Winner: Spur Award, Best Western Nonfiction "Yeeeeehaaah!" Nightly that raucous cry breezes out from beneath the broad-brimmed Stetsons of boot-scootin line dancers at boisterous bars called Cadillac Ranch, Cactus Moon, or Stallions & Stars. And that, Michael Johnson tells us, is just one of the many signs that Americans have rekindled--and refashioned--their love affair with the American West. These "New Westers," Johnson reveals, line-dance and two-step, listen to Garth Brooks and George Strait, drink beer from long-neck bottles, wear clothes ordered from Sheplers, watch rodeo on ESPN, play Wild West arcade games, eat fajitas and tacos in stucco-style Mexican cafes, collect Western art and Native American crafts, and vacation in and move to the West. "New Westers" rewrite the history and biography of the West. They re-imagine the West in cowboy sagas and poetry, Native American novels, Mexican-American drama, nature writing, revisionist films, eclectic visual artwork, and neo-traditional music. They flock to movies like Thelma and Louise, Unforgiven, and Dances with Wolves or mini-series like Lonesome Dove and read bestsellers like The Crossing and All the Pretty Horses. "New Westers" are men and women who may or may not have ever hitched up a horse but who want a "personal" West. At the end of an urbanized century adrift in confusing change, they seek a more natural home, a fuller and wider sense of place, and a deeper and more colorful personal identity. They also want, Johnson shows, to revive the dream of the mythic West--but on new and different terms. They overrun the Old West and yet strive to preserve it, raising troubling new concerns about the differences between the mythic and the real, between traditional and contemporary cultural influences. Infused with true grit and true affection, Johnson's immensely entertaining book takes us on a lively jaunt through a colorful and amazing landscape. His celebration of things Western will be treasured by all armchair cowpokes or anyone who's ever dreamed of riding the high country.

In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music examines the important issues surrounding the music and image of one of the most innovative and successful rock bands ever. The band influence is examined both through an explication of the music and an ethnographic study of Led Zeppelin fans, who are quite candid about their likes and dislikes in the band's history. More than just a sampling of opinion, Fast uses this research to underscore her own findings on gender and sexuality, the creation of myth and the use of ritual, the appropriation of Eastern musics and the blues, the physicality of the music, and the use of the body in performance. Specific pieces, "Dazed and Confused", "Kashmir", "Stairway to Heaven", and "Whole Lotta Love" form the basis of an examination of the group's long-lasting appeal and their musical development.

Researchers in the new field of literary-and-cultural studies look at social issues - especially issues of change and mobility - through the lens of literary thinking. The essays range from cultural memory and migration to electronic textuality and biopolitics.

Through a unique combination of theoretical scope and material, and historical, breadth The Hermeneutics of Suspicion poses an original investigation into our understanding of alterity in Indian literature and history, and significantly contributes to an emerging discourse on East-West literary relations. Hans Georg Gadamer's notion of hermeneutical consciousness seeks to open up a cultural context through which to engage the other. It stands in opposition to the hermeneutics of suspicion advocated by recent popular theories, such as colonial discourse analysis, multiculturalism, postcolonial theory, the critique of globalism, etc. In his late work, Paul Ricoeur charts a middle path between the hermeneutics of suspicion and a hermeneutical consciousness that addresses the ontological and ethical categories of otherness. His approach reflects concerns voiced elsewhere, particularly in the historiography of Michel de Certeau and the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. This volume follows the path proposed by Ricoeur and, alongside Certeau and Levinas, provides an examination of varying representations of the Indian Other in classical Greek and Sanskrit sources, the writings of Church Fathers, apocryphal literature, the Romance tradition, Portuguese and Italian travel narratives and Jesuit mission letters. In the various texts examined, the problems of translation are highlighted together with the sense that understanding can be found somewhere between the different approaches of hermeneutical consciousness and critical consciousness. This book not only looks at the European reception of the Indian other, but also looks at the ancient Indian view of its others and the cross-pollination of Indian concepts of otherness with the West.

First published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Development is not an all-powerful machinery imposing its will upon powerless actors. Rather, it is a complex process that brings together multiple actors with diverse agendas. Participants' power in affecting outcomes results from their ability to mobilize discursive and material resources and to control and manipulate time and spatial contexts. This work critically examines development practices and various forms of collective action based on detailed ethnographical analysis of the Yacyreta hydroelectric project. The story unfolds in the borderlands of Paraguay and Argentina in the heart of the Latin American Southern Cone where local political cultures are responding to global forces that now dictate economic integration. Although relatively unknown today to the world, this area promises to exert a strong global impact in the near future.

