Left Coast Press

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Left Coast Press was an independent, scholarly publishing house specializing in social sciences and humanities. Based in Walnut Creek, California, and distributed globally, the company published approximately 500 books between 2005 and 2016 before the company was purchased by Routledge, who rebranded them as Routledge books. [1] The company also published 13 scholarly journals before its journals division was sold in 2012 to Maney Publishing, [2] now part of Taylor & Francis.

Contents

Founded by Mitchell Allen, formerly Executive Editor at Sage Publications and Publisher of AltaMira Press, and Ariadne Prater, an administrator at University of California Berkeley, the company focused on publishing anthropology, archaeology, museum studies, and qualitative methods. Within these fields, products included research monographs, edited collections, reference books, textbooks, scholarly comic books, supplemental texts, DVDs, and scholarly journals. Almost all Left Coast titles were available both in paper and ebook form. Distributors included University of Chicago Press (US), University of Arizona Press (US), University of British Columbia Press (Canada), Berg Publishers (Europe), Eurospan (Europe), Footprint Books (Australia).

An unrelated nt.html Left Coast Press, which produces hand printed books, operates in Oakland, California, and is directed by Dorothy Yule.

Archaeology

Left Coast's first season in 2005 included books by archaeologists Brian Fagan, [3] Thomas King, [4] and David Whitley. [5] In 2007, Left Coast became publisher for the UCL Institute of Archaeology, for which they published and distributed 67 titles by 2016. [6] Left Coast also published for the World Archaeological Congress (WAC), including the long-standing One World Archaeology series, a series of research handbooks, and a series on indigenous peoples and archaeology. [7] The largest of Left Coast's lists of titles, the archaeology program had additional series on heritage tourism, cultural resources management, rock art research, historical archaeology, cultural property law, and historical ecology. Left Coast resurrected the defunct Academic Press book series, reissuing such New Archaeology titles as Kent Flannery’s Early Mesoamerican Village, [8] Linda Cordell's Archaeology of the Southwest, and Jane Buikstra’s Bioarchaeology . Among the archaeologists publishing with the press were Paul Bahn, Jeremy Sabloff, Thomas King, Sarah Milledge Nelson, Alice Beck Kehoe, Deborah Pearsall, Lewis Binford, David Lewis-Williams, Ian Hodder, and Michael Shanks.

Indigenous archaeology and cultural resources management were two focuses of the Left Coast program. Left Coast was among the sponsoring organizations for the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage Project of Simon Fraser University. [9] Among the projects in archaeology was the first book on Black Feminist Archaeology (Battle-Baptiste), [10] descriptions of the excavations at Catalhoyuk written by journalist Michael Balter [11] and another by the site's guard Sadrettin Dural, and a book of archaeological quotations. Left Coast also preserved in print the 7th edition of the oldest archaeological field methods textbook, originally written by Robert Heiser in 1949. [12]

Anthropology

Left Coast published in many of the areas of anthropology, including cultural anthropology, archaeology, and biological anthropology. Its list focused on applied aspects of the field, particularly medical anthropology and business anthropology, in which the publisher had ongoing series. Central to the business anthropology program was the first reference volume on the topic, Handbook of Anthropology in Business (Denny and Sunderland) in 2014. [13] Another focus in anthropology was in Native American and indigenous studies, including books by indigenous scholars such as Gary White Deer, Joe Watkins, Sonya Atalay, and Roger Echo-Hawk.

