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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies
This innovative archaeological study of diet and cooking technology sheds light on ancient cuisine. Ancient cuisine is one of the hot topics in today's archaeology. This book explores changing settlement and subsistence in the Northern Great Lakes from the perspective of food-processing technology and cooking. Susan Kooiman examines precontact Indigenous pottery from the Cloudman site on Drummond Island on the far eastern end of Michigan's Upper Peninsula to investigate both how pottery technology, pottery use, diet, and cooking habits change over time and how these changes relate to hypothesized transitions in subsistence, settlement, and social patterns among Indigenous pottery-making groups in this area. Kooiman demonstrates that ceramic technology and cooking techniques evolved to facilitate new subsistence and processing needs. Her interpretations of past cuisine and culinary identities are further supported and enhanced through comparisons with ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts of local Indigenous cooking and diet. The complementary nature of these diverse methods demonstrates a complex interplay of technology, environment, and social relationships, and underscores the potential applications of such an analytic suite to long-standing questions in the Northern Great Lakes and other archaeological contexts worldwide. This clearly written book will interest students and scholars of archaeology and anthropology, as well as armchair archaeologists who want to learn more about Indigenous/Native American studies, food studies and cuisine, pottery, cooking, and food history.
The contributors to this collection provide a wealth of new analyses of both traditional and emerging aspects of entrepreneurship, from a variety of national perspectives and from a variety of disciplines. Globalization has begun to dismantle the barriers that traditionally segregated local business opportunities and local firms from their international counterparts. Local markets are becoming integral parts of broader, global markets. As globalization proceeds apace, entrepreneurs and small businesses will play a more prominent role on the global business arena. The volume is divided into three sections. The first looks at the internationalization process itself while the second focuses on factors facilitating this process in small and medium-sized firms. The last section examines emerging dimensions in management policy. This book provides valuable insights for business leaders, policy formulators, students and academics alike in understanding and coping with our rapidly changing world.
This collection of essays honours Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) as a Platonic philosopher. Ficino was not the first translator of Plato in the Renaissance, but he was the first to translate the entire corpus of Platonic works, and to emphasise their relevance for contemporary readers. The present work is divided into two sections: the first explores aspects of Ficino s own thought and the sources which he used. The second section follows aspects of his influence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The papers presented here deepen and enrich our understanding of Ficino, and of the philosophical tradition in which he was working, and they offer a new platform for future studies on Ficino and his legacy in Renaissance philosophy. Contributors include: Unn Irene Aasdalen, Constance Blackwell, Paul Richard Blum, Stephen Clucas, Ruth Clydesdale, Brian Copenhaver, John Dillon, Peter J. Forshaw, James Hankins, Hiro Hirai, Sarah Klitenic Wear, David Leech, Letizia Panizza, Valery Rees, and St phane Toussaint.
For the first time in human history, more people inhabit urban than rural areas. Investigating the experience of hunger and malnutrition in urban spaces, Food and Agriculture in Urbanized Societies confronts the persistence of social inequalities, constant waves of economic crises and accelerating climate shifts, asking, how and to what extent food systems will recover and rebuild after the unprecedented eruption of a pandemic? An in-depth diagnosis of the state of the art of the current and dominant agri-food system, the broad and diverse collective intelligence in this edited collection proposes alternatives for change and redesign, bringing together a set of pioneering ideas and solutions to old and new problems. From environmental regeneration and the quality of food to the nutritional, political and economic perspective, the chapters culminate with the focus on developing a more integrative and systematic approach towards urban and rural areas. Inspiring innovative and sustainable practices, governance perspectives and informing public policies, Food and Agriculture in Urbanized Societies offers the most current research on urbanized agriculture to truly provide 'pathways for a better future' to foster more equitable and fair societies.
Music has been a vital part of leisure activity across time and cultures. Contemporary commodification, commercialization, and consumerism, however, have created a chasm between conceptualizations of music making and numerous realities in our world. From a broad range of perspectives and approaches, this handbook explores avocational involvement with music as an integral part of the human condition. The chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure present myriad ways for reconsidering and refocusing attention back on the rich, exciting, and emotionally charged ways in which people of all ages make time for making music. The contexts discussed are broadly Western, including an eclectic variety of voices from scholars across fields and disciplines, framing complex and multifaceted phenomena that may be helpfully, enlighteningly, and perhaps provocatively framed as music making and leisure. This volume may be viewed as an attempt to reclaim music making and leisure as a serious concern for, amongst others, policy makers, scholars, and educators who perhaps risk eliding some or even most of the ways in which music - a vital part of human existence - is integrated into the everyday lives of people. As such, this handbook looks beyond the obvious, asking readers to consider anew, "What might we see when we think of music making as leisure?"