The saga of the Yacyreta hydroelectric project on the Argentina-Paraguay border not only illustrates the radical change in the power dynamics of the Latin American Southern Cone region, but also reflects the transformation of development discourse and practice during the last decades. It examines the relationship between the weakened role of the nation-state in decision making and the emergence of nongovernmental organizations and grassroots movements as key development actors. Because the Yacyreta dam is being built in the borderlands of two countries as a binational undertaking, it threatens the boundedness of nation-states precisely where sovereignty is traditionally guarded--the national frontiers. Under these and other global challenges of deterritorialation such as processes of regional integration encouraged by Mercosur (Common Market of the South), popular conflicts have become spatialized, reflecting both the resilience of national imaginings and histories of exclusion and exploitation.

This study demystifies populist and romanticized academic constructions of subaltern groups. It shows that the outcomes of popular struggles can be one of accomodation and cooperation and not resistance. Nonetheless, they constitute serious threats to planned development. It challenges current approaches in development that advocate participation, empowerment, and communication.

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.

Shlapentokh . . . former senior fellow at MoscoW's Institute of Sociology, has written an important study of responses to the general domestic crisis of the USSR. The first half of the book is devoted to examination of the background of the current crisis; the second half covers major ideological tendencies, conservative, ' neo-Stalinist, ' and liberal.' Shlapentokh shows how Gorbachev has gradually absorbed much, but by no means all, of the liberal' ideology but concludes that future prospects for liberalizing tendencies are highly uncertain. . . . Shlapentokh's insights make this first comprehensive treatment of Soviet ideology in the Gorbachev era one of the more significant studies of the USSR in recent years. "Choice"

The mid-1970s found almost all spheres of Soviet society in economic, social, and moral decline, a decline that generated conflicting ideologies offering solutions. "Soviet Ideologies in the Period of Glasnost" provides a penetrating examination of these unofficial ideologies, both historically and analytically, based upon studies of Soviet media, literature, films, underground literature, and Western scholarly works. It is a thorough and well-documented discussion of unofficial thinking trends in the Soviet Union during the post-Brezhnev era.

View the Table of Contents .nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; Read the Introduction . "Oscar G. Chase studies the American legal system in the manner of an anthropologist. By comparing American 'dispute ways' with those of other systems, including some commonly believed to be more 'primitive, ' he finds interesting similarities that challenge the premise that we live in a society regulated by a rational and just 'rule of law.'" — New York Law Journal "A witty and engaging endeavor. . . . A good contribution to our professional knowledge, and it is a must reading." — Law and Politics Book Review "After readingLaw, Culture, and Ritual, no one could ever again think that our legal proceedings are nothing more than an efficient method of discovering truth and applying law. Oscar Chase effectively uses a comparative approach to help us to step back from our legal practices and see just how steeped in myths, rituals and traditions they are. Scholars will want to read this book for its contribution to comparative law, but everyone interested in American culture should read this book. Chase shows us that there is no separating law from culture: each informs and maintains the other.Law, Culture, and Ritualis a major step forward in the rapidly expanding field of the cultural study of law." — Paul Kahn, author ofThe Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship "Having allowed ourselves to be convinced (wrongly) that we are the most litigious people in the world, Americans have become obsessed with finding (quick) cures. Oscar Chase's book sounds a salutary warning. By presenting striking comparative examples that shatter our parochialism, he forces us to examine the cultural roots of disputeprocesses." — Richard Abel, Connell Professor of Law, UCLA Law School Disputing systems are products of the societies in which they operate - they originate and mutate in response to disputes that are particular to specific social, cultural, and political contexts. Disputing procedures, therefore, are an important medium through which fundamental beliefs, values, and symbols of culture are communicated, preserved, and sometimes altered. InLaw, Culture, and Ritual, Oscar G. Chase uses interdisciplinary scholarship to examine the cultural contexts of legal institutions, and presents several case studies to demonstrate that the processes used for resolving disputes have a cultural origin and impact. Ranging from the dispute resolution practices of the Azande, a technologically simple, small-scale African society, to the rise of discretionary authority in civil litigation in America, Chase challenges the claims of some scholars that official dispute systems are more reflective of the interests and preferences of elite professionals than of the cultures in which they are embedded.

A case study of why Third World countries are still poor, the premise of this book is that while some progress has been made in transforming the political economy of Ecuador, certain behaviors, beliefs and attitudes have kept the country from developing in ways that otherwise would have been possible. As the author asserts, for almost five centuries the cultural habits of Ecuadorian citizens have constituted a stumbling block for individual economic success. Still, he concludes, people's cultural values are not immutable: inconvenient customs can be changed or influenced by the economic success of immigrants. This is the challenge that Ecuador faces in the twenty-first century.

