This book celebrates basketry as a culturally significant skilled practice and as a theoretically rich discipline which has much to offer contemporary society. While sometimes understudied and underappreciated, it has much in common with mathematics and engineering, art, craft and design, and can also act as a socially beneficial source of skill and care. Contributors show how local knowledge of materials, plants and place are central to the craft. Case studies include the skill in weaverbird nest building (challenging how we perceive learning in craft and nature), an engineer's perspective on twining Peruvian grass bridges, and the local knowledge embodied in Pacific plaited patterns and knots. Photo-essays explore materials and techniques from the point of view of artists, anthropologists and mathematicians, revealing how the structure and skill in basketwork illustrate a significant form of textile technology. Thus, the book demonstrates that the textures, patterns and geometric forms that emerge through basketwork reflect an embodied knowledge which expresses mathematical and engineering comprehension. The therapeutic value of the craft is recognised through a selection of case studies which consider basketry as a healing process for patients with brain injury, mental health problems, and as a memory aid for people living with dementia. This reclaims basketry's significant role in occupational therapy as an agent of recovery and well-being. Basketry's inherently sustainable nature is also considered, demonstrating the continuation of basketry in spite of handwork's general decline and profiling new and recycled materials. Above all, the book envisages basketry as an intellectually rewarding means of knowing. It presents the craft as embodying care for skilled making and for the social and natural environments in which it flourishes.

Courtship in Georgian England was a decisive moment in the life cycle, imagined as a tactical game, an invigorating sport, and a perilous journey across a turbulent sea. This volume brings to life the emotional experience of courtship using the words and objects selected by men and women to navigate this potentially fraught process. It provides new insights into the making and breaking of relationships, beginning with the formation of courtships using the language of love, the development of intimacy through the exchange of love letters, and sensory engagement with love tokens such as flowers, portrait miniatures, and locks of hair. It also charts the increasing modernization of romantic customs over the Georgian era - most notably with the arrival of the printed valentine's card - revealing how love developed into a commercial industry. The book concludes with the rituals of disintegration when engagements went awry, and pursuit of damages for breach of promise in the civil courts. The Game of Love in Georgian England brings together love letters, diaries, valentines, and proposals of marriage from sixty courtships sourced from thirty archives and museum collections, alongside an extensive range of sources including ballads, conduct literature, court cases, material objects, newspaper reports, novels, periodicals, philosophical discourses, plays, poems, and prints, to create a vivid social and cultural history of romantic emotions. The book demonstrates the importance of courtship to studies of marriage, relationships, and emotions in history, and how we write histories of emotions using objects. Love emerges as something that we do in practice, enacted by couples through particular socially and historically determined rituals.

Sydney Anglo discusses every English royal entry, festival, disguising, masque, and tournament from the accession of Henry VII to the coronation celebrations of Elizabeth I. Based principally on primary sources, his study is analytical rather than descriptive. In 1969, when this book first appeared, the serious study of Renaissance court festivals and civic pageantry was in its infancy and - although the subject has since burgeoned - the volume of publications relevant to the early Tudors has been modest and largely confined to matters of detail. In this new edition, therefore, Professor Anglo discusses material published since 1969 in a preface where, as far as possible, the material is arranged according to the chronological and thematic order of the book. The original pagination and notes which have been regularly cited by scholars has thereby been retained. A bibliography of works cited in the text has been added, to facilitate the work of a new generation of students.

A critical and cutting-edge examination of modern prison labor The United States is home to the most expansive prison system on Earth. In addition to holding nearly a quarter of the world's legal captives, this nation puts them to work. Close to two-thirds of those held in U.S. state prisons hold some sort of job while incarcerated. For these imprisoned people, the carceral institution is not only a place of punishment, but a workplace as well. Yet, very little is known about the world of work behind bars. In order to illuminate the "black box" that is modern prison labor, this book marshals 18 months of ethnographic observations within one of America's medium-security prisons as well as 82 interviews with currently-incarcerated men and the institutional staff members tasked with overseeing them. Pulling together these accounts, it paints a picture of daily labors on the inside, showing that not all prison jobs are the same, nor are all imprisoned workers treated equally. While some find value and purpose in higher-paying, more desirable jobs, others struggle against monotony and hardship in lower-paying, deskilled work assignments. The result is a stratified prison employment system in which race, ethnicity, nationality, and social class help determine one's position in the labor hierarchy and, as a result, their experiences of incarceration and ability to prepare for release. Through insightful first-hand perspectives and rich ethnographic detail, Orange-Collar Labor takes the reader inside the prison workplace, illustrating the formal prison economy as well as the informal black market on which many rely to survive. Highlighting moments of struggle and suffering, as well as hard work, cooperation, resistance, and dignity in harsh environments, it documents the lives of America's working prisoners so often obscured from view.

