Diversions and Divergences in Fields of Play reflects the critical efforts of its editors. They have organized recent, quality play scholarship into six thematic sections, including Theorizing Play, Traditional Play, Children's Play, Playful Primates, Resistant Play, and Intertextual Play.

Speed is the essence of the modern era, but our faster, more frenetic lives often trouble us and leave us wondering how we are meant to live in today's world. Slow Living explores the philosophy and politics of 'slowness' as it investigates the growth of Slow Food into a worldwide, 'eco-gastronomic' movement. Originating in Italy, Slow Food is not only committed to the preservation of traditional cuisines and sustainable agriculture but also the pleasures of the table and a slower approach to life in general. Craig and Parkins argue that slow living is a complex response to processes of globalization. It connects ethics and pleasure, the global and the local, as part of a new emphasis on everyday life in contemporary culture and politics. The 'global everyday' is not a simple tale of speed and geographical dislocation. Instead, we all negotiate different times and spaces that make our quality of life and an 'ethics of living' more pressing concerns. This innovative book shows how slow living is about the challenges of living a more mindful and pleasurable life.

Focusing on the experiences of Russian migrants to the United Kingdom, this book explores the connection between migrations, homes and identities. It evaluates several approaches to studying them, and is structured around a series of case studies on attitudes to homemaking, food and cooking, and clothing.

"A Theory of Shopping" offers a highly original perspective on one of our most basic everyday activities - shopping. We commonly assume that shopping is primarily concerned with individuals and materialism. But Miller rejects this assumption and follows the surprising route of analysing shopping by means of an analogy with anthropological studies of sacrificial ritual. He argues that the act of purchasing goods is almost always linked to other social relations, and most especially those based on love and care.

The ethnographic sections of the book are based on a year's study of shopping on a street in North London. This provides the basis for a sensitive description of the issues the shopper confronts when making decisions as to what to buy. Miller develops a theory to account for these observations, arguing that shopping typically consists of three major stages which reflect the three key stages of many rites of sacrifice. In both shopping and sacrifice the ultimate intention is to constitute others as desiring subjects. Finally the book examines certain historical shifts in both subjects and objects of devotion, in particular, ideals of gender and love.

This treatment of shopping from the perspective of comparative anthropology represents a highly innovative approach to one of the most familiar tasks of our daily lives. Written in a clear and accessible manner, this book will be of interest to students and academics in anthropology, sociology and cultural studies, as well as anybody who wants to consider more deeply the nature of their own everyday activities.

Zilbergeld calls attention to the dangers of the politically correct movement while providing specific counterarguments to the claims made by the politically correct across a range of social, educational, and political issues. Zilbergeld contends that political correctness poses the most important intellectual threat to America at the turn of the century. The issue of political correctness is important because it is a massive and a largely successful attempt to undermine the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization. The book analyzes the issue of political correctness in five areas: education, science and the environment, affirmative action and group entitlement, the military, and the culture wars. It also explores the nature and concepts of political correctness, including its philosophical and historical antecedents. In each chapter, the specific issue is addressed with examples of political correct arguments and counterarguments so that the reader can evaluate the issue equitably.

When it was first published as a special issue of the prestigious theory journal Poetics Today, the collection was named Best Special Issue of 2001 by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals - a body affiliated with the Modern Languages Association (MLA).

The judges had the following to say about the collection:

'What finally characterises the best... is a publishing design that. . . brings together a community of scholars . . . |and that] realises the potential of a publishing project, as opposed to good topics which did not mature significantly beyond a proceedings collection . . . Instead of the usual tactic of canonising a national or regional literature, or taking the measure of an existing tradition, this collection sets up a dialectic between South Africa's impossibly heterogeneous literary tradition, and its position as a literary/cultural symbol in Europe and the First World . . . Instead of making the job even more impossible, this somehow clarifies the peculiar multidirectional traffic that makes the question of South African culture a matter of global interest.'