This book offers a theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich study of the intersections of contemporary Christianity and youth culture, focusing on evangelical engagements with punk, hip hop, surfing, and skateboarding. Ibrahim Abraham draws on interviews and fieldwork with dozens of musicians and sports enthusiasts in the USA, UK, Australia, and South Africa, and the analysis of evangelical subcultural media including music, film, and extreme sports Bibles. Evangelical Youth Culture: Alternative Music and Extreme Sports Subcultures makes innovative use of multiple theories of youth cultures and subcultures from sociology and cultural studies, and introduces the "serious leisure perspective" to the study of religion, youth, and popular culture. Engaging with the experiences of Pentecostal punks, surfing missionaries, township rappers, and skateboarding youth pastors, this book makes an original contribution to the sociology of religion, youth studies, and the study of religion and popular culture.
In the last three decades, the human body has gained increasing prominence in contemporary political debates, and it has become a central topic of modern social sciences and humanities. Modern technologies - such as organ transplants, stem-cell research, nanotechnology, cosmetic surgery and cryonics - have changed how we think about the body. In this collection of thirty original essays by leading figures in the field, these issues are explored across a number of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, including pragmatism, feminism, queer theory, post-modernism, post-humanism, cultural sociology, philosophy and anthropology. A wide range of case studies, which include cosmetics, diet, organ transplants, racial bodies, masculinity and sexuality, eating disorders, religion and the sacred body, and disability, are used to appraise these different perspectives. In addition, this Handbook explores various epistemological approaches to the basic question: what is a body? It also offers a strongly themed range of chapters on empirical topics that are organized around religion, medicine, gender, technology and consumption. It also contributes to the debate over the globalization of the body: how have military technology, modern medicine, sport and consumption led to this contemporary obsession with matters corporeal? The Handbook's clear, direct style will appeal to a wide undergraduate audience in the social sciences, particularly for those studying medical sociology, gender studies, sports studies, disability studies, social gerontology, or the sociology of religion. It will serve to consolidate the new field of body studies.
From Bombay to Bollywood analyzes the transformation of the national film industry in Bombay into a transnational and multi-media cultural enterprise, which has come to be known as Bollywood. Combining ethnographic, institutional, and textual analyses, Aswin Punathambekar explores how relations between state institutions, the Indian diaspora, circuits of capital, and new media technologies and industries have reconfigured the Bombay-based industry's geographic reach. Providing in-depth accounts of the workings of media companies and media professionals, Punathambekar has produced a timely analysis of how a media industry in the postcolonial world has come to claim the global as its scale of operations. Based on extensive field research in India and the U.S., this book offers empirically-rich and theoretically-informed analyses of how the imaginations and practices of industry professionals give shape to the media worlds we inhabit and engage with. Moving beyond a focus on a single medium, Punathambekar develops a comparative and integrated approach that examines four different but interrelated media industries--film, television, marketing, and digital media. Offering a path-breaking account of media convergence in a non-Western context, Punathambekar's transnational approach to understanding the formation of Bollywood is an innovative intervention into current debates on media industries, production cultures, and cultural globalization.Aswin Punathambekaris Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. He is the co-editor ofGlobal Bollywood(NYU Press, 2008).In thePostmillenial Popseries
This book addresses the role of cooperation, networks and institutions in the context of regional innovation systems. It emphasises the importance of these factors in the emergence of local innovation systems, using detailed examples of clusters which have reached different stages of maturity. The authors address the topic from an empirical, theoretical and political perspective, and highlight the local mechanisms which are involved in the development of innovation systems. They offer a comprehensive overview of different approaches in the field and present numerous case studies which stress the influence of networks and local institutions. Significantly, they also introduce several new approaches to regional innovation systems, including contributions which explicitly discuss the design and potential of policy measures to promote regional development. The policy recommendations are based on sound theorising which, in turn, is based on extensive empirical research. This book is a valuable addition to a complex and growing literature which offers new perspectives and insights on cooperation, networks and institutions, and their role in the development of local systems of innovation. The combination of empirical, theoretical and policy-oriented approaches will ensure this book is essential reading for academics and policymakers in the fields of regional economics, innovation research and economic geography.
