A very exciting collection that explores sport in itself and also as a cultural phenomenon. In unexpected ways, bicycles are linked to modernization in Mexico, baseball takes on socialist overtones in the Yucatan, and the political outlook in Cuba and Nicaragua is explained in terms of their emphasis on sports. This reviewer especially liked Lever's article on Brazil, in which she demonstrates that sport helps complex modern societies cohere. Spanning a time period from the turn of the century to the present, the seven essays offer dramatic insights into Latin American societies; Robert Levine's conclusion presents comparisons with sports in the US. This new entry into the growing field of sport and social analysis is highly recommended for college and university libraries. Choice A collection of eight original essays by distinguished scholars, this book examines the role of sports, particularly soccer and baseball, in Latin America from the late 19th century to the present. The first study of its kind, Sport and Society in Latin America vividly demonstrates the ways in which sport can be used to study various historical and social processes and expands our understanding of sport as a major form of social behavior in Latin America. The contributors analyze the relationship of sport to foreign penetration and cultural imitation, urbanization and the rise of mass society, social divisiveness and social integration, class conflict, politics, and nationalism and revolution.

The public child welfare system has been increasingly attacked for failing to implement long-standing national policies, especially family preservation. Pelton, a social work educator, continues this attack, but in a uniquely comprehensive, coherent, and compelling manner. His well-documented critique focuses on the philosophical underpinnings and internal workings of public child welfare, especially its medicalization of child abuse; inappropriate out-of-home placement of children for reasons of poverty; excessive reliance on foster care; and dysfunctional dual structure (investigative versus helping roles). . . . His] analysis is powerful and provocative and should be required reading for all engaged or interested in child welfare. "Choice"

This volume reveals how the modern public child welfare system and its forerunners have failed to serve professed child welfare policies that have been enunciated from the beginning of this century to the present. The basic dynamics, operational structure, and direction of the child welfare system are thoroughly scrutinized by Pelton with the intent of promoting productive controversy. One of the central issues discussed by the book is the separation of children from their parents by child welfare agencies. Evidence is presented that shows that, throughout this century, child removal has survived as a major tactic in regard to child welfare problems despite a long-standing policy of family preservation. This is the only book to be critical not only of the child welfare system, but of recent attempts to improve it, namely, the permanency planning movement. It is also the only one to propose an entirely new structure for the child welfare system.

"For Reasons of Poverty" begins with a historical review of child welfare through the twentieth century and then examines the crusade against child abuse. Next, the book covers the foster care system, the permanency planning movement, and the dual role of the child welfare system. The last chapter of the volume focuses on a plan for restructuring the child welfare system in the United States, which Pelton believes could be realistically accomplished within the larger ongoing economic and social welfare policy context. This book should be of particular interest to child welfare administrators in public and private agencies and to child welfare advocates and social workers. Additionally, it contains information applicable to a number of different fields, including social work, public policy, sociology, and psychology.

They're Playing Our Songs offers a unique and fascinating vehicle for women's voices to be heard on the subject of women's music and how it affects their lives. Author Ann M. Savage explores 15 women's engagements with what might be called feminist rock music, including that of such noted artists as Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos, the Indigo Girls, and Melissa Etheridge. The women interviewed here tell deeply personal stories of how songs by these musicians have helped them survive and cope with turbulent life experiences such as difficult work environments, depression, and abusive relationships. As we can see, then, music can be not only pleasurable but also fiercely expressive, in ways that allow its listeners some vicarious catharsis. These accounts of personal transformation make for a book that is at once compelling and dynamically political, revealing the myriad ways in which art, polemics, and life intertwine to create a side of womanhood that few ever get to see.

An account of the changes in Jewish habits that suburban living has effected, and, to some extent, the changes in suburban attitudes that Jewish residents have helped to bring about.