The company brought to press posthumously a lost work by anthropologist Leslie White, Modern Capitalist Culture, begun in 1959 but not published until 2008. [14] Left Coast's publisher, Mitchell Allen, received an Executive Director's Award of the American Anthropological Association in 2014 for the Press's work in anthropology. [15]

Museum Studies

Left Coast partnered with several organizations to produce works of practical interest to museum professionals: the Museum Education Roundtable, [16] the PEW Center for Arts and Heritage, Te Papa Museum, and the Exploratorium. [17] Authors in the museum research and practice world who published works with the press included Beverly Serrell, Peter Samis, Leslie Bedford, Kathleen MacLean, and Hugh Genoways. John H. Falk and Lynne Dierking's book The Museum Experience was added to the Left Coast list in 2011 and a new edition The Museum Experience Revisited published in 2012. [18] Explorations of visitor experience, interpretive planning, diverse audiences, and career planning were included in the Left Coast titles.

Qualitative Methods

Left Coast was the publisher for the International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry, publishing both its journal and an annual book series out of the Congresses. Founder of the Congress, Norman K. Denzin, was a frequent contributor to the Left Coast list as an editor and author, including his Qualitative Manifesto and a set of 4 books on Native Americans treatment by American culture.

Janice Morse edited two textbook series for Left Coast, which also published a series based out of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology at the University of Alberta, founded by Morse. She also wrote books on qualitative health research and research design for the Left Coast list.

The newly developed subfield of autoethnography [19] was another element of the qualitative methods list, including the Handbook of Autoethnography, Carolyn Ellis’s texts Revision and Evocative Autoethnography (with Arthur Bochner), and the Writing Lives series.

Max van Manen, moved his six phenomenology [20] titles to Left Coast in 2015, where he then launched the Phenomenology of Practice series. Oral history became another focus of the research methods collection, including the Community Oral History Toolkit and the Practicing Oral History series, edited by Nancy MacKay. Other qualitative methods authors at Left Coast included Yvonna Lincoln, Laurel Richardson, Harry Wolcott, Johnny Saldaña, Jean Clandinin, and Bud Goodall. Left Coast books won book awards from the International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry in five of first seven years the award was presented.

Other Strands of Publication

Left Coast produced books in other social science fields including:

Seven books on cultural studies, communication, advertising, tourism, and writing by Arthur Asa Berger

Journals

Beginning in 2006, after taking over publication of the 30-year old Journal of Museum Education, Left Coast launched a pair of new professional journals for the museum field, first with Museums & Social Issues (2006), then Museum History Journal (2008).

In 2009, the Society for California Archaeology chose Left Coast as publisher of a new journal for their organization, California Archaeology. [21] Left Coast launched three new journals for archaeologists: Heritage and Society (2008), Ethnoarchaeology (2009), and Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage (2012). In addition, they secured agreement to assume publication of Kiva, a 75-year old journal of southwest archaeology sponsored by the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society, Lithic Technology, a 35-year old journal of lithics studies, and Ñawpa Pacha , a 30-year old journal of Andean archaeology sponsored by the Institute of Andean Studies.

Left Coast partnered with the International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry to create the International Review of Qualitative Inquiry in 2008 [22] and launched a second qualitative journal, Qualitative Communication Research (now Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, University of California Press) in 2012.

In 2012, the Left Coast list of journals was transferred to Maney Publishing in the United Kingdom, except for the qualitative journals, which were transferred to University of California Press. Maney was purchased by Taylor & Francis in 2015, including the Left Coast journals.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethnography</span> Systematic study of people and cultures

Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qualitative research</span> Form of research

Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, including understanding their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation. This type of research typically involves in-depth interviews, focus groups, or observations in order to collect data that is rich in detail and context. Qualitative research is often used to explore complex phenomena or to gain insight into people's experiences and perspectives on a particular topic. It is particularly useful when researchers want to understand the meaning that people attach to their experiences or when they want to uncover the underlying reasons for people's behavior. Qualitative methods include ethnography, grounded theory, discourse analysis, and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Qualitative research methods have been used in sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, communication studies, social work, folklore, educational research, information science and software engineering research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Ucko</span> English archaeologist

