This book compares the Italian Fascist and the Spanish Falangist political cultures from the early 1930s to the early 1940s, using the idea of the nation as the focus of the comparison. It argues that the discourse on the nation represented a common denominator between these two manifestations of the fascist phenomenon in Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain. Exploring the similarities and differences between these two political cultures, this study investigates how Fascist and Falangist ideologues defined and developed their own idea of the nation over time to legitimise their power within their respective countries. It examines to what extent their concept of the nation influenced Italian and Spanish domestic and foreign policies. The book offers a four-level framework for understanding the evolution of the fascist idea of the nation: the ideology of the nation, the imperial projects of Fascism and Falangism, race and the nation, and the place of these cultures in the new Nazi continental order. In doing so, it shows how these ideas of the nation had significant repercussions on fascist political practice.

What is astro-culture? In The Babylonian Planet it is unfolded as an aesthetic, an idea, a field of study, a position, and a practice. It helps to engineer the shift from a world view that is segregated to one that is integrated - from global to planetary; from distance to intimacy and where closeness and cosmic distance live side-by-side. In this tour de force, Sonja Neef takes her cue from Edouard Glissant's vision of multilingualism and reignites the myth of the Tower of Babel to anticipate new forms of cultural encounter. For her, Babel is an organic construction site at which she fuses theoretical analysis and case studies of artists, writers and thinkers like William Kentridge, Orhan Pamuk and Immanuel Kant. Her skilful interrogations then allow her to paint a portrait of art and culture that abolishes the horizon as a barrier to vision and reclaims it as a place of contact and relation. By combining the Babylonian concept of the encounter and the planetary concept of the whole-earth, Neef creates a space - an astro-culture - in which she can examine topics as varied as language, translation, media, modernity, migration and the moon. In doing so, she instigates a renewed cultural understanding receptive to the kinder forms of cultural encounter and globalisation she hopes will come.

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"An important contribution to our understanding of the talkshow genre and its cultural political funtion."
-- "American Journal of Sociology"

"A wide-ranging exploration of some key theoretical issues in cultural sociology centerting on subjectivity, sense-making, and cultural heirarchy."
--"Contemporary Sociology"

"A cogent analysis of our culture."
--"The Times"

When "The Phil Donahue Show" topped the ratings in 1979, it ushered in a new era in daytime television. Mixing controversial social issues, light topics, and audience participation, it created a new genre, one that is still flourishing, despite being harshly criticized, over two decades later. Now, the daytime TV landscape is littered with talk shows. But why do people watch these shows? How do they make sense of them? And how do these shows affect their viewers' sense of what constitutes appropriate public debate?

In Talking Trash, Julie Engel Manga offers a fascinating exploration of these questions and reveals the wide range of reasons viewers are drawn to "trash talk." Focusing on such shows as "Oprah!, Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones," and "Maury Povitch," and drawing upon interviews with women who watch these shows, Talking Trash is the first examination of the talk show phenomenon from the viewers' perspective. In taking this approach, Manga is able to understand what talk shows mean to the women who watch them. And by refusing to judge either the shows or their viewers as good or bad, she is able to grasp how viewers relate to these shows-as escape, entertainment, uninhibited public discourse, or an accurate reflection of their ownhardships and heartaches. Manga concludes that while the form of "trash-talk" shows may be relatively new, the socio-cultural experience they embody has been with us for a long time.

Absorbing, entertaining, and keenly perceptive, Talking Trash illuminates the complex viewer response to "trash talk" and examines the cultural politics surrounding this wildly controversial popular phenomenon.

This volume applies a mix of qualitative and quantitative research and case studies to analyze the role that the craft beverage industry plays within society at large. It targets important themes such as environmental conservation and social responsibility, as well as the psychology of the craft beer drinker and their impact on tourism marketing. This volume advances marketing, hospitality, and leisure studies research for academics, industry experts, and emerging entrepreneurs.

