My Book Shelf

This year, I am committed to documenting the books that I am reading. I will also be posting my notes and brief commentaries on the books here. I will provide links to their worldcat entries and to download links if they are open access. So these days, I am currently reading: Two Lenins: A Brief …

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Annotation: James Scott’s The Moral Economy of the Peasant

Continuing my summaries of readings that I come across, here's an annotation of a classic: James C. Scott’s (1977) breathtaking analysis of the “moral economy” of the peasant society provides a useful framework in looking at the condition of migrations from the countryside. He first locates the “economic dilemma” of peasants, arguing that often, the …

Ahmed, Sara. 2007. “A Phenomenology of Whiteness.” Feminist Theory 2(8):149-168.

Whiteness is “an ongoing and unfinished history which orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they 'take-up space, and what they 'can do'” (149). Phenomenology can be used to bring to the surface things such as habits which have remained unnoticed. Ahmed follows postcolonial scholars, and other philosophers of the "phenomenology of race" who have …

Annotation: Comaroffs .1987. The madman and the migrant

Using the rhetoric of contrast, and using the imagery of two informants (the madman and the migrant) to explore Marxian historical consciousness and the anthropological concept of culture, the authors argue that first, “culture always intervenes directly in consciousness and its expression” (205). For example, how the Tshidi of South Africa contrast the concepts of …

Annotation: Rafael, Vince. 2009. Your Grief is our Gossip

Rafael, Vince. 2009. Your Grief is our Gossip: Overseas Filipinos and Other Spectral Presences. In, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History: Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Rafael “inquire(s) into nationalist attempts at containing the dislocating effects of global capital through the collective mourning of its victims” (204). He argues that this …

Fedyuk, Olena. 2012. Images of Transnational Motherhood

Fedyuk, Olena. 2012. Images of Transnational Motherhood: The Role of Photographs in Measuring Time and Maintaining Connections between Ukraine and Italy. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 38(2):279-300. The author uses pictures exchanged between Ukrainian women migrants in Italy and their families back home as “primary media,” in an “attempt to break the analytical 'unit' …

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2010. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2010. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In, Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea. Rosalind Morris (ed.) Pp. 21-78. NY: Columbia University Press. Spivak writes that while Foucault and Deleuze were “great intellectuals,” their unmediated conversation (Intellectuals and Power 1972) revealed “certain kinds of convictions” – for instance, their …

Annotation: Marks, Laura. 2000. The Skin of the Film

Marks, Laura. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham and London: Duke University Press. The book's title serves as a "metaphor to emphasize the way film signifies through its materiality", and it also suggests that vision is tactile (xi). The author argues that even though cinema is audiovisual in …

Annotation: Ruby, Jay. 1995. The Moral Burden of Authorship In Ethnographic Film

Ruby, Jay. 1995. The Moral Burden of Authorship In Ethnographic Film. Visual Anthropology Review, 11(2):77–82. Ruby contends that there is an "arrogance" in the anthropological paradigm of “see(ing) the world through the eyes of the native" (Malinowski 1922). He asks, "If anthropologists want to see the world through native eyes, why don't they simply watch …

Annotation: Cheah, Pheng. 2010. Biopower and the New International Division of Reproductive Labor.

  Cheah, Pheng. 2010. Biopower and the New International Division of Reproductive Labor. In, Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea. Pp. 179-212. Rosalind Morris (ed.) New York: Columbia University Press.   Cheah reopens Spivak's critique of Foucault by treating Foucauldian biopower as operating in the “new international division of power” …