This book explores the communication challenges faced by parents as they raise children who are bi-cultural, multi-cultural, or are adopted from a heritage other than the parents. Each contributor views the family as a site of intercultural dialogue and mediation, and uses compelling studies throughout to examine the parents who creatively balance cultural influences within their families. Using television depictions of parents on Modern Family and All-American Muslim to the everyday activities of mixed-ethnicity and international families, Mediating Cultures reports the communication strategies employed by the parents as they strive to create affirming relationships between children and their heritages. This collection brings together two largely separate literatures of family communication and intercultural communication studies with accessible yet context-driven studies to explain how families integrate multiple cultural heritages and perspectives.

The study is set against the backdrop of the urbanization trend in present-day China, and focuses on the relationship between farmers who have lost their land ("land-lost farmers") and local government. Particularly, it applies the extended case method to answer the following two questions: first, in what ways do the forces of integration and conflict manifest themselves in the relationship between land-lost farmers and local government? Second, how do land-lost farmers and local government apply respective modalities in the context of their interplay? The main finding is that the two groups, land-lost farmers and officials, are engaged in a complex and dynamic relationship. That relationship is played out locally within a network of power-interest structures, which not only manifests itself as forces of integration and conflict, but also as an ongoing process, a game played by knowledgeable agents, whose strategies are enacted, and in so doing, both reproduce that game and alter it. Readers will gain an ethnographic understanding of the relationship based on an in-depth examination of perspectives on both sides of the equation.

Culture, once a center-stage concept in anthropology, is now being discussed by talk show personalities and journalists and included in a wide range of academic disciplines. In view of the myriad uses and abuse of the concept, "The Relevance of Culture" sets the record straight through a careful survey of the development of the concept of culture, and the arguments and continuing relevance of it to theoretical discussions. The authors illustrate its roles in such diverse areas as risk and technology, nursing and health care, evolution, criminology, information, economy, geography, and even the uneven the understanding of suicide.

Noted shcolars apply their wit and wisdom to illustrate and analyze the role of culture, creating a definitive picture for scholars, beginning students of cultural anthroplogy, and related social sciences.

With a foreword by Richard E. Vander Ross

In recent years, dramatic increases in racial intermarriage have given birth to a generation who refuse to be shoehorned into neat, pre-existing racial categories. Energized by a refusal to allow mixed-race people to be rendered invisible, this movement lobbies aggressively to have the category multiracial added to official racial classifications.

While applauding the self-awareness and activism at the root of this movement, Jon Michael Spencer questions its ultimate usefulness, deeply concerned that it will unintentionally weaken minority power. Focusing specifically on mixed-race blacks, Spencer argues that the mixed-race movement in the United States would benefit from consideration of how multiracial categories have evolved in South Africa. Americans, he shows us, are deeply uninformed about the tragic consequences of the former white South African government's classification of mixed-race people as Coloured. Spencer maintains that a multiracial category in the U.S. could be equally tragic, not only for blacks but formultiracials themselves.

Further, splintering people of color into such classifications of race and mixed race aggravates race relations among society's oppressed. A group that can attain some privilege through a multiracial identity is unlikely to identify with the lesser status group, blacks. It may be that the undoing of racial classification will come not by initiating a new classification, but by our increased recognition that there are millions of people who simply defy easy classification.

By the year 2000, more than one-third of Americans will be persons of color, and by 2050 non-white persons will constitute 45% of the population. Immigration from European countries has decreased, but the number of migrants from countries of non-white ancestry has increased. Consequently, many Americans are showing a growing interest in knowledge about the values and behaviors of their diverse associates. This book offers an insight into the diverse lifestyles for some cultures of color in American society. Although all members of these cultures may not identify themselves as persons of color, the cultures were selected because they incorporate a significant number of non-white individuals. Each chapter presents an overview of a cultural group that includes a brief history, migration trends, traditional and modern family practices, religious beliefs, concepts about death and dying, nutritional preferences, health behaviors, and diseases often found among its members. The cultures discussed are Africans, African Americans, Alaskans, Asians, Haitians, Hawaiians, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, and West Indians. This book should be of interest to academics, health care professionals, sociologists, clergy, and laypersons. Its goal is to alleviate fear and prejudice through informed understanding.

The Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan won their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Now they are emerging from the shadow of dominance and are subjects of intense interest from the West. The modern culture and customs of the various peoples in these geopolitical hotspots, straddling the far reaches of Europe into Asia, are revealed to a general audience for the first time. This will be the must-have volume for a broad, authoritative overview of these traditional civilizations as they cope with globalization.

This book uses the Historic Urban Landscape - the most recently codified notion of international urban heritage conservation - to demonstrate why it is necessary to demarcate history from cultural heritage and what consequences the increasing popularity of the latter have on history. It also demonstrates how the history of cultural heritage can be constructed as a historical problem. First, the conceptual history of urban heritage preservation - based on the standard setting instruments of international organizations - reveals the fundamental elements of the current concept of urban heritage. Second, this concept, as worded in the HUL approach, is investigated through the analysis of Vienna, which played a crucial role in the establishment of HUL. These examples are used to to show how the evolution of cultural heritage can be constructed as a historical problem.

Approaches to Language, Culture and Cognition aims to bring cognitive linguistics and linguistic anthropology closer together, calling for further investigations of language and culture from cognitively-informed perspectives against the backdrop of the current trend of linguistic anthropology.

The austerity crisis has radically altered the economic landscape of Southern Europe. But alongside the decimation of public services and infrastructure lies the wreckage of a generation's visions for the future. In Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, there is a new, difficult reality of downward mobility. Grassroots Economies interrogates the effects of the economic crisis on the livelihood of working people, providing insight into their anxieties. Drawing on a wide range of ethnographic material, it is a distinctive comparative analysis that explores the contradictions of their coping mechanisms and support structures. With a focus on gender, the book explores values and ideologies, including dispossession and accumulation. Ultimately it demonstrates that everyday interactions on the local scale provide a significant sense of the global.

This book offers an interactionist perspective on theories of public representation, knowledge and immigration in museum institutions. Examining how a Franco-German museum exhibition represents immigrants and exposes public stereotypes, the analysis follows the process of the production and reception of the exhibition as it travelled from Paris to Berlin. The author proposes a microsociological contextualisation analysis integrating discourse analysis and ethnography to compare formats of museum work, social interaction in the exhibition and mass media debates. Visitor reception of the different exhibition versions reveals the symbolic nature of interactions in museums, for example concerning conflicting political voices and accusations of censorship. Depending on the institutional context, interactions in the museums are geared towards securing immigrants a place in national collective memory, towards carrying out debate on integration, or providing opportunities for personal encounters and reflection beyond national categorisation. This book will appeal to students and researchers interested in work on the intersection of sociology, cultural studies, and discursive psychology, in methods of discourse analysis and ethnography; and to practitioners working in museums.

There has been a widespread fascination with age-dissimilar couples in recent years. This book examines how the romantic relationships of these couples are understood. Based on qualitative research, McKenzie investigates notions of autonomy, relatedness, contradiction, and change in age-dissimilar relationships and romantic love.

Every day for the next twenty years, more than 10,000 people in the United States will turn 65. With life expectancies increasing as well, many of these Americans will eventually require round-the-clock attention--and we have only begun to prepare for the challenge of caring for them. In Labors of Love, Jason Rodriquez examines the world of the fast-growing elder care industry, providing a nuanced and balanced portrait of the day-to-day lives of the people and organizations that devote their time to supporting America's aging population. Through extensive ethnographic research, interviews with staff and management, and analysis of internal documents, Rodriquez explores the inner workings of two different nursing homes--one for-profit and one non-profit--to understand the connections among the administrative regulations, the professional requirements, and the type of care provided in both types of facilities. He reveals a variety of challenges that nursing home care workers face day to day: battles over the budget; the administrative hurdles of Medicaid and Medicare; the employees' struggle to balance financial stability and compassionate care for residents. Yet, Rodriquez argues, nursing home workers give meaning and dignity to their work by building emotional attachments to residents and their care. An unprecedented study, Labors of Love brings new insight into the underlying structures of a crucial and expanding sector of the American health care system.

