A Matter of Life and Death: Hunting in Contemporary Vermont

A Matter of Life and Death: Hunting in Contemporary Vermont





American hunters occupy a remarkably complex place in this country s cultural and political landscape. On the one hand, they are cast as perpetrators of an anachronistic and unnecessary assault on innocent wildlife. On the other hand, they are lauded as exemplars of no-nonsense American rugged individualism. Yet despite the passion that surrounds the subject, we rarely hear the unfiltered voices of actual hunters in discussions of hunting.
In A Matter of Life and Death, anthropologist Marc Boglioli puts a human face on a group widely regarded as morally suspect, one that currently stands in the crossfire of America s so-called culture wars. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Addison County, Vermont, which took him from hunting camps and sporting goods stores to local bars and kitchen tables, Boglioli focuses on how contemporary hunters, women as well as men, understand their relationship to their prey. He shows how hunters attitudes toward animals flow directly from the rural lifeways they have continued to maintain in the face of encroaching urban sensibilities. The result is a rare glimpse into a culture that experiences wild animals in a way that is at once violent, consumptive, and respectful, and that regards hunting as an enduring link to a vanishing past. It is a book that will challenge readers hunters, non-hunters, and anti-hunters alike to reconsider what constitutes a morally appropriate relationship with the non-human residents of this planet.









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Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art





The art world is bound to the economy, writes Julian Stallabrass, "as tightly as Ahab to the white whale." In Art Incorporated, Stallabrass offers a provocative look at contemporary art and the dramatic changes that have taken place in the last twenty years, illuminating the connections between money, politics, and art. Stallabrass notes that the spectacular crash of 1989 profoundly changed the character of contemporary art, shattering the art-world's self-importance and producing a reaction against art that engaged with theory and politics, in favor of art that set out to awe, entertain, and be sold. He describes the growth of biennials and other art events across the globe in the 1990s, the construction of new museums of contemporary art, and the expansion of many museums already in existence. These activities, Stallabrass writes, have become steadily more commercial, as museums establish alliances with corporations, bring their products closer to commercial culture, and move from modeling themselves on libraries to becoming more like theme parks. In connection with this, he offers an insightful look at installation art, which is often seen as an art that firmly resists buying and selling, pointing out that installations appeal to museums precisely because a work of art that can only be seen on a particular site ensures that viewers have to go there. Shedding light on everything from the greatly increased visibility for women artists, to the intense competition between art and television, to the conservative backlash against notorious works, Art Incorporated provides a frank and penetrating view of the contemporary art world.









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