This essential collection on maternal and child health focuses on the rites of giving birth from a cross-cultural perspective. The distinguished list of contributors describe the many customs surrounding birth through infancy, highlighting a wide range of variation in practices across cultures. They discuss attitudes and techniques in childbirth, the interaction between human evolutionary form and birthing procedures, the influence of societal factors that differentiate Western from non-Western maternal birthing positions, and the art of midwifery. Also treated are less well-known areas of birthing such as the imagery of birthing, placenta rituals, and popular beliefs about the amniotic membrane called a caul. In addition, the authors explore the humoral medical tradition used in birthing, the possible influence of cultural practices on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), customs and beliefs regarding breastfeeding, weaning, swaddling, and finally a sociobiological perspective on early infant behavior. This book will be valuable for courses in medical sociology and anthropology, public health or behavioral sciences, psychology and psychiatry, and for pre-med students.

Adolescence, like childhood, is more than a biologically defined life stage: it is also a sociohistorical construction. The meaning and experience of adolescence are reformulated according to societal needs, evolving scientific precepts, and national aspirations relative to historic conditions. Although adolescence was by no means a "discovery" of the early twentieth century, it did assume an identifiably modern form during the years between the Great War and 1950.

"The Dominion of Youth: Adolescence and the Making of Modern Canada, 1920 to 1950" captures what it meant for young Canadians to inhabit this liminal stage of life within the context of a young nation caught up in the self-formation and historic transformation that would make modern Canada. Because the young at this time were seen paradoxically as both the hope of the nation and the source of its possible degeneration, new policies and institutions were developed to deal with the "problem of youth." This history considers how young Canadians made the transition to adulthood during a period that was "developmental"--both for youth and for a nation also working toward individuation. During the years considered here, those who occupied this "dominion" of youth would see their experiences more clearly demarcated by generation and culture than ever before. With this book, Cynthia Comacchio offers the first detailed study of adolescence in early-twentieth-century Canada and demonstrates how young Canadians of the period became the nation's first modern teenagers.

Someone dies. What happens next?

One family inters their matriarch's ashes on the floor of the ocean. Another holds a memorial weenie roast each year at a greenburial cemetery. An 1898 ad for embalming fluid promises, "You can make mummies with it " while a leading contemporary burial vault is touted as impervious to the elements. A grieving mother, 150 years ago, might spend her days tending a garden at her daughter's grave. Today, she might tend the roadside memorial she erected at the spot her daughter was killed. One mother wears a locket containing her daughter's hair; the other, a necklace containing her ashes.

What happens after someone dies depends on our personal stories and on where those stories fall in a larger tale--that of death in America. It's a powerful tale that we usually keep hidden from our everyday lives until we have to face it.

"American Afterlife" by Kate Sweeney reveals this world through a collective portrait of Americans past and present who find themselves personally involved with death: a klatch of obit writers in the desert, a funeral voyage on the Atlantic, a fourth-generation funeral director--even a midwestern museum that takes us back in time to meet our deathobsessed Victorian progenitors. Each story illuminates details in another until something larger is revealed: a landscape that feels at once strange and familiar, one that's by turns odd, tragic, poignant, and sometimes even funny.

May Edel's The Chiga of Uganda is in the grand tradition of Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Leslie Spier. Written at a time when older ways were menaced by contact with other cultures, Edel's effort was part of a descriptive urgency that aimed to capture the past before the past disappeared. And that past should be viewed from the perspective of the people themselves, by students going into the field to observe, question, and report. This book is an enlarged and amplified edition of The Chiga of Western Uganda published in 1957 by the Oxford University Press for the International African Institute. It is enlarged by a major section on material culture hitherto unpublished. The Chiga of Uganda provides a special insight into a culture at that time (1933) still intact under the British protectorate. It is for the most part a picture of life as it was then still being lived. Where significant changes were already taking place, the various changes are discussed in the contexts in which they seemed relevant in social structure, kinship, marriage, economics, social control, religion, and education. What makes this edition unique is the new segment on material culture. This delves into Chiga patterns of food supply and preparation, horticulture, fire and heating, water supplies, cattle raising, hunting, fishing, and problems related to shelter, clothing, and hygiene. Two new special sections deal with tools and utensils, and, no less important, the physical skills and motor habits of the people. Edel's concrete yet wide-ranging descriptions provide an irreplaceable insight into a people and a culture at a unique point in world and colonial history. The new introduction, written by Abraham Edel, provides a special sort of insight, drawing heavily upon the correspondence that May Edel wrote at the time. The introduction shows how the clouds of war and Nazism in Europe at the time were already changing the character and context of anthropology no less than every other area of human endeavor. A final new aspect of The Chiga of Uganda is May Edel's last reflections focusing on African tribalism, which turns out to be not all that different from ethnic and national rivalries in the Western world. This book will be indispensable to anthropologists, Africanists, and historians.

