Telling the story of the author's time living with a Kazakh family in a small village in western Mongolia, this book contextualizes the family's personal stories within the broader history of the region. It looks at the position of the Kazakh over time in relation to Tsarist Russian, Soviet, Chinese and Mongolian rule and influence. These are stories of migration across generations, bride kidnappings and marriage, domestic violence and alcoholism, adoption and family, and how people have coped in the face of political and economic crisis, poverty and loss, and, perhaps most enduringly, how love and family persist through all of this.

Sex and Ethics: Essays on Sexuality, Virtue and the Good Life, edited by Raja Halwani, is an anthology that addresses a hitherto very neglected philosophical field comprising issues about virtue and virtue ethics, on the one hand, and sexuality and sex, on the other. The topics range from discussions of particular virtues and vices related to sexuality, to the role of sexuality in the ethical life, to feminism and sex and virtue, to issues surrounding virtue and adultery, promiscuity, and pornography.

This collection of essays represents some of the most important recent research into changing patterns of family, household and community life. It brings together some of the leading sociologists in the field to explore how these informal social relationships change over time and the life course. It will be essential reading on courses concerned with the family and youth sociology.

This book conceptualises the lived experience of intimacy in a world in which the terms and conditions of love and friendship are increasingly unclear. It shows that the analysis of the 'small world' of dyads can give important clues about society and its gendered makeup.

Contemporary culture provides conflicting and confusing messages about the meaning and purpose of human sexuality, and often sex education that is offered often does not promote a mature, integrated understanding of sexuality. Human Sexuality in the Catholic Tradition meets the great need for pastoral guidance in addressing moral issues of sexuality in both the Church and broader culture today. Kieran Scott and Harold Horell explore with other leading scholars how to draw from the best Christian faith traditions to renew our understanding of sexuality, explore the integration of our sexuality and our spirituality, and develop life-affirming and life-sustaining ways of approaching contemporary sexual issues. This book explores sexuality from spiritual, psychological, moral and ministerial perspectives, and addresses specific issues such as sex and marriage, celibacy, homosexuality, and cohabitation.

This book analyses the relationship between youth and participation, looking specifically at those repertories of involvement that are commonly clustered under the concept of "unconventional political participation". The author focuses on the connections between youth practices of participation and youth conditions in contemporary society. Drawing from the analysis of three ethnographic case studies conducted on experiences of youth participation in Italy and Sweden, the circumstances and the reasons leading young people to express their political ideas through forms of engagement located outside the realm of "formal politics" are explored. The book seeks to bring back the specificities of contemporary youth at the centre of the analysis of youth practices of participation, highlighting their often overlooked socio-historical and generational 'situatedness'. Youth and Unconventional Political Engagement will be of interest students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including youth studies, political science, and sociology.

This dynamic collection of original essays by leading international film scholars and classicists addresses the provocative representation of sexuality in the ancient world on screen. Throughout the history of cinema, filmmakers have returned to the history, mythology, and literature of Greek and Roman antiquity as the ideal site for narratives of erotic adventure and displays of sexual excess. A critical reader on the creative approaches used to screen sexuality in classical settings, contributors utilize case studies from films such as Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Angels & Insects (1995), and Alexander (2004) as well as the television series Rome (2005-07) and Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010). Featuring contributors such as Antony Augoustakis, Alison Futrell, Paula James, and Corinne Pache, the essays in this collection apply a variety of theoretical perspectives to the role of love and sexuality in screening the ancient world.

"Scant decades ago most Westerners agreed that . . . Lifelong monogamy was ideal . . . Mothers should stay home with children . . . premarital sex was to be discouraged . . . Heterosexuality was the unquestioned norm . . . popular culture should not corrupt children. Today not a single one of these expectations is uncontroversial." So writes Rodney Clapp in assessing the status of the family in postmodern Western society. In response many evangelicals have been quick to defend the so-called traditional family, assuming that it exemplifies the biblical model. Clapp challenges that assumption, arguing that the "traditional" family is a reflection more of the nineteenth-century middle-class family than of any family one can find in Scripture. At the same time, he recognizes that many modern and postmodern options are not acceptable to Christians. Returning to the biblical story afresh to see what it might say to us in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Clapp articulates a challenge to both sides of a critical debate. A book to help us rethink the significance of the family for the next century.

