This book provides a fascinating, up-to-date overview of the social, cultural, economic, and political landscapes of Tanzania. In Culture and Customs of Tanzania, author Kefa M. Otiso presents an approachable basic overview of the country's key characteristics, covering topics such as Tanzania's land, peoples, languages, education system, resources, occupations, economy, government, and history. This recent addition to Greenwood's Culture and Customs of Africa series also contains chapters that portray the culture and social customs of Tanzania, such as the country's religion and worldview; literature, film, and media; art, architecture, and housing; cuisine and traditional dress; gender roles, marriage, family structures, and lifestyle; and music, dance, and drama. Describes historical events from the late 1800s to the present day Provides several maps depicting Tanzania's location in Africa, major physical features, administrative units, urban areas, ethnic groups, and population distribution Contains an interdisciplinary bibliography of sources in the areas of geography, history, anthropology, and popular culture Includes a glossary of key terms, places, cities, ethnic groups, and personalities

From 1976 to 1978, the young photographer Simon Barker was a member of the "Bromley Contingent"--a group of avid Sex Pistols fans who comprised the group's inner circle at the height of the punk movement. Many of them, such as Jordan and Siouxsie Sioux, were notorious for their daredevil dress sense, and several--such as Sioux, Steven Severin, Adam Ant, Poly Styrene, Billy Idol, Viv Albertine and Ari Up--went on to form some of the most important bands of the era. This compilation of previously unseen photographs by Barker shows these founders of punk in their earliest incarnations--in bedrooms and kitchens, at public gigs and private parties--before media and commerce sunk their claws into punk's iconoclastic look and class politics. Taken with the simplest and cheapest pocket cameras, the photographs in this collection constitute Barker's "family album for the years 1976 to 1978." In the spirit of the Pistols' "God Save the Queen," the volume closes with a photographic sequence taken by Barker during the 1976 Jubilee celebrations, which shows Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu hobnobbing with the Queen of England in the royal procession.

American comics from the start have reflected the white supremacist culture out of which they arose. Superheroes and comic books in general are products of whiteness, and both signal and hide its presence. Even when comics creators and publishers sought to advance an antiracist agenda, their attempts were often undermined by a lack of awareness of their own whiteness and the ideological baggage that goes along with it. Even the most celebrated figures of the industry, such as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Jack Jackson, William Gaines, Stan Lee, Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, and Frank Miller, have not been able to distance themselves from the problematic racism embedded in their narratives despite their intentions or explanations. Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes: Whiteness and Its Borderlands in American Comics and Graphic Novels provides a sober assessment of these creators and their role in perpetuating racism throughout the history of comics. Josef Benson and Doug Singsen identify how whiteness has been defined, transformed, and occasionally undermined over the course of eighty years in comics and in many genres, including westerns, horror, crime, funny animal, underground comix, autobiography, literary fiction, and historical fiction. This exciting and groundbreaking book assesses industry giants, highlights some of the most important episodes in American comic book history, and demonstrates how they relate to one another and form a larger pattern, in unexpected and surprising ways.

This work provides an accurate, in-depth examination and scientific evaluation of the most famous hauntings in American history as depicted in popular films and television programs. Neither a debunking book nor one written for the "true believer" in the paranormal, American Hauntings objectively scrutinizes the historic evidence behind such hugely popular films as The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, An American Haunting, The Conjuring, and The Haunting in Connecticut to ascertain the accuracy of these entertainment depictions of "true life" hauntings. The authors then compare these popular culture accounts against the alleged real-life encounters and impartially weigh the evidence to assess whether each incident actually took place. Written by highly credentialed, recognized authorities on the paranormal and social psychology, this book contains meticulously documented, science-based information written for a broad audience, from middle and high school students and those taking introductory courses at a university level to general readers. There is no other work that provides as careful and unbiased an evaluation of the most famous hauntings in American history. The book also examines the reliability of popular television shows such as Unsolved Mysteries and Paranormal Witness. Supplies a balanced approach to the subject of the paranormal and social psychology that explores both sides of the issue and evaluates the evidence as a scientist would Examines subject matter that is of universal, natural interest to students, teachers, and the general public, and supplies interdisciplinary coverage of religion, history, sociology, social psychology, folklore, critical thinking, pseudoscience, and media/film studies Provides an ideal resource for students writing reports and research papers