A Companion to Moral Anthropology is the first collective consideration of the anthropological dimensions of morals, morality, and ethics. Original essays by international experts explore the various currents, approaches, and issues in this important new discipline, examining topics such as the ethnography of moralities, the study of moral subjectivities, and the exploration of moral economies. * Investigates the central legacies of moral anthropology, the formation of moral facts and values, the context of local moralities, and the frontiers between moralities, politics, humanitarianism * Features contributions from pioneers in the field of moral anthropology, as well as international experts in related fields such as moral philosophy, moral psychology, evolutionary biology and neuroethics

This book establishes play as a mode of humanistic inquiry with a profound effect on art, culture and society. Play is treated as a dynamic and relational modality where relationships of all kinds are forged and inquisitive interdisciplinary engagement is embraced. Play cultivates reflection, connection, and creativity, offering new epistemological directions for the humanities. With examples from a range of disciplines including poetry, history, science, religion and media, this book treats play as an object of inquiry, but also as a mode of inquiry. The chapters, each focusing on a specific cultural phenomenon, do not simply put culture on display, they put culture in play, providing a playful lens through which to see the world. The reader is encouraged to read the chapters in this book out of order, allowing constructive collision between ideas, moments in history, and theoretical perspectives. The act of reading this book, like the project of the humanities itself, should be emergent, generative, and playful.

This pivot includes a series of inside ethnographic accounts and stories about managerial practices and processes, providing a critical account of managerial and HR practices. It seeks to advance thinking in the theoretical areas of strategy-as-practice (SasP), Actor-Network Theory, human resource management practices and safety as practice. Offering a unique insider insight to decision-making and strategy within an organization, the chapters demonstrate how practices are constructed and implemented for a range of systems and policies. Employing an ethnographic approach also gives an opportunity to assess the interpretation and deployment of procedures, policies and practices in order to control and achieve conformity to organizational goals. It satisfies a demand for richer descriptions of managerial practices in situ that can be used to challenge and critique traditional approaches, and guide researchers to apply an SasP and ANT perspective in other organizational settings.

Processes of development concerning reconciliation, rehabilitation and peace-building have become a central theme for global organizations tasked with intervening in broken and divided societies after violent conflicts. What can reunite populations divided by war and violence whilst attempting to build a peaceful civil society? This book considers the impact and value of sport, notably football, towards achieving this goal. Using extensive fieldwork from Liberia, Collison highlights the multiple and diverse stakeholders and actors aligning themselves with 'Sport for Development and Peace' interventions. By unpacking and conceptualising the ambiguous terminology, complex social effects and the lived experience of SDP, this book draw upon participant voices and the author's own lived experience within SDP to gain symbolic understandings of culture, identity and the formal and informal social structures in which participants and interventions operate. Collison identifies that SDP has become fashionable within development agendas but it remains an aspirational image, a notion of seduction, rather than a tested method of reintegration and youth development in post-conflict environments. Youth and Sport for Development questions the assumptions of SDP rhetoric and programs, and traces the effects of football - the favoured vehicle of SDP- on youth in post-conflict Liberia. Examining three core themes: post-conflict development, youth and community, this book centralises the narratives of young football players in Liberia and will appeal to scholars across Anthropology, Sociology, Sports Studies, Politics and Development.