Peter John Ucko FRAI FSA was an influential English archaeologist. He served as Director of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London (UCL), and was a Fellow of both the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Society of Antiquaries. A controversial and divisive figure within archaeology, his life's work focused on eroding western dominance by broadening archaeological participation to developing countries and indigenous communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Kroeber</span> American anthropologist (1876–1960)

Alfred Louis Kroeber was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through 1947. Kroeber provided detailed information about Ishi, the last surviving member of the Yahi people, whom he studied over a period of years. He was the father of the acclaimed novelist, poet, and writer of short stories Ursula K. Le Guin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Autoethnography</span> Research method using personal experience

Autoethnography is a form of ethnographic research in which a researcher connects personal experiences to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings. It is considered a form of qualitative and/or arts-based research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UCL Institute of Archaeology</span> Academic department at UCL

UCL's Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of the Social & Historical Sciences Faculty of University College London (UCL) which it joined in 1986 having previously been a school of the University of London. It is currently one of the largest centres for the study of archaeology, cultural heritage and museum studies in the world, with over 100 members of staff and 600 students housed in a 1950s building on the north side of Gordon Square in the Bloomsbury area of Central London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Hawaiʻi Press</span> Academic publisher

The University of Hawaiʻi Press is a university press that is part of the University of Hawaiʻi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of New Mexico Press</span>

The University of New Mexico Press (UNMP) is a university press at the University of New Mexico. It was founded in 1929 and published pamphlets for the university in its early years before expanding into quarterlies and books. Its administrative offices are in the Office of Research, on the campus of UNM in Albuquerque.

The University of Utah Press is the independent publishing branch of the University of Utah and is a division of the J. Willard Marriott Library. Founded in 1949 by A. Ray Olpin, it is also the oldest university press in Utah. The mission of the press is to "publish and disseminate scholarly books in selected fields, as well as other printed and recorded materials of significance to Utah, the region, the country, and the world."

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to anthropology:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire Smith (archaeologist)</span> Australian archaeologist

Claire Smith, is an Australian archaeologist specialising in Indigenous archaeology, symbolic communication and rock art. She served as Dean (Research) of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University in 2017-2018 and, prior to that, as head of the Department of Archaeology. She served two terms as president of the World Archaeological Congress from 2003 to 2014 and greatly increased the organization's size and visibility. Among her many publications is the Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology.

Harold Lloyd "Bud" Goodall Jr. was an American scholar of human communication and a writer of narrative ethnography. He was a professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University.

Robert Fleming Heizer was an archaeologist who conducted extensive fieldwork and reporting in California, the Southwestern United States, and the Great Basin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Stonebanks</span>

Dr. C. Darius Stonebanks is a multiple award-winning Professor of Education with an international reputation in the areas of Action Research, Narrative Inquiry, Critical Methodologies, Secularism, Islamophobia, Anti-Racism, Social Justice, and Transformative Praxis. He has worked in Montreal’s inner-city elementary schools, the James Bay Cree territories as a CEGEP instructor and as the Director of a Community Campus dedicated to lifelong learning in Malawi. As an immigrant to Canada at a young age, with parents born in Iran and Egypt, Dr. Stonebanks uses his understandings as a racialized, visible minority to build capacity in those who are otherwise excluded from natural human rights in public spaces, such as Education. He is deeply committed to further opening Canada’s higher education to the next generation of BIPOC academics, researchers, and leaders. His latest honour was the 2022 Congress of Qualitative Inquiry “Career Award”.

Arthur P. Bochner is an American communication scholar known for his research and teaching on intimate relationships, qualitative inquiry, narrative, and autoethnography. He holds the rank of Distinguished University Professor at the University of South Florida. Bochner is the former President of the National Communication Association and former Vice-President of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Among his publications are two books, two edited collections, and more than 100 book articles, chapters, and essays on communication theory, family and interpersonal communication, love and marriage, and the philosophies and methodologies of the human sciences, especially narrative inquiry and autoethnography.

