WHO OWNS THE BODY, AND WHEN DOES IT DIE?

(Excerpt from a forthcoming article)

by Colin Dayan, author of The Law is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons

The Supreme Court recently ruled that Henry Skinner, a Texas inmate sentenced to die for killing his girlfriend and her two sons nearly twenty years ago, can ask to test evidence from the scene of the crime—knives, fingernail clippings, blood and hairs, etc.—that might prove his innocence. Texas prosecutors had always refused to consent to the testing. But remedying the violation of Skinner’s civil rights by granting such a request does not mean that the tests will actually be carried out. All it does is add the support of federal civil rights law to the post-trial DNA testing issue. And there is no guarantee that any results will exculpate him. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her opinion, “they might further incriminate Skinner.”

Now, another prisoner on death row has raised questions, not about whether his civil rights have been violated, but about his rights to dispose of his own body—after execution. Christian Longo, in Oregon, guilty of murdering his wife and three children, wants to donate his organs after his execution. The state says he can’t. Who owns the corpse? Does a person who is to be executed have no right to property, even his own body?

*A full version of this piece is forthcoming in Law, Culture, and Humanities, Volume 7, Issue 2 (June 2011).

Can’t get enough baseball? This week’s book giveaway, Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos by Alan Klein, will help fill the gap.

From 1985 to 1994 there existed a significant but unheralded experiment in professional baseball. For ten seasons, the Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos (The Owls of the Two Laredos) were the only team in professional sports to represent two nations. Playing in the storied Mexican League (an AAA affiliate of major league baseball), the “Tecos” had home parks on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, in Laredo, Texas and in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. In true border fashion, Mexican and American national anthems were played before each game, and the Tecos were operated by interests in both cities. Baseball on the Border is the story of the rise and unexpected demise of this surprising team. Anyone with an interest in baseball will be enlightened & entertained by this informative book.

“Read this book, enjoy the characterizations of the players, managers, and administrators … listen to the crowd cheer for their home town heroes, and pause to think, as Klein paints the picture with a masters stroke, of what this [book] can tell us about transnational relations and the impact of sport.”–Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler, authors of Backboards and Blackboards

“The book is very well written. . . . It contributes greatly to the literature on the cultural basis of sport, to our understanding of the manner in which cultural inventions reflect national identity and processes, and substantiates an important insight to the idea that sport may provide a window to ongoing social change.”–Carlos Velez-Ibañez, American Anthropologist

Everyone who LIKES us on our Facebook Page is automatically entered in our weekly book giveaways.

Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos by Alan Klein

The language of winning is so ingrained in the culture that we Americans don’t even notice it. Does all this competition make us happier? Of course not. Listen along as Francesco Duina, author of Winning: Reflections on an American Obsession, joins David Phillippi on the Office Hours podcast. Their lively discussion touches on subjects from popular culture ranging from sports to children to celebrities, including why it makes sense for Budweiser to crown itself “The King of Beers” while the Danish brand Carlsberg is happier to be “Probably the Best Beer in the World.”

Here’s the love with wine and flowers!

Why are we giving away two books this week? First of all, our Facebook Page reached the 2,000 fans milestone over the weekend and 2nd, it’s Valentine’s Day. So to everyone, here’s “the love” and our thanks with some wine and flowers: Ancient Wine by Patrick E. McGovern and Orchids of Australia by John J. Riley.

“Ancient Wine tells a dramatic, factual story of wine’s beginnings at the dawn of civilization 8,000 years ago, bringing to life what I have long believed-wine has been an essential part of the gracious way of life for many cultures. Patrick McGovern takes us on a fascinating journey back to the first experiments in making this marvelous beverage. He shows the central role of wine in human history, with insights drawn from archeology, chemistry, gastronomy, and the arts. Ancient Wine will please everyone who enjoys wine. I heartily recommend it.”–Robert Mondavi, winemaker

“Vast in scope and amazing in detail, this comprehensive guide highlights a different type of orchid on each pair of beautifully designed pages. . . . Banks’ and Riley’s passion for the native orchids of Australia has clearly resulted in one of today’s finest contemporary orchid books. Well written and wonderfully illustrated, Orchids of Australia is one of the most interesting and beautiful guides available.”–The Botanical Artist

Anyone who has or who LIKES us on Facebook this week is in the draw on Friday.

Ancient Wine by Patrick E. McGovern and Orchids of Australia by John J. Riley.

BOOK FACT: About seventy thousand Indians once owned the eastern half of the area that is now the state of Oklahoma, a territory immensely wealthy in farmland, forest, coal mines, and untapped oil pools.

And Still the Waters Run:
The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes
By Angie Debo
One of Princeton University Press’s Notable Centenary Titles.

Debo’s classic work tells the tragic story of the spoliation of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole nations at the turn of the last century in what is now the state of Oklahoma. After their earlier forced removal from traditional lands in the southeastern states–culminating in the devastating ‘trail of tears’ march of the Cherokees–these five so-called Civilized Tribes held federal land grants in perpetuity, or “as long as the waters run, as long as the grass grows.” Yet after passage of the Dawes Act in 1887, the land was purchased back from the tribes, whose members were then systematically swindled out of their private parcels.

The publication of Debo’s book fundamentally changed the way historians viewed, and wrote about, American Indian history. Writers from Oliver LaFarge, who characterized it as “a work of art,” to Vine Deloria, Jr., and Larry McMurtry acknowledge debts to Angie Debo. Fifty years after the book’s publication, McMurtry praised Debo’s work in the New York Review of Books: “The reader,” he wrote, “is pulled along by her strength of mind and power of sympathy.”

