Advancing our understanding of one of the most influential 20th-century philosophers, Robert Vinten brings together an international line up of scholars to consider the relevance of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas to the cognitive science of religion. Wittgenstein's claims ranged from the rejection of the idea that psychology is a 'young science' in comparison to physics to challenges to scientistic and intellectualist accounts of religion in the work of past anthropologists. Chapters explore whether these remarks about psychology and religion undermine the frameworks and practices of cognitive scientists of religion. Employing philosophical tools as well as drawing on case studies, contributions not only illuminate psychological experiments, anthropological observations and neurophysiological research relevant to understanding religious phenomena, they allow cognitive scientists to either heed or clarify their position in relation to Wittgenstein’s objections. By developing and responding to his criticisms, Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion offers novel perspectives on his philosophy in relation to religion, human nature, and the mind.

This book is about pleasure. It's also about pain. Most important, it's about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential.

We're living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting... The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we've all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.

In Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain...and what to do about it. Condensing complex neuroscience into easy-to-understand metaphors, Lembke illustrates how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check. The lived experiences of her patients are the gripping fabric of her narrative. Their riveting stories of suffering and redemption give us all hope for managing our consumption and transforming our lives. In essence, Dopamine Nation shows that the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery.

Music- and style-centred youth cultures are now a familiar aspect of everyday life in countries as far apart around the globe as Nepal and Jamaica, Hong Kong and Israel, Denmark and Australia. This lucid and original text provides a lively and wide-ranging account of the relationship between popular music and youth culture within the context of debates about the spatial dimensions of identity. It begins with a clear and comprehensive survey, and critical evaluation, of the existing body of literature on youth culture and popular music developed by sociologists and cultural and media theorists. It then develops a fresh perspective on the ways in which popular music is appropriated as a cultural resource by young people, using as a springboard a series of original ethnographic studies of dance music, rap, bhangra and rock. Bennett's original research material is carefully contextualised within a wider international literature on youth styles, local spaces and popular music but it serves to illustrate graphically how styles of music and their attendant stylistic innovations are appropriated and `lived out' by young people in particular social spaces. Music, Bennett argues, is produced and consumed by young people in ways that both inform their sense of self and also serve to construct the social world in which their identities operate. With its comprehensive coverage of youth and music studies and its important new insights, Popular Music and Youth Culture is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students in sociology, cultural studies, media studies and popular music studies. Dr ANDY BENNETT is lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He has published articles on aspects of youth culture, popular music, local identity and music and ethnicity in a number of journals, including Sociological Review, Media Culture and Society and Popular Music. He is currently co-editing a book on guitar cultures.

In response to increased focus on the protection of intangible cultural heritage across the world, Music Endangerment offers a new practical approach to assessing, advocating, and assisting the sustainability of musical genres. Drawing upon relevant ethnomusicological research on globalization and musical diversity, musical change, music revivals, and ecological models for sustainability, author Catherine Grant systematically critiques strategies that are currently employed to support endangered musics. She then constructs a comparative framework between language and music, adapting and applying the measures of language endangerment as developed by UNESCO, in order to identify ways in which language maintenance might (and might not) illuminate new pathways to keeping these musics strong. Grant's work presents the first in-depth, standardized, replicable tool for gauging the level of vitality of music genres, providing an invaluable resource for the creation and maintenance of international cultural policy. It will enable those working in the field to effectively demonstrate the degree to which outside intervention could be of tangible benefit to communities whose musical practices are under threat. Significant for both its insight and its utility, Music Endangerment is an important contribution to the growing field of applied ethnomusicology, and will help secure the continued diversity of our global musical traditions.