Evidence pertaining to continual violence throughout the life cycle coupled with the experience of growing old in a life permeated by intimate violence is scarce. And the focus is usually on the victims usually, the older, battered women and seldom on their aging partners or adult children who were part and parcel of the violent dynamics in the family system. With the increase in longevity and the older population s subsequent growth in size, the number of elderly couples living and aging in long-lasting conflictive relationships is on the rise.

The relatively intense preoccupation with elder abuse in the gerontological literature in recent years has not specifically addressed long-term intimate violence among the old adults and its lasting consequences. Similarly, the literature on intimate intergenerational relationships in old age has usually focused on normative exchanges between partners and their extended family, including their adult children. Therefore, conflictive relationships, and particularly violent ones, have also fallen outside the scope of this body of research. This volume describes and analyzes the various perspectives of family members concerning life, and particularly old age, in the shadow of long-term intimate violence. It explores how people make sense out of living and aging in violence, how interpersonal, familial and cross-generational relationships are perceived and reconstructed and how we-ness is achieved, if at all, in such families."

This collection explores the dynamics of the modern, middle-class American family and its near-constant state of transition. The editors introduce the book by situating it within the context of work, family, and ethnographic research on middle-class families in the United States. Emerging and established scholars contributed chapters based on their original field research, following each chapter with a personal reflection on doing field work. The volume concludes with an original essay by Kathryn Dudley, an anthropologist who has spent decades studying the intersections of work, family, and class in American culture. As a whole, the volume highlights how culture shapes family life amid shifting social and economic landscapes. The authors, working in the fields of anthropology and sociology, observed daily life at workplaces and in homes, interviewing people about their work, their children, and their ideas about what makes a good family. They report on their fieldwork in essays rich with the detail of everyday life, revealing the fascinating diversity of American middle-class families through chapters about gay co-father families, African American stay-at-home mothers, first-time fathers, rural refugees from corporate America, well-off white mothers, Taiwanese immigrant churches, the fetal ultrasound, and more. The Changing Landscape of Work and Family in the American Middle Class is an excellent text for classes in anthropology, sociology, American culture, family studies, work and family, and gender studies.

This book offers an empirically informed understanding of how cultural, autobiographical and absent memories of orphanhood interact and interconnect or come into being in the re-telling of a life story and construction of an identity. The volume investigates how care experienced identities are embedded within personal, social and cultural practices of remembering. The book stems from research carried out into the life (hi)stories of twelve undervalued 'historical witnesses' (Roberts, 2002) of orphanhood: women who grew up in Nazareth House children's home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Several themes are covered, including histories of care in Northern Ireland, narratives and memories, sociologies of home, and self and identity. The result is an impressive text that works to introduce readers to the complexity of memory for care experienced people and what this means for their life story and identity.

This book explores the intersections between class and sexuality in lesbians and gay men's experiences of parenting and the everyday pathways navigated therein, from initial routes into parenting, to location preferences, schooling choice and community supports.

The City and Sex examines American political sex scandals at the national level. Studying these events over time with an emphasis on the evolving responses of both statesmen and citizens reveals the republic's deteriorating moral health and illuminates the country's dangerous tendency toward servitude. Using scandals as a window through which to glimpse our deterioration, the book identifies a trajectory of decline beginning in the twentieth century, by which Americans became less tutored in virtue, less spirited in citizenship, less agreed on questions of moral significance, and ultimately less dexterous in exercising the skills of self-government. It seeks to show that the freedom from virtue won through the collapse of moral standards has produced an American citizenry increasingly prone to the kind of dependence and enslavement Alexis de Tocqueville cautioned against in the 1830s.

Must a state in which gay marriage is not legal recognize such a marriage performed in another state? The Constitution does not require recognition in all cases, but it does forbid states from nullifying family relationships based in other states, or from making themselves havens for people who are trying to escape obligations to their spouses and children. In this book, Andrew Koppelman offers workable legal solutions to the problems that arise when gay couples cross state borders. Drawing on historical precedents in which states held radically different moral views about marriage (for example, between kin, very young individuals, and interracial couples), Koppelman shows which state laws should govern in specific situations as gay couples travel or move from place to place.
Americans are profoundly divided over same-sex marriage, and now that gay civil unions and marriages are legal in some states, the issue has become increasingly urgent. Koppelman offers a sensible approach that will appeal to the best instincts of both sides.