Contending that a "mythology of race" consisting of themes of sex and savagery exists in the United States and is perpetuated in popular culture, Frankie Y. Bailey identifies stereotypical images of blacks in crime and detective fiction and probes the implied values and collective fantasies found there. Out of the Woodpile is the first sociohistorical study of the evolution of black detectives and other African American characters in genre fiction. The volume's three divisions reflect the evolution of the status of African Americans in American society. The three chapters of the first section, "From Slaves to Servants," begin with a survey of the works of Poe and Twain in antebellum America, then discuss the depiction of blacks and other natives in British crime and detective fiction in the days of the British Empire, and lastly focus on American classics of the pre-World War II period. In "Urban Blues," Bailey continues her investigation of black stock characters by zeroing in on the denizens of the "Black Metropolis" and their "Black Rage." "Assimilating," the final section, contains chapters that scrutinize "The Detectives," "Black Lives: Post-War/Post Revolution," and the roles assigned to "Black Women." The results of survey questions carried in The Third Degree, the newsletter of the Mystery Writers of America, as well as the views of fourteen crime writers on the creation of black characters in genre fiction are followed by the "Directory," which includes a sampling of cases featuring black characters, a list of black detectives, relevant works of fiction, film, television, and more. The volume's informed analyses will be important reading for students and scholars in the fieldsof popular culture, American popular fiction, genre fiction, crime and detective fiction, and black and ethnic studies. It is also a timely resource for courses dealing with race relations and blacks in American literature or society.

The first introduction to the Incas and their myths aimed at students and general readers, bringing together a wealth of information into one convenient resource. Full of hard to find information, Handbook of Inca Mythology provides an accessible introduction to the rites, beliefs, and spiritual tales of the Incas. It provides a concise overview of Incan civilization and mythology, a chronology of mythic and historical events, and an A–Z inventory of central themes (sacrifice, fertility, competition, reversaldualism, colors, constellations, giants, and miniatures), personages (Viracocha, Manco Capac, Pachackuti Inca), locations (Lake Titicaca, Corickancha), rituals, and icons. The last Native American culture to develop free of European influence, the Incas, who had no written language, are known only from Spanish accounts written after the conquest and archaeological finds. From these fragments, a vanished world has been reborn and reintroduced into modern Andean life. There is no better way into that world and its mind-bending mythology than this unique handbook.

Crazy Horse was as much feared by tribal foes as he was honored by allies. His war record was unmatched by any of his peers, and his rout of Custer at the Little Bighorn reverberates through history. Yet so much about him is unknown or steeped in legend.Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life corrects older, idealized accounts - and draws on a greater variety of sources than other recent biographies - to expose the real Crazy Horse: not the brash Sioux warrior we have come to expect but a modest, reflective man whose courage was anchored in Lakota piety. Kingsley M. Bray has plumbed interviews of Crazy Horse's contemporaries and consulted modern Lakotas to fill in vital details of Crazy Horse's inner and public life. Bray places Crazy Horse within the rich context of the nineteenth-century Lakota world. He reassesses the war chief's achievements in numerous battles and retraces the tragic sequence of misunderstandings, betrayals, and misjudgments that led to his death. Bray also explores the private tragedies that marred Crazy Horse's childhood and the network of relationships that shaped his adult life. To this day, Crazy Horse remains a compelling symbol of resistance for modern Lakotas. Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life is a singular achievement, scholarly and authoritative, offering a complete portrait of the man and a fuller understanding of his place in American Indian and United States history.

This rhetorical study of the various language strategies and competing worldviews involved in the 140-year argument between Biblical creationists and Darwinian evolutionists focuses on the 1860 Huxley/Wilberforce debate, the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, and the 1981 Arkansas Creation-Science Trial. When Darwin published his Origins of Species in 1859, he initiated a debate about the origin of human life and the role of God in human affairs scarcely equalled in world history. Smout traces the response of Biblical creationists to Darwinian evolutionists. Looking carefully at the stories told and the tactics used by both sides, he analyzes all available accounts of the original debate culminating in the 1860 Huxley/Wilberforce debate, the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, and the 1981 Arkansas Creation-Science Trial. Professor Smout argues that both sides in the controversy use various language strategies to persuade the culture as a whole to see the world that they see and to enact their position as public policy. As Smout illustrates, the problem is that both sides rely on an inadequate conception of language as a namer of timeless realities rather than as an instrument used by human communities to achieve their goals. He attempts to articulate a better view of language and to show how it might help solve intractable arguments such as this. He argues that we should see language as a tool that shapes what we see, and definitions of terms as political acts rather than statements of fact made by disciplinary experts. An important analysis for students and scholars in rhetoric, history, religion, and sociology.

Product information not available.

