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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies
Cities are defined by their complex network of busy streets and the
multitudes of people that animate them through physical presence
and bodily actions that often differ dramatically: elegant
window-shoppers and homeless beggars, protesting crowds and
patrolling police. As bodies shape city life, so the city's spaces,
structures, economies, politics, rhythms, and atmospheres
reciprocally shape the urban soma. This collection of original
essays explores the somaesthetic qualities and challenges of city
life (in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas) from a variety of
perspectives ranging from philosophy, urban theory, political
theory, and gender studies to visual art, criminology, and the
interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics. Together these essays
illustrate the aesthetic, cultural, and political roles and trials
of bodies in the city streets.
Unrecognized in the United States and resisted in many wealthy,
industrialized nations, children's rights to participation and
self-determination are easily disregarded in the name of
protection. In literature, the needs of children are often obscured
by protectionist narratives, which redirect attention to parents by
mythologizing the supposed innocence, victimization, and
vulnerability of children rather than potential agency. In Perils
of Protection: Shipwrecks, Orphans, and Children's Rights, author
Susan Honeyman traces how the best of intentions to protect
children can nonetheless hurt them when leaving them unprepared to
act on their own behalf. Honeyman utilizes literary parallels and
discursive analysis to highlight the unchecked protectionism that
has left minors increasingly isolated in dwindling social units and
vulnerable to multiple injustices made possible by eroded or
unrecognized participatory rights. Each chapter centers on a
perilous pattern in a different context: ""women and children
first"" rescue hierarchies, geographic restriction, abandonment,
censorship, and illness. Analysis from adventures real and
fictionalized will offer the reader high jinx and heroism at sea,
the rush of risk, finding new families, resisting censorship
through discovering shared political identity, and breaking the
pretenses of sentimentality.
In her new book, Corine Pelluchon argues that the dichotomy between
nature and culture privileges the latter. She laments that the
political system protects the sovereignty of the human and leaves
them immune to impending environmental disaster. Using the
phenomenological writings of French philosophers like Emmanuel
Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Paul Ricoeur, Pelluchon contends that
human beings have to recognise humanity's dependence upon the
natural world for survival and adopt a new philosophy of existence
that advocates for animal welfare and ecological preservation. In
an extension of Heidegger's ontology of concern, Pelluchon declares
that this dependence is not negative or a sign of weakness. She
argues instead, that we are nourished by the natural world and that
the very idea of nourishment contains an element of pleasure. This
sustenance comforts humans and gives their lives taste. Pelluchon's
new philosophy claims then, that eating has an affective, social
and cultural dimension, but that most importantly it is a political
act. It solidifies the eternal link between human beings and
animals, and warns that the human consumption of animals and other
natural resources impacts upon humanity's future.
In this study, Jo Stoner investigates the role of domestic material
culture in Late Antiquity. Using archaeological, visual and textual
evidence from across the Roman Empire, the personal meanings of
late antique possessions are revealed through reference to
theoretical approaches including object biography. Heirlooms,
souvenirs, and gift objects are discussed in terms of sentimental
value, before the book culminates in a case study reassessing
baskets as an artefact type. This volume succeeds in demonstrating
personal scales of value for artefacts, moving away from the focus
on economic and social status that dominate studies in this field.
It thus represents a new interpretation of domestic material
culture from Late Antiquity, revealing how objects transformed
houses into homes during this period.
In The Anti-Heroine on Contemporary Television: Transgressive
Women, Molly Brost explores the various applications and
definitions of the term anti-heroine, showing that it has been
applied to a wide variety of female characters on television that
have little in common beyond their failure to behave in morally
"correct" and traditionally feminine ways. Rather than dismiss the
term altogether, Brost employs the term to examine what types of
behaviors and characteristics cause female characters to be labeled
anti-heroines, how those qualities and behaviors differ from those
that cause men to be labeled anti-heroes, and how the label
reflects society's attitudes toward and beliefs about women. Using
popular television series such as Jessica Jones, Scandal, and The
Good Place, Brost acknowledges the problematic nature of the term
anti-heroine and uses it as a starting point to study the complex
women on television, analyzing how the broadening spectrum of
character types has allowed more nuanced portrayals of women's
lives on television.