Despite the tens of billions spent each year in international aid, some of the most promising and exciting social innovations and businesses have come about by chance. Many of the people behind them did not consciously set out to solve anything, but they did. Welcome to the world of the reluctant innovator. "This important, timely book gives the reader an invaluable insight into the workings of the world of social entrepreneurship. It is a must-read for students, practitioners, policymakers and anyone with a passing interest in how to work for the greater good." Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder of the World Economic Forum and Co-Founder of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship "This book's vivid, engaging stories - of ordinary people who have devoted their lives to solving problems and injustices they never expected to encounter - make a major contribution to understanding what social innovation is all about. This is an inspiring and essential read for everyone who cares about our flawed, messy, beautiful world and believes in its myriad possibilities." Hannah Bloch, Mission Projects Editor, National Geographic magazine "Ken Banks, whose career has taken him from offshore banking to launching a brilliant communications tool for Africa, takes us on a social innovation journey. We meet ten entrepreneurs who happened on life-changing ideas - from solar lighting for African maternity wards to film subtitles to promote literacy in India - and then fought against every kind of obstacle to make them happen. Inspiring and instructive." Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world. He is a PopTech Fellow, a Tech Awards Laureate, an Ashoka Fellow and a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, and has been internationally recognised for his technology-based work.

In New African Thinkers, young scholars from across Africa discuss their vision for the social, political, and economic future of their continent. A unifying element running throughout their work is the argument that culture-defined broadly as a way of life, system of values and controls, and modes of practice and expression-lies at the heart of a reimagined Africa: a place of prosperity and socioeconomic well-being, integration, and self-determination. The book grew out of the Tenth African Young Graduates and Scholars conference, the theme of which was the African Union's Agenda 2063.

Over the last three decades Anthony La Vopa has extended his reach as an Enlightenment historian from Germany to England, Scotland, and France. Enlightenment Past and Present: Essays in a Social History of Ideas provides insights into all four contexts, with a view to understanding the Enlightenment's contours in spaces that were distinct but nonetheless shared in a European-wide engagement with a cluster of political, social, and cultural issues. The volume explores a wide variety of themes in the formation of modernity, including the construction of a public, the emergence of modern feminism, the problematic legitimacy of sexuality and marriage, the ideal and practice of friendship, patron-client relations, the conversational sociability of politeness, and the evolution of the essay as a genre. La Vopa aims to demonstrate in practice the new interest in restoring the social to intellectual history without falling back into reductionism. He throws a spotlight on a number of key texts in eighteenth-century philosophy. In several essays, La Vopa employs the resources of meaning in rhetorical cultures with thick social contexts to present Enlightenment texts not simply as print records, but as rhetorical performances with specific audiences. He also often intertwines contexts by focusing on biographical experience, using 'private' life traces such as diaries and other forms of correspondence, to enhance our understanding of published discourse. While drawing on the history of philosophy, the volume takes a decidedly more historical path through the canon. It includes essay reviews which take stock of developments in Enlightenment studies via critical appraisals of major recent contributions to the field.

One of the longest and seemingly most intractable civil wars in Latin America was brought to an end by the signing of the Peace Accords between the Guatemalan government and the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG) in December 1996. The essays in this volume evaluate progress made in the implementation of the peace agreements and signal some of the key challenges for future political and institutional reform. The volume opens with a chapter by Gustavo Porras, the government's main negotiator in the peace process. The first section then examines the issue of demilitarization. This is followed by aspects of indigenous rights in the peace process, including conceptual frameworks for rights advancement, the harmonization of state law and customary law, and the challenges of nation-state and citizenship construction. The next section examines issues of truth, justice, and reconciliation, and assesses prospects for the Truth Commission. The volume closes with an analysis of different aspects of political reform in Guatemala and includes comments made on the chapters and developed in the debate which took place at the conference on which it is based. The contributors are Marta Altolaguirre*, Marta Elena Casa?s*, Demetrio Cojt?*, Edgar Guti?rrez*, Frank La Rue, Roger Plant, Gustavo Porras*, Alfonso Portillo*, Jennifer Schirmer, Rachel Sieder, David Stoll, Rosalina Tuyuc*, Anna Vinegrad, Richard Wilson (* chapters in Spanish).