From their location in the heart of Detroit, Michigan, the Weisfelds' lab has reached out for thirty years to couples in long-term partnerships around the world. In living rooms in Detroit, London, Moscow, Beijing, and beyond, couples of all types and ages have shared their perspectives into adult romantic relationships. The Psychology of Marriage: An Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural View is a distillation of these findings, which have appeared in dozens of book chapters, journal articles, and conference presentations. This book provides new systematic comparisons that offer insights into the mysteries of marriage and other committed relationships. Scholars, professional counselors, and family therapists will find a helpful framework in the text for thinking about cultural similarities and differences in marital dynamics. Researchers will be introduced to a robust new instrument, the Marriage and Relationship Questionnaire (MARQ), which can be used in heterosexual and same-sex couples in virtually any cultural setting, along with ethical guidelines for conducting this research. Anyone who is interested in why committed relationships work (or do not work) will find the book filled with compelling new information.

Danan is a gifted and highly regarded Jewish educator. She has written a comprehensive guide to Jewish parenting, filled with a tremendous amount of information, enthusiasm, practical ideas, wise advice, and a fantastic quantity of resources. This book is essential reading for Jewish parents.

"A foster mother herself, Wozniak brings particular poignancy and insight to this fascinating look at motherhood and social policy. Her interviews with foster mothers are coupled with research on who foster mothers are and why they fostera].Wozniak also looks at the larger issues of women's roles in society and how we handle the needs of displaced children. . . an important but little-researched topic."
--"Booklist"

"[A] thoughtful and well-researched book."
--"Reference and Research Book News," February 2002

"Wozniak presents a very readable analysis of the broad challenges facing foster families...This book is important for anyone in the social work or family services field."
--"Choice"

The first book on foster care written from foster mothers' perspectives, They're All My Children voices the often painful experiences of contemporary U.S. foster mothers as they struggle to mother and care-work in the face of exploitative social relations with the state. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, Wozniak, herself a former foster mother and an anthropologist, presents and analyzes women's personal stories about fostering to reflect on the larger socio-cultural context of American family lifenamely, how we think about kinship, identity, and work. Foster mothers construct enduring kinship relationships with children, and often with the children's biological families. These relationships enhance children's chances to growth and thrive and in turn extend women's kin relationships into often distant and disparate communities. Wozniak also highlights the economic side of fostering to show how foster mothers are both mothers and workers; foster children are both providersand provided for, adored sentimental children and economic figures.

Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, Wozniak argues that we have not gone far enough in understanding the experiences of these women whose life work lies outside the usual boundaries. Nor have child welfare gone far enough in revising the theories upon which child welfare policies are based. Foster mothers and their experiences challenge the patriarchal, nuclear family ideals upon which foster care programs are based, a challenge that They're All My Children takes forward.

Contemporary culture provides conflicting and confusing messages about the meaning and purpose of human sexuality, and often sex education that is offered often does not promote a mature, integrated understanding of sexuality. Human Sexuality in the Catholic Tradition meets the great need for pastoral guidance in addressing moral issues of sexuality in both the Church and broader culture today. Kieran Scott and Harold Horell explore with other leading scholars how to draw from the best Christian faith traditions to renew our understanding of sexuality, explore the integration of our sexuality and our spirituality, and develop life-affirming and life-sustaining ways of approaching contemporary sexual issues. This book explores sexuality from spiritual, psychological, moral and ministerial perspectives, and addresses specific issues such as sex and marriage, celibacy, homosexuality, and cohabitation.

This groundbreaking investigation into the consumption of homes and domesticity in the Middle East during the period between the mid-nineteenth and the early twenty-first centuries provides subtle accounts of how people in the region restructured their most immediate and intimate surroundings. Avoiding the notion of linearity and "progress" in the transition to modern lifestyles, this volume focuses on the market where producers and consumers meet, the state and the national movements with their respective ideologies and practices, and the role of advertisers, but also the agency of individual and group choice. In addition, it discusses, in different ways, the close interrelations between the representation of home and domestic life, for example in journals, books, and photography, and the political economy of house consumption. The contributors foreground the impact of economic, political, and socio-cultural transformations on the private life of individuals and the processes of restructuring self-identity and lifestyles via acts of consumption.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of studies on youth agency across various parts of the world. It explores diverse perspectives on education, citizenship and future livelihoods, modernity and tradition, gender equality, and social norms and transformations as they relate to how young people construct their agency. Drawing on case studies of young women and men from Africa, the Americas and South Asia, this book illustrates the different ways in which education affects youth's beliefs, engagement, action, and identities in broader historical, social, cultural, economic, and political contexts. Chapters argue for education as a potential force for equity and explore how both formal schooling and informal educational programs may challenge and inspire youth through individual and collective action to change the social conditions affecting their lives and their communities. The global nature of this book gives readers a deeper understanding of youth agency as a dynamic process in relation to changing economic, political, and social environments. Featured topics include: The role of community context and relationships in shaping U.S. youth's citizen agency. Malala Yousafzai and media narratives of girls' education within Islam and modernity. Social capital, sexual relationships, and agency for Tanzanian youth. Boys' agency toward higher education in urban Jamaica. Children's economic agency in Kanchipuram, India. Vocational training and agency among Kenyan youth. Education and Youth Agency is an essential resource for researchers, educators, practitioners, and undergraduate and graduate students across such related disciplines as developmental psychology, international and comparative education, family studies as well as public health, educational policy and politics, youth studies, and social policy.

