Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer

Book Description

When French sociologist Loic Wacquant signed up at a boxing gym in a black neighborhood of Chicago's South Side, he had never contemplated getting close to a ring, let alone climbing into it. Yet for three years he immersed himself among local fighters, amateur and professional. He learned the Sweet science of bruising, participating in all phases of the pugilist's strenuous preparation, from shadow-boxing drills to sparring to fighting in the Golden Gloves tournament. In this experimental ethnography of incandescent intensity, the scholar-turned-boxer dissects the making of prizefighters and supplies a model for a "carnal sociology" capable of capturing "the taste and ache of action." Body and Soul marries the analytic rigor of the sociologist with the stylistic grace of the novelist to offer a compelling portrait of a bodily craft and of life and labor in the black American ghetto at century's end, but also a revealing tale of self transformation and social transcendence. And, by fleshing out Pierre Bourdieu's signal concept of habitus, it deepens our theoretical grasp of human practice.

Customer Reviews:

Wacquant Psycho-analytic Portrait.......2007-01-06

Put simply: if you want to get a decent look at the inner-city boxing phenomenon, buy this. But if you are in academia, be warned: Wacquant is far from the detached observer he swears he is. A good example of what NOT to do in ethnographic research.

Wacquant's book is a must-read for students of sociology.......2006-08-27

I had Professor Wacquant for one of my classes and I have to say he is an excellent professor who has amazing ideas about today's society. In this book, he argues against the mainstream idea of the underclass and he also explains how the boxing gym is a force in opposition to the forces of the ghetto. Very well written, the book is a very good read. It has been very interesting for me, as I am studying sociology as a college student and I box in my spare time.

Close and personal.......2004-01-07

Having searched and read close to what I can find on the subject featured in this book, I can honestly say that it covers close to everything I was looking for. It is well written, a page-turner (which I rarely find a "scientific" book to be), in depth, and has a nice personal touch. Wacquant shows great understanding for the sport, as well as the interpersonal and mystified aspects of the gym, and is able to put this together in sociological terms and aspects. I have myself traveled around the world, and in several major cities (and small towns) visited different gyms with the purpose of training. But also because I am interested in the differences of the gyms and the poeple there. I can relate to Woodlawn Boys Club because I spent a few weeks in Minnapolis, and frequented a "similar" kind of gym there, and I find great interest in reading about his findings in "his" gym. One of the main reasons I read - and liked - this book, is my search for validating boxing as professional youth work, and I discovered many findings, which can also be applied in my small country, which is totally different when it comes to the urban life. The principles are nevertheless the same. So for every person interested in boxing, youth work or/and the mystique surrounding the sport and the gym (as a phenomena) this is a must. Or if you merely want interesting reading from a modern and gutsy sociologist, you will probably like it as well. Enjoy!

Over the Next Hill: An Ethnography of Rving Seniors in North America

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Too dated and technical
Rving Seniors
A Scholarly Approach to RV's AND to Retirement

Over the Next Hill: An Ethnography of Rving Seniors in North America
Dorothy Ayers Counts , and David R. Counts
Manufacturer: Broadview Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Poetics and Politics of Tuareg Aging: Life Course and Personal Destiny in Niger
Life Is So Good
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Annual Editions: Aging 06/07 (Annual Editions Aging)

ASIN: 1551111160

Book Description

This is an updated edition of this successful study, first published in 1996. In addition to updates on points of fact, new to this edition are the following:

1) An expanded section on working RVers which includes a profile of a working RVer in her seventies and two RVers who do volunteer work at the CARE center in the home park of the Escapees RV club in Livingston, TX. The CARE center (Continued Assistance for Retired Escapees) provides daycare and some nursing care for RVers who are too ill or elderly to travel but who want to stay in the RVing community. CARE is run mostly by volunteers, as a result the costs are exceptionally low and there is a strong sense of bonding between the residents, the people who work there, and the RVers who stay at the Livingston park for a while.