Most of our expereince is visual. We obtain most of our information and knowledge through sight, whether from reading books and newspapers, from watching television or from quickly glimpsing road signs. Many of our judgements and decisions, concerning where we live, what we shall drive and sit on and what we wear, are based on what places, cars, furniture and clothes look like. Much of our entertainment and recreation is visual, whether we visit art galleries, cinemas or read comics. This book concerns that visual experience. Why do we have the visual experiences we have? Why do the buildings, cars, products and advertisements we see look the way they do? How are we to explain the existence of different styles of paintings, different types of cars and different genres of film? How are we to explain the existence of different visual cultures? This book begins to answer these questions by explaining visual experience in terms of visual culture. The strengths and weaknesses of traditional means of analysing and explaining visual culture are examined and assessed. Using a wide range of historical and contemporary examples, it is argued that the groups which artists and designers form, the audiences and markets which they sell to, and the different social classes which are produced and reproduced by art and design are all part of the successful explanation and critical evaluation of visual culture.

This study looks at the relationship between popular recreations and the spaces in which they took place, and in doing so it provides a history of how England enjoyed itself during the long eighteenth century. Because the poor lacked land of their own, public spaces were needed for their sports and pastimes. Such recreations included: parish wakes and feasts; civic fairs and celebrations; football, cricket and other athletic sports; bull- and bear-baiting; and the annual celebrations of Shrove Tuesday and Guy Fawkes. Three case studies form the core of this book, each looking at the recreations and spaces to be found in different types of settlement: first, the streets and squares of provincial market towns; then the diverse vacant spaces to be found in industrialising towns and villages of the west Midlands and West Riding of Yorkshire; and finally the village greens of rural England. Through a detailed examination of contemporary books, diaries and newspapers, and records in over forty archives, Dr Griffin addresses the questions of what spaces were used, and what was the interaction with those who used and controlled the land. The industrial revolution has been seen to have had a negative impact on popular recreation; through its innovative use of the concept of space, this book provides a welcome alternative to this traditional view.

Loki, ever the shapeshifter, has never been more adaptable across pop culture. Whether it's deep in the stories from Norse mythology, the countless offshoots and intepretations across media, or even the prolific Loki that has come to dominate our screens via the Marvel Cinematic Universe, each serves its own purpose and offers a new layer to the character we've come to know so well. By exploring contemporary variations of Loki from Norse god to anti-hero trickster in four distinct categories - the God of Knots, Mischief, Outcasts and Stories - we can better understand the power of myth, queer theory, fandom, ritual, pop culture itself and more. Johnson invites readers to journey with him as he unpicks his own evolving relationship with Loki, and to ask: Who is your Loki? And what is their glorious purpose?

From Louis Brandeis to Robert Bork to Clarence Thomas, the nomination of federal judges has generated intense political conflict. With the coming retirement of one or more Supreme Court Justices--and threats to filibuster lower court judges--the selection process is likely to be, once again, the center of red-hot partisan debate.
In Advice and Consent, two leading legal scholars, Lee Epstein and Jeffrey A. Segal, offer a brief, illuminating Baedeker to this highly important procedure, discussing everything from constitutional background, to crucial differences in the nomination of judges and justices, to the role of the Judiciary Committee in vetting nominees. Epstein and Segal shed light on the role played by the media, by the American Bar Association, and by special interest groups (whose efforts helped defeat Judge Bork). Though it is often assumed that political clashes over nominees are a new phenomenon, the authors argue that the appointment of justices and judges has always been a highly contentious process--one largely driven by ideological and partisan concerns. The reader discovers how presidents and the senate have tried to remake the bench, ranging from FDR's controversial "court packing" scheme to the Senate's creation in 1978 of 35 new appellate and 117 district court judgeships, allowing the Democrats to shape the judiciary for years. The authors conclude with possible "reforms," from the so-called nuclear option, whereby a majority of the Senate could vote to prohibit filibusters, to the even more dramatic suggestion that Congress eliminate a judge's life tenure either by term limits or compulsory retirement.
With key appointments looming on the horizon, Adviceand Consent provides everything concerned citizens need to know to understand the partisan rows that surround the judicial nominating process.

