Books

The Soviets are often viewed as insatiable industrialists who saw nature as a force to be tamed and exploited. Song of the Forest counters this assumption, uncovering significant evidence of Soviet conservation efforts in forestry, particularly under Josef Stalin. Stephen Brain profiles the leading Soviet-era conservationists, agencies, and administrators, and their efforts to formulate forest policy despite powerful ideological differences.

In this original cultural history, Ernesto Capello analyzes the formation of memory, myth, and modernity through the eyes of Quito’s diverse populations. By employing Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of chronotopes, Capello views the configuration of time and space in narratives that defined Quito’s identity and its place in the world. To Capello, these tropes began to crystallize at the end of the nineteenth century, serving as a tool for distinct groups who laid claim to history for economic or political gain during the upheavals of modernism.

Through this study of the province of Nizhnii Novgorod in the nineteenth century, far from the power centers of Petersburg or Moscow, Evtuhov demonstrates how almost everything we thought we knew about Russian society was wrong. Instead of ignorant peasants, we find skilled farmers, artisans and craftsmen, and tradespeople. Instead of a powerful central state, we discover effective local projects and initiative in abundance. Instead of universal ignorance we are shown a lively cultural scene. Most of all, instead of an all-defining Russian exceptionalism we find a world similar to many other European societies.

Winner of the 2012 ASEEES Vucinich Book Prize

This volume chronicles the changing forms of indigenous engagement with the Ecuadorian state since the early nineteenth century that grew into the strongest unified indigenous movement in Latin America. Nine case studies examine how indigenous peoples have attempted to claim control over state formation in order to improve their position in society. It concludes with four comparative essays that place indigenous organizational strategies in Ecuador within a larger Latin American historical context.

A captivating history of consumer culture in Russia from the 1880s to the early 1930s. Hilton highlights the critical role of consumerism as a vehicle for shaping class and gender identities, modernity, urbanism, and as a mechanism of state power in the transition from tsarist autocracy to Soviet socialism.

Foreword by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Translated by Parmen Leontovitsch

In this highly original study, Victor Leontovitsch offers a reinterpretation of liberalism in a uniquely Russian form. He documents the struggles to develop civil society and individual liberties in imperial Russia up until their ultimate demise in the face of war, revolution, and the collapse of the old regime.

This is the first English-language translation of Leontovitsch’s monumental work, which was originally published to critical acclaim in German in 1957.

In republican Colombia, salt became an important source of revenue not just to individuals, but to the state, which levied taxes on it and in some cases controlled and profited from its production. Focusing his study on the town of La Salina, Joshua M. Rosenthal presents a fascinating glimpse into the workings of the early Colombian state, its institutions, and their interactions with local citizens during this formative period.

Sanders examines the rise of environmental activism in Seattle amidst the “urban crisis” of the 1960s and its aftermath. Seattle’s activists came to influence everything from industry to politics, planning, and global environmental movements.

This volume presents an original analysis of the role of sound in Latin American and Caribbean societies, from the late nineteenth century to the present. The contributors examine the importance of sound in the purveyance of power, gender roles, race, community, religion, and populism. They also demonstrate how sound is essential to the formation of citizenship and nationalism.

Urban Rivers examines urban interventions on rivers through politics, economics, sanitation systems, technology, and societies; how rivers affected urbanization spatially, in infrastructure, territorial disputes, and in flood plains, and via their changing ecologies. Providing case studies from Vienna to Manitoba, the chapters assemble geographers and historians in a comparative survey of how cities and rivers interact from the seventeenth century to the present.

Bound Lives chronicles the lived experience of race relations in northern coastal Peru during the colonial era. Rachel Sarah O’Toole examines how Andeans and Africans negotiated and employed casta, and in doing so, constructed these racial categories. This study highlights the tenuous interactions of colonial authorities, indigenous communities, and enslaved populations and shows how the interplay between colonial law and daily practice shaped the nature of colonialism and slavery.

Winner of the 2013 Perœ Flora Tristan Prize from the Peru Section of theLatin American Studies Association

Transition Cinema documents the critical role filmmakers, the film industry, and state regulators played in Argentina’s volatile and unfinished transition from dictatorship to democracy. Jessia Stites Mor shows how, during periods of both military repression and civilian rule, the state moved to control political film production and its content, distribution, and exhibition. She also reveals the strategies that the industry, independent filmmakers, and film activists employed to comply with or circumvent these regulations.

The first English-language study of Soviet culture clubs in Kyrgyzstan. These clubs profoundly influenced the future of Kyrgyz cultural identity and fostered the work of many artists. Ali Igmen also chronicles the remarkable agency of the Kyrgyz people, who employed available resources to meld their own heritage with Soviet and Russian ideologies and form artistic expressions that continue to influence Kyrgyzstan today.

An original transnational history of Russia and Germany during the critical era of the world wars. By examining the mutual perceptions and misperceptions within each country, the contributors reveal the psyche of the Russian-German dynamic and its use as a powerful political and cultural tool.

Jorge Nallim chronicles the decline of liberalism in Argentina during the volatile period between two military coups—the 1930 overthrow of Hip—lito Yrigoyen and the deposing of Juan Per—n in 1955. Nallim documents a wide range of locations where liberalism was claimed and ultimately marginalized in the pursuit of individual agendas. He demonstrates how liberalism became a vital and complex factor in the metamorphosis of modern history in Argentina and Latin America as well.