Cabinets of Experimental Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Europe is an ambitious contribution to the growing interest in how science came to engage the attention of a public outside the academic and professional spheres and how collections of instruments played a formative role in this development. Collections of physical instruments for research and demonstration appeared throughout Europe in the eighteenth century and the coverage of the book is correspondingly broad. While collections in different cultural and geographical locations had much in common, there were significant local modifications. The essays in this book illustrate how science, sometimes thought to be monolithic and universal, can maintain core intellectual characteristics and practical techniques while adapting to particular sites and circumstances. Contributors include: Jim Bennett, Sofia Talas, Huib J. Zuidervaart, Hans Hooijmaijers, Ad Maas, Tiemen Cocquyt, Inga Elmqvist Soederlund, Paola Bertucci, Marta C. Lourenco, David Felismino, Ivano Dal Prete, Ewa Wyka, Martin Weiss, and Paolo Brenni.

Social theory can sometimes seem as though it's speaking of a world that existed long ago, so why should we continue to study and discuss the theories of these dead white men? Can their work still inform us about the way we live today? Are they still relevant to our consumer-focused, celebrity-crazy, tattoo-friendly world? This book explains how the ideas of classical sociological theory can be understood, and applied to, everyday activities like listening to hip-hop, reading fashion magazines or watching reality TV. Taking the reader through central sociological texts, Social Theory In Popular Culture explains why key theorists - from Marx to Saussure - are still considered to be the bedrock of sociology and sociological enquiry. Each chapter examines a different key thinker and applies their work to a recognisable aspect of popular cultural, showing how the central issues underpinning classic social thought - class, conflict, gender, power, ethnicity, and social status - can still be readily observed within the modern global world. Encouraging the reader to critique and reflect upon the ways in which classic social theory applies to their own worlds, this is the perfect antidote to dry social theory explanations. It is an eye-opening read for all students and scholars across the social sciences.

Home, wrote Robert Frost, is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. And yet the idea of home has, in the modern world, become extremely problematic.

Robert Frost's words tellingly illustrate the centrality of home to the human experience, as an unconditional haven that one simply has, without having to earn.

Yet, we live at a time when the idea of home has become extremely problematic. Our homeless fill America's streets and shelters; the comfort of home is increasingly threatened by urban violence; and the world-wide plight of those exiled or fleeing from their homelands due to civil war, starvation, or political repression seems relentless.

The idea of home, bound as it is in family and in the roles of men and women, has a deep resonance that is not fully captured by its use as a social and political slogan. What is its history and ideology? What has it meant and how has its meaning changed? Home moves us perhaps most powerfully as absence or negation. Homelessness and exile are among the worst of conditions, bringing with them alienation, estrangement, and the feelings of greatest despair.

This volume, based on a multi-institutional collaboration between the New School for Social Research and five major New York City museums, and its resulting conference, convenes many of America's top scholarly minds to address historical and contemporary meanings of home. Among the issues specifically addressed are the artistic rendition of home in art and propaganda; literary meanings of home; exile through the ages; homelessness past; homelessness in Dickens; the homeless in New York City history; alienation and belonging; slavery and the femalediscovery of personal freedom; and, more generally, the home and family in historical perspective.

Contributing to the volume are Breyten Breytenbach, David Bromwich (Yale University), Sanford Budick (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Stanley Cavell (Harvard University), Mary Douglas, Tamara K. Hareven (University of Delaware), Eric Hobsbawm (Cambridge University, Emeritus), John Hollander (Yale University), Kim Hopper (Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research), George Kateb (Princeton University), Alexander Keyssar (Duke University), Steven Marcus (Columbia University), Orlando Patterson (Harvard University), Joseph Rykwert (University of Pennsylvania), Simon Schama (Harvard University), Alan Trachtenberg (Yale University), and Gwendolyn Wright (Columbia University).