2) A list of websites that provides resources and information for RVers and people who want to start RVing. The list includes sources for RVing families, single RVers, people who are interested in a particular kind of RVing style (eg "boondockers"), people who want to rent an RV, organizations for RVers with special interests (African Americans, former military, etc.).

3) An appendix (Appendix 5) that provides information, resources and suggestions for people who think that they might want to try serious RVing but need help getting started.

4) Updated information on Canadian provincial residence rules for eligibility for inclusion in provincial medical care programs.

Customer Reviews:

Too dated and technical.......2007-09-17

I felt that this book was too dated to be of much use. Apparently much of the research took place 10-15 years ago and I must think that there have been significant changes in RVing in the elapsed time.

Rving Seniors.......2007-06-27

I finally understand why I want to be an RVer! The book was informative and the subject matter was thoroughly investigated. I'm passing the book around to my children so they will understand why their crazy Mom wants to hit the road as a Senior RVer.

A Scholarly Approach to RV's AND to Retirement.......2000-04-24

As a newcomer to the world of RV's I found this book both interesting and disquieting. Many of my intial observations as I moved through RV parks in the West last fall were confirmed. Others were better understood. But better yet, for a retired engineer, they were quantified. How do I compare to others in age, money, marital status? Are my thoughts as I select a park similar to others? How many people travel with dog and/or cats? How much does it cost?

It also helps me understand what motivates people who stay at Quartzite or the Slabs. (Cultural/societal phenomenons that are hard to believe.) It draws clearer pictures of the aging couples I see and what brought them to where they are. It also shows where they're going in their life. It describes "trailer trash" in loving terms.

In other words, its a study of retirement and eventually death. Its uniqueness is that it focus on RVers, specifically the fulltimers.

The scholarly style may put some readers off but in my opinion, if you are thinking of selling the farm and fulltiming, you need this book before you buy that 40 foot motorhome. Or if you just want to head south in the winter, or camp by the lake near home you should have this book to understand the people around you. And even if you don't plan to have an RV ever, this will tell you about retired life, maybe more than you realy want to know.

Not a Hazardous Sport
Average customer rating:

Amusing and interesting

Funny and Informative

Anthropologist in Indonesia

Not a Hazardous Sport
Nigel Barley
Manufacturer: Henry Holt & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0805009604

Customer Reviews:

Amusing and interesting.......2005-12-27

Obviously, there is more to anthropology than simply going to some faraway land and relating tales about one's experiences there. But there's nothing wrong with doing just that, as Nigel Barley does in this book. He starts right out, in the first sentence, by saying that "Anthropology is not a hazardous sport." Anyway, he goes off to Indonesia (actually, to Torajaland, on the island of Celebes) to live, um, non-hazardously.

An incident typical of the author's misadventures comes when some of the people he's visiting decide they need to consecrate a new rice barn with blood. They plan to sacrifice a pig to do this. But when they ask him to pass them a machete, he cuts his fingers badly on it. So badly that his blood suffices; they don't need to sacrifice a pig after all.

I enjoyed this book, and I recommend it.

Funny and Informative.......1999-12-31

I am a student of African and Indonesian spiritual practices. This book, along with Mr. Barley's others, is a refreshing departure from long-winded, ivory-tower lectures. Funny and informative.

Anthropologist in Indonesia.......1999-11-28

Nigel Barley is an English antropologist who makes a visit to Torajaland in Sulawesi, Indonesia. He says in his foreword that he want to tell the stories that more traditional antropological books don't tell. The result is sometimes funny but otherwise not very remarkable.

Kinship with Monkeys: The Guajá Foragers of Eastern Amazonia (Historical Ecology Series)

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Kinship with Monkeys: The Guajá Foragers of Eastern Amazonia (Historical Ecology Series)
Loretta A. Cormier
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0231125259

Book Description

Intrigued by a slide showing a woman breast-feeding a monkey, anthropologist Loretta A. Cormier spent fifteen months living among the Guajá, a foraging people in a remote area of Brazil. The result is this ethnographic study of the extraordinary relationship between the Guajá Indians and monkeys. While monkeys are a key food source for the Guajá, certain pet monkeys have a quasi-human status. Some infant monkeys are adopted and nurtured as human children while others are consumed in accordance with the "symbolic cannibalism" of their belief system.