This book historically reconstructs the conservative and moderate liberals' views on governance, morality, and education within the context of La Regeneracion (1878-1903) in Colombian Panama. de la Guardia Wald explores the way political theories and ideologies, especially conservatism and positivism, shaped late nineteenth-century Panamanian pedagogues' conceptualizations of proper education for the sake of social regeneration. By demonstrating that Isthmian political and pedagogical debates went beyond the preoccupation for the realisation of classic liberalism and exploitation of Panama's geographical views, this book challenges the perspective that Panamanian identity was a fabrication of the United States. Instead, this study reveals that the combination of positivist and conservative understandings of morality, reason, and good science defined governmental policies intended to recuperate and enhance civic values and nationalism, leading the way to progress and modernity.

This book aims to present the results of research in the sphere of business language and culture, as well as the experience of pedagogical staff and practitioners concerned with broadly understood business. The highly complex nature of contemporary business environment, approached from both the theoretical and practical standpoint, does not cease to prove that research into business studies cannot be dissociated from the cultural and linguistic context. The chapters included in this book were contributed by academics and practitioners alike, which offers a balanced approach to the topic and ensures high levels of diversity together with an undeniable homogeneity. They were gathered with a view to show various aspects of business language, perceived both as a medium of communication and as a subject of research and teaching. They are concerned with business culture as well, including business ethics and representations of business in popular culture. Owing to its multidisciplinary approach, the book presents a roadmap towards successful functioning in business settings, highlighting such issues as education for business purposes, the study of language used in business contexts, the aspects of cross-cultural communication, as well as ethical behaviour based upon different values in multicultural business environments. Given its multifarious character, the book surely appeals not only to academics, but also to the interested laymen and students who wish to expand their knowledge of business studies and related phenomena.

This book comprehensively explores the changes in the Chinese spiritual world from the perspective of transition and transformation. Chinese feeling, a brand-new concept corresponding to Chinese experience, refers to the vicissitudes that 1.3 billion Chinese people have been through in their spiritual worlds. The book discusses this concept together with Chinese experience, two aspects of the transformation of the Chinese mentality that resulted from the unprecedented social changes since 1978, and which have given this unique era historical meaning and cultural values. At the same time they offer a dual perspective for understanding this great social transition. Further, the book considers what will happen if we only focus on the "Chinese Experience" while neglecting the "Chinese Feeling"; the changes the Chinese people undergo when their desires, wishes and personalities have changed China; and how their emotionally charged social mentality follow ebbs and flows of the changing society. Lastly it asks what embarrassment and frustration the population will be faced with next after the tribulations their spiritual world has already been through.

While music lovers and music historians alike understand that folkmusic played an increasingly pivotal role in American labor and politicsduring the economic and social tumult of the Great Depression, how did thisrelationship come to be? Ronald D. Cohen sheds new light on the complexcultural history of folk music in America, detailing the musicians, governmentagencies, and record companies that had a lasting impact during the1930s and beyond. Covering myriad musical styles and performers, Cohennarrates a singular history that begins in nineteenth-century labor politicsand popular music culture, following the rise of unions and Communismto the subsequent Red Scare and increasing power of the Conservativemovement in American politics-with American folk and vernacular musiccentered throughout. Detailing the influence and achievements of such notablemusicians as Pete Seeger, Big Bill Broonzy, and Woody Guthrie, Cohenexplores the intersections of politics, economics, and race, using the rootsof American folk music to explore one of the United States' most troubledtimes. Becoming entangled with the ascending American left wing, folkmusic became synonymous with protest and sharing the troubles of real peoplethrough song.

Improving the relationship between archaeology and local government represents one of the next great challenges facing archaeology -specifically archaeology done in urban settings. Not only does local government have access to powerful legal tools and policy mechanisms that can offer protection for privately owned archaeological sites, but because local government exists at the grassroots level, it is also often closer to people who have deep knowledge about the community itself, about its values, and about the local meaning of the sites most in need of protection. This partnership between archaeology and local government can also provide visibility and public programing for heritage sites. This book will explore the experiences, both positive and negative, of small and large cities globally. We have examined programs in the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly known as the British Commonwealth) and in the United States. These countries share similar perspectives on preservation and heritage, although the approaches these cities have taken to address municipal archaeology reveals considerable diversity. The case studies highlight how these innovative partnerships have developed, and explain how they function within local government. Engaging with the political sphere to advocate for and conduct archaeology requires creativity, flexibility, and the ability to develop collaborative partnerships. How these archaeological partnerships benefit the community is a vital part of the equation. Heritage and tourist benefits are discussed. Economic challenges during downturns in the economy are analyzed. The book also examines public outreach programs and the grassroots efforts to protect and preserve a community's archaeological heritage.

