This book offers an in-depth description and analysis of Chinese coin-like charms, which date back to the second century CE and which continued to be used until mid 20th century. This work is unique in that it provides an archaeological and analytical interpretation of the content of these metallic objects: inscriptive, pictorial or both. As the component chapters show, these coin-like objects represent a wealth of Chinese traditional folk beliefs, including but not limited to family values, social obligations and religious desires. The book presents a collection of contributed chapters, gathering a diverse range of perspectives and expertise from some of the world's leading scholars in the fields of archaeology, religious studies, art history, language and museology. The background of the cover image is a page from Guang jin shi yun fu , a rhyming dictionary first published in the ninth year of the Kangxi Reign (1652 CE). The metal charm dates back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE), depicting two deities traditionally believed to possess the majic power of suppressing evil spirits. The stich-bound book in the foreground is a collection of seal impressions from the beginning of the 20th century. Its wooden press board is inscribed da ji xiang by Fang Zhi-bin in the year of bing yin (1926 CE).

This book explores the relationship between knowledge and context through a novel analysis of processes of representation. Sandra Jovchelovitch argues that representation, a social psychological construct relating self, other and object-world, is at the basis of all knowledge. Understanding its genesis and actualisation in individual and social life explains what ties knowledge to persons, communities and cultures. It is through representation that we can appreciate the diversity of knowledge, and it is representation that opens the epistemic function of knowing to emotional and social rationalities. Drawing on dialogues between psychology, sociology and anthropology, Jovchelovitch explores the dominant assumptions of western conceptions of knowledge and the quest for a unitary reason free from the 'impurities' of person, community and culture. She recasts questions related to historical comparisons between the knowledge of adults and children, 'civilised' and 'primitive' peoples, scientists and lay communities and examines the ambivalence of classical theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky, Freud, Durkheim and Levy-Bruhl in addressing these issues. Against this background, Jovchelovitch situates and expands Moscovici's theory of social representations, developing a framework to diagnose and understand knowledge systems, how they relate to different communities and what defines dialogical and non-dialogical encounters between knowledges in contemporary public spheres. Diversity in knowledge, she shows, is an asset of all human communities and dialogue between different forms of knowing constitutes the difficult but necessary task that can enlarge the frontiers of all knowledges. Knowledge in context will make essential reading for all those wanting to follow debates on knowledge and representation at the cutting edge of social, cultural and developmental psychology, sociology, anthropology, development and cultural studies.

Terrorism threatens to destroy the world, corruption runs rampant, and natural resources are being depleted. Will these problems ever be solved? If events continue on their current course, these issues could destroy us. It is imperative that we take steps to understand evolutionary natural selection and the processes that have shaped world affairs over the past forty thousand years. Only by learning about social evolution and how ideologies have shaped societies will we be able to play active roles in trying to solve society's problems. Author Charles Brough covers topics such as basic behavior, the development of the first patriarchal system, barbarism and the rise of religions, and possible alternatives to Western civilization. Learn why the green revolution is falling behind, the implications of climate change, and how lagging energy supplies will affect the world. This social approach to studying evolution and humanity is different than anything you've ever encountered. You must be willing to understand the function that ideologies serve without believing in any of them to gain a deeper perspective on what may be The Last Civilization.

This timely book aims to change the way we think about religion by putting emotion back onto the agenda. It challenges a tendency to over-emphasise rational aspects of religion, and rehabilitates its embodied, visceral and affective dimensions. Against the view that religious emotion is a purely private matter, it offers a new framework which shows how religious emotions arise in the varied interactions between human agents and religious communities, human agents and objects of devotion, and communities and sacred symbols. It presents parallels and contrasts between religious emotions in European and American history, in other cultures, and in contemporary western societies. By taking emotions seriously, A Sociology of Religious Emotion sheds new light on the power of religion to shape fundamental human orientations and motivations: hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, loves and hatreds.

This is the first book to explore how religious movements and actors shape and are shaped by aspects of global city dynamics. Theoretically grounded and empirically informed, Religion and the Global City advances discussions in the field of urban religion, and establishes future research directions. David Garbin and Anna Strhan bring together a wealth of ethnographically rich and vivid case studies in a diversity of urban settings, in both Global North and Global South contexts. These case studies are drawn from both 'classical' global cities such as London and Paris, and also from large cosmopolitan metropolises - such as Bangalore, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos, Singapore and Hong Kong - which all constitute, in their own terms, powerful sites within the informational, cultural and moral networked economies of contemporary globalization. The chapters explore some of the most pressing issues of our times: globalization and the role of global neo-liberal regimes; urban change and in particular the dramatic urbanization of Global South countries; and religious politics and religious revivalism associated, for instance, with transnational Islam or global Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity.

