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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions
In Japan, evidence of the country's Westernization abounds, yet
despite appearances, it has remained ""uniquely"" Japanese. For
this reason, the uninformed Westerner doing business there will
find it difficult and even frustrating to work with Japanese unless
he or she gains a good understanding of Japan and its people. The
author draws on his extensive bilingual and bicultural experience
to provide readers with an insightful look at many key aspects of
doing business with Japan, ranging from initiating and maintaining
business contacts, effective interpersonal communication,
decision-making styles, negotiation tactics, presentational
speaking, working of Japanese multinational companies, and living
and working in Japan. Businesspeople, academics, non-academics,
students, and others who are interested in learning how to
communicate effectively and successfully with Japanese in
international business contexts will benefit from the author's
sound recommendations and advice.
Using Amish Mafia as a window into the interplay between the real
and the imagined, this book dissects the peculiar appeals and
potential dangers of deception in reality TV and popular
entertainment. When Amish Mafia was released in 2012, viewers were
fascinated by the stories of this secret group of Amish and
Mennonite enforcers who used threats, extortion, and violence to
keep members of the Amish community in line-and to line their own
pockets. While some of the stories were based loosely on actual
events, the group itself was a complete fabrication. Its members
were played by ex-Amish and ex-Mennonite young adults acting out
scenarios concocted by the show's producers. What is most
extraordinary about Amish Mafia is that, even though it was
fictional, it was cleverly constructed to appear real. Discovery
Channel, which aired it, assiduously maintained that it was real;
whole episodes were devoted to proving that it was real; and many
viewers (including smart reality TV fans) were fooled into
believing it was real. In Fooling with the Amish, Dirk Eitzen
examines the fakery in Amish Mafia and how actual viewers of the
show responded to it to discover answers to two questions that have
long puzzled media scholars: What is it about the so-called reality
of reality shows that appeals to and gratifies viewers? How and why
are people taken in by falsehoods in the media? Eitzen's ultimate
answer to these questions is that, in taking liberties with facts,
Amish Mafia works very much like gossip. This helps to explain the
workings not just of this and other reality TV shows but also of
other forms of media fakery, including fake news. The book winds
through numerous fascinating case studies of media fakery, from P.
T. Barnum's famous "humbugs" of the nineteenth century to recent TV
news scandals. It examines the social and emotional appeals of
other forms of entertaining fakery, including professional
wrestling and supermarket tabloids. It explains how and why
conventions of contrivance evolved in reality TV as well as the
ethics of media fakery. And, for readers interested in the Amish,
it tells how the ex-Amish "stars" of Amish Mafia got involved in
the show and the impact that involvement had on their lives.
This volume addresses pertinent questions related to cross-border
labor migration and puts forward a "labor market" perspective that
goes beyond the national frame of reference prevailing in most of
the extant labor market scholarship. In four sections, the volume
pulls together a number of key threads: How can we theoretically
grasp "global labor markets?" What does existing empirical research
reveal about the current state of affairs and the historical
development of "global labor markets", provided that they can even
be regarded as "global?" How is the emergence of border-crossing
labor markets influenced by existing institutions, international
intermediaries and social networks? The editors have crafted a
coherent volume that enriches our understanding of both
globalization and labor markets. Contributors include: Patrik
Aspers, Peter-Paul Banziger, Martin Buhler, Rebecca
Gumbrell-McCormick, Richard Hyman, Sven Kesselring, Eleonore
Kofman, Ursula Mense-Petermann, Sigrid Quack, Alexandra Scheele,
Helen Schwenken, Karen Shire, Marcel van der Linden, Thomas
Welskopp, Tobias Werron, and Anna Zaharieva.
This is an engaging autobiographical account of a young American
woman's life in her Samoan husband's native home. Fay Calkins, a
descendant of Puritan settlers, met Vai Ala'ilima, a descendant of
Samoan chiefs, while working on her doctoral dissertation in the
Library of Congress. After an unconventional courtship and a
typical American wedding, they set out for Western Samoa, where Fay
was to find a way of life totally new and charming, if at times
frustrating and confusing. Soon after her arrival in the islands,
the bride of a few months found herself with a family of seven boys
in a wide range of ages, sent by relatives to live with the new
couple. She was stymied by the economics of trying to support
numerous guests, relatives, and a growing family, and still
contribute to the lavish feasts that were given on any
pretext--feasts, where the guests brought baskets in which to take
home as much of the largesse as they could carry. Fay tried to
introduce American institutions: a credit union, a co-op, a work
schedule, and hourly wages on the banana plantation begun by her
and her husband. In each instance, she quickly learned that Samoans
were unwilling or unable to grasp her Western ideas of input
equaling output, of personal property, or of payment received for
work done. Despite these frustrations and disappointments, however,
life among the people of her Samoan chief was for Fay happy and
productive.
Here are the great stories of the Blackfeet, including the
entertaining Na'Pi (Old Man) stories of mischief and trickery; the
hero Kut-o-yis', who got rid of the bad things; the secret
societies and how the earth was created. Recorded in person by the
famous conservationist and ethnologist, George Bird Grinnell, who
became a tribal member in 1885.
This open access book presents a nuanced and accessible synthesis
of the relationship between land tenure security and sustainable
development. Contributing authors have collectively worked for
decades on land tenure as connected with conservation and
development across all major regions of the globe. The first
section of this volume is intended as a standalone primer on land
tenure security and its connections with sustainable development.
The book then explores key thematic challenges that interact
directly with land tenure security, followed by a section on
strategies for addressing tenure insecurity. The book concludes
with a section on new frontiers in research, policy, and action. An
invaluable reference for researchers in the field and for
practitioners looking for a comprehensive overview of this
important topic. This is an open access book.
