British photographer Tariq Zaidi presents a fashion subculture of Kinshasa & Brazzaville: La Sape, Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes. Its followers are known as 'Sapeurs' ('Sapeuses' for women). Most have ordinary day jobs as taxi-drivers, tailors and gardeners, but as soon as they clock off they transform themselves into debonair dandies. Sashaying through the streets they are treated like rock stars - turning heads, bringing 'joie de vivre' to their communities and defying their circumstances.

Summary: "This book provides a fascinating insight to the vibrant street style of the "Sapeurs", the elegant and immaculately dressed dandies from the heart of the Congo. The Sapeurs today belong to 'Le SAPE' (Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes, or the Society of Tastemakers and Elegant people) - one of the world's most exclusive clubs. Members have their own code of honour, codes of professional conduct and strict notions of morality. It is a world within a world within a city. Designer brands of suits and accessories are of the utmost importance to Sapeurs - Pierre Cardin, Roberto Cavalli, Dior, Fendi, Gaultier, Gucci, Issey Miyake, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Versace, Yohji Yamamoto - are their patron saints. Unlike some US hip-hop gangs who are dressed in similar fine threads, there is no bloodshed here - here your clothes do all the fighting for you, otherwise you are not fit to be called a Sapeur. The result is a unique and inspiring style, that has captured the imagination of people all over the world - the sapeurs are now truly the kings of elegance"-- Publisher's web site.

The individualism of the French peasantry during the nineteenth century has frequently been asserted as one of its most striking characteristics. In this 1999 book, Alan Baker challenges this orthodox view and demonstrates the extent to which peasants continued with traditional, and developed new, forms of collective action. He examines representations of the peasantry and discusses the discourse of fraternity in nineteenth-century France in general before considering specifically the historical development, geographical diffusion and changing functions of fraternal voluntary associations in Loir-et-Cher between 1815 and 1914. Alan Baker focuses principally upon associations aimed at reducing risk and uncertainty and upon associations intended to provide agricultural protection. A wide range of new voluntary associations were established in Loir-et-Cher - and indeed throughout rural France - during the nineteenth century. Their historical geography throws new light upon the sociability, upon the changing mentalités, of French peasants, and upon the role of fraternal associations in their struggle for survival.

1. The Art of Gnidnarb Need for a new way of experiencing Branding as a mirror Magical Effect: the Hitchcock clinic The consumer as co-designer The curse of empowerment The Consuman Being Emocoding A coat of values 2. The Multiple Identity Crisis Democratic problems The social trapeze artist - Identity crisis 1: Good honest coffee - Identity crisis 2: Best is cheapest - Identity crisis 3: The new besiegers - Identity crisis 4: More good honest coffee - Identity crisis 5: The Paul Smith rip off The consumer taken hostage Acquired helplessness Escapism New eras 3. The Discovery of Identity I am not myself (and actually never have been) The other as a stranger Whom do I belong to? Mirror image, let's hear it Experience of identity through the camera Your unique identity development The eye of the other From the English pub 4. The Social Jungle Social reflexes Being single is hard work Looks as an instrument for social benchmarking Tribe formation along the lines of a code The basic 'in or out' game Social dominoes Personal buffer: the comfort zone As long as you look good Ignore it New Social Order: Respect! 5. Status and Symbol The Code of status Three Scarcity Trends 1. Thin as status indicator 2. 'Ordinary' as status indicator 3. Bare and empty as status indicator Status and gap Buying off our guilt D Fence Lost secret Politically incorrect: incorrect politics 6. The Basic Design The design matrix Round-trip to Paradise The Suitcase project Feeling like animation Branding and backwards Purchasing drive: 'I shop, therefore I am' Waste economy Puppets on a string Virtually real Visual statements of fashion and trendiness Lifestyle as fashion The Art of Credibility 7. Makeover Visible and invisible moments The Great Positioning Choice Juggling self-control 1. Predator or prey 2. Group thinking 3. Skin or hide Visual culture and the manipulation of images The Emocode as an index for identity experience values One of the herd or free individual Between two worlds The Invisible Man 8. Sanctuary The need for a bubble Safe on the inside, shiny on the outside Sunglasses The mobile phone Designer Teeth The Coded Society Shoes New metasystems Sophistication in identity design 9. Transformation A new life I M Perfect: Redemption, liberation of yourself Mental makeover Scarifications Liberation from the self-image Transformation of perception1 Hype Design A transformation in your life Transformation by looking outwards Innocence regained The 'I-am-Me' moment The three crucial elements Transformation through self-friendship About the author Works cited List of Illustrations Further sources of inspiration Index.

The influx of African migrants into Europe in recent years has raised important issues about changing labor economies, new technologies of border control, and the effects of armed conflict. But attention to such broad questions often obscures a fundamental fact of migration: its effects on ordinary life. Affective Circuits brings together essays by an international group of well-known anthropologists to place the migrant family front and center. Moving between Africa and Europe, the book explores the many ways migrants sustain and rework family ties and intimate relationships at home and abroad. It demonstrates how their quotidian efforts—on such a mass scale—contribute to a broader process of social regeneration. The contributors point to the intersecting streams of goods, people, ideas, and money as they circulate between African migrants and their kin who remain back home. They also show the complex ways that emotions become entangled in these exchanges. Examining how these circuits operate in domains of social life ranging from child fosterage to binational marriages, from coming-of-age to healing and religious rituals, the book also registers the tremendous impact of state officials, laws, and policies on migrant experience. Together these essays paint an especially vivid portrait of new forms of kinship at a time of both intense mobility and ever-tightening borders.

The bloody, month-long battle for the Citadel in Hue during 1968 pitted U.S. Marines against an entrenched, numerically superior North Vietnamese Army force. By official U.S. accounts it was a tactical and moral victory for the Marines and the United States. But a survivor's compulsion to square official accounts with his contrasting experience has produced an entirely different perspective of the battle, the most controversial to emerge from the Vietnam War in decades. In some of the most frank, vivid prose to come out of the war, author Nicholas Warr describes with urgency and outrage the Marines' savage house-to-house fighting, ordered without air, naval, or artillery support by officers with no experience in this type of deadly combat. Sparing few in the telling, including himself, Warr's shocking firsthand narrative of these desperate suicide charges, which devastated whole companies, takes the wraps off an incident that many would prefer to keep hidden. His account is sure to ignite heated debate among historians and military professionals. Despite senseless rules of engagement and unspeakable carnage, there were unforgettable acts of courage and self-sacrifice performed by ordinary men asked to accomplish the impossible, and Warr is at his best relating these stories. For example, there's the grenade-throwing mortarman who in a rage wipes out two machine-gun emplacements that had pinned down an entire company for days, and the fortunate grunt with thick glasses who stumbles blindly—without receiving a scratch—across a street littered with the dead and dying who hadn't made it. In describing the most vicious urban combat since World War II, this account offers an unparalleled view of how a small unit commander copes with the conflicting demands and responsibilities thrust upon him by the enemy, his men, and the chain of command.