Synopses & Reviews
and#147;Based on virtuoso research interlaced with a lucid and compelling analysis,
Stranger Intimacy challenges the assumptions at the heart of most social history. Refusing to separate political economy, state practices, racialization, and the regulation of domesticity and sexuality, Nayan Shah reads legal and bureaucratic archives for stories of non-normative sociality among multi-racial transient migrants in the early twentieth century. With this treasure trove, he launches a stunning array of arguments against the stabilizing tropes of states and historians, and for an expansive vision of democratic life teeming under the radar of regulation and exclusion. This is a breathtaking book.and#8221;
and#151;Lisa Duggan, author of The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy
and#147;With admirable historical rigor, Stranger Intimacy brings new vitality and intense insight to studies of race, nation, and sexuality. A leader in the field, Nayan Shah brilliantly unsettles official attempts to pin down migrants, to fix them in place in nuclear family households, within and#145;properand#8217; heterosexual constraints. Charting the contested terrains of western North America a century ago, with their complex border crossings, couplings, and collectives, this book radically enhances understandings of estrangement and belonging today.and#8221;
and#151;John Howard, author of Concentration Camps on the Home Front: Japanese Americans in the House of Jim Crow
and#147;Nayan Shah's Stranger Intimacy is a precise account of the lives and labors of South Asian migrants inside a North America that was hostile to them. Drawing from an array of archival materials, Shah charts the social navigation of the migrants and shows us how they build their own worlds. The State and Business saw them as Alien and Worker; Shah restores the migrants to the intimacy of human beings.and#8221;
and#151;Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
and#147;Stranger Intimacies is a tremendously important book. Shah challenges pervasive patterns in scholarship that assume that the experiences of South Asians or of gays and lesbians are particular and parochial concerns of people with those embodied identities. Instead he draws on the situated knowledge and historically and socially shaped standpoints of these groups to reveal how citizenship, sexuality, and labor are always linked, how heterosexism, racism, and class rule are not aberrant departures from liberal citizenship but rather its component parts.and#8221;
and#151;George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place
and#147;Stranger Intimacy is the definitive work that reveals, with persuasion and deep archival research, that Asian American studies requires the study of gender and sexuality. Tracking the movements of Indians to North America in the early twentieth century, it shows us how a diverse set of laws produced immigrant subjects through race, heteronormativity, and the white, nuclear family. and#145;Stranger intimacy,and#8217; in Shahand#8217;s brilliant concept, is the site of regulation, struggle, and possibility.and#8221;
and#151;Inderpal Grewal, author of Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms
Review
and#8220;Brilliant. . . . [Shahand#8217;s] lucid prose, vivid stories, and gripping analysis make it a great read for both academic and general audiences.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Show how the history of even a small (in numerical terms) minority has important implications for the ways in which all Americans understand the parameters of citizenship.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;An important contribution to the forging of a more complete and inclusive history of the North American West.and#8221;
Review
"Carefully documentedand#160;and compellingly narrated. . . . Transformsand#160;the central questions in Asian American and immigrationand#160;history."
Synopsis
By reaching out to those on the receiving end of the criminal justice system, Jana Arsovska examines some of the most widespread myths about the so-called Albanian Mafia. The narratives presented in this book are about the dynamic relationship between culture, politics, and organized crime, and are based on more than a decade of empirical and ethnographic research on the causes, codes of conduct, activities, migration, and structure of Albanian organized crime groups in the Balkans, Western Europe, and the U.S. Decoding Albanian Organized Crime makes sense of the mythology surrounding the topic of Albanian criminality, and features interviews with victims, offenders, and law enforcement across ten countries, as well as court files and confidential intelligence reports.
Synopsis
The expansion of organized crime across national borders has become a key security concern for the international community. In this theoretically and empirically vibrant portrait of a global phenomenon, Jana Arsovska examines some of the most widespread myths about the so-called Albanian Mafia. Based on more than a decade of research, including interviews with victims, offenders, and law enforcement across ten countries, as well as court files and confidential intelligence reports, Decoding Albanian Organized Crime presents a comprehensive overview of the causes, codes of conduct, activities, migration, and structure of Albanian organized crime groups in the Balkans, Western Europe, and the United States. Paying particular attention to the dynamic relationships among culture, politics, and organized crime, the book develops a framework for understanding the global growth of the criminal underworld and provides a model for future comparative research.
Synopsis
In exploring an array of intimacies between global migrants Nayan Shah illuminates a stunning, transient world of heterogeneous social relationsand#151;dignified, collaborative, and illicit. At the same time he demonstrates how the United States and Canada, in collusion with each other, actively sought to exclude and dispossess nonwhite races. Stranger Intimacy reveals the intersections between capitalism, the state's treatment of immigrants, sexual citizenship, and racism in the first half of the twentieth century.
Synopsis
"Jana Arsovskaand#8217;s expertise in the subject matterand#151;combined with truly gripping proseand#151;provides the reader with a solid understanding of the historical, legal, and sociological aspects of this truly international and sophisticated element of organized crime."and#151;John R. Cencich, Professor and Director, Center for Criminological and Forensic Sciences, California University of Pennsylvania, and author of
The Deviland#8217;s Garden: A War Crimes Investigatorand#8217;s Story "Arsovska offers excellent analysis, ethnographic insight, and crucial background about the social, economic, and political context of the situation she describes so well. This is an academic, yet personal, account that captures the conditions that empowered Albanian organized crime during the post-Soviet conflict in the Balkans. Start with the preface, and you will be hooked."and#151;Jay Albanese, Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University, and author of Transnational Crime and the 21st Century: Criminal Enterprise, Corruption, and Opportunity
"An unprecedented insight into Albanian organized crime and its evolving cultural, social, and political context. With many vignettes, photos, and firsthand accounts, Decoding Albanian Organized Crime is an outstanding piece of work."and#151;Letizia Paoli, Professor, University of Leuven Faculty of Law, and author of Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style
About the Author
Nayan Shah is Professor and Chair of the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and the author of Contagious Divides (UC Press).
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I. Migration, Capitalism, and Stranger Intimacy
1. Passion, Violence, and Asserting Honor
2. Policing Strangers and Borderlands
3. Rural Dependency and Intimate Tensions
PART II. Intimacy, Law, and Legitimacy
4. Legal Borderlands of Age and Gender
5. Intimate Ties and State Legitimacy
PART III. Membership and Nation-States
6. Regulating Intimacy and Immigration
7. Strangers to Citizenship
Conclusion: Estrangement and Belonging
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index