University of California Press Blog

Christian Youth Culture and Music

On April 30th, Brittany Shoot of Religion Dispatches, interviewed Eileen Luhr, author of Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture (UC Press, January 2009). Below, are a couple of questions Luhr answered. Please read the rest of the interview entitled, "Christian Punk Meets American Pop; Evangelicals in the ’Burbs."

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In Witnessing Suburbia, you briefly explain the roots of your academic interest in the convergence of popular culture, music, and evangelism. Can you say more about how you came to write the book?

My interest in Christian conservatism began when I was home from college and watching the 1992 Republican National Convention. The convention took place at a bad time for Republicans—the Cold War had ended and George H.W. Bush had raised taxes despite a pledge not to. As a result, he didn’t have much to run on other than the concept of “family values,” which the Republicans invoked following the riots in Los Angeles (this was when Dan Quayle condemned the TV character “Murphy Brown” for having a child out of wedlock in a speech to the Commonwealth Club).

In Houston, Pat Buchanan gave a primetime speech in which he declared a “cultural war” for the “soul of America.” I was appalled by the speech, but I had siblings who thought it was great. So my initial interest in the topic was that “family values” could provoke vastly different reactions—I found it exclusive, but others found it inclusive. A few years later, I went to graduate school to write about the culture of “family values,” and I found that not much had been written about the music and popular culture of Christians.

What was your favorite part of your research?

My favorite research was for the chapter about Christian metal bands. I was never a fan of “mainstream” metal music, so I felt that I could treat both Christian and “secular” bands fairly. Still, I found the claims and the stunts to be pretty outrageous.

Christian bands had some really strange ideas and some interesting justifications for wearing makeup and having long hair. I had a database of hundreds of Christian metal bands, and I poured through all kinds of fan magazines to follow them. My favorite anecdote is the one about an obscure band from Texas called Stryken. They attended a Motley Crue concert wearing futuristic suits of armor. They somehow managed to get a 14’ x 8’ wooden cross into the arena (who knows what people bring to these shows?) and took it to the area in front of the stage. They were eventually kicked out of the concert for proselytizing.

What was the most surprising thing you discovered?

In researching chapter two, which looks at Christian youth subcultures, I found a really interesting punk zine called “Thieves and Prostitutes” that had intricate artwork (I believe one of the editors is now a tattoo artist) and articles that tried to claim Jesus as the original punk. A student in Florida was suspended from school for distributing the zine, in part because the principal misunderstood what the art signified—he was afraid it was blasphemous. The 700 Club featured the suspended student because they felt his religious rights were violated by the school. This was one of the moments where political and cultural activism intersected.

* To read the rest of the interview, please visit the Religion Dispatches website.

* Special thanks to Religion Dispatches for letting us post an excerpt of the article.

Ocean: Reflections on a Century of Exploration

Wolf H. Berger is Distinguished Research Professor at the Geosciences Research Division of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He is also the author of Ocean: Reflections on a Century of Exploration, which was published by UC Press in April 2009. To learn more about the author, please visit his website and read his blog entry below.

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By: Wolf H. Berger

Consider some simple questions such as these: Why are there mountains and why do they occur in chains? Why are the sediments of the deep sea only a few hundred meters thick? Why did whales grow so large, and why are the biggest ones living in our own time? (This last question was raised by Herman Melville in his book Moby Dick.) What is the largest daily migration of organisms on the planet and why did it arise?

How many among our friends would be able to address questions such as these in a reasoned way? How many of the teachers of our children would? Not that I have the answers. But rational discussion is possible, given sufficient background.