The apparent contradiction of this predator/protector relationship became the central theme of Cormier's research: How can monkeys be both eaten as food and nurtured as children? Her research reveals that monkeys play a vital role in Guajá society, ecology, economy, and religion. In Guajá animistic beliefs, all forms of plant and animal life -- especially monkeys -- have souls and are woven into a comprehensive kinship system. Therefore, all consumption can be considered a form of cannibalism.

Cormier sets the stage for this enlightening study by examining the history of the Guajá and the ecological relationships between human and nonhuman primates in Amazonia. She also addresses the importance of monkeys in Guajá ecological adaptation as well as their role in the Guajá kinship system. Cormier then looks at animism and life classification among the Guajá and the role of pets, which provide a context for understanding "symbolic cannibalism" and how the Guajá relate to various forms of life in their natural and supernatural world. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications of ethnoprimatology beyond Amazonia, including Western perceptions of primates.

The New York Mets: Ethnography, Myth, and Subtext

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The New York Mets: Ethnography, Myth, and Subtext
Richard Grossinger
Manufacturer: Frog, Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Mets Fan
Amazing!: Celebrating the Mets' Miracle 2006 Season
Tales from the Mets Dugout
Mets Pride: For the Love of Mookie, Mike, and David Wright
For Mets Fans Only

ASIN: 158394205X
Release Date: 2007-08-21

Book Description

No baseball team has captured America’s imagination like the Mets. Alternately the “Lovable Losers” and the “Miracle Mets,” New York’s other team offers fascinating fodder for writer Richard Grossinger in this thoughtful collection. The New York Mets is a series of probing essays on the best and most interesting years of the team, particularly 1969, 1973, 1986, and last year’s abbreviated run. A pivotal essay chronicles the lives of a professional athlete and a die-hard fan to create a well-argued, deeply felt meditation on the ways in which franchise baseball has come to fail not only the fans but the players.

This centerpiece presents a poignant narrative of Mets pitcher Terry Leach and author Grossinger’s own experiences playing and tracking the sport. Taken together, these powerful essays alternately take the poet’s, the alchemist’s, and the player’s perspective to paint a composite portrait that brings all the stunning highs and dispiriting lows together to show the ways in which America’s favorite pastime has changed. Grossinger reflects on the salad days when teams were happily homegrown and laments the current money-ball scenario some call baseball today.

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Entering an Ancient World
Where is the video??
Maritime anthropology as adventure travel, with drama.
The best of science, courage, navigation lore and adventure.
The best of science, courage, navigation lore and adventure.

The Last Navigator
Stephen D. Thomas
Manufacturer: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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We, the Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific (Revised)
Voyage of Rediscovery: A Cultural Odyssey through Polynesia
Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes

ASIN: 0070645744

Book Description

Nonfiction account of a young American man's sojourn in the South Pacific, on the Micronesian island of Satawal in the Caroline archipelago, studying traditional navigation with Mau Piailug, the last of the palus. It was Piailug who navigated a Polynesian vessel from Hawaii to Tahiti without compass or charts, as documented by a PBS film of the voyage. Thomas learns how to navigate by stars, wind, swell, birds, and memory. It is a story of seafaring, a dying culture, and self-discovery.

Customer Reviews:

Entering an Ancient World.......2007-05-24

I read Steve Thomas' book in the evenings while I was staying at Trader's Ridge Resort on Yap. Steve's clarity and attention to detail taught me not only about the rudiments of traditional oceanic navigation, but also opened my eyes more fully to Micronesian culture, and attuned me to how delicately it hangs between the encroachments of the West and the timeless pace of these islands. Even if you will never see a sailing canoe, this book will change your life. Well done.

