Riva Berleant | University of Connecticut (original) (raw)

Books by Riva Berleant

Research paper thumbnail of ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA.  A critical bibliography

Abstract: Antigua and Barbuda, two islands of Leeward Island group in the eastern Caribbe... more Abstract:
Antigua and Barbuda, two islands of Leeward Island group in the eastern Caribbean, together make up a single independent state. The union is an uneasy one, for their relationship has always been ambiguous and their differences in history and economy greater than their similarities.
This bibliography is the only comprehensive reference book available for locating information about Antigua and Barbuda. It gathers a variety of sources on a full range of topics, most of them in English, and provides informative and evaluative annotations for each one. Students, researchers, librarians, travellers, and business people will find this bibliography invaluable, as will Barbudans and Antiguans themselves.

Research paper thumbnail of Montserrat: a critical bibliography

This bibliography covers English-language literature of the eastern Caribbean island of Montserra... more This bibliography covers English-language literature of the eastern Caribbean island of Montserrat from the seventeenth century to 1991 (a few French and German entries). It is arranged by topic; for example Geology, Agriculture, Society, Culture, History, Archaeology, etc. Each entry has a critical and descriptive annotation. It is fully indexed. There is an introductory essay about Montserrat and its regional context.

Research paper thumbnail of The Keeping of Animals

An edited collection of papers on the social anthropology and ecology of livestock production and... more An edited collection of papers on the social anthropology and ecology of livestock production and use in a range of societies.

Papers by Riva Berleant

Research paper thumbnail of Women, Work, and Gender in the Caribbean: Recent Research

Latin American Research Review

Research paper thumbnail of Mosaic Livelihoods in the Caribbean in the Twentieth Century

Research paper thumbnail of Grazing and Gardens in Barbuda

This paper uses field research, archival sources, historical traveler's accounts, and gov... more This paper uses field research, archival sources, historical traveler's accounts, and government documents to establish a history of alternating land uses on the dry tropical island of Barbuda, Lesser Antilles. It shows that animal-keeping on open range and shifting cultivation have alternated as dominant land uses in response to recurrent droughts. It shows that weather cycles, land use, subsistence and cash economy, and political environment are linked in an historically enduring ecological system.

Research paper thumbnail of Beans, Peas, and Rice in the Eastern Caribbean

Rice and Beans, 2012

ABSTRACT Rice and beans, omnipresent in the American tropics and subtropics, embrace in a single ... more ABSTRACT Rice and beans, omnipresent in the American tropics and subtropics, embrace in a single dish the antitheses of the region: peasant and plantation; highland and lowland; culture and power. This chapter examines rice and beans in the eastern Caribbean, a region made up of small islands that are living examples of Caribbean cultural variety on a foundation of historical and institutional commonality. As elsewhere in the circum-Caribbean, rice and beans dishes in the eastern Caribbean embody the cultural fusion of African, Asian, Native American, and European within the confines of class and the processes of change. This chapter first defines the eastern Caribbean, and then explores the histories and uses of rice and beans within the region. This exploration of rice from Asia and Africa and of beans species from both the Old and New Worlds describes their arrival, their roles as food imports and as garden crops, and their functions in provisioning enslaved Africans on plantations. It considers the declining use of other foods, especially maize and root crops, since the middle of the twentieth century, and the economic and symbolic roles of rice and beans within changing livelihoods and changing aspirations. Two islands of disparate physical environment and colonial history, Montserrat and Barbuda, supply the illustrations.

Research paper thumbnail of From Labor to Peasantry in Montserrat after the End of Slavery

This paper details the transformation of the labor force in Montserrat during the sixty years aft... more This paper details the transformation of the labor force in Montserrat during the sixty years after emancipation, 1834-1895. It shows how apprentices and sharecroppers gradually acquired land and developed a peasant production economy. The economic activities of rural, small-scale producers buttressed the island's internal economy, helped integrate the Caribbean through inter-island trade, spurred the process by which a social contrivance for making sugar was transmuted into a more workable human society, however much hobbled by its plantation past.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Mark P. Leone, Critical Historical Archaeology

Leone has assembled excerpts from fourteen of his previously published papers and has glossed eac... more Leone has assembled excerpts from fourteen of his previously published papers and has glossed each with a short essay describing the personal, professional, intellectual, and political context in which he conceived and carried out the research

Research paper thumbnail of Montserrat: a critical bibliography

This bibliography includes published English-language (with some French and German) books, articl... more This bibliography includes published English-language (with some French and German) books, articles, periodicals, reference sources, and government publications dealing with Montserrat and its regional context up to 1991. It begins with essay introducing the island and the research done on it. Each entry includes a critical and descriptive annotation. It is arranged by topics (for example, geography, archaeology, social organization, biota, volcanology, law and government, agriculture, culture, education, statistics, etc.) and includes indices to titles, authors, and subjects.

