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

The closing years of the 20th century will be remembered as a time of tumultuous change. The various essays are attempts to understand the changes and ground them in the context of the logic of the contemporary world-system. The essays are divided into two main themes: structural transformations and regional ramifications of global transformations. East Asia, the Pacific Rim, European periphery, and the Middle East are all examined to determine if fundamental changes are occuring. Scholars and upper level and graduate students of economic history, developmental economics, regional economics, international economics, and political economy will find provocative contrasts and insights in this collection of essays, presented at the 18th annual Political Economy of the World-System Conference.

Christianity and cultural aspirations are inevitably in tension: the combination invites a suspicion that temporal pursuits have slackened a quest for divine approbation. Nevertheless, as Christians generally believe that worldly success may be a position of influence worth seeking for noble reasons, it is truly an area of tension, rather than merely temptation. This volume explores this lively juxtaposition in the context of modern Britain and America. In fifteen original essays, a range of well-respected scholars examine the cultural aspirations of a broad spectrum of Christians, including Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and Anglicans, as they were expressed in arenas as diverse as politics, education, arthitecture, and sport.

This original and provocative study tells the story of American literary history from the perspective of its environmental context. Weaving together close readings of early American texts with ecological histories of tobacco, potatoes, apples and honey bees, Michael Ziser presents a method for literary criticism that explodes the conceptual distinction between the civilized and natural world. Beginning with the English exploration of Virginia in the sixteenth century, Ziser argues that the settlement of the 'New World' - and the cultivation and exploitation of its bounty - dramatically altered how writers used language to describe the phenomena they encountered on the frontier. Examining the work of Harriot, Grainger, Cooper, Thoreau and others, Ziser reveals how these authors, whether consciously or not, transcribed the vibrant ecology of North America, and the ways that the environment helped codify a uniquely American literary aesthetic of lasting importance.

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

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

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

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

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

"Revolutionary Social Transformation" focuses on the visions and analysis culled from the writings of Karl Marx, Paulo Freire, and Antonio Gramsci. Marx's theory of critical praxis and his dialectical conceptualization of capitalism are discussed together with Freire's and Gramsci's ideas. The author suggests that these are necessary ingredients for authentic social transformation as well as a basis for rekindling hope for a veritable democratic future.

The author employs both a language of critique and a language of possibility to argue that the process of social transformation must be inherently educational. Social transformation begins in prefigurative, preparatory projects and continues even after the creation of a new social formation. She also argues that Marx's materialist theory of consciousness--his theory of critical praxis--informs the thinking of both Freire and Gramsci. The ideas of Freire and Gramsci together with Marx's dialectical conceptualization of capitalism provide essential ingredients for the type of critical theory of educational praxis necessary for authentic social transformation. These ingredients also indicate how local transformative efforts can be linked to the global project for social transformation and ultimately the ending of all oppression.

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

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

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

The Miseducation of the West examines the ways in which educational institutions such as media and schools have shaped Western views of Islam. The nature of these messages tells readers as much, if not more, about Western self-images as they do about Islam and Islamic peoples. Quickly emerging is a Western perspective on the "other." Westerners found easy justification for the colonial conquest of many Islamic lands. In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries England, France, and to a lesser extent Russia colonized much of the Mulsim world with the United States entering the picture after World War II. Economic colonialization, the oil business, interference with various governments, and the way these events and people are represented in the formal curriculum of schools and the informal curriculum of the media are central dimensions of this work. The contemporary expression of these stories involve the Bush administration's and its conservative allies' efforts to teach the nation about the true meaning of 9/11 and Islamic terrorism. In various reports, conservative organizations with close ties to the Bush White House, present forceful views of what historical concepts should be taught in U.S. schools. As Joe L. Kincheloe states in his thoughtful introduction, these efforts "represent a return to a 1954 view of America as the bearer of the democratic torch to the anti-democratic forces of the world. A critical education must counter such tendencies and work to conceptualize 9/11 in a variety of contexts." The essayists in this book write with different voices from diverse viewpoints, contributing to a discussion that will not end for years to come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan won their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Now they are emerging from the shadow of dominance and are subjects of intense interest from the West. The modern culture and customs of the various peoples in these geopolitical hotspots, straddling the far reaches of Europe into Asia, are revealed to a general audience for the first time. This will be the must-have volume for a broad, authoritative overview of these traditional civilizations as they cope with globalization.