Despite its enduring popularity as a national festival, Christmas has been largely neglected by English historians. Neil Armstrong offers the first study to examine both the experience and representation of Christmas during the formative period of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book explores the origins of our deeply held notions of the traditional nature of Christmas and demonstrates how they were shaped by English modernity. A study of both continuity and change, Christmas in nineteenth-Century England makes an important contribution to cultural and social history, and is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of childhood, the family, philanthropy, work and consumerism. Scholarly yet accessible, it will be enjoyed by academics, students and the general public alike. -- .

Latest research on the chivalric ethos of western Europe,10c-15c, from the practical (houses, armour) to the intellectual [conceptof holy war, loyalty, etc.]. The Strawberry Hill conferences on medieval knighthood, from which these volumes spring, aim to bring together historians and literary scholars whose interests focus on medieval chivalry, to bridge the gulf between the two areas of specialisation and explore matters of common interest. Eight papers cover a wide area, both territorially and chronologically,but common themes emerge. One group of essays deals with the embellishments of lordship, both architectural and heraldic, studying residences and also developments in armour. A second group concerns ideals which motivated the aristocracy of western Europe, from the late 10th to the 15th centuries: romances, the Peace movement ofAquitaine, holy war, and loyalty; concentration on rationalism and free will in thewritings of the cultural circle which revolved around Sir John Fastolfis identified as an important element in the development of the EnglishRenaissance. Professor CHRISTOPHER HARPER-BILL teaches in the Department of History, University of East Anglia; Dr RUTH HARVEY is lecturer in French at Royal Holloway, University of London. Contributors: ADRIAN AILES, JEFFREY ASHCROFT, CHARLES COULSON,JONATHAN HUGHES, JANE MARTINDALE, PETER NOBLE, MATTHEW STRICKLAND,ANN WILLIAMS.

In this book, contemporary representations of Bolivian art, music, religion, literature, festivals, theater, and cinema document how history and geography have shaped Bolivia's modern culture. Bolivia has long been neglected by North American historians and anthropologists. Now, author Javier A. Galvan fills this gap with a book that analyzes the complex cultures of this South American nation within the context of its rich history and contemporary traditions. The first half of this text is dedicated to how and where people live-detailed geography, social traditions, religious practices, political institutions, and Bolivian cuisine and culture. The varied religious and linguistic traditions of the indigenous groups that comprise the majority of the national population are also described, giving readers a deeper appreciation for the diversity of Bolivia's character. The second half of the book explores the creative talent of Bolivians who are advancing the literary movements, painting styles, architectural design, theater productions, fashion design, and emerging film industry of the country. Culture and Customs of Bolivia also includes a detailed analysis of contemporary print and broadcasting media. Presents a chronology of historical, political, and cultural events from pre-Colombian times to the present Includes photographs that illustrate the country's richness of people, festivals, architectural treasures, artwork, and regional cultural celebrations as well as geographical and historic maps Contains a comprehensive bibliography for further reading Provides a glossary of regional expressions and key terms to understanding the cultural mosaic of Bolivia

Don't just see the sights-get to know the people. Vietnam is one of the most fascinating destinations in Southeast Asia. Having emerged from two decades of war, it has undergone a period of rapid and far-reaching change, and its people have their eyes fixed firmly on the horizon. Culture Smart! Vietnam is for those who want to learn about the traditional values, sensibility, and modern way of life of the Vietnamese. It explains deep-seated attitudes and describes some of the social, economic, and cultural changes now under way. Aimed at dispelling common misconceptions, it gives practical advice on what to expect and how to behave in unfamiliar situations in order to help you discover for yourself the warmth and humor of this tough, resilient people. Have a more meaningful and successful time abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on values, attitudes, customs, and daily life will help you make the most of your visit, while tips on etiquette and communication will help you navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.

***NOW IN PAPERBACK*** School violence has become our new American horror story, but it also has its roots in the way it comments on western values with respect to violence, shame, mental illness, suicide, humanity, and the virtual. Beyond Columbine: School Violence and the Virtual offers a series of readings of school shooting episodes in the United States as well as similar cases in Finland, Germany, and Norway, among others and their relatedness. The book expands the author's central premise from her earlier book Failure to Hold, which explores the hidden curriculum of American culture that is rooted in perceived inequality and the shame, rage, and violence that it provokes. In doing so, it goes further to explore the United States' outdated perceptual apparatus based on a reflective liberal ideology and presents a new argument about proprioception: the combined effect of a sustained lack of thought (non-cognitive) in action that is engendered by digital media and virtual culture. The present interpretation of the virtual is not limited to video games but encompasses the entire perceptual field of information sharing and media stylization (e.g., social networking, television, and branding). More specifically, American culture has immersed itself so thoroughly in a digital world that its violence and responses to violence lack reflection to the point where it confuses data with certainty. School-related violence is presented as a dramatic series of events with Columbine as its pilot episode.

