This book discusses the relationship between law and memory and explores the ways in which memory can be thought of as contributing to legal socialization and legal meaning-making. Against a backdrop of critical legal pluralism which examines the distributedness of law(s), this book introduces the notion of mnemonic legality. It emphasises memory as a resource of law rather than an object of law, on the basis of how it substantiates senses of belonging and comes to frame inclusions and exclusions from a national community on the basis of linear-trajectory and growth narratives of nationhood. Overall, it explores the sensorial and affective foundations of law, implicating memory and perceptions of belonging within this process of creating legality and legitimacy. By identifying how memory comes to shape and inform notions of law, it contributes to legal consciousness research and to important questions informing much socio-legal research.

Marriage has not always meant just one man and one woman. For much of human history, over much of the globe, the most common alternative was polygamy: marriage involving more than one spouse. Polygamy, or plural marriage, has long been an accepted form of union in human societies, involving people living on every continent. However, polygamy has come to symbolize a problematic, even "barbaric," form of marriage that is often labeled as "backwards," less modern and progressive, embodying the oppression of women by men. In Polygamy: A Very Short Introduction, Sarah M. S. Pearsall explores what plural marriages reveal about the inner workings of marriage and describes the controversies surrounding it. The book emphasizes the diversity of historical polygamist societies, from the Shi'ite Muslims and Wendat men who practiced short-term marriages to the Mixteca, Maori, Inca, Algonquin, and Marta indigenous people of North America and the Pacific Islands, as well as medieval Irish kings, rulers of the Kingdom of Buganda in east Africa, and residents of the Ottoman Empire. Pearsall also explains the Old Testament origins of polygamy in the book of Genesis, making note of vocal Protestant defenders of the practice such as Martin Luther and John Milton, and the divides within Christianity that led to Joseph Smith's establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) and the Mormons' fight throughout the 19th-century under his successor Brigham Young's leadership to freely practice plural marriage. Polygamy: A Very Short Introduction looks at how polygamous domestic and sexual relationships have influenced larger dynamics of power, gender, rank, race, and religion in societies all over the world, while also attempting to untangle the paradox of female constraint and liberty for women who advocated for polygamy, arguing that plural marriage offered security and stability rather than restraint for women. In balancing an explanation of the many complexities and misunderstandings of plural marriage, the book reveals how polygamy continues to have an influence on society today.

Informative and eye-opening, the Handbook on Religion in China provides a uniquely broad insight into the contemporary Chinese variations of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. In turn, China's own religions of Daoism, of filial piety and transmissions of rites have spread beyond China, a progression that is explored in detail across 19 chapters, written by leading experts in the field. Utilising a historical focus to emphasize developments and highlight the transformations of ritual practices, festivals, divination and traditions, this Handbook deals with the emergence of new attitudes to selfhood and the great diversity of civic and other rituals. Traditional ways of forming relationships and conducting life-cycle rituals are also considered. This comprehensive Handbook investigates the ways in which all of these changes are affected by governmental controls that have intriguing unintended consequences. Providing a solid introduction for both newcomers and informed readers, this Handbook will be a key resource for sociologists and anthropologists of ritual and religion as well as students of religious studies, contemporary Chinese studies and the sociology of religion. With extensive references to assist readers wishing to further deepen their understanding this Handbook will also be of interest to historians and individuals interested in contemporary China. Contributors include: I. Beller-Hann, S. Billioud, D. Campo, A.Y. Chau, B. Chen, S. Feuchtwang, G. Ha, A. Iskra, S. Jones, J. Kang, R. Madsen, W. Matthews, E. Oxfeld, D.A. Palmer, P.G. Ran, M. Schumann, R.G. Tiedemann, R.P. Weller, F. Winiger, K. Wu, Y. Zhu

From Policemen to Revolutionaries uncovers the less-known story of Sikh emigrants in Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yin Cao argues that the cross-border circulation of personnel and knowledge across the British colonial and the Sikh diasporic networks, facilitated the formation of the Sikh community in Shanghai, eventually making this Chinese city one of the overseas hubs of the Indian nationalist struggle. By adopting a translocal approach, this study elaborates on how the flow of Sikh emigrants, largely regarded as subalterns, initially strengthened but eventually unhinged British colonial rule in East and Southeast Asia.

