This book offers a new analysis of the intellectual and the Chinese socialist revolution. Under the Chinese Communist Party, the intellectual was never simply an outspoken scholar, a browbeaten artist, a supportive official, or any kind of person facing an increasingly powerful political regime. The intellectual was first and foremost a widening classification of people based on Marxist thought. As the party turned revolutionaries and otherwise perfectly ordinary people into subjects identified locally as intellectuals, their appearance profoundly affected the political thinking of the party elites and how they organized the revolution, as well as postrevolutionary Chinese society. Drawing on a wide range of data, Eddy U takes the reader on a fascinating journey that examines political discourses, revolutionary strategies, rural activities, official registrations, organized protests, work organizations, and theater productions. The book lays out in colorful details the formation of new identities and new patterns of organization, association, and calculus. The outcome is a compelling picture of the mutual constitution of the intellectual and the Chinese socialist revolution, the impact of which is still visible in globalized China.

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Creating the Qur’an presents the first systematic historical-critical study of the Qur’an’s origins, drawing on methods and perspectives commonly used to study other scriptural traditions. Demonstrating in detail that the Islamic tradition relates not a single attested account of the holy text’s formation, Stephen J. Shoemaker shows how the Qur’an preserves a surprisingly diverse array of memories regarding the text’s early history and its canonization. To this he adds perspectives from radiocarbon dating of manuscripts, the linguistic history of Arabic, the social and cultural history of late ancient Arabia, and the limitations of human memory and oral transmission, as well as various peculiarities of the Qur’anic text itself. Considering all the relevant data to present the most comprehensive and convincing examination of the origin and evolution of the Qur’an available, Shoemaker concludes that the canonical text of the Qur’an was most likely produced only around the turn of the eighth century.

“Stephen Shoemaker leaves no significant aspect of the debate over the Qur’an’s origin and evolution unexamined. His book is a milestone in Qur’anic studies. Everyone in the field will have to read it.” FRED M. DONNER, Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern History, University of Chicago

STEPHEN J. SHOEMAKER is Professor of Religious Studies and Ira E. Gaston Fellow in Christian Studies at the University of Oregon. He is author of The Death of a Prophet, The Apocalypse of Empire, and A Prophet Has Appeared, among many other publications.

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The relationships between female sex workers and their noncommercial male partners are often assumed to be coercive and anchored in risk, dismissed as “pimp-prostitute” arrangements by researchers and the general public alike. Yet, these stereotypes unjustly erase the complexity of lives we imagine to be consumed by social suffering. Dangerous Love centers a framework of love to rethink sex workers’ intimate relationships as commitments to collective solidarity and survival in contexts of oppression. Combining epidemiological research and ethnographic fieldwork in Tijuana, Mexico, Jennifer Leigh Syvertsen examines how individuals try to find love and meaning in lives marked by structural violence, social marginalization, drug addiction, and HIV/AIDS. Linking the political economy of inequalities along the border with emotional lived experience, this book explores how intimate relationships become dangerous safe havens that fundamentally shape both partners’ well-being. Through these stories, we are urged to reimagine the socially transformative power of love to carve new pathways to health equity. “Jennifer Leigh Syvertsen has done everything right in Dangerous Love. Too often, social and behavioral scientists studying drug use avoid describing the affective aspects of drug-using behavior. Syvertsen, rather than averting her eyes, seeks to understand these lives and help the reader to understand.” — J. BRYAN PAGE, Professor of Anthropology, University of Miami “Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews in Tijuana, Dangerous Love includes intimate partners, an element that is usually missing in the qualitative study of drug use—and rare in the study of sex work. By examining female-male partnerships and relational repertoires, Syvertsen makes novel and important contributions.” — LISA MAHER, author of Sexed Work: Gender, Race, and Resistance in a Brooklyn Drug Market