This book is the first major study of the themes which were used in the decoration of sarcophagi made for children in Rome and Ostia from the late first to early fourth century AD. It provides a selective catalogue of examples of each type, followed by discussion of how these fit into the general pattern. This allows certain themes to be identified which are virtually exclusive to children's sarcophagi. The second part of the book discusses the choice of subjects and how these reflect the standing of children in Roman society: to what extent, for instance, was childhood shown as a differentiated stage in life, or was it dominated by aspirations of the adult world? How is the death of a child treated in art? There are separate sections on the role of workshops and customers in the development of child specific imagery, and on material from the early Christian era, providing some interesting distinctions resulting from differing attitudes towards children and beliefs about life and death.

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'.

While late 17th- and 18th-century burial grounds of colonial North America are frequently the subject of research, wide-scale studies of 17th-century burial landscapes are often the less documented aspect of these sites. This book aims to fill some of that gap by exploring the relationships and organization of early British colonial burial grounds within the context of their own settlements and the wider northeast coast. Early settlers immigrated to North America for many reasons, and there, away from the Church of England, they could freely explore their relationship with their faith, community and death, represented today through the organization of their burial landscapes and burial practices. By studying the relationship between burial grounds and their associated settlements, we gain a more holistic understanding of how settlers related to, interpreted, and ultimately handled the reality of human mortality. This book examines the organization of 40 burial grounds founded by British settlers on the northeast coast of North America in the 17th century, with the intention of identifying trends in burial ground organization during this period of early colonization. The results can be applied to archaeological or historical research on colonial settlements that have not yet located their earliest burial ground. The book expands the current knowledge base of settler relationships with mortality through the physical placement of burials and interaction with burial landscapes within their new settlements.

How do British pavements remain free of dog mess? Why are paths not littered with cigarette butts or roads not lined with abandoned cars? What does the decline of the public lavatory say about us and is the national reputation for queuing still deserved today? Orderly Britain takes a topical look at modern society, examining how it is governed and how it organises itself. It considers the rules of daily life, where they come from and why they exist. It asks whether citizens are generally compliant and uncomplaining or rebellious and defiant. This quirky social history takes a close look at shifting customs and practices, people's expectations of each other and how rule-makers seek to shape everyone's lives - even when ignoring some of those rules themselves. Taking the reader on a journey that covers a range of topics - dog mess, smoking, drinking, parking, queuing, toilets - Orderly Britain examines the rapidly changing patterns of everyday life, from post-war to present day, and concludes with an extended look at the unparalleled shifts in social routines that resulted from the global COVID-19 pandemic. Asking whether it is the proliferation of rules and regulations in the UK or something else that keeps people in line, authors Tim Newburn and Andrew Ward offer a unique insight into what creates orderly Britons.

"Gift Giving" brings together 21 scholars from a variety of disciplines--including consumer behavior, communications, and sociology--who are dedicated to the understanding of what motivates gift selection, presentation, and incorporation of a gift into a person's life.

Der Band stellt einerseits Vorgeschichte, Verlauf und Auswirkungen eines der spektakularsten Zusammenbruche eines Versicherungskonzerns im 20. Jahrhundert dar und bietet daruber hinaus eine am Beispiel demonstrierte, systematische Analyse der Verflechtung von Misswirtschaft mit Medien, Staat und Gesellschaft. Die Phoenix Lebensversicherung, mit Sitz in Wien und Kunden in 22 Landern, wurde im Jahr 1936 zahlungsunfahig. Sie hatte riesige Verluste aufgeturmt, Bilanzen gefalscht und Schlusselpersonen hofiert. Ihr Sturz drohte eine europaweite Finanzkrise auszuloesen und wurde mit diktatorischen Massnahmen aufgefangen. Das Buch schildert die wirtschaftliche wie politische Rolle des Versicherers vor 1918, wahrend der Weimarer Republik und ab 1933.