This innovative volume presents the personal aspects of retirement--the feelings, pleasures, and problems of this life event, expressed in the words of retirees. The author considers work patterns prior to retirement, the decision-making process itself, and the aftermath of the decision to retire. This passage of worker to retiree addresses concerns and questions that are important to many of those about to retire: how working conditions and other factors can affect the decision to retire; problems of a workaholic; how to handle leisure interests on a full-time basis; widowhood and retirement; depression; retirement insurance; mandatory retirement; volunteer work; and many other topics. The retirees include men and women who are blue- and white-collar workers, hourly paid or salaried: CEO of a major international corporation; social worker; college instructor; dentist; journalist; production controller in manufacturing; automobile dealer. Thus readers can easily identify with others who have made this journey before them and share their experiences, becoming more knowledgeable and more confident about their futures.

Our Lives Are But Stories explores the crucial role of personal storytelling in the lives of a unique generation of women -- Jewish women who left the Muslim country of Tunisia to settle in the newly created Israeli state. To this day, the older generation of Tunisian Israelis continues to rely on storytelling as a form of education, entertainment, and socialization. But for women this art has taken on new dimensions, especially as they seek to impart their values to the young. Here Esther Schely-Newman expertly interweaves the personal accounts of the private lives of four Tunisian-Israeli women to analyze the rich complexities of communication. She considers how various approaches to narration reflect storytelling as a cultural phenomenon and highlights the need to understand stories in the contexts in which they are told.

The four narrators grew up in a culture in which women's stories were confined to the private sphere, were usually told to other women, and were supposedly fiction -- or at least metaphors masking their real lives. Forced migration to farming communities in Israel and the shock of being uprooted created new identities for women and new outlets for storytelling. Women narrators increasingly began to tell more openly of their personal lives. Schely-Newman organizes her narrators' accounts by the themes of childhood, marriage, motherhood, immigration, and old age and considers a wide range of factors that shape the narration, including audience, intent, choice of language, and Jewish-Muslim culture. The result is a fascinating blend of analysis, narration, and history.

A tour of Tudor England through the coroner's reports of ordinary people's various grizzly fatal accidents. A Horrible History for adults by leading Oxford historians.

How did ordinary people live in Tudor England? This unique history unearths the ways they died to find out.

Uncovering thousands of coroners' reports, An Accidental History of Tudor England explores the history of everyday life, and everyday death, in a world far from the intrigues of Hampton Court Palace, Shakespeare's plots and the Spanish Armada. Here, farming, building and travel were dangerous. Fruit trees killed more people than guns, and sheep killed about the same number as coalmines. Men stabbed themselves playing football and women drowned in hundreds fetching water. Going to church had its dangers, especially when it came to bell-ringing, archery practice was perilous and haystacks claimed numerous victims. Restless animals roamed the roads which contained some potholes so deep men could drown, and drown they did.

From bear attacks in north Oxford to a bowls-on-ice-incident on the Thames, this book uses a remarkable trove of sources and stories to put common folk back into the big picture of Tudor England, bringing the reality of their world to life as never before.

This innovative book documents border porosities that have developed and persisted between Greece and North Macedonia over different temporalities and at different localities. By drawing on geology's approaches to studying porosity, Dimova argues that similar to rocks and minerals that only appear solid and impermeable, seemingly impenetrable borders are inevitably traversed by different forms of passage. The rich ethnographic case studies, from the history of railroads in the southern Balkans, border town beauty tourism, child refugees during the Greek Civil War, mining and environmental activism, and the urban renovation project in Skopje, show that the political borders between states do not only restrict or regulate the movement of people and things, but are also always permeable in ways that exceed state governmentality. -- .

A process through which skills, knowledge, and resources are expanded, capacity building, remains a tantalizing and pervasive concept throughout the field of anthropology, though it has received little in the way of critical analysis. By exploring the concept's role in a variety of different settings including government lexicons, religious organizations, environmental campaigns, biomedical training, and fieldwork from around the globe, Hope and Insufficiency seeks to question the histories, assumptions, intentions, and enactments that have led to the ubiquity of capacity building, thereby developing a much-needed critical purchase on its persuasive power.