Perhaps no topic today is politically more divisive than homosexuality, particularly when it is coupled with the deeply rooted concept of civil rights. This work focuses on 20th/21st- century U. S. history as it pertains to GLBT history. Major issues and events such as the Stonewall riot, Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the military, same-sex marriage, gay rights, gay pride, organizations and alliances, AIDS, and legal battles and court cases are discussed. Also included are sidebars highlighting major debates, legal landmarks and key individuals. A timeline and further reading sections concluding each chapter as well as a full bibliography and black and white images enhance the text. In these opening years of the 21st century in the United States, perhaps no topic is more divisive than homosexuality, particularly when it is coupled with the deeply rooted concept of civil rights. The same-sex marriage debate, for example, is but part of a larger discussion over issues crucial to American life, such as the role of law in the lives of individuals, relationships among law, economics, and morality, and the values thought to distinguish and define us. GLBT history is not just the struggle for rights, it is people simply living their lives the best they knew how regardless of the terms they or others use for them. This work focuses on U. S. history and, within that, the 20th century, particularly because the vast majority of work in GLBT history has been during this place and time. Major issues and events such as the Stonewall riot, Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the military, same-sex marriage, gay rights, gay pride, organizations and alliances, AIDS, and legal battles and court cases are discussed. Included in this reference work are sidebars highlighting major debates, legal landmarks and key individuals. A timeline and further reading sections concluding each chapter as well as a full bibliography and black and white images enhance the text.

In this visit to the wonderland of children's imaginative, make-believe play, readers are be exposed to both a general, bird's-eye view of the whole of this fascinating realm, and to a closer look at its diverse regions. This volume examines the borderlines between make-believe play and akin phenomena such as dreams, drama, and rituals. Readers will become acquainted with the secret codes of make-believe play. These codes are activated in both covert and overt power struggles among children as well as in the child's internal theater of emotions. Readers will have the opportunity to examine these uses by looking at real-life sociodramatic play scenes. Also, the development of make-believe play and its interface with the child's general cognitive and socioemotional development is traced. This volume enables readers to consider children of various cultures at play, and investigates whether make-believe play and its characteristics are universal or culture-specific.

Make-believe play has been investigated across fields including cognitive, clinical, developmental, and social psychology, as well as linguistics, anthropology, and sociology. In this book, a comprehensive, integrative model is proposed, in which all of these approaches are synthesized into a single, coherent whole. The unifying hypothesis behind this synthesis is that make-believe play is a semiotic system, a body of signs and symbols, a language by means of which children express themselves and communicate. This language enables children to regulate and balance both their inner emotional life and their social life. Another central hypothesis is therefore that make-believe play functions as an homeostatic feedback mechanism for controlling the level of arousal around the child's central concerns, as well as the level of interpersonal conflict around issues of social proximity and power. Therapeutic and education applications of make-believe play are derived from these hypotheses and their ramifications.

This biographical guide introduces readers to the writers behind the most popular, influential, and provocative work in the field of science fiction. 100 Most Popular Science Fiction Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies gives readers a chance to learn more about the extraordinary writers behind the mind-bending major works in the speculative genre. The 100 authors in this volume are the most accomplished in the field—popular with readers, influential to other authors, and favorites among educators and librarians. 100 Most Popular Science Fiction Authors provides a brief biography for each writer, a guide to his or her writings, and a list of recent interviews and essays for further research. Coverage of each author's career includes highlights of awards won as well as work in other popular media such as movies, television, graphic novels and game-playing. As the book clearly demonstrates, science fiction is a genre that doesn't stand still. The authors here range from the classical era to the mid-20th-century Golden Age of Science Fiction, to the popular young writers who have taken the genre, and its readers, into the 21st century.

A righteous reformer committed to the power of education, Horace Mann became a national figure by championing the common school movement. Mann's message, which he preached at every opportunity, was that universal public education was the only means to transform America's disorderly masses into a disciplined, judicious republican citizenry, thereby removing the dangers of anarchy and class warfare.

In his new look at Mann's work and thought, Bob Pepperman Taylor shows that Mann's ideas on civic education have had a lasting impact on the way that we still think today about education and its relation to our civic life. Written from the perspective of democratic theory and practice, Taylor's work reassesses Mann's philosophy of civic education and deeply resonates with today's pervasive and highly political debates about the role of education.

By conceiving of public schooling as serving primarily political ends, this nineteenth-century reformer fostered an enduring tension between educational values and political purposes. Taylor contends that Mann's approach to civic education marginalized the role of schools in training the intellect, and that this anti-intellectual component has been retained in the current model of schooling in the United States. He contends that Mann's schooling model promotes moral certainty and political consensus over intellectual doubt and political disagreement--an imbalance that erodes and weakens both educational and democratic ends.

