Material culture最新文献

{"title":"Red, White, & Black Make Blue: Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina Life","authors":"E. Salo","doi":"10.5860/choice.51-5771","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.51-5771","url":null,"abstract":"Red, White, & Black Make Blue: Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina Life By Andrea Feeser Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2013. x + 140 pages. Tables, 10 unnumbered pages of plates, notes, bibliography, and index. $69.95 (Cloth), ISBN 978-0-8203-3817-0; $24.95 (Paper), ISBN 978-0-8203-44553-6.The study of colonial history is a rich and complex area in American Studies The varied nature of the colonies along the Atlantic Coast allow for historians to study topics that range from religion to land tenure policies, economics, and slavery One of the most examined colonies, South Carolina, has made an industry of its heritage tourism based on its Colonial and Antebellum past When historians examine the history of South Carolina, the theme of the interconnections between slavery and the plantation-based economy are usually center-staged Since the 1970s, scholars have produced several important works on the economic history of the Lowcountry, with particular focus on the development of the plantation and its growth as the prominent economic center of the region (see, for example, Clowse 1971, Coclanis 1985, Coclanis 1989, and Edelson 1998) Even after the Civil War and emancipation, most plantations remained in production, switching their labor force from slaves to sharecroppers It was the development of cash crops, in addition to the enslaved workforce, that served as the basis of the plantation system that varied from indigo and rice during the colonial period to cotton during the antebellum period, and that \"the cultivation of indigo has ...a complex and sometimes fraught history in the Americas and especially in South Carolina\" (p 1)In Red, White, & Black Make Blue: Indigo in the Fabric Of Colonial South Carolina Life, Dr Andrea Feeser, an art historian from Clemson University, uses the history of the cultivation of indigo in South Carolina to present an excellent economic history of the colony, as well as a platform to explore the interactions between the Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and Europeans, as they all played a role in the development of the cash-crop system and the society that it supported The examination of the different peoples in the colony through the prism of indigo allows the reader to \"understand...the ways in which they intertwined with one another and with the culture of the state's European colonizer\" (p 112) While rice and cotton both offer similar vehicles to explore this interaction, Feeser succeeds in using indigo, an often forgotten crop, to show the roles of all groups in the expansion of the colonyOften overlooked outside of South Carolina, before the Revolutionary War indigo was one of the most important crops because of economic incentives by the Royal government and became the economic basis for many of the plantations that dotted the Lowcountry Not as well known outside of the state, South Carolina lore credits the growing of indigo in the state with Eliza Lucas Pinckney, viewed as the ma","PeriodicalId":81941,"journal":{"name":"Material culture","volume":"31 1","pages":"72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90247579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Seeing Underground: Maps, Models, and Mining Engineering in America","authors":"P. Pospisek","doi":"10.5860/choice.187171","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.187171","url":null,"abstract":"Seeing Underground: Maps, Models, and Mining Engineering in America By Eric C. Nystrom Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2014. xi + 301 pages, 43 illustrations, bibliographical references, and index. $39.95 (Cloth), ISBN 978-0-874179323.In this interesting and perceptive book, historian Eric C Nystrom explores the visual culture of American mining from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1920s Nystrom argues that visual representations of mines are indispensable to understanding the rise of industrial mining in the United States, as well as the professionalization of mining in which educated engineers and geologists replaced experienced miners within corporate hierarchies Seeing Underground works on a number of levels as Nystrom offers a general overview of industrial mining during this period while discussing maps and models as technologies of growing importance within that industry He further argues for the use of underground maps and models as both visual and material culture, in that these objects carry information by design, but are also expressions of a particular mining culture Nystrom draws upon a broad swath of American industrial mining: copper in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, anthracite coal in Pennsylvania, copper in Butte, Montana, and silver in Tonopah, Nevada Seeing Underground is thus built upon an impressive research base, ranging from standard archival sources to maps collected in the National Mine Map Repository to three-dimensional models held by the Smithsonian, mining schools, and elsewhere The work itself is divided into two parts, maps and models, each focusing on the major forms taken by the visual cultureNystrom portrays maps, and the professionals who created them, as the most significant forces in industrial mining during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries Over the course of three chapters, he describes the process and tools by which mine maps were made, the way in which underground maps