The Culture of Immodesty in American Life and Politics is a collection of thirteen essays from a broad range of scholars and independent authors, evaluating the prevalence of immodesty in various aspects of American life and culture. Contributors diagnose immodesty through the lens of corporations that are 'too big to fail, ' consumption inspired by excessive greed, art and fashion that lack beauty and taste, government budgets resulting in perennial deficits, and foreign policy that meddle in the affairs of other nations. Going beyond mere diagnosis of societal ills, The Culture of Immodesty in American Life and Politics provides a prescription for cultural impropriety: promoting a framework for the rejection of immodesty and greed in contemporary life.

An inter-disciplinary, international collection that examines the mutual influences between law and culture through a series of sophisticated case studies showing how cultural phenomena are brought under legal regulation, how laws are resisted through cultural practices, and how those practices shape the way in which law is understood and applied.

This groundbreaking collection combines ethnographic and historic strategies to reveal how dance plays crucial cultural roles in various regions of the world, including Tonga, Java, Bosnia-Herzegovina, New Mexico, India, Korea, Macedonia, and England. The essays find a balance between past and present and examine how dance and bodily practices are core identity and cultural creators. Reaching beyond the typically Eurocentric view of dance, "Dancing from Past to Present" opens a world of debate over the role dance plays in forming and expressing cultural identities around the world.

Although Eugene O'Neill's work has generated much scholarship, his one-act plays have not received the critical attention they deserve. Given that O'Neill began his career writing such plays, including his justly famous "Sea Plays," associated with the Provincetown Players, it is surprising that his one-acts have been largely neglected. This collection aims to fill the gap by examining these texts, during what can be considered O'Neill's formative writing years, and the foundational period of American drama. A wide-ranging investigation into O'Neill's one-acts, the contributors shed light on a less-explored part of his career and assist scholars in understanding O'Neill's entire oeuvre.

Based on a wide range of field studies, Sir Raymond Firth discusses the geographical and historical factors that determine the development of racial groups; shows how culture is an out-growth of natural environment; and describes how various societies have solved the economic, technological, social and sexual problems that confront them. The book provides a framework for understanding all human societies and interpreting the changes that take place within them.

This book is a collection of essays covering a range of issues related to socioeconomic inequalities and diversities. The authors, leading social scientists of diverse nationalities, represent varied perspectives. The book has essays on multiculturalism, social inclusion and exclusion of minorities and other marginalized groups such as low castes, linguistic minorities, Adivasis (tribals), persons with disability and unemployed youth. The book focuses on some innovative concepts considered necessary to understand the very process and evolution of aspects of social development such as pro-sociality, authentic responsible self and leadership ideology. The book deals with the challenges for achieving social development and societal harmony. The book will be a very useful resource for social science scholars and particularly for social and cultural psychologists, development professionals and administrators interested in the issues related to social development, social diversity and inter-group relations. The book will also be useful for policy formulation and action.

Through the narratives and movements of survivors of the war in Lanka these interconnected essays develop the concept of 'survival media' as embodied and expressive forms of mobility across borders.

In the years since World War II, what began in the United States as a shift from a wartime to a peacetime economy soon led to a massive outpouring of new commercial offerings of consumer products and services accompanied by unprecedented efforts to market these commodities. How, Monroe Friedman asks, did these extraordinary commercial developments change the American people over the course of the postwar period? He offers the beginnings of an answer to this, and many other related questions, by bringing together the individual components of a recently completed series of studies on changes in language used in the popular literature of the United States since 1945. The studies ask how literature has been influenced by commercial developments. Brand names were used as the indicator of linguistic influence, and detailed content analyses were conducted to examine trends in the use of brand names in popular literature contexts. The first chapter provides background information for the individual studies and the last chapter attempts to make sense of their aggregate findings. Several intervening chapters examine the results of content analyses of popular novels, plays, and songs of the postwar era. Additional chapters look at the use of brand names in newspaper reporting of non-business stories, as well as the symbolic communication functions of brand names in both humorous and non-humorous writings. The penultimate chapter uses test data from Consumer Reports to analyze the quality of the consumer products whose brand names are used frequently in the popular literature of the postwar era. Friedman offers a unique and important combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to an extremely large and diverse set of popular culture materials. His findings, which shed light on significant commercial developments of the postwar period, cut across many disciplines including American studies, history, literature, journalism, drama, linguistics, marketing, advertising, mass communications, sociology, psychology, and popular culture.

Growing dependency, increased contact and interactions, and the development of a participatory world culture have brought the topic of culture change to our attention as never before. Naylor examines the various issues and aspects of change, particularly directed or intended change, as it occurs within multicultural settings. He combines the best information available on the topic of change and provides a comprehensive model for change processes in an effort to supply the reader with the essentials required for understanding culture change and working within its contexts. It is appropriate for courses in anthropology, sociology, education, development studies and health, and will serve equally well for either undergraduate or graduate levels.

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.

Today, more Americans than ever are going abroad to visit, work, or study. Increasingly, the ability to communicate and work in cross-cultural situations is seen as an important determinant of success in business, government, education, and the social services. Being successful depends less on what you know of a particular culture than it does on what you know about managing new cultural situations.

This book provides a comprehensive and practical guide to communicating, learning, and adapting within any new cultural environment. It begins by examining what culture is and why it is important. It then goes on to outline the process of cross-cultural adjustment, and presents some highly effective tools and strategies for avoiding culture shock, while encouraging learning. Advice on learning a language, preparing for the transition, settling in, working and living overseas, and planning re-entry into U.S. culture is given. One of the book's most useful features is the presentation of a detailed plan for actually making the transition from one culture to another. It also provides a detailed chapter on re-entering the home environment, again to aid in minimizing shock and anxiety. The skills learned from this book are essential to success and can be put to use in any new culture, anywhere in the world.

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.

"Divided into three sections on cosmetics, clothes and hairstyling, this book explores how early modern women regarded beauty culture and in what waysskin, clothes and hair could be used to represent racial, class and gender identities, and to convey political, religious and philosophical ideals"--

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.

This book reviews the sources of the air pollutants responsible for building damage and the mechanisms involved. Studies investigating the relationships between pollution concentration (dose) and the resulting damage (response) are described and the latest research findings for dose-response functions are presented.

Trends in pollutant emissions, ambient concentrations and building damage over time are described and future predictions are presented. Methodologies for assessing the extent of the potential problem in a region the stock at risk are presented. Procedures for estimating the economic implications are described and the consequences are discussed in detail, because economic factors are important for reaching policy and management decisions at local, national and international scales.

Damage to cultural heritage buildings is an important additional effect which needs to be considered as the standards are revised and the factors which will need to be brought into the assessment are presented.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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."

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.

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.