New York Jews, so visible and integral to the culture, economy and politics of America's greatest city, has eluded the grasp of historians for decades. Surprisingly, no comprehensive history of New York Jews has ever been written. City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York, a three volume set of original research, pioneers a path-breaking interpretation of a Jewish urban community at once the largest in Jewish history and most important in the modern world. Volume II, Emerging Metropolis, written by Annie Polland and Daniel Soyer, describes New York's transformation into a Jewish city. Focusing on the urban Jewish built environment-its tenements and banks, synagogues and shops, department stores and settlement houses-it conveys the extraordinary complexity of Jewish immigrant society. Each volume includes a visual essay by art historian Diana Linden interpreting aspects of life for New York's Jews from their arrival until today. These illustrated sections, many in color, illuminate Jewish material culture and feature reproductions of early colonial portraits, art, architecture, as well as everyday culture and community. Overseen by noted scholar Deborah Dash Moore, City of Promises offers the largest Jewish city in the world, in the United States, and in Jewish history its first comprehensive account.

This book explores the understanding, description, and measurement of the physical, sensory, social, and emotional features of motorcycle and bicycle journey experiences in tourism. Novel insights are presented from an original case study of these forms of tourism in the Sella Pass, a panoramic road close to the Dolomites UNESCO World Heritage Site. A comprehensive mixed-methods strategy was employed for this research, with concurrent use of quantitative and qualitative methods including documentation and secondary data analysis, mobile video ethnography, and emotion measurement. The aim was to create a holistic knowledge of the features of journey experiences and a new definition of the mobility space as a perceptual space. The book is significant in that it is among the first studies to explore the concept of journey experiences and to develop an interdisciplinary theoretical foundation of mobility spaces. It offers a comprehensive understanding and a benchmarking of the features of motorcycling and cycling journey experiences, a deeper market knowledge on motorcycling and cycling tourists, and a set of tools, techniques, and recommendations for future research on tourist experiences.

How Spanish-language radio has influenced American and Latino discourse on key current affairs issues such as citizenship and immigration. Winner, Book of the Year presented by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education Honorable Mention for the 2015 Latino Studies Best Book presented by the Latin American Studies Association The last two decades have produced continued Latino population growth, and marked shifts in both communications and immigration policy. Since the 1990s, Spanish- language radio has dethroned English-language radio stations in major cities across the United States, taking over the number one spot in Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, and New York City. Investigating the cultural and political history of U.S. Spanish-language broadcasts throughout the twentieth century, Sounds of Belonging reveals how these changes have helped Spanish-language radio secure its dominance in the major U.S. radio markets. Bringing together theories on the immigration experience with sound and radio studies, Dolores Ines Casillas documents how Latinos form listening relationships with Spanish-language radio programming. Using a vast array of sources, from print culture and industry journals to sound archives of radio programming, she reflects on institutional growth, the evolution of programming genres, and reception by the radio industry and listeners to map the trajectory of Spanish-language radio, from its grassroots origins to the current corporate-sponsored business it has become. Casillas focuses on Latinos' use of Spanish-language radio to help navigate their immigrant experiences with U.S. institutions, for example in broadcasting discussions about immigration policies while providing anonymity for a legally vulnerable listenership. Sounds of Belonging proposes that debates of citizenship are not always formal personal appeals but a collective experience heard loudly through broadcast radio.

Estimation of the Time Since Death is a current comprehensive work on the methods and research advances into the time since death and human decomposition. This work provides practitioners a starting point for research and practice to assist with the identification and analysis of human remains. It contains a collection of the latest scientific research, various estimation methods, and includes case studies, to highlight methodological application to real cases. This reference first provides an introduction, including the early postmortem period, biochemical methods, and the value of entomology in estimating the time since death, along with other factors affecting the decomposition process. Further coverage explores importance of microbial communities in estimating time since death. Separate chapters on aquatic environments, carbon 14 dating and amino acid racemization, and total body scoring will round out the reference. The final chapter ties together the various themes in the context of the longest running human decomposition facility in the world and outlines future research directions.

