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"Provides the most comprehensive coverage of Asian Americans' religious practices, cutting across different ethnic groups, religions, topics, and generations. It should be an essential reader for anyone interested in Asian Americans' religious practices."
--Pyong Gap Min, co-editor of "Religions in Asian America: Building Faith Communities"

a"Asian American Religion" makes an important sociological contribution to our understanding of the nature of the interplay between religious diversity and American culture.a
--Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

"This volume is an important contribution to a much needed recognition of the role of religion in American social and cultural life." --"Multicultural Review"

aThis anthology represents the cutting-edge research on Asian American religions from a social science standpoint.a
--The Journal of Asian Studies.

Asian American Religions brings together some of the most current research on Asian American religions from a social science perspective. The volume focuses on religion in Asian American communities in New York, Houston, Los Angeles, and the Silicon Valley/Bay Area, and it includes a current demographic overview of the various Asian populations across the United States. It also provides information on current trends, such as that Filipino and Korean Americans are the most religiously observant people in America, that over 60 percent of Asian Americans who have a religious identification are Christian, and that one-third of Muslims in the United States are Asian Americans.

Rather than organizing the book around particular ethnic groups or religions, Asian American Religions centers on thematic issues, like symbols and rituals, political boundaries, and generation gaps, in order to highlight the role of Asian American religions in negotiating, accepting, redefining, changing, and creating boundaries in the communities' social life.

Proverbs, once described as 'the wisdom of many and the wit of one', offer unique insights the way of life and the social mores of past generations. This book features an introduction which explores the role of proverbs in Scottish culture and over 1,000 proverbs arranged in easily accessible A-Z format. Many have been commonly used for hundreds of years, but modern sayings are also included. The addition of a comprehensive glossary will help you fully appreciate these colourful and often humorous nuggets of wisdom and advice. Jock's a mislear'd imp, but ye're a rum deil Jock may be mischievous, but he's well behaved by your standards The fish that sooms in a dub will aye taste o' mud You can never change your upbringing When ye can suit yer shanks to my shoon, ye may speak Don't speak about me until you've been in a similar situation yourself

All Year Round is brimming with things to make, activities, stories, poems and songs to share with your family. It is full of well-illustrated ideas for fun and celebration: from Candlemas to Christmas and Midsummer's day to the Winter solstice.Observing the round of festivals is an enjoyable way to bring rhythm into children's lives and provide a series of meaningful landmarks to look forward to. Each festival has a special character of its own: participation can deepen our understanding and love of nature and bring a gift to the whole family. All Year Round invites you to start celebrating now!

Telling the Seasons takes us on a journey through the twelve months of the year with stories, customs and celebrations. Drawing on the changing patterns of nature and the rich tapestry of folklore from the British Isles, it is a colourful guide into how and why we continue to celebrate the seasons. Here are magical myths of the sun and moon, earthy tales of walking stones and talking trees and lively legends of the spirits of each season. Original drawings, sayings, songs, recipes and rhymes, combine into a 'spell-book' of the seasons. Martin Maudsley tells tales around the year to children and adults, specialising in stories of the natural world and local landscapes. He can be found leading seasonal celebrations from firelit winter wassails to bright May Day mornings in rural Dorset where he lives.

..".this specialist-oriented volume is a rich contribution to the literature on this region. Notably it seems directed as much toward the ongoing historiographical conversation in Bali itself as it is toward external scholars." JASO Online

..".constitutes an outstanding contribution in the study of history outside the traditional perspective of recourse to narrative sources (whether these be oral or written)." African Affairs

"This amazing book...represents a model for scholars seeking to blend the tools of history writing and political/ cultural anthropology; its value is applicable not only in Cameroon, but elsewhere." International Journal for African Historical Studies

"With the suspense of a detective novel, this slim, richly detailed volume] proceeds in a series of comparisons...This charming book is an exacting exercise in comparison and historical reconstruction." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

..".an important contribution - not only to the local history of the Grasslands of Cameroon. It offers a better understanding of processes of transformation of rituals and asks important methodological questions, which should be of interest to anybody dealing with the history of early photography in Africa and visual anthropology. As to be expected from the "Cameroon Studies" series the volume is rounded up by a comprehensive bibliography and a very useful index." Anthropos

"As in his previous works, Fardon does not make it easy for his readers to labour through his dense writing. However, it is absolutely worthwhile. This unconventional book contains a wealth of insights with far-reaching methodological consequences. It demonstrates how to recover history without even for a moment losing sight of the constructivity of the knowledge produced." Journal of African History

Lela in Bali tells the story of an annual festival of eighteenth-century kingdoms in Northern Cameroon that was swept up in the migrations of marauding slave-raiders during the nineteenth century and carried south towards the coast. Lela was transformed first into a mounted durbar, like those of the Muslim states, before evolving in tandem with the German colonial project into a festival of arms. Reinterpreted by missionaries and post-colonial Cameroonians, Lela has become one of the most important of Cameroonian festivals and a crucial marker of identity within the state. Richard Fardon's recuperation of two hundred years of history is an essential contribution not only to Cameroonian studies but also to the broader understanding of the evolution of African cultures.