In the Early Modern period, massive emigration, along with political contention between the Court and the City, reshaped London's social topography and human landscape. This book examines the spaces and identities which characterized the changing metropolis. From excursions into institutions like Bedlam, Bridewell, and the Theatre, as well as exploring the less formal places and practices of London, such as prostitution, the suburbs, and the fashion parades at St Paul's Walk, a new way of seeing the city becomes open to us.

The present volume is the first to address the interrelationship between Goethe's scientific thought and work, his ideas on art and literary oeuvre, and chaos and complexity theories. The eleven studies assembled in it treat one or more elements or aspects of this interrelationship, ranging from basic concepts all the way to a model of an aesthetic-scientific methodology. In the process, the authors scrutinize chaos and complexity both as motif and motor of literary texts and nature within various contexts of past and present. The volume should be of interest to literary scholars, scientists, and philosophers of science, indeed, to all those who are interested in the continuities between the humanities and sciences, culture and nature.

This is a landmark study on Aby Warburg's life and work, translated into English.In ""Aby Warburg and Anti-Semitism"", Charlotte Schoell-Glass provides an unprecedented look at the life and writings of cultural critic Aby Warburg through the prism of Warburg's little-known political views. Schoell-Glass argues provocatively based on archival research that Warburg's work and teachings developed as a reaction to the growing anti-Semitism in Germany, which he saw as a threat to classical education and university scholarship. Translated into English for the first time, ""Aby Warburg and Anti-Semitism"" sheds much needed light on Warburg's views on Judaism and the politics of his time.Aby Warburg, scion of a well-known Jewish banking family in Hamburg, sacrificed his birthright to pursue a career as a private scholar. As an independent art historian, he devoted himself almost exclusively to reinterpreting the revival of antiquity within the Renaissance, urging other art historians to approach their work as a brand of the larger study of image making and philosophy. In this study, Schoell-Glass examines Warburg's most influential essays on Durer, Rembrandt, and the Sassetti Chapel and his most innovative concepts - the accessories of motion, the pathos formula, and the afterlife of antiquity - to illustrate how Warburg persistently showed a deep concern over a disappointing and unstable outside world within his own work. Schoell-Glass shows how Warburg attempts to make a response to anti-Semitism the only way he knew how, despite his awareness of the diminishing societal relevance of that response.From this study of Warburg, Schoell-Glass produces a multilayered case study of the encounter between twentieth-century politics and scholarship. Art historians, German historians, and scholars of Jewish studies and cultural studies will be grateful for this volume.

"This set of 18 essays offers a variety of interesting commentaries a 'progressive forum' on the Clinton sex scandal. . . . The collection includes (in part) ruminations on body imagery, the idea of 'the Jewess, ' the association of sexual recklessness with notions of race and class, the peculiarities of Clinton's politics (as well as his personal behavior) that made him vulnerable to such an attack, and the implications for Clinton's (reluctant) feminist supporters."
--"Library Journal"

"The book contains more than its share of smart writing"
--"Salon.com"

Alongside the O.J. Simpson trial, the affair between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky now stands as the seminal cultural event of the 90s. Alternatively transfixed and repelled by this sexual scandal, confusion still reigns over its meanings and implications. How are we to make sense of a tale that is often wild and bizarre, yet replete with serious political and cultural implications?

Our Monica, Ourselves provides a forum for thinking through the cultural, political, and public policy issues raised by the investigation, publicity, and Congressional impeachment proceedings surrounding the affair. It pulls this spectacle out of the framework provided by the conventions of the corporate news media, with its particular notions of what constitutes a newsworthy event. Drawing from a broad range of scholars, Our Monica, Ourselves considers Monica Lewinsky's Jewishness, Linda Tripp's face, the President's penis, the role of shame in public discourse, and what it's like to have sex as the president, as well as specific legal and historical issues at stake in the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

Thoughtful but accessible, immediate yet far reaching, Our Monica, Ourselves will change the way we think about the Clinton affair, while helping us reimagine culture and politics writ large.