In 1985 The WELL, a dial-up discussion board based on the utilization of desktop computer technology, invited popular participation in one of the first examples of what would eventually evolve into the "blog"- an interactive website allowing reaction comments to initial statements, and now providing the primary Internet means for dialogue. The WELL began with the phrase: "You own your own words." Though almost everything else about online discussion has changed in the two decades since, those words still describe its central premise, and this basic idea underlies both the power and the popularity of blogging today. Appropriately enough, it also describes American journalism as it existed a century and a half before The WELL was organized, before the concept of popular involvement in the press was nearly swept away on the rising tide of commercial and professional journalism. In this book, which is the first to provide readers with a cultural/historical account of the blog, as well as the first to analyze the different aspects of this growing phenomenon in terms of its past, Aaron Barlow provides lay readers with a thorough history and analysis of a truly democratic technology that is becoming more important to our lives every day. The current popularity of political blogs can be traced back to currents in American culture apparent even at the time of the Revolution. At that time there was no distinct commercial and professional press; the newspapers, then, provided a much more direct outlet for the voices of the people. In the nineteenth century, as the press became more commercial, it moved away from its direct involvement with politics, taking on an "observer" stance--removing itselffrom the people, as well as from politics. In the twentieth century, the press became increasingly professional, removing itself once more from the general populace. Americans, however, still longed to voice their opinions with the freedom that the press had once provided. Today, blogs are providing the means for doing just that.

Throughout its history Nicaragua has been plagued by corruption, social and racial inequality, civil unrest, and foreign interference. Yet despite being the second poorest nation in South America, Nicaragua maintains a rich and vibrant culture that reflects its strong Catholic devotion, diverse indigenous roots, and overwhelming zest for life. Culture and Customs of Nicaragua introduces students and general readers to Nicaragua's unique blend of religious and traditional holidays, so numerous that the country is said to be in a constant state of celebration; its growing film industry; its many styles of dance, the popular "street theatre" open to all bystanders; important contributions to Spanish literature, local cuisines, architecture, social norms, and more. Readers learn what it is like to live in one of Latin America's most disillusioned countries but also discover the passionate culture that defines and sustains the Nicaraguan people.

This book is a captivating and authoritative introduction to Brazil-its history, the evolution of its society and culture, and the staggering variety of peoples and landscapes within its borders. Brazil: A Global Studies Handbook provides an easy-to-access, multifaceted introduction to the world's fifth largest nation-a staggeringly diverse region, socially and geographically, that remains relatively unknown even as it becomes increasingly important on the world stage. Brazil offers an expert chronological narrative summary of over five centuries of South America's largest country-from the days of early Portuguese exploration to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's reelection. In addition, it provides a richly informative section of alphabetically organized entries covering important Brazilian people, places, and events. For readers both new to Brazil or researching specific aspects of its unique history, complex politics, heavyweight economy, and vibrant culture, this is the volume with which to begin. Includes maps of the early division of South America, modern Brazil's regions and states, and comparative views of Brazil's size to that of Europe as well as photographs of slave conditions, early transportation of coffee, famous leaders, indigenous peoples, the Amazon rainforest, and more Provides a glossary of terms from Brazil's history to contemporary times, defining terms such as estado novo, bureaucratic authoritarianism, Tropicalismo, and Capoeira

In Postsocialist Conditions: Idea and History in China's "Independent Cinema," 1988-2008, WANG Xiaoping offers a comprehensive survey and trenchant critique of China's "Independent Cinema" by the sixth-generation auteurs. By showing the multi-valence of the postsocialist conditions in contemporary Chinese society, their films articulate a new cultural-political logic in postsocialist China, which is also the logic of the market in this era of neoliberal transformation, brought about by the forces of marketization since the late 1980s. The directors laudably show the spirits of humanism and the humanitarian concerns of the underclass, yet the shortage and repudiation of class analysis prohibits the artists from exploring the social contradictions and the cause of class restructuration.

