SAR Press
Influencing Thought, Creating Change
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From SAR’s founding more than one hundred years ago, the publication and distribution of scholarly research has proven central to its mission. The flagship Advanced Seminar Series, launched in 1970, has been joined over the years by other special series—Resident Scholar, Popular Archaeology, and Arroyo Hondo. The newest series, Global Indigenous Politics, introduced two powerful titles this year: Maxmilian Viatori’s One State, Many Nations on Indigenous rights in Ecuador and Robert Albro’s Roosters at Midnight on Bolivian politics.
The Press also produces many creative and unique titles beyond the series categories, such as this year’s Art in Our Lives: Native Women Artists in Dialogue. In 2010–2011, the press also began offering “print-on-demand” books in order to reissue classic titles that had gone out of print. “As a small scholarly press with a long history of publishing books addressing critical and emerging issues in anthropology and related disciplines, we are pleased to provide our readers access to important books that were previously difficult to find,” said Lynn Thompson Baca, director, SAR Press.
In today’s challenging publishing climate, SAR Press—an oasis of independence dedicated to books that “influence thought and create change”—remains a rare and invaluable resource for scholars, artists, freethinkers, and hungry minds everywhere.
Here are descriptions of a selection of this year’s newly published titles, with links to extensive excerpts, a full list of SAR Press books, and ordering information.
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Indians & Energy Edited by Sherry L. Smith and Brian Frehner The authors consider the complex relationship between development and Indian communities in the Southwest in order to reveal how an understanding of patterns in the past can guide policies and decisions in the future. 2010 |
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Mimbres Lives and Landscapes Edited by Margaret C. Nelson and Michelle Hegmon The well-illustrated essays in this book offer the latest archaeological research on the ancient Mimbres to explain what we know and what questions still remain about men's and women's lives, their sustenance, the changing nature of leadership, and the possible meanings of the dramatic pottery designs. 2010 |
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Roots of Conflict Edited by Patrick V. Kirch Roots of Conflict presents the efforts of a team of social and natural scientists to understand the complex, systemic linkages between land, climate, crops, human populations, and their cultural structures. 2011 |
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Art in Our Lives Edited by Cynthia Chavez Lamar and Sherry Farrell Racette with Lara Evans Art in Our Lives is the culmination of three seminars at SAR's Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) that brought together Native women artists to discuss the balancing of their art practice with their myriad roles, responsibilities, and commitments. 2010 |
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The Work of Sovereignty David Kamper The Work of Sovereignty is a study of organizing campaigns and grassroots, ad hoc collective political actions carried out by employees trying to increase control over their workplaces and their say in the political life of their communities in Indian Country. By studying them, the author takes an on-the-ground approach to tribal labor relations that puts tribal workers at the center of the action. Attending to indigenous peoples as both economic and political members of their community in this way also sheds light on processes of indigenous self-determination that are not always as readily visible as those in courtrooms and tribal council chambers. 2010 |
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One State, Many Nations Maximilian Viatori This book traces the process of self-organization and emergence within Ecuador’s Indigenous movement from 1998 to 2008 for the Zápara nationality, one of the smallest Indigenous groups in Ecuador, to explore the complex role that multiculturalism has played in local identity politics. 2010 |
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Roosters at Midnight Robert Albro Roosters at Midnight is an ethnography about the political lives and careers of a growing urban-dwelling and indigenous constituency that operates primarily within the informal economy in and around the provincial capital Quillacollo. 2010 |
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Pharmaceutical Self Edited by Janis H. Jenkins This book addresses a critical contemporary issue—the worldwide proliferation of pharmaceutical use. The contributors explore questions such as: How are culturally constituted selves transformed by regular ingestion of pharmaceutical drugs? Does “being human” increasingly come to mean not only oriented to drugs but also created and regulated by them? From the standpoint of cultural phenomenology, does this reshape human “being”? 2011 |
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Forces of Compassion Edited by Erica Bornstein and Peter Redfield Suffering and charity have a long history. Both human sorrows and attempted remedies were familiar features of life in earlier eras and religious traditions, however, during the final decades of the twentieth century, natural disasters and civilian casualties of war transformed into “humanitarian crises.” In these recurring dramas presented by international media, an extensive network of interstate entities and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) supplies assistance to victims. 2011 |
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Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico 1694–1875 David M. Brugge Combining archeological evidence with Navajo cultural precepts, David M. Brugge has used the records of the oldest European institution in the American Southwest, the Catholic Church, to shed some light on the practices, causes, and effects of Spanish, Mexican, and American occupation on the Navajo Nation. 2010 |
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Enduring Conquests Edited by Matthew Liebmann and Melissa S. Murphy Enduring Conquests presents new interpretations of Native American experiences under Spanish colonialism and challenges the reader to reexamine long-standing assumptions about the Spanish conquests of the Americas. 2011 |
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Becoming Indian Circe Sturm In Becoming Indian, author Circe Sturm examines Cherokee identity politics and the phenomenon of racial shifting. Racial shifters, as described by Sturm, are people who have changed their racial self-identification from non-Indian to Indian on the US Census. 2011 |