Contributors include: Lauren Berlant, Eric O. Clarke, Ann Cvetkovich, Simone Weil Davis, Lisa Duggan, Jane Gallop, Marjorie Garber, Janet R. Jakobsen, James R. Kincaid, Laura Kipnis, Tomasz Kitlinski, Pawel Leszkowicz, Joe Lockard, Catharine Lumby, Toby Miller, Dana D. Nelson, Anna Marie Smith, Ellen Willis, and Eli Zaretsky.

Drawing from a diverse literature that underscores America's growing racial hostility and violence, York defines and explores the claims of cross-cultural training as an aid to increasing personal satisfaction and professional productivity in culturally diverse work environments. York claims that soaring failure rates among cross-cultural workers, particularly teachers, business personnel, and missionaries, are the result of inadequate, poorly administered, or inappropriate cross-cultural training. Examining more than 500 studies of cross-cultural training programs in more than a dozen occupations, York compares training given to Peace Corps and diplomatic corps members, teachers, doctors, and others who work in culturally diverse environments. In an analysis of these programs, she determines whether differences in policies, goals, selection procedures, lengths of training time, age or race of trainees, training location, or other factors contribute to long-term effectiveness of the programs.

Loustaunau and Sanchez-Bane combine their many years of association and collaboration dealing with health issues in the U.S.-Mexico border area, to bring together a series of chapters illustrating that asi es la vida, that's life, need not indicate a fatalistic acceptance that poverty, sickness, misery, and misfortune must be taken in stride. The authors of the chapters have researched, studied, worked with, or have been borderlanders themselves. The chapters focus on the impact of the social structure, and on the power and determination of people to change their conditions for the better, increasing their choices and enlarging their worlds. They look beyond political and economic barriers to find the spark in the human spirit that must be identified and nurtured to produce a better life for the benefit of peoples and nations on both sides of the border, and to nourish the third culture as a bridge between nations. The authors note the dangers and pitfalls along the way, and the need for more realistic policies and programs to empower people to define their own problems, and to participate in fashioning the solutions.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, American media abound with images and narratives of bodily transformations. At the crossroads of American, cultural, literary, media, gender, queer, disability and governmentality studies, the book presents a timely intervention into critical debates on body transformations and contemporary makeover culture.

The front-line soldiers of the First World War endured appalling conditions in the trenches and suffered unprecedented slaughter in battle. Their morale, as much as the strategy of their commanders, played the crucial part in determining the outcome of `the war to end all wars'. J. G. Fuller examines the experience of the soldiers of the British and Dominion armies. How did the troops regard their plight? What did they think they were fighting for? Dr Fuller draws on a variety of contemporary sources, including over a hundred magazines produced by the soldiers themselves. This is the first scholarly analysis of the trench journalism which played an important role in the lives of the ordinary soldiers. Other themes explored include the nature of patriotism, discipline, living conditions, and leisure activities such as sport, concert parties, and the music hall. Dr Fuller's vivid and detailed study throws new light on the question of warfare, and in particular how the British and Dominion armies differed from those of their allies and opponents, which were wracked by mutiny or defeat as the war went on.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"In this remarkable volume, Paula S. Fass, a pioneer and pace-setter in the burgeoning field of children's history, demonstrates that a knowledge of history is essential to understanding contemporary controversies over child protection, the commercialization of childhood, multiculturalism in public schools, and the impact of globalization."
--Steven Mintz, author of "Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood"

aThought-provokinga--"Choice"

Paula S. Fass, a pathbreaker in children's history and the history of education, turns her attention in Children of a New World to the impact of globalization on children's lives, both in the United States and on the world stage. Globalization, privatization, the rise of the "work-centered" family, and the triumph of the unregulated marketplace, she argues, are revolutionizing the lives of children today.