The aim of the book is to deepen the understanding of the workings of the ocean, for all who are interested in the sea. The target audience especially includes teachers of ocean sciences, from middle to high school and into college. It is because of my contact with teachers, in education events involving walks along the beach and lectures regarding the essence of ocean sciences, that I realized the need for a friendly guide to the sea – a book comprehensive enough to allow for looking up common concepts and elementary facts, but steering clear of the conventional textbook format. What was called for, I felt, is a focus on the evolution of essential ideas about the environment that is the ocean, and the life within it. Detail – the wonderful gift of meticulous observation – should come into play only to illustrate the process of building thought models of a comprehensive scale. In pursuing this goal, I had the benefit of formal training in the major fields of the natural sciences with an emphasis in geology, paleontology, and oceanography, and of many years of teaching introductory and advanced courses in oceanography. Equally useful information accrued from several decades of research in ocean ecology and sedimentation, with a focus on the carbon cycle, including its behavior within the ice ages and before their onset. I also had the benefit of fruitful interaction with many colleagues at Scripps and other major oceanographic institutions. Scripps historian Betty Shor, in the early years of the project (which took some ten years), was able to focus my general interest in the history of scientific ideas into links with Scripps history, which made allusions to the evolution of concepts plain and factual where they might have remained vague and tentative.

In essence, the book became an exercise in communicating something that has been called “Ocean Literacy,” a special case of Earth literacy. Earth literacy has at least two great benefits: a sense of delight at living on this very special planet and an ability to follow discussions about human impacts. The motivation and skills that derive from Earth literacy allow for both effective teaching and effective participation in Earth stewardship.

Breaking the Chain: How Businesses Can End Slavery

Years ago, historian Ron Soodalter came across an account of slavery in modern-day America. Digging further, he learned the disturbing truth: slavery is thriving all over the world, including the United States. Soodalter, who has written extensively about slavery, recently joined Kevin Bales, leading expert on modern slavery and president of the organization Free the Slaves, to write The Slave Next Door and help put an end to human trafficking. As Bales explains above, companies, governments, and individuals all play important roles in the business of slavery, and must work together to eliminate it.

Citing a U.S. State Department study, Bales and Soodalter estimate that between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the US and enslaved every year. Some are tricked, promised a job or education abroad; others are stolen from the streets and forced to work in squalid and dangerous conditions for the rest of their lives. There are slaves working in almost every industry: in agriculture, construction, factories, restaurants, and brothels, and in people's homes. A few manage to escape, but most do not. In a two-part post on the Human Trafficking Project blog, Soodalter places slavery as “the second or third most lucrative criminal enterprise of our time, after drugs, and maybe guns." (read more here and here). With an estimated 27 million victims worldwide, slavery is a silent scourge—few perpetrators are ever caught, and few victims have the opportunity to tell their stories. 

In the above video, also posted on the Human Trafficking Project blog, Bales explains how businesses and consumers fit into the pattern of slavery: “If you’re buying and selling [a product that uses slavery]… you’re involved." He describes how companies can form effective antislavery networks: “It’s all about teamwork. The consumer works with the company. The company works with the government. The government works with the antislavery organizations...We all get together and we can solve this problem.” In The Slave Next Door, Bales and Soodalter give a powerful voice to modern-day slavery, and show how to achieve a slavery-free future.

New Book Trailer: Elephant Reflections

We invite you to watch our latest book trailer for Elephant Reflections (UC Press, April 2009). Please check back, as we continue to add more book trailers and videos! To view our video library, please visit our UC Press video page or our You Tube Channel. As always, Happy Viewing!

Tales of God's Friends

John Renard is Professor of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. His many books include Seven Doors to Islam: Spirituality and the Religious Life of Muslims, Windows on the House of Islam, and Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment, and Servanthood, all from UC Press. His most recent endeavor was writing Tales of of God's Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Translation, which was published by UC Press in April 2009. Below, he shares the inspirations for his books.

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By: John Renard

One of the best ways to get to the heart of a religious or cultural tradition other than your own is to encounter, in person or in stories, truly exemplary characters from that religion or culture. Six or seven years ago, I began searching for material I could use to teach a university course on popular and influential religious personalities in Islamic history and tradition. There were plenty of studies on individual characters from specific cultures and times. To my surprise, I could not find - in any language - a single broad global thematic overview of the immense subject of the kind of religiously important Muslims that some other traditions call "saints." As I worked on Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment, and Servanthood, published by UCPress in 2008, it was equally apparent that no single volume provided English translations of classic stories of Friends of God from across the world and through Islamic history. Tales of God's Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Translation offers a collection of marvelous stories, from the ninth to the twentiety centuries, and from Morocco to China. It is my hope that these stories will put readers in touch with the "human" dimension of Islam so often missing in the daily blare of negative stories about Islam and Muslims.

Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture

Allison J. Pugh is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Virginia. Pugh's latest book, Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture was published by UC Press in February 2009. For more information on Pugh and work, please visit her website and her blog, Care Work Live. In her blog entry below, she talks about how recent economic woes effect parental spending.

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By: Allison J. Pugh

Apparently, the age of consumption is over.  Time Magazine is proclaiming this the era of the New Frugality.  The New York Times conducted a poll reporting that 71 percent of Americans say they've cut back on luxuries.  The Wall Street Journal contended there was "good reason" to believe that America's turn to thrift will outlast the recession.

To be sure, the recent economic dislocations are profound.  There is no doubt that many people are cutting back where they can.  But what counts as "luxuries"?  What are viewed as the basics, the fundamental priorities for a strapped budget?  What is consumption for, anyway?

For the children I observed for three years in Oakland, Calif., spending on things as mundane as GameBoys or Magic cards served as critical markers of belonging in their social worlds.  Had they seen that recent movie the girl sitting nearby just mentioned?  Could they talk about that kind of Lunchable, what came on the tray, what it tasted like?  Had they been to Marine World? Kids continually had to negotiate their way in and out of conversations that formed a sort of "economy of dignity," a system of fleeting moments of belonging.

What did they do when they did not own or had not experienced whatever everyone else was talking about?  Most children had multiple strategies for handling those incidents, strategies that I explore in my book Longing and Belonging.   While they could manage those difficult moments, however, children up and down the class ladder also disliked them intensely as felt instances of deprivation.

Parents felt the ensuing pressure, and in most cases, even under dire economic conditions, responded by making sure children had what they needed to participate in the social world at school.  I visited with one mother who bought her daughter a full bedroom set, even though she herself was sleeping on the floor.  Even when financial necessity forces parents to reshuffle creditors, they often put their child's desires first.

At the same time, when parents talked to me about their buying habits, what they reported was not quite as straightforward as those news reports of cutting back on "luxuries" suggest.  Affluent parents would tell me how little they bought, maintaining that they were not materialistic or spendy.  Low-income parents would tell me how much they bought, how they could really take care of their child's needs and desires.  Both seemed to view their kids' consumer desires as the psychological need to be normal.  Is that a "luxury"?  Only to those few parents who actually did resist, who had the convictions or biographies that inured them to the social risks of their children's difference from others, risks that their children bore on their own at school or in the neighborhood.

We don't know exactly how most American households will respond to the changing economic tides, where they will reduce, where they will not.  The spending data are not yet in, despite the trend pieces and poll data.  But without change in the root causes of spending on children -- the risks and fear of difference, the paramount importance of commodities in determining normalcy, and thus belonging -- parents may be reserving the New Frugality for themselves while for their children resorting to some of the Old Consumerism.

National Day of Silence

On April 17th, Kate Harding of Salon.com wrote an article called "No One Will Miss You," highlighting the 13th Annual National Day of Silence "to bring attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment and effective responses." In the article, Harding mentions a few teens who took their lives after being repeatedly taunted and ridiculed by their peers and even school adminstrators.

Harding also quotes The New York Times blogger, Judith Warner and C.J. Pascoe, author of Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (UC Press, June 2007). Harding writes:

