Lines of the Nation

Lines of the Nation
Author: Laura Bear
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2007
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780231140027

Lines of the Nation radically recasts the history of the Indian railways, which have long been regarded as vectors of modernity and economic prosperity. From the design of carriages to the architecture of stations, employment hierarchies, and the construction of employee housing, Laura Bear explores the new public spaces and social relationships created by the railway bureaucracy. She then traces their influence on the formation of contemporary Indian nationalism, personal sentiments, and popular memory. Her probing study challenges entrenched beliefs concerning the institutions of modernity and capitalism by showing that these rework older idioms of social distinction and are legitimized by forms of intimate, affective politics. Drawing on historical and ethnographic research in the company town at Kharagpur and at the Eastern Railway headquarters in Kolkata (Calcutta), Bear focuses on how political and domestic practices among workers became entangled with the moralities and archival technologies of the railway bureaucracy and illuminates the impact of this history today. The bureaucracy has played a pivotal role in the creation of idioms of family history, kinship, and ethics, and its special categorization of Anglo-Indian workers still resonates. Anglo-Indians were formed as a separate railway caste by Raj-era racial employment and housing policies, and other railway workers continue to see them as remnants of the colonial past and as a polluting influence. The experiences of Anglo-Indians, who are at the core of the ethnography, reveal the consequences of attempts to make political communities legitimate in family lines and sentiments. Their situation also compels us to rethink the importance of documentary practices and nationalism to all family histories and senses of relatedness. This interdisciplinary anthropological history throws new light not only on the imperial and national past of South Asia but also on the moral life of present technologies and economic institutions.

Color Lines, Country Lines

Color Lines, Country Lines
Author: Lingxin Hao
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2007-06-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1610442687

The growing number of immigrants living and working in America has become a controversial topic from classrooms to corporations and from kitchen tables to Capitol Hill. Many native-born Americans fear that competition from new arrivals will undermine the economic standing of low-skilled American workers, and that immigrants may not successfully integrate into the U.S. economy. In Color Lines, Country Lines, sociologist Lingxin Hao argues that the current influx of immigrants is changing America's class structure, but not in the ways commonly believed. Drawing on twenty years of national survey data, Color Lines, Country Lines investigates how immigrants are faring as they try to accumulate enough wealth to join the American middle class, and how, in the process, they are transforming historic links between race and socioeconomic status. Hao finds that disparities in wealth among immigrants are large and growing, including disparities among immigrants of the same race or ethnicity. Cuban immigrants have made substantially more progress than arrivals from the Dominican Republic, Chinese immigrants have had more success than Vietnamese or Korean immigrants, and Jamaicans have fared better than Haitians and immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, many of these immigrant groups have acquired more wealth than native-born Americans of the same race or ethnicity. Hao traces these diverging paths to differences in the political and educational systems of the immigrants' home countries, as well as to preferential treatment of some groups by U.S. immigration authorities and the U.S. labor market. As a result, individuals' country of origin increasingly matters more than their race in determining their prospects for acquiring wealth. In a novel analysis, Hao predicts that as large numbers of immigrants arrive in the United States every year, the variation in wealth within racial groups will continue to grow, reducing wealth inequalities between racial groups. If upward mobility remains restricted to only some groups, then the old divisions of wealth by race will gradually become secondary to new disparities based on country of origin. However, if the labor market and the government are receptive to all immigrant groups, then the assimilation of immigrants into the middle class will help diminish wealth inequality in society as a whole. Immigrants' assimilation into the American mainstream and the impact of immigration on the American economy are inextricably linked, and each issue can only be understood in light of the other. Color Lines, Country Lines shows why some immigrant groups are struggling to get by while others have managed to achieve the American dream and reveals the surprising ways in which immigration is reshaping American society.

Country Music's Greatest Lines

Country Music's Greatest Lines
Author: Bobby Braddock
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2019-02-04
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1439669546

“One of country music’s greatest songwriters has given us his own private tour of the collective genius of his profession.” —Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author and host of the Revisionist History podcast Bobby Braddock, the only living songwriter to have written number-one country songs in five consecutive decades, celebrates standout lines in more than eighty country masterpieces. Unique stories give the reader a behind-the-scenes look at classics from Hank Williams, Bill Anderson, Roger Miller and Merle Haggard, as well as twenty-first-century icons like Alan Jackson, Taylor Swift and Eric Church. Artist Carmen Beecher brings these tales to vivid life with strikingly realistic illustrations of seldom-seen songwriters, easily recognizable superstars and unforgettable song characters. From late 1940s jukebox hits to present-day chart toppers, Braddock and Beecher offer a magical journey from the songwriter’s pen to the singer’s lips to the listener’s ear. “Country Music’s Greatest Lines works as an insider’s take on the business of country, and it also sent me to a dozen records I wanted to hear immediately. Braddock and Beecher evoke the mythology of country without sentimentalizing the music or its creators. It’s a remarkable achievement.” —Nashville Scene “We see how stand-alone powerful and effective a few well-crafted lines can be, even when removed from the context of the entire song.” —Sounds Like Nashville “Country songs, from Hank Williams till today, remain faithful to their tradition of reminding their listeners about the life they live. Braddock, a 60-year creator of songs, remembered that when he decided to write this book.” —American Songwriter

FCC Record

FCC Record
Author: United States. Federal Communications Commission
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1944
Release: 1991
Genre: Telecommunication
ISBN:

Drawing Lines in Sand and Snow

Drawing Lines in Sand and Snow
Author: Condon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2016-09-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1315290197

This important book addresses the major issues facing the North American continent: security, economic integration, border management, corruption, and illegal migration.

A Nation on the Line

A Nation on the Line
Author: Jan M. Padios
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2018-04-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822371987

In 2011 the Philippines surpassed India to become what the New York Times referred to as "the world's capital of call centers." By the end of 2015 the Philippine call center industry employed over one million people and generated twenty-two billion dollars in revenue. In A Nation on the Line Jan M. Padios examines this massive industry in the context of globalization, race, gender, transnationalism, and postcolonialism, outlining how it has become a significant site of efforts to redefine Filipino identity and culture, the Philippine nation-state, and the value of Filipino labor. She also chronicles the many contradictory effects of call center work on Filipino identity, family, consumer culture, and sexual politics. As Padios demonstrates, the critical question of call centers does not merely expose the logic of transnational capitalism and the legacies of colonialism; it also problematizes the process of nation-building and peoplehood in the early twenty-first century.

Arbitrary Lines

Arbitrary Lines
Author: M. Nolan Gray
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2022-06-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1642832545

It's time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary--if not sufficient--condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities. Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city. Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life--where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up