Richard Fardon, Professor of West African Anthropology in the University of London, is the author of four monographs on West Africa, as well as numerous works of anthropological theory. Since 1988 he has taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, where he chaired the University of London's Centre of African Studies for eight years. In addition to its obvious archival sources, this book draws upon ethnographic research he began in Nigeria (from 1976) and in Cameroon (from 1984). Richard Fardon has been editor of the journal AFRICA since 2001.

Thailand is rapidly industrializing, dramatically improving the living standards of its people, and gradually developing a more democratic society. Despite such profound changes, traditional Thai culture has not only survived, but has also, in many respects, prospered. Although famous for its food, and despite its increasing popularity as a tourist destination, Thailand remains relatively unknown to most Westerners. Culture and Customs of Thailand presents the traditional culture and customs against the backdrop of modern times. Thailand has always been an important Southeast Asian country. With a long-reigning monarchy, it is the only country in the region that has never been colonized by a Western power or suffered bloody revolutions and wars. It was the first Asian country to establish diplomatic relations with the United States, and has remained a constant ally. Thailand has emerged as a considerable economic force as the world's largest rice and rubber producer and remains a regional political power. Against this historical framework, Kislenko deftly introduces the traditional and modern strands of the dominant Buddhist faith and other religions, such as animism. Coverage includes literature, the arts, architecture--including the Thai Wat--food and dress, gender and marriage, festivals and fun, and social customs. Kislenko also balances the portrait with discussions of threats from globalization, AIDS and sex tourism, the drug trade, and corruption in business and government. Evocative photos, a country map, a timeline, and a chronology complete the coverage. This reference is the best source for students and general readers to gain substantial, sweeping insight into the Thais andtheir "land of smiles."

Talking to the Dead is an essay on death and its tenacious hold on Irish culture. There are few traditions in which funerary motifs have been so ubiquitous in literature, popular rituals, folk representations, public rhetorics, even constructions of place. There are even fewer cultures in which funerary genres and preoccupations constitute the central thread of continuity. The Irish Theatrum Mortis is not simply an obsession of writers from the bards to Beckett and Heaney. Nor is it confined to contemporary Republican iconography. It is to be found in the pages of the local press, in acts of ritual resistance to unpopular decisions, in the way in which significant public events are narrated and framed. Though the funerary Ireland presented here may well yield to the new, positive self-image of the Celtic Tiger, it is the authors' contention that at the end of the twentieth century the funerary sign continues to define Irish identity. For good and ill, it is the centre that holds.

'An important and timely book.' - Philippa Gregory Joan of Navarre was the richest woman in the land, at a time when war-torn England was penniless. Eleanor Cobham was the wife of a weak king's uncle - and her husband was about to fall from grace. Jacquetta Woodville was a personal enemy of Warwick the Kingmaker, who was about to take his revenge. Elizabeth Woodville was the widowed mother of a child king, fighting Richard III for her children's lives. In Royal Witches, Gemma Hollman explores the lives of these four unique women, looking at how rumours of witchcraft brought them to their knees in a time when superstition and suspicion was rife.

This original and authoritative text reveals how chivalry was part of the problem of violence in medieval Europe, not merely it's solution. If one ideal was to internalize restraint in knights, chivalry also worshipped hands-on violence, as a close reading of chivalric literature shows. In a developing society, chivalric ideals and practices were both praised and feared by those who sought its reform.

Historically, canonic studies of ritual have discussed and explained ritual organization, action, and transformation primarily as representations of broader cultural and social orders. In the present, as in the past, less attention is given to the power of ritual to organize and effect transformation through its own dynamics. Breaking with convention, the contributors to this volume were asked to discuss ritual first and foremost in relation to itself, in its own right, and only then in relation to its socio-cultural context. The results attest to the variable capacities of rites to effect transformation through themselves, and to the study of phenomena in their own right as a fertile approach to comprehending ritual dynamics.

