|
Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Customs & folklore > Customs
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, working-class
Americans had eating habits that were distinctly shaped by jobs,
families, neighborhoods, and the tools, utilities, and size of
their kitchensOCoalong with their cultural heritage. How the Other
Half Ate is a deep exploration by historian and lecturer Katherine
Turner that delivers an unprecedented and thoroughly researched
study of the changing food landscape in American working-class
families from industrialization through the 1950s.
Relevant to readers across a range of disciplinesOCohistory,
economics, sociology, urban studies, womenOCOs studies, and food
studiesOCothis work fills an important gap in historical literature
by illustrating how families experienced food and cooking during
the so-called age of abundance. Turner delivers an engaging
portrait that shows how AmericaOCOs working class, in a multitude
of ways, has shaped the foods we eat today."
This publication is the first English translation from the Italian
of the fascinating contemporary account of the spectacular four-day
celebrations that took place in Pesaro in May 1475 to mark the
marriage of Costanzo Sforza Lord of Pesaro and Camilla d'Aragona of
Naples. The event was commemorated both in manuscript and early
print in an anonymous narration that describes in great detail the
arrival of the bride and her welcome procession into Pesaro; the
actual marriage ceremony and the celebratory banquet that followed;
the pageants, presentation of gifts and fireworks that filled the
third day; and the final day's excitement of jousts and yet more
theatrical entertainment. The translation has been made from the
early printed text (the incunable in the British Library, I.A.31753
Sforza, Costantio Signore di Pesaro, 1475) and also directly from
the unique illustrated presentation manuscript in the Vatican
Library (MS Vat. Urb. Lat. 899) which, though previously thought to
have been produced in 1480, may in fact have been made at the same
time as the incunable edition. It is not known for whom the printed
books were intended (7 copies only survive), but it is likely that
the prominent dignitaries among the 108 guests - who included
Federico da Montefeltro, the groom's brother-in-law - would have
been the recipients of the account when it was printed in November
1475.This present edition of the text includes all the images that
illustrate the original manuscript - 32 full-page miniatures that
depict the floats that welcomed the bride at the city gates of
Pesaro; the costumed figures at the wedding banquet who represented
the presiding Sun and Moon or the male and female messengers of the
classical gods and goddesses who announcedthe exotic dishes of the
12-course banquet; and further colourful, unusually interesting
illustrations of the ballets, fireworks and triumphs of the final
two days of the celebrations. In addition to the Introduction that
provides the reader with the historical background and biographical
details of the protagonists and personalities of this special
occasion, Dr. Bridgeman also adds helpful and highly informative
annotations to the narration itself. In addition she provides full
descriptions and explanations of the illustrations - all reproduced
here in colour - and devotes a separate appendix to listing and
explaining all the dishes served at the wedding banquet, together
with their ingredients and recipes.
This history of Ukrainian immigrants in Michigan and their American
descendants examines both the choices people made and the social
forces that impelled their decisions to migrate and to make new
homes in the state. Michigan's Ukrainians came in four waves, each
unique in time and character, beginning in the late nineteenth
century and continuing in the twenty-first. Detroit attracted many
of them with the opportunities it offered in its booming automobile
industry. Yet others put down roots in cities and towns across the
state. Wherever they settled, they established churches and
community centers and continued to practice the customs of their
homeland. Many Ukrainian Americans have made significant
contributions to Michigan and the United States, including those
who are showcased in this book. This comprehensive text also
highlights cultural practices and traditional foods cherished by
community members.
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.
The Poison in the Gift is a detailed ethnography of gift-giving in
a North Indian village that powerfully demonstrates a new
theoretical interpretation of caste. Introducing the concept of
ritual centrality, Raheja shows that the position of the dominant
landholding caste in the village is grounded in a
central-peripheral configuration of castes rather than a
hierarchical ordering. She advances a view of caste as semiotically
constituted of contextually shifting sets of meanings, rather than
one overarching ideological feature. This new understanding
undermines the controversial interpretation advanced by Louis
Dumont in his 1966 book, Homo Hierarchicus, in which he proposed a
disjunction between the ideology of hierarchy based on the purity
of the Brahman priest and the temporal power of the dominant caste
or the king.
