Conceived By General. Sir Robert Baden-Powell as a way to reduce class tensions in Edwardian Britain, scouting evolved into an international youth movement. It offered a vision of romantic outdoor life as a cure for disruption caused by industrialization and urbanization. Scouting's global spread was due to its success in attaching itself to institutions of authority. As a result, scouting has become embroiled in controversies in the civil rights struggle in the American South, in nationalist resistance movements in India, and in the contemporary American debate over gay rights. In Race, Resistance, and the Boy Scout Movement in British Colonial Africa. Timothy Parsons uses scouting as an analytical tool to explore the tensions in colonial society. Introduced by British officials to strengthen their rule, the movement targeted the students, juvenile delinquents, and urban migrants who threatened the social stability of the regime. Yet Africans themselves used scouting to claim the rights of full imperial citizenship. They invoked the Fourth Scout Law, which declared that a scout was a brother to every other scout, to challenge racial discrimination. Parsons shows that African scouting was both an instrument of colonial authority and a subversive challenge to the legitimacy of the British Empire. His study of African scouting demonstrates the implications and far-reaching consequences of colonial authority in all its guises.

A classic and highly controversial expose of the secret world of the Freemasons reissued with a new introduction by Martin Short, author of 'Inside the Brotherhood'. The Freemasons have long fascinated outsiders. The subject of Dan Brown's new novel - set for release in 2007 - this secret and exclusive society, thought to be the largest in Britain today, remains a mystery to the many excluded from its ranks. One would never know if a father or brother was a member due to the mandatory vow of secrecy. In this classic, controversial expose, Stephen Knight talks to the men on the inside - those who have broken their vow of secrecy to reveal the darker side of the 'brotherhood'. Do they influence the law? Is the KGB involved? And is there is a secret group of Masons running the country today, perhaps influencing every move we make? Fully updated with a new introduction by Martin Short, acclaimed author of 'Inside the Brotherhood', this is the unmissable, true story of an ancient, and mysterious brotherhood operating in our midst.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children meets Lord of the Flies in the exciting debut from Angharad Walker. 'A mesmerising other-worldly story that got deep under my skin - I couldn't put it down.' JASBINDER BILAN, author of Asha & the Spirit Bird 'Dark, tense and intoxicating ... Seriously exciting.' LUCY STRANGE, author of The Ghost of Gosswater A new boy arrives at the Ash House. He can't remember his name - or why he's been sent there. Given the name Sol, and troubled by a mystery pain that no medicine can cure, he joins the gang of children living in the shadows of the secretive house. Soon, however, there's more for him to face: the darkness that descends with the arrival of the Doctor ... A timeless, multi-layered debut for ages 10+; perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, and Ransom Riggs's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Truly unique and original storytelling, with touches of magical realism and dystopia. Features stunning artwork by Olia Muza.

The Chinese Communist Youth League is the largest youth political organization in the world, with over 80 million members. Former Chinese President Hu Jintao was a firm supporter of the League, and believed that it could play a bigger role in winning the hearts and minds of Chinese youth by actively engaging with their interests and demands. Accordingly, he provided the League with a new youth work mandate to increase its capacity for responsiveness under the slogan 'keep the Party assured and the youth satisfied'. This original investigation of the hitherto-unexamined organization uses a combination of interviews, surveys and ethnography to explore how the League implemented Hu's mandate at both local and national levels, exposing the contradictory nature of some of its campaigns. By doing so, it also sheds light on the reasons for Xi Jinping's turn against the League during his first term in office. The Chinese Communist Youth League: Juniority and Responsiveness in a Party Youth Organization develops the original concept of 'juniority' to capture the complex ways that generational power is institutionalized, alienating young people from official political processes, with significant implications for China's political development. The book will be of interest to researchers and students of Chinese politics, as well as to scholars of comparative youth politics and sociology.