Fass begins by considering the role of the school as a fundamental component of social formation, particularly in a nation of immigrants like the United States. She goes on to examine children as both creators of culture and objects of cultural concern in America, evident in the strange contemporary fear of and fascination with child abduction, child murder, and parental kidnapping. Finally, Fass moves beyond the limits of American society and brings historical issues into the present and toward the future, exploring how American historical experience can serve as a guide to contemporary globalization as well as how globalization is altering the experience of American children and redefining childhood.

Clear and scholarly, serious but witty, Children of a New World provides afoundation for future historical investigations while adding to our current understanding of the nature of modern childhood, the role of education for national identity, the crisis of family life, and the influence of American concepts of childhood on the world's definitions of children's rights. As a new generation comes of age in a global world, it is a vital contribution to the study of childhood and globalization.

The works of Louisiana authors differ from the works of other Southern writers in significant ways. Strong French, Spanish, Native American, and African American traditions shaped Louisiana culture, and Louisiana writers reflect that cultural diversity in their works. So too, historical and religious influences caused Louisiana to develop in a distinct way, and these influences have similarly affected Louisiana writers. The narrative styles employed by these writers generally differ from the styles of other Southern authors. While contemporary Louisiana writers have contributed a substantial body of work to Southern literature, their writings have not received adequate scholarly attention. This book provides a critical introduction to Louisiana literature and gives special attention to how Louisiana literature and culture depart from the rest of the South.

The volume is the first collection of scholarly studies focusing on Louisiana writers from the 1930s to the present. Drawing together discussions of 15 of Louisiana's current premier fiction writers, the collection is organized into three broad sections. The first examines Louisiana narratives and folk traditions; the second, influences of religious traditions on Louisiana writers, including Protestantism, Catholicism, and Paganism; and the third, the construction of gender and race in Louisiana culture. Included are discussions of such writers as Ernest J. Gaines, Anne Rice, James Lee Burke, Moira Crone, John Dufresne, Michael Lee West, Rebecca Wells, and Robert Olin Butler.

While African literature is presently enjoying much attention from the scholarly community, its heritage and identity are becoming less clearly defined. While Africa has a rich oral tradition, African writers find themselves writing in the languages of their colonial oppressors. So too, many of the best African writers now live outside Africa, particularly in North America. Much of the criticism of African literature is written by American professors, African writers sometimes teach their literature at American universities, and American publishers issue African literary works. At the same time, the political climate of many African countries has been detrimental to literacy and writing. This book explores many of the issues currently facing African literature.

Each chapter is written by an expert contributor, to provide the volume with a broad coverage of numerous topics related to the present state of African literature. The opening chapters examine issues of language and postcoloniality in African literary works. Later chapters discuss such concerns as the formation of an African literary canon, representations of history and ideology in African writing, the role of women in African literature, and African ritual theater. Through its various chapters, the volume makes clear that African writers continue to engage pressing social and political issues, and that they are intellectuals rather than entertainers.

By the year 2000, more than one-third of Americans will be persons of color, and by 2050 non-white persons will constitute 45% of the population. Immigration from European countries has decreased, but the number of migrants from countries of non-white ancestry has increased. Consequently, many Americans are showing a growing interest in knowledge about the values and behaviors of their diverse associates. This book offers an insight into the diverse lifestyles for some cultures of color in American society. Although all members of these cultures may not identify themselves as persons of color, the cultures were selected because they incorporate a significant number of non-white individuals. Each chapter presents an overview of a cultural group that includes a brief history, migration trends, traditional and modern family practices, religious beliefs, concepts about death and dying, nutritional preferences, health behaviors, and diseases often found among its members. The cultures discussed are Africans, African Americans, Alaskans, Asians, Haitians, Hawaiians, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, and West Indians. This book should be of interest to academics, health care professionals, sociologists, clergy, and laypersons. Its goal is to alleviate fear and prejudice through informed understanding.