Commemorative Events emphasise remembering. They are held on the anniversaries of significant past events, either annually or after significant time periods. Commemorative events provide fascinating insight into how societies see themselves, their heritage and their identity. These events however carry high propensity for controversy as memory and identity are highly subjective and other stakeholders hold different views of what should be commemorated and why. This is the first book to provide an in - depth critical examination of commemorative events, particularly what they mean to societies and how they are used by governments as well as impacts on other stakeholders. The book fully explores these issues by reviewing all the major types of commemorative events including, nationhood or independence, wars, battles, famous people and cultural milestones from varying geographical regions and stakeholder perspectives. By doing so the book furthers understanding of these types of events in society as well as furthering knowledge of social and political uses and impacts of events. This thought provoking volume will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics interested in events.

This is an examination of human encounter with death in Germany from the eve of the Reformation to the rise of Pietism. The Protestant Reformation transformed the funeral more profoundly than any other ritual of the traditional church. Luther's doctrine of salvation by faith alone made the foundation of the traditional funeral, intercession for the dead in Purgatory, obsolete. By drawing on anthropological interpretations of death ritual, this study explores the changing relationships between the body, the soul, the living and the dead in the daily life of early modern Germany.

The essays collected in Fate and Prognostication in the Chinese Literary Imagination deal with the philosophical, psychological, gender and cultural issues in the Chinese conception of fate as represented in literary texts and films, with a focus placed on human efforts to solve the riddles of fate prediction. Viewed in this light, the collected essays unfold a meandering landscape of the popular imaginary in Chinese beliefs and customs. The chapters in this book represent concerted efforts in research originated from a project conducted at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. Contributors are Michael Lackner, Kwok-kan Tam, Monika Gaenssbauer, Terry Siu-han Yip, Xie Qun, Roland Altenburger, Jessica Tsui-yan Li, Kaby Wing-Sze Kung, Nicoletta Pesaro, Yan Xu-Lackner, and Anna Wing Bo Tso.

Don't just see the sights get to know the people. Discovering the Russian soul is like opening a matryoshka, a Russian doll, revealing the many layers. The Russian orthodox religion is unique; Russian history is tragic; and the people are unpredictable. Russia s military and political power, as well as the rich contribution of its art and culture, is the result of an inner dynamic not always understood by outsiders. Culture Smart! Russia sets out to help you to become a more perceptive traveler, and to make your trip more personally fulfilling. It explores the connections between Russia s turbulent past and its paradoxical present; it describes present-day values and attitudes, and offers practical advice on what to expect and how to behave in different social circumstances. Have a more meaningful and successful time abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on values, attitudes, customs, and daily life will help you make the most of your visit, while tips on etiquette and communication will help you navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.

Is the practice of FGM (female genital mutilation) on the rise in the UK and US? Why? What happens to religious and cultural traditions when they are taken from their context into a new, often secular, state? "Women, Violence, and Tradition" is a fascinating look into contemporary life histories of women from ethnic minority communities in the West, focusing specifically on their experiences of under-researched cultural practices. The book gives close insight into how ethnic minority women today navigate between their religious and cultural traditions and the secular state in which they live. The volume illuminates areas of tension and difficulty when some women actively try to reform aspects of their tradition while remaining fiercely loyal to their cultural identity. Other examples highlight how young women are choosing to endorse traditional practices, seeing this as an important way of demonstrating the legitimacy of their religion and culture in the face of increasing hostility. This brave and original book tackles the sensitive and controversial issue of FGM, as well as surveying changing attitudes and practices around marriage and divorce. Using a cross-cultural perspective, the book draws in the views of activists and community organizations who work with women to confront injustice.

This book pulls together experts in the fields of economics and Russian culture, all participants in the Samuel P. Huntington Memorial Symposium on Culture, Cultural Change and Economic Development, a follow-up to the 1999 Cultural Values and Human Progress Symposium at Harvard University. As the sequel to the 2001 volume Culture Matters, it discusses modernization, democratization, economic, and political reforms in Russia and asserts that these reforms can happen through the reframing of cultural values, attitudes, and institutions. (Cover design by Katie Makrie.)