"The book on offer here is fascinating. I do not think it is proper to classify it as 'philosophy' or 'sociology' or 'comparative education'. It is a work sui generis. Its cultural and historical range is extraordinary. Its illustrations are themselves arresting. Its literature is well outside disciplinary conventions and ranges across a number of languages. Mirabile dictu!" Professor Robert Cowen How have modern societies arrived at assuming: * Culture is non-essential! * Higher education is to train economically but not socio-politically active & engaged citizens! * Economic wealth is the most important and prominent form of individual and national assets! * Precariousness and socio-economic gaps are due to individuals' skills and capacities but not the failure of legal, political, and social systems! * Freedom and equality are about "choices in having" but not necessarily about "ways of being and becoming"! Torabian argues these assumptions have not been constructed overnight and that COVID-19 has simply revealed their long-term fabrication and impact since the 1970s. This book is a fascinating voyage from the Middle Ages to today. It travels across different socio-cultural and political contexts drawing on arts, literary works, music, philosophical thoughts, economic and social concepts. It explores value systems and perceptions of wealth, poverty, and inequality and depicts the mutual impact and shifting role of (higher) education and culture and societies- particularly when related to social revolutions, political participation, and collective quests for equality and justice across time and spaces. Examining instrumentalisation of culture and education by the powerful elite, Torabian delineates mechanisms through which values are fabricated and imposed on the masses. Drawing on some catching examples, she explains the authoritarian elite do so through visible rewards and punishments, while in capitalist societies power remains invisible and indirect. In both contexts, though, she skilfully demonstrates, the powerful groups transform the role and meaning of culture and higher education to facilitate normalisation and internalisation of their fabricated value system among the masses. Consequently, Torabian celebrates the recently accelerated quest for socio-ecological justice and sustainability across societies as a fortunate cosmopolitan shift. This, she believes, announces a rupture with the dominant capitalist ideology that has reigned the world since the 1970s through celebrity culture, media, propaganda, and by reducing higher education to an economic activity. The pursuit of a socio-ecological contract based on fairness, justice, and participation, Torabian argues, requires a renewed value system in which the socio-political role of culture and higher education can be revitalised. To this end, she introduces an innovative framework, i.e., the Big Wealth Pie (the topic of the author's upcoming book in this series) and proposes using transgressive education, resistance pedagogy, and teaching ignorance. She reckons such a social contract can be a global reality if "being" replaces the capitalist ideology of "having"; a process that can be started and reified by questioning what is or is not essential in socio-ecologically just societies. The book is thought-provoking and timely in questioning values and social institutions that have normalised precariousness, inequality, and poverty within a consumerist logic.

This book describes three impactful cases of political violence that broke out in Mexico in 1994, pointing to an important juncture in Mexican political development. At that point, the patrimonial order centered on the PRI and the Mexican presidency entered a momentous crisis that is still ongoing after a quarter of a century and caused the patrimonial order and the civil order to compete over Mexican public life. Such competition, in turn, unfolds at the cultural level on the terrain of three semantics of political violence that shape public debates over violence in Mexico. Ultimately, this book sheds light over the refraction of patrimonial and civil attributions across such cultural terrains.