This book employs a broad analysis of Chinese patriliny to propose a distinctive theoretical conceptualization of the role of desire in culture. It utilizes a unique synthesis of Marxian and psychoanalytic insights in arguing that Chinese patriliny is best understood as, simultaneously, "a mode of production of desire" and as "instituted fantasy." The argument advances through discussions and analyses of kinship, family, gender, filial piety, ritual, and (especially) mythic narratives. In each of these domains, P. Steven Sangren addresses the complex sentiments and ambivalences associated with filial relations. Unlike most earlier studies which approach Chinese patriliny and filial piety as irreducible markers of cultural difference, Sangren argues that Chinese patriliny is better approached as a topic of critical inquiry in its own right.

This book explores what is at stake in our confessional culture. Thomas Docherty examines confessional writings from Augustine to Montaigne and from Sylvia Plath to Derrida, arguing that through all this work runs a philosophical substratum - the conditions under which it is possible to assert a confessional mode - that needs exploration and explication.
Docherty outlines a philosophy of confession that has pertinence for a contemporary political culture based on the notion of 'transparency'. In a postmodern 'transparent society', the self coincides with its self-representations. Such a position is central to the idea of authenticity and truth-telling in confessional writing: it is the basis of saying, truthfully, 'here I take my stand'.
The question is: what other consequences might there be of an assumption of the primacy of transparency? Two areas are examined in detail: the religious and the judicial. Docherty shows that despite the tendency to regard transparency as a general social and ethical good, our contemporary culture of transparency has engendered a society in which autonomy (or the very authority of the subject that proclaims 'I confess') is grounded in guilt, reparation and victimhood.

Beginning with the myth of origin that joins every young Zaramo woman to her origins as she is initiated into the secrets of life and womanhood, the book then provides us with an historical account of the Tanzanian coast around Dar es Salaam as a background to the persistence of the cultural institutions to which the reader is introduced. Statements and narrations by Salome as a representative of the modern educated Zaramo people intersperse the author's descriptions of the rituals of womanhood, of individual and social healing, and of the ways conflict is symbolically manipulated and managed. Rituals are seen in their vibrant role, not as remnants of tradition, but as means of handling encroaching external pressures on the community. These pressures include, commercialization of livelihood, development thrust in the form of villagization, or the ongoing process of losing land rights. The book shows that a people will counteract the threat of social disintegration by overemphasizing their core values in an attempt to create strong communication forces and instruments of power. A good introduction to contemporary African issues, Third World women's studies, and ethnographic anthropology.

Since 2004, the Baby Doll Mardi Gras tradition in New Orleans has gone from an obscure, almost forgotten practice to a flourishing cultural force. The original Baby Dolls were groups of black women, and some men, in the early Jim Crow era who adopted New Orleans street masking tradition as a unique form of fun and self-expression against a backdrop of racial discrimination. Wearing short dresses, bloomers, bonnets, and garters with money tucked tight, they strutted, sang ribald songs, chanted, and danced on Mardi Gras Day and on St. Joseph feast night. Today's Baby Dolls continue the tradition of one of the first street women's masking and marching groups in the United States. They joyfully and unabashedly defy gender roles, claiming public space and proclaiming through their performance their right to social citizenship. Essayists draw on interviews, theoretical perspectives, archival material, and historical assessments to describe women's cultural performances that take place on the streets of New Orleans. They recount the history and contemporary resurgence of the Baby Dolls while delving into the larger cultural meaning of the phenomenon. Over 140 color photographs and personal narratives of immersive experiences provide passionate testimony of the impact of the Baby Dolls on their audiences. Fifteen artists offer statements regarding their work documenting and inspired by the tradition as it stimulates their imagination to present a practice that revitalizes the spirit.

