After World War II, America's religious denominations spent billions on church architecture as they spread into the suburbs. In this richly illustrated history of midcentury modern churches in the Midwest, Gretchen Buggeln shows how architects and suburban congregations joined forces to work out a vision of how modernist churches might help reinvigorate Protestant worship and community. The result is a fascinating new perspective on postwar architecture, religion, and society. Drawing on the architectural record, church archives, and oral histories, The Suburban Church focuses on collaborations between architects Edward D. Dart, Edward A. Soevik, Charles E. Stade, and seventy-five congregations. By telling the stories behind their modernist churches, the book describes how the buildings both reflected and shaped developments in postwar religion-its ecumenism, optimism, and liturgical innovation, as well as its fears about staying relevant during a time of vast cultural, social, and demographic change. While many scholars have characterized these congregations as "country club" churches, The Suburban Church argues that most were earnest, well-intentioned religious communities caught between the desire to serve God and the demands of a suburban milieu in which serving middle-class families required most of their material and spiritual resources.

In the thousand years before the rise of Islam, two radically diverse conceptions of what it means to say that a law is divine confronted one another with a force that reverberates to the present. What's Divine about Divine Law? untangles the classical and biblical roots of the Western idea of divine law and shows how early adherents to biblical tradition--Hellenistic Jewish writers such as Philo, the community at Qumran, Paul, and the talmudic rabbis--struggled to make sense of this conflicting legacy. Christine Hayes shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law was divine by virtue of its inherent qualities of intrinsic rationality, truth, universality, and immutability, while for the biblical authors, divine law was divine because it was grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. Hayes describes the collision of these opposing conceptions in the Hellenistic period, and details competing attempts to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance. She shows how Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish writers, from the author of 1 Enoch to Philo of Alexandria, were engaged in a common project of bridging the gulf between classical and biblical notions of divine law, while Paul, in his letters to the early Christian church, sought to widen it. Hayes then delves into the literature of classical rabbinic Judaism to reveal how the talmudic rabbis took a third and scandalous path, insisting on a construction of divine law intentionally at odds with the Greco-Roman and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized West. A stunning achievement in intellectual history, What's Divine about Divine Law? sheds critical light on an ancient debate that would shape foundational Western thought, and that continues to inform contemporary views about the nature and purpose of law and the nature and authority of Scripture.

Parishes are the missing middle in studies of American Catholicism. Between individual Catholics and a global institution, the thousands of local parishes are where Catholicism gets remade. American Parishes showcases what social forces shape parishes, what parishes do, how they do it, and what this says about the future of Catholicism in the United States. Expounding an embedded field approach, this book displays the numerous forces currently reshaping American parishes. It draws from sociology of religion, culture, organizations, and race to illuminate basic parish processes, like leadership and education, and ongoing parish struggles like conflict and multiculturalism. American Parishes brings together contemporary data, methods, and questions to establish a sociological re-engagement with Catholic parishes and a Catholic re-engagement with sociological analysis. Contributions by leading social scientists highlight how community, geography, and authority intersect within parishes. It illuminates and analyzes how growing racial diversity, an aging religious population, and neighborhood change affect the inner workings of parishes. Contributors: Gary J. Adler Jr., Nancy Ammerman, Mary Jo Bane, Tricia C. Bruce, John A. Coleman, S.J., Kathleen Garces-Foley, Mary Gray, Brett Hoover, Courtney Ann Irby, Tia Noelle Pratt, and Brian Starks

This Open access book brings a cultural lens, and a distinctive analytical framework, to the problem of transitioning to a sustainable, low-carbon future.  The world faces a seemingly impossible hurdle – to radically alter long-established social, economic and technological systems in order to live within the biophysical limits of the globe, while ensuring a just and enduring transition.  The overarching premise of this book is that this cannot be achieved without widespread cultural change.  ‘We need a change in culture’ is often used rhetorically, but what does this really mean? Stephenson starts by exploring culture’s elusiveness, describing its divergent interpretations before identifying core features of culture that are common across most definitions.  These characteristics form the core of the cultures framework, an extensively tested approach to studying the links between culture and sustainability outcomes. The framework makes culture an accessible concept which can be analytically applied to almost any sustainability problem. Using many examples from around the world, Stephenson illustrates how cultural stability, cultural flexibility and cultural transformation all have a part to play in the sustainability transition.  She guides the reader in the use of the cultures framework for policy development and to underpin research undertaken by individuals or by multi-disciplinary teams. Clearly and engagingly written, Culture and Sustainability is essential reading for academics, students, policy makers and indeed anyone interested in a sustainable future. 