progressed from simple representations to important carriers of technical information, and ultimately how experts wielding these maps established themselves as indispensable to the business of industrial mines Previous to the mid-nineteenth century, practical miners simply sought ores near the surface and followed the veins underground as long as they were accessible As mines became deeper and more complex during the middle portion of the nineteenth century, underground maps became more useful for preventing and prosecuting trespass by keeping tabs on the mine's progress in conjunction with the property lines The key players in this process were educated mining engineers whose technical skills made it possible to craft images of the entire mine works, which were otherwise impossible to view holistically In doing so, engineers and later geologists grew in stature as managers and supervisors found maps indispensable to the work of the mine Maps allowed bosses to more efficiently direct their men, keep track of the underground ","PeriodicalId":81941,"journal":{"name":"Material culture","volume":"24 1","pages":"76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85225492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary","authors":"A. Galeucia","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-6957","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-6957","url":null,"abstract":"Blue Jeans: The Art of the Ordinary By Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodward Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012. vii + 169pp. Acknowledgements, bibliography and index. $63.00 (Hardcover), 978-0520272187; $27.95 (Softcover), 978-0520272194.Emerging from British material culture and cultural studies, anthropologist Daniel Miller and sociologist Sophie Woodward have spent the past several years building numerous studies associated with the clothing item most commonly referred to as \"blue jeans\" or \"denim,\" which the authors use interchangeably In this book, they present a hybrid discussion of data and theories emerging from an ethnographic study of three connected London streets in a majority middle-class, mixed-ethnicity neighborhoodThe authors identify their initial goal for this study as simply to answer the question \"Why do so many people wear jeans?\" (p 3) Blue jeans are a common article of clothing that most people can identify and likely own In that regard, they are ordinary, everywhere But as Miller and Woodward demonstrate in Blue Jeans, once people start talking about their blue jeans, it's possible to uncover patterns associated with practical comfort, cost, appearance and identity, as well as a variety of other complex aspects of lived experience What this monograph offers as a result is an exploration into the complex role the clothing item plays not only in the London neighborhood the authors studied, but also on a broader geographic scale Similarly, Blue Jeans contributes practical and theoretical implications for cultural studies beyond Miller and Woodward's field siteAs a result of the early stages of this ethnographic study, the authors developed the Global Denim Project, which is discussed in Miller and Woodward's 2011 edited volume Global Denim (New York: Berg Press) Readers interested in varied geographic and methodological discussions of denim will benefit from reading Global Denim in juxtaposition with Blue Jeans, which acts as a stand-alone case study connected to the Global Denim ProjectMiller and Woodward's approach to denim in Blue Jeans, although initiated from a traditional open-ended ethnographic standpoint, developed into a multilayered quest to extrapolate understandings of social choices, conformity, identity, and normativity at a local and global scale The book is organized as follows: its early chapters explore the ethnographic approaches, questions, and participant stories that emerged from the authors' fieldwork, while the later chapters, though still discussing participant material, delve more deeply into theories of material culture (in this case, denim) and the concept of \"ordinary \"Miller and Woodward conclude Blue Jeans with a brief review of various theories of the ordinary, material culture, and identity associated with the everyday In these sections, they engage anthropological, sociological, performance, and various interdisciplinary resources to discuss how studies of ordinary it","PeriodicalId":81941,"journal":{"name":"Material culture","volume":"606 1","pages":"69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77466072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The American Department Store Transformed, 1920-1960","authors":"Molly Rosner","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-1572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-1572","url":null,"abstract":"The American Department Store Transformed, 1920-1960 By Richard Longstreth New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. xi + 323 pp. 243 b/w + 15 color illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $65.00 (Cloth), ISBN 978-0-3001-4938-8.The American Department Store Transformed, a remarkably detailed architectural and material history of one of the principal institutions of twentieth-century American consumerism, explores the physical (and to a lesser extent, ideological) changes that department stores underwent over a 40-year period While several other histories focus on the formative years of the department store - starting in the 1880s and ending around 1920 - Longstreth identifies a later period of major transformation: 1920 to 1960 For him, the guiding force behind the transformation of the department store is the never-ending quest for profit, or at least, economic solvencyLongstreth is not the first to investigate these institutions, and his book \"aims to complement existing studies in its focus as well as in the time framed covered...