By considering Mann's unique influence as a theorist of civic education, Taylor argues, we find both his greatest strengths and most significant weaknesses. And when we take Mann seriously as a contributor to American political thought, we find that the challenge he presents is more significant than concerns about the lack of originality or the unscientific nature of some of his ideas.

Ultimately, Mann can tell us a great deal about the very best in our educational tradition, as well as help us see some of its significant flaws and show us how both strengths and weaknesses have played out in our current public and higher systems of education. By examining how Mann was the first to articulate a cohesive vision of the relationship between civic education and democratic practice, Taylor demonstrates that Mann belongs among the key founders of the American political tradition.

Jewish-American poetry and drama play an important role in contemporary American culture. These writings also reflect an enormous diversity of perspectives. Some poets, such as Allen Ginsberg, have attained fame and a large audience, while others have been recognized chiefly by scholars. Poets such as Howard Nemerov are more conservative, others such as Kenneth Koch are experimental, and still others, such as Ginsberg, are prophetic. Similarly, some Jewish-American playwrights, especially Arthur Miller, have acquired a worldwide following, while others continue to labor in obscurity. The spectrum of Jewish-American drama encompasses the liberated Jewish women of Wendy Wasserstein and Emily Mann, the gay Jewish persons who come out of the closet in the plays of Harvey Fierstein, and the satires of Arthur Kopit and Woody Allen.

The rich experiences of Jewish-American drama and poetry are captured in this authoritative reference work. The volume includes alphabetically arranged entries for more than 70 contemporary Jewish-American dramatists and poets, such as Paddy Chayevsky, Sarah Blacher Cohen, Allen Ginsberg, John Hollander, Barbara Lebow, Denise Levertov, Allen Mandelbaum, David Mamet, and Arthur Miller. Each entry includes a brief biography, a discussion of major works and themes, an overview of the critical reception of the author's writings, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. The first part of the book includes entries for dramatists, while the second covers poets. Each part is introduced by a short overview essay, and the volume closes with selected, general bibliographies.

"The handbook is an impressive collection of research studies and theories provided by knowledgeable contributors on life-span development from conception to old age."--Anthropology and Aging Quarterly

The doubling of our average life span since the turn of the 20th century is considered by many scholars to be one of the most important changes in human existence. This definitive text is the only volume to fully address, through a multidisciplinary perspective, the biological, cognitive, and psychological development that occurs from infancy through old age, and how the sociocultural and institutional factors interface with these changes.

Edited by leading research scholars in the field of life-span development, the volume also includes contributions of specialists in behavioral genetics, socioemotional selectivity theory, neuroscience, ecological models, and more. It examines the dynamics of close relationships and informal ties among the elderly population, child-parent attachment relationships as a life-span phenomenon, developmental tasks across the lifespan, continuity and discontinuity in temperament and personality, the sociocultural context of cognition across the life span, and variability in approaches to social problem solving from early to later life. Given the number of recent demographic shifts, it also explores issues related to fertility, life expectancy, environmental contexts, technology, immigration, and public policy. Key Features:

Integrates the full life span from infancy through old age in each chapter Considers multidisciplinary perspectives that address personal relationships, cognitive development, and social, emotional, and physical health across the life span Situates life-span development in ecological contexts (e.g., socioeconomic, neighborhood, and immigration status) Provides a concise but thorough resource for graduate seminars in life-span-related studies Highlights future issues in all areas of life-span study

Marxist thought pervades American academic discourse, particularly in the humanities and the social sciences. Fernandez-Morera shows why the survival of these ideas is unjustified in the face of their theoretical and practical problems and their historical record.

Fernandez-Morera provides a comprehensive critique of Marxist/materialist discourse as it pervades contemporary American scholarship. He examines the rhetorical and ideological underpinnings of the discourse, the socioeconomic circumstances and personality type of its academic practitioners, and its impact on other forms of academic speech. He also exposes the epistemological and ethical consequences of the discourse in light of the history of the 20th century and explains its remarkable success in the academic world.

Being multidisciplinary, the book should challenge many and appeal to those interested in criticism, politics, epistemology, ethics, history, sociology, and even economics. Certainly all those interested in the condition of higher education will find it provocative."