Where is the video??.......2006-10-06

The book is good but where is the video that I saw on Public Television several years ago?
How do I get a copy?
How do I get in touch with Steve Thomas?

Maritime anthropology as adventure travel, with drama........1999-02-24

This book is one of the few good 1980's attempts to document the voyaging culture of the Caroline Islands of Micronesia. It follows Kenneth Brower's 'Song For Satawal', which is now out of print!

Plenty of authentic stuff to make this a good read even if you get queasy at the insecurities and soul-searching and quest for meaning that pervades this account of one man's unique adventure in the Pacific.

There is lots of interesting anthropology (or is it sociology?) here, such as the system for ownership and preservation/protection of marine resources. Good background for anyone working in resource management in the Pacific.

The image that sticks in my mind after reading this book is the agonizing, slow-motion demise of traditional society in the small islands of the Carolines. The Carolines had centuries of Spanish/German/Japanese/USA stepping on their culture, still they managed to resurrect the voyaging skills, but now face the competition of outboards, charts, technological changes. Their oral tradition recorded vast local knowledge of this part of the pacific ocean, but the younger generations for some reason don't have the desire to avail themselves. Youngsters move away, they choose to join the workaday world instead of developing their skills at the traditonal systems that proferred self-sufficiency to their ancestors. The youngsters don't want the old way.

The few remaining navigators are at a loss how to preserve the sailing traditions, so one of them accepts a student from Boston, Mass. This guy (the author, Steve) goes to Satawal, home of the greatest surviving ocean-voyaging practitioners, and he spends a LOT of time learning the language, learning the rules, getting informants to tell him about the legends, secret knowledge and systematics of ocean navigation according to the hand-me-down skills of these descendents of the sailors who populated the pacific ocean islands. In the process he manages to get in unpleasant binds over taboos, local politics, and even gets to go fishing and sailing with the natives. The book is liberally salted with the concepts, specifics, and vocabulary of native voyaging, and there is an appendix at the end that gives glossaries, diagrams, etc.

The best of science, courage, navigation lore and adventure........1998-09-24

The original edition of Thomas' saga showed an excellent example of the truly gifted amateur contributing to the practical art of cultural analysis. Drawn to solve a personal intellectual problem on how the early polynesians navigated, Thomas chose the solution of walking in their "mocassins" or paddling in their canoes, learning their language and living their culture. I found his journey as intriguing as the quests of Oliver Sachs(Island of the Color-blind People) or Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Civilization) and as intricate as Dva Sobel's tracing of the development of the Chronometer (Longitude). His tool of learning about these people by choosing their most precious historical achievement was inspired. His report by cross-referencing his modern "quantified" vision with their "common sense" qualitative analysis of the sea and its trails is a fascinating tale of multi-cultural experiences. Will he ever return? Even if the island culture is forever changed, one can only hope that he will in some way give us a follow-up picture. Professional scientists and anthropologists should note that Thomas' approach solves the "solipsistic problem" of intercultural communication as effectively as the "Seti Project" hopes to in the future. It is as interesting as Carl Sagan's fiction-- "Contact", but much closer than one might imagine.

The best of science, courage, navigation lore and adventure........1998-09-24

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Sport Ethnography
Robert R. Sands
Manufacturer: Human Kinetics Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0736034374

Aleuts, Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)

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Aleuts, Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology)
William S. Laughlin
Manufacturer: Harcourt Brace College Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Himalayan Herders

ASIN: 0030812690

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Turning Back
Stephen Steinberg
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Asian and Latino Immigrants in a Restructuring Economy: The Metamorphosis of Southern California
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ASIN: 0807041114

Book Description

Turning Back is a challenge to conservatives and liberals alike who have fueled the backlash against policies designed to alleviate racial inequality.

"Committed, anti-racist scholarship. . . . A useful contribution to clear thinking about race."

--George M. Fredrickson, The New York Review of Books

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The Gypsy Season
George Nickels
Manufacturer: Ashley Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0879491876

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