Latin American extractivism has become the ground on which
activists and scholars frame the dynamics of ecological
devastation, accumulation of wealth, and erosion of rights. These
maladies are the detritus of longstanding extraction-oriented
economies, and more recently from the expansion of the extractive
frontier and the implementation of new technologies in the
extraction of fossil fuels, mining, and agriculture. But the fields
of sociology, political ecology, anthropology, and geography have
largely ignored the role of art and cultural practices in studies
of extractivism and postextractivism. The field of art theory on
the other hand, has offered a number of texts that put forward
insightful analyses of artwork addressing extraction, environmental
devastation, and the climate crisis. However, an art theory
perspective that does not engage firsthand with collective action
remains limited, and fails to provide an account of the role,
processes and politics of art in anti- and post-extractivist
movements. Creating Worlds Otherwise offers the narratives that
subaltern groups generate around extractivism, and how they
develop, communicate, and mobilize these narratives through art and
cultural practices. The book reports on a two-year research project
into creative resistance to extractivism in Argentina, and builds
on long-term engagement working on environmental justice projects
and campaigns in Argentina and the UK. Creating Worlds Otherwise is
structured according to the main themes of anti and
post-extractivist movements: territoriality; ecofeminism and the
ethics of care; human rights and the rights of nature; urban
extractivism; sovereignty, autonomy and self-determination; and
postextractivism and alternatives to development. It is an
innovative contribution to the fields of Latin American studies,
political ecology, cultural studies, and art theory, and addresses
pressing questions regarding what post-extractivist worlds might
look like as well as how such visions are put into practice.
The contemporary conflict scenarios are beyond the reach of
standardized approaches to conflict resolution. Given the curious
datum that culture is implicated in nearly every conflict in the
world, culture can also be an important aspect of efforts to
transform destructive conflicts into more constructive social
processes. Yet, what culture is and how culture matters in conflict
scenarios is contested and regrettably unexplored. The Handbook of
Research on the Impact of Culture in Conflict Prevention and
Peacebuilding is a critical publication that examines cultural
differences in conflict resolution based on various aspects of
culture such as morals, traditions, and laws. Highlighting a wide
range of topics such as criminal justice, politics, and
technological development, this book is essential for educators,
social scientists, sociologists, political leaders, government
officials, academicians, conflict resolution practitioners, world
peace organizations, researchers, and students.
Foreigners in their Own Land: A Mexican American Studies Reader
provides students with a carefully selected collection of articles
that demonstrate how the Mexican American story can be interwoven
within a traditional, American master narrative. It provides a
thematic overview of issues that have shaped the Mexican American
experience in the United States while simultaneously covering
centuries of history. Readers gain an understanding of the
diversity of the Hispanic culture and how Mexicans are one small
part of the Hispanic story. The readings in this anthology are
written by scholars from a range of disciplines-history, political
science, sociology, criminology, and anthropology, to name a
few-showcasing a wide range of perspectives. The book is organized
into six chapters, which address U.S.-Spanish heritage and
exploration; Mexican women in the 19th century; Mexican lynching;
immigration and the Bracero Program; education; and borderlands and
21st century Mexican Americans. Each chapter includes an
introduction, the selected readings, and discussion questions that
enhance the learning experience and inspire critical thought.
Challenging the typical master narrative of U.S. history,
Foreigners in their Own Land is an engaging and enlightening
supplemental resource for courses in Mexican American studies.
This book explores commemoration practices and preservation efforts
in modern Britain, focusing on the years from the end of the First
World War until the mid-1960s. The changes wrought by war led
Britain to reconsider major historical episodes that made up its
national narrative. Part of this process was a reassessment of
heritage sites, because such places carry socio-political meaning
as do the memorials that mark them. This book engages the four-way
intersection of commemoration, preservation, tourism, and urban
planning at some of the most notable historic locations in England.
The various actors in this process-from the national government and
regional councils to private organizations and interested
individuals-did nothing less than engineer British national memory.
The author presents case studies of six famous British places,
namely battlefields (Hastings and Bosworth), political sites
(Runnymede and Peterloo), and world's fairgrounds (the Crystal
Palace and Great White City). In all three genres of heritage
sites, one location developed through commemorations and tourism,
while the other 'anti-sites' simultaneously faltered as they were
neither memorialized nor visited by the masses. Ultimately, the
book concludes that the modern social and political environment
resulted in the revival, creation, or erasure of heritage sites in
the service of promoting British national identity. A valuable read
for British historians as well as scholars of memory, public
history, and cultural studies, the book argues that heritage
emerged as a discursive arena in which British identity was
renegotiated through times of transitions, both into a democratic
age and an era of geopolitical decline.
Do we have moral duties to people in distant parts of the world? If
so, how demanding are these duties? And how can they be reconciled
with our obligations to fellow citizens? Every year, millions of
people die from poverty-related causes while countless others are
forced to flee their homes to escape from war and oppression. At
the same time, many of us live comfortably in safe and prosperous
democracies. Yet our lives are bound up with those of the poor and
dispossessed in multiple ways: our clothes are manufactured in
Asian sweatshops; the oil that fuels our cars is purchased from
African and Middle Eastern dictators; and our consumer lifestyles
generate environmental changes that threaten Bangladeshi peasants
with drought and famine. These facts force us to re-evaluate our
conduct and to ask whether we must do more for those who have less.
