As Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy, Sir Edward Reed (1830 1906) oversaw the final move from wooden to ironclad ships. Upon resigning from the Navy in 1870 he designed warships for Germany, Chile, Brazil and Japan, and was invited to Japan in 1879 to advise its government on plans to strengthen its navy. Eleven years after the restoration of the monarchy, the country was embarking on a period of rapid industrial and military development. Published in 1880, and part history, part travel narrative, Reed's book gives a fascinating insight into Japan during a key period in her history and is an informal yet informed assessment of its people, customs, history and geography. Volume 1 covers the geography and history of Japan, including its mythology and the origins of its religions. It concludes with a valuable assessment by Reed of the political, social and industrial reforms and developments that he witnessed.

As Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy, Sir Edward Reed (1830 1906) oversaw the final move from wooden to ironclad ships. Upon resigning from the Navy in 1870 he designed warships for Germany, Chile, Brazil and Japan, and was invited to Japan in 1879 to advise its government on plans to strengthen its navy. Eleven years after the restoration of the monarchy, the country was embarking on a period of rapid industrial and military development. Published in 1880, and part history, part travel narrative, Reed's book gives a fascinating insight into Japan during a key period in her history and is an informal yet informed assessment of her people, customs, history and geography. Volume 2 is an account of Reed's travels, often in a rickshaw, around the country during his three-month stay. It includes his more personal observations, taken directly from his diary, of Japan's scenery, cities and people.

Stephenson Percy Smith (1840-1922) arrived in New Zealand as a boy, and soon became fascinated by Maori culture. After retiring in 1900 from his career as a government surveyor, Smith devoted himself to the study of the Maori and co-founded the Polynesian Society, which published this two-volume study in 1913-15. The book contains the Maori text of an important body of beliefs and traditions which had been committed to writing over fifty years earlier, when the young W. H. Whatahoro had acted as scribe for a group of senior elders concerned to preserve this ancient and sacred knowledge. Only long afterwards was Whatahoro willing to divulge it to Europeans, and he personally assisted Smith with the translation provided here. Volume 2 focuses on traditions relating to the history and migrations of the Maori people and their arrival in New Zealand in the 'Great Fleet'.

First published between 1887 and 1890, this six-volume work, containing Maori texts with English translations and commentary, and engraved illustrations, was one of the first printed records of the oral traditions of the Maori. The project was commissioned by the New Zealand government in 1879 when it was observed that, due to the introduction of European culture and education, indigenous traditions were in danger of dying out. The material was collected by John White (1826-91), an ethnographer, public servant and writer who had arrived in New Zealand as a boy and first began documenting Maori poetry in the 1840s. Volume 3, published in 1887, includes myths of the rainbow god Uenuku, canoe migrations, and legends of the South Island Maori, many of them relating to ancestry, feuds and warfare.

Images of the devastation wreaked by typhoons, flooding, earthquakes and drought in the Philippines circulate globally as an important part of disaster discourses. This collection seeks to move beyond these simplistic representations of calamity by bringing together a group of Filipino and international scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to grapple with the complex nature of disaster in the Philippines. Firmly grounded in the relationship between disaster and place, the volume's contributors confront the challenges of the Philippine nation's internal heterogeneity of language, ethnicity and class. In doing so, this book seeks to engage the specificities of place amid diversity, and explores two broad but interrelating avenues of investigation through case studies drawn from across the archipelago: How can environmental extremity in the Philippines help us understand disasters? How can disasters help us understand the Philippines?

