The question of ignorance occupies a central place in anthropological theory and practice. This volume argues that the concept of ignorance has largely been pursued as the opposite of knowledge or even its obverse. Though they cover wide empirical ground - from clients of a fertility treatment center in New York to families grappling with suicide in Greenland - contributors share a commitment to understanding the concept as a productive, social practice. Ultimately, The Anthropology of Ignorance asks whether an academic commitment to knowledge can be squared with lived significance of ignorance and how taking it seriously might alter anthropological research practices.

"Art in the Service of Colonialism" throws new light on how nothing in the Moroccan French Protectorate (1912-1956) escaped the imprints of metropolitan ideology and how the French transformed and dominated Moroccan society by looking at how the arts and crafts were transformed in the colonial period. Hamid Irbouh argues that during the Moroccan Protectorate (1912-1956), the French imposed their domination through a systematic modernisation and regulation of local arts and crafts. They also stewarded Moroccans into industrial life by establishing vocational and fine arts schools. The French archives, Arabic sources, and oral testimonies, which Irbouh used, demonstrate complex relationships between colonial administrators of both genders and their interactions with Moroccan officials, notables, and the poor. The French co-opted some locals into joining these educational institutions, which respected and reinforced familiar pre-Protectorate social structures. The artisans become The Best Workers in the French Empire, and artists exhibited abroad and cultivated a European and American clientele. The contradictions between reformist goals and the old order, nevertheless, added to social dislocations and led to rebellion against French hegemony. Irbouh focuses on how French women infiltrated the feminine Moroccan milieu to buttress colonial ideology, and how, at critical moments, Moroccan women and their daughters rejected traditional passive roles and sabotaged colonial plans. France's legacy in Moroccan arts and crafts provoked a backlash in the postcolonial period. After independence local artists, searching for their own identities, sought to reclaim their authenticity. The struggle to define a pristine visual heritage still rages, and the author, by underlining French contributions to Moroccan artistic and craft production, challenges the conclusions of the artists and critics who have argued for the establishment of an unadulterated art devoid of most or even all foreign influences. As in so many areas of Moroccan society, this book reveals that the weight of colonial history remains heavily present. In this well-conceived book based on original archival sources Hamid Irbouh investigates how French colonial administrators employed French women to inculcate colonial ideology by establishing new craft schools for notable and poor families in Moroccan cities. The French intended not only to teach modernized versions of old Moroccan crafts, but also wanted to instill new work habits and modern concepts of time into the girls and young women who attended their schools. Dr. Irbouh demonstrates how French women administrators took the lead in this effort and also shows how Moroccan women absorbed their lessons, but also resisted the colonial enterprise. His is a novel approach to colonial art history, situating Moroccan art production in large social, political and ideological contexts.

By exploring indigenous people's knowledge and use of sea ice, the SIKU project has demonstrated the power of multiple perspectives and introduced a new field of interdisciplinary research, the study of social (socio-cultural) aspects of the natural world, or what we call the social life of sea ice. It incorporates local terminologies and classifications, place names, personal stories, teachings, safety rules, historic narratives, and explanations of the empirical and spiritual connections that people create with the natural world. In opening the social life of sea ice and the value of indigenous perspectives we make a novel contribution to IPY, to science, and to the public

This bold intervention into the debate over the memory and post-memory of the Holocaust both scrutinises recent academic theories of post-Holocaust trauma and provides a new reading of literary and architectural memory texts related to the Holocaust.

From the outset, Silvio Berlusconi's career was expected to be short, and he has been considered finished several times, only to have reemerged victorious. This fascinating political and historical study shows that Berlusconi's success and resilience have lain in his ability to provide answers to longstanding questions in Italian history.

In recent decades, religious fundamentalism has played an increasingly significant role in Western and Middle Eastern politics and culture. In this volume, an international group of scholars from fields such as religious studies, sociology, political science, history, and anthropology explore diverse dimensions of religious fundamentalism and relate it to a range of cultural and political issues. Although the focus is on fundamentalism in its Jewish guise, the methodological and comparative emphases make it valuable to specialists in a variety of fields.

Among the issues examined are: the characteristics that link fundamentalist movements within various religious traditions; the study of fundamentalist motifs as they appear specifically in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (and whether or not this is a useful approach); the relationship between religion and modernity; the impact of fundamentalism on the Arab-Israeli conflict; and the interaction of modern Jewish fundamentalist movements with traditional Judaism. The book also provides important insights into the emergence of religious fundamentalism as a powerful social and political force in Jewish life, particularly in Israel.