Research paper thumbnail of Antigua and Barbuda (a critical bibliography)

Antigua and Barbuda, two islands of Leeward Island group in the eastern Caribbean, together make ... more Antigua and Barbuda, two islands of Leeward Island group in the eastern Caribbean, together make up a single independent state. The union is an uneasy one, for their relationship has always been ambiguous and their differences in history and economy greater than their similarities. This bibliography is the only comprehensive reference book available for locating information about Antigua and Barbuda. It gathers a variety of sources on a full range of topics, most of them in English, and provides informative and evaluative annotations for each one. Students, researchers, librarians, travellers, and business people will find this bibliography invaluable, as will Barbudans and Antiguans themselves.

Research paper thumbnail of David Bidney: Professor, Theorist, and Correspondent

David Bidney: Professor, Theorist, and Correspondent Riva Berleant (University of Connecticut [em... more David Bidney: Professor, Theorist, and Correspondent Riva Berleant (University of Connecticut [emer.]) David Bidney (1908-1987) taught both philosophy and anthropology at Indiana University from 1950 to 1974. He began with a doctorate in philosophy, but was increasingly drawn to anthropology during a research appointment at Yale from 1940 to 1942, where he worked with Bronislaw Malinowski and Cornelius Osgood. Theoretical Anthropology appeared in 1953, and The Concept of Freedom in Anthropology in 1963. As a graduate student in the interdisciplinary folklore department at Indiana from 1956 to 1958, I took Bidney’s courses in the anthropology of religion, the history of anthropology, and nineteenth and twentieth-century ethnological theory. Bidney was insistent on our direct engagement with the texts, and with their larger intellectual and philosophical contexts. Folklore faded while I read the likes of Tylor, Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown, and Julian Steward, not to mention the German n...

Research paper thumbnail of Women's place is every place: merging domains and women's roles in Barbuda and Dominica

… & change in the Caribbean: a …, 1993

In the United States some women wear a button that reads' Women's place is every place&... more In the United States some women wear a button that reads' Women's place is every place'. This slogan is meant to counter the belief that women's place is in the home. Yet both cliches express the western assumption that social life is divided into two spheres, the public, ...

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Maurice Godelier, The Metamorphoses of Kinship

ABSTRACT: A positive review of Godelier's book, which summarizes the history of kinship studi... more ABSTRACT: A positive review of Godelier's book, which summarizes the history of kinship studies in anthropology, assessing and critiquing influential kinship theories. It presents a new theory of incest taboos and demonstrates the need for revived kinship research on the new modes of kinship that are developing everywhere.

Research paper thumbnail of Statehood, the commons, and the landscape in Barbuda

Caribbean Geography, 1991

Barbuda became part of the independent state of Antigua and barbuda in 1981. This paper summarize... more Barbuda became part of the independent state of Antigua and barbuda in 1981. This paper summarizes the Barbudan system of extensive land use and customary tenure, describes some significant landscape changes since 1977, and relates these changes to political independence and a new perception of the land as marketable commodity rather than cherished commons.

Research paper thumbnail of The Saramaka and the arts of resistance: Counter‐hegemony in theory and practice

Reviews in Anthropology, 1993

Research paper thumbnail of The white minority and the emancipation process in Montserrat, 1807-32

New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 1996

Author focuses on the governing élites and argues that salient features of their behaviour and at... more Author focuses on the governing élites and argues that salient features of their behaviour and attitudes were responses to the emancipation process. They objected to the abolition of slavery and the divergence of the society they lived in from the ideals they envisioned. Concludes that the élite's harsh responses to change exacerbated rather than strengthened their fragile political and economic status.

Research paper thumbnail of Subsistence cultivation in the Caribbean

New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 1986

Research paper thumbnail of Paleolithic Flints: Is an Aesthetics of Stone Tools Possible?

