General Books
For a full list of books and DVDs go to - www.kpress.com.au
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AN
EYE FOR THE TROPICS Images of Jamaica and the Bahamas as tropical paradises full of palm trees, white sandy beaches, and inviting warm water seem timeless. Surprisingly, the origins of those images can be traced back to the roots of the islands tourism industry in the 1880s. As Krista A. Thompson explains, in the late nineteenth century, tourism promoters, backed by British colonial administrators, began to market Jamaica and the Bahamas as picturesque tropical paradises. They hired photographers and artists to create carefully crafted representations, which then circulated internationally via postcards and illustrated guides and lectures. Illustrated with more than one hundred images, including many in color, An Eye for the Tropics is a nuanced evaluation of the aesthetics of the tropicalizing images and their effects on Jamaica and the Bahamas. Thompson describes how representations created to project an image to the outside world altered everyday life on the islands. Hoteliers imported tropical plants to make the islands look more like the images. Many prominent tourist-oriented spaces, including hotels and famous beaches, became off-limits to the islands black populations, who were encouraged to act like the disciplined, loyal colonial subjects depicted in the pictures. Analyzing the work of specific photographers and artists who created tropical representations of Jamaica and the Bahamas between the 1880s and the 1930s, Thompson shows how their images differ from the English picturesque landscape tradition. Turning to the present, she examines how tropicalizing images are deconstructed in works by contemporary artistsincluding Christopher Cozier, David Bailey, and Irénée Shawat the same time that they remain a staple of postcolonial governments vigorous efforts to attract tourists. First edition 2006,
cardcover, 368 pages, B&W and colour photos, index $50.00 |
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IN
SEARCH OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY Controversy swirled
around the Black Panthers from the moment the revolutionary black nationalist
Party was founded in Oakland, California, in 1966. Since that time, the
group that J. Edgar Hoover called the single greatest threat to
the nations internal security has been celebrated and denigrated,
deified and vilified. Rarely, though, has it received the sort of nuanced
analysis offered in this rich interdisciplinary collection. Historians,
along with scholars in the fields of political science, English, sociology,
and criminal justice, examine the Panthers and their present-day legacy
with regard to revolutionary violence, radical ideology, urban politics,
popular culture, and the media. The book looks at how the Party's use
of revolutionary aesthetics, and they show how the Panthers manipulated
and were manipulated by the media. Illuminating some of the complexities
involved in placing the Panthers in historical context, this collection
demonstrates that the scholarly search for the Black Panthers has only
just begun. Contributors: Bridgette Baldwin, Davarian L. Baldwin, David
Barber, Rod Bush, James T. Campbell, Tim Lake, Jama Lazerow, Edward P.
Morgan, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Roz Payne, Robert O. Self, Yohuru Williams
and Joel Wilson $50.00 |
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PARADOXICAL
PLATYPUS David
Fleay is known as the Founder of Conservation in Australia. He was the
first person to breed the platypus in captivity an event not repeated
for another 50 years. This new edition of David Fleays classic book Paradoxical
Platypus, is introduced by Michael Archer, as well as a forward by
Dr Steve Van Dyck, Senior Curator of Vertebrates at the the Queensland
Museum. Originally printed in 1980, this ground-breaking book laid the
foundation for research in this field and offers a fascinating insight
into a remarkable Australian. $40.00 |
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GLOBAL
INDIGENOUS MEDIA In this exciting interdisciplinary
collection, scholars, activists, and media producers explore the emergence
of Indigenous media: forms of media expression conceptualized, produced,
and created by Indigenous peoples around the globe. Whether discussing
Maori cinema in New Zealand or activist community radio in Colombia, the
contributors describe how native peoples use both traditional and new
media to combat discrimination, advocate for resources and rights, and
preserve their cultures, languages, and aesthetic traditions. By representing
themselves in a variety of media, Indigenous peoples are also challenging
misleading mainstream and official state narratives, forging international
solidarity movements, and bringing human rights violations to international
attention. Global
Indigenous Media addresses Indigenous self-representation across many
media forms, including feature film, documentary, animation, video art,
television and radio, the Internet, digital archiving, and journalism.
The volumes sixteen essays reflect the dynamism of Indigenous media-making
around the world. One contributor examines animated films for children
produced by Indigenous-owned companies in the United States and Canada.
