An engrossing review of the development of global consumerism and its impact on sociological issues. The phrase "shop till you drop" has become as American as apple pie and the trend does not appear to be slowing. Consumer Culture begins with the history of the consumer culture, which reveals that our fascination with consuming shows not only the hidden significance of everyday items, such as sugar and fashionable clothing, but also reveals the uniqueness of our way of life. Consumer Culture also presents the views of economists and sociologists who see consumption as an expression of freedom. The book covers the social impact of consumption, examining such dubious milestones as physical attacks upon McDonald's and Starbucks, and best sellers that are critical of consumption. There is coverage of important research, such as whether consumers are making rational or impulsive choices and the effect of advertising on children. Capsule biographies of key individuals, such as Aaron Montgomery Ward, who pioneered the modern catalog, and Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's; important figures in advertising, such as Helen Rosen Woodward; leaders in the consumer protection movement, such as Ralph Nader and Florence Kelley; and more Statistics on U.S. and global consumption trends including clustering and segmentation in patterns of consumption; the growth of franchises and malls; shopping behavior by age, ethnicity, and geographical location; and environmental effects such as those due to garbage production

Whiteness is often looked upon and equated with being American, but this book seeks to discover how other American voices and experiences have been and are excluded from the American legacy. It directly addresses the notion of self and human division in a cultural climate that has historically fostered the marginalization of multiple racial identities. This is an interdisciplinary work on understanding and promoting intercultural communication and will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of communication, multicultural studies, social psychology, and sociology.

This book addresses a variety of topics within the growing discipline of Archaeoastronomy, focusing especially on Archaeoastronomy in Sicily and the Mediterranean and Cultural Astronomy. A further priority is discussion of the astronomical and statistical methods used today to ascertain the degree of reliability of the chronological and cultural definition of sites and artifacts of archaeoastronomical interest. The contributions were all delivered at the XVth Congress of the Italian Society of Archaeoastronomy (SIA), held under the rubric "The Light, the Stones and the Sacred" - a theme inspired by the International Year of Light 2015, organized by UNESCO. The full meaning of many ancient monuments can only be understood by examining their relation to light, given the effects that light radiation produces in "interacting" with lithic structures. Moreover, in addition to manifestations of the sacred through the medium of light (hierophanies), there are many ties between temples, tombs, megalithic structures, and the architecture of almost all ages and cultures and our star, the Sun. Readers will find the book to be a source of fascinating insights based on synergies between the disciplines of archaeology and astronomy.

Closing a critical gap in the literature examining the strained relationship between the U.S. and Japan, this book synthesizes the economic, political, historical, and cultural factors that have led these two nations, both practitioners of capitalism, along quite different paths in search of different goals. Taking an objective, multidisciplinary approach, the author argues that there is no single explanation for Japan's domestic economic or foreign trade successes. Rather, his analysis points to a systemic mismatch that has been misdiagnosed and treated with inadequate corrective measures. This systemic mismatch in the corporate strategy, economic policies, and attitudes of the U.S. and Japan created and is perpetuating three decades of bilateral economic frictions and disequilibria.

As long as both the U.S. and Japan deal more with symptoms than causes, bilateral problems will persist. This book's unique analysis will encourage a better understanding on both sides of the Pacific of what has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen if corporate executives and policymakers in the two countries do not better realize the extent of their differences and adopt better corrective measures.

This book is dedicated to the research of the "pleasure phenomenon" as the most important factor in individual and socio-cultural development. In a society of mass consumption, pleasure-having turned into a commodity and a means of manipulation-defines civilizational development. The authors theorize that the pursuit of pleasure can destroy one's self, culture, and environment. The recent rapid technological expansion has turned pleasure into a societal challenge. This study emphasizes the necessity of intrinsic transformation of marketing in the 21st Century which would shift the focus from seeking pleasure to controlling desires in a way that would benefit self, society, and the world.