No one likes us, we don't care' is the anthem of the most notorious fans in British football. But little is known about the actual people who generated and continue to maintain this most infamous of working-class subcultures. In addition to the voices of the fans themselves, this book provides a rich and original account of the historical background, social sources, expressive culture and ritual practices of Millwallism, a far more complex, meaningful and anthropologically compelling phenomenon than the media stereotypes suggest. The author argues that Millwall functions in the popular consciousness as a powerful symbol: specific understandings of 'football hooliganism', working-class masculinity, and violent 'neo-fascism' are triggered by its use in the media and in everyday social interaction. There are, it follows, few social groups as heavily mythologized as Millwall fans. Further, the generation and maintenance of this myth has significance far beyond the club itself, and is rooted in the meanings attached to working-class identities and modernity, masculinity and the body. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Millwall, the issues of 'football hooliganism' or working-class masculinity, sociology, anthropology, or sports studies.Shortlisted for the Philip Abrams Memorial Book Prize 2001

ICT Acceptance, Investment and Organization: Cultural Practices and Values in the Arab World is a unique source of information outlining the importance of Information Communication Technology (ICT) adoption and diffusion. This book covers the Arab world's strong need for access to information systems, while still paying close attention to their culture and localization of practices. These values and beliefs are not only linked to factors such as language, governance and religion, but also influenced by cultural, political and legal issues. These are important factors that could have a far-reaching impact on their overall success or failure.

Examines the interdependent relationships between the film industry and the state in East Asia, treating films as political economic products, mixtures of government policy and industrial motives, rather than mere works of art or media commodities. Chapters examine the East Asian film industries from the 1930s to the 2010s, which pursued their own economic and political goals by cooperating, negotiating, and conflicting with states. Through studies of national film policies, film industry strategies, and cultural-political influences on audience receptivity, this book reveals how films are formed by the interaction of the state, the film companies and audiences.

This edited collection brings together distinguished scholars across a range of academic disciplines to explore how the European Union engages with culture. The book examines the ways in which cultural issues have been framed at the EU level and the policies and instruments to which they have given vent.

Protest is a ubiquitous and richly varied social phenomenon, one that finds expression not only in modern social movements and political organizations but also in grassroots initiatives, individual action, and creative works. It constitutes a distinct cultural domain, one whose symbolic content is regularly deployed by media and advertisers, among other actors. Yet within social movement scholarship, such cultural considerations have been comparatively neglected. Protest Cultures: A Companion dramatically expands the analytical perspective on protest beyond its political and sociological aspects. It combines cutting-edge synthetic essays with concise, accessible case studies on a remarkable array of protest cultures, outlining key literature and future lines of inquiry.

The last 15 years have witnessed deep changes in Israeli society. The naive solidarity of the early years of statehood has given way to more sophisticated approaches, and the atmosphere of the 1990s was conducive towards critique and open discussion. It was the age of the Oslo Accords, of the large wave of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, economic growth and prosperity, and a concurrent feeling of security and well-being. Israel was fast becoming a postcapitalist society, a junior member of the global village. This newly acquired self-assurance led to openness towards unorthodox views on basic questions of Israeli identity. The new mood found expression in the cultural climate and in the public debates. The Zionist narrative in relation to the Palestinians; the early troubled absorption of immigrants from Islamic countries; the discrimination against the Arab Israeli minority; the delay in the 1950s in incorporating the memory of the Holocaust into collective memory; the Zionist attitude towards the Jewish Diaspora, all these were issues on the cultural and intellectual agenda, subjects of heated controversies. This book attempts to come to grips with these themes. The complex texture of Israeli society is drawn here by a number of hands, presenting up-to-date approaches, as viewed by experts.

What are the functions of optimism in modern societies? How is hope culturally transmitted? What values and attitudes does it reflect? This book explores how and why powerful institutions propagate 'cultures of optimism' in different domains, such as politics, work, the family, religion and psychotherapy.