Like the Green Revolution of the 1960s, a "Blue Revolution" has taken place in global aquaculture. Geared towards quenching the appetite of privileged consumers in the global North, it has come at a high price for the South: ecological devastation, displacement of rural subsistence farmers, and labour exploitation. The uncomfortable truth is that food security for affluent consumers depends on a foundation of social and ecological devastation in the producing countries. In Confronting the Blue Revolution, Md Saidul Islam uses the shrimp farming industry in Bangladesh and across the global South to show the social and environmental impact of industrialized aquaculture. The book pushes us to reconsider our attitudes to consumption patterns in the developed world, neoliberal environmental governance, and the question of sustainability.

Guilds and fraternities, voluntary associations of men and women, proliferated in medieval Europe. The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages explores the motives and experiences of the many thousands of men and women who joined together in these family-like societies. Rarely confined to a single craft, the diversity of guild membership was of its essence. Setting the English evidence in a European context, this study is not an institutional history, but instead is concerned with the material and non-material aims of the brothers and sisters of the guilds. Gervase Rosser addresses the subject of medieval guilds in the context of contemporary debates surrounding the identity and fulfilment of the individual, and the problematic question of his or her relationship to a larger society. Unlike previous studies, The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages does not focus on the guilds as institutions but on the social and moral processes which were catalysed by participation. These bodies founded schools, built bridges, managed almshouses, governed small towns, shaped religious ritual, and commemorated the dead, perceiving that association with a fraternity would be a potential catalyst of personal change. Participants cultivated the formation of new friendships between individuals, predicated on the understanding that human fulfilment depended upon a mutually transformative engagement with others. The peasants, artisans, and professionals who joined the guilds sought to change both their society and themselves. The study sheds light on the conception and construction of society in the Middle Ages, and suggests further that this evidence has implications for how we see ourselves.

An overview of the mysterious history of the Freemasons and their presence in American society With over four million members worldwide, and two million in the U.S., Freemasonry is the largest fraternal organization in the world. Published in conjunction with the National Heritage Museum, this extravagantly illustrated volume offers an overview of Freemasonry's origins in seventeenth-century Scotland and England before exploring its evolving role in American history, from the Revolution through the labor and civil rights movements, and into the twenty-first century. American Freemasons explores some of the causes for the rise and fall of membership in the fraternity and why it has attracted men in such large numbers for centuries. American Freemasons is the perfect introduction to understanding a society that, while shrouded in mystery, has played an integral role in the lives and communities of millions of Americans. Copublished with the National Heritage Museum.

The definitive history of the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati and their founder, Adam Weishaupt The Bavarian Order of the Illuminati is the most celebrated secret society in the world. Though officially lasting only 11 years, the powerful spell and shadow cast by the Illuminati still looms in the present day, where its influence can be seen in current conspiracy beliefs and actions by powerful individuals working in the shadows. The original Order of the Illuminati was founded by Bavarian professor Adam Weishaupt in 1776. Although the order was banned and brought down by the Bavarian Elector in 1787--when he became aware of the extent to which it had infiltrated the courts, schools, and his own administration--its legend and deep influence lives on to this day. Charting the rise and fall of this infamous order, this book--first published in French in 1915 and never before available in English--remains the definitive history of the Order of the Bavarian Illuminati. It also offers a revealing look at the world that spawned and shaped it: a ceaseless ferment of revolutionary and occult ideas and the ceaseless attempts by crown and church to suppress them. Other secret societies that shared the stage with the Illuminati during these years include the Templar Strict Observance, von Hund's Templar Freemasonry, and other Masonic lodges the Illuminati targeted to subvert for their own purposes. Many of the documents the author consulted for the writing of this book were destroyed during the two World Wars, making this book the only surviving record of many of the order's secrets. The author explains the Bavarian Illuminati's grades, rituals, and ceremonies as well as its fundamental philosophies. He paints vivid portraits of the leaders of the order, including Weishaupt, Baron Knigge, and Xavier von Zwack. He reveals how Weishaupt early on decided to subvert the existing German Freemason Lodge as a shortcut to gain esoteric hegemony over the occult world, all in order to extend Illuminati influence into the society at large and the government. The author also provides extensive detail of the order's eventual destruction by the Bavarian government. In addition to its revelation of little-known secrets of the Illuminati Order, the author also sheds new light on much of the occult life of this time, including the activities of figures such as Cagliostro and Mirabeau and other active groups such as Freemason chapters, the Rosicrucians, and the Martinists.

