Focusing on ten islands through the Caribbean, this ethnography examines how charismatic religious leaders develop creative transnational religious networking strategies that help spread the movement and increase its potential to become a greater force in shaping the future in the English-speaking Caribbean. The large and explosive global Charismatic movement spread in powerful ways in the small and tranquil English-speaking Caribbean. It is here in the deep Caribbean world of demonic possessions, spiritual demons, and supernatural healers where the Charismatic movement continues to shape a resilient culture. Placing the Charismatic movement in the realm of culture provides some highly surprising findings that reveal the potential of a religious movement and its ability for change in a late-modern social world.

This is the first critical study of feminist practices of 'speaking out' in response to rape. This book argues that feminist anti-rape politics are characterised by a belief in the transformative potential of women's personal narratives of sexual violence. The political mobilisation of these narratives has been an incredibly successful strategy, but one with unresolved ethical questions and political limitations. The book explores both the successes and the unresolved questions through feminist archival materials, published narratives of sexual violence, and mass media and internet sources. It argues that that a rethinking of the role and place of women's stories and the politics of speaking out is vital for a rethinking of feminist politics around sexual violence and key to fresh approaches to combating this violence.

Judge not, lest ye be judged. This timeless wisdom has guided the Anglican Church for hundreds of years, fostering a certain tolerance of eccentricity among its members.

Good thing, too.

The ‘Mermaid of Morwenstow’ excommunicated a cat for mousing on a Sunday. When he was late for a service, Bishop Lancelot Fleming commandeered a Navy helicopter. ‘Mad Jack’ swapped his surplice for a leopard skin and insisted on being carried around in a coffin. And then there was the man who, like Noah’s evil twin, tried to eat one of each of God’s creatures…

In spite of all this they saw the church as their true calling. After all, who cares if you're wearing red high heels when there are souls to be saved?

Approaches to Language, Culture and Cognition aims to bring cognitive linguistics and linguistic anthropology closer together, calling for further investigations of language and culture from cognitively-informed perspectives against the backdrop of the current trend of linguistic anthropology.

This book addresses the complicated question of how markets and consumption create the possibilities for cross-cultural exchanges and the multicultural pleasures of omnivorous consumption, whilst at the same time building new boundaries and distinctions, paving the way for new exploitative relationships, and initiating novel modes of status and capital accumulation. The contributors identify that the divide between the economic and ethical dimensions of globalisation has never seemed in sharper relief. With the workings of global markets at odds with fostering cosmopolitan social change, this collection addresses the question of whether we should assume that market logics and consumptive practices conflict with cosmopolitan agendas. It also explores whether the imperatives of economic globalisation and individual consumption practices are opposed to cosmopolitan prospects for global solidarities. Cosmopolitanism, Markets and Consumption will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including in the social sciences, businesses and marketing studies.

This book provides a multidisciplinary analysis of the production of Turkish cultural policies in the context of globalization and of the circulation of knowledge and practices. Focusing on circulations, the book proposes an innovative approach to the transfer of cultural policies, considering them in terms of co-production and synchrony. This argument is developed through an examination of circulations at the international, national, and local levels; employing original empirical data and case study analyses. Divided into three parts the book first examines the Kemalist legacy, before turning to the cultural policies developed under the AKP's leadership, and concludes by investigating the production of cultural policies in the outlying regions of Turkey. The authors shed new light on the particular importance of culture to the understanding of the societal upheavals in contemporary Turkey. By considering exchanges as circulations rather than one-way impositions, this book also advances our understanding of how territories are (re)defined by culture and makes a significant contribution to the interrogation of the concept of "Westernization". This book brings into clear focus the reconfigurations currently taking place in Turkish cultural policy, demonstrating that while they are driven by the ruling party, they are also the work of civil society actors. It convincingly argues that an authoritarian turn need not necessarily spell the end of the cultural scene, and highlights the innovative adaptations and resistance strategies used in this context. This book will appeal to students and scholars of public policy, sociology and cultural studies.

This book offers an interactionist perspective on theories of public representation, knowledge and immigration in museum institutions. Examining how a Franco-German museum exhibition represents immigrants and exposes public stereotypes, the analysis follows the process of the production and reception of the exhibition as it travelled from Paris to Berlin. The author proposes a microsociological contextualisation analysis integrating discourse analysis and ethnography to compare formats of museum work, social interaction in the exhibition and mass media debates. Visitor reception of the different exhibition versions reveals the symbolic nature of interactions in museums, for example concerning conflicting political voices and accusations of censorship. Depending on the institutional context, interactions in the museums are geared towards securing immigrants a place in national collective memory, towards carrying out debate on integration, or providing opportunities for personal encounters and reflection beyond national categorisation. This book will appeal to students and researchers interested in work on the intersection of sociology, cultural studies, and discursive psychology, in methods of discourse analysis and ethnography; and to practitioners working in museums.

