Robert Kastenbaum, creator of the award-winning "Encyclopedia of Death," has now collected and edited a source of reliable information on adult development that is accessible to the general reader, useable by professionals, and perfect for those who are simply browsing. This work is a fascinating and highly informative look at the milestones and ordeals, the key issues, and the concerns of American adults. The book expands our understanding of adulthood through 105 articles written by more than 70 contributing specialists from the fields of psychology, anthropology, religion, and sociology.

Assuming power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party was soon faced with a crucial problem: how to construct the socialist 'New Man'? Using Foucault's theory of 'technologies of the self', Lynteris examines the conflict between self-cultivation and the abolition of the self in the biopolitically neuralgic field of 'socialist medicine'.

This book paints a comprehensive portrait of Mexico's system of assisted reproduction first from a historical perspective, then from a more contemporary viewpoint. Based on a detailed analysis of books and articles published between the 1950s and 1980s, the first section tells the story of how the epistemic, normative, and material infrastructure of the assisted reproduction system was built. It traces the professionalization process of assisted reproduction as a medical field and the establishment of its professional association. Drawing on ethnographic material, the second part looks at how this system developed and flourished from the 1980s up to 2010, its commercialization process, how the expansion of reproductive services took place, and the messages regarding reproductive technologies that circulated within a wide discursive landscape. Given its scope and methods, this book will appeal to scholars interested in science and technology studies, reproduction studies, history of medicine, medical anthropology, and sociology.

The detective, as a preeminent figure in all forms of American popular culture, has become the subject of a variety of theoretical exploration. By investigating that figure, these essays demonstrate how the genre embodies all the contradictions of American society and the ways in which literature and the media attempt to handle those contradictions. Issues of class, gender, and race; the interaction of film and literature; and generic evolution are fundamental to any understanding of the American detective in all of his or her forms. Beginning with essays about Raymond Chandler's treatment of women, Part I concentrates on writers of the genre whose detectives embody aspects of American culture in the 20th century. Through examination of the work of Elmore Leonard, Chester Himes, Sue Grafton, and others, these essays look at the influence of film on literature, how ethnicity affects the genre's conventions, and gender issues. Part II looks closely at specific detectives in the media and demonstrates how the film detective has gone from one who upholds the moral order to one who contributes to the continuation of evil. A study of television detectives confirms the necessity of formula and variation to sustain a detective over many seasons.

This transnational collection discusses the use of Native American imagery in twentieth and twenty-first-century European culture. With examples ranging from Irish oral myth, through the pop image of Indians promulgated in pornography, to the philosophical appropriations of Ernst Bloch or the European far right, contributors illustrate the legend of "the Indian." Drawing on American Indian literary nationalism, postcolonialism, and transnational theories, essays demonstrate a complex nexus of power relations that seemingly allows European culture to build its own Native images, and ask what effect this has on the current treatment of indigenous peoples.

Increasingly, women and minorities are entering fields where white male power is firmly entrenched. The spaces they come to occupy are not empty or neutral, but are imbued with history and meaning. This groundbreaking book interrogates the pernicious, subtle but nonetheless widely held view that certain bodies are naturally entitled to certain spaces, while others are not.Drawing on case studies from within the nation state, including Westminster and Whitehall, the art world, academia and everyday life, this book uncovers the hidden processes that undermine female and/or racialized bodies in spaces marked by masculinity and whiteness. How are positions of authority racialized and gendered? How do people manage their femininity and/or blackness while in a predominantly white male context? How do spaces become naturalized or normalized, and what does it mean when they are disrupted?Answering these questions and many more, this book is the first to examine the meaning of diversity in organizations in its absolute complexity. It argues that a thorough engagement with difference requires a rigorous investigation of how institutional cultures become normative. It is only when we see and name this invisible central point of reference, which is so often taken for granted, that we can we truly unsettle long established links. Uniting social, cultural and political theory, and engaging with a range of substantive material from a variety of institutions, this book is a timely contribution to wide-reaching debates on race, gender and space.

Since the global financial crisis the unprecedented role independent central banks have come to play in our societies has been increasingly disputed. This, in turn, has drawn greater attention to the link between their legitimacy, public support and their independence. Over the past thirty years, academics and central bankers have tried to systematically pin down the sources of central bank independence. One of them, however - culture - has continuously eluded their grip. By engaging in an ethnography of the social text of German, European and US monetary affairs, this book introduces a new analytical framework that will enable practitioners and academics, particularly within sociology, economics, political economy, and political science, to gain a clear understanding of the role of culture in central banking. Also, it will show why for an independent central bank meeting its own monetary goals may not be enough to secure public support for itself and its currency.