A process through which skills, knowledge, and resources are expanded, capacity building, remains a tantalizing and pervasive concept throughout the field of anthropology, though it has received little in the way of critical analysis. By exploring the concept's role in a variety of different settings including government lexicons, religious organizations, environmental campaigns, biomedical training, and fieldwork from around the globe, Hope and Insufficiency seeks to question the histories, assumptions, intentions, and enactments that have led to the ubiquity of capacity building, thereby developing a much-needed critical purchase on its persuasive power.

Museums and archives all over the world digitize their collections and provide online access to heritage material. But what factors determine the content, structure and use of these online inventories? This book turns to India and Europe to answer this question. It explains how museums and archives envision, decide and conduct digitization and online dissemination. It also sheds light on born-digital, community-based archives, which have established themselves as new actors in the field. Based on anthropological fieldwork, the chapters in the book trace digital archives from technical advancements and postcolonial initiatives to programming alternatives, editing content, and active use of digital archives.

Primarily on the basis of ethnographic case-studies from around the world, this volume links investigations of work to questions of personal and professional identity and social relations. In the era of digitalized neoliberalism, particular attention is paid to notions of freedom, both collective (in social relations) and individual (in subjective experiences). These cannot be investigated separately. Rather than juxtapose economy with ethics (or the profitable with the good), the authors uncover complex entanglements between the drudgery experienced by most people in the course of making a living and ideals of emancipated personhood.

Lewis Island in Lambertville, New Jersey, is the site of the Lewis Fishery, the last haul seine American shad fishery on the nontidal Delaware River. The Lewis family has fished in the same spot since 1888 and operated the fishery through five generations. The extended Lewis family, its fishery's crew, and the Lambertville community connect with people throughout the region, including environmentalists concerned about the river. It was a Lewis who raised the alarm and helped resurrect a polluted river and its biosphere. While this once exclusively masculine activity is central to the tiny island, today men, women, and children fish, living out a sense of place, belonging, and sustainability. In Another Haul: Narrative Stewardship and Cultural Sustainability at the Lewis Family Fishery, author Charlie Groth highlights the traditional, vernacular, and everyday cultural expressions of the family and crew to understand how community, culture, and the environment intersect. Groth argues there is a system of narrative here that combines verbal activities and everyday activities. On the basis of over two decades of participation and observation, interviews, surveys, and a wide variety of published sources, Groth identifies a phenomenon she calls ""narrative stewardship."" This narrative system, emphasizing place, community, and commitment, in turn, encourages environmental and cultural stewardship, tradition, and community. Intricate and embedded, the system appears invisible, but careful study unpacks and untangles how people, often unconsciously, foster sustainability. Though an ethnography of an occupation, the volume encourages readers to consider what arises as special about all cultures and what needs to be seen and preserved.

El Salvador's civil war began in 1980 and ended twelve bloody years later.It saw extreme violence on both sides, including the terrorising and targetingof civilians by death squads, recruitment of child soldiers, and the death anddisappearance of more than 75,000 people. Examining El Salvador's vibrantlife-story literature written in the aftermath of this terrible conflict-includingmemoirs and testimonials-Erik Ching seeks to understand how thewar has come to be remembered and rebattled by Salvadorans and what thatmeans for their society today. Ching identifies four memory communities that dominate nationalpostwar views: civilian elites, military officers, guerrilla commanders, andworking class and poor testimonialists. Pushing distinct and divergent stories,these groups are today engaged in what Ching terms a "narrative battle"for control over the memory of the war. Their ongoing publications in themarketplace of ideas tend to direct Salvadorans' attempts to negotiate thewar's meaning and legacy, and Ching suggests that a more open, coordinatedreconciliation process is needed in this postconflict society. In the meantime,El Salvador, fractured by conflicting interpretations of its national trauma,is hindered in dealing with the immediate problems posed by the nexus ofneoliberalism, gang violence, and outmigration.

Governmental social institutions are responsible for major policy decisions that deeply affect our everyday lives. This edited collection analyzes the effects of the main macro-social systems--law and politics, economic development, education, social welfare, health, mental health, transportation, housing, and religion--on the lives of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans. The contributors, who are experts with the particular fields they address, reveal that macro-social systems are characterized by widespread, severe discrimination in the form of laws, attitudes, and behaviors towards ethnic minorities. Their analyses, which include both historical and contemporary perspectives, are accompanied by suggestions for policy measures aimed at improving the lives of ethnic minorities.