Contributing to the volume are: Gerald Cromer (Bar-Ilan Univ.), Menachem Friedman (Bar-Ilan Univ.), Susan Harding (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz), James Davison Hunter (Univ. of Virginia), Aaron Kirschenbaum (Tel Aviv University), Hava Larazus-Yafeh (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem), Ian Lustick (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Alan Mittleman (Muhlenberg College), James Piscatori (Univ. College of Wales), Elie Rekhess (Tel Aviv Univ.), Laurence J. Silberstein (Lehigh Univ.), and Ehud Sprinzak (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem).

The concept of 'wilderness' as a foundational idea for environmentalist thought has become the subject of vigorous debates. Myths of Wilderness in Contemporary Narratives offers a taxonomy of the forms that wilderness writing has taken in Australian and Canadian literature, re-emphasizing both country's origins as colonies.

This bibliography describes, in comprehensive detail, thirty-six special collections in the United States that are rich in published and unpublished research materials in the fields of intentional communities (communes), nudism, and sexual behavior, especially sexual freedom. For each collection, Selth provides information about types of publications, bibliographic access, conditions of use, miscellaneous comments, and describes the holdings. Indexes by name of the collection and geographical location and indexes of periodicals, names, and subjects are provided to enhance the usefulness of this unique research aid.

Drawing on traditional archival research, reception theory, cultural histories of slumming, and recent work in critical theory on literary representations of poverty, Westgate argues that the productions of slum plays served as enactments of the emergent definitions of the slum and the corresponding ethical obligations involved therein.

This exciting new and original collection locates dance within the spectrum of urban life in late modernity, through a range of theoretical perspectives. It highlights a diversity of dance forms and styles that can be witnessed in and around contemporary urban spaces: from dance halls to raves and the club striptease; from set dancing to ballroom dancing, to hip hop and swing, and to ice dance shows; from the ballet class, to fitness aerobics; and 'art' dance which situates itself in a dynamic relation to the city.

Europeans are eating out in unprecedented numbers - in cafs, pubs, brasseries and restaurants. Globalization brought about changes in patterns of leisure and consumption, as well as a democratization of restaurant culture. But what if we open up this concept of 'eating out' to include any eating that takes place outside the home? What cultural shifts can we see through time? What differences can we discover about pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial societies?Eating Out in Europe addresses such questions as it examines changes in eating patterns through time. 'Eating out' is broadly conceived to cover everything from nibbling a pizza at work to dining in an exquisite restaurant, from suffering an institutional lunch at the school cafeteria to enjoying the natural world with a picnic. The meaning of eating out clearly varies enormously depending on the setting, circumstances and significance of the meal. The contributors describe and interpret the huge changes that occurred in eating habits throughout Europe by analyzing such factors as urbanization, technological innovation, demographic growth, employment patterns and identity formation. Case studies include the evolution of the pub, the rise of the fast food industry in Britain, picnicking in nineteenth-century France, snack culture in the Netherlands, industrial canteens in Germany, the rise of restaurants in Norway and countryside traditions in Hungary, among others. Fully comprehensive and illustrated, the contributors draw on examples throughout Europe from the late eighteenth century to the present day.

This book is a landmark in contemporary cultural psychology. Ernest Boesch's synthesis of ideas is the first comprehensive theory of culture in psychology since Wilhelm Wundt's Volkerpsychologie of the first decades of the twentieth century. Cultural psychology of today is an attempt to advance the program of research that was charted out by Wundt-yet at times we are carefully avoiding direct recognition of such continuity. While Wundt's experimental psychology has been hailed as the root for contemporary scientific psychology, the other side of his contribution- ethnographic analysis of folk traditions and higher psychological functions- has been largely discredited as something disconnected from the scientific realm. As an example of ""soft"" science-lacking the ""hardness"" of experimentation-it has been considered to be an esoteric hobby of the founding father of contemporary psychology. Of course that focus is profoundly wrong-the opposition ""soft"" versus ""hard"" just does not fit as a metalevel organizer of any science.Yet the rhetoric discounting the descriptive side of Wundt's psychology is merely an act of social guidance of what psychologists do-not a way of creating knowledge.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Preface.

