a decade away, to chronicle a season of Carnival, to write about the paradox of an enduring rite in a crumbling city. Following the participants as they prepared for the parades and balls that make up the gala season, she found herself on a journey into a unique form of culture where ordinary standards of taste and behavior simply don't apply. She moved from subculture to subculture, from white uptown parlors and high society enclaves to French Quarter retreats, black jazz bars, and gay drag shows. She joined an all-women krewe for a float ride down Canal Street and dressed as a dancing girl in the satirical parade of the Krewe de Vieux. She visited the secret dens of elite traditional clubs and attended the open meetings of an embattled city council . Carnival, for all its rituals and disguises, mirrors New Orleans society, with its peculiar social hierarchies, its pockets of strange tradition, its madcap diversity, its partiality to drama and spectacle. The controversy surrounding Carnival is a war over the heart and soul of the city, over the dwindling base of power and money. New Orleans has succumbed to the same troubles that are tearing apart other American cities. In revealing the political, social, and cultural realities behind the grand illusions, Carol Flake has also discovered the common threads that just might bring the city back together. An intimate, surprising, sometimes shocking portrait of a great American city and a timely look at a unique part of the New South, New Orleans is destined to become a classic.

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David Yetman

"From the very first, Teachive captivated me," David Yetman writes in this ethnography of a Mayo Indian peasant village in Sonora, Mexico. Over the centuries, the Mayos have evolved a profound union between the monte, or thornscrub forest, and their cultural life. With the assistance of resident Vicente Tajia and others, Yetman describes the region's plant and animal life and recounts the stories and traditions that animate the monte for the Mayos. That folk culture, so critical to their identity, is under assault by the global economic revolution. A passionate observer and chronicler, Yetman analyzes how galloping capitalism is destroying the monte and thus eroding traditional Mayo society. Listing Indian, Spanish, and scientific terms, an appendix glosses plants used by the Mayos in the Teachive area.

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[éd.:] Nathalie Clayer et Erdal Kaynar

"En suivant certains des silllons creuses par Francois Georgeon, les etudes ici reunies se repartissent en quatre groupes. Les premieres s'inscrivent dans le registre de l'histoire politique et ideologique des dernieres decennies de l'epoque ottomane. Elles touchent a la politisation et a la question des provinces de l'Empire. Elles touchent aussi au vocabulaire politique et aux nouvelles temporalites introduites par la revolution jeune-turque dans la reflexion de certains intellectuels. Les secondes sont des contributions a l'histoire intellectuelle. Une place importante est faite dans cette partie a la presse et a l'imprime, tandis qu'une derniere contribution reprend la question des intellectuels voyageurs. La troisieme partie est consacree a l'histoire sociale. Y sont abordees des themes divers tels que: la construction et la fluidite des identifications, les fetes, l'alimentation, et les evolutions sociales a l'echelle urbaine, comme a l'echelle individuelle.^ Enfin, la quatrieme et derniere partie rassemble d'un cote des etudes sur la Turquie kemaliste et, de l'autre, des essais sur le passage "des Ottomans aux Turcs" (pour reprendre le titre d'un volume d'articles de Francois Georgeon), et sur la construction des savoirs dans ce domaine. Following in Francois Georgeon's footsteps, this volume is divided in four parts. The first group of studies concerns the political and ideological history of the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. These studies tackle the issue of politicization, the question of the provinces of the Empire, political vocabulary and new timescales brought by the Young Turc Revolution in the thought of some intellectuals. The second group includes contributions on intellectual history. Important themes in this part are printed publishing and the press, while the last contribution takes up the issue of intellectual travelers. The third group is devoted to social history.^ Studies address identity development and fluidity, celebrations, food, and social developments on an urban or individual scale. The fourth and last part brings together both studies on Kemalist Turkey and essays on the switch from Ottomans to Turks (to quote a title of one of Francois Georgeon's volumes) and on knowledge construction in this field"--provided by publisher.

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Judith L. Pace and Janet S. Bixby

"This book offers a groundbreaking examination of citizenship education programs that serve contemporary youth in schools and communities across the United States. These programs include social studies classes and curricula, school governance, and community-based education efforts. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the experiences and perspectives of educators and youth involved in these civic education efforts. The contributors offer rich analyses of how mainstream and alternative programs are envisioned and enacted, and the most important factors that shape them. A variety of theoretical lenses and qualitative methodologies are used, including ethnography, focus group interviews, and content analyses of textbooks."--BOOK JACKET.