This book argues for the importance of the theory of the culture industry in today's world. It begins by considering the neglect of the culture industry in the second and third generation of the Frankfurt School, presenting historical background information and criticisms on the theories of Habermas and Honneth. In our age, the culture industry is something quite different from what Adorno and Horkheimer described or could even imagine in the twentieth century. Today, the masses can not only access the media but can also respond to the messages they receive. A key question that arises, then, is why the masses, even after gaining access to their own media, still adhere to the values of the capitalist system? Why haven't they achieved a class consciousness? This work seeks to answer those questions. Drawing on Jean Baudrillard's work, it reveals the semiotic aspects of the culture industry and describes the industry in the age of simulation and hyperreality. The book argues that the culture industry has now entered the micro level of our everyday life through shopping centers, the image of profusion and more. Further, it explores new aspects of the culture industry, such as a passion for participating in the media, the consumed vertigo of catastrophe, and masking the absence of a profound reality. As such, the book will particularly appeal to graduates and researchers in sociology and sociological theory, and all those with an interest in the Frankfurt School and the works of Jean Baudrillard.

This book is a distinctive collection on transcultural encounters in knowledge production and consumption, which are situated at the heart of pursuit for cognitive justice. It uniquely represents transcultural dialogues between academics of Australia, China and Malaysia, located on the borders of different knowledge systems. The uniqueness of this volume lies in the convergence of transcultural perspectives, which bring together diverse disciplines as cultural studies, education, media, translation theory and practice, arts, musicology, political science and literature. Each chapter explores the possibility of decolonising the knowledge production space as well as research methodologies. The chapters engage with 'Chinese' and 'western' thought on transcultural subjects and collectively articulate a new politics of difference, de-centring the dominant epistemologies and research paradigms in the global academia. Refracted through transcultural theories and practices, adapted to diverse traditions, histories and regional affiliations, and directed toward an international transcultural audience, the volume demonstrates expansive possibilities in knowledge production and contributes to the understanding of and between research scholarship which deals with collective societal and cultural challenges within the globalised world we live in. It would be of interest to researchers engaged with current critical debates in general and global scholars in transcultural and intercultural studies in specific.

This book presents selected academic papers addressing five key research areas - archaeology, history, language, culture and arts - related to the Malay Civilisation. It outlines new findings, interpretations, policies, methodologies and theories that were presented at the International Seminar on Archaeology, History, and Language in the Malay Civilisation (ASBAM5) in 2016. Further, it provides new perspectives and serves as a vital point of reference for all researchers, students, policymakers and legislators who have an interest in the Malay Civilisation.

Conservative and progressive religious groups fiercely disagree about issues of sex and gender. But how did we get here? Melissa J. Wilde shows how today's modern divisions began in the 1930s in the public battles over birth control and not for the reasons we might expect. By examining thirty of America's most prominent religious groups-from Mormons to Methodists, Southern Baptists to Seventh Day Adventists, and many others-Wilde contends that fights over birth control had little do with sex, women's rights, or privacy. Using a veritable treasure trove of data, including census and archival materials and more than 10,000 articles, statements, and sermons from religious and secular periodicals, Wilde demonstrates that the push to liberalize positions on contraception was tied to complex views of race, immigration, and manifest destiny among America's most prominent religious groups. Taking us from the Depression era, when support for the eugenics movement saw birth control as an act of duty for less desirable groups, to the 1960s, by which time most groups had forgotten the reasons behind their stances on contraception (but not the concerns driving them), Birth Control Battles explains how reproductive politics divided American religion. In doing so, this book shows the enduring importance of race and class for American religion as it rewrites our understanding of what it has meant to be progressive or conservative in America.

This book comprehensively examines religious faith in China from the perspective of cultural philosophy and cultural history. It explores the social, political, cultural and spiritual meanings of religions, tracing their historical development and related paradigm shifts. It also analyzes the characteristics of the country's local religions and the process of indigenization of world religions, and describes the peaceful co-existence and harmonious confluence of multiple religions in Chinese spiritual life, revealing the vibrant and diverse colors of its religious culture. Examining these religions' social and cultural functions in contemporary Chinese society, the book demonstrates the rich and complex intertwinement of religious faith, cultural spirit and national disposition among the Chinese people.

This book explores the contours of a transformational sociology which seeks to reconsider the horizons of sociological imagination. It questions accepted modernist assumptions such as the equation of society and nation-state, the dualism of individual and society and that of ontology and epistemology. Arguing that contemporary sociology suffers from what Ulrich Beck calls the Nato-like fire power of western sociology, it argues that sociology has to open itself to transcivilizational dialogues and planetary conversations about self, culture and society. The book also challenges scholars to go beyond a privileging of the post-traditional telos of modernist sociology and puts forward a foundational interrogation of modernist sociology. It underscores the limitations of established conventions of sociology and considering an alternative sociology based upon Confucian vision and practice of self-transformation. This collection offers a way to go beyond dominant structures of modern sociology and contemporary dominant ways of thinking about and doing sociology helping us cultivate a transdisciplinary sociology.

