A collective case study of photographic culture through the lens of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

A massive quantity of museums’ photographic holdings resides not on gallery walls or archives, but outside of their formal collections, including reference photos and ephemera that are integral to the workings of museums. What Photographs Do explores how museums are defined through their photographic practices. Studied through the prism of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, this collection asks complex and ambiguous questions about how accumulations of photographs create the values, hierarchies, histories, and knowledge systems of a museum ecosystem. Chapters are comprised of short, auto-ethnographic interventions from museum practitioners, from studio photographers and image managers to conservators and non-photographic curators, who address the significance of both historical and contemporary practices of photography in their work, providing an extensive and unique range of accounts of what photographs do in museums while also expanding the critical discourse of both photography and museums.

A robust rationale on what schools should teach and how.

The design of school curricula involves deep thought about the nature of knowledge and its value to learners and society. Such a serious responsibility raises a number of questions: What is knowledge for? What knowledge is important for children to learn? How do we decide what knowledge matters in each school subject? The blurring of distinctions between pedagogy and curriculum, as well as that between experience and knowledge, has resulted in a confusing message for teachers about the part that each plays in the education of children. This book aims to dispel confusion through a robust rationale for what schools should teach, offering key understanding to teachers of the relationship between knowledge and their own pedagogy. This second edition includes new chapters on chemistry, drama, music, and religious education, as well as an updated chapter on biology. A revised introduction reflects on the emerging discourse around decolonizing the curriculum and on the relationship between the knowledge that children encounter at school and in their homes.
 

Through eleven case studies conducted across India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, The Wild East examines a variety of economic sectors and business enterprises that regularly flout the law, such as coal, oil, real estate, and industrial labor. Bridging anthropology and political economy, the case studies explore how state regulative law is ignored or selectively manipulated and reveal the workings of regulated criminal economic systems in which politicians, police, judges, and bureaucrats are closely intertwined. Disrupting the existing literature on South Asia’s informal economy, The Wild East also suggests avenues for future research that will be of critical value to students and scholars of economics, anthropology, sociology, criminology, comparative politics, political science, and international relations.

 

Miniaturization is the creation of small objects that resemble larger ones, usually but not always for purposes different to those of the larger original object. Worlds in Miniature brings together researchers working across various regions, time periods and disciplines to explore the subject of miniaturization as a material culture technique. It offers original contributions to the field of miniaturization through its broad geographical scope, interdisciplinary approach, and deep understanding of miniatures and their diverse contexts.   
Beginning with an introduction by the editors, which offers a guide to studying and comparing miniatures, the following chapters include studies of miniature Neolithic stone circles on Exmoor, Ancient Egyptian miniature assemblages, miniaturization under colonialism as practiced by the Makah People of Washington State, miniature watercraft from India, miniaturized contemporary tourist art of the Warao people of Venezuela, and dioramas on display in the Science Museum. Interspersing the chapters are interviews with miniature-makers, including two miniature boat builders at the National Maritime Museum, Cornwall and a freelance architectural model maker. The interdisciplinary nature of the volume makes it suitable reading for anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, artists, and researchers in related fields across the social sciences.
 

The first extended study in English of the revolutionary memoirs from Shlissel’burg Fortress.

In 1884, sixty-eight prisoners convicted of terrorism and revolutionary activity were transferred to a new maximum-security prison at Shlissel´burg Fortress near St. Petersburg. Inhuman conditions in the prison caused severe mental and physical deterioration among the prisoners, and over half died. However, the survivors fought back to reform the prison and improve the inmates’ living conditions. Their memoirs enshrined their experience in revolutionary mythology and served as an indictment of the Tsarist autocracy’s loss of moral authority. This book features three of these memoirs—translated into English for the first time—as well as an introductory essay that analyzes the memoirs’ construction of a collective narrative of resilience, resistance, and renewal. The first extended study of these memoirs in English, this book uncovers an important episode in the history of political imprisonment. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the Russian revolution, carceral history, penal practice and behaviors, and prison and life writing.