In the twentieth century dispensationalism emerged as one of the most influential forces in American religion as well as one of America's most significant religious exports. By the close of the century, dispensationalism had developed into a global religious phenomenon claiming millions of adherents. Scanning for the "signs of the times" in current world events, scouring their Bibles for prophetic meaning, and creating vivid and elaborate stories about the end times, dispensationalists have played a major role in transforming American religion and politics. The most common contemporary form of prophecy belief, dispensationalism also plays a significant role in American popular culture (65 million copies of the Left Behind novels sold) and throughout the world, influencing movements from the Nation of Islam to global Pentecostalism. Despite its importance and continuing appeal, however, scholars often reduce dispensationalism to an anti-modern, apocalyptic literalist branch of Protestant fundamentalism. Brendan Pietsch argues that, on the contrary, the seemingly mysterious allure of prophecy belief can be understood as a form of technological modernism. Pietsch shows that dispensational thinking and practices, which emerged between 1870 and 1920, grew out of the popular fascination with applying technological methods - such as quantification and classification - to the interpretation of texts and time. The central node of this network of texts, scholars, institutions, and practices was the lightning-rod Bible teacher C.I. Scofield, whose best-selling Scofield Reference Bible became the canonical formulation of dispensational thought. The first book to contextualize dispensationalism in this new and provocative way, Dispensational Modernism shows how the mainstream, urban Protestant clergy of this time, as they began developing new "scientific" methods for interpreting the Bible also sought to create new grounds for confidence in religious understandings of the Bible and of time itself.

Historical, anthropological, and philosophical in approach, Buddha in the Crown is a case study in religious and cultural change. It examines the various ways in which Avalokitesvara, the most well known and proliferated bodhisattva of Mahayana Buddhism throughout south, southeast, and east Asia, was assimilated into the transforming religious culture of Sri Lanka, one of the most pluralistic in Asia. Exploring the expressions of the bodhisattva's cult in Sanskrit and Sinhala literature, in iconography, epigraphy, ritual, symbol, and myth, the author develops a provocative thesis regarding the dynamics of religious change. Interdisciplinary in scope, addressing a wide variety of issues relating to Buddhist thought and practice, and providing new and original information on the rich cultural history of Sri Lanka, this book will interest students of Buddhism and South Asia.

Does religiosity diminish democratic economic and civil tendencies? Do Islamic traditions provoke more hostility to democratic values in comparison to other religious traditions? In Religion, Religiosity, and Democratic Values, Abbas Mehregan undertakes an empirical examination of the effects of individual religiosity, historical religion, institutional democracy, and socioeconomic development on attitudes towards free market economics and confidence in traditional, modern, and post-modern civil society organizations. Using multilevel analysis, Mehregan compares 60 Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, and folk-religion societies in these regards. Furthermore, in addition to an empirical comparison of Sunni and Shia Islamic countries, a theoretical investigation of the relationship between Islam and democratic economic and civil values provides a comprehensive insight into the topic.

Women are more religious than men. Despite being excluded from leadership positions, in almost every culture and religious tradition, women are more likely than men to pray, to worship, and to claim that their faith is important to them. Women also dominate the world of "New Age" spirituality and are far more superstitious than men.
This book reviews the now-sizeable body of social research to consider if the gender gap in religion is indeed universal. Marta Trzebiatowska and Steve Bruce extensively critique competing explanations of the differences found. They conclude that the gender gap is not the result of biology but is rather the consequence of important social differences over-lapping and reinforcing each other. Responsibility for managing birth, child-rearing and death, for example, and attitudes to the body, illness and health, each play a part. In the West, the gender gap is exaggerated because the social changes that undermined the plausibility of religion bore most heavily on men first. Where the lives of men and women become more similar, and where religious indifference grows, the gender gap gradually disappears.
Written in an accessible style whilst drawing some robust conclusions, the book's main purpose is to serve as a state-of-the-art review for those interested in one of the largest differences between male and female behavior.