This book offers a theoretical intervention into the normative ideals of public space that are deeply rooted in Western urbanism. It disrupts the binaries of presence/absence, inclusion/exclusion by presenting a series of case studies that vividly convey the complexity and vicissitude of grassroots spatial practices. It engages powerfully with the question of what constitutes the "urban public" in our everyday cities. Moreover, it provides a fresh perspective on the proliferating scholarship on Chinese urbanism in the reform era by seriously considering the ways in which ordinary urban inhabitants respond to and negotiate the impacts of rapid social change and the reshuffling of the systems of values and ideologies. The urban public, therefore, is analyzed as an important field in which identities and cultural differences are formed and performed. This book is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in theories of urban public space in general or urban transformation of post-reform China in particular.

This edited collection highlights the diversity and reach of global leisure studies and global leisure theory. It explores the impact of globalization on leisure, and the sites of resistance and accommodation found in local, virtual and global leisure spaces. Unlike any other collection on leisure studies, Global Leisure and the Struggle for a Better World is truly representative of the diversity of the large and growing leisure scholarship across the globe. It demonstrates how researchers in leisure studies and sociology of leisure are applying complex theory to their work, and how a new theory of global leisure is emerging.

The ageing of our population is a key societal issue across the globe. Although people are living longer, they need to be living longer in good health to continue to enjoy quality of life and independence and to prevent rises in health and social care costs. This timely and ground-breaking volume will provide an up-to-date overview of the factors that promote physical activity in later life. Despite advances in the fields of gerontology and geriatrics, sports and exercise science, sociology, health psychology, and public health, knowledge is largely contained within disciplines as reflected in the current provision of academic texts on this subject. To truly address the present and substantial societal challenges of population ageing, a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach is required. This handbook will inform researchers, students, and practitioners on the current evidence base for what physical activities need to be promoted among older people and how they can be implemented to maximise engagement. This handbook will be an invaluable resource for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and students across the social sciences.

This book reimagines the pleasures of sports and provides a critical perspective from the Global South. Analysing the spread of sports markets in Sri Lanka along with a range of struggles, the book highlights how the celebration of 'sportive nationalism,' promoting sports markets in the Global South reinforces patriarchal ethno-nationalist authoritarian sports cultures. By explaining how the realm of social reproduction involving households and communities is integral for play and sports, the book challenges the market-driven 'sports and development' agenda while arguing for a 'sports commons.' By foregrounding issues of justice and care, the book highlights how struggles for recognition, redistribution and representation are central to reimagining sports within an alternative notion of work, play and resistance.

This edited collection critically engages with a range of contemporary issues in the aftermath of the North Atlantic financial crisis that began in 2007. From challenging the erosion of academic authority to the myth that parliamentary democracy is not worth engaging with, it addresses three interrelated questions facing young people today: how to reclaim our universities, how to revitalise our democracy and how to recast politics in the 21st century. This book emphasises the crucial importance of generational experience as a wellspring for progressive social change. For it is the young generations who have come of age in a world marred by crises that are at the forefront of challenging the status quo. With insight into new social movements and protests in the UK, Canada, Greece and Ukraine, this stimulating collection of works will be invaluable for those teaching, studying and campaigning for alternatives. It will also be of relevance to scholars in social movement studies, the sociology and anthropology of economic life, the sociology of education, social and political theory, and political sociology.

This edited volume offers an historical perspective on the creation of a global mass industry around skiing. By focusing on the ski resort as loci par excellence for global exchange, the contributors consider the development of skiing around the world during the crucial post-war years. With its global lens, Leisure Cultures and the Making of Modern Ski Resorts highlights both commonalities and differences between countries. Experts across various fields of research cover developments across the ski-able world, from Europe, Asia and America to Australia. Attention to media and material cultures reveals an insight into global fashions, consumption and ski cultures, and the impact of mainstream media in the 1960s and 1970s. This global and interdisciplinary approach will appeal to history, sociology, cultural and media research scholars interested in a cultural history of skiing, as well as those with more broad interests in globalization, consumption research, and knowledge transfer.