The events in Seattle and other cities around the world demonstrate that globalisation and trade liberalisation are currently under severe pressure. There are also reasons to believe that these pressures are being translated into measures to increase the protection of domestic markets. This book addresses what are arguably the four most important origins of these pressures: macroeconomic conditions, labour policy, trade and the environment, and market imperfections.The authors first address the role of macroeconomic conditions and policies, and demonstrate how these can have a crucial role in explaining 'slippages' of trade policy. The second origin of instability is labour policy, in particular the pressures to introduce universal labour standards. The third economic origin the book considers is the relationship between trade and the environment and the attempts to link trade policies to environmental standards. The fourth origin of protectionist pressure comes from the presence of various market imperfections and the extent to which they affect competition. The authors conclude that multilateral agreements can be extremely helpful in creating the right environment for equitable trade policies, but warn that complete success can only be achieved once major hurdles are overcome in the highly controversial and politically sensitive areas of labour, environment and competition. Offering a unique perspective on the threat to globalisation, this book should be widely read by students, practitioners and policymakers in the spheres of international trade, transition and development studies, and competition, labour and environmental economics.
Globalization and the Small Open Economy investigates the specific role of small open countries in a globalizing economic system and assesses the unique pressures and opportunities afforded them by globalization. Traditionally, in contrast to large countries, small open economies (SOEs) have relied on international economic policy rather than domestic policy as a means to foster national economic development. Their firms also have a far greater reliance on host countries to gain competitive advantage than those of larger nations. This would suggest that globalization has potentially a far greater impact on SOEs than on large countries. The contributors to this volume concur with this view and seek to outline the challenges and opportunities faced by policymakers and managers of multinational enterprises from SOEs. They examine the role of government, environmental policy, inward and outward foreign direct investment and multinational management and conclude that, on balance, globalization provides more of an opportunity than a threat to economic growth in these countries. An innovative collection with fascinating new insights on the present and future role of small, open countries in the global economy, this will be an important new reference source for academics and students, public policy research institutes, international business scholars and trade economists.
This book is about machines: those that have been actualized, fantastical imaginal machines, to those deployed as metaphorical devices to describe complex social processes. Machines argues that they transcend time and space to emerge through a variety of spaces and places, times and histories and representations. They are such an integral fabric of daily reality that their disappearance would have immediate and dire consequences for the survival of humanity. They are part and parcel to our contemporary social order. From labor to social theory, art or consciousness, literature or television, to the asylums of the 19th century, machines are a central figure; an outgrowth of affective desire that seeks to transcend organic limitations of bodies that whither, age and die. Machines takes the reader on an intellectual, artistic, and theoretical journey, weaving an interdisciplinary tale of their emergence across social, cultural and artistic boundaries. With the deep engagement of various texts, Machines offers the reader moments of escape, alternative ways to envision technology for a future yet to materialize. Machines rejects the notion that technological innovations are indeed neutral, propelling us to think differently about those "things" created under specific economic or historical paradigms. Rethinking machines provides a rupture to our current technocratic impetus, shining a critical light on possible alternatives to our current reality. Let us sit back and take a journey through Machines, holding mechanical parts as guides to possible alternative futures.
"In lively and unflinching prose, Eric Cazdyn and Imre Szeman argue that contemporary thought about the world is disabled by a fatal flaw: the inability to think "an after" to globalization. After establishing seven theses (on education, morality, history, future, capitalism, nation, and common sense) that challenge the false promises that sustain this time-limit, After Globalization examines four popular thinkers (Thomas Friedman, Richard Florida, Paul Krugman and Naomi Klein) and how their work is dulled by these promises. Cazdyn and Szeman then speak to students from around the globe who are both unconvinced and uninterested in these promises and who understand the world very differently than the way it is popularly represented. After Globalization argues that a true capacity to think an after to globalization is the very beginning of politics today"--
This seminal reference tool provides a detailed chronological account of the development of European integration from the fragmentation at the end of the Second World War to the launch of the Euro on 31st December 1998. It offers a descriptive summary of important events, measures, arrangements, conferences and ideas that shaped the progress towards integration. Wim Vanthoor's chronology reveals that the attainment of political unions referred to by Winston Churchill in 1946 as 'The United States of Europe', was on the one hand a controversial point in the struggle for integration while on the other it was always kept in view as the ultimate objective. The author comes to the conclusion that with the creation of the economic and monetary union the efforts to achieve European political unification have reached an interim phase. Previous experience suggests that, in the long run, the European Union needs to be deepened in order to create the supranationality which the founding fathers of the European Community already had in mind when they signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957. This reference work will prove invaluable to students, scholars and professionals interested in the development of the European Union.
