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
and#8220;Readers seeking . . . debates on scientific atheism and social science critiques of religion will find ample food for thought here.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Provide[s] some valuable insights.and#8221;
Synopsis
For years, criminologists have studied the relationship between crime and below-average intelligence, concluding that offenders possess IQ scores 8-10 points below those of non-offenders. Little, however, is known about the criminal behavior of those with above-average IQ scores. This book provides some of the first empirical information about the self-reported crimes of people with genius-level IQ scores. Combining quantitative data from 72 different offenses with qualitative data from 44 follow-up interviews, this book describes the nature of high-IQ crime while shedding light on a population of offenders often ignored in research and sensationalized in media.
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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
Paul Froese explores the nature of religious faith in a provocative examination of the most massive atheism campaign in human history. That campaign occurred after the 1917 Russian Revolution, when Soviet plans for a new Marxist utopia included the total eradication of all religion. Even though the Soviet Union's attempt to secularize its society was quite successful at crushing the institutional and ritual manifestations of religion, its leaders were surprised at the persistence of religious belief. Froese's account reveals how atheism, when taken to its extreme, can become as dogmatic and oppressive as any religious faith and illuminates the struggle for individual expression in the face of social repression.
Synopsis
and#147;The story of the survival of religion in the Soviet Union is one of the great surprises of the end of the twentieth century. Indeed, it is so surprising that many social scientists write it off, attribute it to cultural nationalism, or ignore it. It is assumed that religion simply was given a temporary reprieve and would shortly succumb to 'secularization.' Professor Froese demolishes this assumption.and#8221;and#151;Andrew Greeley, author of
The Catholic Imagination"The Plot to Kill God is refreshingly creative in bringing evidence from a neglected but hugely important case to bear on thinking through social scientific theories of religion. This is an important contribution to a field greatly in need of just this kind of solid historical case analysis.and#8221;and#151;Christian Smith, University of Notre Dame
and#8221;A wonderful book that will break the hearts of Richard Dawkins and all the other angry atheists. After more than 70 years of intensive educational efforts and brutal persecution of religion, there were no fewer believers in Russia than in the United States.and#8221;and#151;Rodney Stark
and#147;'Scientific' socialism in communist countries turned out to be a hollow faith incapable of replacing more traditional religions. Paul Froese beautifully shows why, and how this provides us with useful lessons about the continuing power of religion today.and#8221;and#151;Daniel Chirot, University of Washington
"Froese compellingly tests many theories about the causes of religious belief, strength, and resurgence. The Plot to Kill God highlights the close link between human nature and religious faith, thus making a broad argument about the anthropological foundation of religion while also using the tools of social science to advance our knowledge, concepts and theories about religion and society."and#151;Margarita Mooney, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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