Because the book’s findings implicated prominent state politicians and supporters of the University of Oklahoma, the university press there was forced to reject the book in …. for fear of libel suits and backlash against the university. Nonetheless, the director of the University of Oklahoma Press at the time, Joseph Brandt, invited Debo to publish her book with Princeton University Press, where he became director in 1938.

We invite you to browse the book in Google Preview:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/423.html

Dr. Francesco Duina of Bates College recently provided a brief 90-second explanation of his book, Winning: Reflections on an American Obsession on WAMC’s Academic Minute. During the segment, Duina explains the argument and relevance of Winning and explores why the U.S. is consistently outranked on lists of the world’s happiest countries. Whew – that’s a lot for just 90 seconds!

Click here to listen, and here to learn more about the book!

FACT: In 1921 a traveling religious man appeared in eastern British Bengal. Soon residents began to identify this half-naked and ash-smeared sannyasi as none other than the Second Kumar of Bhawal–a man believed to have died twelve years earlier, at the age of twenty-six. So began one of the most extraordinary legal cases in Indian history.

The case would rivet popular attention for several decades as it unwound in courts from Dhaka and Calcutta to London.

A Princely Impostor? tells an incredible story replete with courtroom drama, sexual debauchery, family intrigue, and squandered wealth. With a novelist’s eye for interesting detail, Partha Chatterjee sifts through evidence found in official archives, popular songs, and backstreet Bangladeshi bookshops. He evaluates the case of the man claiming, with the support of legions of tenants and relatives, to be the long-lost Kumar. And he considers the position of the sannyasi’s detractors, including the colonial government and the Kumar’s young widow, who resolutely refused to meet the man she denounced as an impostor.

Along the way, Chatterjee introduces us to a fascinating range of human character, gleans insights into the nature of human identity, and examines the relation between scientific evidence, legal truth, and cultural practice. The story he tells unfolds alongside decades of Indian history. Its plot is shaped by changing gender and class relations and punctuated by critical historical events, including the onset of World War II, the Bengal famine of 1943, and the Great Calcutta Killings. And by identifying the earliest erosion of colonialism and the growth of nationalist thinking within the organs of colonial power, Chatterjee also gives us a secret history of Indian nationalism.

A Princely Impostor?
The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal
By Partha Chatterjee

For more books in our online sale catalog, please visit:
http://press.princeton.edu/booksale/

We invite you to see what’s new and forthcoming in our 2011 Anthropology catalog.

Clifford Geertz, Thomas Barfield, E. Summerson Carr and many more can be found in the catalog. Great books by great authors.

Browse Princeton’s 2011 Anthropology catalog online at:
http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/anth11.pdf

If you’re at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting, visit the Princeton booth (no. 400) and say hello. Browse new books there!

You can also learn about new anthropology books by joining our e-mail list at:
http://press.princeton.edu/subscribe/

FACT: Plastic surgery first gained popularity at the end of the sixteenth century with the appearance of epidemic syphilis, when doctors sought to rebuild the noses of those who suffered from the disease.

Nose reconstructions have been common in India for centuries. South Korea, Brazil, and Israel have become international centers for procedures ranging from eyelid restructuring to buttock lifts and tummy tucks. Argentina has the highest rate of silicone implants in the world. Around the globe, aesthetic surgery has become a cultural and medical fixture. Sander Gilman seeks to explain why by presenting the first systematic world history and cultural theory of aesthetic surgery. Touching on subjects as diverse as getting a “nose job” as a sweet-sixteen birthday present and the removal of male breasts in seventh-century Alexandria, Gilman argues that aesthetic surgery has such universal appeal because it helps people to “pass,” to be seen as a member of a group with which they want to or need to identify.

Making the Body Beautiful:
A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery
By Sander L. Gilman

Read chapter one online:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6545.html

The William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology “honors the best book published annually in Europeanist anthropology,” as determined by a panel of Society for the Anthropology of Europe members (quotation from the SAE website). This year, the judges selected PUP’s own Didlier Fassin and Richard Rechtman as winners of the prize for their book, The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood! Congratulations to you both!

The Empire of Trauma explores the concept of trauma in the modern world, and seeks to understand how trauma became culturally and politically recognized and respected. It also provides a critical lens on the development of morals and values in our globalized world. Fred Inglis of Times Higher Education has declared Fassin and Rechtman’s work, “[a] model contribution to this collective effort at understanding and mitigating the world’s misery…[This] calm and mighty book is no less than a staccato history of military and civilian suffering since 1914…Splendid.”

The prize recipients were announced shortly before the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, and will be publicized on the SAE website.

If you guessed General Petraeus, you are correct! See this great short article from Reuters for more.

Most of us are taught from a young age to be winners and avoid being losers. But what does it mean to win or lose? And why do we care so much? Does winning make us happy? Winning undertakes an unprecedented investigation of winning and losing in American society, what we are really after as we struggle to win, our collective beliefs about winners and losers, and much more.

Francesco Duina argues that victory and loss are not endpoints or final destinations but gateways to something of immense importance to us: the affirmation of our place in the world. But Duina also shows that competition is unlikely to provide us with the answers we need. Winning and losing are artificial and logically flawed concepts that put us at odds with the world around us and, ultimately, ourselves. Duina explores the social and psychological effects of the language of competition in American culture.

Read chapter one online:
Winning:
Reflections on an American Obsession
By Francesco Duina
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9340.html