New Year’s Lessons from the History of Secession
No matter how divided the country is today, no matter the defeats of the past several years, there remains room to be both grateful and vigilant.
Category: December 2017
Ethnographic Analysis of a Social Meal: A Pedagogical Exercise
This assignment provided a great teaching moment to engage students in a critical analysis of the norms and expectations shaping what “traditional” means.
The Business of Holiday Meals
Corporate cookbooks show not only how prior generations of cooks approached the holiday meal, but also how it was shaped by the forces of urban capitalism that continue to inform our holiday tastes and desires.
Festivus as Anti-Capitalist Performance
Understanding Festivus means understanding that the episode and later celebrations were a rejection of both religion and capitalism in a media form that was also increasingly capitalist.
Plain Brown Pinecones are Beautiful, Too: Christmas Presents in Highlights for Children
In dispensing with consumerism at Christmas (and Santa Claus too), Highlights upends traditional gift-giving practices in American families, re-structuring the child-centered celebration of wealth into one focused on gathering as a community.
Waif and Stray on a Hot Christmas Day: Lawless Reflections
Christmas is for family. And for friends, waifs, and strays who join families discovered in their neighborhoods, communities, and workplaces. Who will you be without and with on December 25?
The True Meaning of Chrismukkah
Through the process of assimilation, Hanukkah ultimately took its place alongside Christmas in the pantheon of American consumerism.
Barbed Wire Christmas: Holidays and Incarcerated Japanese Americans
Holidays served as a distraction to the monotony and degradation experienced in the camps. They provided a reminder for what was lost, and an opportunity for authorities to highlight the potential of toeing the line.
The Moses Cemetery: Where Serial Displacement Meets History
People who lived in communities destroyed by urban renewal and gentrification frequently frame their narratives about displacement as theft. They see their homes, businesses, and churches as stolen by capitalism. Spaces for the dead are among those stolen and erased.
The Activist History Review 