Duke University Press Log

Brazil's Environment Minister Steps Down

Marina Silva, the Environment Minister in Brazil, has stepped down according to the BBC News.  She was a staunch defender of the Amazon rainforests and, according to the BBC, "Correspondents say Ms Silva's resignation will reinforce a perception that President Lula is more concerned with economic development than conservation."
Brazil's environmental efforts at both the state and local level are the subject of Kathryn Hochstetler and Margaret E. Keck's 2007 book Greening Brazil:  Environmental Activism in State and Society.  The book challenges the claim that environmentalism came to Brazil from abroad, and retells the story of environmentalism in Brazil from the inside out, analyzing the extensive efforts within the country to save its natural environment, and the interplay of those efforts with transnational environmentalism.

David Price in The Guardian

David H. Price, author of Threatenting Anthropology and the forthcoming Anthropological Intelligence (June 2008), is mentioned in this article from the Guardian. Price is a founding member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, which has been speaking out against the Pentagon's Human Terrain System (HTS) program, in which social scientists are deployed in the "war on terror." Last week Michael V. Bhatia, a graduate student in political science who was serving in the HTS program, was killled in Afghanistan.

Linda Williams in Chicago Tribune

Linda Williams, editor of Porn Studies, and author of the forthcoming book Screening Sex (November 2008), is quoted in a Chicago Tribune op-ed by Laura Hodes. Hodes writes about the differing treatment of male and female nudity in recent films Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Female nudity is displayed with intent to arouse the audience, while male nudity is played for a laugh, she argues. Linda Williams says, ""There is nervousness about male nudity, and what you do when you are nervous is you laugh. It is almost a permanent adolescent reaction that is built into American movies, and we haven't gotten beyond the adolescent reaction to the more adult reaction." Hodes includes further comments by Williams on her blog.

Adoption and Kinship

Sunday's L.A. Times features a story about the ways in which western ideas of adoption clash with traditional African kinship systems.  According to the article: "There's no word for adoption in [the] Swahili language. It is common for Africans to send orphaned or impoverished children to live with richer relatives. . . . Unlike in adoptions, the child remains in regular contact with the parents."
    Duke author Jessaca B. Leinaweaver, in her forthcoming book The Circulation of Children:  Kinship, Adoption, and Morality in Andean Peru (October 2008), delves into similar issues of kinship and adoption in Andean Peru.  Her in-depth ethnographic analysis reveals child circulation to be a meaningful, pragmatic social practice for poor and indigenous Peruvians. 

Driftless Nominated for NY Photo Award

Danny Wilcox Frazier's Driftless has been nominated for a prestigious New York Photo Award. The winners will be announced on May 16.

Hunt Family Feud in Vanity Fair

This month's Vanity Fair features an article on the family of H. L. Hunt, the Texas oil magnate. Some of Hunt's children and grandchildren are currently feuding over his vast fortune. Duke recently published the autobiography of Swanee Hunt, diplomat, philanthropist, and political activist. Swanee is one of H. L. Hunt's daughter's from his third marriage to Ruth Ray. She writes about growing up in the rich, eccentric family. Her father kept multiple families at once (he was "married" to Lyda Bunker and Frania Tie at the same time). Swanee and her sisters and brother are not part of the current legal wrangling, which involves Hunt's descendants from his marriage to Lyda Bunker.

Finnstrom in Sudan Tribune

Sverker Finnström, author of Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda has co-written an article about the complicated and precarious peace process in Northern Uganda for the Sudan Tribune.   Finnström and his co-author Ronald R. Atkinson focus on what will happen (particularly to the widely-displaced Acholi people) if/when a peace agreement is finally reached:  "As we wait for the current situation to be resolved, and a final agreement signed, we would like to stress that successfully implementing the agreement will be an arduous, grassroots project that will require the sustained attention and support of the outside world. A so-called “post-conflict situation” can often be more violent than a conflict itself, and we need to be prepared, emotionally and practically, for problems and setbacks."

More on Hawaiian Sovereignty

The Associated Press reports that a group of Native Hawaiian activists, the Hawaiian Kingdom Government, have occupied Iolani Palace, the former home of Hawaiian royalty, and taken over the grounds. For background on the Native Hawaiian rights movement and history, check out our pathbreaking book by Noenoe Silva, Aloha Betrayed. And you can look forward to two forthcoming books, Hawaiian Blood by J. Kēhaulani Kauanui and Native Men Remade by Ty P. Tengan. Noenoe Silva will be speaking at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. later this month.

Glave on Bonita Jamaica

Thomas Glave's Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles is featured on the Bonita Jamaica website. Garvin Gray writes, “Some very rich and powerful themes are explored in this book. Let’s make one thing clear. Caribbean writers are some of the best writers in the world. Get your copy of Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay  Writing from the Antilles. Read it with an open mind and see how it compares with writings from great Caribbean writers of the past. Please keep the conversation going. Every Jamaican should have equal rights to Jamaica."

Buszek in Planet Weekly

Maria Elena Buszek's Pin-Up Grrrls is mentioned in Tuscaloosa's Planet Weekly in an interview with Shimmy Von Braun, an actress and pin=up model. Erica Crabtree Mossholder writes, "A fascinating book, Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture, chronicles the images and manifestations of the pin-up from the 1860s to today. The author, Maria Elena Buszek, describes why women gravitate towards the curvy pin-up woman as the definition of beautiful, as opposed to a stick-thin image we’ve been socialized to accept. "