aRough Writing is much more than a fascinating account of the little-known relationship between an American president and the immigrant authors whose work he promoted in the service of a new national narrative. Meticulously researched and lucidly written, Rough Writing enables us to see a vital period in American literature through new eyes.a
--Laura Browder, author of "Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities"

As the United States struggled to absorb a massive influx of ethnically diverse immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, the question of who and what an American is took on urgent intensity. It seemed more critical than ever to establish a definition by which Americanness could be established, transmitted, maintained, and judged. Americans of all stripes sought to articulate and enforce their visions of the nationas past, present, and future; central to these attempts was President Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt fully recognized the narrative component of American identity, and he called upon authors of diverse European backgrounds including Israel Zangwill, Jacob Riis, Elizabeth Stern, and Finley Peter Dunne to promote the nation in popular written form. With the swell and shift in immigration, he realized that a more encompassing national literature was needed to aexpress and guide the soul of the nation.a Rough Writing examines the surprising place and implications of the immigrant and of ethnic writing in Rooseveltas America and American literature.

Superman rose from popular culture - comic books, newspaper strips, radio, television, novels, and movies - but people have so embraced the character that he has now become part of folklore. This transition from popular to folk culture signals the importance of Superman to fans and to a larger American populace. Superman's story has become a myth dramatizing identity, morality, and politics. Many studies have examined the ways in which folklore has provided inspiration for other forms of culture, especially literature and cinema. In Superman in Myth and Folklore, Daniel Peretti explores the meaning of folklore inspired by popular culture, focusing not on the Man of Steel's origins but on the culture he has helped create. Superman provides a way to approach fundamental questions of human nature, a means of exploring humanity's relationship with divinity, an exemplar for debate about the type of hero society needs, and an articulation of the tension between the individual and the community. Through examinations of tattoos, humor, costuming, and festivals, Peretti portrays Superman as a corporate-owned intellectual property and a model for behavior, a means for expression and performance of individual identity, and the focal point for disparate members of fan communities. As fans apply Superman stories to their lives, they elevate him to a mythical status. Peretti focuses on the way these fans have internalized various aspects of the character. In doing so, he delves into the meaning of Superman and his place in American culture and demonstrates the character's staying power.

Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion explores the social importance of hair, wherever it grows, explaining the cultural significance of hair and hairiness, and presenting a new critical engagement with hair and its stories, histories, performances and rituals. From heads, legs and underarms, to wigs and beards, and everything in between, the presentation, manipulation and daily experience of human hair plays a central and dynamic role within fashion, self-expression and the creation of social identity. The book's diverse range of cross-cultural essays encompasses the study of hair in fashion, film, art, history, literature, performance and consumer culture. Offering an accessible mix of visual analysis, cultural commentary and critical theory, Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion will appeal to all those interested in the presentation and analysis of cultural identity and the body.

The supernatural has become extraordinarily popular in literature, television, and film. Vampires, zombies, werewolves, witches, and wizard have become staples of entertainment industries, and many of these figures have received extensive critical attention. But one figure has remained in the shadows - the female ghost. Inherently liminal, often literally invisible, the female ghost has nevertheless appeared in all genres. Subversive Spirits: The Female Ghost in British and American Popular Culture brings this figure into the light, exploring her cultural significance in a variety of media from 1926 to 2014. Robin Roberts argues that the female ghost is well worth studying for what she can tell us about feminine subjectivity in cultural contexts. Subversive Spirits examines appearances of the female ghost in heritage sites, theater, Hollywood film, literature, and television in the United States and the United Kingdom. What holds these disparate female ghosts together is their uncanny ability to disrupt, illuminate, and challenge gendered assumptions. As with other supernatural figures, the female ghost changes over time, especially responding to changes in gender roles. Roberts's analysis begins with comedic female ghosts in literature and film and moves into horror by examining the successful play The Woman in Black and the legend of the weeping woman, La Llorona. Roberts then situates the canonical works of Maxine Hong Kingston and Toni Morrison in the tradition of the female ghost to explore how the ghost is used to portray the struggle and pain of women of color. Roberts further analyzes heritage sites that use the female ghost as the friendly and inviting narrator for tourists. The book concludes with a comparison of the British and American versions of the television hit Being Human, where the female ghost expands her influence to become a mother and savior to all humanity.