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

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

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

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

aThought-provokinga--"Choice"

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

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

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

The common saying is that people have a culture. This book argues that people live a culture - which may explain why they are so affectively attached to it. By considering cultural interactions on a global scale, this book investigates how cultures can be understood in terms of conflict and cooperation, in relation to the nation-state, a multiplicity of worlds, society, civilization and community. It considers how culture is at the basis of the construction of individual and collective selves; how they can come to be alienated; are defined in relation to others; are perhaps in-comparable; when they are considered to be dis-abled; and whether we can speak of animal cultural selves and mechanical cultural selves. Its twelve chapters consists of two parts each that both start with a piece of music. The pieces are taken from different cultures and all connote that getting to understand cultures depends on listening, first and foremost.

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

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

The Reformation has traditionally been explained in terms of theology, the corruption of the church and the role of princes. R.W. Scribner, while not denying the importance of these, shifts the context of study of the German Reformation to an examination of popular beliefs and behaviour, and of the reactions of local authorities to the problems and opportunities for social as well as religious reform. This book brings together a coherent body of work that has appeared since 1975, including two entirely new essays and two previously published only in German.

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

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

This book offers a broad-based critical examination of the consequences--moral, psychological, sociological, educational, and economic--of increasing specialization in today's world. According to the author, we have now reached a stage where the education and professional work of both elite and non-elite groups are so narrowly focused as to diminish both the individual and society. The development of the complete individual has given way to the development of a complete collective, made up of narrowly focused, fragmented individuals. And educators--the very people who should be able to lead us out of this path of increasing specalization--have themselves fallen victim, unable to function outside their own specialized areas of expertise. This controversial work will be of interest to scholars and students in social psychology, philosophy, educational foundations, economics, Third World development, and business--in short, to all thinking members of modern society.

This volume explores the concept of the honest merchant, taking a broad perspective and covering a wide range of aspects. It looks at the different types of "honest merchant" conceptions originating from different cultures and literary traditions. The book covers Japanese, Islamic, Scandinavian, Russian, German, Spanish, as well as other aspects, and studies different disciplinary backgrounds of the honest merchant, such as philosophical, economic, neuroethical, sociological and literary ones. The concept of the honest merchant has a long tradition in business ethics. In the Hanseatic League and in medieval Italy, the ideal of the honest businessman was taught since the late Middle Ages. It originated during a time when travelling merchants were often regarded with a sceptical eye. The honest merchants of their time however held clear principles in their business and took responsibility for their community. In later times, the religious notions of the concept lost their pivotal place to reason and morality. This book goes beyond the tradition of discussing business ethics in association with concepts from the Hanseatic League and medieval Italy, and puts the central concept of business ethics in a much greater perspective.

To what extent do minority writers feel represented by the literary canon of a nation and its body of "great works"? To what extent do they adhere to, or contest, the supposedly universal values conveyed through those texts and how do they situate their own works within the national tradition? Building on Edward W. Said's contrapuntal readings and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's reflections on the voice of the subaltern, this monograph examines the ways in which Rafik Schami, Emine Sevgi OEzdamar, and Feridun Zaimoglu have re-read, challenged, and adapted the German canon. Similar to other writers in postcolonial contexts, their work on the canon entails an inquiry into history and a negotiation of their relation to the texts and representations that define the "host" nation. Through close analyses of the works of these non-native German authors, the book investigates the intersection between politics, ethics, and aesthetics in their work, focusing on the appropriation and re-evaluation of cultural legacies in German-language literature. Opening up a rich critical dialogue with scholars of German Studies and Postcolonial Theory, Christine Meyer provides a fresh perspective on German-language minority literature since the reunification. Watch our talk with the editor Christine Meyer here: https://youtu.be/bIOn-8q5QIU