Book clubs are everywhere these days. And women talk about the clubs they belong to with surprising emotion: "You will never know what a difference it made in my life". But why are the clubs so important to them? Which women join book clubs and why? And what do the women discuss when they meet? To answer questions like these, Elizabeth Long spent years observing and participating in women's book clubs in the Houston area and interviewing members from dozens of different discussion groups. Far from being an isolated activity, she finds that for club members reading is an active and social pursuit, a crucial way for them to reflect creatively on the meaning of their lives and their place in the social order. Similar to their 19th-century predecessors, whom Long also considers, women today find in reading groups the inspiration, support and self-confidence to reimagine themselves both individually and collectively. Tracing how this process works, Long takes us on a guided tour of the book clubs themselves, from how they are formed and organized to how members choose which books to read. Through vivid examples, she shows how women use literature to achieve personal insight and empowerment. She then turns her attention to the emergence of book clubs that are run through chain bookstores, television shows and the Internet, and considers the importance of such clubs for women as a broader cultural forum. Far from just an excuse to get together once a month, book clubs are here revealed to be a vital arena for self-formation, one that has as much currency now as it did a century ago.

As Africa's oldest orchestra, and certainly its most versatile, the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra is a proud part of the fabric of the Mother City. Founded in 1914 as a municipally funded ensemble, the orchestra was privatised in 1986 and later merged with the former Capab orchestra, achieving independence in 2000.

A Century Of Symphony tells the story of Cape Town’s orchestras over the past 100 years. Bringing together reminiscences, anecdotes and heartfelt stories by players, conductors and audience members, images of the orchestra both past and present, and information gathered from city, newspaper and university archives, A Century Of Symphony offers a timeless perspective on the place of orchestral music in the life of the city.

The challenges of running an orchestra in the 21st century are formidable, but the orchestra’s mission to deliver first-class music played by first-class musicians in a sustainable way has never been more apparent. Outreach and education efforts in disadvantaged communities point the way to the future. This is a story not only worth telling, but also worth preserving, for Cape Town’s orchestras have been the cultural jewel of the city for 100 years.

(Includes a shrinkwrapped CD of music played by the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra)

Company towns are often portrayed as powerless communities, fundamentally dependent on the outside influence of global capital. Neil White challenges this interpretation by exploring how these communities were altered at the local level through human agency, missteps, and chance. Far from being homogeneous, these company towns are shown to be unique communities with equally unique histories.Company Towns provides a multi-layered, international comparison between the development of two settlements--the mining community of Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia, and the mill town of Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada. White pinpoints crucial differences between the towns' experiences by contrasting each region's histories from various perspectives--business, urban, labour, civic, and socio-cultural. Company Towns also makes use of a sizable collection of previously neglected oral history sources and town records, providing an illuminating portrait of divergence that defies efforts to impose structure on the company town phenomenon.

In the club presents a comprehensive examination of social clubs across South Asia, arguing for clubs as key contributors to South Asia's colonial associational life and civil society. Using government records, personal memoirs, private club records, and club histories themselves, In the club explores colonial club life with chapters arranged thematically: the legal underpinnings of clubs; their physical locations and compositions; their financial health; the role of servants and staff as employees of clubs; issues of race and class in clubs; women's clubs; and finally clubs in their postcolonial milieus. This book will be critical reading for scholars of South Asia, graduate students, and intellectually engaged club members alike. -- .

