Books

Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem
Five hundred years after he set sail, the dominant understanding of Christopher Columbus holds him responsible for almost everything that went wrong in the New World. Here, finally, is a book that will radically change our interpretation of the man and his mission. Scholar Carol Delaney claims that the true motivation for Columbus’s voyages is very different from what is commonly accepted. She argues that he was inspired to find a western route to the Orient not only to obtain vast sums of gold for the Spanish Crown but primarily to help fund a new crusade to take Jerusalem from the Muslims—a goal that sustained him until the day he died. Rather than an avaricious glory hunter, Delaney reveals Columbus as a man of deep passion, patience, and religious conviction.

Delaney sets the stage by describing the tumultuous events that had beset Europe in the years leading up to Columbus’s birth—the failure of multiple crusades to keep Jerusalem in Christian hands; the devastation of the Black Plague; and the schisms in the Church. Then, just two years after his birth, the sacking of Constantinople by the Ottomans barred Christians from the trade route to the East and the pilgrimage route to Jerusalem. Columbus’s belief that he was destined to play a decisive role in the retaking of Jerusalem was the force that drove him to petition the Spanish monarchy to fund his journey, even in the face of ridicule about his idea of sailing west to reach the East.

Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem - British Edition
The prevailing opinion of Christopher Columbus is that he was responsible for almost everything that went wrong in the New World, caused by his political and financial ambition. But Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem challenges the received belief — showing that Columbus was driven to find a western route to the Orient not only by the promise of vast wealth for the Spanish crown but by a personal mission to fund a new crusade, to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims. And rather than portraying Columbus simply as a glory hunter, Carol Delaney puts him back into the context of his times and shows him to be a man of deep religious conviction and astonishing determination.

Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem also details the remarkable and chaotic events that struck Europe in the years leading to Columbus' birth and brings the challenges of ocean navigation dramatically to life. Carol Delaney has created a thought-provoking and timely reappraisal of a misunderstood man and his legacy.

Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology
Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology proposes an innovative approach to understanding culture as a constructed phenomenon open to investigation of its implicit premises and explicit forms. This exciting book offers a refreshing hands-on alternative to more traditional textbooks by challenging readers to think about culture in new ways and to apply these ideas to their own lives. Investigating Culture teaches students to think like anthropologists by encouraging them to compare their own cultural experiences with that of anthropologists who enter a culture specifically to study it. Approaching the study of culture or cultural anthropology in this way trains students to confront the reflexive nature of anthropology early on and to distance themselves from the inherent flaws of studying the "exotic Other."

The second edition, done with the help of Deborah Kaspin, is divided into nine chapters that focus on the variety of ways that humans orient themselves --- in space and time, by means of language, the body, the structures of everyday life, and the symbols of religion and public ritual. Each chapter includes an introduction outlining the central issues, selected classic readings, examples from a variety of cultures, suggested additional readings, and a series of exercises designed to make the analysis of culture personally accessible. The third edition will be available in early 2017.

Abraham on Trial
Abraham on Trial questions the foundations of faith that have made a virtue out of the willingness to sacrifice a child. Through his desire to obey God at all costs, even if it meant sacrificing his son, Abraham became the definitive model of faith for the major world religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In this bold look at the legacy of this biblical and qur'anic story, Carol Delaney explores how the sacrifice rather than the protection of children became the focus of faith, to the point where the abuse and betrayal of children has today become widespread and sometimes institutionalized. Her strikingly original analysis also offers a new perspective on what unites and divides the peoples of the sibling religions derived from Abraham and, implicitly, a way to overcome the increasing violence among them.

Delaney critically examines evidence from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim interpretations, from archaeology and Freudian theory, as well as a recent trial in which a father sacrificed his child in obedience to God's voice, and shows how the meaning of Abraham's story is bound up with a specific notion of fatherhood. The preeminence of the father (which is part of the meaning of the name Abraham) comes from the still operative theory of procreation in which men transmit life by means of their "seed," an image that encapsulates the generative, creative power that symbolically allies men with God. The communities of faith argue interminably about who is the true seed of Abraham, who can claim the patrimony, but until now, no one has asked what is this seed.

The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society
How do the metaphors we use to describe procreation affect our view of the relative worth of each gender? Carol Delaney discloses the powerful meanings condensed in the seemingly innocent images of "seed" and "soil." Drawing on her work in a small Turkish village of Sunni Muslims, she shows us that the images are categorically different, hierarchically ordered, and unequally valued.

The ways in which the creation of a child is understood in Turkey furnish a key to understanding a whole range of Turkish attitudes toward sexuality and gender, honor and shame, authority and submission, time and space, inside and outside, open and closed. Moreover, the symbols and meanings by which they represent procreation provide the means for understanding relationships between such seemingly disparate elements as the body, family, house, village, nation, this-world and other-world. Delaney points out that these symbols do not embellish reality; they provide the key to a particular conception of it, a conception that gives coherence to social life. The patterns revealed are not distinctly Turkish; they also comment on some of our own deeply-held assumptions and values about procreation.

Tohum ve Toprak -The Seed and the Soil
Erkeğin rahme tohumu bırakan yaratıcı; kadının da bunu besleyen toprak olduğuna inanılır. Tohum ve toprak -görünürde masum iki imge. Oysa aralarında bir hiyerarşi var; erkeklere atfedilen yaratıcılık ve hayat etme gücü onları simgesel olarak Tanrı'ya yaklaştırırken, kadınların besleyici rolü onları Tanrı tarafından yaratılanla, yani dünya ile eşleştiriyor. Antropolog Carol Delaney, Sünni bir Orta Anadolu köyünde yaptığı saha araştırmasından yola çıkarak, -yaratılış-la ilgili inanış ve simgeleri, ve bunların köylülerin, beden, cinsellik, evlilik, yeme-içme ve zaman-uzuam algıları ile hanenin yeniden üretimindeki işbölümü ve milliyetçilik retoriğinin şekilllenmesindeki rolünü inceliyor. Delaney'in temel tezi, -tekkaynaklı- ürüme teorisi ile teolojik tekranrıcılık doktrinin birbirleriyle ilişkili olduğu; dinin ve yeniden üretimin ayrı ayrı ele alınamayacağı.

Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis
This collection of essays analyzes relations of social inequality that appear to be logical extensions of a "natural order" and in the process demonstrates that a revitalized feminist anthropology of the 1990s has much to offer the field of feminist theory. Contributors:Susan McKinnon, Kath Weston, Rayna Rapp, Janet Dolgin, Harriet Whitehead, Carol Delaney, Brackette Williams, Sylvia Yanagisako, Phyllis Chock, Sherry Ortner and Anna Tsing.