This book argues that the capacity of a country to develop, and the levels of economic and social development achieved, depend more on the institutional parameters within which the development policies are implemented than on the policies themselves. It contends that forces of globalisation influence individual countries' economic and social institutions. The book begins by examining theoretical aspects of social and economic institutions. It goes on to explore the operation of, and change within, these institutions as a result of globalisation, using examples from selected countries over five continents. The contributors conclude that globalisation has produced beneficial impacts on those social institutions which have been necessary for achieving genuine growth and development. On this evidence they argue for the need to embrace globalisation by undertaking relevant institutional changes. Approaching the issue of globalisation from a novel perspective - namely how the forces of globalisation are transforming domestic, social and economic institutions to create greater opportunities for empowerment in individual countries - this book will be a fascinating read for those with an interest in development, institutional and international economics.

From the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century, haciendas dominated the Latin American countryside. In the Ecuadorian Andes, Runa-- Quichua-speaking indigenous people-- worked on these large agrarian estates as virtual serfs. In Remembering the Hacienda: Religion, Authority, and Social Change in Highland Ecuador, Barry Lyons probes the workings of power on haciendas and explores the hacienda's contemporary legacy.

Lyons lived for three years in a Runa village and conducted in-depth interviews with elderly former hacienda laborers. He combines their wrenching accounts with archival evidence to paint an astonishing portrait of daily life on haciendas. Lyons also develops an innovative analysis of hacienda discipline and authority relations. Remembering the Hacienda explains the role of religion as well as the reshaping of Runa culture and identity under the impact of land reform and liberation theology.

This beautifully written book is a major contribution to the understanding of social control and domination. It will be valuable reading for a broad audience in anthropology, history, Latin American studies, and religious studies.

"Queer Cities, Queer Cultures "examines the formation and make-up of urban subcultures and situates them against the stories we typically tell about Europe and its watershed moments in the post 1945 period. The book considers the degree to which the iconic events of 1945, 1968 and 1989 influenced the social and sexual climate of the ensuing decades, raising questions about the form and structure of the 1960s sexual revolution, and forcing us to think about how we define sexual liberalization - and where, how and on whose terms it occurs.An international team of authors explores the role of America in shaping particular forms of subculture; the significance of changes in legal codes; differing modes of queer consumption and displays of community; the difficult fit of queer (as opposed to gay and lesbian) politics in liberal democracies; the importance of mobility and immigration in modulating queer urban life; the challenge of AIDS; and the arrival of the internet.By exploring the queer histories of cities from Istanbul to Helsinki and Moscow to Madrid, "Queer Cities, Queer Cultures "makes a significant contribution to our understanding of urban history, European history and the history of gender and sexuality. ""

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a history of popular folly by Charles Mackay. The book chronicles its targets in three parts: "National Delusions," "Peculiar Follies," and "Philosophical Delusions." Learn why intelligent people do amazingly stupid things when caught up in speculative edevorse. The subjects of Mackay's debunking include alchemy, beards (influence of politics and religion on), witch-hunts, crusades and duels. Present day writers on economics, such as Andrew Tobias, laud the three chapters on economic bubbles.

In the age of ubiquitous media and globalization, the entertainment industry has changed dramatically to accommodate a more comprehensive and diverse audience. As such, research into the influence of culture on entertainment and the media is necessary in order to facilitate further developments in the industry. Handbook of Research on the Impact of Culture and Society on the Entertainment Industry provides a review of the academic and popular literature on the relationship between communications and media studies, cinema, advertising, public relations, religion, food tourism, art, sports, technology, culture, marketing, and entertainment practices. Founded on international research, this publication is essential for upper-level students, researchers, academicians, business executives, and industry professionals seeking knowledge on the current scope of the entertainment industry.

This book follows the ways in which women negotiate and navigate between their feminist identities and their belonging to science fiction fandoms that at times disregard or dismiss them. It explores frictions and discords, including those between feminist women fans and other members in their communities, and between the fan and the object of her fandom. This book examines the intersection of fandom and feminism through the lenses of gender, ethnicity and age, and provides an in-depth and intersectional perspective on fan communities and the layered discrimination and marginalization enfolded in them. Based on 40 in-depth interviews with women fans of Star Wars and Doctor Who, this book highlights the different aspects of a feminist woman fan's identity: becoming, being, belonging, representing, and reconciling. Each chapter in this book unravels the complexity, ambivalence, and contradictions between feminism and fandom, and reveals the tactics women develop to overcome and harmonize them.