These are just a few samples from an eighteenth-century Commonplace Book, passed down the generations from Mary Cannon's kitchen to her many times great-granddaughter Marjorie Quarton. A Commonplace Book was a scrapbook for sayings, letters, prayers, measurements, or, as in this instance, of recipes. Mary Cannon lived in Dunleary (now Dun Laoghaire) and collected over 120 recipes between 1700 and 1707. They are presented here in sections such as ffishe, ffleshe, Puddings and Deserts, Pickles and Preserves. The visceral vocabulary and archaic spellings of these dishes will refresh our word hoard, while imparting a sumptuous flavour to Ireland's gastronomic repertoire. Unopened and untried for over 300 years, they form a unique resource for food historians and knights of the dining table. Marjorie Quarton has edited these recipes, commenting on the significance and usage of certain ingredients. She has added fragments of family history, from Jacobite leaders and Huguenot refugees to tales of the Indian Mutiny. The recipes are illustrated by Alice Bouilliez, also a descendent of Mary Cannon.

Despite predictions that commercial mass culture would displace customs of the past, traditions firmly abound, often characterized as folklore. In The Practice of Folklore: Essays toward a Theory of Tradition, author Simon J. Bronner works with theories of cultural practice to explain the social and psychological need for tradition in everyday life. Bronner proposes a distinctive "praxic" perspective that will answer the pressing philosophical as well as psychological question of why people enjoy repeating themselves. The significance of the keyword practice, he asserts, is the embodiment of a tension between repetition and variation in human behavior. Thinking with practice, particularly in a digital world, forces redefinitions of folklore and a reorientation toward interpreting everyday life. More than performance or enactment in social theory, practice connects localized culture with the vernacular idea that "this is the way we do things around here." Practice refers to the way those things are analyzed as part of, rather than apart from, theory, thus inviting the study of studying. "The way we do things" invokes the social basis of "doing" in practice as cultural and instrumental. Building on previous studies of tradition in relation to creativity, Bronner presents an overview of practice theory and the ways it might be used in folklore and folklife studies. Demonstrating the application of this theory in folkloristic studies, Bronner offers four provocative case studies of psychocultural meanings that arise from traditional frames of action and address issues of our times: referring to the boogieman; connecting "wild child" beliefs to school shootings; deciphering the offensive chants of sports fans; and explicating male bravado in bawdy singing. Turning his analysis to the analysts of tradition, Bronner uses practice theory to evaluate the agenda of folklorists in shaping perceptions of tradition-centered "folk societies" such as the Amish. He further unpacks the culturally based rationale of public folklore programming. He interprets the evolving idea of folk museums in a digital world and assesses how the folklorists' terms and actions affect how people think about tradition.

Although today in France church attendance is minimal, when death occurs many families still cling to religious rites. In exploring this common reaction to one of the most painful aspects of existence, Thomas Kselman turns to nineteenth-century French beliefs about death and the afterlife not only to show how deeply rooted the cult of the dead is in one Western society, but how death and the behavior of mourners have been politicized in the modern world. Drawing on sermons preached in rural and urban parishes, folktales, and accounts of seances, the author vividly re-creates the social and cultural context in which most French people responded to death and dealt with anxieties about the self and its survival. Inspired mainly by Catholicism, beliefs about death provided a social basis for moral order throughout the nineteenth century and were vulnerable to manipulation by public officials and clergy. Kselman shows, however, that by mid-century the increase in urbanization, capitalism, family privacy, and expressed religious differences generated diverse attitudes toward death, causing funerals to evolve from Catholic neighborhood rituals into personalized symbolic events for Catholics and dissenters alike--the civil burial of Victor Hugo being perhaps the greatest symbol of rebellion. Kselman's discussion of the growth of commercial funerals and innovations in cemetery administration illuminates a new struggle for control over funeral arrangements, this time involving businessmen, politicians, families, and clergy. This struggle in turn demonstrates the importance of these events for defining social identity.

Originally published in 1992.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

G. F. Abbott spent two years at the turn of the twentieth century studying the cultural beliefs and folklore of Greek-speaking Macedonia. His results are formulated in this 1903 book and include accounts of such varying topics as the folk-calendar, funeral rites and bird legends among many other observations. Filled with anecdotes of his adventure and reports from local inhabitants, this work is a highly engaging travelogue with many ethnographic insights. Those interested in the development of anthropology will find Abbott's study a telling example of Victorian methods while the general reader will find his prose style warm and enjoyable.