Increasingly, North Americans and Western Europeans identify as 'spiritual but not religious'. But what does 'spirituality' actually mean? And what does this recent 'spiritual turn' reveal about the nature of twenty-first century liberal democracies? Secularization theorists argue that spirituality lacks institutional support and a shared tradition, thereby evincing religious decline. Meanwhile, critical commentators contend that the spiritual turn embodies all of the ills of post-1960s liberal democracies. This book challenges these popular misconceptions. Combining cultural sociology with intellectual history and political philosophy, and drawing from first-hand interview and fieldwork data, along with discourse analysis of best-selling books, it shows that rather than reflecting religious decline, the spiritual turn marks the rise of an enduring cultural structure in Western modernity-the religion of the heart. Tracing the religion of the heart to the 1960s, The Spiritual Turn illuminates its elective affinities with the romantic liberal social imaginary that crystallized in popular consciousness during this era, and transformed the institutional spheres of Western liberal democracies, eventually giving birth to a new social order-romantic liberal modernity. Then, inspired by the Durkheimian tradition, it presents case studies of three sites where the religion of the heart is institutionalized in a specific discursive form-a Twelve Step group, a neo-Pentecostal church, and a Toastmasters public speaking club. The book concludes that while critics may have reason to disparage both spirituality and romantic liberal modernity more generally, the reality is far more complex than their criticisms suggest-and more importantly, far less hopeless.

In this intriguing blend of the commonplace and the ancient, Jean Bottero presents the first extensive look at the delectable secrets of Mesopotamia. Bottero's broad perspective takes us inside the religious rites, everyday rituals, attitudes and taboos, and even the detailed preparation techniques involving food and drink in Mesopotamian high culture during the second and third millennia BCE, as the Mesopotamians recorded them.

Offering everything from translated recipes for pigeon and gazelle stews, the contents of medicinal teas and broths, and the origins of ingredients native to the region, this book reveals the cuisine of one of history's most fascinating societies. Links to the modern world, along with incredible recreations of a rich, ancient culture through its cuisine, make Bottero's guide an entertaining and mesmerizing read.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Every encounter begins with a greeting. Be it a quick `Hello!' or the somewhat longer and gracious `Sula manchwanta galunga omugobe!' shaking hands or shaking, well, rather more private parts of our anatomy, we have been doing it many times daily for thousands of years. It should be the most straightforward thing in the world, but this apparently simple act is fraught with complications, leading to awkward misunderstandings and occasionally even outright violence. In the illuminating and entertaining One Kiss or Two? Andy Scott goes down the rabbit hole to take a closer look at what greetings are all about. In looking at how they have developed, he discovers a kaleidoscopic world of etiquette, body-language, evolution, neuroscience, anthropology and history. Through in-depth research and his personal experiences, and with the help of experts, Scott takes us on a captivating journey through a subject far richer than we might have expected.

Starting from the days of slavery and following through to the first decades of the twentieth century, this book traces the evolution of Carnival and secular black music in Trinidad and beyond. Calypso emerged as the preeminent Carnival song form at the end of the nineteenth century and its association with the festival is investigated, as are the first commercial recordings by Trinidad performers. Considerable use is made of contemporary newspaper reports, colonial documents, travelogues, oral history and folklore, providing an authoritative treatment of a fascinating story in popular cultural history.

In Cannibalism and the Colonial World, an international team of specialists from a variety of disciplines discusses the historical and cultural significance of Western fascination with the topic of cannibalism. Addressing the image as it appears in a series of texts--popular culture, film, literature, travel writing and anthropology--the essays range from classical times to contemporary critical discourse. This group of literary and anthropological scholars places the discussion of cannibalism in the context of postcolonial and cultural studies.

This outstanding and original book, presented here with a new preface, examines the history of material culture in early modern China. Craig Clunas analyzes "superfluous things"-the paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, ceramics, carved jade, and other objects owned by the elites of Ming China-and describes contemporary attitudes to them. He informs his discussions with reference to both socio-cultural theory and current debates on eighteenth-century England concerning luxury, conspicuous consumption, and the growth of the consumer society.