"Covers its subject well, provides useful context, and makes lively reading for anyone interested in the history of technology, the social context of electricity and radioactive materials, or the history of alernative medicine."--"Technology and Culture"

"Not only provides a richly detailed and suprising account of long-forgotten artifacts, but also fleshes out the longer history of some still-familiar attitudes toward health and vitality."
--"Journal of Social History"

"De la Pena's fascinating study melds social history with material culture and the history of science and technology to explain Americans' enthusiastic embrace of modern mechanization and emergent industrial culture."
--"CHOICE"

"In this engaging and well-written study Carolyn Thomas de la Pena offers a detailed cultural history of the medical-technological interface in the period 1850-1940, and in so doing tells us a great deal about how the body and its relation to modernity were conceived."
--"American Historical Review"

"Exellent. Carolyn de la Pena's superbly researched project examines how Americans in the period between 1870 and 1935 sought to supplement their physical energy through engagement with a variety of popular health technologies, including muscle-building machines: electrical invigorators, such as belts and collars: and radioactive elixirs."
--"American Quarterly"

"It's an irresistible account of fads and fascinating foibles, including electric belts and radioactive tonics."
--"Christian Science Monitor"

"Transforming archival research into sparkling prose, "The Body Electric" explains how Americans learned to usemachines to seek health, sexual rejuvenation, and physical transformation. This innovative book is both an entertaining history of fads and foibles and a groundbreaking cultural critique of the continuing obsession with achieving physical perfection."
--David E. Nye, author of "Electrifying America and America as Second Creation"

""The Body Electric" is the so-far missing puzzle piece in our nineteenth-twentieth century knowledge of the social history of the human body and technology a richly illustrated study showing two centuries of technologizing the human body against fears of weakness, enervation, sexual depletion."
--Cecelia Tichi, author of "Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America"

Between the years 1850 and 1950, Americans became the leading energy consumers on the planet, expending tremendous physical resources on energy exploration, mental resources on energy exploitation, and monetary resources on energy acquisition. A unique combination of pseudoscientific theories of health and the public's rudimentary understanding of energy created an age in which sources of industrial power seemed capable of curing the physical limitations and ill health that plagued Victorian bodies. Licensed and "quack" physicians alike promoted machines, electricity, and radium as invigorating cures, veritable "fountains of youth" that would infuse the body with energy and push out disease and death.

The Body Electric is the first book to place changing ideas about fitness and gender in dialogue with the popular culture of technology. Whether through wearing electric belts, drinking radium water, or lifting mechanized weights, many Americans came to believethat by embracing the nation's rapid march to industrialization, electrification, and "radiomania," their bodies would emerge fully powered. Only by uncovering this belief's passions and products, Thomas de la PeAa argues, can we fully understand our culture's twentieth-century energy enthusiasm.

A systematic examination of Chinese communication scholarship and comprehensive critique of its theories and methodologies are long overdue, and in this new collection of essays by a multicultural group of scholars, both aims are achieved. Focusing on such relatively new fields as Chinese health communication and Chinese communication on the internet, the volume addresses key questions about the state and the future of its field. Both challenging and complementing the Western views of communication, it advances theories of cultural and intercultural communication while at the same time broadening our understanding of the relevance of Chinese communication studies to communication studies overall, and the ways in which this subdiscipline points the way toward a new and more complicated future. The essayists, whose origins include the United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China, bring their many perspectives to bear on what is the most comprehensive and inclusive review of Chinese communication research literature published in English. Of great benefit to Western and Eastern communication theorists, philosophers of social science, and Asian studies scholars, Chinese Communication Theory and Research is an invaluable guide to an increasingly complex and significant field of study.

While the writing of other ethnic women has already been receiving considerable attention, the writing of Asian American women has not. (Un)Doing is the first feminist theoretical work to look at writing by such contemporary Asian American writers as Amy Tan, Fae Myenne Ng, R. A. Sasaki, Gish Jen, and Cynthia Kadohata. Viewing them as feminist and postfeminist writers, Kafka argues that gender asymmetry in all its varied forms and guises is the major issue that they confront. Satirizing this world-wide oppression as "the missionary position," Kafka urges ethnic and women of color feminist critics to focus more on commonalities rather than view differences as impenetrable barriers.