Most of us know a bit about what passes for good manners - holding doors open, sending thank-you notes, no elbows on the table. We certainly know bad manners when we see them. But where has this patchwork of beliefs and behaviours come from? How did manners develop? How do they change? And why do they matter so much to us? In examining our manners, Henry Hitchings delves into the English character and investigates our notions of Englishness. Sorry! presents an amusing, illuminating and quirky audit of English manners. From basic table manners to appropriate sexual conduct, via hospitality, chivalry, faux pas and online etiquette, Hitchings traces the history of our country's customs and courtesies. Putting under the microscope some of our most astute observers of humanity, including Jane Austen and Samuel Pepys, he uses their lives and writings to pry open the often downright peculiar secrets of the English character. Hitchings' blend of history, anthropology and personal journey helps us understand our bizarre and contested cultural baggage - and ourselves.

Renowned food scholar Carole Counihan serves up a delicious narrative about family and food in twentieth-century Florence. By looking at how family, and especially gender relations, have changed in Florence since the ending of World War II and continuing on to an examination of current food practices today, "Around the Tuscan Table" offers a portrait of the changing nature of modern life as exemplified through food. How food is produced, distributed, and consumed speaks volumes about a given culture, and this compelling and artfully narrated book aims to preserve, propagate, and interpret Florentines' world-renowned cuisine and culture.
At the market, in the kitchen, and around the table, Counihan gives readers a taste of everyday life in this region of Italy: how eating together unites the family; how the production of food is gendered; how food is a key tool of socialization, and how culture forms aesthetic tastes.
With more than 20 illustrations and age-old family recipes, this is a treat for the senses and the intellect.

Winner, 2013-2014 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, Adult Non-Fiction presented by the Asian Pacific American Librarian Association During the Cold War, Soviet propaganda highlighted U.S. racism in order to undermine the credibility of U.S. democracy. In response, incorporating racial and ethnic minorities in order to affirm that America worked to ensure the rights of all and was superior to communist countries became a national imperative. In Citizens of Asian America, Cindy I-Fen Cheng explores how Asian Americans figured in this effort to shape the credibility of American democracy, even while the perceived "foreignness" of Asian Americans cast them as likely alien subversives whose activities needed monitoring following the communist revolution in China and the outbreak of the Korean War. While histories of international politics and U.S. race relations during the Cold War have largely overlooked the significance of Asian Americans, Cheng challenges the black-white focus of the existing historiography. She highlights how Asian Americans made use of the government's desire to be leader of the "free world" by advocating for civil rights reforms, such as housing integration, increased professional opportunities, and freedom from political persecution. Further, Cheng examines the liberalization of immigration policies, which worked not only to increase the civil rights of Asian Americans but also to improve the nation's ties with Asian countries, providing an opportunity for the U.S. government to broadcast, on a global scale, the freedom and opportunity that American society could offer.

In this exciting book, Ronald Suleski introduces daily life for the common people of China in the century from 1850 to 1950. They were semi-literate, yet they have left us written accounts of their hopes, fears, and values. They have left us the hand-written manuscripts (chaoben ) now flooding the antiques markets in China. These documents represent a new and heretofore overlooked category of historical sources. Suleski gives a detailed explanation of the interaction of chaoben with the lives of the people. He offers examples of why they were so important to the poor laboring masses: people wanted horoscopes predicting their future, information about the ghosts causing them headaches, a few written words to help them trade in the rural markets, and many more examples are given. The book contains a special appendix giving the first complete translation into English of a chaoben describing the ghosts and goblins that bedeviled the poor working classes.

