Catherine Lutz

2007 Society for the Anthropology of North America (SANA) Book Award Complete List of Authors:Dorothy Holland, Donald M. Nonini, Catherine Lutz, Lesley Bartlett, Marla Frederick-McGlathery, Thaddeus C. Guldbrandsen, and Enrique G. Murillo, Jr. What is the state of democracy at the turn of the twenty-first century? To answer this question, seven scholars lived for a year in five North Carolina communities. They observed public meetings of all sorts, had informal and formal interviews with people, and listened as people conversed with each other at bus stops and barbershops, soccer games and workplaces. Their collaborative ethnography allows us to understand how diverse members of a community not just the elite think about and experience "politics" in ways that include much more than merely voting. This book illustrates how the social and economic changes of the last three decades have made some new routes to active democratic participation possible while making others more difficult. Local Democracy Under Siege suggests how we can account for the current limitations of U. S. democracy and how remedies can be created that ensure more meaningful participation by a greater range of people. Complete List of Authors (pictured) From Left to Right, bottom row: Enrique Murillo, Jr., Thaddeus Guldbrandsen, Marla Frederick-McGlathery. Top row: Dorothy Holland, Catherine Lutz, Lesley Bartlett, and Don Nonini.

2007 Society for the Anthropology of North America (SANA) Book Award Complete List of Authors:Dorothy Holland, Donald M. Nonini, Catherine Lutz, Lesley Bartlett, Marla Frederick-McGlathery, Thaddeus C. Guldbrandsen, and Enrique G. Murillo, Jr. What is the state of democracy at the turn of the twenty-first century? To answer this question, seven scholars lived for a year in five North Carolina communities. They observed public meetings of all sorts, had informal and formal interviews with people, and listened as people conversed with each other at bus stops and barbershops, soccer games and workplaces. Their collaborative ethnography allows us to understand how diverse members of a community not just the elite think about and experience "politics" in ways that include much more than merely voting. This book illustrates how the social and economic changes of the last three decades have made some new routes to active democratic participation possible while making others more difficult. Local Democracy Under Siege suggests how we can account for the current limitations of U. S. democracy and how remedies can be created that ensure more meaningful participation by a greater range of people. Complete List of Authors (pictured) From Left to Right, bottom row: Enrique Murillo, Jr., Thaddeus Guldbrandsen, Marla Frederick-McGlathery. Top row: Dorothy Holland, Catherine Lutz, Lesley Bartlett, and Don Nonini.

Depicted variously as heroes, villains, or victims, America's teachers find themselves at the center of a sometimes nasty policy debate. Yet, while politicians, reformers, and pundits contribute to the cacophony that serves as our national conversation about education, those who teach our children everyday are barely heard over the noise. This beautifully written book highlights working teachers speaking on many key educational problems under debate as well as many of the controversial solutions put forth, including revamped teacher evaluations, curricular standardization, and increased testing and data collection. Anthropologist Catherine Lutz and high school teacher Anne Lutz Fernandez traveled the country to meet a wide range of educators on the frontlines of teaching across diverse contexts from traditional public schools to charters to the home school; early in careers and near retirement; in city, town, suburb, and country. What they learned about teaching and learning provides critical insights not just for educators but for anyone interested in American education.

Depicted variously as heroes, villains, or victims, America's teachers find themselves at the center of a sometimes nasty policy debate. Yet, while politicians, reformers, and pundits contribute to the cacophony that serves as our national conversation about education, those who teach our children everyday are barely heard over the noise. This beautifully written book highlights working teachers speaking on many key educational problems under debate as well as many of the controversial solutions put forth, including revamped teacher evaluations, curricular standardization, and increased testing and data collection. Anthropologist Catherine Lutz and high school teacher Anne Lutz Fernandez traveled the country to meet a wide range of educators on the frontlines of teaching across diverse contexts from traditional public schools to charters to the home school; early in careers and near retirement; in city, town, suburb, and country. What they learned about teaching and learning provides critical insights not just for educators but for anyone interested in American education.

For most of the twentieth century, America's love affair with the car went unchallenged. Gas prices were kept low, ever more roads and highways built and maintained, and this year's model always looked a little better than last year's. Then, in fairly short order, gas jumped to $4 a gallon, the housing bubble imploded and the current economic crisis was upon us. Suddenly, car owners had reason to question what is on average, their biggest household expense. Carjacked gets into the meat of America's obsession with cars and explodes myth after myth along the way. While the automobile's contribution to global warming and the effects of volatile gas prices are is widely known, the problems Americans face every day because of their cars are much more widespread and yet much less known - from the surprising $14,000 per year that the average car costs to own to the uptick of incidences of obesity and asthma that car ownership seemingly causes to the more than 6 million car accidents a year at a cost of $230 billion. Carjacked sheds new light on the complex impact of the automobile on American society and shows us how to develop a new and healthier relationship with cars, a relationship that is both cheaper and greener.