This book is a social critique of the cultural taboo of the female virginity in the Middle East. It highlights the unobtainability of this cultural myth and its multilevel destructive influences on various aspects of social life.

This book challenges readers to recognise the conditions that underpin popular approaches to children and young people's participation, as well as the key processes and institutions that have enabled its rise as a global force of social change in new times. The book draws on the vast international literature, as well as interviews with key practitioners, policy-makers, activists, delegates and academics from Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, Australia, the United Kingdom, Finland, the United States and Italy to examine the emergence of the young citizen as a key global priority in the work of the UN, NGOs, government and academia. In so doing, the book engages contemporary and interdisciplinary debates around citizenship, rights, childhood and youth to examine the complex conditions through which children and young people are governed and invited to govern themselves. The book argues that much of what is considered 'children and young people's participation' today is part of a wider neoliberal project that emphasises an ideal young citizen who is responsible and rational while simultaneously downplaying the role of systemic inequality and potentially reinforcing rather than overcoming children and young people's subjugation. Yet the book also moves beyond mere critique and offers suggestive ways to broaden our understanding of children and young people's participation by drawing on 15 international examples of empirical research from around the world, including the Philippines, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, North America, Finland, South Africa, Australia and Latin America. These examples provoke practitioners, policy-makers and academics to think differently about children and young people and the possibilities for their participatory citizenship beyond that which serves the political agendas of dominant interest groups.

Researched and written by a collaborative team of Americans and Russians, "Marriages in Russia" explores the myths and realities of how the first years of market transformation have affected Russian family life. The research project, in which 2418 individual interviews of randomly sampled heterosexual couples are used, was initiated to determine if the relationships between gender attitudes and the relative social statuses of spouses--based on such factors as education, occupational prestige, and income--influence the marital quality spouses experience. Whether these variables are linked to domestic violence, as data show they are in the United States, is also examined. The results are surprising in that they often contradict general beliefs about Russian gender attitudes and gender attributes, and the analysis of these findings is ultimately a fascinating look at the post-Cold War realities of family life in Russia.

How do Chinese, Japanese and Korean mothers in Britain make sense of their motherhood and employment? What are the intersecting factors that shape these women's identities, experiences and stories? Contributing further to the continuing discourse and development of intersectionality, this book examines East Asian migrant women's stories of motherhood, employment and gender relations by deploying interlocking categories that go beyond the meta axes of race, gender and class, including factors such as husbands' ethnicities and the locality of their settlement. Through this, Lim argues for more detailed and context specific analytical categories of intersectionality, enabling a more nuanced understanding of migrant women's stories and identities. East Asian Mothers in Britain will appeal to students and scholars across a range of disciplines and with an interest in identity, gender, ethnicity, class, migration and intersectionality.

This book explores the courtship and marriage of Gwyneth Murray, an English woman, and a Canadian, Harry Logan, who wrote in the personae of their vagina (Dardanella) and penis (Peter) during World War I. Through an analysis of their extensive daily correspondence over nearly a decade, it uncovers the couple's changing attitudes to the intersection of sexuality and religion, to marriage and childrearing, as they navigated the transition from Victorian to modern values. By focusing on first-person narratives, this book enriches our understanding of gender identities revealing how porous the boundaries remained between notions of 'heterosexual' and 'same-sex' friendships. This study offers an unprecedented perspective on one couple's sexual practices, which included mutual masturbation and oral sex, and constitutes one of the most intensive examinations of female attitudes to sexual pleasure in an era of female emancipation.