Ritual has long been a central concept in anthropological theories of religious transmission. Ritual, Performance and the Senses offers a new understanding of how ritual enables religious representations - ideas, beliefs, values - to be shared among participants. Focusing on the body and the experiential nature of ritual, the book brings together insights from three distinct areas of study: cognitive/neuroanthropology, performance studies and the anthropology of the senses. Eight chapters by scholars from each of these sub-disciplines investigate different aspects of embodied religious practice, ranging from philosophical discussions of belief to explorations of the biological processes taking place in the brain itself. Case studies range from miracles and visionary activity in Catholic Malta to meditative practices in theatrical performance and include three pilgrimage sites: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the festival of Ramlila in Ramnagar, India and the mountain shrine of the Lord of the Shiny Snow in Andean Peru.Understanding ritual allows us to understand processes at the very centre of human social life and humanity itself, making this an invaluable text for students and scholars in anthropology, cognitive science, performance studies and religious studies.

A fascinating and comprehensive introduction to the geography, culture, and history of wine that identifies the significance of this simple beverage throughout human history and today. Wine was one the key founding foods of Western culture (bread and oil being the other two). It has played a key role in human history for thousands of years, having been used for enjoyment, rituals, and religious purposes; today, the production and consumption of wine is a billion-dollar industry that plays an important role in the global economy. Planet of the Grapes: A Geography of Wine provides an interesting and accessible lens through which students can learn about geography, culture, society, history, religion, and the environment. The chapters cover the historical geography of wine, document how drinking wine has often been condemned as a vice, and describe wines by region and type, thereby providing a cultural geography of wine. Readers will learn about the historical geography of wine, terroir (the environmental conditions that affect grape crops), grape biogeography, the process of winemaking from a geographic perspective, the economic global significance of the wine trade, the ongoing love-hate relationship between wine and government, and what makes individual wine regions distinct. The content is written to be comprehensible to individuals without detailed previous knowledge about wine but provides detailed information and insight that wine connoisseurs will find engaging. Additionally, through the story of wine comes a unique telling of the social transformations in America that have resulted from sources such as anti-immigrant sentiment, pseudoscience, and censorship. Uses a geographic perspective to examine the wide diversity of significant characteristics of grape varieties, growing conditions, and winemaking techniques Describes the diffusion of wine culture from the Caucasus foothills to the rest of the world Traces the transformation of wine (and alcohol in general) from being an essential "food item" widely consumed by the masses to being considered a scourge on society to being revered as a cultured commodity Includes unique tables that simplify comparisons of wines between regions Covers the breadth of wine geography to not only educate readers about world geography but also to provide information that can serve as an important topic in social and business settings

What do eggs, flour, and milk have in common? They form the basis of waffles, of course, but these staples of breakfast bounty also share an evolutionary function: eggs, seeds (from which we derive flour by grinding), and milk have each evolved to nourish offspring. Indeed, ponder the genesis of your breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and you'll soon realize that everything we eat and drink has an evolutionary history. In Dinner with Darwin, join Jonathan Silvertown for a multicourse meal of evolutionary gastronomy, a tantalizing tour of human taste that helps us to understand the origins of our diets and the foods that have been central to them for millennia--from spices to spirits. A delectable concoction of coevolution and cookery, gut microbiomes and microherbs, and both the chicken and its egg, Dinner with Darwin reveals that our shopping lists, recipe cards, and restaurant menus don't just contain the ingredients for culinary delight. They also tell a fascinating story about natural selection and its influence on our plates--and palates. Digging deeper, Silvertown's repast includes entrees into GMOs and hybrids, and looks at the science of our sensory interactions with foods and cooking--the sights, aromas, and tastes we experience in our kitchens and dining rooms. As is the wont of any true chef, Silvertown packs his menu with eclectic components, dishing on everything from Charles Darwin's intestinal maladies to taste bud anatomy and turducken. Our evolutionary relationship with food and drink stretches from the days of cooking cave dwellers to contemporary creperies and beyond, and Dinner with Darwin serves up scintillating insight into the entire, awesome span. This feast of soup, science, and human society is one to savor. With a wit as dry as a fine pinot noir and a cache of evolutionary knowledge as vast as the most discerning connoisseur's wine cellar, Silvertown whets our appetites--and leaves us hungry for more.