What provoked the fierce and systematic 'will to experiment' that was Modernism? Paranoia--thought especially to afflict those whose identities were founded on professional expertise--was described in the contemporary psychiatric literature as the violent imposition of system onto life's randomness. Modernism's great writers--Conrad, Ford, Lewis, Lawrence--both lived and wrote about these psychopathies of expertise.

"Bringing together contributors from a wide range of disciplines, countries and perspectives this book provides a thought-provoking overview of the human dimension of the workplace. It covers workplace problems as well as potential solutions. Essential reading for anyone committed to making the workplace a humane and effective place"--Provided by publisher.

Armed with cheap digital technologies and a fiercely independent spirit, millions of young people from around the world have taken cultural production into their own hands, crafting their own clothing lines, launching their own record labels, and forging a vast, collaborative network of impassioned amateurs more interested in making than consuming.
"DIY Style" tells the story of this international do-it-yourself (DIY) movement through a major case study of one of its biggest, but least known contingents: the "indie" music and fashion scene of the predominantly Muslim Southeast Asian island nation of Indonesia. Through rich ethnographic detail, in-depth historical analysis, and cutting-edge social theory, the book chronicles the rise of DIY culture in Indonesia, and also explores the phenomenon in Europe and the United States, painting an evocative portrait of vibrant communities who are not only making and distributing popular culture on their own terms, but working to tear down the barriers between production and consumption, third and first world, global and local. What emerges from the book is a cautiously optimistic view of the future of global capitalism - a creative, collectivist alternative built from the ground up.
This exciting and original study is essential reading for students and scholars of anthropology, fashion, media studies, cultural studies and sociology.

This book explores the dimensions and characteristics of social vulnerability in Western Europe. It provides a broad empirical foundation for recent theories on the emergence of new social risks in post-industrial societies, revealing to what extent social risks are compromising the 'normal' functioning of the European population.

Read Chapter One.

"a]it will alter - or perhaps confirm - your thinking about 'public religion' and how traditional and immigrant congregations address (or don't) member and community needs and attitudes and actions towardslarger social issuesa]an obvious choice for religious andcongregational studies and urban sociology programs. It is alsovaluable reading for any cleric or layperson interested in howcontemporary urban religious collectives are shaped by and help shape the lives of their own members, surrounding communities, and the larger society."
"--Congregations"

"Rich in cultural analysis, thick description, maps, photographs, and anecdotes, this book should be read by scholars, policy makers, religious leaders, and anyone who wishes to better understand one of the most exciting stories on the American urban landscape at the turn of a new century."
"--Robert Michael Franklin, President, Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta, Georgia"

"This book presents the initial results of a team-based ethnographic study aimed at understanding better the richness of religious life in the multiplicity of communities that make up modern Chicago."
--"Journal of Contemporary Religion"

"The highly successful result of a team-based, ethnographic approach to understanding the diversity-racial, ethnic, cultural, economic-of Chicago's religious communities, exploring important questions about religion's public role in the metropolis. A must read for those interested in the religious diversity and pluralism of American society or contemporary urban restructuring."
"--Penny Edgell Becker, Department of Sociology, Cornell University, and Author of Congregations inConflict"

"An interesting example of the challenge immigrants face as they attempt to emulate established American institutions while retaining those elements that allow them to function as cohesive communities of ethnic and religious identity."
"--Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Professor of Islamic History, Georgetown University"

"Reaches across the boundaries of private faith and public action, of traditional turf and challenging new populations, of older generations and restless youth, of growing ethnic/religious groups where there can be no majority, and, as yet, no consensus . . . Uncomfortable but essential reading."
"--Carl S. Dudley, Codirector of Hartford Institute for Religion Research and Professor of Church and Community, Hartford Seminary, Hartford, CT"

"Furnishes a rich and diverse insight into the changing American metropolis. Unlike virtually any other book I have read, it does so by examining how church leaders and members cope with these changes. In the end, we get stories not merely of churches and religious change, but of how a major social institution helps people of diverse faiths and backgrounds survive and succeed in the modern American metropolis."
"--Anthony M. Orum, author of City-Building in America"

American cities are in the midst of fundamental changes. De-industrialization of large, aging cities has been enormously disruptive for urban communities, which are being increasingly fragmented. Though often overlooked, religious organizations are important actors, both culturally and politically in the restructuring metropolis.

