In the Red Sea Hills of eastern Sudan, where poverty, famines, and conflict loom large, women struggle to gain the status of responsible motherhood through bearing and raising healthy children, especially sons. But biological fate can be capricious in impoverished settings. Amidst struggle for survival and expectations of heroic mothering, women face realities that challenge their ability to fulfill their prescribed roles. Even as the effects of modernity and development, global inequities, and exclusionary government policies challenge traditional ways of life in eastern Sudan and throughout many parts of Africa, reproductive traumas—infertility, miscarriage, children’s illnesses, and mortality—disrupt women’s reproductive health and impede their efforts to achieve the status that comes with fertility and motherhood. In Embodying Honor Amal Hassan Fadlalla finds that the female body is the locus of anxieties about foreign dangers and diseases, threats perceived to be disruptive to morality, feminine identities, and social well-being. As a “northern Sudanese” viewed as an outsider in this region of her native country, Fadlalla presents an intimate portrait and thorough analysis that offers an intriguing commentary on the very notion of what constitutes the “foreign.” Fadlalla shows how Muslim Hadendowa women manage health and reproductive suffering in their quest to become “responsible” mothers and valued members of their communities. Her historically grounded ethnography delves into women’s reproductive histories, personal narratives, and ritual logics to reveal the ways in which women challenge cultural understandings of gender, honor, and reproduction.

In the Red Sea Hills of eastern Sudan, where poverty, famines, and conflict loom large, women struggle to gain the status of responsible motherhood through bearing and raising healthy children, especially sons. But biological fate can be capricious in impoverished settings. Amidst struggle for survival and expectations of heroic mothering, women face realities that challenge their ability to fulfill their prescribed roles. Even as the effects of modernity and development, global inequities, and exclusionary government policies challenge traditional ways of life in eastern Sudan and throughout many parts of Africa, reproductive traumas—infertility, miscarriage, children’s illnesses, and mortality—disrupt women’s reproductive health and impede their efforts to achieve the status that comes with fertility and motherhood. In Embodying Honor Amal Hassan Fadlalla finds that the female body is the locus of anxieties about foreign dangers and diseases, threats perceived to be disruptive to morality, feminine identities, and social well-being. As a “northern Sudanese” viewed as an outsider in this region of her native country, Fadlalla presents an intimate portrait and thorough analysis that offers an intriguing commentary on the very notion of what constitutes the “foreign.” Fadlalla shows how Muslim Hadendowa women manage health and reproductive suffering in their quest to become “responsible” mothers and valued members of their communities. Her historically grounded ethnography delves into women’s reproductive histories, personal narratives, and ritual logics to reveal the ways in which women challenge cultural understandings of gender, honor, and reproduction.

One of the first anthropological studies based on extensive fieldwork in Vietnam in decades, Embodying Morality examines child-rearing in a rural Red River delta commune. It is a sophisticated and intriguing exploration of the ways in which a family system based on principles of male descent influences the moral upbringing and learning of girls and boys. In Vietnamese culture boys alone perpetuate the patrilineal family line; they incorporate the past, present, and future morality, honor, and reputation of their father's lineage. Within this patrilineal universe, girls are viewed as blank sheets of paper and must compensate for this deficiency by embodying tinh cam (sensitivity, sense). Such attitudes play a significant role in the upbringing of girls and boys and in how they learn to use and understand their bodies. Helle Rydstrøm offers fresh data--from audiotapes, videotapes, textbooks, observations in the home and at school--for identifying the transformation of local and educational constructions of females, males, and morality into body styles of girls, boys, women, and men. She highlights the extent to which body performances in daily life produce, reproduce, and challenge widespread northern Vietnamese ideals of femininity and masculinity. The author's highly original application of post-structuralist theory to Vietnam blends epistemology, practice, body, and socialization theories with feminist analysis and relates these to children's learning. By proposing the body as an analytic category that can move feminist theory beyond the impasse of the well-established opposition between sex and gender, Embodying Morality demonstrates vividly how specific cultural elaborations of corporeality are learned, lived, and experienced in contemporary rural Vietnam.