Born in Pakistan to Baptist missionaries from rural Georgia, Jonathan S. Addleton crossed the borders of race, culture, class, and religion from an early age. Some Far and Distant Place combines family history, social observation, current events, and deeply personal commentary to tell an unusual coming-of-age story that has as much to do with the intersection of cultures as it does with one man's life. Whether sharing ice cream with a young Benazir Bhutto or selling gospel tracts at the tomb of a Sufi saint, Addleton provides insightful and sometimes hilarious glimpses into the Muslim-Christian encounter through the eyes of a young child. His narrative is rooted in many unlikely sources, including a southern storytelling tradition, Urdu ghazal, revivalist hymnology, and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The natural beauty of the Himalayas also leaves a strong and lasting mark, providing solidity in a confusing world that on occasion seems about to tilt out of control. This clear-eyed, insightful memoir describes an experience that will become increasingly more common as cultures that once seemed remote and distant are no longer confined within the bounds of a single nation-state.

This collection opens the geospatiality of "Asia" into an environmental framework called "Oceania" and pushes this complex regional multiplicity towards modes of trans-local solidarity, planetary consciousness, multi-sited decentering, and world belonging. At the transdisciplinary core of this "worlding" process lies the multiple spatial and temporal dynamics of an environmental eco-poetics, articulated via thinking and creating both with and beyond the Pacific and Asia imaginary.

American Economists of the Late Twentieth Century is a collection of essays on the work of 22 contemporary US economists. The essays summarize, place in perspective and appraise the work of a diverse array of accomplished scholars whose writings respresent the best, the most promising and the most innovative in the US. The economists whose work is discussed include Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Paul Davidson, Nancy Folbre, Robert H. Frank, Robert Heilbroner, David Kahneman and Amos Tversky, Paul Krugman, William Lazonick, Gregg Lewis, Richard R. Nelson and Sidney G. Winter, Mancur Olson, Nathan Rosenberg, Thomas Schelling, Vernon Smith, Robert A. Solo, Joseph Stiglitz, Richard Thaler, Lester Thurow and Oliver E. Williamson. The emphasis of the collection is on both the quality and diversity of the work - of different ways of doing economics as it is presently practised. Warren J. Samuels has brought together a series of original essays written by economists who are distinguished in their own right. Historians of economic thought, methodologists, general economists and specialists in the fields represented by the subjects will welcome American Economists of the Late Twentieth Century as a significant contribution to our understanding of contemporary American economic scholarship.

Listen, Copy, Read: Popular Learning in Early Modern Japan endeavors to elucidate the mechanisms by which a growing number of men and women of all social strata became involved in acquiring knowledge and skills during the Tokugawa period. It offers an overview of the communication media and tools that teachers, booksellers, and authors elaborated to make such knowledge more accessible to a large audience. Schools, public lectures, private academies or hand-copied or printed manuals devoted to a great variety of topics, from epistolary etiquette or personal ethics to calculation, divination or painting, are here invoked to illustrate the vitality of Tokugawa Japan's 'knowledge market', and to show how popular learning relied on three types of activities: listening, copying and reading. With contributions by: W.J. Boot, Matthias Hayek, Annick Horiuchi, Michael Kinski, Koizumi Yoshinaga, Peter Kornicki, Machi Senjuro, Christophe Marquet, Markus Ruttermann, Tsujimoto Masashi, and Wakao Masaki.