Contemporary Aesthetics, 2007

This paper asks whether an aesthetics of Paleolithic tools is possible, and if so, what it might ... more This paper asks whether an aesthetics of Paleolithic tools is possible, and if so, what it might be. The application of our own aesthetic sensibilities to artifacts of prehistory is not difficult. We easily recognize and appreciate their visual and tactile qualities. The more complicated questions that the paper explores are whether we can uncover the aesthetic sensibilities of their makers and, if we cannot, whether aesthetic examination of prehistoric tools from our own perspectives is adequate or useful. The paper is based on study of Paleolithic flints from French archaeological sites dating from about 500,000 years ago to about 11,000 years ago. The stone tools are held in the collections of the Wilson Museum (Castine, Maine, U.S.A.), and the paper is illustrated from these collections.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Jack Goody, The Theft of History

ARD: Anthropology Review Database, 2011

ABSTRACT Abstract: Goody considers the Eurocentric shortcomings of western historiography and off... more ABSTRACT Abstract: Goody considers the Eurocentric shortcomings of western historiography and offers correctives that comprehend institutional and cultural commonalities across Bronze Age Eurasia and eschew upstreaming from the rise of Europe.

Research paper thumbnail of ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA.  A critical bibliography

Abstract: Antigua and Barbuda, two islands of Leeward Island group in the eastern Caribbe... more Abstract:
Antigua and Barbuda, two islands of Leeward Island group in the eastern Caribbean, together make up a single independent state. The union is an uneasy one, for their relationship has always been ambiguous and their differences in history and economy greater than their similarities.
This bibliography is the only comprehensive reference book available for locating information about Antigua and Barbuda. It gathers a variety of sources on a full range of topics, most of them in English, and provides informative and evaluative annotations for each one. Students, researchers, librarians, travellers, and business people will find this bibliography invaluable, as will Barbudans and Antiguans themselves.

Research paper thumbnail of Montserrat: a critical bibliography

This bibliography covers English-language literature of the eastern Caribbean island of Montserra... more This bibliography covers English-language literature of the eastern Caribbean island of Montserrat from the seventeenth century to 1991 (a few French and German entries). It is arranged by topic; for example Geology, Agriculture, Society, Culture, History, Archaeology, etc. Each entry has a critical and descriptive annotation. It is fully indexed. There is an introductory essay about Montserrat and its regional context.

Research paper thumbnail of The Keeping of Animals

An edited collection of papers on the social anthropology and ecology of livestock production and... more An edited collection of papers on the social anthropology and ecology of livestock production and use in a range of societies.

Research paper thumbnail of Women, Work, and Gender in the Caribbean: Recent Research

Latin American Research Review

Research paper thumbnail of Mosaic Livelihoods in the Caribbean in the Twentieth Century

Research paper thumbnail of Grazing and Gardens in Barbuda

This paper uses field research, archival sources, historical traveler's accounts, and gov... more This paper uses field research, archival sources, historical traveler's accounts, and government documents to establish a history of alternating land uses on the dry tropical island of Barbuda, Lesser Antilles. It shows that animal-keeping on open range and shifting cultivation have alternated as dominant land uses in response to recurrent droughts. It shows that weather cycles, land use, subsistence and cash economy, and political environment are linked in an historically enduring ecological system.

Research paper thumbnail of Beans, Peas, and Rice in the Eastern Caribbean

Rice and Beans, 2012

ABSTRACT Rice and beans, omnipresent in the American tropics and subtropics, embrace in a single ... more ABSTRACT Rice and beans, omnipresent in the American tropics and subtropics, embrace in a single dish the antitheses of the region: peasant and plantation; highland and lowland; culture and power. This chapter examines rice and beans in the eastern Caribbean, a region made up of small islands that are living examples of Caribbean cultural variety on a foundation of historical and institutional commonality. As elsewhere in the circum-Caribbean, rice and beans dishes in the eastern Caribbean embody the cultural fusion of African, Asian, Native American, and European within the confines of class and the processes of change. This chapter first defines the eastern Caribbean, and then explores the histories and uses of rice and beans within the region. This exploration of rice from Asia and Africa and of beans species from both the Old and New Worlds describes their arrival, their roles as food imports and as garden crops, and their functions in provisioning enslaved Africans on plantations. It considers the declining use of other foods, especially maize and root crops, since the middle of the twentieth century, and the economic and symbolic roles of rice and beans within changing livelihoods and changing aspirations. Two islands of disparate physical environment and colonial history, Montserrat and Barbuda, supply the illustrations.