An analysis of post-communist identity reconstructions under the impact of experiences such as migration and displacement, collective memory and trauma, and cultural self-colonization. The book facilitates a mutually productive dialogue between postcolonialism and post-communism, mapping the rich terrain of contemporary East-Central European creative writing and visual art.

For the inaugural book in our Critical Adventures in New Media series, Douglas Kellner elaborates upon his well known theory which explores how media spectacle can be used as a key to interpreting contemporary culture and politics. Grounded in both cultural and communication theory, Kellner argues that politics, war, news and information, media events (like terrorist attacks or royal weddings), and now democratic uprisings, are currently organized around media spectacles, and demonstrates how and why this has occurred. Rooting the discussions within key events of 2011 - including the war in Libya, the Arab Uprisings, the wedding of William Windsor to Kate Middleton, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the Occupy movements - The Time of the Spectacle makes a highly relevant contribution to the field of media and communication studies. It offers a fresh perspective on the theme of contemporary media spectacle and politics by adopting an approach that is based around critical social and cultural theory. This series gives students a strong critical grounding from which to examine new media.

Following the American Revolution, citizens of the United States began to write a history of their new nation starting with the first English settlements, Jamestown and Plymouth. Virginians embellished the saga of Jamestown and Pocahontas, the Indian woman who, by popular accounts, saved the colony. Similarly, New Englanders sanctified the Pilgrims and their mythical first step on Plymouth Rock.By comparing these two origin myths, investigating them in art, literature, and popular memory, Ann Uhry Abrams uncovers surprising similarities in traditions of remembrance as well as striking differences in the character of the myths and the messages they convey. During these heated debates of antebellum America, the escalating rivalry between North and South prompted an array of artists, authors, and politicians to refashion the legends to their needs, with Massachusetts turning the settlers of Plymouth into pious and industrious saints, Virginians portraying Pocahontas as the savior of English civilization in North America. As these images were codified, tales of Jamestown and Plymouth bolstered debates over immigration, women's rights, abolition, Indian removal, and a host of other issues of national import. And when sectional rifts exploded into the Civil War, the stories fueled the flames that pitted North against South.

The volume explores the hitherto uncharted late medieval religious landscape of Northern Germany, from 13th-century Helfta to the 15th-century Luneburg convents. The mystical and devotional writing of Northern Germany is contextualised through chapters on the Netherlands, Scandinavia and East Prussia. The seminal influence of the liturgy on these texts and their transmission is revealed in the creative interplay of Latin and Low German. Through the individual chapters and their appendices, which also contain translations into English, the reader can access a wealth of texts produced by communities of religious and lay women who write learnedly in Latin and fervently in Low German. Together, the chapters and appendices reveal a fascinating regional "mystical culture" which also reverberated across Northern Europe. Contributors include: Jurgen Barsch, Anne Bollmann, Veerle Fraeters, Ulrike Hascher-Burger, Ernst Hellgardt, Tanja Mattern, Balazs Nemes, Sara S. Poor, Eva Schlotheuber, Almut Suerbaum, and Geert Warnar.

Addressing the pleasures and dangers of cultural identity in the age of mass media and global migration, these essays range from a commentary on the redrawing of the boundaries of contemporary art to a mapping of the controversial theory of hybridity.

Food Words is a series of provocative essays on some of the most important keywords in the emergent field of food studies, focusing on current controversies and on-going debates. Words like 'choice' and 'convenience' are often used as explanatory terms in understanding consumer behavior but are clearly ideological in the way they reflect particular positions and serve specific interests, while words like 'taste' and 'value' are no less complex and contested. Inspired by Raymond Williams, Food Words traces the multiple meanings of each of our keywords, tracking nuances in different (academic, commercial and policy) contexts. Mapping the dynamic meanings of each term, the book moves forward from critical assessment to active intervention -- an attitude that is reflected in the lively, sometimes combative, style of the essays. Each essay is research-based and fully referenced but accessible to the general reader. With a foreword by eminent food scholar Warren Belasco, Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland-Baltmore County, and written by an inter-disciplinary team associated with the CONANX research project (Consumer culture in an 'age of anxiety'), Food Words will be essential reading for food scholars across the arts, humanities and social sciences.