The Asian American population is increasing rapidly and, not unpredictably, so are its mental health needs. A number of cultural factors and stressors common to Asian Americans pose obstacles to the successful employment of Western psychotherapy approaches and counseling---for example, the central role of the family in Asian life and the culturally based, traditional stigma associated with mental health problems. The authors, all practicing psychotherapists, focus on the critical aspects of transference and empathy in their consideration of the mental health approaches and therapies appropriate to ethnic minority population.

The work has value as a resource for professionals and as a training guide for those intending to practice as psychotherapists and counselors in minority communities. It offers extraordinary insights and practical guidance through the use of case studies. Not only do these identify problems stemming from the racial differences between client and therapist, but they also provide rich clinical examples of case diagnosis, treatment plans, and client status statements. This is an important book that will further both the theory and practice of psychotherapy among minority populations.

Transcending the widespread concerns about deteriorating moral values in American society, this collection focuses on the common values of American society. Through the perspectives of philosophers, historians, political scientists, theologians, anthropologists, economists, and scientists, this book examines American social values and discusses how they are applied in current areas of public interest.

American democratic ideals are not simply rooted in the conventional structural and institutional elements of a democracy, such as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. American democracy, in fact, could not survive without a strong basis of social values that support community, tolerance, and cooperation. Since social values form the common bonds of society, and may not be supported by individual members, they are determined through a complex cultural, legal, and political process, as one of the contributors points out.

The contributors to this book were assembled from a variety of disciplines and professions to examine social values and analyze their application in specific areas of current controversy. Through the perspectives of philosophy, anthropology, history, economics, political science, biomedical ethics, and religion, these discussions cover not only disciplinary perspectives but cover topics such as the environment, intergenerational interaction, social welfare policies, gender, and genetic engineering.

This volume presents a comparative framework in which to study the history of publishing and reading in Europe and North America during the eighteenth century. The chapters are written by leading French and American specialists in publishing during the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary eras. The book synthesizes current knowledge in the field and advances scholarship, particularly with respect to copyright legislation. It skillfully integrates the history of publishing during this period with the larger field of eighteenth-century intellectual and cultural history. The chapters are grouped in four sections devoted to publishing as a profession, publishing and the law, readership, and the collection and use of materials. Each broad area is addressed by both specialists from France and America to create a comparative context. The chapters address more particular topics from the perspectives of social, economic, and cultural history; literary criticism; law; and library history. The comparative framework yields new insights into the political cultures of eighteenth-century France and America and into the relationship of print media and political culture.

This volume brings together three areas of interest: the rule-based approach, the entrepreneur, and Japan as an empirical application. It highlights the advantages of the rule-based approach for economic analysis by linking different methodological underpinnings. Using these, the author exemplifies how rule-based economics allows a systematic analysis of the entrepreneur as the key figure in bringing about economic change and diversity. The book includes an empirical methodology for applied research in rule-based economics, which it puts to the test in an empirical study of entrepreneurship in contemporary Japan. The choice of entrepreneurship and Japan showcases the integrative power that rule-based economics brings to further breaking a theoretical deadlock and to analytically capturing a very particular economy investigated very little so far. By offering a body of new and original research, the monograph shows how the idea of entrepreneurship as a rule helps to resolve the Schumpeter-Kirzner divide and to develop an empirical approach to the determinants of entrepreneurial activity.

Postmodern philosophy is shown to be a valuable tool for exposing the bankruptcy of laissez-faire economics and culture and in developing a democratic policy. Despite the claims made by conservatives, Choi, Callaghan, and Murphy argue that an unencumbered market does not encourage pluralism. Sources of power are left intact that work in various ways to truncate democracy. Postmodernism offers an alternative to the conservative ideology and provides a new approach to promoting social equity. The protests in Los Angeles during the spring of 1992 signaled that the United States is a troubled society. Specifically, many people are not close to experiencing democracy. This is the case even though American society is becoming increasingly diverse. Certain powerful interests constrict the American policy in very important ways. Postmodern philosophy is used by Choi, Callaghan, and Murphy to illustrate how this control is maintained through the manipulation of symbolism and other cultural factors. Accordingly, they contend, new symbolism is needed before a democratic, pluralistic polity can be said to exist. Postmodernism is also employed to show how a democratic mode of order can be conceptualized. Contrary to what some critics claim, Postmodernism is a worldly philosophy that has much to say about contemporary issues. This volume of cultural criticism will be of interest to political philosophers, sociologists, and others concerned with current social and political problems.