The wedding ritual of the ancient Romans provides a crucial key to understanding their remarkable civilization. The intriguing ceremony represented the starting point of a Roman family as well as a Roman girl's transition to womanhood. This is the first book-length examination of Roman wedding ritual. Drawing on literary, legal, historical, antiquarian, and artistic evidence of Roman nuptials from the end of the Republic through the early Empire (from ca. 200 BC to AD 200), Karen Hersch shows how the Roman wedding expressed the ideals and norms of an ancient people. Her book is an invaluable tool for Roman social historians interested in how ideas of gender, law, religion, and tradition are interwoven into the wedding ceremony of every culture.

We tend to think of death as a basic and immutable fact of life. Yet death, too, has a history. Death in Berlin is the first study to trace the rituals, practices, perceptions, and sensibilities surrounding death in the context of Berlin's multiple transformations over the decades between Germany's defeat in World War I and the construction of the Berlin Wall. Evocatively illustrated and drawing on a rich collection of sources, Monica Black reveals the centrality of death to the evolving moral and social life of one metropolitan community. In doing so, she connects the intimacies of everyday life and death to events on the grand historical stage that changed the lives of millions all in a city that stood at the center of some of the twentieth century s most transformative events."

The debate over the meaning of marriage in the United States and specifically in Minnesota is not a recent development. From 1820 to 1845, when the first significant numbers of Americans arrived in the region now called Minnesota, they carried the belief that good government and an orderly household went hand in hand. The territorial, state, and federal governments of the United States were built upon a particular vision of civic responsibility: that men, as heads of households, enter civic life on behalf of their dependents--wives, children, servants, and slaves. These dependents were deemed unfit to make personal decisions or to involve themselves in business and government--and they owed labor and obedience to their husbands, fathers, and masters.
These ideas clashed forcibly with the conceptions of kinship and social order that existed among the Upper Midwest's long-established Dakota, Ojibwe, and mixed-heritage communities. In resisting the new gender and familial roles advocated by military personnel, Indian agents, and missionaries, the region's inhabitants frustrated American attempts to transform Indian country into a state. Indeed, many Americans were forced to compromise their own beliefs so that they could put down roots.
Through the stories of married--and divorcing--men and women in the region, Catherine J. Denial traces the uneven fortunes of American expansion in the early nineteenth century and the nation-shaping power of marital acts.
Catherine J. Denial is associate professor of history at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. She specializes in American Indian history and the history of marriage in the United States.

What do deep fried mars bars, cod, and Bulgarian yoghurt have in common? Each have become symbolic foods with specific connotations, located to a very specific place and country. This book explores the role of food in society as a means of interrogating the concept of the nation-state and its sub-units, and reveals how the nation-state in its various disguises has been and is changing in response to accelerated globalisation. The chapters investigate various stages of national food: its birth, emergence, and decline, and why sometimes no national food emerges. By collecting and analysing a wide range of case studies from countries including Portugal, Mexico, the USA, Bulgaria, Scotland, and Israel, the book illustrates ways in which various social forces work together to shape social and political realities concerning food. The contributors, hailing from anthropology, history, sociology and political science, investigate the significance of specific food cultures, cuisines, dishes, and ingredients, and their association with national identity. In so doing, it becomes clearer how these two things interact, and demonstrates the scope and direction of the current study of food and nationalism.