Research paper thumbnail of From Labor to Peasantry in Montserrat after the End of Slavery

This paper details the transformation of the labor force in Montserrat during the sixty years aft... more This paper details the transformation of the labor force in Montserrat during the sixty years after emancipation, 1834-1895. It shows how apprentices and sharecroppers gradually acquired land and developed a peasant production economy. The economic activities of rural, small-scale producers buttressed the island's internal economy, helped integrate the Caribbean through inter-island trade, spurred the process by which a social contrivance for making sugar was transmuted into a more workable human society, however much hobbled by its plantation past.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Mark P. Leone, Critical Historical Archaeology

Leone has assembled excerpts from fourteen of his previously published papers and has glossed eac... more Leone has assembled excerpts from fourteen of his previously published papers and has glossed each with a short essay describing the personal, professional, intellectual, and political context in which he conceived and carried out the research

Research paper thumbnail of Montserrat: a critical bibliography

This bibliography includes published English-language (with some French and German) books, articl... more This bibliography includes published English-language (with some French and German) books, articles, periodicals, reference sources, and government publications dealing with Montserrat and its regional context up to 1991. It begins with essay introducing the island and the research done on it. Each entry includes a critical and descriptive annotation. It is arranged by topics (for example, geography, archaeology, social organization, biota, volcanology, law and government, agriculture, culture, education, statistics, etc.) and includes indices to titles, authors, and subjects.

Research paper thumbnail of Antigua and Barbuda (a critical bibliography)

Antigua and Barbuda, two islands of Leeward Island group in the eastern Caribbean, together make ... more Antigua and Barbuda, two islands of Leeward Island group in the eastern Caribbean, together make up a single independent state. The union is an uneasy one, for their relationship has always been ambiguous and their differences in history and economy greater than their similarities. This bibliography is the only comprehensive reference book available for locating information about Antigua and Barbuda. It gathers a variety of sources on a full range of topics, most of them in English, and provides informative and evaluative annotations for each one. Students, researchers, librarians, travellers, and business people will find this bibliography invaluable, as will Barbudans and Antiguans themselves.

Research paper thumbnail of David Bidney: Professor, Theorist, and Correspondent

David Bidney: Professor, Theorist, and Correspondent Riva Berleant (University of Connecticut [em... more David Bidney: Professor, Theorist, and Correspondent Riva Berleant (University of Connecticut [emer.]) David Bidney (1908-1987) taught both philosophy and anthropology at Indiana University from 1950 to 1974. He began with a doctorate in philosophy, but was increasingly drawn to anthropology during a research appointment at Yale from 1940 to 1942, where he worked with Bronislaw Malinowski and Cornelius Osgood. Theoretical Anthropology appeared in 1953, and The Concept of Freedom in Anthropology in 1963. As a graduate student in the interdisciplinary folklore department at Indiana from 1956 to 1958, I took Bidney’s courses in the anthropology of religion, the history of anthropology, and nineteenth and twentieth-century ethnological theory. Bidney was insistent on our direct engagement with the texts, and with their larger intellectual and philosophical contexts. Folklore faded while I read the likes of Tylor, Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown, and Julian Steward, not to mention the German n...

Research paper thumbnail of Women's place is every place: merging domains and women's roles in Barbuda and Dominica

… & change in the Caribbean: a …, 1993

In the United States some women wear a button that reads' Women's place is every place&... more In the United States some women wear a button that reads' Women's place is every place'. This slogan is meant to counter the belief that women's place is in the home. Yet both cliches express the western assumption that social life is divided into two spheres, the public, ...

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Maurice Godelier, The Metamorphoses of Kinship

ABSTRACT: A positive review of Godelier's book, which summarizes the history of kinship studi... more ABSTRACT: A positive review of Godelier's book, which summarizes the history of kinship studies in anthropology, assessing and critiquing influential kinship theories. It presents a new theory of incest taboos and demonstrates the need for revived kinship research on the new modes of kinship that are developing everywhere.

Research paper thumbnail of Statehood, the commons, and the landscape in Barbuda

Caribbean Geography, 1991

Barbuda became part of the independent state of Antigua and barbuda in 1981. This paper summarize... more Barbuda became part of the independent state of Antigua and barbuda in 1981. This paper summarizes the Barbudan system of extensive land use and customary tenure, describes some significant landscape changes since 1977, and relates these changes to political independence and a new perception of the land as marketable commodity rather than cherished commons.

Research paper thumbnail of The Saramaka and the arts of resistance: Counter‐hegemony in theory and practice

Reviews in Anthropology, 1993

Research paper thumbnail of The white minority and the emancipation process in Montserrat, 1807-32

New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 1996

Author focuses on the governing élites and argues that salient features of their behaviour and at... more Author focuses on the governing élites and argues that salient features of their behaviour and attitudes were responses to the emancipation process. They objected to the abolition of slavery and the divergence of the society they lived in from the ideals they envisioned. Concludes that the élite's harsh responses to change exacerbated rather than strengthened their fragile political and economic status.

Research paper thumbnail of Subsistence cultivation in the Caribbean

New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 1986

Research paper thumbnail of Paleolithic Flints: Is an Aesthetics of Stone Tools Possible?