"Judith Warner wrote about both Carl Walker-Hoover and Eric Mohat, a 17-year-old who shot himself after a bully flat-out suggested he should, adding 'no one will miss you.' And once again, the tormenters were focused on the victim's failure to conform to gender norms, so the bullying manifested as vicious homophobia. 'Eric liked theater, played the piano and wore bright clothing, a lawyer for his family told ABC news, and so had long been subject to taunts of "'gay,' 'fag,' 'queer' and 'homo.'" As Warner puts it, 'The message to the most vulnerable, to the victims of today's poisonous boy culture, is being heard loud and clear: to be something other than the narrowest, stupidest sort of guy's guy, is to be unworthy of even being alive.' She quotes one teenage boy who told author C.J. Pascoe, ' To call someone gay or fag is like the lowest thing you can call someone. Because that's like saying that you're nothing.' Pascoe herself, who spent 18 months studying the culture in a Northern California high school, says that the boys there 'have the sense that to be a man means something and is incredibly important ... To not be a man is to not be fully human and that's terrifying.' To not be a man is to not be fully human. To be gay is to be nothing. In case anyone was unclear on the connection between homophobia and misogyny, there you go."

Read the article "No One Will Miss You" in it's entirety.

Read the article "Dude You've Got Problems."

Podcast with Neil Smelser, Author of The Odyssey Experience

On April 21, 2009, Deborah Harper, President of Psychjourney, interviewed Neil J. Smelser. Smelser is University Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books, including The Social Edges of Psychoanalysis, Problematics of Sociology, and Social Paralysis and Social Change, all from UC Press. He is also the author of The Odyssey Experience: Physical, Social, Psychological, and Spiritual Journeys, which was published by UC Press in February 2009.

Listen to the audio interview with Smelser on psychjourney.com

Download and listen to the Smelser podcast

Taste Fine Wines, Visit Old California, and Explore the History of Life on Earth

UC Press will unveil three brand-new series this fall. The new arrivals travel to Champagne, Tuscany, and colonial California, and to the forefront of systematic biology. The fall season also marks the debut of UC Publishing Services (UCPubS), a sustainable system combining print and digital publishing for scholarly books.

UC Press has about one hundred and thirty series in print. They introduce students to ancient philosophies, chronicle excavations of hominid remains in Ethiopia’s Middle Awash region, celebrate food and culture, reveal California's natural wonders, and explore many other subjects. The new series, The World’s Finest Wines, Western Histories, and Species and Systematics, each have two books due this fall.

The experienced palate can trace a glass of Chianti back to the sprawling vineyards of Tuscany, and a celebratory sip of Champagne back to its namesake province in rural France. In THE WORLD’S FINEST WINES series, the experts behind World of Fine Wine magazine profile these and other classic regions, capturing each area's complex character. In The Finest Wines of Tuscany and Central Italy, Nicholas Belfrage visits more than ninety producers, selects his one hundred favorite wines, and reviews all the best vintages. In The Finest Wines of Champagne, Michael Edwards takes us on a terroir-based journey through the ultimate sparkling wine region. Exploring both traditions and trends, he tastes the most interesting wines, including two decades of vintages. 

SPECIES AND SYSTEMATICS is a scholarly series that investigates fundamental and practical aspects of systematics and taxonomy. Malte Ebach, co-author of Comparative Biogeography, is the series editor.  
    Earth and life share a complex history that stretches far beyond the origin of our species. Yet if we look closely enough at the mountains, oceans, and organisms of today, the entire history of life on earth can unfold before our eyes. To unlock these elusive secrets, biogeographers analyze patterns of biodiversity, species distribution, and geological history. In the landmark text Comparative Biogeography, Lynne Parenti and Malte Ebach outline a comparative approach to biogeography, rooted in phylogenetic systematics.
    Like organisms themselves, the idea and meaning of “species” has evolved over time. In Species, John Wilkins chronicles this concept's evolution from antiquity to the present. "Few topics have engaged biologists and philosophers more than the concept of species, and arguably no idea is more important for evolutionary science,” says Joel Cracraft of the American Museum of Natural History. Adds UC Berkeley’s Kevin Padian of the book: "This is not the potted history that one usually finds in texts and review articles." 

WESTERN HISTORIES is a new series published by the Huntington Library Press and the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, in partnership with the University of California Press. Drawing on the resources and programs of these institutions, the series enriches our understanding of California and the American West.    
    It is always fascinating to imagine what life was like for those who lived and died before our time. How did the people of the past see themselves and their worlds? In Alta California, Steven Hackel collects nine essays examining individual and collective identity in Spanish California. Innovative and extensively researched, the essays bring to light the perspectives of colonial California’s diverse population.
    In The Father of All, the Oakland Museum of California’s chief history curator Louise Pubols presents an illuminating study of the powerful de la Guerra family of Santa Barbara. Through their story, and analysis of the era’s political and economic upheaval, she reveals how patriarchy functioned through the generations in Spanish and Mexican California. 