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Sequels, reboots, franchises, and songs that remake old songs—does it feel like everything new in popular culture is just derivative of something old? Contrary to popular belief, the reason is not audiences or marketing, but Wall Street. In this book, Andrew deWaard shows how the financial sector is dismantling the creative capacity of cultural industries by upwardly redistributing wealth, consolidating corporate media, harming creative labor, and restricting our collective media culture. Moreover, financialization is transforming the very character of our mediascapes for branded transactions. Our media are increasingly shaped by the profit-extraction techniques of hedge funds, asset managers, venture capitalists, private equity firms, and derivatives traders. Illustrated with examples drawn from popular culture, Derivative Media offers readers the critical financial literacy necessary to understand the destructive financialization of film, television, and popular music—and provides a plan to reverse this dire threat to culture. “The thoughtful and thought-provoking chapters of Derivative Media feel like cave paintings that future generations will read long after we’ve perished in the flames of greed. A must-read for anyone working in the arts wanting to help humanity change course quickly!” — Martin Starr, actor, Freaks and Geeks and Silicon Valley “The go-to account of our contemporary financialized culture. It will reshape media studies and give activists new tools to understand the dynamics of the now.” — J. D. Connor, author, Hollywood Math and Aftermath: The Economic Image and the Digital Recession “This tour-de-force breakdown of financialization in the culture industries is essential reading for scholars and creative workers alike.” — Jennifer Holt, author, Empires of Entertainment: Media Industries and the Politics of Deregulation, 1980–1996 “A generational advance in the political economy of communication. I have been waiting for a book like this.” — Jonathan Sterne, author, MP3: The Meaning of a Format

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How do the United States and France differ in laws and attitudes concerning discrimination at work? Franco-American scholar Marie Mercat-Bruns interviews prominent legal scholars to demonstrate how these two post-industrial democracies have adopted divergent strategies. Whereas employers in the United States and France rarely discriminate openly, deep systemic discrimination exists in both countries, each with a unique history of dealing with difference. Powerful and incisive, the book examines hot-button issues such as racial and religious bias, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and equality for LGBT individuals, highlighting comparisons that will further discussions on social equality and fundamental human rights across borders.

“Mercat-Bruns makes original use of comparative law to shed new light on the issue of discrimination at work. In addition to reviewing the literature, she enters into a rich dialogue with American experts about their core findings. This book makes a fascinating and useful contribution to one of today’s most pressing issues.” ANTOINE GARAPON, Secretary General, Director of the Comparative Law Program, Institut des Hautes Etudes sur la Justice (IHEJ

“A very interesting and innovative approach to examining nondiscrimination law.” LISA WADDINGTON, Professor of International and European Law, Maastricht University

“A dialogue among America’s most prominent contemporary theorists of discrimination, Discrimination at Work comprises a series of pluralistic, audacious, and critically considered reflections on discrimination in the workplace.” ANTOINE LYON-CAEN, President of the International Institute for Comparative Studies (IIPEC), Professor Emeritus of French Labor Law, Paris West University Nanterre La Défense

MARIE MERCAT-BRUNS is Affiliated Professor at Sciences Po Law School and Associate Professor in Labor and Employment Law at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris. She is a member of the Research Institute LISE CNRS (Codirector of the program Gender, Categories and Policy) and also of the scientific committee of PRESAGE (Sciences Po/OFCE Research and Academic Program on Gender Thinking).

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In Paraguay’s Chaco region, cattle ranching drives some of the world’s fastest deforestation and most extreme inequality in land tenure, with grave impacts on Indigenous well-being. Disrupting the Patrón traces Enxet and Sanapaná struggles to reclaim their ancestral lands from the cattle ranches where they labored as peons—a decades-long resistance that led to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and back to the frontlines of Paraguay’s ranching frontier. The Indigenous communities at the heart of this story employ a dialectics of disruption by working with and against the law to unsettle enduring racial geographies and rebuild territorial relations, albeit with uncertain outcomes. Joel E. Correia shows that Enxet and Sanapaná peoples enact environmental justice otherwise: moving beyond juridical solutions to harm by maintaining collective lifeways and resistance amid radical social-ecological change. Correia’s ethnography advances debates about environmental racism, ethics of engaged research, and Indigenous resurgence on Latin America’s settler frontiers. “A crucial and incisive contribution to our understanding of racialized geographies, settler capitalism, and environmental and Indigenous justice.” — Gastón R. Gordillo, author of Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction “Focusing on the racial and cultural implications of land and labor in Indigenous struggles in Paraguay, Correia expands our focus on environmental concerns to include human rights, cultural rights, and the need for legal and political justice.” — Nancy Postero, author of The Indigenous State: Race, Politics, and Performance in Plurinational Bolivia ”A story of the underrepresented peoples of Paraguay, their endurance under multiple cycles of dispossession, and the various forms that their resistance takes.” — Gabriela Valdivia, coauthor of Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia

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DNA, Race, and Reproduction helps readers inside and outside of academia engage with the current genomic landscape. The volume brings together experts in law, medicine, religion, history, anthropology, philosophy, and genetics to investigate how scientists, medical professionals, and laypeople use genomic concepts to construct racial identity and make reproductive decisions. It interrogates how DNA figures in the reproduction of racialized bodies and the racialization of reproduction and examines the privileged position from which genomic knowledge claims to speak about human bodies, societies, and activities. The book begins from the premise that reproduction forces a confrontation between biomedical, scientific, and popular understandings of genetics, and that those understandings are often racialized. It therefore centers reproduction as both a site of analysis and an analytic lens.

“Rather than approaching DNA, race, and reproduction as isolated topics, this collection integrates insights from various disciplines to offer a holistic perspective. It challenges conventional assumptions about race and genetics and exposes the flaws in using racial, ethnic, and ancestral categories as proxies for genetic variation.” — KIMBERLY ZAYHOWSKI, Assistant Professor at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

“Expertly tackles the troublesome relationship between our genes and our race. Merging critical scientific and humanistic perspectives, this book provides much-needed insights into how society can better construct identity and heredity, as well as re-envision our fundamental understanding of mind and body.” — RINA BLISS, Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University and author of Rethinking Intelligence and What’s Real about Race?

EMILY KLANCHER MERCHANT is Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Building the Population Bomb.

MEAGHAN O’KEEFE is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and leads the Medical Humanities Program at the University of California, Davis.

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Documenting Death is a gripping ethnographic account of the deaths of pregnant women in a hospital in a low-resource setting in Tanzania. Through an exploration of everyday ethics and care practices on a local maternity ward, anthropologist Adrienne E. Strong untangles the reasons Tanzania has achieved so little sustainable success in reducing maternal mortality rates, despite global development support. Growing administrative pressures to document good care serve to preclude good care in practice while placing frontline healthcare workers in moral and ethical peril. Maternal health emergencies expose the precarity of hospital social relations and accountability systems, which, together, continue to lead to the deaths of pregnant women.

“This powerful and compelling analysis of maternal mortality in rural Tanzania is a groundbreaking addition to scholarship on Africa and its public health challenges. Adrienne E. Strong presents a rich ethnography of hospital function and dysfunction, to which the voices of patients and staff add poignant detail. The ways in which state and global health policy shape maternal health and well-being frame individual narratives in a memorable testimony.” Carolyn Sargent, Professor of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis

“Documenting Death is an arresting tale of life and death on a busy maternity ward in rural Tanzania. Drawing on a remarkable period of ethnographic fieldwork, Strong evocatively details the predicament of nurse midwives caught in the ‘biobureaucracy’ of global health projects and their audit trails. A significant contribution to medical anthropology and critical global health scholarship.” Margaret MacDonald, Associate Professor of Anthropology, York University

Adrienne E. Strong is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida.