As global health institutions and aid donors expanded HIV treatment throughout Africa, they rapidly ""scaled up"" programs, projects, and organizations meant to address HIV and AIDS. Yet these efforts did not simply have biological effects: in addition to extending lives and preventing further infections, treatment scale-up initiated remarkable political and social shifts. In Lesotho, which has the world's second highest HIV prevalence, HIV treatment has had unintentional but pervasive political costs, distancing citizens from the government, fostering distrust of health programs, and disrupting the social contract. Based on ethnographic observation between 2008 and 2014, this book chillingly anticipates the political violence and instability that swept through Lesotho in 2014. This book is a recipient of the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Prize from Vanderbilt University Press for the best book in the area of medicine.

The term "Caucasian" is a curious invention of the modern age. Originating in 1795, the word identifies both the peoples of the Caucasus Mountains region as well as those thought to be "Caucasian." Bruce Baum explores the history of the term and the category of the "Caucasian race" more broadly in the light of the changing politics of racial theory and notions of racial identity. With a comprehensive sweep that encompasses the understanding of "race" even before the use of the term "Caucasian," Baum traces the major trends in scientific and intellectual understandings of "race" from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Baum's conclusions make an unprecedented attempt to separate modern science and politics from a long history of racial classification. He offers significant insights into our understanding of race and how the "Caucasian race" has been authoritatively invented, embraced, displaced, and recovered throughout our history.

The author had identified six 'Foundations Pillars' that are the essential and minimum requirements for all nations, to ensure development and improvements for all their citizenry. These are appropriate building blocks, regardless of the type of government the nation has, or the level of industrialisation and progress of their economy. This book focuses on India; it provides a dimension to the already ignited and meaningful discussion and debate for the 2014 Indian General Elections. It focuses on national and regional level issues to identify longer-term sustainable changes that are required for the essential improvements in India, for the benefit of all its citizens. Building on the principle of Ashoka's Pillar and stone inscribed edicts found across South Asia, this book aims to engage citizens to the key priorities and importance of the six 'Foundation Pillars' that form the basis of national transformational changes that are necessary to ensure improvements for all our citizens. Using the analogy of a house, a house we name India, these priorities form the six 'Foundation Pillars' on which the new 'House of India' can be built, they are the necessary components before citizens can the build a new Indian super-structure 'house' above ground. The weaker these 'Foundation Pillars', the greater the chance of unevenness and movement, and consequently, that the building blocks above ground will crack, damage and eventually either need rebuilding or redesigning. The Indian approach, in many aspects follows behaviour of 'build-neglect-rebuild', where they build something, not necessarily to last, but sufficient for a period, neglect it, and then have to rebuild it, as by that time it is beyond repair. This is where the author believes India is at the moment, and this case study focuses on what citizens could do to change this for their benefit.

Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website.

A type of folklore, myth is central to all cultures. Myths convey serious truths learned over generations and provide practical advice for living within a society. And while many myths go back to antiquity, they are also an important part of popular culture. Because they are so fundamental to civilization, myths are studied in a range of disciplines and at all levels. This reference is a comprehensive but convenient introduction to the role of myth in world cultures. Written by a leading authority, this handbook is of use to high school students, undergraduates, and general readers. It defines and classifies types of myth and provides numerous examples, many of which illustrate the significance of myth to contemporary society. In addition, it surveys the history of the study of myth and overviews critical approaches. It examines the relation of myths to larger contexts, such as politics, religion, and popular culture. The volume closes with a bibliography of print and electronic resources and a glossary.

Contents Include: The Mystery Of The Pacific Peoples maori religion and Mystic Rites Maori Music And Dramatic Art White And Black Magic A Day In The Pah Some Old Time Stories Tales Never Before Written. Contains 10 original black and white period photographs.Keywords: Maori Music Period Photographs Black Magic Dramatic Art Pacific Peoples Pah Old Time Rites Mystic Black And White Mystery Religion

The term 'globalization' generally refers to the homogenization of cultures across the world due to Western encroachment. However, as this book explains, the process is far more subtle, complex and uneven. Taking as its starting point the fundamental question of whether globalization exists, Living with Globalization provides a lively discussion of one of the most used and abused concepts in the twenty-first century. If globalization is a valid construct, it manifests itself in lived experience, not in abstract theories. Examining the ways in which globalization is contributing to patterns of conflict, Living with Globalization explores a variety of case studies, ranging from 9/11 to identity formation. The book reveals the complex ramifications of globalization on society, government and everyday lives.