UC Press and the California Digital Library are pleased to announce University of California Publishing Services (UCPubS). This integrated system combines print distribution, sales, and marketing services offered by UC Press with the open access digital publishing services provided by the California Digital Library through eScholarship. UCPubS is part of the University of California’s broader effort to ensure a sustainable scholarly publishing system in the service of research and teaching. Here's a preview of the UCPubS books coming this fall:

Nietzsche's Negative Ecologies, by Malcolm Bull, T.J. Clark, & Anthony Cascardi

Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury and Free Speech, by Talal Asad, Judith Butler, Saba Mahmood, & Wendy Brown

Stories from Schools: Case Studies of the California Academic Partnership Program, edited by Alice Kawazoe

Hard Work, Hard Times: Global Volatility and African Subjectives, by Anne-Maria Makhulu, Beth A. Buggenhagen, & Stephen Jackson

Public Health: Underappreciated and Underfunded

David Hemenway is Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and Director of the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center. His previous books include Private Guns, Public Health. Hemenway is also the author of While We Were Sleeping: Success Stories in Injury and Violence Prevention, which was published by UC Press in March 2009. In his fourth blog installment, he explains how important and unappreciated public health is.

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Underappreciated and Underfunded

By: David Hemenway

Public health has long been underappreciated; indeed, surveys show that few Americans have any idea what it is.  Although public health has been far more important than medicine (curative care) in improving our nation’s health, all college undergraduates know about career possibilities in medicine, but few know about careers in public health.

Why did I decide to write While We Were Sleeping?  It was to increase knowledge about public health by highlighting some of its successes.  Public health involves assuring that drinking water is safe, that pollution does not despoil the air, and that diseases such as smallpox, polio, measles and tuberculosis are kept in check.  It involves reducing rates of substance abuse, heart disease and obesity. 

The book illuminates the public health approach for dealing with one particular subset of health issues—injuries (including violence).  Although disease kills more people in the United States than injury, injury disproportionately kills the young.  If you die before the age of 40, you are more likely to die of an injury rather than a disease. 

The focus of public health is prevention.  While almost all the resources for medical care go to treating individual patients after they become ill or injured, public health deals with entire populations— while they are healthy.  The community is the patient, and the goal is to keep everyone in the community healthy.

To explain the difference in approach between public health and medicine, I often use an example from public health research on suicide.  When I give presentations to psychiatrists and other mental health professionals in Massachusetts, I ask why they think Arizona and many other states have higher suicide rates than Massachusetts.  The response is typically not an explanation, but a “they do? I didn’t know that.”  The focus of mental health providers is on the treatment of individual patients.  By contrast, public health is interested in understanding and improving the health of populations.  Both approaches are important.  By the way, the answer to the question is NOT that people in Massachusetts have better mental health than those in Arizona. 

One reason that public health is so underappreciated is that we can’t usually identify which specific individuals have been helped by public health measures.  If you don’t get sick at work because of improvements in indoor air quality, not only do you not know whom to thank, you rarely realize that you have been helped.  The same is true if you don’t get poisoned because the food is safe, or you don’t get run over because the walkway has been separated from the road.  These are all public health initiatives.

Thus a problem for public health funding, particularly compared to funding for medical care, is that there are no grateful public health patients.  I recently spent a few days at one of the leading Boston teaching hospitals.  Not only is every building named—after some rich benefactor rather than an outstanding physician or nurse-- but so is virtually every wing, floor, alcove and seminar room.  By contrast, two of the four buildings at Harvard School of Public Health remain unnamed.

The goal of While We Were Sleeping is to increase appreciation of, and maybe even funding for, an underappreciated activity that has been crucial for our societal advancement-- public health.