This book introduces Catholic social teaching (CST) and its teaching on the common good to the reader and applies them in the realm of public health to critically analyze the major global issues of COVID-19 that undermine public interest. It uses the sociotheological approach that combines the moral principles of CST and the holistic analysis of modern sociology and also utilizes the secondary literature as the main source of textual data. Specifically, it investigates the corporate moral irresponsibility and some unethical business practices of Big Pharma in the sale and distribution of its anti-COVID vaccines and medicines, the injustice in the inequitable global vaccine distribution, the weakening of the United States Congress's legislative regulation against the pharmaceutical industry's overpricing and profiteering, the inadequacy of the World Health Organization's (WHO) law enforcement system against corruption, and the lack of social monitoring in the current public health surveillance system to safeguard the public good from corporate fraud and white-collar crime. This book highlights the contribution of sociology in providing the empirical foundation of CST's moral analysis and in crafting appropriate Catholic social action during the pandemic. It is hoped that through this book, secular scholars, social scientists, religious leaders, moral theologians, religious educators, and Catholic lay leaders would be more appreciative of the sociotheological approach to understanding religion and COVID-19. "This book brings into dialogue two bodies of literature: documents of Catholic social teaching, and modern sociology and its core thinkers and texts...The author does especially well to describe how taking 'the sociotheological turn'...will benefit the credibility and dissemination of Catholic social thought." - Rev. Fr. Thomas Massaro, S.J., Professor of Moral Theology, Jesuit School of Theology, Santa Clara University, Berkeley, California.

This book presents a compilation of chapters relating to the socio-cultural experiences of Malaysian Indian women. It includes a historical background covering Indian women's migration to Malaya, and explores the lived realities of contemporary Indian women who are members of this minority ethnic group in the country. The authors cover a wide range of issues such as gender inequality, poverty, the involvement of women in performing arts, work, inter-personal relationships, and well-being and happiness, drawing on substantial empirical data through a gendered lens. This book addresses the gap in the intersectional gender studies literature on minority groups of women in Malaysia, while simultaneously highlighting the multiple forms of subordination minority women - particularly Indian women - experience in society, including those that arise from gender-ethnic intersectionality. In examining the case of Indian women in Malaysia, it also speaks to and enriches existing literature on the lives of minority groups of women in the Global South more broadly This anthology is beneficial to researchers and students in the social sciences, particularly in disciplines related to gender studies and minority studies. In addition, it is also useful for policy makers and social activists working with minority women in the Global South.

In the early twenty-first century it had become a cliche that there was a 'God Gap' between a more religious United States and a more secular Europe. The apparent religious differences between the United States and western Europe continue to be a focus of intense and sometimes bitter debate between three of the main schools in the sociology of religion. According to the influential 'Secularization Thesis', secularization has been an integral part of the processes of modernisation in the Western world since around 1800. For proponents of this thesis, the United States appears as an anomaly and they accordingly give considerable attention to explaining why it is different. For other sociologists, however, the apparently high level of religiosity in the USA provides a major argument in their attempts to refute the Thesis. Secularization and Religious Innovation in the Atlantic World provides a systematic comparison between the religious histories of the United States and western European countries from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century, noting parallels as well as divergences, examining their causes and especially highlighting change over time. This is achieved by a series of themes which seem especially relevant to this agenda, and in each case the theme is considered by two scholars. The volume examines whether American Christians have been more innovative, and if so how far this explains the apparent 'God Gap'. It goes beyond the simple American/European binary to ask what is 'American' or 'European' in the Christianity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in what ways national or regional differences outweigh these commonalities.

Twenty-five years after its original publication, Slave Religion remains a classic in the study of African American history and religion. In a new chapter in this anniversary edition, author Albert J. Raboteau reflects upon the origins of the book, the reactions to it over the past twenty-five years, and how he would write it differently today. Using a variety of first and second-hand sources-- some objective, some personal, all riveting-- Raboteau analyzes the transformation of the African religions into evangelical Christianity. He presents the narratives of the slaves themselves, as well as missionary reports, travel accounts, folklore, black autobiographies, and the journals of white observers to describe the day-to-day religious life in the slave communities. Slave Religion is a must-read for anyone wanting a full picture of this "invisible institution."

In this riveting spiritual memoir, the writer, scholar, and commentator tells the story of his struggles with mental illness, explores the void between the Christian faith and scientific treatment, and forges a path toward reconciling these divergent worlds.

