This book draws together 13 distinctive and original explorations of how dominant cultural mainstreams and margins are formed and resisted, how they stabilize and shift, and how they permeate and define each other. The chapters speak to central problems of cultural politics that represent critical challenges for theory, research, and action in the social world. The authors develop and advance new approaches for interdisciplinary inquiry into contemporary cultural issues. Drawing on and extending scholarship in communication, political science, sociology, women's studies, critical cultural studies, anthropology, and American studies, they analyze what happens when marginal groups meet mainstream forces. The chapters will enliven academic debates over what constitutes a cultural mainstream or margin. This volume explores theories, problems, and contemporary struggles over identity and representation, ideology and hegemony, and discourse and action. The essays focus on critical questions covering postcolonial theory, primitivism, feminism, sexuality, the body, art, multiculturalism, the environmental crisis, the mass media, and social movements. The authors examine diverse issues, ranging from the writing of women prisoners to how media policy is embedded in cultural history, to the political implications of cultural representations in cross-cultural contexts. Altogether, the diversity and depth of the text will help us develop new and complementary ways of thinking about critical questions in the politics of culture.

Western medicine, including psychiatry and psychology, has had a virtual monopoly of the health industry. This has led to economic incentives that literally keep people sick. Anthropologists, because of their holistic and comparative base, are in a unique position to apply their knowledge within clinical settings. Written for anthropologists, but useful to all clinicians, Rush's book offers a new model for understanding health and illness, provides a review of techniques found in many cultures for reducing individual and system stress, and offers processes for recovering health and individual and social balance. Rush establishes a model outlining the development of emotional problems and then offers the clinicial tools and techniques for helping individuals, families, and groups reduce stress and retranslate traumatic or distressing events. The reader will discover a very different view of emotional and physical stress; the approach taken is informational and anthropological in nature. From this approach arise numerous techniques designed to help clients achieve stress reduction and enhanced healing.

Routledge Library Editions: Slavery is a collection of previously out-of-print titles that examine various aspects of international slavery. Books analyse the Atlantic slave trade, and its effects on Africa; modern slavery around the world; slave rebellions and resistance; the Abolitionist movements; the suppression of the slave trade; slavery in the ancient world; and more besides. These writings form part of the vital research into slavery through the ages, and together form a succinct overview.

La comunidad Latina, the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States, has long been told that assimilation is the only way to succeed in American society. This book challenges that generally accepted view and concludes instead that transformation as a way of life is the only viable option for the Latino community as a whole, regardless of racial, class, regional, or religious differences. It highlights how in the everyday life of la comunidad Latina the members of the community can recognize the underlying ways of life, the stories, and the patterns of relationships that cripple them, and how to break with these ways of life, stories, and relationships to create fundamentally more loving and compassionate alternatives.

Along with all men and women, Latinos and Latinas face four choices: retaining a blind loyalty to a romanticized past, assimilating, violating each other, or transforming their ethnic and racial group for the better. This examination of the underlying sacred meaning of the stories of the Latino culture attempts to determine whether these stories are destructive or creative. Now coming of age, la comunidad Latina, previously wounded by assimilation, continues to tell its story in art, literature, history, and religion so that the world may, perhaps for the first time, see its personal, political, historical, and sacred faces. The most important story now being lived is that of Latina women and Latino men who are making choices that will determine the ultimate meaning of a new Latino culture in this nation.

"Wives of the Leopard" explores power and culture in a pre-colonial West African state whose army of women and practice of human sacrifice earned it notoriety in the racist imagination of late nineteenth-century Europe and America. Tracing two hundred years of the history of Dahomey up to the French colonial conquest in 1894, the book follows change in two central institutions. One was the monarchy, the coalitions of men and women who seized and wielded power in the name of the king. The second was the palace, a household of several thousand wives of the king who supported and managed state functions.

Looking at Dahomey against the backdrop of the Atlantic slave trade and the growth of European imperialism, Edan G. Bay reaches for a distinctly Dahomean perspective as she weaves together evidence drawn from travelers' memoirs and local oral accounts, from the religious practices of vodun, and from ethnographic studies of the twentieth century. Wives of the Leopard thoroughly integrates gender into the political analysis of state systems, effectively creating a social history of power. More broadly, it argues that women as a whole and men of the lower classes were gradually squeezed out of access to power as economic resources contracted with the decline of the slave trade in the nineteenth century. In these and other ways, the book provides an accessible portrait of Dahomey's complex and fascinating culture without exoticizing it.