The Dutch-German Communist Left, represented by the German KAPD-AAUD, the Dutch KAPN and the Bulgarian Communist Workers Party, separated from the Comintern (1921) on questions like electoralism, trade-unionism, united fronts, the one-party state and anti-proletarian violence. It attracted the ire of Lenin, who wrote his Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder against the Linkskommunismus, while Herman Gorter wrote a famous response in his pamphlet Reply to Lenin. The present volume provides the most substantial history to date of this tendency in the twentieth-century Communist movement. It covers how the Communist left, with the KAPD-AAU, denounced 'party communism' and 'state capitalism' in Russia; how the German left survived after 1933 in the shape of the Dutch GIK and Paul Mattick's councils movement in the USA; and also how the Dutch Communistenbond Spartacus continued to fight after 1942 for the world power of the workers councils, as theorised by Pannekoek in his book Workers' Councils (1946).

Despite the brevity of its run and the diminutive size of its audience, The English Intelligencer is a key publication in the history of literary modernism in the British Isles. Emerging in the mid-1960s from a dissatisfaction with the prevailing norms of 'Betjeman's England', the young writers associated with it were catalysed by the example of Donald Allen's The New American Poetry as they sought to establish a revitalised modernist poetics. Late Modernism and The English Intelligencer gives the first full account of the extraordinary history of this publication, bringing to light extensive new archival material to establish an authoritative contextualisation of its operation and its relationship with post-war British poetry. This material provides compelling new insights into the work of the Intelligencer poets themselves and, more broadly, the continued presence of an international poetic modernism as a vital force in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century.

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts examines the impact of ancient religious, mythological and magical models on modern mentalities and ideologies as expressed in the visual and performing arts.To what extent did mythological figures such as Circe and Medea influence the representation of the powerful "oriental" enchantress in modern Western art? What role did the ancient gods and heroes play in the construction of the imaginary worlds of the modern fantasy genre? What is the role of undead creatures like zombies and vampires in mythological films? The heroes, gods and demons of the ancient world always played a prominent role in the post-classical imagination.Similarly, the great adventures and the love affairs between gods and mortals have always influenced the reception of Classical culture and still features prominently in modern constructions of antiquity. Examples such the use of magic in Medea's myth as a symbol of cultural and political strangeness, the transformation of Circe in a femme fatale, the reshaping of the oriental cults of the Roman Empire as a menace to new-born Christianity and the revival and adaptation of ancient myths and religion in the arts provide an important backdrop for the exploration of contemporary fears, hopes and ideals across centuries. The volume further aims to deconstruct certain scholarly traditions by proposing original interdisciplinary approaches and collaborations and to show to what extent the visual and performing arts of different periods interlink and shape cultural and social identities.This book offers an original approach to different media - from comics to film, from painting to opera - by authors from different fields and countries. The volume provides the reader with a clear insight into mechanisms of re-elaboration and reception which can be steadily seen at work in artistic and commercial productions. It also supplies new approaches to the most debated questions of the relationship between magic, religion and superstition in the ancient and in the modern worlds. It shows and discusses the shifting and biased interpretations of these concepts in modern visual culture.

With its bleak urban environments, psychologically compelling heroes and socially engaged plots, Scandinavian crime writing has captured the imaginations of a global audience in the 21st century. Exploring the genre's key themes, international impact and socio-political contexts, Scandinavian Crime Fiction guides readers through such key texts as Sjoewall and Wahloeoe's Novel of a Crime, Gunnar Staalesen's Varg Veum series, Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, Henning Mankell's Wallander books, Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy and TV series such as The Killing. With its focus on the function of crime fiction in both reflecting and shaping the late-modern Scandinavian welfare societies, this book is essential for readers, viewers and fans of contemporary crime writing.