Violent urban schools loom large in our culture: for decades they have served as the centerpieces of political campaigns and as window dressing for brutal television shows and movies. Yet unequal access to quality schools remains the single greatest failing of our society and one of the most hotly debated issues of our time. Of all the usual words used to describe non-selective city schools segregated, unequal, violent none comes close to characterizing their systemic dysfunction in high-poverty neighborhoods. The most accurate word is toxic. When Bowen Paulle speaks of toxicity,...
Violent urban schools loom large in our culture: for decades they have served as the centerpieces of political campaigns and as window dressing for br...
When we think about young people dealing drugs, we tend to picture it happening on urban streets, in disadvantaged, crime-ridden neighborhoods. But drugs are used everywhere-even in upscale suburbs and top-tier high schools-and teenage users in the suburbs tend to buy drugs from their peers, dealers who have their own culture and code, distinct from their urban counterparts. In Code of the Suburb, Scott Jacques and Richard Wright offer a fascinating ethnography of the culture of suburban drug dealers. Drawing on fieldwork among teens in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta, they carefully...
When we think about young people dealing drugs, we tend to picture it happening on urban streets, in disadvantaged, crime-ridden neighborhoods. But dr...
It has been close to six decades since Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA and more than ten years since the human genome was decoded. Today, through the collection and analysis of a small blood sample, every baby born in the United States is screened for more than fifty genetic disorders. Though the early detection of these abnormalities can potentially save lives, the test also has a high percentage of false positives-inaccurate results that can take a brutal emotional toll on parents before they are corrected. Now some doctors are questioning whether the benefits of these...
It has been close to six decades since Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA and more than ten years since the human genome was decoded. To...
Forty years in, the War on Drugs has done almost nothing to prevent drugs from being sold or used, but it has nonetheless created a little-known surveillance state in America's most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Arrest quotas and high-tech surveillance techniques criminalize entire blocks, and transform the very associations that should stabilize young lives--family, relationships, jobs--into liabilities, as the police use such relationships to track down suspects, demand information, and threaten consequences. Alice Goffman spent six years living in one such neighborhood in Philadelphia,...
Forty years in, the War on Drugs has done almost nothing to prevent drugs from being sold or used, but it has nonetheless created a little-known surve...
At farmers' markets, we expect to see fruit bursting with juicy sweetness and vegetables greener than a golf course. For Michele de La Pradelle these expectations are mostly the result of a show performed by merchants and sustained by our propensity to see what we want to see there. Hailed upon its release in France, the award-winning "Market Day in Provence" lays bare the mechanisms of the contemporary outdoor market by providing a definitive account of the centuries-old institution at Carpentras, a city near Avignon in the south of France famous for its quintessential public street market....
At farmers' markets, we expect to see fruit bursting with juicy sweetness and vegetables greener than a golf course. For Michele de La Pradelle these ...
India is the largest producer and consumer of feature films in the world, far outstripping Hollywood in the number of movies released and tickets sold every year. Cinema quite simply dominates Indian popular culture, and has for many decades exerted an influence that extends from clothing trends to music tastes to everyday conversations, which are peppered with dialogue quotes. With House Full, Lakshmi Srinivas takes readers deep into the moviegoing experience in India, showing us what it's actually like to line up for a hot ticket and see a movie in a jam-packed theater with more...
India is the largest producer and consumer of feature films in the world, far outstripping Hollywood in the number of movies released and tickets sold...
We like to think of ourselves as possessing an essential self, a core identity that is who we really are, regardless of where we live, work, or play. But places actually make us much more than we might think, argues Japonica Brown-Saracino in this novel ethnographic study of lesbian, bisexual, and queer individuals in four small cities across the United States. Taking us into communities in Ithaca, New York; San Luis Obispo, California; Greenfield, Massachusetts; and Portland, Maine; Brown-Saracino shows how LBQ migrants craft a unique sense of self that corresponds to their new...
We like to think of ourselves as possessing an essential self, a core identity that is who we really are, regardless of where we live, work, or...