This book is a timely intervention in the areas of philosophy, history, and literature. As an exploration of the modern political order and its racial genealogy, it emerges at a moment when scholars and activists alike are wrestling with how to understand subject formation from the perspective of the subordinated rather than from dominant social and philosophical modes of thought. For Sawyer, studying the formation of racialized subjects requires a new imagining of marginalized subjects. Black subjectivity is not viewed from the static imaginings of social death, alienation, ongoing abjection, or as a confrontation with the treat of oblivion. Sawyer innovates the term "fractured temporality," conceptualizing Black subjects as moving within and across temporalities in transition, incorporated, yet excluded, marked with the social death of Atlantic slavery and the emergent political orders it etched, and still capable of exerting revolutionary force that acts upon, against, and through racial oppression.

The topic of memory has shot to prominence in recent years, engaging the attention of academics and a wider public alike. This is partly due to a spate of anniversaries and commemorations of events, such as the Holocaust and the Second World War, whose significance for the present is affirmed even as their meanings continue to be debated. In Germany and France, contested memories, representations and commemorations of this period have become virtually a defining feature of their respective political cultures. Equally contested are France's memories of a decolonization process whose legacy still makes its presence felt in the political landscape. This book uses the concept of 'vectors' of memory to designate the conduits of that memorial activity, and examines in detail a range of vectors - historiography, war crimes trials, novels and films - that have focused public attention and debate in this era of so-called 'commemorative obsession'. More than a descriptive summary of such developments, the author elucidates the identity politics that is being expressed through these channels. In the course of these investigations, concepts such as 'sites of memory', 'testimony', and 'trauma' - much invoked in recent work on 'collective memory' - are critically examined in a number of historical, juridical and representational contexts.
Interdisciplinary in its scope and in the manner in which it bridges historiographical and cultural analysis, this book will appeal to students and scholars of history, cultural and media studies, French and German political culture, Holocaust studies and postcolonialism.

This study seeks to explore the myriad forms of representation of the French public as a whole, and of specific socio-cultural groups in French society, by means of collectively-shared myths and metaphors. The book also examines visual, linguistic and textual media, and political participation and practice. It considers diametrical questions of belonging or marginality, social struggle or social cohesion, and explores how the various forms of identity are created and maintained. The approach is multidisciplinary, using recent research in various disciplines from contributors in France and the UK. The book aims to provide a coherent and multi-faceted study of socio-cultural identity and citizenship in France.

Derrida's claim that 'without deconstruction there can be no responsible political thought' is one of his most provocative, and one that even his most vocal admirers have been reluctant to endorse fully. Deconstruction and Democracy evaluates and substantiates Derrida's assertion, assessing the importance of this eminent contemporary philosopher's work for political thought. From the early 1980s onwards, Derrida has addressed political subjects more and more explicitly; here Alex Thomson argues that the time has come for a fresh understanding of deconstruction -- one that acknowledges its relevance for, and potential contribution to, political thinking. The book provides cogent analysis and exegesis of Derrida's often rather abstruse and impenetrable political writings; explores the implications for political theory and practice of Derrida's work; and brings Derrida's work into dialogue with other major strands of contemporary political thought. Deconstruction and Democracy is the clearest and most detailed engagement available with the politics of deconstruction, and is a major contribution to scholarship on the later work of Jacques Derrida, most notably his Politics of Friendship.