Another explains how Indigenous media producers in Burma (Myanmar) work
with NGOs and outsiders against the countrys brutal regime. Still
another considers how the Ticuna Indians of Brazil are positioning themselves
in relation to the international community as they collaborate in creating
a CD-ROM about Ticuna knowledge and rituals. In the volumes closing
essay, Faye Ginsburg points out some of the problematic assumptions about
globalization, media, and culture underlying the term digital age
and claims that the age has arrived. $50.00 |
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DRAWING
SHADOWS TO STONE This
book features a collection of photographs from an early anthropological
expedition to the North West Coast of Canada, Alaska and Siberia. In 1897
Morris Jessup, president of the American Museum of Natural History in
New York, sponsored a five-year expedition to the North Pacific. Under
the Direction of anthropologist Franz Boaz, research teams studied the
cultural and biological similarities and differences among the several
peoples living on both sides of the Bering Strait, the presumed route
of migration from Asia to North America. The immense research project
left a legacy of classic ethnographies, irreplaceable museum collections,
and some three thousand photographs. $40.00 |
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AUSTRALIENATION Australienation draws
from three decades of John Ogden's work in Australia. With a provocative
mix of directness, humanitarianism and humor, this quietly subversive
book addresses the process of reconciliation between Australia's Indigenous
peoples and the many cultures that came later. $40.00 |
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A
DISTANT PLACE, A DIFFERENT VOICE A beautifully
illustrated book featuring photographs by Susan Turner who has spent fourteen
of the past twenty years living in Papua New Guinea. These photographs
reach far beyond a visitor's curiosity or a researcher's ethnography.
Her view is much more from the inside than from the outside. The Indigenous
people featured in these photographs are gracious and natural collaborators.
These tender yet authoritative photographs show remarkable people in their
work as hunters, gatherers, and farmers, sharing the hope and persistence
that are at the centre of their lives. Each book is signed by Susan Turner. $30.00 |
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PROPHETS
OF THE HOOD Imani
Perry considers the art, politics and culture of Black American hip hop
through an analysis of song lyrics, the words of the prophets of the hood.
Her innovative analysis revels in the artistry of hip hop, revealing it
as an art of innovation, not deprivation. The author offers detailed readings
of the lyrics of many hip hop artists, including Ice Cube, Public Enemy,
De La Soul, KRS-One, Outkasts, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Tupac Shakur,
Lil' Kim, Biggie Smalls, Nas, Method Man, Lauryn Hill and Foxy Brown.
She focuses on the cultural foundations of the music and on the form and
narrative features of the songs-the call and response, the reliance on
the break, the use of metaphor, and the recurring figures of the trickster
and the outlaw. Hip hop, she suggests, airs a much wider, more troubling
range of Black experience than was projected during the civil rights era.
It provides a unique public space where the sacred and the profane impulses
within African American culture unite. $50.00 |
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THE SPIRIT AND
THE FLESH An important book that brings together a wealth of information on the status of gender-variant men in a wide variety of Native American societies. Walter L. Williams combines historical research with his own important and controversial fieldwork to explore the religious, social, gender and sexual aspects of the berdache tradition. An acclaimed authority on the subject, Williams is the first outside observer to participate in both the public rituals and private lives of berdaches in various tribes. reprinted
1996, card cover, 346 pages, illustrations, B&W photos, index $40.00 |
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MAKING
BLACK HARVEST After
the death of his beloved wife and film-maker partner, Robin Anderson,
Bob Connolly read her diaries from the year they had spent filming a vicious
tribal struggle in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Living in a grass
hut with their two-year-old daughter Katherine, and operating their own
camera and sound equipment they recorded 60 hours of footage and the result,
the feature-length documentary 'Black Harvest', won awards all around
the world. Using Robins diaries as his inspiration, augmented by 60 letters
he wrote in the field, Connolly has written a narative that not only sheds
light on film-making, but honestly recounts the pair's moral dilemmas
as they document the unfolding disaster that overwhelms the people they
lived among. $30.00 |
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PATHWAYS
TO INDEPENDENCE Written
by the wife of the former Administrator for Papua New Guinea, Sir Donald
Cleland. This book is a warm personal account of the life and customs
of the people of Papua New Guinea, combined with a detailed record of
political life and the events leading to Independence. $20.00 |
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TWO
WOMEN, TWO WORLDS One of
them grew up in a Park Avenue apartment, haunted by a painful childhood,
deserted by her father, her mentally ill mother committed to a hospital.