Here, sociologist Ralph Pyle investigates the extent to which a male-dominated, Ivy League educated Protestant establishment in the United States since World War II has given way to an elite whose diversity is more representative of the general population. While there is evidence that major changes have diminished the social, political, and economic prerogatives of the traditional Protestant establishment, the author finds that those in command positions of the most influential institutions bear a strong resemblance to their predecessors who directed affairs in an earlier era. Even if the current expansion of influence among previously disempowered groups continues at its present rate, the disproportionate power of white Protestant Ivy Leaguers will persist for several decades to come.

This volume uses bioarchaeological remains to examine the complexities and diversity of past socio-sexual lives. This book does not begin with the presumption that certain aspects of sex, gender, and sexuality are universal and longstanding. Rather, the case studies within-extend from Neolithic Europe to pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to the nineteenth-century United States-highlight the importance of culturally and historically contextualizing socio-sexual beliefs and practices. The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives highlights a major shortcoming in many scholarly and popular presentations of past socio-sexual lives. They reveal little about the ancient or historic group under study and much about Western society's modern state of heteronormative affairs. To interrogate commonsensical thinking about socio-sexual identities and interactions, this volume draws from critical feminist and queer studies. Reciprocally, bioarchaeological studies extend social theorizing about sex, gender, and sexuality that emphasizes the modern, conceptual, and discursive. Ultimately, The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives invites readers to think more deeply about humanity's diversity, the naturalization of culture, and the past's presentation in mass-media communications.

Over the years, the dissemination of technology across society has increased exponentially. As technology continues to improve worldwide connectivity, positive relations between countries is paramount to achieving cultural and economic progression. The Handbook of Research on Sociopolitical Factors Impacting Economic Growth in Islamic Nations is a pivotal scholarly resource on the current factors impacting international relations between Islamic countries. Featuring extensive coverage on sociopolitical structures, economic sector analysis, sociocultural properties, and political policies, this publication is ideal for academicians, students, and researchers interested in discovering more about the current trends and techniques in the economic infrastructures of Islamic nations.

Through revisiting and challenging what we think we know about the work of Edward Burnett Tylor, a founding figure of anthropology, this volume explores new connections and insights that link Tylor and his work to present concerns in new and important ways. At the publication of Primitive Culture in 1871, Tylor was at the centre of anthropological research on religion and culture, but today Tylor's position in the anthropological canon is rarely acknowledged. Edward Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture does not claim to present a definitive, new Tylor. The old Tylor - the founder of British anthropology; the definer of religion; the intellectualist; the evolutionist; the liberal; the utilitarian; the avatar of white, Protestant rationalism; the Tylor of the canon - remains. Part I explore debates and contexts of Tylor's lifetime, while the chapters in Part II explore a series of new Tylors, including Tylor the ethnographer and Tylor the Spiritualist, re-writing the legacy of the founder of anthropology in the process. Edward Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture is essential reading for anyone interested in the study of religion and the anthropology of religion.

This book offers new perspectives on global phenomena that play a major role in today's society and deeply shape the actions of individuals, organizations and nations. In a complex and rapidly changing environment, decision-makers need to gain a better understanding of global phenomena to adapt and to anticipate the evolution of the global context. The authors-ten renowned international scholars of anthropology, economics, law, management and political science-propose an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to social sciences. They analyse how international phenomena, such as globalisation or transnationalisation, transform the disciplines of social sciences from an epistemological standpoint. Explaining what 'global' means in difference disciplines, the authors analyse several global phenomena that characterise today's international environment such as the circulation of norms and ideas, the linkages between war and globalization, corporate governance, and the impact of multinational enterprises on sustainable development and poverty reduction. Providing examples of analytical disciplinary approaches and guidelines for decision-makers in a fast-changing global context this book will be useful to scholars and students of anthropology, economics, law, management and political science as well as practitioners in the private and public sectors.

Red States examines how the recurrent use of Native American history in southern cultural and literary texts produces ideas of ""feeling southern"" that have consequences for how present-day conservative political discourses resonate across the United States. Assembling a newly constituted archive that includes theatrical and musical performances, pre-Civil War literatures, and contemporary novels, Gina Caison argues that notions of Native American identity in the U.S. South can be understood by tracing how audiences in the region came to imagine indigeneity through texts ranging from the nineteenth-century Cherokee Phoenix to the Mardi Gras Indian narratives of Treme. Policy issues such as Indian Removal, biracial segregation, land claim, and federal termination frequently correlate to the audience consumption of such texts, and therefore the reception histories of this archive can be tied to shifts in the political claims of--and political possibilities for--Native people of the U.S. South. This continual appeal to the political issues of Indian Country ultimately generates what we see as persistent discourses about southern exceptionality and counternationalism.