Open Fire: Understanding Global Gun Cultures

by Charles Springwood

Overview

Guns are everywhere: three quarters of a billion guns - from pistols to machine guns - exist in the world today. And guns are everything: a hard-won symbol of individual freedom, an index of crime and disorder, a whole industry legitimately contributing to an economy, a popular piece of sports equipment, and an object of desire, endlessly duplicated by toys, video games and films. Open Fire presents a broad analysis of the social, cultural and political significance of firearms and the worlds they create. Illustrated with a wide range of case material - from North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa - Open Fire explores and questions this global icon of our times. Why do guns proliferate? What does it mean to shoot or to be shot? Who owns guns and who does not? How is a firearm, a manufactured thing, very different from any other object? Is there such a thing as a "gun psychology"? How are firearms regarded in places where they are largely non-existent? Is a gun a different thing when held by a white man?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845204174
Publisher:	Berg Publishers
Publication date:	12/01/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Charles Fruehling Springwood is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University.

Table of Contents

The Social Life of Guns: An Introduction—Charles Fruehling Springwood * SECTION I. Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun: Nation-States, Small Arms, and Local Victims * 2. Gunscapes: Toward a Global Geography of the Firearm—Charles Fruehling Springwood * "Silent But Deadly: Guns and Ceasefire Agreements in Northern Ireland"—Jeffrey Sluka *
4. Gun Politics: Reflections on Brazil's Failed Gun Ban Referendum in the Rio de Janeiro Context—Donna Goldstein * 5. "Of Guns, Children and the Maelstrom"—Frank Afflitto * 6. Warriors and Guns: the Anthropology of Cattle Rustling in Northeastern Africa—Nene Mburu
* SECTION II. Cocked and Loaded: Race, Sex, and Gender * 7. Arming Desire: The Sexual Force of Guns in the U.S.—C. Richard King * 8. Drawing a Virtual Gun—Katherine Gregory * 9. 'Gun Rights are Civil Rights': Racism and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in the United States—Christy Allen * 10. Aiming for Manhood: The Transformation of Guns into Objects of American Masculinity—Amy Ann Cox * 11. 'Man to Man: Power and Male Relationships in the Gunplay Film'—Robert Arjet * SECTION III. Playing, Dancing, and Thinking with Guns * 12. 'I Shot the Sheriff': Gun Talk in Jamaican Popular Music—Carolyn Cooper * 13. Playing at Hate: War Games, the Aryan World Congress, and the American Psyche—Robert Rinehart * 14. The Celebration of Violence: A Live-Fire Demonstration Carried Out by Japan's Contemporary Military—Eyal Ben-Ari and Sabine Frühstück