Duke University Press

Caren Kaplan traces the cultural history of aerial imagery-from the first vistas provided by balloons in the eighteenth century to the sensing operations of military drones-to show how aerial imagery is key to modern visual culture and can both enforce military power and foster positive political connections.

Featuring nearly two hundred full color photographs by William Craft Brumfield, this book documents the architecture of centuries-old wooden and brick churches, cathedrals and homes in the region surrounding the White Sea, which is known as the Russian North.

Esra Akcan describes the introduction of modern architecture into Turkey after the Kemalist political elite took power in 1923 and invited German architects to redesign the new capital of Ankara.

Jacob Blanc examines the creation of the Itaipu Dam-the largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world-on the Brazil-Paraguay border during the 1970s and 1980s to explore the long-standing conflicts around land, rights, indigeneity, and identity in rural Brazil.

Nicholas D'Avella offers an ethnographic reflection on the value of buildings in post-crisis Buenos Aires, showing how everyday practices transform buildings into politically, economically, and socially consequential objects, and arguing that such local forms of value and practice suggest possibilities for building better futures.

Melissa Gregg explores the obsession with using productivity as the primary measure of most workers' sense of value and success in the workplace, showing how it isolates workers from each other while erasing their collective efforts to define work limits.

Rosalind Fredericks traces the volatile trash politics in Dakar, Senegal, to examine urban citizenship in the context of urban austerity and democratic politics, showing how labor is a key component of infrastructural systems and how Dakar's residents use infrastructures as a vital tool for forging collective identifies and mobilizing political action.

Looks at portrayals of Havana in literature, music, and the visual arts in the post-Soviet era, as the city is reinvented as a destination for international tourists and business ventures.

An analysis of the ways in which everyday objects are narrated to animate or realize certain versions of the world.