\" (p 3) He builds on previous social and cultural histories written about department stores In particular, he notes William Leach's ideas about the use of light, air, and glass to stir devotion and desire But Longstreth is less concerned with the cultural, religious, or emotive aspects of this manufactured desire than the rational, economic, and efficient aspects of selling He also downplays the importance of interpersonal and gendered relationships - between salespeople and customers, managers and employees - that are the focus of Susan Benson Porter's book Counter Cultures When Longstreth speaks of the salesperson and customers, his focus is on the ways that their relationships were guided by notions of efficiency and expertise The threat of competition from chain stores, dry goods houses, drug stores, and high-end specialty shops is a constant theme throughout the book Longstreth expertly illustrates which display methods the department store adapted from its competition, as well as where it failed to adaptEach chapter discusses a different technological and physical alteration that took place over the course of the mid-twentieth century Beginning with a description of the expansion in size of early department stores and modernizing techniques that became particularly important in the 1930s, Longstreth extends his study to the physical implications, both for landscapes and transportation He examines parking, branch stores, shopping centers, and malls Then he returns again to the city to close the book In this way, Longstreth takes into account the impact of suburbanization and city politics in changing the American landscape during this periodLongstreth works from an impressive list of resources, illustrating the benefits of interdisciplinary research He researched a wide array of stores in towns and cities across America, and he does not privilege the Northeast as many academic studies do While tracing his th","PeriodicalId":81941,"journal":{"name":"Material culture","volume":"38 1","pages":"67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85994793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gambling on Ore: The Nature of Metal Mining in the United States, 1860-1910","authors":"J. Jenkins","doi":"10.5860/choice.51-3267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.51-3267","url":null,"abstract":"Gambling on Ore: The Nature of Metal Mining in the United States, 1860-1910 Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2014. 252pp. 22 BW through diligent archival research, the author demonstrates how domestic copper production, thought by most to have been driven by the nation's rush toward electricity and telephone communication, was actually in over-abundance prior to electrical wire demand and was driven by accumulative conditions of speculation set forth by the other previously-mined native metals in the region, silver and gold. The message here is quite revealing, especially in an age of technologically-infused culture: the material inputs to society aren't simply sourced from the earth to meet a growing demand, rather the matter of nature is speculated upon, technological means for processing are developed, and ore is extracted all before a market exists for a metal. While the story of modern day metal markets remain much more complex and dependent, it's important to understand the historical conditions of speculation and the reproduction of nature that initially created an abundance of material before there ever was a large-scale industrial use. Indeed, this is the story of not only copper, but other former and current mainstays to our material culture sourced in the western United States, including mercury, borax, uranium, and rare earth elements.The economy of modern-day Montana can be traced to the discovery of its territorial mineral resources. As shown throughout the American West, from the development of the San Francisco Bay Area to the monumental tourism amongst the more rural setting of the Black Hills, the reproduction of material nature and culture in the region began by moving rocks. However, Curtis makes somewhat of a rhetorical shift, if not an all-out new argument, when he claims that use of the noun discovery creates a misconception about the causes of the 1860s Montana gold rush because it leads us to imagine the gold in place, positing knowledge of gold's presence. However, if the groups that occupied these regions knew the locations where gold was deposited, we would be writing a very different history. Instead the author highlights the irony that we only know how much gold was excavated because of the very act of mining. This might seem like a given, but there never was an a priori knowledge that creeks were rich in gold, rather placer mining created that knowledge. In turn, it led to the creation of social and political space: mineral claims and later mining districts with their accordant conflicts.In chapter one, Curtis tells the story of the brothers, James and Granville Stuart, who did more than anyone else in proto Montana to create space. In their individual and combined efforts to find new gulches to prospect, the majority of which were unsuccessful, the two learned that the real money in mining was in the speculation of real estate and sale of supplies. The eventual organization of the Bannack Mining District prov","PeriodicalId":81941,"journal":{"name":"Material culture","volume":"59 1","pages":"74"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85836547","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Modern Architectural Landscape","authors":"Hélène B. Ducros","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-1281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-1281","url":null,"abstract":"The Modern Architectural Landscape By Caroline Constant Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2012. 