Helping students to grapple with big questions surrounding justice,
human rights, and equality, this comprehensive yet accessible
textbook features chapters on a variety of pressing issues such as
immigration, international trade, war, and climate change. Suitable
for undergraduate and graduate students alike, the book also serves
as a philosophical primer for politicians, activists, and anyone
else who cares about justice.
Covering from 1915 to the present, this book deals with the role
that artists and intellectuals have played regarding projects of
European integration. Consciously or not, they partake of a
tradition of Euroskepticism. Because Euroskepticism is often
associated with the discourse of political elites, its literary and
artistic expressions have gone largely unnoticed. This book
addresses that gap. Taking Spain as a case study, author Luis
Martin-Estudillo analyzes its conflict over its own Europeanness or
exceptionalism, as well as the European view of Spain. He ranges
from canonical writers like Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset, and Zambrano
to new media artists like Valeriano Lopez, Carlos Spottorno, and
Santiago Sierra. Martin-Estudillo provides a new context for the
current refugee crisis, the North-South divide among EU countries,
and the generalized disaffection toward the project of European
integration. The eclipsed critical tradition he discusses
contributes to a deeper understanding of the notion of Europe and
its institutional embodiments. It gives resonance to the
intellectual and cultural history of Europe's ""peripheries"" and
re-evaluates Euroskeptic contributions as one of the few hopes left
to imagine ways to renew the promise of a union of the European
nations.
This encyclopaedia showcases the explanatory power of Marxist
educational theory and practice. The entries have been written by
51 leading authors from across the globe. The 39 entries cover an
impressive range of contemporary issues and historical
problematics. The editor has designed the book to appeal to readers
within the Marxism and education intellectual tradition, and also
those who are curious newcomers, as well as critics of Marxism. The
Encyclopaedia of Marxism and Education is the first of its kind. It
is a landmark text with relevance for years to come for the
productive dialogue between Marxism and education for
transformational thinking and practice.
This edited volume advances knowledge of food security and food
sovereignty for students and researchers. The book analyses and
interprets field data and interrogates relevant literature, which
forms the basis for decisions on improving food security and
sovereignty in Africa. It deepens an understanding of food fraud,
and of multinational corporations' (MNCs) manipulations of food
quality to the detriment of consumers. It provides information to
advance new knowledge on the issue of international interdependency
of unequal exchange, and the inactions of governments against the
dumping and waste of food.
A collaboration of political activism and participatory culture
seeking to upend consumer capitalism, including interviews with The
Yes Men, The Guerrilla Girls, among others. Coined in the 1980s,
"culture jamming" refers to an array of tactics deployed by
activists to critique, subvert, and otherwise "jam" the workings of
consumer culture. Ranging from media hoaxes and advertising
parodies to flash mobs and street art, these actions seek to
interrupt the flow of dominant, capitalistic messages that permeate
our daily lives. Employed by Occupy Wall Street protesters and the
Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot alike, culture jamming
scrambles the signal, injects the unexpected, and spurs audiences
to think critically and challenge the status quo. The essays,
interviews, and creative work assembled in this unique volume
explore the shifting contours of culture jamming by plumbing its
history, mapping its transformations, testing its force, and
assessing its efficacy. Revealing how culture jamming is at once
playful and politically transgressive, this accessible collection
explores the degree to which culture jamming has fulfilled its
revolutionary aims. Featuring original essays from prominent media
scholars discussing Banksy and Shepard Fairey, foundational texts
such as Mark Dery's culture jamming manifesto, and artwork by and
interviews with noteworthy culture jammers including the Guerrilla
Girls, The Yes Men, and Reverend Billy, Culture Jamming makes a
crucial contribution to our understanding of creative resistance
and participatory culture.
What is milk? Who is it for, and what work does it do? This
collection of articles bring together an exciting group of the
world's leading scholars from different disciplines to provide
commentaries on multiple facets of the production, consumption,
understanding and impact of milk on society. The book frames the
emerging global discussion around philosophical and critical
theoretical engagements with milk. In so doing, various chapters
bring into consideration an awareness of animals, an aspect which
has not yet been incorporated in these debates within these
disciplines so far. This brand new research from scholars includes
writing from an array of perspectives, including jurisprudence,
food law, history, geography, art theory, and gender studies. It
will be of use to professionals and researchers in such disciplines
as anthropology, visual culture, cultural studies, development
studies, food studies, environment studies, critical animal
studies, and gender studies.
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