The tension between nature and culture, which accompanies the rise of any large society, has become a subject of great concern in our time. In this compelling study, Gunther Barth, acclaimed author of City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America, identifies fleeting moments of concord between nature and culture in the course of American history. During the search for the Wilderness Passage, the progress of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the building of park cemeteries and big city parks, Americans realized that nature was not merely a force to be reckoned with, not merely a resource to be exploited, but also an integral component of their lives. Through the engineering of nature and culture in the urban environment, the energetic attempts to conserve large-scale nature in the United States emerged as an offspring of the big city. Heightening our understanding of the historical complexity of the relationship between nature and culture, and suggesting that harmony between the two is a mark of civilization, this original study will be an invaluable guide to anyone concerned with the quality of life in America, past and future.

Material religion is a rapidly growing field, and this volume offers an accessible, critical entry into these new areas of research. Each "key term" uses case studies and is accompanied by a color image - an object, practice, space, or site. The entries cut across geographies, histories, and traditions, offering a versatile and engaging text for the classroom. Key topics covered include: - Icon, ritual, magic, gender, race - Sacred, spirit, technology, - Space, belief, body, brain - Taste, touch, smell, sound, vision Each entry demonstrates in clear and jargon-free prose how the key term figures prominently in understanding the materiality of religion. Written by leading international scholars, all entries are linked by the ways materiality stands at the forefront of the understanding of religion, whether that comes from humanistic, social scientific, artistic, curatorial, or other perspectives. Brent Plate brings his expertise and extensive teaching experience to the comprehensive introduction which introduces students to the themes and methods of the material cultural study of religion. Key Terms in Material Religion provides a much-needed resource for courses on theory and method in religious studies, the anthropology of religion, and the ever-increasing number of courses focused on material religion.

This book offers a first rate selection of academic articles on Latin American bioethics. It covers different issues, such as vulnerability, abortion, biomedical research with human subjects, environment, exploitation, commodification, reproductive medicine, among others. Latin American bioethics has been, to an important extent, parochial and unable to meet stringent international standards of rational philosophical discussion. The new generations of bioethicists are changing this situation, and this book demonstrates that change. All articles are written from the perspective of Latin American scholars from several disciplines such as philosophy and law. Working with the tools of analytical philosophy and jurisprudence, this book defends views with rational argument, and opening for pluralistic discussion.

God, Space, and City in the Roman Imagination is a unique exploration of the relationship between the ancient Romans' visual and literary cultures and their imagination. Drawing on a vast range of ancient sources, poetry and prose, texts, and material culture from all levels of Roman society, it analyses how the Romans used, conceptualized, viewed, and moved around their city. Jenkyns pays particular attention to the other inhabitants of Rome, the gods, and investigates how the Romans experienced and encountered them, with a particular emphasis on the personal and subjective aspects of religious life. Through studying interior spaces, both secular (basilicas, colonnades, and forums) and sacred spaces (the temples where the Romans looked upon their gods) and their representation in poetry, the volume also follows the development of an architecture of the interior in the great Roman public works of the first and second centuries AD. While providing new insights into the working of the Romans' imagination, it also offers powerful challenges to some long established orthodoxies about Roman religion and cultural behaviour.