Demonstrates how race and power help to explain American religion in the twenty-first century When White people of faith act in a particular way, their motivations are almost always attributed to their religious orientation. Yet when religious people of color act in a particular way, their motivations are usually attributed to their racial positioning. Religion Is Raced makes the case that religion in America has generally been understood in ways that center White Christian experiences of religion, and argues that all religion must be acknowledged as a raced phenomenon. When we overlook the role race plays in religious belief and action, and how religion in turn spurs public and political action, we lose sight of a key way in which race influences religiously-based claims-making in the public sphere. With contributions exploring a variety of religious traditions, from Buddhism and Islam to Judaism and Protestantism, as well as pieces on atheists and humanists, Religion Is Raced brings discussions about the racialized nature of religion from the margins of scholarly and religious debate to the center. The volume offers a new model for thinking about religion that emphasizes how racial dynamics interact with religious identity, and how we can in turn better understand the roles religion-and Whiteness-play in politics and public life, especially in the United States. It includes clear recommendations for researchers, including pollsters, on how to better recognize moving forward that religion is a raced phenomenon. With contributions by Joseph O. Baker, Kelsy Burke, James Clark Davidson, Janine Giordano Drake, Ashley Garner, Edward Orozco Flores, Sikivu Hutchinson, Sarah Imhoff, Russell Jeung, John Jimenez, Jaime Kucinskas, Eric Mar, Gerardo Marti, Omar M. McRoberts, Besheer Mohamed, Dawne Moon, Jerry Z. Park, Z. Fareen Parvez, Theresa W. Tobin, and Rhys H. Williams.

This thoughtful and wide-ranging open access volume explores the forces and issues shaping and defining contemporary identities and everyday life in Brunei Darussalam. It is a subject that until now has received comparatively limited attention from mainstream social scientists working on Southeast Asian societies. The volume helps remedy that deficit by detailing the ways in which religion, gender, place, ethnicity, nation-state formation, migration and economic activity work their way into and reflect in the lives of ordinary Bruneians. In a first of its kind, all the lead authors of the chapter contributions are local Bruneian scholars, and the editors skilfully bring the study of Brunei into the fold of the sociology of everyday life from multiple disciplinary directions. By engaging local scholars to document everyday concerns that matter to them, the volume presents a collage of distinct but interrelated case studies that have been previously undocumented or relatively underappreciated. These interior portrayals render new angles of vision, scale and nuance to our understandings of Brunei often overlooked by mainstream inquiry. Each in its own way speaks to how structures and institutions express themselves through complex processes to influence the lives of inhabitants. Academic scholars, university students and others interested in the study of contemporary Brunei Darussalam will find this volume an invaluable resource for unravelling its diversity and textures. At the same time, it hopefully stimulates critical reflection on positionality, hierarchies of knowledge production, cultural diversity and the ways in which we approach the social science study of Brunei. 'I wish to commend the editors for bringing this volume to fruition. It is an important book in the context of Southeast Asian sociology and even more important for the development of our social, geographical, cultural and historical knowledge of Brunei.' -Victor T. King, University of Leeds

This book investigates how cooking, eating, and identity are connected to the local micro-climates in each of Ghana's major eco-culinary zones. The work is based on several years of researching Ghanaian culinary history and cuisine, including field work, archival research, and interdisciplinary investigation. The political economy of Ghana is used as an analytical framework with which to investigate the following questions: How are traditional food production structures in Ghana coping with global capitalist production, distribution, and consumption? How do land, climate, and weather structure or provide the foundation for food consumption and how does that affect the separate traditional and capitalist production sectors? Despite the post WWII food fight that launched Ghana's bid for independence from the British empire, Ghana's story demonstrates the centrality of local foods and cooking to its national character. The cultural weight of regional traditional foods, their power to satisfy, and the overall collective social emphasis on the 'proper' meal, have persisted in Ghana, irrespective of centuries of trade with Europeans. This book will be of interest to scholars in food studies, comparative studies, and African studies, and is sure to capture the interest of students in new ways.