This edited volume examines the challenges of globalization in light of the need to revisit and reconceptualize the notion of Pan-Africanism. The first part of the book examines globalization and Africa's socioeconomic and political development in this century by using the Diopian Pluridisciplinary Methodology. This approach is imperative because the challenges faced by Africa vis-a-vis globalization and socioeconomic development are so multiplexed that no single disciplinary approach can adequately analyze them and yield substantive policy recommendations. The chapters in the second part analyze the imperatives for Africa's global knowledge production, development, and economic transformation in the face of the pressures of globalization. Part two demonstrates an urgent need for Africa's significant participation in the global knowledge economy in order to meet the continent's modern transformation and development aspirations. The final part examines lessons from old and new Pan-Africanism and how they can be utilized to deal with the challenges emanating from the forces of modern globalization. With its multidisciplinary approach to a wide range of pressing, modern issues for the African content, this book is essential reading for scholars across the social sciences interested in where Africa is now and where it should go in this increasingly globalized world.

Using the cheap desktop publishing techniques of 'zine culture, and supplementing them with an extensive presence on the World Wide Web, the Bad Subjects Production Team has produced one of the only successful political 'zines in the US, as well as one of the first--and longest-running--on-line publications in the world.

Bad Subjects offers a critique of the post-1960s left in the United States, and attempts to reclaim a utopian vision for a political movement which has become fragmented and cynical about the possibility of social transformation. Indeed, Bad Subjects itself is simultaneously a valuable resource and an inspiration, a record of what politically-engaged cultural criticism can achieve, and an example of a progressive political community making use of new technologies.

Offering a way out of vulgar multiculturalism--based on separatism and the idea of "authenticity"--into a critical identity politics founded on coalitions, hybridity, and class consciousness, Bad Subjectsspeaks to readers both in and outside of the academy. Taking their cue from the feminist slogan, "the personal is political," and from Marxist injunctions to study "everyday life," Bad Subjects covers everything from popular culture and high technology to economic restructuring and political organizing, from Raymond Williams to The Dead Kennedys.

In the terrain of cultural criticism, Bad Subjects is an off-road vehicle roaring away from the beaten path.

This book describes how a deeper knowledge and understanding of cultural differences represents a meaningful and useful tool for management of companies, and in particular SMEs, in the People's Republic of China. After introductory chapters on the internationalization of SMEs and the role played by management in this process, the authors explore the implications of academic discourses on culture and its dimensions for company management. The influence of Chinese cultural roots and the country's current cultural environment on management is then examined, with provision of guidance on response to the identified challenges. A key feature of the book is the presentation of important recent fieldwork in the main economic regions of China. This research further clarifies how business culture and cultural differences impact on company activities in China and casts light on various aspects of the adaptive capability of SMEs within the country, highlighting the value of cultural awareness and intelligence. The book will be of interest to academics and practitioners alike.

"Wives of the Leopard" explores power and culture in a pre-colonial West African state whose army of women and practice of human sacrifice earned it notoriety in the racist imagination of late nineteenth-century Europe and America. Tracing two hundred years of the history of Dahomey up to the French colonial conquest in 1894, the book follows change in two central institutions. One was the monarchy, the coalitions of men and women who seized and wielded power in the name of the king. The second was the palace, a household of several thousand wives of the king who supported and managed state functions.

Looking at Dahomey against the backdrop of the Atlantic slave trade and the growth of European imperialism, Edan G. Bay reaches for a distinctly Dahomean perspective as she weaves together evidence drawn from travelers' memoirs and local oral accounts, from the religious practices of vodun, and from ethnographic studies of the twentieth century. Wives of the Leopard thoroughly integrates gender into the political analysis of state systems, effectively creating a social history of power. More broadly, it argues that women as a whole and men of the lower classes were gradually squeezed out of access to power as economic resources contracted with the decline of the slave trade in the nineteenth century. In these and other ways, the book provides an accessible portrait of Dahomey's complex and fascinating culture without exoticizing it.

Roland Barthes - the author of such enduringly influential works as Mythologies and Camera Lucida - was one of the most important cultural critics of the post-war era. Since his death in 1980, new writings have continued to be discovered and published. The Afterlives of Roland Barthes is the first book to revisit and reassess Barthes' thought in light of these posthumously published writings. Covering work such as Barthes' Mourning Diary, the notes for his projected Vita Nova and many writings yet to be translated into English, Neil Badmington reveals a very different Barthes of today than the figure familiar from the writings published in his lifetime.