344pp. Black and white photos, notes. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8166-7307-0; $30.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-8166-7635-4.In The Modern Architectural Landscape, Caroline Constant's main purpose is to interrogate the relationship between architecture and landscape architecture at both the theoretical and practical levels by highlighting the history and nature of the collaboration between both professions in the design of specific twentieth century modernist projects across the world, some renowned and some less well-known. How do architecture and landscape intersect conceptually and influence each other, and how do architects and landscape architects work together and conceive their respective roles in the design and realization of architectural projects? Moreover, when might the demands of a project push the architect into a landscape architect role? Constant's methodology to engage in the architecture-landscape continuum is to showcase a series of case studies that exemplify the practices, ideological underpinnings, social and political purposes, and physical challenges behind nine projects designed from the First World War to the 1980s, some of which were executed while others were not. These illustrative architectural undertakings cover a wide geographical and thematic range: from the planned communities of Sunnyside, New York, and Romerstadt, Frankfurt, to Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion, Asplund's Public Library in Stockholm, the Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm, the transformation of the Prague Castle, Farm Security Administration migrant labor camps and community homes in California, Le Corbusier's accomplishments in the planned city of Chandigarh, Punjab, Detroit's International Style Lafayette Park, and finally the Parc de la Villette in Paris. The value of this collection of independent essays, written over the last 25 years, is that together, they give a multifaceted response to the complex question of the relationship between architecture, landscape, planning, and urban design, and allow a comparison of the processes at play in the transformation of that relationship according to place, time, and intervention of influential individuals in the field.The book is divided into two parts. While the case studies constitute the essential part of the book, Constant's splendid introduction is critical in setting the stage to appreciate the projects she depicts in the rest of the book, and the historical narrative that laces them together. Indeed, she reviews and integrates decades of literature on landscape and landscape architecture, exposing how theorists have defined and envisaged the consequences of merging both fields in the designed transformation of place. Going back to the basic concepts and early landscape studies, she deconstructs the notion of landscape as theorized by geographers such as J.B. Jackson, John Stilgoe, and ","PeriodicalId":81941,"journal":{"name":"Material culture","volume":"11 1","pages":"71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80182241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape","authors":"Ne Baron","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-1504","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-1504","url":null,"abstract":"Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape By Katherine Ziff Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2012. 220pp. Tables, maps, notes, photographs, bibliography, and index. $$, (Hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-8214-1973-1.Author Katherine Ziff has written a well-documented text with many photographs, tables, and maps that focus on the site of the Athens Lunatic Asylum (originally named in 1868) (p. xii). The subject of mental health facilities built utilizing the Kirkbride plan is of key importance to preservationists, architectural historians, and others. So many mental health facilities have met with abandonment and demolition over the years. Ziff s text consists of six chapters in total. Three chapters focus on architecture, politics, and landscape, which may interest readers whose concern is in the built environment.The Kirkbride plan was developed by Thomas Story Kirkbride, M.D. in the mid-nineteenth century when American psychiatry was in its infancy. Moral treatment originated with Dr. Philippe Pinel, an asylum physician in Paris, France in 1795 who \"allegedly removed chains from his patients and undertook human, compassionate, and supportive care.