For years, Charles Marsh suffered panic attacks and debilitating anxiety. As an Evangelical Christian, he was taught to trust in the power of God and His will. While his Christian community resisted therapy and personal introspection, Marsh eventually knew he needed help. To alleviate his suffering, he made the bold decision to seek medical treatment and underwent years of psychoanalysis.

In this riveting spiritual memoir, Marsh tells the story of his struggle to find peace and the dramatic, inspiring transformation that redefined his life and his faith. He examines the tensions between faith and science and reflects on how his own experiences offer hope for bridging the gap between the two. Honest and revealing, Marsh traces the roots of shame, examines Christian notions of sex, faith, and mental illness and their genesis, and chronicles how he redefined his beliefs and rebuilt his relationship with his community.

A poignant and vital story of deep soul work, Evangelical Anxiety helps us look beyond the stigma that leaves too many people in pain and offers people of faith a way forward to find the help they need while remaining true to their beliefs.

The Religious Lives of Older Laywomen draws on ethnographic fieldwork, cross-cultural comparisons, and relevant theories exploring the beliefs, identities, and practices of 'Generation A'-Anglican laywomen born in the 1920s and 1930s. Now in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, they are often described as the 'backbone' of the Church and likely its final active generation. The prevalence of laywomen in mainstream Christian congregations is a widely accepted phenomenon that will cause little surprise amongst the research community or Christian adherents. What is surprising is that we know so little about them. Generation A laywomen have remained largely invisible in previous work on institutional religion in Euro-American countries, particularly as the focus on religion and gender has turned to youth, sexuality, and priesthood. Female Christian Generation A is on the cusp of a catastrophic decline in mainstream Christianity that accelerated during the 'post-war' (post-1945) age. The age profile of mainstream Christianity represents an increasingly aging pattern, with Generation A not being replaced by their children or grandchildren-the Baby-Boomers and generations X, Y, and Z. Generation A is irreplaceable and unique. 'Generation' shares specific values, beliefs, behaviours, and orientations, therefore, when this generation finally disappears within the next five to 10 years, their knowledge, insights, and experiences will be lost forever. Abby Day both documents and interprets their religious lives and what we can learn about them and more widely, about contemporary Christianity and its future.

This book is about skateboard video and experimental ways of thinking about cities. It makes a provocative argument to consider skate video as an archive of the city from below. Here 'below' has a dual meaning. First, below refers to an unofficial archive, a subaltern history of urban space. Second, below refers to the angle from which skateboarders and filmers gaze upon, capture, and consume the city-from the ground up. Since taking to the streets in the early 1980s, skateboarding has been captured on film, video tape and digital memory cards, edited into consumable forms and circulated around the world. Videos are objects amenable to ethnographic analysis while also archiving exercises in urban ethnography by their creators. I advocate for taking skate video seriously as a (fragile) archive of the urban backstage, collective memory across time and space, creative urban practice, urban encounters (people-to-people and people-to-object/s), and the globalization of a subculture at once delinquent and magnificent.

Combining global, media, and cultural studies, this book analyzes the success of Hallyu, or the "Korean Wave" in the West, both at a macro and micro level, as an alternative pop culture globalization. This research investigates the capitalist ecosystem (formed by producers, institutions and the state), the soft power of Hallyu, and the reception among young people, using France as a case study, and placing it within the broader framework of the 'consumption of difference.' Seen by French fans as a challenge to Western pop culture, Hallyu constitutes a material of choice for understanding the cosmopolitan apprenticeships linked to the consumption of cultural goods, and the use of these resources to build youth's biographical trajectories. The book will be relevant to researchers, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students in sociology, cultural studies, global studies, consumption and youth studies.

Will Islam be able to adapt to France's secularity and its strict separation of public and private spheres? Can France accommodate Muslims? In this book, Frank Peter argues that the debate about "Islam" and "Muslims" is not simply caused by ignorance or Islamophobia. Rather, it is an integral part of how secularism is reasoned. Islam and the Governing of Muslims in France shows that understanding religion as separate from other aspects of life, such as politics, economy, and culture, disregards the ways religion has operated and been managed in "secular" societies such as France. This book uncovers the varying rationalities of the secular that have developed over the past few decades in France to "govern Islam," in order to examine how Muslims engage with the secular regime and contribute to its transformation. This book offers a close analysis of French secularism as it has been debated by Islamic intellectuals and activists from the 1990s until the present. It will influence the study of secularism as well as the study of Islam in the French Republic, and reveal new connections between Islamic traditions and secular rationalities.