Public Religion and Urban Transformation provides a sweeping view of urban religion in response to thesetransformations. Drawing on a massive study of over seventy-five congregations in urban neighborhoods, this volume provides the most comprehensive picture available of urban places of worship-from mosques and gurdwaras to churches and synagogues-within one city.

Revisiting the primary site of research for the early members of the Chicago School of urban sociology, the volume focuses on Chicago, which provides an exceptionally clear lens on the ways in which religious organizations both reflect and contribute to changes in American pluralism.

From the churches of a Mexican American neighborhood and of the Black middle class to communities shared by Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Muslims and the rise of "megachurches," Public Religion and Urban Transformation illuminates the complex interactions among religion, urban structure, and social change at this extraordinary episode in the history of urban America.

How men and women interact, the respect young show old and old show young, and who doffs their hat to whom provides a telling window on American cultural history. Bowing To Necessities is the chronologically most wide-ranging study, covering the long period of 1620 to 1860, of its kind. Working through two centuries of conduct literature, Professor Hemphill provides a wonderful retelling of American history to the Civil War, illuminating crucial connections between evolving class, gender, and age relations along the way.

This title offers a Marxist take on a selection of artistic and cultural achievements from the rap music of Tupac Shakur to the painting of Van Gogh, from HBO's Breaking Bad to Balzac's Cousin Bette , from the magical realm of Harry Potter to the apocalyptic landscape of The Walking Dead , from The Hunger Games to Game of Thrones .

Wenshan Jia demonstrates that a true liberation of Chinese civic discourse can start with a focus on indigenous cultural practices, such as face practices--the understanding that every human face offers a distinct cultural grammar for acting, speaking, and feeling. Chinese character and identity, the author argues, are primarily functions of communication, and as such, these practices are of enormous consequence to the necessary reconstruction of Chinese identity in the changing socioeconomic context of the 21st century. In this way, Jia finds a middle ground between the advocacy of complete Westernization and radical Chinese nationalism: as a pragmatic alternative, communication is key. Never before has facework research been approached so systematically from the standpoint of its relationship to character and identity. Jia's work substantially advances the literature on Chinese communication and presents a unique perspective on its relationship to social transformation. This new paradigm of facework--including analytical methods such as Circular Questioning in addition to major case studies--challenges traditional views while pointing the way toward a new and valuable social-constructionist view.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"Staiger's" Blockbuster TV" artfully balances formal analysis, inflected with and informed by various theoretical perspectives, of four different sitcoms with an examination of their reception. "JUMPCUT"

"Staiger offers a radical counter-approach to traditional film-centered analysis."
--"Jump Cut"

Archie Bunker. Jed. Laverne and Shirley. Cliff Huxtable. Throughout the entire history of American prime-time television only four sitcoms have been true blockbusters, with Nielsen ratings far above the second- and third-rated programs. Weekly, millions of Americans of every age were making a special effort to turn on the set to see what Archie, Jed, Laverne, and Cliff were doing that week. The wild popularity of these shows--"All in the Family," "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Laverne & Shirley" (and its partner "Happy Days"), and "The Cosby Show"--left commentators bewildered by the tastes and preferences of the American public. How do we account for the huge appeal of these sitcoms, and how does it figure into the history of network prime-time television?

Janet Staiger answers these questions by detailing the myriad factors that go into the construction of mass audiences. Treating the four shows as case studies, she deftly balances factual explanations (for instance, the impact of VCRs and cable on network domination of TV) with more interpretative ones (for example, the transformation of "The Beverly Hillbillies" from a popular show detested by the critics, to a blockbuster after its elevation as the critics' darling), and juxtaposes industry-based reasons (for example, the ways in which TV shows derive success fromplacement in the weekly programming schedule) with stylistic explanations (how, for instance, certain shows create pleasure from a repetition and variation of a formula).

Staiger concludes that because of changes in the industry, these shows were a phenomenon that may never be repeated. And while the western or the night-time soap has at times captured public attention, Blockbuster TV maintains that the sitcom has been THE genre to attract people to the tube, and that without understanding the sitcom, we can't properly understand the role of television in our culture.

Departing from an ethnographic collection in London, From Storeroom to Stage traces the journey of its artefacts back to the Romanian villages where they were made 70 years ago, and to other places where similar objects are still in use. The book explores the role that material culture plays in the production of value and meaning by examining how folk objects are mobilized in national ideologies, transmissions of personal and family memory, museological discourses, and artistic acts.