This book follows the development of industrial agriculture in California and its influence on both regional and national eating habits. Early California politicians and entrepreneurs envisioned agriculture as a solution to the food needs of the expanding industrial nation. The state's climate, geography, vast expanses of land, water, and immigrant workforce when coupled with university research and governmental assistance provided a model for agribusiness. In a short time, the San Francisco Bay Area became a hub for guaranteeing Americans access to a consistent quantity of quality foods. To this end, California agribusiness played a major role in national food policies and subsequently produced a bifurcated California Cuisine that sustained both Slow and Fast Food proponents. Problems arose as mid-twentieth century social activists battled the unresponsiveness of government agencies to corporate greed, food safety, and environmental sustainability. By utilizing multidisciplinary literature and oral histories the book illuminates a more balanced look at how a California Cuisine embraced Slow Food Made Fast.

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.

This book explores pain in a number of ways. At the heart of the book is an extension of Melzack's neuromatrix theory of pain into the social, cultural, and economic fields. Specific assemblages involving varied institutions, flows of capital, encounters, and social and economic structures provide a framework for the formation of pain, its perception, experience, meaning, and cultural production. Complementing the extended neuromatrix is a second theory, focussed on the propensity of western market capitalism to seek out new areas of life to subsume to capital. Pain is one such life area that is now ripe for exploitation. Although the book has theory at its heart, it draws extensively on case studies to identify the contradictions and complexities. Case studies are drawn from accounts of drug use in varied contexts such as prescription drugs, methamphetamine use, oxycodone use in North America, and the global rise of the medicinal cannabis marketplace.

Handbook of Research on Technologies and Cultural Heritage: Applications and Environments covers the many important uses information communication technology in enhancing the experience at cultural environments. From museums, to archaeological sites, to festivals and artistic events to even government institutions and public buildings, information communication technology is revolutionizing the way the public participates at and with these cultural sites, and this reference source provides both a thorough exploration of this revolution and springboard for future discoveries.

This book investigates economic, political, and cultural conditions that have led to transnational flows of culture in Asia. Coverage also looks at the consequences of an increasingly interconnected Asian regional culture as well as policy makers and cultural industries' response to it. The book features essays written by researchers from different countries in Asia and beyond with diverse disciplinary backgrounds. The volume also contains engaging examples and cases with comparative perspectives. The contributors provide readers with grounded analysis in the organizational and economic logics of Asian creative industries, national cultural policies that promote or hinder cultural flows, and the media convergence and online consumers' surging demand for Asianized cultural products. Such insights are of crucial importance for a better understanding of the dynamics of transnational cultural flows in contemporary Asia. In addition, the essays aim to "de-westernize" the study of cultural and creative industries, which draws predominantly on cases in the United States and Europe. The contributors focus instead on regional dynamics of the development of these industries. The popularity of J-Pop and K-Pop in East and Southeast Asia (and beyond) is now well known, but less is known about how this happened. This volume offers readers theoretical tools that will help them to make better sense of those exciting phenomena and other rising cultural flows within Asia and their relevance to the global cultural economy.

For black people in America, Christian formation historically has come at a steep price--alienation from, even shame for, their African past. This alienation is primarily rooted in the acceptance of two orthodox Christian doctrines: the doctrines of original sin and Jesus Christ as exclusive savior. This work is concerned with the way Black Christian formation, because of the acceptance of universal, absolute, and exclusive Christian doctrines, seems to justify and even encourage anti-African sentiment. Clark seeks to address this problem by constructing a doctrine of the ancestors in an effort to legitimize indigenous African religious categories and offer an alternative theological anthropology for the future of Black theology.

In creating interpretive strategies for maritime sites, archaeologists and resource managers often are required to think creatively to overcome challenges and problems. These issues include interpreting sites in inaccessible locations and extremely deep water, enabling and controlling access to fragile sites and restricted areas, monitoring visitor behavior, making information interesting to a wide audience, and creating opportunities for public engagement, among other concerns. Meeting Challenges presents cutting-edge interpretation and public education strategies for maritime resources, both on land and underwater, with emphasis on solving the unique problems often associated with presenting these fragile, limited-access sites as heritage attractions and on developing effective visitation and civic engagement opportunities. The examples presented ideally can serve as models for resource managers, archaeologists engaged in interpretation, and site administrators. This volume brings together a diverse group of heritage professionals to discuss issues they've encountered and to present ideas and case studies for adapting, improvising, and overcoming them.

Professors Murphy and Choi use postmodern philosophy to expose an important source of racism and cultural domination. They examine foundationalism, which they see at the core of the Western intellectual tradition and which is shown to foster a metaphysics of domination. By contrast, postmodernism undermines this root of racism.

They demonstrate that foundationalism is not needed to support identity, institutions, or political order. Indeed, they assert that true pluralism is possible once foundationalist approaches to knowledge and order are set aside. Special attention is directed to two current modes of discrimination: institutional racism and symbolic violence. Murphy and Choi provide an intriguing look at ways to undercut the justification for racism and other threats to cultural difference. This volume will be of particular interest to scholars and other researchers in the areas of race relations, cultural studies, and political theory.