There is a wealth of scholarship on tourism from a variety of different disciplines, but few attempts to synthesize its broad themes into a coherent analytical framework. This book addresses this problem by analyzing tourism in light of contemporary social theory. By focusing on tourism in terms of consumption, commodification, and the political and cultural economy, the relationships between tourism, globalization, people, and place are explored in an empirically grounded but theoretically informed analysis.

Japanese culture is inscrutable-but then, so is American culture seen from the viewpoint of the Japanese. As Hayashi and Kuroda make clear, the problem is one of perspective. Neither is really an enigma if the viewer can free him- or herself from the mother culture and look at the other culture from within its own context. Along the way, the authors answer many questions about Japan from the never-ending nature of its trade disputes to the reasons for the misconceptions of many Western writers. The authors challenge those who think every culture perceives, thinks, and expresses alike. They also challenge those who believe that Japanese culture has changed significantly in recent years. Hayashi and Kuroda look at ancient poems and 7th-century documents as well as the writings of Japan's Nobel laureate, Oe, to show that the essence of Japanese culture remains unchanged. By examining the use of language as well as analyzing modern statistical data, Hayashi and Kuroda show how the Japanese concept of self is indistinct and how the Japanese live in a mental world of multiple truths. Along the way the authors provide new interpretations and insights that are invaluable to all students of Japan, from policy makers to poets and painters.

During the American Civil War, political ideology was the most important determinant of French journalistic attitudes. Conservatives usually supported the South while Liberals usually supported the North. Provincial newspapers, however, less consistently followed ideological patterns than their Parisian and big-city colleagues. Slavery was not a determinant of French attitudes, since all French were opposed to slavery; rather, both Conservatives and Liberals used the issue of slavery as a device to garner support. While Conservatives remained firm in believing that the South would prevail until the very end, Liberal journalists sometimes despaired of a Union triumph in the face of Northern military defeats.

Food at Sea: Shipboard Cuisine from Ancient to Modern Times traces the preservation, preparation, and consumption of food at sea, over a period of several thousand years, and in a variety of cultures. The book traces the development of cooking aboard in ancient and medieval times, through the development of seafaring traditions of storing and preparing food on the world s seas and oceans. Following a largely chronological format, Simon Spalding shows how the raw materials, cooking and eating equipments, and methods of preparation of seafarers have both reflected the shoreside practices of their cultures, and differed from them. The economies of whole countries have developed around foods that could survive long trips by sea, and new technologies have evolved to expand the available food choices at sea. Changes in ship construction and propulsion have compelled changes in food at sea, and Spalding s book explores these changes in cargo ships, passenger ships, warships, and other types over the centuries in fascinating depth of detail. Selected passages from songs and poems, quotes from seafarers famous and obscure, and new insights into culinary history all add spice to the tale."

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).

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.

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.

"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.

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.

Jewish identity in German culture remains in a critical state of flux. Analyzing its construction and perception in public discourse, the contributors of this volume discuss the works of a number of authors--from Kafka to new writers such as Irene Dische and Maxim Biller. In addition, topics covered include: American-Jewish writers in Germany, minority culture, homosexuality, and Jewish magazines.

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.

There could be no better homage to recently deceased sociologist Charles C. Moskos than dedicating to him this selection of the papers presented at RC01's international conference in Seoul (July 2008). It offers an up-to-date view of the panorama of social studies on armed forces and conflict resolution in a context of fast-moving change that renders many preceding theoretical previsions obsolete. Just to cite two aspects of this change, one can point first of all to how the presented studies move beyond the very concept of globalization, after which the conference had been named. It in fact emerged with clarity that the new dimensions of the context in which militaries and military policy must move are those of a constant, diffuse interaction of the 'local' and the 'global', so-called globalization. A second aspect, in the international area, is the shift towards a multipolar global order with the United States, the European Union, China, Russia, Latin America, Japan and India all manoeuvring for position, a shift that has significant consequences on military action as well.

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.

"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.

This book examines the essence of leadership, its characteristics and its ways in Asia through a cultural and philosophical lens. Using Asian proverbs and other quotes, it discusses leadership issues and methods in key Asian countries including China, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Singapore. It also explores the leadership styles of various great Asian political and corporate leaders. Further, it investigates several unique Asian philosophies, such as Buddhism, Guan Yin, Confucianism, Ta Mo, Chinese Animal zodiac signs, Hindu Gods, the Samurai, the Bushido Spirit and Zen in the context of leadership mastery and excellence. Offering numerous examples of a potpourri of the skills and insights needed to be a good, if not a great, leader, this practical, action-oriented book encourages readers to think, reflect and act.