In the late 1800s W.E.B. Dubois asked what it really means to be black in America. He raised the spectre of divided loyalties and the blurring of individuality that he called "Double Consciousness". This volume offers an insight into this "dilemma of identity" by asking the seemingly rhetorical question, what does O.J. Simpson have in common with the participants in the Million Man March, the jury that set him free, the people who inexplicably cheered his acquittal, the prosecuting attorney, the black Muslim Louis Farrakhan, or with his own children? Each case involves cross-cutting currents of age, sex, religion, race, ethnicity, class and ideology. But what they share among themselves, and with the rest of the nation, is the firm conviction that they are black. The author aims to reveal the importance of this imaginary bond, this ethnic ethic, this myth of black ethnicity. He explores its creation, its evolution and its role in linking together the many generations of blacks in America. Dr Davis also seeks to show: how this myth connects the slave huts of Alabama to O.J.'s Brentwood estate; how it connects him to his jury emancipators; how it connects Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to discussions of affirmative action; and how it connects an ancient Juffure villager named Kunta Kinte to contemporary slum dwellers in Harlem. The book argues that it is not race that ties these diverse millions together, but a co-operatively developed paradigm shared by blacks and non-blacks alike as to what constitutes an authentic black existence. By de-bunking the myth, the author seeks to point the way to a fuller recognition of the individual differences that blacks have always had but that are becoming more apparent as the opportunity to express them becomes more prevalent.

Jean Liedloff, an American writer, spent two and a half years in the South American jungle living with Stone Age Indians. The experience demolished her Western preconceptions of how we should live and led her to a radically different view of what human nature really is. She offers a new understanding of how we have lost much of our natural well-being and shows us practical ways to regain it for our children and for ourselves.

Uniforms are not unique to Japan, but their popularity there suggests important linkages: material culture, politico-economic projects, bodily management, and the construction of subjectivity are all connected to the wearing of uniforms. This book examines what the donning of uniforms says about cultural psychology and the expression of economic nationalism in Japan. Conformity in dress is especially apparent amongst students, who are required to wear uniforms by most schools. Drawing on concrete examples, the author focuses particularly on student uniforms, which are key socializing objects in Japan's politico-economic order, but also examines 'office ladies' (secretaries), 'salary men' (white collar workers), service personnel, and housewives, who wear a type of uniformed dress. Arguing that uniforms can be viewed as material markers of a life cycle managed by powerful politico-economic institutions, he also shows that resistance to official state projects is expressed by 'anti-uniforming' modes of self.

This volume brings together cutting-edge research from emerging and senior scholars alike representing a variety of disciplines that bears on human preferences for fairness, equity and justice. Despite predictions derived from evolutionary and economic theories that individuals will behave in the service of maximizing their own utility and survival, humans not only behave cooperatively, but in many instances, truly altruistically, giving to unrelated others at a cost to themselves. Humans also seem preoccupied like no other species with issues of fairness, equity and justice. But what exactly is fair and how are norms of fairness maintained? How should we decide, and how do we decide, between equity and efficiency? How does the idea of fairness translate across cultures? What is the relationship between human evolution and the development of morality? The collected chapters shed light on these questions and more to advance our understanding of these uniquely human concerns. Structured on an increasing scale, this volume begins by exploring issues of fairness, equity, and justice in a micro scale, such as the neural basis of fairness, and then progresses by considering these issues in individual, family, and finally cultural and societal arenas. Importantly, contributors are drawn from fields as diverse as anthropology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, bioethics, and psychology. Thus, the chapters provide added value and insights when read collectively, with the ultimate goal of enhancing the distinct disciplines as they investigate similar research questions about prosociality. In addition, particular attention is given to experimental research approaches and policy implications for some of society's most pressing issues, such as allocation of scarce medical resources and moral development of children. Thought-provoking and informative, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Fairness, Equity, and Justice is a valuable read for public policy makers, anthropologists, ethicists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and all those interested in these questions about the essence of human nature.

This ethnography, based on a five-year field study, presents a holistic view of a nearly invisible ethnic minority in the urban Midwest, Cambodian refugees. Hopkins begins with a brief look at Cambodian history and the reign which led these farmers to flee their homeland, and then presents an intimate portrait of ordinary family life and also of Buddhist ceremonial life. The book details their struggles to adjust in the face of the many barriers presented by American urban life, such as poverty, dangerous neighborhoods, and unemployment, and also by the conflict between their particular needs and American institutions such as schools, health care, law, and even the agencies intended to help them.

In 1991, the centrifugal forces of ethnic nationalism destroyed the Soviet Union. Religious and ethnic issues will be the defining principles of political life in East Europe, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia for the next decade. Yet when most Americans and Europeans read, for instance, of the Ossetians and Ingush, they have no idea who these peoples are or why they are fighting. This volume will provide a ready reference for students, researchers, and librarians who are trying to sort out the political and social struggles in that part of the world. Focusing on ethnolinguistic groups rather than peoples with purely religious orientations, Olson provides entries on over 450 ethnic groups, with appropriate cross-references. Each entry concludes with references, and the volume includes a selected bibliography of English-language titles. The volume also includes a chronology, several appendixes providing statistical information, and an appendix essay on Islam in Russia and the Soviet Union.

