Review of a book: T. Hoch, V. Kopeček, De Facto States in Eurasia, Routledge, London-New York 2020

Les Chamanes de la Préhistoire: Transe et Magie dans les Grottes Ornées, by Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams, 1996. Paris: Éditions Seuil; ISBN 2-02-028902-4 hardback 249FF, 110 pp., 114 colour ills.The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves, by Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams, 1996. New York (NY): Harry N. Abrams; ISBN 0-8109-4182-1 hardback, US$49.50, 120 pp., 116 colour ills.Jean Clottes and David Lewis-Williams' recent book Les Chamanes de la Préhistoire builds on a body of rock art research which has come to dominate the field, marginalizing interest in other cultural themes such as totemism and records of everyday foraging. Shamanism and totemism are, however, two of the most pervasive indigenous theories of being to have been discussed in the anthropological literature. The word totem comes from the Ojibwa, a native North American people, while the word shaman comes from the Tungus of central Siberia. Their use cross-culturally to refer to types of religion (i.e. shamanism and totemism), is an artefact of anthropology. Shamanism can be applied to customs that are inferred to have arisen independently in different parts of the world; customs in a single circum-arctic culture area; or scattered survivals from an allegedly original human condition. The cross-cultural validity of shamanism has been considered by Eliade, Lewis, Hultkrantz and Vitebsky. Shamanism refers to the use of spirits as guardians and helpers of individuals, contacted through trance. The validity of totemism as a cross-culturally-valid category has been vigorously debated in anthropology. It is generally agreed to refer to the use of animals or plants as emblems or guardians of social groups celebrated in ritual. The rationale of totemism is that each group is identified with a different species; the significance of each species derives from its place in the cognitive structure. Group A is kangaroo because it is not emu or python. While Durkheim interpreted totemism as the original human religion, Lévi-Strauss persuasively argued that totemism is a product of human cognition, which has developed independently in North America, Australia and Africa.

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Urban Ornithology

10.7591/cornell/9781501719615.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

P. A. Buckley ◽

Walter Sedwitz ◽

William J. Norse ◽

John Kieran

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

New York City ◽

York City ◽

Historical Analysis ◽

Recent Book ◽

City Area ◽

Analogous Data ◽

Species Lists ◽

Park Area ◽

Gains And Losses

This book offers the first quantitative long-term historical analysis of the migratory, winter, and breeding avifaunas of any New York City natural area—Van Cortlandt Park and the adjacent Northwest Bronx—and spans the century and a half from 1872 to 2016. Only Manhattan’s Central and Brooklyn’s Prospect Parks have published even lightly annotated cumulative species lists, last updated in 1967, and the most recent book addressing the birdlife of the New York City area was published more than 50 years ago. Addressed are the 301 Bronx, New York City and New York City area species known to have occurred within the study area, plus another 70 potential additions. These are contrasted with their status in adjacent Riverdale, the entire Bronx, Central and Prospect Parks, New York City, plus Long Island, Westchester, and Rockland Cos. The history of the 123 known study area breeding species are tracked from 1872—only 20 years after Audubon’s death in Manhattan—complemented by unique quantitative breeding data from Van Cortlandt Park censuses from 1937 to 2015. Gains and losses of breeding species are tracked and discussed as an expanding New York City inexorably extinguished unique habitat, offset only slightly by addition of two large reservoirs. Comparisons are provided with analogous data from heavily monitored Central and Prospect Parks. The tradeoffs in attempting to managing an urban park area for mass recreation at the same time as conserving its natural resources are highlighted.

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Our Sports Clubs: The Sport-for-All Dream in Crisis? Book Review of Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. By Robert Putnam. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015, 400 pp.; ISBN: 1476769893.

Social Inclusion ◽

10.17645/si.v5i2.849 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 250-253

Author(s):

Reinhard Haudenhuyse

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Extracurricular Activities ◽

American Dream ◽

Recent Book ◽

Opportunity Gap ◽

Sports Clubs ◽

Caring Adults ◽

American Society ◽

The Impact

This review investigates the potential implications of Putnam’s recent book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis for the field of social sport sciences. The main themes in Putnam’s Our Kids are class segregation and the widening ‘opportunity’ gap between the ‘have’ and ‘have nots’ in American society. The question can and needs to be asked: what the impact of class-based segregation has been on ‘our sport clubs’? Furthermore, Putnam also discusses the importance and unequal provision of Extracurricular activities. Putnam sees such activities as contexts for developing social skills, a sense of civic engagement and even for generating upward mobility. An important advantage of such activities is, according to Putnam, the exposure to caring adults outside the family, who can often serve as valuable mentors. However, throughout the book, Putnam uses a rather judgmental and moralizing language when talking about the parents of the ‘have nots’. The lesson that sport researchers can learn from this is to be sensitive and critical to moralizing approaches and deficiency discourses regarding the inclusion in and through sport of children and youth living in poverty.

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The War Lovers (Again)

Cornell Internation Affairs Review ◽

10.37513/ciar.v5i2.421 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Elizabeth Sanders ◽

Caroline Emberton

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Turning Point ◽

Strong Support ◽

The United States ◽

Recent Book ◽

American Empire ◽

Theodore Roosevelt ◽

Major Player ◽

The World ◽

Speaker Of The House

Evan Thomas’s recent book, The War Lovers, chronicles the “monumental turning point” of the U.S. declaration of war against Spain in 1898, and the small circle of men who pressed for war, and for an American empire. The central figures, for Thomas, were Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy; his friend Henry Cabot Lodge, hawkish senator and foreign policy adviser to President McKinley; and William Randolph Hearst, editor of the New York Journal, whose paper did its upmost to fan war fervor in 1897-8. These men were inspired by, and had the strong support of Alfred Thayer Mahan a naval officer, history professor, and influential author of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. Though President McKinley hesitated about war with Spain, Roosevelt and Lodge had long dreamed of a war that would establish the United States as a major player on the world stage. When another prominent politician, Speaker of the House Thomas Reed, opposed substantial increases in naval funding that he thought “invited conflict,” Lodge promptly accused him of harboring “extreme pro-Spanish prejudices.”