The 21st century has born witness to myriad changes in the way the world is secured from the many emergencies that continually threaten to disrupt it. This book concentrates on two such changes. First, it takes stock of the ever-increasing development and diversification of data and digital technologies that security organisations have at their disposal. Secondly, it examines how these digital devices have fostered a new direction in which security agencies primarily conceive of emergencies as so many risks of the future. Emergency governance has undergone what might be called an anticipatory turn here, with digitally rendered and imagined scenes of future contingency becoming cause and justification for intervention in the here and now. Rather than scrutinising this turn at its most spectacular heights in the domains, for instance, of warfare or counter-terrorism, the book explores the facilitation of risk governance through digital technologies in a more quotidian incarnation; namely by tracing the steps that the United Kingdom's Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) take to govern fire emergencies whose potential has been identified but have yet to unfold. Delving into the FRS, the book maps out a digital infrastructure that includes various software, institutional processes, multiple forms of risk calculation but also human beings, relations and consciousness and an array of material spaces in which these things exist. Accentuated here is how these components assemble to produce projections of future emergencies on a number of sensorial registers. This infrastructure is shown, in turn, to inform and shape a catalogue of refined modes of action through which interventions on future emergencies are made in the present. Engaging in depth with this infrastructure, the FRS provides an understanding of risk as a lived relation, risk as an organisational ethos whose liveliness is founded upon and reverberates through the relations existing between those people and things operating in the FRS to make sense of potential fire emergencies. Using the concept of lived relation as a foundation, the book develops a critical understanding of anticipatory governance by grasping its resonance with issues emanating in the wider field of security, showing how security figures as a set of practices that rely upon and cultivates affective conditions, that enrols the force of elements like fire into its institutional arrangement, that draw on an array of knowledges to exercise power and, in the process, that instantiate new forms of subjectivity.

This international edited collection examines how racism trajectories and manifestations in different locations relate and influence each other. The book unmasks and foregrounds the ways in which notions of European Whiteness have found form in a variety of global contexts that continue to sustain racism as an operational norm resulting in exclusion, violence, human rights violations, isolation and limited full citizenship for individuals who are not racialised as White. The chapters in this book specifically implicate European Whiteness - whether attempting to reflect, negate, or obtain it - in social structures that facilitate and normalise racism. The authors interrogate the dehumanisation of Blackness, arguing that dehumanisation enables the continuation of racism in White dominated societies. As such, the book explores instances of dehumanisation across different contexts, highlighting that although the forms may be locally specific, the outcomes are continually negative for those racialised as Black. The volume is refreshingly extensive in its analyses of racism beyond Europe and the United States, including contributions from Africa, South America and Australia, and illuminates previously unexplored manifestations of racism across the globe.

Harnessing a cultural sociological approach to explore transformations in key social spheres in post-1989 Poland, Chmielewska-Szlajfer illuminates shifts in religiosity, sympathy towards others, and civic activity in post-Communist Poland in the light of Western influence over elements of Polish life. Reshaping Poland's Community after Communism focuses on three major cases, largely ignored in Polish scholarship: (1) a hugely popular, faux-baroque Catholic shrine, which illustrates new strategies adopted by the Polish Catholic Church to attract believers; (2) Woodstock Station, a widely known free charity music festival, demonstrating new practices of sympathy towards strangers; and (3) the emergence of national internet pro-voting campaigns and small-town watchdog websites, which uncover changes in practical uses of civic engagement. In exploring grass-roots, everyday negotiations of religiosity, charity, and civic engagement in contemporary Poland, Chmielewska-Szlajfer demonstrates how a country's cultural changes can suggest wider, dramatic democratic transformation.

This edited collection critically explores new and emerging models of female athleticism in an era characterised as postfeminist. It approaches postfeminism through a critical lens to investigate new forms of politics being practised by women in physical activity, sport and online spaces at the intersections of gender, ethnicity, sexuality and ability. New Sporting Femininities features chapters on celebrity athletes such as Serena Williams and Ronda Rousey, alongside studies of the online fitspo movement and women's growing participation in activities like roller derby, skateboarding and football. In doing so, it highlights key issues and concerns facing diverse groups of women in a rapidly changing gender-sport landscape. This collection sheds new light on the complex and often contradictory ways that women's athletic participation is promoted, experienced and embodied in the context of postfeminism, commodity feminism and emerging forms of popular feminism.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of public opinion patterns among Muslims, particularly in the Arab world. On the basis of data from the World Values Survey, the Arab Barometer Project and the Arab Opinion Index, it compares the dynamics of Muslim opinion structures with global publics and arrives at social scientific predictions of value changes in the region. Using country factor scores from a variety of surveys, it also develops composite indices of support for democracy and a liberal society on a global level and in the Muslim world, and analyzes a multivariate model of opinion structures in the Arab world, based on over 40 variables from 12 countries in the Arab League and covering 67% of the total population of the Arab countries. While being optimistic about the general, long-term trend towards democracy and the resilience of Arab and Muslim civil society to Islamism, the book also highlights anti-Semitic trends in the region and discusses them in the larger context of xenophobia in traditional societies. In light of the current global confrontation with radical Islamism, this book provides vital material for policy planners, academics and think tanks alike.