This book demonstrates the power and distinctiveness of the contribution that sociolinguistics can make to our understanding of everyday communicative practice under changing social conditions. It builds on the approaches developed by Gumperz and Hymes in the 1970s and 80s, and it not only affirms their continuing relevance in analyses of the micropolitics of everyday talk in urban settings, but also argues for their value in emergent efforts to chart the heavily securitised environments now developing around us. Drawing on 10 years of collaborative work and ranging across disciplinary, interdisciplinary and applied perspectives, the book begins with guiding principles and methodology, shifts to empirically driven arguments in urban sociolinguistics, and concludes with studies of (in)securitised communication addressed to challenges ahead.

Transitional justice and national inquiries may be the most established means for coming to terms with traumatic legacies, but it is in the more subtle social and cultural processes of "memory work" that the pitfalls and promises of reconciliation are laid bare. This book analyzes, within the realms of literature and film, recent Australian and Canadian attempts to reconcile with Indigenous populations in the wake of forced child removal. As Hanna Teichler demonstrates, their systematic emphasis on the subjectivity of the victim is problematic, reproducing simplistic narratives and identities defined by victimization. Such fictions of reconciliation venture beyond simplistic narratives and identities defined by victimization, offering new opportunities for confronting painful histories.

Through an interdisciplinary conversation with contributors from social anthropology, religious studies, film studies, literary studies, cultural studies, and history, Crafting Chinese Memories is a novel book which addresses how works of art shape memories, and offers new ways of conceptualising storytelling, memory-making, art, and materiality. It explores the memories of artists, filmmakers, novelists, storytellers, and persons who come to terms with their own histories even as they reveal the social memories of watershed events in modern China.

Recounts the life and career of Croatian filmmaker Rajko Grlic in the form of a lexicon of film terms tied to anecdotes spanning Grlic's life. "I read a lot this year. Old, new, borrowed, blue. This was the best. The paradox of reading something so avidly that you can't put it down and then I got to the last 20 pages slowing down to a snail's pace and reading so slowly so that it wouldn't be over so quickly."-Mike Downey, European Film Academy From his post-Nazi-era childhood in Yugoslavia to his college years during the 1968 invasion of Prague, the Yugoslav dissolution wars, and his subsequent exile in the United States, these personal stories combine to provide insight into socialist film industries, contextualizing south Slavic film while also highlighting its contacts with Western filmmakers and film industry. From the introduction by Aida Vidan: The one hundred and seventy-seven film terms provide sometimes a direct and at other times a metaphoric path to Grlic's stories and concurrently serve as a self-referential mechanism to comment on a series of film attributes. The entries can be read in any order, allowing for the reader's own "montage" of the book's universe.... Grlic adroitly captures the absurdities and paradoxes in one's life resulting from the sort of tectonic shifts with which East European history abounds.

Few styles of popular music have generated as much controversy as progressive rock, a musical genre best remembered today for its gargantuan stage shows, its fascination with epic subject matter drawn from science fiction, mythology, and fantasy literature, and above all for its attempts to combine classical music's sense of space and monumental scope with rock's raw power and energy. Its dazzling virtuosity and spectacular live concerts made it hugely popular with fans during the 1970s, who saw bands such as King Crimson, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Jethro Tull bring a new level of depth and sophistication to rock. On the other hand, critics branded the elaborate concerts of these bands as self- indulgent and materialistic. They viewed progressive rock's classical/rock fusion attempts as elitist, a betrayal of rock's populist origins.
In Rocking the Classics, the first comprehensive study of progressive rock history, Edward Macan draws together cultural theory, musicology, and music criticism, illuminating how progressive rock served as a vital expression of the counterculture of the late 1960s and 1970s. Beginning with a description of the cultural conditions which gave birth to the progressive rock style, he examines how the hippies' fondness for hallucinogens, their contempt for Establishment-approved pop music, and their fascination with the music, art, and literature of high culture contributed to this exciting new genre. Covering a decade of music, Macan traces progressive rock's development from the mid- to late-sixties, when psychedelic bands such as the Moody Blues, Procol Harum, the Nice, and Pink Floyd laid the foundation of the progressive rock style, and proceeds to the emergence of the mature progressive rock style marked by the 1969 release of King Crimson's album In the Court of the Crimson King. This "golden age" reached its artistic and commercial zenith between 1970 and 1975 in the music of bands such as Jethro Tull, Yes, Genesis, ELP, Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, and Curved Air.
In turn, Macan explores the conventions that govern progressive rock, including the visual dimensions of album cover art and concerts, lyrics and conceptual themes, and the importance of combining music, visual motif, and verbal expression to convey a coherent artistic vision. He examines the cultural history of progressive rock, considering its roots in a bohemian English subculture and its meteoric rise in popularity among a legion of fans in North America and continental Europe. Finally, he addresses issues of critical reception, arguing that the critics' largely negative reaction to progressive rock says far more about their own ambivalence to the legacy of the counterculture than it does about the music itself.
An exciting tour through an era of extravagant, mind-bending, and culturally explosive music, Rocking the Classics sheds new light on the largely misunderstood genre of progressive rock.