She became a physcotherapist. The other grew up in a dirt-floor hut shared
by pigs, in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea. She married a polygamist
whose family gave "bride price" to her family and whose fifth
wife attacked her with a knife. She became a feminist activist. Somehow,
they met. With the heart of a mother and the attuned intellect of an experienced
United States psychotherapist, Audrey McCollum explores the life of Pirip
Kuru. McCollum discovers that she needs to suspend her Western feminist
perspective in order to see Pirip clearly. The more she discovers about
Pirip the more she discovers about herself. Her poignant memories lend
an incredible strength to a story of cross-cultural understanding and
gender equality. $30.00 |
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RENEWAL OR CHAOS This book examines the political and economic trends which are shaping Indonesia's future. The contributors are leading politicians, business people, academics and international journalists with a deep knowledge of Indonesia. They include Dr Dewi Fortuna Anwar, the foriegn affairs adviser to Soeharto's successor, President Habibie. Other contributors include Dr Amien Rais, John McBeth, Patrick Walters, Marcus Mietzner, Kevin Evens, Richard Borsuk, Asep Suryahadi, Jamie Mackie, Amien Rais, Laksamana Sukardi, Franz Magnis-Suseno and Sofyan Wanandi. first
edition 1999, card cover, 256 pages, forward, glossary, tables, graphs,
index $30.00 |
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SKULL
WARS When
a 9,000-year-old human skeleton washed out of a Washington riverbank in
1996, it ignited a controversy that has not stopped burning. The controversy
and resulting lawsuit raised the fundamental question of 'who owns history'.
Archaeologists proclaimed the skeleton one of the most important finds
of the century and proceeded to plan extensive scientific analysis, while
Native Americans declared such studies a desecration and demanded the
skeleton for reburial. An acrimonious and highly public argument ensued,
complete with lawsuit. $40.00 |
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YAQUI MYTHS
AND LEGENDS These
legends were collected in 1942 from the Yaqui people, from the border
region of Northern Mexico and Arizona. The Yaqui conception of the world
is considerably different from that of their Mexican and United States
neighbours. $25.00 |
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DONALD
THOMSON'S MAMMALS AND FISHES OF NORTHERN AUSTRALIA A unique
record of the work of a brilliant zoologist and anthropologist. Included
are a superb collection of original black and white photographs taken
in the harsh conditions of northern Australia in the 1930s and 40s. Each
species covered includes original notes by Thomson, locality map, comments
by authors and where possible, an identification photo and measurements.
The text includes notes from diaries and records that Thomson kept on
his travels. Included is a glossary of Aboriginal language names and photographs
of many of the Aboriginal people he encountered in Arnhem Land and Cape
York. $50.00
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DAVID
FLEAY'S WORLD OF WEDGE-TAILS This
book brings together the writings of David Fleay as he attempted to educate
his fellow Australians on the attributes of the Wedge-tailed Eagle. A
bird that was once seen as an enemy to the pastoral industry and was eventually
granted total protection. Then the common sight of rows of Wedge-tail
bodies strung along barbed wire fences, those gruesome trophies, disappeared
from the rural scene. David Fleay's final success in breeding the Wedge-tailed
Eagle in captivity took place in 1977 after 42 years of dedicated attempts.
These writings show the total admiration and respect expressed by David
Fleay for the Wedge-tailed Eagles. $30.00 |
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ANIMALS
FIRST Dr David
Fleay's success have been many, the only succesful and scientifically
documented platypus breeding in captivity and he milked the first taipan
for anti-venene production in 1950. After working for several decades
in Victoria he established his own Fauna Reserve at West Burleigh in south-east
Queensland in 1952. He co-founded the Wildlife Preservation Society of
Queensland in 1962 and wrote a weekly newspaper column for over 30 years.
Because of his dedication and persistance to create interest in native
fauna and flora, Australians today are much more aware of the uniqueness
and value of the bush and its wonderful inhabitants. He was a true trail-blazer
for all who have followed in his footsteps. $50.00 |
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