Contract workers from the Philippines make up one of the world's largest movements of temporary labor migrants. Deirdre McKay follows Filipino migrants from one rural community to work sites overseas and then home again. Focusing on the experiences of individuals, McKay interrogates current approaches to globalization, multi-sited research, subjectivity, and the village itself. She shows that rather than weakening village ties, temporary labor migration gives the village a new global dimension created in and through the relationships, imaginations, and faith of its members in its potential as a site for a better future.

The essays contained within the volume--by scholars from a wide range of disciplines including American studies, art history, political science, psychology, and sociology--each engage a particular instance of the practices of memory as they are complicated by globalization.

Subjects include the place of nostalgia in post-Yugoslavia Serbian national memory, Russian identity after the collapse of the Soviet Union, political remembrance in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, the role of Chilean mass media in forging national identity following the arrest of Augusto Pinochet, American debates over memorializing Japanese internment camps, and how the debate over the Iraq war is framed by memories of opposition to the Vietnam War.

Transference of Oriental images and identities to the American landscape and its inhabitants, especially in the West—in other words, portrayal of the West as the "Orient"—has been a common aspect of American cultural history. Place names offer notable examples—think of the Jordan River or Pyramid Lake—but the imagery and its varied meanings are more widespread and significant. Understanding that range and significance, especially to the western part of the continent, means coming to terms with the complicated, nuanced ideas of the Orient and of the North American continent that European Americans brought to the West. Such complexity is what historical geographer Richard Francaviglia unravels in this book.

La Caraïbe ressemble à s’y méprendre à un visage maquillé. Une couche superficielle d’exotisme fait ressortir ses traits les plus attrayants, à l’image des photographies de ces brochures touristiques sur lesquelles on force le bleu de la mer et le blanc du sable, tout en cadrant au plus serré sur les hôtels, les plages et les parties entretenues des centres-villes. Derrière cette parure cependant, se dévoile, à qui prend la peine d’observer, un visage profondément marqué par les inégalités, des carrières à ciel ouvertes des Cockpit Mountains (Jamaïque) jusqu’aux bidonvilles des marécages de Beetham à Port-of-Spain (Trinidad).Romain Cruse est de ceux qui ont pris la peine d’observer. Il s’intéresse au processus de mise en dépendance – ou périphérisation – du bassin caribéen du XVIe siècle à nos jours. Il prend en compte ce processus à la fois dans sa dynamique physique (le méditerranéanisme), sa dynamique économico-historique (le colonialisme) et dans sa dynamique géopolitique contemporaine (domination économique). Le principal intérêt de cet ouvrage est de ne pas présenter l'histoire de la Caraïbe comme celle d'un colonialisme dont n'arriveraient pas à se défaire les territoires. Si le poids du passé est important, ces espaces principalement insulaires ont tout de même connu de deux siècles (Haïti) à un demi-siècle (Jamaïque, Dominique, etc.) d'«indépendance» officielle. Le contexte géopolitique actuel, soit le glissement de la domination européenne vers celle américaine, ne saurait non plus être ignoré.

Volume 3 of Gulf of Mexico Origin, Waters, and Biota; a series edited by John W. Tunnell Jr., Darryl L. Felder, and Sylvia A. Earle     A continuation of the landmark scientific reference series from the Harte Research Institute for Gulf Of Mexico Studies, this volume provides the most up-to-date systematic, cohesive, and comprehensive description of the geology of the Gulf of Mexico basin. The book’s six sections address the Gulf’s origin (including petroleum resources), processes (including climate change), and coral reefs.   Knowledge about the foundation of the ocean environment remains vital to the understanding of the mineral and marine resources of the Gulf as well as the increasing effects of sedimentation and global warming. With this volume, much of the information necessary for a full view of the geology of the Gulf in the U.S., Mexico, and Cuba that was previously sequestered in the files of industry or government has been made more readily available for scientists, researchers, and students. It provides valuable synthesis and interpretation, representing nearly everything known about the geology of the Gulf of Mexico in the early twenty-first century.   Four years in the making, this monumental compilation is both a lasting record of the current state of knowledge and the starting point for a new millennium of study.

Most people would not consider north central Kansas’ Waconda Lake to be extraordinary. The lake, completed in 1969 by the federal Bureau of Reclamation for flood control, irrigation, and water supply purposes, sits amid a region known—when it is thought of at all—for agriculture and, perhaps to a few, as the home of "The World’s Largest Ball of Twine" (in nearby Cawker City). Yet, to the native people living in this region in the centuries before Anglo incursion, this was a place of great spiritual power and mystic significance. Waconda Spring, now beneath the waters of the lake, was held as sacred, a place where connection with the spirit world was possible. Nearby, a giant snake symbol carved into the earth by native peoples—likely the ancestors of today’s Wichitas—signified a similar place of reverence and totemic power. All that began to change on July 6, 1870, when Charles DeRudio, an officer in the 7th U.S. Cavalry who had served with George Armstrong Custer, purchased a tract on the north bank of the Solomon River—a tract that included Waconda Spring. DeRudio had little regard for the sacred properties of his acreage; instead, he viewed the mineral spring as a way to make money. In Holy Ground, Healing Water: Cultural Landscapes at Waconda Springs, Kansas, anthropologist Donald J. Blakeslee traces the usage and attendant meanings of this area, beginning with prehistoric sites dating between AD 1000 and 1250 and continuing to the present day. Addressing all the sites at Waconda Lake, regardless of age or cultural affiliation, Blakeslee tells a dramatic story that looks back from the humdrum present through the romantic haze of the nineteenth century to an older landscape, one that is more wonderful by far than what the modern imagination can conceive.

This book explores the customary, social, economic political and rights issues surrounding access, ownership and control over land from a gender perspective. It combines theory and practice from researchers, lawyers and judges, each with track records of working on women and rights concerns. The nexus between the reluctance to recognize and materialize womenís right to land, and the increasing feminization of poverty is undeniable. The problem assumes special acuity in an essentially agrarian context like Cameroon, where the problem is not so much the law as its manner of application. That this book delves into investigating the principal sources and reasons for this prevalent injustice is particularly welcome. As some of the analyses reveal, denying women their right to land acquisition or inheritance is sometimes contrary to established judicial precedents and even in total dissonance with the countryís constitution. Traditional and cultural shibboleths associated with land acquisition and ownership that tend to stymie womenís development and fulfilment, must be quickly shirked, for such retrograde excuses can no longer find comfort in the law, morality nor in ìmodernî traditional thinking. The trend, albeit timid, of appointing women to Land Consultative Boards and even as traditional authorities, can only be salutary. These are some positive practical steps that can translate the notion of equal rights into ìequal powerî over land for both sexes; otherwise ìequalityî in this context will remain an unattractive slogan.