Throughout time and in every culture, human beings have eaten together. Commensality - eating and drinking at the same table - is a fundamental social activity, which creates and cements relationships. It also sets boundaries, including or excluding people according to a set of criteria defined by the society. Particular scholarly attention has been paid to banquets and feasts, often hosted for religious, ritualistic or political purposes, but few studies have considered everyday commensality. Commensality: From Everyday Food to Feast offers an insight into this social practice in all its forms, from the most basic and mundane meals to the grandest occasions. Bringing together insights from anthropologists, archaeologists and historians, this volume offers a vast historical scope, ranging from the Late Neolithic period (6th millennium BC), through the Middle Ages, to the present day. The sixteen chapters include case studies from across the world, including the USA, Bolivia, China, Southeast Asia, Iran, Turkey, Portugal, Denmark and the UK. Connecting these diverse analyses is an understanding of commensality's role as a social and political tool, integral to the formation of personal and national identities. From first experiences of commensality in the sharing of food between a mother and child, to the inaugural dinner of the American president, this collection of essays celebrates the variety of human life and society.
Modern Conspiracy attempts to sketch a new conception of conspiracy theory. Where many commentators have sought to characterize conspiracy theory in terms of the collapse of objectivity and Enlightenment reason, Fleming and Jane trace the important role of conspiracy in the formation of the modern world: the scientific revolution, social contract theory, political sovereignty, religious paranoia and mass communication media. Rather than see in conspiratorial thinking the imminent death of Enlightenment reason, and a regression to a new Dark Age, Modern Conspiracy contends that many characteristic features of conspiracies tap very deeply into the history of the Enlightenment itself: among other things, its vociferous critique of established authorities, and a conception of political sovereignty fuelled by fear of counter-plots. Drawing out the roots of modern conspiratorial thinking leads us to truths less salacious and scandalous than the claims of conspiracy theorists themselves yet ultimately far more salutary: about mass communication; about individual and crowd psychology; and about our conception of and relation to knowledge.Perhaps, ultimately, what conspiracy theory affords us is a renewed opportunity to reflect on our very relationship to the truth itself.
In this book, Kevin Kester details how the United Nations promotion of higher education for peace and international understanding sometimes unintentionally contributes to the reproduction of conflict and violence across diverse cultures. He shows this through an indepth examination of peace curricula, pedagogy and policy in one United Nations higher education institution, where he indicates how dominant philosophical and pedagogical models that signify acceptable peace education ultimately undermine the very goals of educational peacebuilding. Kester contends that theoretical and pedagogical training must develop beyond the dominant psycho-social, rational and state-centric assumptions that permeate the field today if higher education is to better contribute to personal and societal peacebuilding. Drawing from the fields of educational philosophy and sociology, he argues for new concepts of poststructural violence and second order reflexivity that can assist scholars in reducing conflict and building peace in lasting ways. He complements his fieldwork findings with personal reflections throughout the book to reimagine the transformative possibilities of peacebuilding education for the 21st century.