Chop suey. Sushi. Curry. Adobo. Kimchi. The deep associations Asians in the United States have with food have become ingrained in the American popular imagination. So much so that contentious notions of ethnic authenticity and authority are marked by and argued around images and ideas of food. Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader collects burgeoning new scholarship in Asian American Studies that centers the study of foodways and culinary practices in our understanding of the racialized underpinnings of Asian Americanness. It does so by bringing together twenty scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum to inaugurate a new turn in food studies: the refusal to yield to a superficial multiculturalism that naively celebrates difference and reconciliation through the pleasures of food and eating. By focusing on multi-sited struggles across various spaces and times, the contributors to this anthology bring into focus the potent forces of class, racial, ethnic, sexual and gender inequalities that pervade and persist in the production of Asian American culinary and alimentary practices, ideas, and images. This is the first collection to consider the fraught itineraries of Asian American immigrant histories and how they are inscribed in the production and dissemination of ideas about Asian American foodways. Robert Ji-Song Ku is Associate Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies at Binghamton University. He is the author of Dubious Gastronomy: The Cultural Politics of Eating Asian in the USA. Martin F. Manalansan IV is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora. Anita Mannur is Associate Professor of English and Asian /Asian American Studies at Miami University. She is the author of Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture.

Society consists of numerous interconnected, interacting, and interdependent groups, which differ in power and status. The consequences of belonging to a more powerful, higher-status 'majority' versus a less powerful, lower-status 'minority' can be profound, and the tensions that arise between these groups are the root of society's most difficult problems. To understand the origins of these problems and develop solutions for them, it is necessary to understand the dynamics of majority-minority relations. This volume brings together leading scholars in the fields of stigma, prejudice and discrimination, minority influence, and intergroup relations to provide diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives on what it means to be a minority. The volume, which focuses on the strategies that minorities use in coping with majorities, is organized into three sections: 'Coping with Exclusion: Being Excluded for Who You Are'; 'Coping with Exclusion: Being Excluded for What You Think and Do'; and 'Coping with Inclusion'.

Believing in Belonging draws on empirical research exploring mainstream religious belief and identity in Euro-American countries. Starting from a qualitative study based in northern England, and then broadening the data to include other parts of Europe and North America, Abby Day explores how people 'believe in belonging', choosing religious identifications to complement other social and emotional experiences of 'belongings'. The concept of 'performative belief' helps explain how otherwise non-religious people can bring into being a Christian identity related to social belongings. What is often dismissed as 'nominal' religious affiliation is far from an empty category, but one loaded with cultural 'stuff' and meaning. Day introduces an original typology of natal, ethnic and aspirational nominalism that challenges established disciplinary theory in both the European and North American schools of the sociology of religion that assert that most people are 'unchurched' or 'believe without belonging' while privately maintaining beliefs in God and other 'spiritual' phenomena. This study provides a unique analysis and synthesis of anthropological and sociological understandings of belief and proposes a holistic, organic, multidimensional analytical framework to allow rich cross cultural comparisons. Chapters focus in particular on: the genealogies of 'belief' in anthropology and sociology, methods for researching belief without asking religious questions, the acts of claiming cultural identity, youth, gender, the 'social' supernatural, fate and agency, morality and a development of anthropocentric and theocentric orientations that provides a richer understanding of belief than conventional religious/secular distinctions.

This text is about the ways that traditional cultural practices either change or persist in the face of social and economic development, whether the latter proceeds primarily from internal or external forces.

Official and popular celebrations marked the Brazilian empire's days of national festivity, and these civic rituals were the occasion for often intense debate about the imperial regime. Hendrik Kraay explores the patterns of commemoration in the capital of Rio de Janeiro, the meanings of the principal institutions of the constitutional monarchy established in 1822-24 (which were celebrated on days of national festivity), and the challenges to the imperial regime that took place during the festivities. While officialdom and the narrow elite sought to control civic rituals, the urban lower classes took an active part in them, although their popular festivities were not always welcomed by the elite. "Days of National Festivity" is the first book to provide a systematic analysis of civic ritual in a Latin American country over a long period of time--and in doing so, it offers new perspectives on the Brazilian empire, elite and popular politics, and urban culture.