This book presents a novel and innovative approach to the study of social evolution using case studies from the Old and the New World, from prehistory to the present. This approach is based on examining social evolution through the evolution of social institutions. Evolution is defined as the process of structural change. Within this framework the society, or culture, is seen as a system composed of a vast number of social institutions that are constantly interacting and changing. As a result, the structure of society as a whole is also evolving and changing. The authors posit that the combination of evolving social institutions explains the non-linear character of social evolution and that every society develops along its own pathway and pace. Within this framework, society should be seen as the result of the compound effect of the interactions of social institutions specific to it. Further, the transformation of social institutions and relations between them is taking place not only within individual societies but also globally, as institutions may be trans-societal, and even institutions that operate in one society can arise as a reaction to trans-societal trends and demands. The book argues that it may be more productive to look at institutions even within a given society as being parts of trans-societal systems of institutions since, despite their interconnectedness, societies still have boundaries, which their members usually know and respect. Accordingly, the book is a must-read for researchers and scholars in various disciplines who are interested in a better understanding of the origins, history, successes and failures of social institutions.

This volume examines today's vibrant and creative trans-Atlantic Caribbean community. It advances three central arguments, first, the concepts of diaspora and of Caribbean diaspora are problematic. Second, the African diaspora and its variant Caribbean diaspora are integral parts of the wider Atlantic world making it disingenuous to speak of the West and the rest where Caribbeans in the Atlantic are concerned. Third, Goulbourne insists that meaningful discussions about these aspects of the modern world must be empirically validated while being theoretically informed. Unlike much cultural and literary studies, this text makes a plea for verifiable evidence to inform academic and popular discussions about the exciting experiences of Caribbeans across the Atlantic. Chapters explore questions of definition and theory, the common Atlantic heritage and fate, social and economic contexts of Caribbean transnationality, Africa, the USA and the Caribbean in popular discourses in Britain, transnationality of families and the propensity of Caribbean-born and their offspring to return to the Caribbean from the mother country.

Modern Spain is a revelation in this up-to-date overview. Stanton vibrantly describes the startling variety of landscape, people, and culture that make up Spain today. Included are a context chapter and others on religion, customs, media, cinema, literature, performing arts, and visual arts. Students of Spanish and a general audience will be rewarded with engrossing insights into what writer Ernest Hemingway called the very best country of all.

Spain is a modern European nation, yet Spaniards are fiercely tied to their individual towns and regions--with their distinct social customs, dialects or languages, foods, landscape, and lifestyles--more than to a united country. "Culture and Customs of Spain" conveys the extremes, such as the hard-working Catalan contrasted to the leisurely paced Castilian, coexisting in first and third world conditions, and the love/hate relationship with the Catholic Church. Spain's institutions are described, and its contributions to the world--from unparalleled literature and cuisine to flamenco and filmmaker Pedro Almodovar--are celebrated. A chronology and glossary complement the text.

Corruption in politics and business is, after war, perhaps the greatest threat to democracy. Academic studies of corruption tend to come from the field of International Relations, analysing systems of formal rules and institutions. This book offers a radically different perspective - it shows how anthropology can throw light on aspects of corruption that remain unexamined in international relations. The contributors reveal how corruption operates through informal rules, personal connections and the wider social contexts that govern everyday practices. They argue that patterns of corruption are part of the fabric of everyday life - wherever we live - and subsequently they are often endemic in our key institutions. The book examines corruption across a range of different contexts from transitional societies such as post-Soviet Russia and Romania, to efforts to reform or regulate institutions that are perceived to be potentially corrupt, such as the European Commission. The book also covers the Enron and WorldCom scandals, the mafia in Sicily and the USA, and the world of anti-corruption as represented by NGOs like Transparency International.

The list of challenges facing nonhuman primates in the 21st century is a long one. The expansion of palm oil plantations to feed a growing consumer class is eating away at ape and monkey habitats in Southeast Asia and Central Africa. Lemurs are hunted for food in the poorest parts of Madagascar while monkeys are used as medicine in Brazil. Traditional cultural beliefs are maintaining demand for animal body parts in West African markets while viral YouTube videos of "cute" and "cuddly" lorises have increased their market value as pets and endangered their populations. These and other issues are addressed in this book by leading researchers in the field of ethnoprimatology, the study of human/nonhuman primate interactions that combines traditional primatological methodologies with cultural anthropology in an effort to better understand the nuances of our economic, ritualistic, and ecologic relationships.