A Cultural History of The Human Body presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers 2800 years of the human body as a physical, social, spiritual and cultural object. Volume 1: A Cultural History of the Human Body in Antiquity (1300 BCE - 500 CE) Edited by Daniel Garrison, Northwestern University. Volume 2: A Cultural History of the Human Body in The Medieval Age (500 - 1500) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University Volume 3: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Renaissance (1400 - 1650) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University and William Bynum, University College London. Volume 4: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Enlightenment (1600 - 1800) Edited by Carole Reeves, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London. Volume 5: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age of Empire (1800 - 1920) Edited by Michael Sappol, National Library of Medicine in Washington, DC, and Stephen P. Rice, Ramapo College of New Jersey. Volume 6: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Modern Age (1900-21st Century) Edited by Ivan Crozier, University of Edinburgh, and Chiara Beccalossi, University of Queensland. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters: 1. Birth and Death 2. Health and Disease 3. Sex & Sexuality 4. Medical Knowledge and Technology 5. Popular Beliefs 6. Beauty and Concepts of the Ideal 7. Marked Bodies I: Gender, Race, Class, Age, Disability and Disease 8. Marked Bodies II: the Bestial, the Divine and the Natural 9. Cultural Representations of the Body 10. The Self and Society This means readers can either have a broad overview of a period by reading a volume or follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Superbly illustrated, the full six volume set combines to present the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on the human body through history.
The 19th century witnessed an explosion of writing about unproductivity, with the exploits of various idlers, loafers, and "gentlemen of refinement" capturing the imagination o fa country that was deeply ambivalent about its work ethic. Idle Threats documents this American obsession with unproductivity and its potentials, while offering an explanation of the profound significance of idle practices for literary and cultural production. While this fascination with unproductivity memorably defined literary characters from Rip Van Winkle to Bartleby to George Hurstwood, it also reverberated deeply through the entire culture, both as a seductive ideal and as a potentially corrosive threat to upright, industrious American men. Drawing on an impressive array of archival material and multifaceted literary and cultural sources, Idle Threats connects the question of unproductivity to other discourses concerning manhood, the value of art, the allure of the frontier, the usefulness of knowledge, the meaning of individuality, and the experience of time, space, and history. Andrew Lyndon Knighton offers a new way of thinking about the largely unacknowledged "productivity of the unproductive," revealing the incalculable and sometimes surprising ways in which American modernity transformed the relationship between subjects and that which is most intimate to them: their own activity.
Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883-1959), Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Rome and one of the leading historians of religions in the twentieth century, maintained a long correspondence with Herbert Jennings Rose (1883-1961), the gifted Canadian scholar who was Professor of Greek at St Andrews and is best known for his work in the field of ancient religion and folklore. These letters, spanning the years 1927 to 1958, bear witness to the close relationship between the two scholars and focus on two of Pettazzoni's books, both translated by Rose: Essays on the History of Religions (1954) and The All-Knowing God (1956). They also shed light on Pettazzoni's initiative to the foundation of the journal NVMEN (1954), and reveal Rose's brilliant personality.
Technology for Facilitating Humanity and Combating Social Deviations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives provides a state-of-the-art compendium of research and development on socio-technical approaches to support the prevention, mitigation, and elimination of social deviations with the help of computer science and technology. This book provides historical backgrounds, experimental studies, and future perspectives on the use of computing tools to prevent and deal with physical, psychological and social problems that impact society as a whole.
This book is the result of a comparative investigation that contrasts micro-systems of innovation in several regions of China and Australia - two vastly different countries in terms of traditions, industry structures, political systems and economic organisation. Six regional studies comprehensively document the experiences of firms engaged in product or process innovation. The book also examines the institutions that support research and development and the impact of government policies on innovation in each of the regions studied. The case-studies present original and informative insights into the different ways in which local, national and transnational interests interact and influence regional development. These findings support the view that local innovation systems are emerging with quite different structural characteristics. The authors conclude that local, national and transnational dimensions are continually redefining and aligning themselves in novel and interesting ways. They highlight the importance of identifying these structural relationships in order to encourage dynamic innovation to occur. This, they argue, has important implications for policymakers concerned with the promotion of innovation in regional areas. Innovation, Technology Policy and Regional Development will be of great interest to those involved in research and policy in the fields of economic growth and employment, industrial economics and innovation.
Today's globalised world means offshore finance, airport boutiques and high-speed Internet for some people, against dollar-a-day wages, used t-shirts, and illiteracy for others. How do these highly skewed global distributions happen, and what can be done to counter them? New Rules for Global Justice engages with widespread public disquiet around global inequality. It explores (mal)distributions in relation to country, class, gender and race, with international examples drawn from Australia to Zimbabwe. The book is action-oriented and empowering, presenting concrete proposals for 'new rules' in regard to climate change, corruption, finance, food, investment, the Internet, migration and more. |
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