Deciding what to eat and how to eat it are two of the most basic acts of everyday life. Yet every choice also implies a value judgement: 'good' foods versus 'bad', 'proper' and 'improper' ways of eating, and 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' bodies. These food decisions are influenced by a range of social, political and economic bioauthorities, and mediated through the individual 'eating body'. This book is unique in the cultural politics of food in its exploration of a range of such bioauthorities and in its examination of the interplay between them and the individual eating body. No matter whether they are accepted or resisted, our eating practices and preferences are shaped by, and shape, these agencies. Abbots places the body, materiality and the non-human at the heart of her analysis, interrogating not only how the individual's embodied eating practices incorporate and reject the bioauthorities of food, but also how such authorities are created by the individual act of eating. Drawing on ethnographic case studies from across the globe, The Agency of Eating provides an important analysis of the power dynamics at play in the contemporary food system and the ways in which agency is expressed and bounded. This book will be of great benefit to any with an interest in food studies, anthropology, sociology and human geography.

In Ethnography from the Mission Field: The Hoffmann Collection of Cultural Knowledge Joubert et al. offer a translated and annotated edition of the 24 ethnographic articles by missionary Carl Hoffmann and his local interlocutors published between the years 1913 and 1958. The edition is introduced by a historic contextualisation using a cultural historical approach to analyse the contexts in which Hoffmann's ethnographic texts were produced. Making use of historical material and Hoffmann's own words from personal diaries and letters, the authors convincingly draw the attention to the discursive context in which the texts annotated in this book had been compiled. In a concluding chapter the book traces the captivating developments of the orthography of Northern Sotho through Hoffmann's texts over almost half a century. Brill has made the documentary film "A Journey into the Life of a Mission-Ethnographer" which is interlinked with this book available online via its online channels. To access it please click here. The digital database of the "Hoffmann Collection of Cultural Knowledge" (HC-CK) can be accessed by clicking here. It is an amalgamation of digital scans, images and video footage relating to missionary Carl Hoffmann's work and life on various mission stations, made available by the Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin.

This volume explores the role of religion in the educational achievement of Hispanics. In particular, it assesses the influence of religion on parental involvement in children's educational experiences. The book compares Catholic and Protestant parents' opinions and practices against the backdrop of socio-economic factors, such as levels of income and schooling. In its examination of the relationships between family, church and school, the study explores how religion and other cultural traits such as family structure, language, and ethnic identity, interact and yield particular educational outcomes. The study shows that religion can make a positive difference in the education of Latinos. Religion is a resource that parents can tap into for the benefit of their children. Teachers, school administrators, policy makers and religious leaders will find this study useful as they strive to understand and change Latinos' educational status.

In 1996 on the banks of the Columbia River a 9,300-year old skeleton was found that would become the impetus for the first legal assault on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The Kennewick Man, as it came to be called, put to test whether the American Indian tribes of the area were culturally affiliated with the skeleton as they claim and their oral traditions affirm, or whether the skeleton was affiliated with a people who are no longer present. At the same time, another 9,000-year old skeleton was found in the storage facility of the Nevada State Museum, where it had gone unnoticed for the past 50 years. Like the Kennewick Man, the Spirit Cave Mummy also brought to fore the question of cultural affiliation between contemporary American Indian tribes of the western Great Basin and those people who resided in the area during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Cultural anthropologist Peter N. Jones tackles these contentious questions in this landmark study, Respect for the Ancestors. For the first time in a single work, the question of cultural affiliation between the present-day American Indians of the American West and the people of the distant past is examined using multiple lines of evidence. Out of this comprehensive study, a picture of continuous cultural evolution and adaptation between the peoples of the ancient past and those of the present-day emerges from the evidence. Further, important implications for the field of anthropology are discussed as a result of this benchmark study. Anyone working in the American West today will benefit from this book.

Images of diamonds appear everywhere in American culture. And everyone who has a diamond has a story to tell about it. Our stories about diamonds not only reveal what we do with these tiny stones, but also suggest how we create value, meaning, and identity through our interactions with material culture in general.