\" Pinel referred to his method as traitement morale, meaning ethical, honorable treatment of people suffering from mental illness (p. 7). Moral treatment was believed to be efficacious in treating individuals deemed mentally ill during a time when America was shifting from an agrarian to an industrial-based society. Kirkbride professed that successful treatment addressed within the rolling hills of a therapeutic landscape would bring about healing. \"This approach was a radical alternative to well-established aggressive, punitive tactics of curing mental illness with punishment and restraints\" (pp. 7-9).A person could be committed to an asylum in the state of Ohio with three documents: medical certification from a physician certifying insanity; a request for commitment from a probate judge listing the name of witnesses; and an asylum document with written acceptance of the patient listing the date, patient number, age, and county of residence (p. 27). Individuals that presented with seizure (epilepsy), exhibited drug/alcohol addictions, attempted suicide, threatened to or actually had harmed others, elderly people with dementia, and those today that would be clinically diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder were regularly admitted to asylums (p. 25).Once admitted men and women were housed separately (p. 72) within winglike extensions from the central administrative area or core (p. 66). The men were housed on the left and the women on the right (p. 64). The patients that were quiet and well-behaved had sleeping areas closest to the central administrative structure and the troublesome, physically obtrusive, and verbally expressive patients were housed in the wings farthest away from the core (p. 66). The lead physician, who was also the superintendent of the asylum, and his famil","PeriodicalId":81941,"journal":{"name":"Material culture","volume":"189 1","pages":"79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75779134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate","authors":"John McGraw","doi":"10.7560/712638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/712638","url":null,"abstract":"Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate By Elizabeth Hill Boone Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. xxvii+307pp. Figures, color plates, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $55.00 (Cloth), ISBN-10: 0-292-71263-4, ISBN-13: 978-0-292-71263-8.Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate is a major contribution to the study of Pre-Columbian religion and worldview. Anthropologists, archeologists, art historians, and others interested in Mesoamerica will find much of value in this beautiful volume, replete with color plates and illustrations. The book focuses on the few central Mexican divinatory manuscripts that managed to survive centuries of accident, neglect, and even purposeful destruction at the hands of overzealous missionaries. The Codices Borgia, Cospi, Fejervary-Mayer, Laud, Porfirio Diaz Reverse, Vaticanus B, and Aubin No. 20 reflect themes from the greater Mixteca-Puebla-Tlaxcala region. The Codex Borbonicus and the Tonalamatl Aubin are screenfold books (made of bark paper) that exhibit the Aztec tradition of central Mexico. The term codex, though traditionally conceived of as a book of individual pages sewn together along one side, is, according to the author, also used by Americanists to refer to these screenfold books and scroll-sit denotes pictorial content above all.The Mexican codices are divinatory almanacs, material records of the techniques and ciphers necessary to reveal occult information. The divinatory worldview promotes a metaphysics that associates certain signs and patterns with other vital energies that affect human life. This worldview illuminates the meaning of Mesoamerican calendrics and the role of time in these societies. They were not obsessive historians eager to date and file events. Rather, they were convinced that the patterns of the present had come before and would return again. To track and understand these patterns was to have insight into the nature of the universe and a greater measure of control over one's own life. Boone writes that \"these codices are our best portal into the religious ideology and cosmology of the Aztecs, Mixtees, and their neighbors. They are as close as we are likely to get to the spiritual world of ancient Mexico\" (p. 6).The author, a former Director of Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, has taught art history at Tulane University since 1995. Boone has studied the Mexican divinatory codices for over a quarter century and her thorough review of the manuscripts and the swarm of debates over all aspects of their decipherment and interpretation conveys both erudition and an infectious enthusiasm. Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate is the first book that attempts to synthesize information from all the divinatory codices in order to arrive at larger themes and patterns than contained in any one codex alone. She envisioned the present volume as a companion to her prior work, Stories in Red and Black (University of Texas Press, 2000","PeriodicalId":81941,"journal":{"name":"Material culture","volume":"15 1","pages":"76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74218641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Atlas of the Great Plains","authors":"Jennifer Mapes","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-3050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-3050","url":null,"abstract":"Atlas of the Great Plains By Stephen J. Lavin, Fred M. Shelley, and J. Clark Archer Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. 352pp. 8 illustrations, 312 maps, 11 graphs. $39.99, ISBN 978-0-8032-1536-8.Atlas of the Great Plains is as ambitious as it is beautiful. The atlas fills a broadening gap in academic texts that describe and illustrate regions of the United States. Certainly, we have textbooks covering regions of the U.S. and coffee-table books with photographs of specific regions, but few regional geographies, in the classic sense, have been written in the last decade. Too often we must choose between attractive maps created by non-scientist designers and uninspiring maps created by academics without cartographic skills.Thematic atlases, too, are a lost art in American geography and related disciplines. They are either non-existent or authored by the popular press, which range from those found at the discount aisle of Barnes Be Noble to the two quirky atlases of San Francisco and New Orleans by journalist Rebecca Solnit.Infused with up-to-date understandings of social and natural science research, this new text aims to both provide a solid overview of the geography of the Great Plains, and to offer attractive, legible maps as evidence for this description.In the first goal, to offer a solid, vivid, description of the Great Plains, the atlas goes above and beyond. It chooses important topics to map and describe and organizes them in a manner that draws in the reader and avoids being another atlas that is just saying: \"here are a bunch of pretty maps.