Carolyn Ellis is an American communication scholar known for her research of autoethnography, a reflexive approach to research, writing, and storytelling that connects the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political. Her research centers on how individuals negotiate identities, emotions, and meaning making in and through close relationships.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norman K. Denzin</span> American sociologist

Norman Kent Denzin was an American professor of sociology. He was an emeritus professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was research professor of communications, College of Communications scholar, professor of sociology, professor of cinema studies, professor in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. Denzin's academic interests included interpretive theory, performance studies, qualitative research methodology, and the study of media, culture and society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janice M. Morse</span> New Zealand-born nursing researcher

Janice Margaret Morse in Blackburn, Lancs., UK to New Zealand parents. She is an anthropologist and nurse researcher who is best known as the founder and chief proponent of the field of qualitative health research. She has taught in the United States and Canada. She received PhDs in transcultural nursing and in anthropology at the University of Utah, where she later held the Ida May “Dotty” Barnes and D Keith Barnes Presidential Endowed Chair in the College of Nursing at University of Utah,. She is also an Emerita Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah and Professor Emerita at the University of Alberta. She is founder of three journals and created four scholarly book series on qualitative research. She was Founding Director of the International Institute of Qualitative Methodology at University of Alberta, the longest standing research institute on qualitative inquiry in the world.

Leon Anderson is an American sociologist, academic and researcher. He is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Ohio University and Utah State University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">INAPL</span> Argentine anthropological and cultural institute

The National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought is an Argentine government agency dedicated to preserving national cultural and archeological heritage. It is a part of Argentina's ministry of culture.

References

  1. "Newsletters | Books+Publishing". www.booksandpublishing.com.au.
  2. "Maney Publishing acquires Left Coast Press, Inc. journals | STM Publishing News".
  3. Moshenka, G. "Review of Writing Archaeology," Papers of the Institute of Archaeology 18 (2007) pp. 190-192
  4. Craib, J. "Review of Doing Archaeology," Australian Archaeology 65 (2007) p. 56
  5. Gendron, D. "Review of Introduction to Rock Art Research," Canadian Journal of Archaeology 31: 2 (2007) 261-263
  6. Whitehouse, R. "Peter and Institute Publications," Archaeology International 10, p 21.
  7. "Publications – World Archaeological Congress".
  8. Wauhope, R. "Review of The Early Mesoamerican Village," American Antiquity 42:4 (1977), 656-659
  9. "Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage | Theory, Practice, Policy, Ethics".
  10. Little, B. "Review of Black Feminist Archaeology," Northeast Historical Archaeology 39:9 (2010)
  11. Fairbairn, A. "Review of The Goddess and the Bull", Australian Archaeology 64 (2007), pp. 54-56
  12. "NPS Archeology Program: Archeology for Interpreters". www.nps.gov.
  13. "Rita Denny and Patricia Sunderland, "Handbook of Anthropology in…". New Books Network.
  14. [ dead link ]
  15. American Anthropological Association (2014). "Changing the Atmosphere: 2014 American Anthropological Association Annual Report" (PDF). American Anthropological Association.
  16. Nevins, E. "Visual History of the Journal of Museum education," JME40 Blog Mar 31, 2015,
  17. "About the publishing program". www.exploratorium.edu. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
  18. Falk/Dierking, The Museum Experience Revisited, Schnitzler Museum of Art lecture March 17, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDP87JEC3D4
  19. Ellis, Carolyn (January 2011). "Autoethnography: An Overview". Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research. 12 (1). doi:10.17169/fqs-12.1.1589 . Retrieved November 6, 2019.
  20. van Maanen, Max (April 2, 2017). "Phenomenology in its Original Sense". Qualitative Health Research. 27 (6): 810–825. doi:10.1177/1049732317699381. PMID   28682720 via Sage.
  21. Allen, Mark. 2008. President's Message. SCA Newsletter 42:3 September, p 3
  22. Conference Program, International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry, 2009, p. 6