Christianity Today 2019 Book of the Year Award, Missions/Global Church Building from a behind-the-scenes case study of Kenya's Nairobi Chapel and its "daughter" Mavuno Church, Wanjiru M. Gitau expands their story into a narrative that offers analysis of the rise, growth, and place of megachurches worldwide in the new millennium. In contexts experienced as deeply volatile, and on a continent reeling from the structural incoherence imposed in colonial times, megachurches provide a map of reality to navigate by, with the gospel as their primary compass. Gitau shows that recognizing the psychological, spiritual, and social destabilization of modernizing societies is the first step to valuing the place of megachurches in contemporary Christianity. Through analysis of social demography, theology, philosophy of ministry, leadership development, and strategy, Megachurch Christianity Reconsidered makes integral sense of the historical and social forces that give megachurches their growth opportunity, and reclaims them as a subject of serious theological conversation. This engaging account centers on the role of millennials in responding to the need for "a home for new generations" amid the dislocating transitions of globalization and postmodernity in postcolonial Africa and around the world. Gitau gleans practical wisdom for postdenominational churches everywhere (mega- and otherwise) from the lessons learned in Kenya's remarkable urban, evangelical renewal movement. Missiological Engagements charts interdisciplinary and innovative trajectories in the history, theology, and practice of Christian mission, featuring contributions by leading thinkers from both the Euro-American West and the majority world whose missiological scholarship bridges church, academy, and society.

What images come to mind when you read the word 'intoxication'? What behaviour do you associate with the word 'drunk'? When you hear the word 'drug', what images do you recall? This textbook provides an essential and thorough grounding in debates about the role of intoxication in contemporary society, from social and cultural perspectives. It examines intoxication in the broadest sense as including both legal and illegal substances and both culturally accepted and socially stigmatised practices. Given the pace of recent changes in policy and practice - from the increasingly common legalisation of cannabis, to the recent trend of sobriety amongst adolescents and young adults - this book stands out by offering both a through historical and theoretical overview and a topical and forward looking exploration of current debates. It adopts a multi-scale approach to examine wider patterns of change so it considers the subjective experiences of the role intoxication plays in the lives of individuals and groups, in the construction of diverse identities and how this differs by age, gender and ethnicity. The authors play particular attention to the way in which the state justifies interventions based on moral, health and criminal justice discourses and also consider the role played by other individuals and institutions, not least the mass media and the alcohol industry, in propagating and challenging common sense explanations of intoxication. It speaks to undergraduates, master's students and above, with a range of pedagogic features, and offers insights into policy and practice.

This open access book adopts a cultural sociology of materiality to explore the hallmark of the female athlete: the ponytail. Studying a wealth of news articles about ponytails in sports and society, Broch uncovers this hairstyle's polyvocality and argues that it is a total social phenomenon. By separating his approach from the cultural studies tradition, Broch highlights how hair is imbued with codes, narratives, and myth that allow its wearers to understand, maneuver, and criticize social gender relations in deeply personal ways. Using multiple theories about hair, bodies, myths, and icons, he creates a multidimensional method to show how icons are imitated and used. As women navigate their practical lives, health issues, and gendered expectations, the ponytail materializes their dynamic maneuvering of cultural and social environments. Sporting a ponytail-itself an embodiment of movement-is filled with a performativity of social movements: a cultural kinetics that is never apolitical.