This anthology analyzes societal and cultural aspects of modern Japan. It identifies the dynamic trend and undercurrent in Japan by addressing three key areas: modernization, internationalization, and memory and imagination. Using interdisciplinary and multi-language approaches, it discusses topics such as religion, ethnicity, civil society, art, public health, popular culture, war, identity and education. It is a valuable resource for scholars and graduate students with an interest in cutting-edge research analyses of Japanese / Asian studies.

"Lovrenovic's talents lie not in the enumeration of historical facts, but in constructing (or discovering) a narrative to the evolving idea of Bosnia."
--"Slavic and European Journal"

While the contemporary political history of Bosnia has been played out on television for international audiences, the complicated cultural basis for recent historical events remains largely unknown. Why did Bosnians who spoke the same language fracture along religious and ethnic lines? Is there a distinct Bosnian nation and Bosnian culture? What does it mean to be Bosnian if one is Serbian or Croatian? And what does the future hold for artistic and intellectual life in Bosnia?

In Bosnia: A Cultural History, Ivan Lovrenovic provides a complex and detailed account of Bosnian history from a unique and often overlooked perspective. Focusing on the changes in religious, cultural, and ethnic influences from Paleolithic times to the present, Lovrenovic's analysis probes deep into the Bosnian past and helps to enlighten the reader as to the present and potential future of this troubled land.

The evolution of the Bosnian Church distinct from the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, the role of Islam and Judaism, religious and secular architecture, ancient and modern prose and poetry, music, radio, film and television are all discussed to offer a comprehensive portrait of Bosnian culture.

"Critical examination of the role of identity in academic and activist feminism."
--"Women's Review of Books"

"This lively, well-edited collection of papers offers an excellent introduction to many of the issues and interests at stake."
--"The European Legacy"

In recent years, identity has come to be seen as a process rather than a fact or deterministic force. Yet, recognizable identity traits continue to draw people together and provide them with a sense of empowering commonality. Although the plasticity afforded identity has freed up rigid definitions and guidelines for affiliation, some believe that nebulous demarcations of identity may deprive women of a solid position from which to effectively contest centers of power.

Bringing together articles by well-known authors and theorists such as Audre Lourde, June Jordan, Daphne Patai, Barbara Smith, Marilyn Frye, Shane Phelan, Leila J. Rupp, Hazel Carby, and Adrienne Rich with lesser-known writers and scholars, this broad-based anthology ranges widely from personal narratives to empirical research. The book unpacks issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, and age, contributing a mA(c)lange of sharp, lively perspectives to current debate.

In a postmodern era of feminism, how do women come to identify, organize and mobilize themselves within a complex global network of relationships? Identity Politics in the Women's Movement offers critical examination of the inescapable role of identity in academic and activist feminism and the opportunities, challenges and conflicts identity politics pose.

This collection introduces and develops Lacanian thought concerning the relations among language, subjectivity, and society. Lacanian Theory of Discourse provides an account of how language both interacts with and constitutes structures of subjectivity, producing specific attitudes and behaviors as well as significant social effects.