The Arts have always been vital in teaching, and are the primary bases for religious communication: paleolithic cave paintings and artefacts long predate many scriptural sources. This major new series is designed to provide and understanding of the world's religions through the various art forms associated with religious practice and experience - whether the visual arts, dance, drama or music. In focusing on the importance of the art form in religious teaching and its role outside galleries and museums, this distinctive series moves beyond the traditional realms of religious art literature. Given the fact that mass literacy is largely a modern 'western phenomenon', this series responds to an obvious gap in religious communication, alongside its traditional textual sources. Thus, the Religion and the Arts series presents a unique synthesis of ideas, literature and themes, to emphasise the very varied relationship between diverse religions and the art which both informs the cultures themselves and is also a vivid expression of their systems of beliefs.

What affect does Islamic political culture have on democracy and human rights practices? It has been argued that Islam facilitates authoritarianism, contradicts the values of Western societies, and significantly affects important political outcomes in Muslim countries. This view, Price argues, is based primarily on analysis of Islamic political theory and ad-hoc studies of individual countries, which do not consider other factors. Through rigorous evaluation of the relationship between Islam, democracy, and individual rights at the cross-national level, Price suggests that too much emphasis is being placed on the power of Islam as a political force. Comparative case studies, which focus on factors relating to the interplay between Islamic groups and regimes, economic influences, ethnic cleavages and societal development, are used to explain the variance in the influence of Islam on politics across eight nations.

Price argues that much of the political power that is attributed to Islam can be better explained by other factors. Indeed, the increasing strength of Islamic political groups has often been associated with democratization. To test these assertions, an index of Islamic political culture based on the extent to which Islamic law is utilized and how Western ideas, institutions, and technologies are implemented, has been constructed. This indicator is used in statistical analysis to analyze the relationship between Islam, democracy, and individual rights across 23 predominantly Muslim countries and a control group of non-Muslim developing nations. The results provide strong evidence that Islamic political culture does not have a significant influence on levels of democracy and the protection of individual rights in predominantly Muslim countries.

This book expands on Archaeological Human Remains: Global Perspectives that was published in the Springer Briefs series in 2014 and which had a strong focus on post-colonial countries. In the current volume, the editors include papers that deal with non-Anglophone European traditions such as Portugal, Germany and France. In addition, authors continue the exploration of osteological trajectories that are not well-documented in the West, such as Senegal, China and Russia. The lasting legacies of imperialism, communism and colonialism are apparent as the authors of the individual country profiles examine the historical roots of the study of archaeological human remains and the challenges encountered while also considering the likely future directions likely of this multi-faceted discipline in different world areas.

Explores the meaning of writing in the post postmodernist moment when master narratives have been questioned and the very act of representing others has been problematized, and discusses some of the key theoretical debates emerging in the aftermath of what came to be known as the postmodernist crisis.

When the author first went to Botswana in the early 1980s to study the impact a major land reform had on rural life in this impoverished African country, social theory and ethnographic practice seemed solid and convincing. A decade later, and again in 1999, she returned to Bostwana and to the Tswapong people whose lives she had shared, and she encountered not only a rapidly shifting social reality, but she also began to ask questions that stemmed from and were shaped by theoretical frames quite different from those she had employed in her earlier work.

At the center of the narrative that runs through this study is a critical reflexive discussion that explores the tension between data recorded at a particular historical moment and the interpretive frames offered to make sense of such data.

Eloquence in Trouble captures the articulation of several troubled lives in Bangladesh as well as the threats to the very genres of their expression, lament in particular. The first ethnography of one of the most spoken mother tongues on earth, Bangla, this study represents a new approach to troubles talk, combining the rigor of discourse analysis with the interpretive depth of psychological anthropology. Its careful transcriptions of Bangladeshi troubles talk will disturb some readers and move others--beyond past academic discussion of personhood in South Asia.

Spanish popular culture is one of the richest in the world. The absence of an efficient ruling class has allowed the people to stamp their personality on all major aspects of the country's life. This book describes the peculiar Spanish feeling for death and tragedy in popular religious practices, music and the bullfight; the fiesta sense of life, so foreign to the work ethic of other Western countries; the oral tradition that has managed to survive into the post-industrial age with its creative use of slang, proverbs and obscenity; popular literature, the press, radio, television and the movies.