This enthralling book will take you, month-by-month, day-by-day, through all the festivities of English life. From national celebrations such as New Year's Eve to regional customs such as the Padstow Hobby Horse procession, cheese rolling in Gloucestershire and Easter Monday bottle kicking in Leeds, it explains how they originated, what they mean and when they occur. A fascinating guide to the richness of our heritage and the sometimes eccentric nature of life in England, The English Year offers a unique chronological view of our social customs and attitudes

Description: Circumcision is one of the oldest and most common surgical processes, being practised, for a range of medical, social and religious reasons, on up to 30% of males worldwide. It is currently being promoted by a range of health bodies as a means of tackling HIV in developing countries. Yet, there is significant concern about sexual, physiological and psychological effects and complications and its prophylactic effectiveness. In examining a case in which a failed circumcision was performed for religious reasons, the Regional Court in Cologne decided that the practice contravened the bodily autonomy of minors and was subject to the same legislation used to classify female genital cutting as assault. This, understandably, aroused serious concerns among various religious communities who practise circumcision. At the same time as religious groups seek to protect circumcision from comparisons with female genital cutting, there is a trend, particularly in post-colonial thought in the US, to revise negative understandings of female genital cutting by making cautious, positive comparisons with circumcision. This collection considers the apparent contradictions and complications of the contemporary status and deployment of the many forms of genital cutting, raising a serious, wide-reaching question: what scope should society have to impose physically invasive rites on people? This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

A journey to Alaska's remote roadless villages, during a time of great historical transition, brings us this enduring portrait of a place and its people. Alutiiq, Yup'ik, Inupiaq, and Athabascan subjects reveal themselves as entirely contemporary individuals with deep longings and connection to the land and to their past. Tom Kizzia's account of his travels off the Alaska road system, first published in 1991, has endured with a sterling reputation for its thoughtful, poetic, unflinching engagement with the complexity of Alaska's rural communities. Wake of the Unseen Object is now considered some of the finest nonfiction writing about Alaska. This new edition includes an updated introduction by the author, looking at what remains the same after thirty years and what is different-both in Alaska, and in the expectations placed on a reporter visiting from another world.

Man the Hunter is a collection of papers presented at a symposium on research done among the hunting and gathering peoples of the world. Ethnographic studies increasingly contribute substantial amounts of new data on hunter-gatherers and are rapidly changing our concept of Man the Hunter. Social anthropologists generally have been reappraising the basic concepts of descent, fi liation, residence, and group structure. This book presents new data on hunters and clarifi es a series of conceptual issues among social anthropologists as a necessary background to broader discussions with archaeologists, biologists, and students of human evolution.

Middle-Class Dharma is a contemporary ethnography of class mobility among Hindus in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. Focusing on women in Pulan, an emerging middle-class neighborhood of Udaipur, Jennifer D. Ortegren argues that upward class mobility is not just a socio-economic process, but also a religious one. Central to Hindu women's upward class mobility is negotiating dharma, the moral and ethical groundings of Hindu worlds. As women experiment with middle-class consumer and lifestyle practices, they navigate tensions around what is possible and what is appropriate-that is, what is dharmic-as middle-class Hindu women. Ortegren shows how these women strategically align emerging middle-class desires with more traditional religious obligations in ways that enable them to generate new dharmic boundaries and religious selfhoods in the middle classes. Such transitions can be as joyful as they are difficult and disorienting. Middle-Class Dharma explores how contemporary Hindu women's everyday practices reimagine and reshape Hindu traditions. By developing dharma as an analytical category and class as a dharmic category, Ortegren pushes for expanding definitions of religion in academia, both within and beyond the study of Hinduism in South Asia.

Die vorliegende Publikation erforscht schwerpunktmassig die Mainzer Fastnacht in der NS-Zeit. Sie leistet damit einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus und zur Mainzer Stadtgeschichte, indem neue Quellen erschlossen und bekannte neu interpretiert werden. Weiterhin pruft sie das historische Forschungsparadigma "nationalsozialistische Volksgemeinschaft". Sie fragt nach den Verhaltensweisen der "narrischen" Volksgenossen in der Festoeffentlichkeit der nationalsozialistisch geformten Stadtgesellschaft und ihren Nachwirkungen in der jungen Bundesrepublik. Studien zu weiteren regionalen Hochburgen von Fastnacht und Karneval sowie zur Feierkultur der DDR bieten eine wertvolle Basis fur weiterfuhrende Vergleiche.