Things become meaningful through our interactions with them, but how do people go about making meaning? What can we learn from an ethnography about the production of identity, creation of kinship, and use of diamonds in understanding selves and social relationships? By what means do people positioned within a globalized political-economy and a compelling universe of advertising interact locally with these tiny polished rocks?

This book draws on 12 months of fieldwork with diamond consumers in New York City as well as an analysis of the iconic De Beers campaign that promised romance, status, and glamour to anyone who bought a diamond to show that this thematic pool is just one resource among many that diamond owners draw upon to engage with their own stones. The volume highlights the important roles that memory, context, and circumstance also play in shaping how people interpret and then use objects in making personal worlds. It shows that besides operating as subjects in an ad-burdened universe, consumers are highly creative, idiosyncratic, and theatrical agents.

Russell W. Ramsey, Ph.D., D. Min., is the nation's longest standing scholar who writes about the Latin American military and security forces. He offers here a compilation of his best published work on this admittedly controversial topic, dating from 1963 to 2002."

Time travel, UFOs, mysterious planets, stigmata, rock-throwing poltergeists, huge footprints, bizarre rains of fish and frogs-nearly a century after Charles Fort's Book of the Damned was originally published, the strange phenomenon presented in this book remains largely unexplained by modern science. Through painstaking research and a witty, sarcastic style, Fort captures the imagination while exposing the flaws of popular scientific explanations. Virtually all of his material was compiled and documented from reports published in reputable journals, newspapers and periodicals because he was an avid collector. Charles Fort was somewhat of a recluse who spent most of his spare time researching these strange events and collected these reports from publications sent to him from around the globe. This was the first of a series of books he created on unusual and unexplained events and to this day it remains the most popular. If you agree that truth is often stranger than fiction, then this book is for you.

In You Never Call, You Never Write, Joyce Antler provides an illuminating and often amusing history of one of the best-known figures in popular culture-the Jewish Mother. Whether drawn as self-sacrificing or manipulative, in countless films, novels, radio and television programs, stand-up comedy, and psychological and historical studies, she appears as a colossal figure, intensely involved in the lives of her children. Antler traces the odyssey of this compelling personality through decades of American culture. She reminds us of a time when Jewish mothers were admired for their tenacity and nurturance, as in the early twentieth-century image of the "Yiddishe Mama," a sentimental figure popularized by entertainers such as George Jessel, Al Jolson, and Sophie Tucker, and especially by Gertrude Berg, whose amazingly successful "Molly Goldberg" ruled American radio and television for over 25 years. Antler explains the transformation of this Jewish Mother into a "brassy-voiced, smothering, and shrewish" scourge (in Irving Howe's words), detailing many variations on this negative theme, from Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks to television shows such as "The Nanny," "Seinfeld," and "Will and Grace." But she also uncovers a new counter-narrative, leading feminist scholars and stand-up comediennes to see the Jewish Mother in positive terms. Continually revised and reinvented, the Jewish Mother becomes in Antler's expert hands a unique lens with which to examine vital concerns of American Jews and the culture at large. A joy to read, You Never Call, You Never Write will delight anyone who has ever known or been nurtured by a "Jewish Mother," and it will be a special source of insight for modern parents. As Antler suggests, in many ways "we are all Jewish Mothers" today.

Traces the anthropological and ethnological theories of the ancient Greeks and Romans from the creation of the world to the invention of the Americas. In ancient Greek and Roman thinking, whether the world is flat or spherical it will have imaginary boundaries and liminal areas where the norms of nature and culture are thought to break down. Analogies are constantly drawn between 'primitive' peoples at the 'edges of the world' and 'primitive' people in prehistory. Distance, both in time and space, leads to difference, and the idea that strange things happen out there or happened back then dominates Greek and Roman thinking on other cultures. This book examines ancient ideas of the creation of the world, the beginnings of life and origin of species, humans and animals, utopias and blessed islands, and 'barbarian' cultures beyond the Mediterranean world, before going on to trace the influence of ancient anthropological and ethnological thought on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. We begin with primordial chaos and end with the invention of the Americas, taking in on the way many strange creatures, among them the noble or ignoble savages of Britain, Gaul and Ireland, the Man-faced Ox-creatures of Empedocles, the Dog-heads of India, the Amazons, Centaurs, Columbus, and the Tupinamba of Brazil.