Students and scholars will appreciate the first comprehensive treatment of Spanish popular culture in a single volume. The author has done first-hand research in all the major regions of Spain and has compiled a list of major archives and resource centers. An extensive bibliography on the major fields of popular Spanish culture is included at the end of each chapter.

How do technological and cultural developments interact to affect consumption? What do ways of using household goods in specific historical contexts tell us about individual and collective identities? Do changes in consumption patterns emancipate social groups or reinforce existing structures of power?
The 'economic miracle' experienced by West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s had profound effects on everyday life and gender relations. This book reflects the growing need for historical research on leisure and consumption in the modern period and provides a very entertaining and carefully researched study of ideas about women, men, housework, consumption, and modernity. It contrasts the virtual reality presented by advertisements with the important qualitative changes in household appliances and how they affected everyday life and gender roles. New products claimed to make housework easier, but the idea of substituting money for labor contrasted with the ideal of the thrifty, hard-working housewife and a clear division of gender roles. The author examines a broad range of issues encompassing the transformation of household appliances from luxuries to necessities, the threat of consumer debt, men and housework, women and technology, and labor and leisure in the modern household.
This timely book represents a significant contribution to the following areas: material culture, German history, women's history, sociology, media/cultural studies and anthropology.

Diasporas large-scale ethnic migrations have been a source of growing concern as we try to understand the nature of community, identity and nationalism. Traditionally, diaspora communities have been understood to be pariah communities, and most work on diasporas has focused on specific groups such as the Jewish or African Diaspora. This book is unique in arguing against traditional interpretations and in taking a comparative look at a range of diasporas, including the Jewish, Arab, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Maltese, Greek and Armenian diasporas.Taking the past four centuries into consideration, the authors examine diaspora trading networks across the globe on both a regional and international level. They investigate the common patterns and practices in the enterprises of diaspora peoples and entrepreneurs. The regions covered include Western Europe, the Mediterranean, South West Asia and the Indian Ocean, and South East Asia. Global networks of diaspora trading groups were crucial to international trade well before the twentieth century, yet because they were not part of established institutions they have remained elusive to economists, sociologists and historians.Through an understanding of diaspora trading networks, we learn not only about diaspora communities but also about the roots of the modern global economy.

In tracing the process through which monuments give rise to collective memories, this path-breaking book emphasizes that memorials are not just inert and amnesiac spaces upon which individuals may graft their ever-shifting memories. To the contrary, the materiality of monuments can be seen to elicit a particular collective mode of remembering which shapes the consumption of the past as a shared cultural form of memory. In a variety of disciplines over the past decade, attention has moved away from the oral tradition of memory to the interplay between social remembering and object worlds. But research is very sketchy in this area and the materiality of monuments has tended to be ignored within anthropological literature, compared to the amount of attention given to commemorative practice. Art and architectural history, on the other hand, have been much interested in memorial representation through objects, but have paid scant attention to issues of social memory. Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary in scope, this book fills this gap and addresses topics ranging from material objects to physical space; from the contemporary to the historical; and from 'high art' to memorials outside the category of art altogether. In so doing, it represents a significant contribution to an emerging field.

Cultural anthropology is at a crossroads. Under the impact of postmodernist critiques, serious doubts have been raised about the scientific validity-indeed, the very viability-of the ethnographic enterprise. These doubts have been voiced most loudly in North America, where the field nonetheless still enjoys the broadest academic base, and attracts the largest number of practitioners. Over the last decade, a set of critical issues has increasingly engaged cultural anthropologists in heated debate. The first part of this volume includes a full-fledged discussion of these issues, offering suggestions for their constructive resolution. In spite of the disciplinary self-doubts engendered by postmodernism, the theory-building process in anthropology has not been abandoned. The second part of the volume presents a range of original theoretical statements by which American and Canadian anthropologists set the premises for disciplinary trends likely to shape anthropological practice for years to come. If, as it is prognosticated, the 21st century will see an explosion of interest in cultural anthropology, the models and ideas presented in this volume define the parameters of disciplinary expansion. North American cultural anthropology enters its second century on a wave of theoretical innovation and pragmatic translatability that may finally resolve the disciplinary contrast between analysis and application.

This study shows that, despite numerous surface similarities, the popular culture of the 1930s was different from that of the 1920s in a variety of ways, and not only because of the Great Depression. It was a period of quiet desperation and shifting values, one in which nickels and dimes replaced dollars as the currency of popular culture, and in which the emphasis was on finding methods to occupy idle time and idle minds. Popular culture during the 1930s is important for understanding not only how Americans coped, but why they did so with such good humor and so little of the discontent visible elsewhere in the world. An appreciation of popular culture during the 1930s is essential to understanding other aspects of the decade.