Gestures of Music Theater: The Performativity of Song and Dance offers new cutting edge essays focusing on Song and Dance as performative gestures that not only entertain but also act on audiences and performers. The chapters range across musical theatre, opera, theatre and other artistic practices, from Glee to Gardzienice, Beckett to Disney, Broadway to Turner Prize winning sound installation. The chapters draw together these diverse examples of vocality and physicality by exploring their affect rather than through considering them as texts. This book considers performativity in relation to Dramaturgy, Transition, Identity, Context, Practice, Community and finally, Writing. The book reveals how the texture of music theatre, containing as it does the gestures of song and dance, is performative in dense, interwoven, dialogical and paradoxical ways, partly caused by the intertextual and interdisciplinary energies of its make-up, partly by its active dynamism in performance. The book's contributors derive methodologies from many disciplines, seeking in many ways to resist and explode discrete discipline-based enquiry. They share methodologies and performance repertoires with discipline-based scholarship from theatre studies, musicology and cultural studies, but there are many other approaches and case studies which we also embrace. Together, they view these as neighboring voices whose dialogue enriches the study of contemporary music theatre.

WINNER OF THE 2020 CONNECTICUT BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION AND NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS FOR BOOK CLUBS IN 2021 BY BOOKBROWSE "Perkins' richly detailed narrative is a reminder that gender equity has never come easily, but instead if borne from the exertions of those who precede us."-Nathalia Holt, New York Times bestselling author of Rise of the Rocket Girls If Yale was going to keep its standing as one of the top two or three colleges in the nation, the availability of women was an amenity it could no longer do without. In the winter of 1969, from big cities to small towns, young women across the country sent in applications to Yale University for the first time. The Ivy League institution dedicated to graduating "one thousand male leaders" each year had finally decided to open its doors to the nation's top female students. The landmark decision was a huge step forward for women's equality in education. Or was it? The experience the first undergraduate women found when they stepped onto Yale's imposing campus was not the same one their male peers enjoyed. Isolated from one another, singled out as oddities and sexual objects, and barred from many of the privileges an elite education was supposed to offer, many of the first girls found themselves immersed in an overwhelmingly male culture they were unprepared to face. Yale Needs Women is the story of how these young women fought against the backward-leaning traditions of a centuries-old institution and created the opportunities that would carry them into the future. Anne Gardiner Perkins's unflinching account of a group of young women striving for change is an inspiring story of strength, resilience, and courage that continues to resonate today. "Yes, Yale needed women, but it didn't really want them... Anne Gardiner Perkins tells how these young women met the challenge with courage and tenacity and forever changed Yale and its chauvinistic motto of graduating 1,000 male leaders every year."-Lynn Povich, author of The Good Girls Revolt

Is globalization making our world more equal, or less? Proponents of globalization argue that it is helping and that in a competitive world, no one can afford to discriminate except on the basis of skills. Opponents counter that globalization does nothing but provide a meritocratic patina on a consistently unequal distribution of opportunity. Yet, despite the often deafening volume of the debate, there is surprisingly little empirical work available on the extent to which the process of globalization over the past quarter century has had any effect on discrimination. Tackling this challenge, Discrimination in an Unequal World explores the relationship between discrimination and unequal outcomes in the appropriate geographical and historical context. Noting how each society tends to see its particular version of discrimination as universal and obvious, the editors expand their set of cases to include a broad variety of social relations and practices. However, since methods differ and are often designed for particular national circumstances, they set the much more ambitious and practical goal of establishing a base with which different forms of discrimination across the world can be compared. Deriving from a broad array of methods, including statistical analyses, role-playing games, and audit studies, the book draws many important lessons on the new means by which the world creates social hierarchies, the democratization of inequality, and the disappearance of traditional categories.