The contributors to Wanton Women in Late-Imperial Chinese Literature: Models, Genres, Subversions and Traditions draw attention to 'wanton woman' themes across time as they were portrayed in court history (McMahon), fiction (Stevenson), drama (Lam, Wu), and songs and ballads (Oki, Epstein, McLaren). Looking back, the essays challenge us with views of sexual transgression that are more heterogeneous than modern popular focus on Pan Jinlian would suggest. Central among the many insights to be found is that despite gender performance in Chinese history being overwhelmingly determined by the needs of patriarchal authority, men and women in the late imperial period discovered diverse ways in which to reflect on how men constantly sought their own bearings in reference to women.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Chapter One.

"All of the entries are well written and should intrigue a broad range of students because they run the gamut from the very academic to the more popularly written. . . . Overall this is an enjoyable collection that does a great deal to put to rest Emile Durkheimas assumption of a close, positive correlation between the occurrence of and participation in holidays and societal integration."
--"Choice"

"[P]rovides readers with a deeper insight into the ways in which holidays have been used and misused throughout American history. We learn of how Americans come together on their special days and how those days, sometimes, reveal social strains. A necessary volume for anyone who cares about how Americans reveal community and perform civic obligation."
--Gary Alan Fine, author of "Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial"

"Fascinating in what it says about the holidays as mechanisms of socialization, prisms through which identity can be refracted, even changed."
--"Chicago Tribune ""[A] new and welcome framework for understanding the meanings of holidays in our multi-cultural society. Any simple explanation of even the most familiar celebrations will be challenged in reading this wide-ranging collection."
--Penne L. Restad, author of "Christmas in America: A History"

"[O]ffers an effervescent mix of sociological and historical reflections on the state of holidays and rituals in American culture."
--Leigh E. Schmidt, author of "Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays"

How did Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday become a national holiday? Why do we exchangepresents on Christmas and Chanukah? What do bunnies have to do with Easter? How did Earth Day become a global holiday? These questions and more are answered in this fascinating exploration into the history and meaning of holidays and rituals. Edited by Amitai Etzioni, one of the most influential social and political thinkers of our time, this collection provides a compelling overview of the impact that holidays and rituals have on our family and communal life.

From community solidarity to ethnic relations to religious traditions, We Are What We Celebrate argues that holidays such as Halloween, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, and Valentine's Day play an important role in reinforcing, and sometimes redefining, our values as a society. The collection brings together classic and original essays that, for the first time, offer a comprehensive overview and analysis of the important role such celebrations play in maintaining a moral order as well as in cementing family bonds, building community relations and creating national identity. The essays cover such topics as the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday; the importance of holidays for children; the mainstreaming of Kwanzaa; and the controversy over Columbus Day celebrations.

Compelling and often surprising, this look at holidays and rituals brings new meaning to not just the ways we celebrate but to what those celebrations tell us about ourselves and our communities.

Contributors: Theodore Caplow, Gary Cross, Matthew Dennis, Amitai Etzioni, John R. Gillis, Ellen M. Litwicki, Diana Muir, Francesca Polletta, Elizabeth H. Pleck, David E. Proctor, Mary F. Whiteside, and Anna Day Wilde.

A macabre, spectacular and thought-provoking survey of human remains used in decorative, commemorative or devotional contexts across the world today, from the author of Heavenly Bodies and The Empire of Death. Memento Mori takes the reader on a ghoulish but beautiful tour of some of the world's more unusual sacred sites and traditions, in which human remains are displayed for the benefit of the living. From burial caves in Indonesia festooned with bones, to skulls smoking cigarettes, wearing beanie hats and sunglasses, and decorated with garlands of flowers in South America, Paul Koudounaris ventures beyond the grave to find messages of hope and salvation. His glorious colour photographs and informed commentaries reveal that in many places, the realms of the living and the dead are nowhere near so distinct as contemporary Western society would have us believe.

Mediated by Gifts is a collection of essays by top scholars on gifts, giving and the social and political forces that shaped these practices in medieval and early modern Japan. The international assemblage of authors provides new insights into these deeply ingrained practices. The essays focus on topics such as shogunal visits to shrines and temples, exchanges between the imperial house and the shogun, a physician and his patients, the shogun, his vassals his and his ladies, the merchant class and the shogunal government, and between scholars and their cosmopolitan circle of contacts. This virtually unexplored view of Japanese history provides new tools to better elucidate both historical and modern Japan. Contributors are Lee Butler, Andrew Goble, Kaneko Hiraku, Laura Nenzi, Ozawa Emiko, Cecilia Segawa Siegle, and Margarita Winkel.