One of the first anthropological studies based on extensive fieldwork in Vietnam in decades, Embodying Morality examines child-rearing in a rural Red River delta commune. It is a sophisticated and intriguing exploration of the ways in which a family system based on principles of male descent influences the moral upbringing and learning of girls and boys. In Vietnamese culture boys alone perpetuate the patrilineal family line; they incorporate the past, present, and future morality, honor, and reputation of their father's lineage. Within this patrilineal universe, girls are viewed as blank sheets of paper and must compensate for this deficiency by embodying tinh cam (sensitivity, sense). Such attitudes play a significant role in the upbringing of girls and boys and in how they learn to use and understand their bodies. Helle Rydstrøm offers fresh data--from audiotapes, videotapes, textbooks, observations in the home and at school--for identifying the transformation of local and educational constructions of females, males, and morality into body styles of girls, boys, women, and men. She highlights the extent to which body performances in daily life produce, reproduce, and challenge widespread northern Vietnamese ideals of femininity and masculinity. The author's highly original application of post-structuralist theory to Vietnam blends epistemology, practice, body, and socialization theories with feminist analysis and relates these to children's learning. By proposing the body as an analytic category that can move feminist theory beyond the impasse of the well-established opposition between sex and gender, Embodying Morality demonstrates vividly how specific cultural elaborations of corporeality are learned, lived, and experienced in contemporary rural Vietnam.

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER "My Grandmother's Hands will change the direction of the movement for racial justice."— Robin DiAngelo, New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology. The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans—our police. My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide. Paves the way for a new, body-centered understanding of white supremacy—how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system. Offers a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing methods, in addition to incisive social commentary. Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, is a therapist with decades of experience currently in private practice in Minneapolis, MN, specializing in trauma, body-centered psychotherapy, and violence prevention. He has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Dr. Phil as an expert on conflict and violence. Menakem has studied with bestselling authors Dr. David Schnarch (Passionate Marriage) and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score). He also trained at Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute.

Military academies have served youth for more than a century with proud traditions of producing graduates who are scholars, leaders, and athletes who adhere to a code of honor and ethical principles as they take the knowledge, skills, and dispositions gained at those academies into higher education, the business world, military service, civic endeavors, and the broader workforce. There is a current gap and need for research that explores the various components of a K-20 military school/college education and how those components successfully produce leaders of character for our military, civic, academic, and business worlds both in the United States and abroad. The Handbook of Research on Character and Leadership Development in Military Schools synthesizes research on the impact of military academies by providing a singular compendium of current academic studies on the graduates of military academies and the communities of which they enter after graduation. The chapters will explore the academics, leadership, character development, citizenship, athletics, and other dimensions of both global and national, and both private and public, military academies. This book is ideal for current leaders, staffs, governing board members, and alumni of military academies both in the United States and internationally along with policymakers, government officials, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the implications of character and leadership development on individuals enrolled in or graduated from military schools.

“A seminal work” on class divisions within the Union Army—“One of the best examples of . . . scholarship on the social history of Civil War soldiers” (The Journal of Southern History). During the Civil War, the Union army appeared cohesive enough to withstand four years of grueling war against the Confederates and to claim victory in 1865. But fractiousness bubbled below the surface of the North’s presumably united front. Internal fissures were rife within the Union army: class divisions, regional antagonisms, ideological differences, and conflicting personalities all distracted the army from quelling the Southern rebellion. In this highly original contribution to Civil War and gender history, Lorien Foote reveals that these internal battles were fought against the backdrop of manhood. Clashing ideals of manliness produced myriad conflicts, as when educated, refined, and wealthy officers (“gentlemen”) found themselves commanding a hard-drinking group of fighters (“roughs”)—a dynamic that often resulted in violence and even death. Based on extensive research into previously ignored primary sources, The Gentlemen and the Roughs uncovers holes in our understanding of the men who fought the Civil War and the society that produced them. Finalist for the 2011 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize

A groundbreaking investigation into the migration of martial arts techniques across continents and centuries The presence of African influence and tradition in the Americas has long been recognized in art, music, language, agriculture, and religion. T. J. Desch-Obi explores another cultural continuity that is as old as eighteenth-century slave settlements in South America and as contemporary as hip-hop culture. In this thorough survey of the history of African martial arts techniques, Desch-Obi maps the translation of numerous physical combat techniques across three continents and several centuries to illustrate how these practices evolved over time and are still recognizable in American culture today. Some of these art traditions were part of African military training while others were for self-defense and spiritual discipline. Grounded in historical and cultural anthropological methodologies, Desch-Obi's investigation traces the influence of well-delineated African traditions on long-observed but misunderstood African and African American cultural activities in North America, Brazil, and the Caribbean. He links the Brazilian martial art capoeira to reports of slave activities recorded in colonial and antebellum North America. Likewise Desch-Obi connects images of the kalenda African stick-fighting techniques to the Haitian Revolution. Throughout the study Desch-Obi examines the ties between physical mastery of these arts and changing perceptions of honor. Including forty-five illustrations, this rich history of the arrival and dissemination of African martial arts in the Atlantic world offers a new vantage for furthering our understanding of the powerful influence of enslaved populations on our collective social history.

This history of African motherhood over the longue durée demonstrates that it was, ideologically and practically, central to social, economic, cultural and political life. The book explores how people in the North Nyanzan societies of Uganda used an ideology of motherhood to shape their communities. More than biology, motherhood created essential social and political connections that cut across patrilineal and cultural-linguistic divides. The importance of motherhood as an ideology and a social institution meant that in chiefdoms and kingdoms queen mothers were powerful officials who legitimated the power of kings. This was the case in Buganda, the many kingdoms of Busoga, and the polities of Bugwere. By taking a long-term perspective from c.700 to 1900 CE and using an interdisciplinary approach - drawing on historical linguistics, comparative ethnography, and oral traditions and literature, as well as archival sources - this book shows the durability, mutability and complexity of ideologies of motherhood in this region.

A study of pregnancy and childbirth customs in Niger, and how it has both a high fertility rate and high rates of maternal and infant mortality. How do women in Niger experience pregnancy and childbirth differently from women in the United States or Europe? Barbara M. Cooper sets out to understand childbirth in a country with the world’s highest fertility rate and an alarmingly high rate of maternal and infant mortality. Cooper shows how the environment, slavery and abolition, French military rule, and the rapid expansion of Islam have all influenced childbirth and fertility in Niger from the nineteenth century to the present day. She sketches a landscape where fear of infertility generates intense competition between communities, ethnicities, and co-wives and creates a culture where concerns about infertility dominate concerns about overpopulation, where illegitimate children are rejected, and where the education of girls is sacrificed in the name of avoiding shame. Given a medical system poorly adapted to women’s needs, a precarious economy, and a political context where it is impossible to address sexuality openly, Cooper discovers that it is little wonder that pregnancy and birth are a woman’s greatest pride as well as a source of grave danger. “Beautifully written, insightful, and full of empathy. A must read for anyone seeking to understand the damaging consequences of neglecting women’s and infants’ health.” —Johanna Schoen, author of Abortion after Roe “Few experiences are more potent than reproduction. Countless Blessings brilliantly unwinds the full import of this potency, tracing a history of demography, bodily peril, parental joy, and social, religious, and political meaning. Cooper’s tremendous skill and creativity as a scholar enable us to see the political stakes of reproduction, even as they are grounded in the intimacies of embodied experience.” —Julie Livingston, author of Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa “Countless Blessings shows how women in Niger and in West Africa have long navigated the various states of social value, personhood, spirituality, and childbirth, and it paints a remarkable picture of how contested and embodied the social and material concerns of childbirth remain for women today.” —Ampson Hagan, Univeristy of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, IJAHS