Jan Ken Po, Ai Kono Sho"" ""Junk An'a Po, I Canna Show"" These
words to a simple child's game brought from Japan and made local,
the property of all of Hawaii's people, symbolize the cultural
transformation experienced by Hawaii's Japanese. It is the story of
this experience that Dennis Ogawa tells so well here.
Throughout the early modern period, the nymph remained a powerful
figure that inspired and informed the cultural imagination in many
different ways. Far from being merely a symbol of the classical
legacy, the nymph was invested with a surprisingly broad range of
meanings. Working on the basis of these assumptions, and thus
challenging Aby Warburg's famous reflections on the nympha that
both portrayed her as cultural archetype and reduced her to a
marginal figure, the contributions in this volume seek to uncover
the multifarious roles played by nymphs in literature, drama,
music, the visual arts, garden architecture, and indeed
intellectual culture tout court, and thereby explore the true
significance of this well-known figure for the early modern age.
Contributors: Barbara Baert, Mira Becker-Sawatzky, Agata Anna
Chrzanowska, Karl Enenkel, Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Michaela Kaufmann,
Andreas Keller, Eva-Bettina Krems, Damaris Leimgruber, Tobias
Leuker, Christian Peters, Christoph Pieper, Bernd Roling, and Anita
Traninger.
Karen Tracy examines the identity-work of judges and attorneys in
state supreme courts as they debated the legality of existing
marriage laws. Exchanges in state appellate courts are juxtaposed
with the talk that occurred between citizens and elected officials
in legislative hearings considering whether to revise state
marriage laws. The book's analysis spans ten years, beginning with
the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of sodomy laws in 2003 and
ending in 2013 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the federal
government's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional, and
it particularly focuses on how social change was accomplished
through and reflected in these law-making and law-interpreting
discourses. Focal materials are the eight cases about same-sex
marriage and civil unions that were argued in state supreme courts
between 2005 and 2009, and six of a larger number of hearings that
occurred in state judicial committees considering bills regarding
who should be able to marry. Tracy concludes with analysis of the
2011 Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on DOMA, comparing it to
the initial 1996 hearing and to the 2013 Supreme Court oral
argument about it. The book shows that social change occurred as
the public discourse that treated sexual orientation as a
"lifestyle " was replaced with a public discourse of gays and
lesbians as a legitimate category of citizen.
The second edition of Mildred Blaxter's successful and highly
respected book offers a comprehensive and engaging introduction to
the key debates surrounding the concept of health today. It
discusses how health is defined, constructed, experienced and acted
out in contemporary developed societies, drawing on a range of
empirical data from the USA, Britain, France, and many other
countries.
The new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, with
new material added on health and identity, the "new genetics," the
sociology of the body, and the formation of health capital
throughout the life course. The topic is the concept of health,
rather than the more usual emphasis on illness and health-care
systems. Special emphasis is given to the lay perspective to show
how people themselves think about and experience health. Blaxter
guides students through all the relevant conceptual models of the
relationship of health to the structure of society, from inequality
in health to the ideas of the risk society, the 'socio-biological
translation' and the contribution of health to social capital. The
book concludes with a comprehensively revised and thought-provoking
discussion of the impact of new technology, the boundaries between
life and death, modern commodification of health, technological
transformations of the body and theories of evolutionary
biology.
"Health" is an invaluable textbook for students of medicine and
other health professions as well as those studying sociology,
health sciences and health promotion.
In this surprising new look at how clothing, style, and commerce
came together to change American culture, Jennifer Le Zotte
examines how secondhand goods sold at thrift stores, flea markets,
and garage sales came to be both profitable and culturally
influential. Initially, selling used goods in the United States was
seen as a questionable enterprise focused largely on the poor. But
as the twentieth century progressed, multimillion-dollar businesses
like Goodwill Industries developed, catering not only to the needy
but increasingly to well-off customers looking to make a statement.
Le Zotte traces the origins and meanings of ""secondhand style""
and explores how buying pre-owned goods went from a signifier of
poverty to a declaration of rebellion. Considering buyers and
sellers from across the political and economic spectrum, Le Zotte
shows how conservative and progressive social activists--from
religious and business leaders to anti-Vietnam protesters and drag
queens--shrewdly used the exchange of secondhand goods for economic
and political ends. At the same time, artists and performers, from
Marcel Duchamp and Fanny Brice to Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain, all
helped make secondhand style a visual marker for youth in revolt.
The first decades of the twenty-first century have been beset by
troubling social realities: coalition warfare, global terrorism and
financial crisis, climate change, epidemics of family violence,
violence toward women, addiction, neo-colonialism, continuing
racial and religious conflict. While traumas involving large-scale
or historical violence are widely represented in trauma theory,
familial trauma is still largely considered a private matter,
associated with personal failure. This book contributes to the
emerging field of feminist trauma theory by bringing focus to works
that contest this tendency, offering new understandings of the
significance of the literary testimony and its relationship to
broader society. The Poetics of Transgenerational Trauma adopts an
interdisciplinary approach in examining how the literary testimony
of familial transgenerational trauma, with its affective and
relational contagion, illuminates transmissive cycles of trauma
that have consequences across cultures and generations. It offers
bold and insightful readings of works that explore those
consequences in story-Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family
Tragicomic (2006), Helene Cixous's Hyperdream (2009), Marguerite
Duras's The Lover (1992), Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy (1999),
and Alexis Wright's Carpentaria (2006) and The Swan Book (2013),
concluding that such testimony constitutes a fundamentally feminist
experiment and encounter. The Poetics of Transgenerational Trauma
challenges the casting of familial trauma in ahistorical terms, and
affirms both trauma and writing as social forces of political
import.
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