Contemporary Aesthetics, 2007

This paper asks whether an aesthetics of Paleolithic tools is possible, and if so, what it might ... more This paper asks whether an aesthetics of Paleolithic tools is possible, and if so, what it might be. The application of our own aesthetic sensibilities to artifacts of prehistory is not difficult. We easily recognize and appreciate their visual and tactile qualities. The more complicated questions that the paper explores are whether we can uncover the aesthetic sensibilities of their makers and, if we cannot, whether aesthetic examination of prehistoric tools from our own perspectives is adequate or useful. The paper is based on study of Paleolithic flints from French archaeological sites dating from about 500,000 years ago to about 11,000 years ago. The stone tools are held in the collections of the Wilson Museum (Castine, Maine, U.S.A.), and the paper is illustrated from these collections.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Jack Goody, The Theft of History

ARD: Anthropology Review Database, 2011

ABSTRACT Abstract: Goody considers the Eurocentric shortcomings of western historiography and off... more ABSTRACT Abstract: Goody considers the Eurocentric shortcomings of western historiography and offers correctives that comprehend institutional and cultural commonalities across Bronze Age Eurasia and eschew upstreaming from the rise of Europe.

Research paper thumbnail of Mosaic Livelihoods in the Caribbean in the  Twentieth Century

Research paper thumbnail of Genre Bending (After Life: An Ethnographic Novel)

Anthropology & Humanism, 2007

Research paper thumbnail of Paleolithic Flints: Is an Aesthetics of Stone Tools Possible?

Contemporary Aesthetics, 2007

... The Paleolithic period in human prehistory began about 2.3 million years ago, when the unques... more ... The Paleolithic period in human prehistory began about 2.3 million years ago, when the unquestionably tool-using hominin Homo erectus ... of the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, added grinding and polishing to the original Paleolithic techniques of hammering and chipping. ...

Research paper thumbnail of BOOK REVIEW:  Eren, Metin I. (ed.) 2012 Hunter-Gatherer Behavior: Human Response during the Younger Dryas. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press.  Notes: 281 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm. ISBN: 9781598746020

Eleven papers synthesize global archaeological evidence to conclude that the climate changes of t... more Eleven papers synthesize global archaeological evidence to conclude that the climate changes of the Younger Dryas stadial (ca. 12,000 BP) were not the primary reason for changes in the hunter-gatherer adaptations of the period.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of David Price, Anthropological Intelligence (2008)

This book examines the diverse roles that anthropologists filled in World War II, as well as the ... more This book examines the diverse roles that anthropologists filled in World War II, as well as the war's effects on anthropological research and ethnographic writing.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Besson and Momsen, Caribbean Land and Development Revisited

In 1987 Besson and Momsen published the collection Land and Development in the Caribbean. The pre... more In 1987 Besson and Momsen published the collection Land and Development in the Caribbean. The present collection revisits the subject with new essays and mostly new authors.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Paul Trout,  Deadly Powers: Animal Predators and the Mythic Imagination

ABSTRACT: A review of Trout's book and critical assessment of his argument that our ancestral f... more ABSTRACT: A review of Trout's book and critical assessment of his argument that our ancestral fear of being eaten by animals shaped human brains, behavior, culture, and especially story-telling.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Mark P. Leone, Critical Historical Archaeology

Leone has assembled excerpts from fourteen of his previously published papers and has glossed eac... more Leone has assembled excerpts from fourteen of his previously published papers and has glossed each with a short essay describing the personal, professional, intellectual, and political context in which he conceived and carried out the research

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Jack Goody, The Theft of History

Abstract: Goody considers the Eurocentric shortcomings of western historiography and offers corr... more Abstract: Goody considers the Eurocentric shortcomings of western historiography and offers correctives that comprehend institutional and cultural commonalities across Bronze Age Eurasia and eschew upstreaming from the rise of Europe.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Maurice Godelier, The Metamorphoses of Kinship

ABSTRACT: This book summarizes the history of kinship studies in anthropology, assessing and c... more ABSTRACT: This book summarizes the history of kinship studies in anthropology, assessing and critiquing influential kinship theories. It presents a new theory of incest taboos and demonstrates the need for revived kinship research on the new modes of kinship that are developing everywhere.

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Histoire Naturelle des Indes.  New West Indian Guide 72:127-129

Histoire Naturelle des Indes, known as "The Drake Manuscript," consists of a French text that acc... more Histoire Naturelle des Indes, known as "The Drake Manuscript," consists of a French text that accompanies 199 watercolor images of plants, animals, and human activities made in the circum-Caribbean region during a voyage dated around 1590.