Promoting cultural understanding in a globalized world, this collection offers a new perspective on Western philosophy and religion through the voices of Chinese scholars. It examines the evolution of economic and political structures across the United States and the European Union, as well as key developments in various educational systems in the United Kingdom, Sweden, the US, France and Germany. As an interdisciplinary study situated at the intersection of sociology, history, culture and philosophy, this book re-examines pivotal structures and developments in Western countries and provides readers with a succinct yet effective way of mastering a deeper understanding of Western culture.

This book is a study of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial Competitions of the 1990s, with a focus on designs that kindle empathetic responses. Through analysis of provocative designs, the book engages with issues of empathy, secondary witnessing, and depictions of concentration camp iconography. It explores the relationship between empathy and cultural memory when representations of suffering are notably absent. The book submits that one design represents the idea of an uncanny memorial, and also pays attention to viewer co-authorship in counter-monuments. Analysis of counter-monuments also include their creative engagement with German history and their determination to defy fascist aesthetics. As the winning design for The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is abstract with an information centre, there is an exploration of the memorial museum. Callaghan asks whether this configuration is intended to compensate for the abstract memorial's ambiguity or to complement the design's visceral potential. Other debates explored concern political memory, national memory, and the controversy of dedicating the memorial exclusively to murdered Jews.

This volume presents multiple idiographic, archaeological studies of vernacular watercraft from North America and the Caribbean. Rather than attempt to synthesize all vernacular types, this volume focuses on ship construction data recovered through archaeological investigations that has been used to make inferences about culture. This collection of case studies, including many examples from cultural resource management and graduate student theses, presents a thematic exploration of cultural adaptation as expressed through ship construction.

Tourism Discourse offers new insights into the role of spoken, written and visual discourse in representating and producing tourism as a global cultural industry. With a view to the interplay between the symbolic and economic orders of global mobility, the book is grounded in empirically-based studies of key tourism genres.

The enormous growth of evangelicalism is one of the major developments in recent American life. Like other scholars, Jorstad acknowledges that evangelicalism has grown because it is theologically attractive. But Jorstad also attributes the growth of the evangelical movement to its relationship with American popular culture. According to the author, the evangelical movement was able to integrate populist, democratic traditions with a cultural inclusiveness, a mastery of high technology, and a willingness to use mass media to spread its views. The book contains three sections. The first traces the development of evangelical subculture between 1960 and 1990. The second part discusses the evangelical movement and social and individual values. The third part explores popular religion and the media. The book considers the involvement of evangelicals in popular religion, the appeal of popular religion to many but not to all evangelicals, the similarities between popular religion and more traditional religious organizations, and the means by which evangelicalism effectively utilizes the many genres and styles of popular culture.

This book presents journeys of sixteen Indigenous Australian athletes from their first touch of a'footy' to the highest levels of Australian football and rugby league, conceptualized as a processof learning. The authors challenge simplistic explanations of Indigenous success in Australianfootball and rugby league, centered on the notion of the 'natural athlete'. The book tracesthe development of Indigenous sporting expertise as a lifelong process of learning situated inlocal culture and shaped by the challenges of transitioning into professional sport. Individually,the life stories told by the participants provide fascinating insights into experience, cultureand learning. Collectively, they provide deep understanding of the powerful influence thatAboriginal culture exerted on the participants' journeys to the top of their sports while locatingindividual experience and agency within larger economic, cultural and social considerations.Stories of Indigenous Success in Australian Sport will be of interest to students and scholarsacross a range of disciplines including Indigenous studies, physical education, education, sportmanagement and sociology

Yar examines the autobiographies of fallen sports stars, exploring their fall from grace and the stigma it entails. Drawing upon sociological and criminological perspectives, it illuminates how fallen stars use confessional acts of story-telling to seek forgiveness, vindication and redemption.

Paying attention to the historically specific dimensions of objects such as the photograph, the illustrated magazine and the collection, the contributors to this volume offer new ways of thinking about nineteenth-century practices of reading, viewing, and collecting, revealing new readings of Wordsworth, Shelley, James and Wilde, among others.

This book is available open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The so-called Arab Spring challenged conventional wisdom and certainties about the Arab world where its effects continue to be felt as well as in the diaspora. This book provides an original contribution to current social and cultural theory on Arab social movements by giving a fuller historical and critical treatment of contemporary artistic and cultural production from the region and beyond. Thematically structured and covering culture, media, politics, and literary studies, the book uses a range of theoretical material that engages readers in three key ways. First, it adopts a critical standpoint with respect to the term "Arab Spring," recognizing the multiple interpretations and varied geographical, historical, and political realities of the term. Second, its focus on carefully selected case studies - namely, Egypt, Tunis, Syria, and Yemen - adds depth to analysis of the cultural, literary and artistic dimensions that operate fluidly across the Arab world. Third, it presents a methodological case study for the growing community of researchers involved in interdisciplinary education. Together, the contributors to the book show how the interplay of politics, culture, and media across varied locations has and continues to shape emergent Arab social forms and a region on the cusp of historical and cultural change.

Domestic Violence Laws in the United States and India is a comparative study of the domestic violence laws in India and the United States, seeking to illuminate the critical issues of intimate partner violence through the lenses of these two societies.