This book provides fresh insight into the creative practice developed by Paul McCartney over his extended career as a songwriter, record producer and performing musician. It frames its examination of McCartney's work through the lens of the systems model of creativity developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and combines this with the research work of Pierre Bourdieu. This systems approach is built around the basic structures of idiosyncratic agents, like McCartney himself, and the choices he has made as a creative individual. It also locates his work within social fields and cultural domains, all crucial aspects of the creative system that McCartney continues to be immersed in. Using this tripartite system, the book includes analysis of McCartney's creative collaborations with musicians, producers, artists and filmmakers and provides a critical analysis of the Romantic myth which forms a central tenet of popular music. This engaging work will have interdisciplinary appeal to students and scholars of the psychology of creativity, popular music, sociology and cultural studies.

This book contains the first complete translation of the first half of the Pedology of the Adolescent by the Soviet thinker, educator, and teacher L.S. Vygotsky. It was the longest work published in his lifetime and was a correspondence course written by Vygotsky for teachers across the Soviet Union. The book is a sustained argument about the borders of pedology, the nature of the transition between childhood and adulthood, and the concrete character of the distinction between the lower psychological functions that we largely share with animals and those that are specific to fully socialized humans. After an initial methodological introduction, three kinds of maturation-general anatomical, sexual, and sociocultural-are explored. This book will be followed by a companion volume covering pedology of the transitional age as a psychological and social problem.

Smart societies pose new challenges for police organizations. Demands for more efficiency and effectiveness test police organizations which are often resistant to change. This book uses the concept of the abstract police to describe the way in which police organizations have tried to adapt to these new evolutions and the consequences. The chapters stem from a conference called "Street Policing in a Smart Society" which sought to frame and analyse these developments in policing. In this book, the concept of the abstract police is introduced, analysed and then challenged from different angles, looking at the evolutions related to technology, plural policing, police discretion and police decision making. As such, the book is a reflection of current debates on policing and police organization, aiming to give input to the debate by providing new insights on police and police work.

This book is about how Australian and Turkish historical understanding of the First World War Gallipoli Campaign has been shaped by travel to the battlefield for the purposes of commemoration. Utilizing a cultural historical method, the study begins with examining how cultural conceptions of travel influenced the experience of those fighting in the 1915 Battle, and ends with the way that new global insecurities and the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan in 2021 is reflecting and influencing Australia and Turkey's social memory of their military past. This wide historical lens and the author's original fieldwork and analysis of documents allows for an in-depth exploration of the ways in which cultural patterns of social memory develop over time and mapping of how specific cultural representations in the past are reclaimed. The book argues that travel is a key factor influencing social change by providing distinctive ritual experiences that afford unique, discursive opportunities and empowering particular carriers and custodians of social memory.

This book contributes to research on therapeutic culture by drawing on longstanding ethnographic work and by offering a new theoretical reading of therapeutic culture in today's society. It suggests that the therapeutic field serves as a key site in which a number of contradictions of capitalism are confronted and lived out. It shows that therapeutic engagements are inherently ambivalent and contradictory, as they can be articulated and engaged with in many different ways and harnessed for diverse, and often contradictory, political projects. The book takes issue with the interpretation of therapeutic culture as merely individualising, depoliticizing and working in congruence with neoliberalism, and shows that therapeutic engagements may also open up a space for contestation and critique of neoliberal capitalism, animate collective action for social change and articulate alternative forms of life and subjectivities. The book will speak to a wide variety of audiences in the social sciences and will be of particular interest to those working in the fields of sociology, anthropology, critical psychology, cultural studies, gender studies, and critical social theory.