In The Radical Machiavelli: Politics, Philosophy and Language, some of the finest Machiavellian scholars explore the Florentine's thought five hundred years after the composition of his masterpiece, The Prince. Their analysis, however, goes past The Prince, extending to Machiavelli's entire corpus and shining new light on his political, historical, and military works, with a special focus on their heritage in modern Marxist thought, the arena in which they reverberate most profoundly and originally. Rather than a neutral, comprehensive, and safe interpretation, this book offers a partial and even partisan reading of Machiavelli, the 16th-century thinker who continues to divide scholars and interpreters, forcing them to confront their responsibility as contemporary thinkers in a global society where Machiavelli's ideas and the issues they address still matter. Contributors are: Etienne Balibar, Banu Bargu, Jeremie Barthas, Thomas Berns, Alison Brown, Filippo Del Lucchese, Romain Descendre, Jean-Louis Fournel, Fabio Frosini, Giorgio Inglese, Mikko Lahtinen, Jacques Lezra, John P. McCormick, Warren Montag, Vittorio Morfino, Mohamed Moulfi, Gabriele Pedulla, Tania Rispoli, Peter D. Thomas, Sebastian Torres, Miguel Vatter, Stefano Visentin, Yves Winter, and Jean-Claude Zancarini.

This book foregrounds the figure of the perpetrator in a selection of British, American, and Canadian comics and explores questions related to remembrance, justice, and historical debt. Its primary focus is on works that deliberately estrange the figure of the perpetrator-through fantasy, absurdism, formal ambiguity, or provocative rewriting-and thus allow readers to engage anew with the history of genocide, mass murder, and sexual violence. This book is particularly interested in the ethical space such an engagement calls into being: in its ability to allow us to ponder the privilege many of us now enjoy, the gross historical injustices that have secured it, and the debt we owe to people long dead.

The Long Life invites the reader to range widely from the writings of Plato through to recent philosophical work by Derek Parfit, Bernard Williams, and others, and from Shakespeare's King Lear through works by Thomas Mann, Balzac, Dickens, Beckett, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, to more recent writing by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and J. M. Coetzee.
Helen Small argues that if we want to understand old age, we have to think more fundamentally about what it means to be a person, to have a life, to have (or lead) a good life, to be part of a just society. What did Plato mean when he suggested that old age was the best place from which to practice philosophy - or Thomas Mann when he defined old age as the best time to be a writer - and were they right? If we think, as Aristotle did, that a good life requires the active pursuit of virtue, how will our view of later life be affected? If we think that lives and persons are unified, much as stories are said to be unified, how will our thinking about old age differ from that of someone who thinks that lives and/or persons can be strongly discontinuous? In a just society, what constitutes a fair distribution of limited resources between the young and the old? How, if at all, should recent developments in the theory of evolutionary senescence alter our thinking about what it means to grow old?
This is a groundbreaking book, deep as well as broad, and likely to alter the way in which we talk about one of the great social concerns of our time - the growing numbers of those living to be old, and the growing proportion of the old to the young.

Patrick Barr-Melej here illuminates modern Chilean history with an unprecedented chronicle and reassessment of the sixties and seventies. During a period of tremendous political and social strife that saw the election of a Marxist president followed by the terror of a military coup in 1973, a youth-driven, transnationally connected counterculture smashed onto the scene. Contributing to a surging historiography of the era's Latin American counterculture, Barr-Melej draws on media and firsthand interviews in documenting the intertwining of youth and counterculture with discourses rooted in class and party politics. Focusing on ""hippismo"" and an esoteric movement called Poder Joven, Barr-Melej challenges a number of prevailing assumptions about culture, politics, and the Left under Salvador Allende's ""Chilean Road to Socialism."" While countercultural attitudes toward recreational drug use, gender roles and sexuality, rock music, and consumerism influenced many youths on the Left, the preponderance of leftist leaders shared a more conservative cultural sensibility. This exposed, Barr-Melej argues, a degree of intergenerational dissonance within leftist ranks. And while the allure of new and heterodox cultural values and practices among young people grew, an array of constituencies from the Left to the Right berated counterculture in national media, speeches, schools, and other settings. This public discourse of contempt ultimately contributed to the fierce repression of nonconformist youth culture following the coup.