Coffee Culture: Local experiences, Global Connections explores coffee as (1) a major commodity that shapes the lives of millions of people; (2) a product with a dramatic history; (3) a beverage with multiple meanings and uses (energizer, comfort food, addiction, flavouring, and confection); (4) an inspiration for humor and cultural critique; (5) a crop that can help protect biodiversity yet also threaten the environment; (6) a health risk and a health food; and (7) a focus of alternative trade efforts. This book presents coffee as a commodity that ties the world together, from the coffee producers and pickers who tend the plantations in tropical nations, to the middlemen and processors, to the consumers who drink coffee without ever having to think about how the drink reached their hands.

Routledge is proud to be re-issuing this landmark series in association with the International African Institute. The series, published between 1950 and 1977, brings together a wealth of previously un-co-ordinated material on the ethnic groupings and social conditions of African peoples. Concise, critical and (for its time) accurate, the Ethnographic Survey contains sections as follows: Physical Environment Linguistic Data Demography History & Traditions of Origin Nomenclature Grouping Cultural Features: Religion, Witchcraft, Birth, Initiation, Burial Social & Political Organization: Kinship, Marriage, Inheritance, Slavery, Land Tenure, Warfare & Justice Economy & Trade Domestic Architecture Each of the 50 volumes will be available to buy individually, and these are organized into regional sub-groups: East Central Africa, North-Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, West Central Africa, Western Africa, and Central Africa Belgian Congo. The volumes are supplemented with maps, available to view on routledge.com or available as a pdf from the publishers.

First published in 2005. This definitive work contains a collection of texts written at the time when Chivalry was a living tradition spread across the whole of Europe. In it are fascinating accounts of Chivalry's history and origins, the education of knights, chivalric love and the religious and military orders of knighthood. Nowhere else are the facts of Chivalry brough together so brilliantly.

This anthology contains seven texts by Kurt Blaukopf (1914-1999) that exemplify the sociological and epistemological position of this pioneer of Austrian music sociology. Blaukopf's efforts were aimed at a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach and analysis of music as a cultural phenomenon and as social practice. The primary aim of this anthology is to make Blaukopf's work better known in the English-speaking world. It offers the interested reader a fruitful analysis of the relation between music sociology and its sister disciplines, e.g. musicology, a solid analysis in terms of the philosophy of science on the possibilities and limits of music sociology, and a highly topical discussion about the significance of intrinsic artistic aspects in music sociology.

Food consumption patterns and practices are rapidly changing in Asia and the Pacific, and nowhere are these changes more striking than in urban areas. This book brings together scholars from anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, tourism, architecture and development studies to provide a comprehensive examination of food consumption trends in the cities of Asia and the Pacific, including household food consumption, eating out and food waste. The chapters cover different scales of analysis, from household research to national data, and combine different methodologies and approaches, from quantifiable data that show how much people consume to qualitative findings that reveal how and why consumption takes place in urban settings. Detailed case studies are included from China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam, as well as Hawai'i and Australia. The book makes a timely contribution to current debates on the challenges and opportunities for socially just and environmentally sound food consumption in urbanizing Asia and the Pacific. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138120617_oachapter3.pdf

Actress, storyteller, and priestess Luisah Teish dramatically re-creates centuries-old African-American traditions with music, memoir, and folk wisdom.

Latest research on the chivalric ethos of western Europe 10c-15c. from the practical [houses, armour], to the intellectual [concept of holy war, loyalty, etc.] These eight papers from the Strawberry Hill Conference cover a wide area, but common themes emerge. One group of essays deals with the embellishments of lordship, both architectural and heraldic, studying residences and also developments in armour. A second group concerns ideals which motivated the aristocracy of western Europe, from the late 10th to the 15th centuries: romances, the Peace movement of Aquitaine, holy war, and loyalty. Concentration on rationalism and free will in the writings of the cultural circle which revolved around Sir John Fastolf is identified as an important element in the development of the English Renaissance. Professor CHRISTOPHER HARPER-BILLteaches in the Department of History, University of East Anglia; Dr RUTH HARVEY is lecturer in French, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College. Contributors: ADRIAN AILES, JEFFREY ASHCROFT, CHARLES COULSON, JONATHAN HUGHES, JANE MARTINDALE, PETER NOBLE, MATTHEW STRICKLAND, ANN WILLIAMS

Montenegro has been a much neglected part of former Yugoslavia. The Montenegrin Warrior Tradition aims to scrutinize the identity debates in Montenegrin public opinion over the question of membership to NATO and to explore how narratives created for that purpose have been linked with Montenegrin identity, history, tradition, and the concept of Montenegrin masculinity. The intertwining of the question of identity with that of NATO membership, and the inseparability of these issues from the context of quotidian politics produces an array of controversies among Montenegrin citizens. The book interprets the public and private debates about Montenegro joining NATO through the prism of anthropological studies of identity; in particular those focused on a general theory of culture and the anthropology of multiculturalism.