\" The maps are there for a purpose and were clearly selected by those deeply familiar with the Great Plains region, its history and challenges ahead.These maps and descriptions provide an excellent source for those interested in material culture of the United States to better understand the historic and demographic context of their research. However, readers may be disappointed that few maps include cultural landscape elements (exceptions include auto racetracks and cell phone tower locations). In this area, the somewhat outdated, but groundbreaking, Atlas of the New West (Reibsame 1997) better integrated these elements in their examination of the changing culture and environment of the Western United States.Many of the most telling maps in the atlas are those that illustrate change over time. They include maps of the decline of bison range, shifts in crops, changes in employment, and decadal population density from 1810 to 2006. One fascinating map shows the census year of maximum population, illustrating in one map the decline of many central plains counties, but also the growth of the oil and gas and amenity-driven migration in the western edge of the plains.Also included are maps from Archer and Lavin's 2006 Historical Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Maps unique to this collection, yet reflective of the Great Plains, are maps illustrating the urban nature (and rarity) of symphony or","PeriodicalId":81941,"journal":{"name":"Material culture","volume":"10 1","pages":"78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91048466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields","authors":"Ralph M. Hartsock","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-5407","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-5407","url":null,"abstract":"Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields By Rebecca R. Scott Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. xvi + 271pp. Photographs, tables, endnotes, bibliography and index. $32.00, (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8131-2411-7.Mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining is a mining technique that, for expediency, explodes mountains in order to extract coal, as an alternative to traditional underground mining. Previous scholarly texts on the topic have focused upon 1) MTR as a process, 2) environmental activism, or 3) the effects of MTR on the environment and economics. Author Rebecca Scott, a native of West Virginia, has resided out of that state about the same amount of time as she did inside, mostly in Greenbrier County. The author discovered that her prior residence in West Virginia minimized the skepticism of the West Virginians to strangers, and allowed her to present an insider's perspective, while her distance allowed an objective analysis of coalfield life. Scott, a sociology professor at the University of Missouri, considers the cultural interactions of race, gender, and nature in the Appalachian coalfields with MTR as an exemplary issue (p. 20).Removing Mountains investigates cultural space, place, and environmental politics while investigating how interdependencies of Appalachia and America relate to the cultural politics of MTR. In the introduction: \"The Logic of Extraction,\" Scott analyzes and deconstructs the coal industry's viewpoint, noting that this system contradicts its own existence by the destruction of its own natural basis. Such a system survives only because it creates an illusion of safety for the poor.Scott's writing is as much about perception by those outside Appalachia as it is about Appalachian coal culture (p. 49). As part of her description of the national sacrifice zone of Appalachia, Scott describes how various books have depicted the culture of West Virginia and mountain people.Scott identifies cultural elements of Appalachia through the analysis of films, both documentary and entertainment, and television programs. These vary between those that are derisive of the Appalachian culture and those which stereotype the region's inhabitants. With its famous \"Dueling Banjos\" scene, the dramatic thriller, Deliverance (1972) \"represents a watershed moment in cultural representations of the mountain South.\" (p. 231) At the same time, the film suggests that the \"only way modern society can relate to nature is through total domination.\" (p. 51) Wrong Turn (2003) is more derisive of the culture in West Virginia, as it describes mountain men as products of inbreeding. But this view has been perpetuated for nearly half-a-century. Jack Weller described the people of southern Appalachia in terms of double first cousins and close intermarriage, (p. 52) Television programs, such as \"The Beverly Hillbillies\" and \"Saturday Night Live\" depict those in Appalachia in stereotypical manners. …","PeriodicalId":81941,"journal":{"name":"Material culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"70"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75738592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}