Author: Noah Coburn File Type: pdf War is one of the most lucrative job markets for an increasingly global workforce. Most of the work on American bases, everything from manning guard towers to cleaning the latrines to more technical engineering and accounting jobs, has been outsourced to private firms that then contract out individual jobs, often to the lowest bidder. An American base in Afghanistan or Iraq will be staffed with workers from places like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Turkey, Bosnia, and Nepal so-called third-country nationals. Tens of thousands of these workers are now fixtures on American bases. Yet, in the plethora of records kept by the U.S. government, they are unseen and uncountedtheir stories untold. Noah Coburn traces this unseen workforce across seven countries, following the workers often zigzagging journey to war. He confronts the varied conditions third-country nationals encounter, ranging from near slavery to more mundane forms of exploitation. Visiting a British Imperial training camp in Nepal, U.S. bases in Afghanistan, a cafe in Tbilisi, offices in Ankara, and human traffickers in Delhi, Coburn seeks out a better understanding of the people who make up this unseen workforce, sharing powerful stories of hope and struggle. Part memoir, part travelogue, and part retelling of the war in Afghanistan through the eyes of workers, Under Contract unspools a complex global web of how modern wars are fought and supported, narrating war stories unlike any other. Coburns experience forces readers to reckon with the moral questions of a hidden global war-force and the costs being shouldered by foreign nationals in our name. ****Review An irreplaceable and beautifully written book. Under Contract is one of the richest and most straightforward ethnographic accounts of war yet written. In focusing on the long and difficult paths of the contractors of the latest Afghan war, Coburn is the first to truly demonstrate the transnational and profit-driven nature of most modern war. (Catherine Lutz Brown University) With a vivid eye for detail, analytic lucidity, and compassion, Noah Coburn opens up a space between anthropology and investigative journalism. His journey to understand the human ripple effects of the war in Afghanistan takes him to Nepal, India, Turkey, the Republic of Georgia, and the U.K. in search of people who, often driven by economic desperation, worked for U.S. military contractors. A disturbing picture emerges a world governed by massive inequalities and the brute realities of chance where some profit handsomely from war while others, dead or maimed for life, are treated as cheap, disposable, and conveniently invisible casualties of American intervention. An important account of a new neoliberal mode of warfare, vital reading for anyone interested in military affairs, Afghanistan, migration, and globalization. (Hugh Gusterson author of Drone Remote Control Warfare**) In this highly readable and disturbing account of the American war effort in Afghanistan, Noah Coburn traces the complex transnational web that has snared individuals from various countries in the conflict. A Gurkha story as well as war story, Under Contract chronicles not valor and glory, but poverty, human trafficking, and institutional racism. It will prove a useful resource for anyone interested in international relations, migration, and conflict. (Deepak Thapa co-author of A Kingdom under Siege Nepals Maoist Insurgency, 1996 to 2004**) In his vivid and insightful first-person account, Noah Coburn expands the scope and impact of modern warfare by unveiling the lives of subcontractors often supplied by human trafficking networks and always trapped in a shameful maze of greed and exploitation. Under Contract puts a human face on crucial issues in the prolonged U.S. war in Afghanistan, exposing the grim underworld of migrant workers. (Ann Hagedorn author of The Invisible Soldiers How America Outsourced Our Security**) About the Author Noah Coburn is Professor of Anthropology at Bennington College. He is one of the few contemporary anthropologists with years of on-the-ground field research experience in Afghanistan. He is the author of three previous books, most recently Losing Afghanistan An Obituary for the Intervention (Stanford, 2016). His writing has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and The Financial Times.

Author: Brian Moeran File Type: pdf Under the guidance of Moeran and Christensen, the authors in this volume examine evaluative practices in the creative industries by exploring the processes surrounding the conception, design, manufacture, appraisal, and use of creative goods. They describe the editorial choices made by different participants in a creative world, as they go about conceiving, composing or designing, performing or making, selling and assessing a range of cultural products. The study draws upon ethnographically rich case studies from companies as varied as Bang and Olufsen, Hugo Boss, and Lonely Planet, in order to reveal the broad range of factors guiding and inhibiting creative processes. Some of these constraints are material and technical others are social or defined by aesthetic norms. The authors explore how these various constraints affect creative work, and how ultimately they contribute to the development of creativity.

Author: Christopher Fletcher File Type: pdf How did the kings of England and France govern their kingdoms? This volume, the product of a ten-year international project, brings together specialists in late medieval England and France to explore the multiple mechanisms by which monarchs exercised their power in the final centuries of the Middle Ages. Collaborative chapters, mostly co-written by experts on each kingdom, cover topics ranging from courts, military networks and public finance office, justice and the men of the church to political representation, petitioning, cultural conceptions of political society and the role of those excluded from formal involvement in politics. The result is a richly detailed and innovative comparison of the nature of government and political life, seen from the point of view of how the king ruled his kingdom, but bringing to bear the methods of social, cultural and economic history to understand the underlying armature of royal power.**

Author: Lenka Panusková File Type: pdf The Velislav Bible is one of the most beautiful medieval Bohemian manuscripts. It is a heavily illustrated manuscript that contains only short selections of the text, that instruct the reader about the story depicted. The last picture in the manuscript shows a man kneeling before St. Catherine, identified as Velislav, hence the name of the manuscript. The Bible comprises stories from the Books of Genesis and Exodus, visions of Daniel, and the stories of Samson as well as of Judith. The narrative of the Antichrist precedes the Christological part. The New Testament continues with the Book of Revelation, stories following the Ascension of Christ, and key events from the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul. The manuscript closes with the legend of St. Wenceslas, the patron saint of Bohemia. The essays in The Velislav Bible, Finest Picture-Bible of the Late Middle Ages Biblia depicta as Devotional, Mnemonic and Study Tool analyze the manuscript from historical, textual, art-historical, and iconographic perspectives. However, a shared concern of all the authors is to think about its functions. An edition of the Latin titulis is being published here for the first time.