Drawing on the accounts of early European travelers, original
Arabic sources on jurisprudence and etiquette, and treatises on
coffee from the period, the author recounts the colorful early
history of the spread of coffee and the influence of coffeehouses
in the medieval Near East. Detailed descriptions of the design,
atmosphere, management, and patrons of early coffeehouses make
fascinating reading for anyone interested in the history of coffee
and the unique institution of the coffeehouse in urban Muslim
society
A quarter of a century ago, Subhadra Butalia looked out from her
bedroom window and saw a young woman being burned to death for not
bringing enough dowry. In this book, Butalia writes of the ways in
which society conspires to silence thousands of innocent young
women each year, driving them to horrific deaths or lifelong
servitude.
This book explores the understudied and often overlooked subject of
African presence in India. It focuses on the so-called Sidis,
Siddis or Habshis who occupy a unique place in Indian history. The
Sidis comprise scattered communities of people of African descent
who travelled and settled along the western coast of India, mainly
in Gujarat, but also in Goa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Sri Lanka
and in Sindh (Pakistan) as a result of the Indian Ocean trade from
the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries. The work draws from extant
scholarly research and documentary sources to provide a
comprehensive study of people of African descent in India and sheds
new light on their experiences. By employing an interdisciplinary
approach across fields of history, art, anthropology, religion,
literature and oral history, it provides an analysis of their
negotiations with cultural resistance, survivals and collective
memory. The author examines how the Sidi communities strived to
construct a distinct identity in a new homeland in a polyglot
Indian society, their present status, as well as their future
prospects. The book will interest those working in the fields of
history, sociology and social anthropology, cultural studies,
international relations, and migration and diaspora studies.
What is property, and why does our species have it? In The Property
Species, Bart J. Wilson explores how humans acquire, perceive, and
know the custom of property, and why this might be relevant to
understanding how property works in the twenty-first century.
Arguing that neither the sciences nor the humanities synthesizes a
full account of property, the book offers a cross-disciplinary
compromise that is sure to be controversial: Property is a
universal and uniquely human custom. Integrating cognitive
linguistics with philosophy of property and a fresh look at
property disputes in the common law, the book makes the case that
symbolic-thinking humans locate the meaning of property within a
thing. That is, all human beings and only human beings have
property in things, and at its core, property rests on custom, not
rights. Such an alternative to conventional thinking contends that
the origins of property lie not in food, mates, territory, or land,
but in the very human act of creating, with symbolic thought,
something new that did not previously exist. Written by an
economist who marvels at the natural history of humankind, the book
is essential reading for experts and any reader who has wondered
why people claim things as "Mine!", and what that means for our
humanity.
The Mirth of Nations is a social and historical study of jokes
told in the principal English-speaking countries. It is based on
use of archives and other primary sources, including old and rare
joke books. Davies makes detailed comparisons between the humor of
specific pairs of nations and ethnic and regional groups. In this
way, he achieves an appreciation of the unique characteristics of
the humor of each nation or group.
A tightly argued book, The Mirth of Nations uses the comparative
method to undermine existing theories of humor, which are rooted in
notions of hostility, conflict, and superiority, and derive
ultimately from Hobbes and Freud. Instead Davies argues that humor
merely plays with aggression and with rule-breaking, and that the
form this play takes is determined by social structures and
intellectual traditions. It is not related to actual conflicts
between groups. In particular, Davies convincingly argues that
Jewish humor and jokes are neither uniquely nor overwhelmingly
self-mocking as many writers since Freud have suggested. Rather
Jewish jokes, like Scottish humor and jokes are the product of a
strong cultural tradition of analytical thinking and intelligent
self-awareness.
The volume shows that the forty-year popularity of the Polish
joke cycle in America was not a product of any special negative
feeling towards Poles. Jokes are not serious and are not a form of
determined aggression against others or against one's own group.
The Mirth of Nations is readable as well as revisionist. It is
written with great clarity and puts forward difficult and complex
arguments without jargon in an accessible manner. Its rich use of
examples of all kinds of humor entertains the reader, who will
enjoy a great variety of jokes while being enlightened by the
author's careful explanations of why particular sets of jokes exist
and are immensely popular. The book will appeal to general readers
as well as those in cultural studies.