1907. Its Teachings, Rules, Laws and Present Usages Which Govern the Order at the Present Day.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2020 With the dramatic rise of Freemasonry in the eighteenth century, art played a fundamental role in its practice, rhetoric, and global dissemination, while Freemasonry, in turn, directly influenced developments in art. This mutually enhancing relationship has only recently begun to receive its due. The vilification of Masons, and their own secretive practices, have hampered critical study and interpretation. As perceptions change, and as masonic archives and institutions begin opening to the public, the time is ripe for a fresh consideration of the interconnections between Freemasonry and the visual arts. This volume offers diverse approaches, and explores the challenges inherent to the subject, through a series of eye-opening case studies that reveal new dimensions of well-known artists such as Francisco de Goya and John Singleton Copley, and important collectors and entrepreneurs, including Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and Baron Taylor. Individual essays take readers to various countries within Europe and to America, Iran, India, and Haiti. The kinds of art analyzed are remarkably wide-ranging-porcelain, architecture, posters, prints, photography, painting, sculpture, metalwork, and more-and offer a clear picture of the international scope of the relationships between Freemasonry and art and their significance for the history of modern social life, politics, and spiritual practices. In examining this topic broadly yet deeply, Freemasonry and the Visual Arts sets a standard for serious study of the subject and suggests new avenues of investigation in this fascinating emerging field.

Since its initial publication, "Loft Living" has become the classic analysis of the emergence of artists as a force of gentrification and the related rise of "creative city" policies around the world. This 25th anniversary edition, with a new introduction, illustrates how loft living has spread around the world and that artists' districts--trailing the success of SoHo in New York--have become a global tourist attraction. Sharon Zukin reveals the economic shifts and cultural transformations that brought widespread attention to artists as lifestyle models and agents of urban change, and explains their role in attracting investors and developers to the derelict loft districts where they made their home.
Prescient and dramatic, "Loft Living" shows how a declining downtown Manhattan became a popular "scene," how loft apartments became hot commodities for the middle class, and how investors, corporations, and rich elites profited from deindustrializing the city's factory districts and turning them into trendy venues for art galleries, artisanal restaurants, and bars. However, this edition points out that the artists who led the trend are now priced out of the loft market. Even in New York, where the loft living market was born, artists have no legal claim on loft districts, nor do they get any preferential treatment in the harsh real estate market.
From the story of SoHo in Lower Manhattan to SoWa in Boston and SoMa in San Francisco, Zukin explains how once-edgy districts are transformed into high-price neighborhoods, and how no city can restrain the juggernaut of rising property values.

There is scarcely an historical subject which arouses the fantasy as much as the history of the secretive Order of the Temple. Although it has been disbanded for nearly 700 years, books continue to appear about these religious knights. In these books it is claimed that the Templars uncovered the grave of Jesus, that they were the discoverers of America and the guardians of the Turin Shroud or that they found the Holy Grail. There are also critical writings about the Templars. They were supposed to be drunkards and devil worshipers. Koert ter Veen decided it was time that the truth behind the sagas and myths was studied and told. In this impressive, elaborate and richly illustrated book, he tells the factual tragic history of the Order. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the French King Philip IV, due to shortage of money, ensured the misbegotten name of the Templars. The King wanted to possess the supposed riches of the Templars by discrediting and destroying them. The position of the monk-soldiers was weakened by their lack of success against the Islamic forces during the Crusades. The Order was destroyed, but its undeserved bad reputation lingers on. This informative and interesting book will entertain a large readership, from scholar to layman.

This book tells the untold story of Australia's veteran bikers. Like other motorcycle clubs, the Australian War Fighters (pseudonym) are a fringe-dwelling subculture that provokes strong opinions. Newspaper editors have been salivating over motorcycle club imagery since the subculture emerged in California in the middle of the twentieth century. Motorcycle clubs remain the subject of persisting 'moral panics' in Australia and have been the subject of successive crackdowns, police operations, and hard-hitting legislation aimed at driving them out of existence. The War Fighters operate on the periphery of the hard-core one percent element of the subculture. While they enjoy the notoriety of looking mean, the War Fighters do significant charity work, and the seemingly bizarre combination of outlaw biker subculture aesthetic with raising money for local hospitals means these men enjoy the paradox of looking bad while doing good. Drawing on sociological research Edward Scarr tells the true story of how and why the veteran motorcycle club subculture came to be. What follows is an ultimately hopeful story of redemption from despair and the salvation of lives that had been all but given up on.