A pioneer of childhood studies, Liebel uses a broad array of international case studies to examine the repercussions of colonial conquest on children’s lives and childhood policies today. Looking at how children in the Global South are affected by unequal power relations, paternalistic policies and violence by state and nonstate actors, he shows how we can work to decolonize childhoods and ensure that children’s rights are better promoted and protected.

"Religion among the Folk in Egypt" seeks to structure the entire field of supernatural beliefs and related practices in the folk communities of Egypt. These beliefs constitute a cognitive system on the one hand and represent behavioral experiences felt, thought, and lived by individuals and social groups on the other. The systemic qualities of the beliefs involved are represented by the fact that the components are interconnected; even a peripheral belief is connected to others and, ultimately, attributed to a central component. The individual 'believer' is aware of the systeM's components and of the interrelationships among these components. Individuals and social groups manifest the behavioristic nature of a belief or a piece of knowledge within the system through actions. These actions, or rituals are motivated by these beliefs and are made in response to, and within the confines of, the beliefs.

A major component of a belief is its affective quality. From the viewpoint of the believer, a religious belief is associated with a certain type of sentiment: awe, reverence, fear, love, hate, and so forth. Such feelings are learned and lead the individual to act in a certain manner and direction congruent with his feelings. In the present inquiry the sentiments involved are predominantly of a religious nature. The folk system only partially overlaps with the formal religion. Folk beliefs and practices, however, represent real behavioral patterns which influence the thoughts, feelings, and actions of individuals and tradition bound groups in daily living; in many respects it is the real religious culture, while formal religion represents the ideal or the supposed form of that culture.

This book combines historical biography with a focus on the role of the practitioner in the folk health-care system, and ethnobotany, including a description of the active ingredients of the herbs used in African American herbal medicine. The contributions of European Colonial, American Indian, and African practices to the development of contemporary African American folk medicine are discussed. In addition to showing John Lee's approach to folk medicine, the volume provides descriptions and illustrations of the main herbs used. Folk Wisdom and Mother Wit provides a basic historical framework and background to the continuing viability of a folk medical system based on a pluralism combining biomedicine and traditional health care. As such, it will be of value to scholars and students of medical anthropology as well as Black Studies.

This collection highlights the work of the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Urgent Anthropology Fellowships fund, which supports research into communities whose culture and social life are under immediate threat. Created by George Appell in response to the distress he experienced working with a traumatized community of swidden cultivators in Borneo, who were struggling to survive after relocation in what Appell describes as a ‘cultural concentration camp’, the fund was established to identify ways of supporting and strengthening such communities through ethnographic work. Since 1995, Urgent Anthropology Fellows have worked with many displaced communities, whether found in refugee camps, resettled in kindred communities across national borders or in environments hostile to their traditional way of life; or whether suffering from the aftermath of civil war or the intrusion of foreigners in search of minerals. Despite the diversity of circumstances in these case studies, this book shows some of the common strategies that emerge in helping displaced communities regain some control over their own destinies. These include membership of social networks, access to natural resources, land ownership and self sufficiency, autonomy in local judicial procedures and economic activities as well as the celebration of traditional rituals, all of which lessen the potential powerlessness of displaced communities. Any anthropologist or NGO worker, and indeed anyone who works with, or cares about, vulnerable communities and the rights of indigenous peoples, will gain much from the accumulation of experience and insights offered herein.

What is at stake in the production of experimental texts by lesbian writers? what motivates these writers and characterizes their work? In this work, Elizabeth Meese examines the ways in which the experiences of the text, and the experiences of character, diverge and converge wit the writer's own biography.

This dictionary is the first to deal comprehensively with the history of counseling in the United States for the last 100 years and with the professional, ethical, and legal aspects of counseling. The introduction describes the development of counseling since 1900 in this country, defines the major theoretical approaches to counseling through the years, describes the counseling process and characterizes counseling approaches at different stages in a person's life, and talks about client and counselor relationships. The 279 entries that make up the main body of the book cover a broad range of terms, concepts, theories, approaches, strategies, key people and organizations, various types of groups and problems, and major issues. Internal cross-references between entries and a general index make this dictionary easily accessible for students, scholars, and practitioners in counseling in the fields of psychology and education. Short lists of important sources for further reading that accompany the different entries add to the usefulness of this research tool.