This book explores the intimate relationship between literature and
class in England (and later Britain) from the Peasants' Revolt at
the end of the fourteenth century to the impact of the French
Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of
the nineteenth. The book argues throughout that class cannot be
seen as a modern phenomenon that occurred after the Industrial
revolution but that class divisions and relations have always
structured societies and that it makes sense to assume a historical
continuity. The book explores a number of themes relating to class:
class consciousness; class conflict; commercialisation; servitude;
rebellion; gender relations; and colonisation. After outlining the
history of class relations, five chapters explore the ways in which
social class consciously and unconsciously influenced a series of
writers: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Behn, Rochester, Defoe, Duck,
Richardson, Burney, Blake and Wordsworth. -- .
![The Book of Tea (Hardcover): Okakura Kakuzo](//media.loot.co.za/images/x80/413928929424179215.jpg) |
The Book of Tea
(Hardcover)
Okakura Kakuzo; Introduction by Bruce Richardson
|
R686
R597
Discovery Miles 5 970
Save R89 (13%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
This book investigates the pronounced enthusiasm that many
traditions display for codes of ethics characterised by a multitude
of rules. Recent anthropological interest in ethics and historical
explorations of 'self-fashioning' have led to extensive study of
the virtuous self, but existing scholarship tends to pass over the
kind of morality that involves legalistic reasoning. Rules and
ethics corrects that omission by demonstrating the importance of
rules in everyday moral life in a variety of contexts. In a
nutshell, it argues that legalistic moral rules are not necessarily
an obstruction to a rounded ethical self, but can be an integral
part of it. An extended introduction first sets out the theoretical
basis for studies of ethical systems that are characterised by
detailed rules. This is followed by a series of empirical studies
of rule-oriented moral traditions in a comparative perspective. --
.
Drawing on twenty years of research, this book examines the
historical perspective of a Pacific people who saw "globalization"
come and go. Suau people encountered the leading edge of
missionization and colonialism in Papua New Guinea and were active
participants in the Second World War. In Memory of Times to Come
offers a nuanced account of how people assess their own experience
of change over the course of a critical century. It asks two key
questions: What does it mean to claim that global connections are
in the past rather than the present or the future, and what does it
mean to claim that one has lost one's culture, but not because
anyone else took it away or destroyed it?
In Coca Yes, Cocaine No Thomas Grisaffi traces the political ascent
and transformation of the Movement toward Socialism (MAS) from an
agricultural union of coca growers into Bolivia's ruling party.
When Evo Morales-leader of the MAS-became Bolivia's president in
2006, coca growers celebrated his election and the possibility of
scaling up their form of grassroots democracy to the national
level. Drawing on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork with coca
union leaders, peasant farmers, drug traffickers, and politicians,
Grisaffi outlines the tension that Morales faced between the
realities of international politics and his constituents, who, even
if their coca is grown for ritual or medicinal purposes, are
implicated in the cocaine trade and criminalized under the U.S.-led
drug war. Grisaffi shows how Morales's failure to meet his
constituents' demands demonstrates that the full realization of
alternative democratic models at the local or national level is
constrained or enabled by global political and economic
circumstances.
A festive account of one family's Chinese New Year celebration. A
little girl describes the preparations--everything from cleaning
and shopping to food preparation and gifts--leading up to a magical
Lunar New Year. In one dreamy sequence, the girl imagines herself
in Ancient China, riding on a dragon, and watching the celebration
unfold.
"Fascinating."
--The New York Times Book Review
Anyone who laments the excesses of Christmas might consider the Puritans of colonial Massachusetts: they simply outlawed the holiday. The Puritans had their reasons, since Christmas was once an occasion for drunkenness and riot, when poor "wassailers extorted food and drink from the well-to-do. In this intriguing and innovative work of social history, Stephen Nissenbaum rediscovers Christmas's carnival origins and shows how it was transformed, during the nineteenth century, into a festival of domesticity and consumerism.
Drawing on a wealth of period documents and illustrations, Nissenbaum charts the invention of our current Yuletide traditions, from St. Nicholas to the Christmas tree and, perhaps most radically, the practice of giving gifts to children. Bursting with detail, filled with subversive readings of such seasonal classics as "A Visit from St. Nicholas and A Christmas Carol, The Battle for Christmas captures the glorious strangeness of the past even as it helps us better understand our present.
"Christmas . . . too often fails to wholly satisfy the spirit or the senses. How and why the yuletide came to this is the subject of historian Stephen Nissenbaum's fascinating new study. "
--Newsweek
|
|