The movement of millions of settlers to Siberia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked one of the most ambitious undertakings pursued by the tsarist state. Colonizing Russia's Promised Land examines how Russian Orthodoxy acted as a basic building block for constructing Russian settler communities in current-day southern Siberia and northern Kazakhstan. Russian state officials aspired to lay claim to land that was politically under their authority, but remained culturally unfamiliar. By exploring the formation and evolution of Omsk diocese - a settlement mission - Colonizing Russia's Promised Land reveals how the migration of settlers expanded the role of Orthodoxy as a cultural force in transforming Russia's imperial periphery by "russifying" the land and marginalizing the Indigenous Kazakh population. In the first study exploring the role of Orthodoxy in settler colonialism, Aileen Friesen shows how settlers, clergymen, and state officials viewed the recreation of Orthodox parish life as practised in European Russia as fundamental to the establishment of settler communities, and to the success of colonization. Friesen uniquely gives peasant settlers a voice in this discussion, as they expressed their religious aspirations and fears to priests and tsarist officials. Despite this agreement, tensions existed not only among settlers, but also within the Orthodox Church as these groups struggled to define what constituted the Russian Orthodox faith and culture.

A practical guide to the symbols and rituals of Freemasonry as a path of spiritual development and self-realization * Shares the history and meaning of Freemasonry and its symbols * Offers thoughtful explorations of different areas of Masonic experience, drawing on esoteric doctrines and paralleling them with experiences found in daily life * Provides simple exercises and practices to help internalize and personalize the lessons presented, including dreamwork, journaling, meditation, and prayer In this practical guide, Mark Stavish details the spiritual lessons and rituals of Freemasonry as a step-by-step path of spiritual development and self-improvement for both Masons and non-Masons, men and women, alike. He explores the history and meaning of Freemasonry and its symbols--from its origins in the Temple of Solomon to the Medieval craft guilds to the Renaissance--and explains how the Craft promotes personal growth through the symbolic building of self and an inner Temple of Wisdom in much the same way that Masonry's rituals symbolize the building of Solomon's Temple in accordance with the mystical architectural instructions of Hiram. Drawing on esoteric doctrines, including the Qabala, alchemy, sacred geometry, John Dee's angelic magic, and the secrets of the Gothic cathedral builders, each chapter addresses an area of the Masonic experience, paralleling them with experiences each of us finds in our own lives. The author provides simple practices to help internalize and personalize the lessons presented, including dreamwork, journaling, meditation, prayer, and understanding sacred architecture. The author also examines the crafting and use of the spiritual and symbolic tools of Freemasonry, such as the trestle or tracing board and the Chamber of Reflection. Providing the tools to make the Craft an initiatic experience of self-improvement, the author shows that, ultimately, the Masonic experience is the human quest for self-realization and self-expression, so that we each may find our place in the Temple of Wisdom.

Secret societies are becoming increasingly controversialathrust into public awareness by popular books, films, the Internet, and a host of recent documentaries. In academia, this exposure finds a parallel in the proliferation of research, institutes, and conferences. Yet the media depictions tend to be caricatures, a playing to pervasive stereotypes for public consumption, while the academic stress historical and philological matters. Indeed, to the extent a sociological focus exists, it largely emphasizes the roles these groups played in social history. And for the societies' members themselves, there has been a paucity of work on the contemporary meaning of these groupsaa neglect made mystifying by the vast social changes that have taken place over the past century. In this study, and for the first time by any scholar, Kenney moves beyond history and applies the methods and theoretical tools of contemporary sociology to study the lived world of freemasons in today's society. To provide a clear portrait of the patterned experiences of contemporary freemasons and the issues faced by "the Craft" today, Kenney draws on qualitative data from three primary sources: (1) extensive interviews with 121 contemporary freemasons in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia; (2) video footage shot for a feature film on contemporary freemasonry; and (3) his observations and experiences in nearly fifteen years as a freemason. Brought to Light provides a highly original contribution to sociology, Masonic scholarship, and the social sciences generally.