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[Introduction To] Conceiving Spirits: Birth Rituals And Contested Identities Among Lauje Of Indonesia, Jennifer W. Nourse

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For most of the Lauje' of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, birth spirits are of primary importance. The spirits inhabit a mother's birth fluids and placenta, nurturing fetuses in the womb and children after birth---or bringing sickness and death if rituals are neglected.

Jennifer Nourse describes how Lauje' from both modernized coastal and isolated highland villages attribute to birth spirits competing meanings that hinge on an individual's gender, social class, and religion. At the beginning of her fieldwork, Nourse collaborated with two Lauje' men whose concepts of birth spirits as divided into good and bad, male and female, or local and foreign …

[Introduction To] Done Deal?: The Politics Of The 1997 Budget Agreement, Daniel J. Palazzolo

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How did a Democratic president and a Republican Congress reach agreement at a time of intense partisanship, mutual distrust, and suspicion? How were leaders of opposing parties able to negotiate a good-faith agreement to balance the budget, reduce spending for Medicare, and cut taxes? Does the agreement truly deserve the praise given by its supporters or the criticism dealt by its opponents? Daniel J. Palazzolo answers these questions with a vivid, first-person account of federal budget politics. In "Done Deal?" Palazzolo debunks conventional views of Washington politics that portray an antiquated separation-of-powers system hopelessly mired in partisan politics. Applying a …

[Introduction To] Educando A Fernando: CóMo Se Construyó De La RúA Presidente, Ernesto Seman

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An account of Fernando de la Rua’s successful presidential campaign in Argentina in 1999.

[Introduction To] Tribes, Treaties, And Constitutional Tribulations, Vine Deloria Jr., David E. Wilkins

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"Federal Indian law... is a loosely related collection of past and present acts of Congress, treaties and agreements, executive orders, administrative rulings, and judicial opinions, connected only by the fact that law in some form has been applied haphazardly to American Indians over the course of several centuries.... Indians in their tribal relation and Indian tribes in their relation to the federal government hang suspended in a legal wonderland."

In this book, two prominent scholars of American Indian law and politics undertake a full historical examination of the relationship between Indians and the United States Constitution that explains the present …