There is something doing every day in Texas, from the Fireant Festival to the Gatorfest, Watermelon Thump, or Bun Run. Texan Jim Gramon has compiled all the major events in one book.

Although numerous studies of religious rituals have been conducted by religious studies scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists, it is rare to find a work that brings scholars from different disciplines together to discuss the similarities and differences in their research. This book represents contributions by leading scholars from several disciplines that show the diversity of approaches to religious rituals, while also providing cross-disciplinary perspectives on this topic.

The goals of the chapters are to consider where the field currently stands in understanding religious rituals and what novel ideas can improve our knowledge about these practices; and furnish innovative applications of theory by discussing particular examples which are drawn from the authors? fieldwork. The chapters cover Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, and Islamic rituals, thus providing a view of how ritual practices vary across the globe, but also how they share some important characteristics.

A concise history of smoking in British popular culture from the early nineteenth century to the present day.. Provides the historical backdrop to the current debates about the politics of tobacco and health, demonstrating that both pro- and anti-smokers have consistently failed to understand the position of smoking within popular culture.. Important themes explored include: the importance of consumption to constructions of masculinity and femininity, the role of the state in the official regulation of the 'minor vices', the morality of consumption and the position of scientific knowledge within popular culture.. Traces the production, promotion and consumption of tobacco as well as outlining the arguments that have variously opposed this ever-controversial drug.. Genuinely interdisciplinary, combining elements of social, cultural and economic history whilst contributing to debates in sociology and cultural studies, the anthropology of material culture, design history, medical history and public health policy. -- .

Franz Steiner's study of Taboo is internationally recognized as a classic in its field. In a newly researched introductory chapter, based on a thorough study of Steiner's unpublished papers, this edition for the first time places the book in its context and offers a new reading of the text. More than just a critique of existing taboo theories, as it has often been seen, this study offers a profound analysis of danger behavior and pollution in "non-civilized" societies. This provided an important starting-point for Mary Douglas' Purity and Danger. A key aspect of Steiner's achievement lies in his attempt to reconcile detailed, faithful ethnographic analysis with anthropological comparison. His analysis of taboo thus provides a case study with wide-ranging ramifications.

This new edition makes a classic text available once again to students and general readers. A major new introduction based on archival research offers, for the first time, a biography and critical study of Franz Steiner; it not only places him in the context of British and European thought but also shows his importance for contemporary debates, among them deconstruction and Orientalism.

Jeremy Adler is Professor of German at King's College London and specializes ininterdisciplinary subjects such as literature and science, poetry and painting, literature and anthropology. He is currently preparing a collected edition of Franz Steiner's poetry for the German Academy of Language and Literature, Darmstadt.

Richard Fardon is Professor in West African Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and has intensively researched among Chamba-speaking people in Cameroon and Nigeria. He is currently completing an intellectual biography of Mary Douglas.

When Shoba Narayan - who has just returned to India with her husband and two daughters after years in the United States - asks whether said cow might bless her apartment next, it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship between our author and Sarala, who also sells fresh milk right across the street from that thoroughly modern apartment building. The two women connect over not only cows but also family, food, and life. When Shoba agrees to buy Sarala a new cow, they set off looking for just the right heifer, and what was at first a simple economic transaction becomes something much deeper, though never without a hint of slapstick. The Milk Lady of Bangalore immerses us in the culture, customs, myths, religion, sights, and sounds of a city in which the twenty-first century and the ancient past coexist like nowhere else in the world. It's a true story of bridging divides, of understanding other ways of looking at the world, and of human connections and animal connections, and it's an irresistible adventure of two strong women and the animals they love.

Blackfoot Ways of Knowing is a journey into the heart and soul of Blackfoot culture. As a scholar and researcher, Betty Bastien places Blackfoot tradition within a historical context of precarious survival amid colonial displacement and cultural genocide. In sharing her personal story of reclaimed identity, Bastien offers a gateway into traditional Blackfoot ways of understanding and experiencing the world.For the Siksikaitsitapi, knowledge is experiential, participatory, and ultimately sacred. Bastien maps her own process of coming to know, stressing the recovery of the Blackfoot language and Blackfoot notions of reciprocal responsibilities and interdependence. Rekindling traditional ways of knowing is essential for Indigenous peoples in Canada to heal and rebuild their communities and cultures. By sharing what she has learned, Betty Bastien hopes to ensure that the next generation of Indigenous people will enjoy a future of hope and peace.