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After the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, Rome finally took control of Egypt. This occupation simultaneously facilitated and circumscribed the exchange of goods, people, and ideas along the paths carved across Rome’s burgeoning empire. In this book, Edward Kelting sets out to recapture one of these systems of exchange: the vibrant literary tradition known as Aegyptiaca—or “Egyptian things”—in which culturally mixed authors wrote about Egypt for a Greek and Roman audience. These authors have been dismissed as not really “Egyptian,” and their contemporary popularity has been ignored. But as Kelting powerfully argues, this genre in fact constitutes a vibrant intellectual tradition, developed from heterogeneous influences but deeply engaged with Egypt’s pharaonic past. In contrast to usual narratives of Roman domination, Kelting uncovers a complex project of political engagement and cultural translation in which Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all participated. “In this stunning book, Edward Kelting tells the story of how Rome discovered Egyptian culture in the first century ce. He skillfully explores the lives of the people who made it happen, a group of bicultural intellectuals and writers who worked in Rome but had their roots in Alexandria. This is an important book that needed to be written and deserves to be widely read.” — IAN RUTHERFORD, Professor of Greek at the University of Reading “Rich and wide-ranging, this book interrogates the concept of Aegyptiaca and finds something that was never fixed, never simply the merging of two pure components, Greek and Egyptian. The reality was, instead, both heterogeneous and fluid. Kelting repeatedly draws out the problems of reductive readings of Greco-Roman Egypt. A major scholarly contribution.” — JOHN DILLERY, Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia

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Emergency in Transit responds to the crisis framings that dominate migration debates in the global north. Eleanor Paynter reformulates Europe’s so‑called migrant crisis from a sudden disaster to a site of contested witnessing, where competing narratives threaten, uphold, or reimagine migrant rights. Focusing on Italy, a crucial port of arrival, she draws together testimonials from ethnographic research alongside examples from film, media, literature, and visual art to interrogate the colonial, racial logics that inform emergency responses to migration well beyond international borders. Revealing how this emergency apparatus operates, and centering the experiences of Black Africans in Italy, Emergency in Transit posits a vision of mobility that refutes the notions of crisis so often imposed on those who cross the Mediterranean Sea.

“Passionate and timely. Illuminates possibilities for a different future.” — SANDRO MEZZADRA, coauthor of Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (with Brett Neilson)

“This excellent book navigates its way through the at times haunting accounts of survivors of the Mediterranean crossings, the forms of protest crafted in elegy to the victims, and the many artistic productions that document a rich and vibrant emergent cultural world often silenced in popular discourse. Eleanor Paynter unearths the many symbols and tokens of transformation of a society caught in its own web of forgetting.” — DONALD MARTIN CARTER, author of Navigating the African Diaspora: The Anthropology of Invisibility

“Emergency in Transit brilliantly shows how emergency, as both a logic and an operation, ushers in a new age in Italy wherein virulent and violent forms of racism are given space to play out. This beautifully written book also holds space for the voices, texts, films, and sounds that serve as witness and testimony to this pernicious age.” — STEPHANIE MALIA HOM, University of California, Santa Barbara

ELEANOR PAYNTER is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Oregon.

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Well into the twenty-first century, achieving gender equality in the economy remains unfinished business. Worldwide, women’s employment, income, and leadership opportunities lag men’s. Building and using a one-of-a-kind database that covers 193 countries, this book systematically analyzes how far we’ve come and how far we have to go in adopting evidence-based solutions to close the gaps. Spanning topics including girls’ education, employment discrimination of all kinds, sexual harassment, and caregiving needs across the life course, the authors bring the findings to life through global maps, stories of laws’ impact in courts and beyond, and case studies of making change. A powerful call to action, Equality within Our Lifetimes reveals how gender equality is both feasible and urgently needed to address some of the greatest challenges of our generation.

“An inspirational title to further the advancement of comprehensive gender equality, which goes beyond formal and protective equality to substantive equality that underpins transformative laws, policies, and, above all, results on the ground.” — VIRGINIA BRAS GOMES, Former Chairperson of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

“This book makes a compelling case, based on both quantitative and qualitative data, for how and why gender equality benefits everyone. Governments would be wise to heed this lesson.” — YASMEEN HASSAN, Global Executive Director, Equality Now

“This book is an essential handbook for those invested in gender equality law and policy.” — CATHERINE FISK, Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law

JODY HEYMANN is Founding Director of the WORLD Policy Analysis Center; Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles; and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. ALETA SPRAGUE is Senior Legal Analyst at WORLD and an attorney with over a decade of experience working on social policy and inequality. AMY RAUB is Principal Research Analyst at WORLD and an economist with two decades of experience working on discrimination and inequality.

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