This book, by one of the world's leading sociologists of religion. brings together a collection of essays written over the last decade and explores the dynamics internal to churches and other religious bodies. The second half of the book examines the consequences of these internal dynamics including world system theory, the cultureal impact of cults, and the relationship between religious and ethnic identities.

This book analyses issues related to the political use and economical misappropriation of urban cultural events, cultural infrastructures, public resources, and cultural traditions in the city of Valencia, Spain. It deals critically with a variety of sociological questions related to cultural production in the city, including geographical segregation as culturally defined in the city; misogyny and the peripheral role of women in traditional cultural events, xenophobia; and nationalism/regionalism. As such, the book will be useful to students and scholars of sociology of the arts, cultural policy, and museum management, and urban sociology.

This book develops a theory of existential security. It demonstrates that the publics of virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving toward more secular orientations during the past half century, but also that the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before. This second edition expands the theory and provides new and updated evidence from a broad perspective and in a wide range of countries. This confirms that religiosity persists most strongly among vulnerable populations, especially in poorer nations and in failed states. Conversely, a systematic erosion of religious practices, values and beliefs has occurred among the more prosperous strata in rich nations.

How does culture affect action? This question has long been framed in terms of a means vs ends debate-in other words, do cultural ends or cultural means play a primary causal role in human behavior? However, the role of socialization has been largely overlooked in this debate. In this book, Vila-Henninger develops a model of how culture affects action called "The Sociological Dual-Process Model of Outcomes" that incorporates socialization. This book contributes to the debate by first providing a critical overview of the literature that explains the limitations of the sociological dual-process model and subsequent scholarship-and especially work in sociology on "schemas". It then develops a sociological dual-process model of moral judgment that formally explains Type I processes, Type II processes, and the interaction between Type I and Type II processes. The book also expands sociological dual-process models to include a temporal dimension-the "Sociological Dual-Process Model of Outcomes". Finally, the book integrates a theory of socialization into the sociological dual-process model and creates empirical indicators that confirm Vila-Henninger's theorization and contribute to the literature on measures of dual-process models.

This book explores how to compose sounds and visualisations that represent psychedelic hallucinations and experiences of synaesthesia. Through a detailed discussion regarding compositional methodologies and technical approaches, the book aims to educate students, practitioners, and researchers working in related areas. It weaves together sound, visual design, and code across a range of media, providing conceptual approaches, theoretical insights, and practical strategies, which unlock new design frameworks for composing psychedelic sounds and visualisations.

This book provides extensive information on craftsmen-built houses in China. Though some inroads have been made in studying this folk custom, this work represents the first comprehensive and systematic monograph. The book examines the topic at the two main levels of "history" and "theory". Combining historical textual research, contemporary textual research, and field study, the book presents systematic information on the folk custom of craftsmen-built houses in China. At the level of theoretical research, it puts forward some original opinions on the major theoretical issues, such as the folk custom of religious belief, the boundary between superstition and religion, and the relationship between oral literature and ritual. The book provides a guide to help readers systematically understand the folk custom of craftsmen-built houses in China. Sharing valuable insights into Chinese architectural history, as well as religious studies, cultural anthropology, and folklore, it will appeal to researchers in the fields of folklore, cultural anthropology, and architecture and can also serve as a popular science book for understanding Chinese architectural culture.

This book explores the relationship between the food culture of Israel and the creation of its national identity. It is an effort to research what the mundane, everyday behaviours such as cooking and feeding ourselves and others, can tell us about the places we were born and the cultural practices of a nation. With the aim of developing a better understanding of the many facets of Israeli nationalism, this ethnographic work interrogates how ordinary Israelis, in particular women, use food in their everyday life to construct, perform and resist national narratives. It explores how Israeli national identity is experienced through its food culture, and how social and political transformations are reflected in the consumption patterns of Israeli society. The book highlights understudied themes in anthropology, food studies and gender studies, and focuses on three key themes: food and national identity construction, the role of women as feeders of the nation, and everyday nationhood. It is a relevant work for researchers and students interested in the study of food, gender, nationalism and the Middle East; as well as for food writers and bloggers alike.