This article considers ecotourism among the Kuna of the San Blas Archipelago in Panama, using the term I use the concept of islamiento to describe both ‘isolation’ and ‘island-isation’ as central metaphors to understand Kuna strategies in demarcating tourist and community spaces. The local autonomy exemplified by the Kuna in tourism is just one transformation of the way in which they utilise island configurations as a source of physical and ideological independence. While competition for resources between tourists, non-Kuna ‘outsiders’ and Kuna ‘insiders’ is common, pressures on local inhabitants, resources and the need for privacy and community life are exacerbated in island tourism. Through various mechanisms that turn the physical properties of the archipelago to their advantage, the Kuna limit the impacts of tourism on daily life and strengthen their autonomy.

Full text of the article:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1470-9856.2010.00447.x/full

Shackel, Paul. New Philadelphia: An Archaelogy of Race in the Heartland. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010.

New Philadelphia, Illinois, was founded in 1836 by Frank McWorter, a Kentucky slave who purchased his own freedom and then acquired land on the prairie for establishing a new—and integrated—community. McWorter sold property to other freed slaves and to whites, and used the proceeds to buy his family out of slavery. The town population reached 160, but declined when the railroad bypassed it. By 1940 New Philadelphia had virtually disappeared from the landscape. In this book, Paul A. Shackel resurrects McWorter’s great achievement of self-determinism, independence, and the will to exist. Shackel describes a cooperative effort by two universities, the state museum, the New Philadelphia Association, and numerous descendents to explore the history and archaeology of this unusual multi-racial community.

Leone, Mark P. Critical Historical Archaelogy. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press, 2010.

How can we use the past to make sense of the issues and problems that concern us in the present? In this collection of his most important writing, Mark Leone, a leading theorist of postprocessual or postmodern archaeology, offers a model for Critical Historical Archaeology that sets the field on the new trajectory. A forceful advocate for historical archaeology as an activist pursuit, he argues that the way to live in the postmodern period is not simply to chronicle it, but to use the process of interpreting of heritage to develop new understandings the cultural and political issues of our time.

Freidenberg, Judith The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho: Villa Clara and the Construction of the Argentine Identity. Austin. The University of Texas Press, 2009.

By the mid-twentieth century, Eastern European Jews had become one of Argentina's largest minorities. Some represented a wave of immigration begun two generations before; many settled in the province of Entre Ríos and founded an agricultural colony. Taking its title from the resulting hybrid of acculturation, The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho examines the lives of these settlers, who represented a merger between native cowboy identities and homeland memories.

The arrival of these immigrants in what would be the village of Villa Clara coincided with the nation's new sense of liberated nationhood. In a meticulous rendition of Villa Clara's social history, Judith Freidenberg interweaves ethnographic and historical information to understand the saga of European immigrants drawn by Argentine open-door policies in the nineteenth century and its impact on the current transformation of immigration into multicultural discourses in the twenty-first century. Using Villa Clara as a case study, Freidenberg demonstrates the broad power of political processes in the construction of ethnic, class, and national identities. The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho draws on life histories, archives, material culture, and performances of heritage to enhance our understanding of a singular population--and to transform our approach to social memory itself.

Chambers, Erve 2009 In Both Our Possibilities: Anthropology on the Margins. Human Organization, 68(4): 274-379

Abstract:
There is benefit to be gained from viewing anthropology and its applications as choices and inventions, rather than as strict disciplinary codes and imperatives. the choices we make concerning our profession have expanded with the growth of practice outside academia. By the same token, we are shaped as much by the uses that others have for us and by the human environments in which we find ourselves as we are by our own preferences. Collaboration has become a hallmark of many approaches to practice, and the kinds of collaborations being constructed are different from those usually associated with applied anthropology. in its actions, anthropology is both a science (seeking distance) and an art (seeking engagement).

Full text of the article:
http://sfaa.metapress.com/link.asp?id=d611464j2561x754

Brighton, Stephen Historical Archaeology of the Irish Diaspora: A Transnational Approach. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press. 2009.

Shackel, Paul The Archaeology of American Labor and Working-Class Life. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. 2009

The winners write history. Thus, it is no surprise that the story of American industrialization is dominated by tales of unbridled technical and social progress. What happens, though, when we take a closer look at the archaeological record? That is the focus of Paul Shackel's new book, which examines labor and working-class life in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century industrial America.

Shackel offers an overview of a number of ongoing archaeology projects that are focused on reconstructing the capital-labor relations of the past. He demonstrates that worker unrest has been a constant feature of industrialization, as the fight for fair wages and decent working conditions has been a continual one. He shows how workers resisted conditions through sabotage and how new immigrants dealt with daily life in company housing; he even reveals important information about conditions in strike camps.