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The Hartford Declaration

Theology Today ◽

10.1177/004057367503200209 ◽

1975 ◽

Vol 32 (2) ◽

pp. 183-191

Author(s):

Ernest Campbell ◽

Joseph Fletcher ◽

Letty M. Russell ◽

Richard Shaull ◽

Peter L. Berger

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Pastoral Theology ◽

Assistant Professor ◽

Recent Book ◽

Political Ethics ◽

Large Measure ◽

East Harlem ◽

Christian Churches ◽

Theological School ◽

Princeton Theological Seminary

IN the April issue of Theology Today (pp. 94–97), we printed the full text of “An Appeal for Theological Affirmation,” popularly known as the Hartford Declaration. The Declaration, consisting of thirteen themes of contemporary thought considered dangerous to the church's message, was signed by eighteen people from various Christian churches. Several other people were involved in preliminary consideration of the ideas expressed in the document. A meeting at the Hartford Seminary Foundation in January, 1975, was in large measure organized by Peter Berger, Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, and Richard John Neuhaus, pastor of the Church of Saint John the Evangelist in Brooklyn, and out of that meeting emerged the text of the “Appeal for Theological Affirmation.” Theology Today erred in giving the impression that the text had been formulated in consultations prior to the January meeting. We have asked four people to respond to the Hartford Declaration, and their reactions, plus a response from Dr. Berger, are printed below. Ernest Campbell is minister of the Riverside Church, New York City, and author of the recent Locked in a Room With Open Doors (1974). Joseph Fletcher has been a regular contributor to Theology Today and is the author of Situation Ethics: The New Morality (1966). Formerly Professor of Pastoral Theology and Christian Ethics at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, he is now Professor of Medical Ethics, University of Virginia Hospital, Charlottesville, Va. Letty M. Russell is Assistant Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and author of Human Liberation in a Feminist Perspective—A Theology (1974). Earlier she served as a pastor of the East Harlem Protestant Parish in New York. Richard Shaull, Professor of Ecumenics at Princeton Theological Seminary, has also been a frequent contributor to Theology Today. Formerly a missionary in Brazil, Dr. Shaull is the author of Encounter with Revolution (1955) and, with Carl Oglesby, Containment and Change (1967). Dr. Berger is a member of Theology Today's Editorial Council and his most recent book is Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change (1974), which is reviewed in this issue of Theology Today.

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Policy-Relevant Research and Media Communication

Innovation in Aging ◽

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.2384 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽

pp. 683-684

Author(s):

Pamela Herd

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Survey Methods ◽

New York Times ◽

Recent Book ◽

Washington Post ◽

Relevant Research ◽

Media Communication ◽

The Public ◽

York Review ◽

Health Aging

Abstract The second speaker is Dr. Pamela Herd, Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University. Dr. Herd will discuss her approach to conducting innovative and impactful policy-relevant research, as well as her experience communicating research to policymakers and the public through op-eds and other forms of media. Dr. Herd’s research focuses on inequality and how it intersects with health, aging, and policy. She also has expertise in survey methods and administration. Her most recent book, Administrative Burden, was reviewed in the New York Review of Books. She has also published editorials in venues such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as podcasts, including the Weeds, produced by Vox media.

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Eric Foner

Exchanges The Interdisciplinary Research Journal ◽

10.31273/eirj.v2i1.98 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 1-19

Author(s):

Andrew Hammond ◽

Andrew Hammond

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

New York City ◽

York City ◽

Republican Party ◽

Military History ◽

Abraham Lincoln ◽

Recent Book ◽

Pulitzer Prize ◽

Columbia University ◽

American Slavery

Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. Born in New York City to a family that included union organisers, political activists, and historians – his father Jack was a scholar of military history – Foner has gone on to become one of the leading historians of his generation. His most recent book, for example, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010), won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Lincoln Prize, while he has been one of only two figures to have been elected President of the American Historical Association, Society of American Historians, and the Organisation of American Historians. Previous works have included Free Soil, Free Labour, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970), Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988), and The Story of American Freedom (1998). While two strands run throughout his intellectual trajectory, the first being the abolition and legacy of slavery, it is the second theme that I wish to take up here.Photo credit: Daniella Zalcman

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Diversity Now! Sequins, Style & the End of Gender with Dr. Madison Moore

Fashion Studies ◽

10.38055/fs020205 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 1-10

Author(s):

Rachel Rammal

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Social Change ◽

Assistant Professor ◽

Recent Book ◽

Fashion Industry ◽

Annual Lecture ◽

Personal Lives ◽

Lecture Series ◽

Guest Lecturer ◽

Virginia Commonwealth University

Diversity Now! is an annual lecture series hosted by the Centre for Fashion Diversity and Social Change at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. This lecture series explores how individuals have used fashion as a means to inspire social change and political advocacy in their personal lives, their community, or the fashion industry. The 2019 guest lecturer was Dr. Madison Moore, an artist-scholar, DJ, and Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. In this seventh series lecture, Moore discussed the journey and research behind his recent book Fabulous: The Rise of The Beautiful Eccentric (2018). Drawing on autobiography, anecdotal evidence, and interviews, Moore took his audience on a journey from his childhood in Ferguson, Missouri, to the night scene in New York, London, and Berlin, with an emphasis on Vogue Balls and catwalks. While Moore’s lecture drew on various sources, his message was unequivocal: style and clothes have the power to inspire social change.

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