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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions
The Musical Playground is a new and fascinating account of the
musical play of school-aged children. Based on fifteen years of
ethnomusicological field research in urban and rural school
playgrounds around the globe, Kathryn Marsh provides unique
insights into children's musical playground activities across a
comprehensive scope of social, cultural, and national contexts.
A cutting-edge appraisal of revolution and its future. On Revolutions, co-authored by six prominent scholars of revolutions, reinvigorates revolutionary studies for the twenty-first century. Integrating insights from diverse fields-including civil resistance studies, international relations, social movements, and terrorism-they offer new ways of thinking about persistent problems in the study of revolution. This book outlines an approach that reaches beyond the common categorical distinctions. As the authors argue, revolutions are not just political or social, but they feature many types of change. Structure and agency are not mutually distinct; they are mutually reinforcing processes. Contention is not just violent or nonviolent, but it is usually a mix of both. Revolutions do not just succeed or fail, but they achieve and simultaneously fall short. And causal conditions are not just domestic or international, but instead, they are dependent on the interplay of each. Demonstrating the merits of this approach through a wide range of cases, the authors explore new opportunities for conceptual thinking about revolution, provide methodological advice, and engage with the ethical issues that exist at the nexus of scholarship and activism.
Real Sex Films explores one of the most controversial movements in international cinema through an innovative interdisciplinary combination of theories of globalization and embodiment. Risk sociology, feminist film theory and critical feminist mapping theory are brought together with concepts of production, narrative, genre, authorship, stardom, spectatorship and social audience as several lenses of both 'mutual understanding' and 'galvanizing extension' in ways of seeing this object of 'real-sex cinema'. Notions of personal subjectivity and critical distance, disciplinary co-operation and critique, and cinematic perceptions of the utopia and dystopia of love within risk modernity are the tensions exposed reflexively and in parallel, as each chapter focuses different lenses communicating intimacy, desire, risk and transgression. This is a book which substantively, methodologically and theoretically is embracing and engaging in its consideration of the images, ethics, 'double standards' and embodiments of brutal cinema. Written in a style free of jargon, and crossing the boundaries of film studies, media and cultural studies, the ethnographic turn, risk sociology, feminist psychoanalytical and geopolitical studies, this is a book for students, academics as well as general and professional audiences.
Explore the haunted history of the RMS "Queen Mary."
Tantric traditions in both Buddhism and Hinduism are thriving throughout Asia and in Asian diasporic communities around the world, yet they have been largely ignored by Western scholars until now. This collection of original essays fills this gap by examining the ways in which Tantric Buddhist traditions have changed over time and distance as they have spread across cultural boundaries in Asia. The book is divided into three sections dedicated to South Asia, Central Asia, and East and Southeast Asia. The essays cover such topics as the changing ideal of masculinity in Buddhist literature, the controversy triggered by the transmission of the Indian Buddhist deity Heruka to Tibet in the 10th century, and the evolution of a Chinese Buddhist Tantric tradition in the form of the True Buddha School. The book as a whole addresses complex and contested categories in the field of religious studies, including the concept of syncretism and the various ways that the change and transformation of religious traditions can be described and articulated. The authors, leading scholars in Tantric studies, draw on a wide array of methodologies from the fields of history, anthropology, art history, and sociology. Tantric Traditions in Transmission and Translation is groundbreaking in its attempt to look past religious, linguistic, and cultural boundaries.
Cultural conflicts about the family-including those surrounding women's social roles, the debate over abortion, and in more recent years, debates about stem cell research, same-sex marriage, and contraception-have intensified over the last few decades among Catholics, as well as among American citizens generally. In fact, these conflicts comprise much of the substance of the moral polarization that currently characterizes our public politics. Scholars have demonstrated the importance of the media in the endurance of these conflicts, as well as the important role played by elites, particularly religious elites. But less is known about how individuals in local settings and cultures-especially religious settings-experience and participate in them. Why are these conflicts so resonant among ordinary Americans, and Catholics in particular? By exploring how religion and family life are intertwined in local parish settings, this book strives to understand how and why Catholics are divided around these cultural conflicts about the family. It presents a close and detailed comparative ethnographic analysis of the families and local religious cultures in two Catholic parishes: religiously conservative Our Lady of the Assumption Church and theologically progressive St. Brigitta Church. Through an examination of the activities of parish life, together with the faith stories of parishioners, this book reveals how two congregational social processes-the practice of central ecclesial metaphors, and the construction of Catholic identities-matter for the ways in which parishioners work out the routines of marriage, childrearing, and work-family balance, as well as to the ways they connect these everyday challenges to the public politics of the family. The analysis further demonstrates that these institutional processes promote polarization among Catholics through practices that unintentionally fragment the Catholic tradition in local religious settings.
Minos and the Moderns considers three mythological complexes that
enjoyed a unique surge of interest in early twentieth-century
European art and literature: Europa and the bull, the minotaur and
the labyrinth, and Daedalus and Icarus. All three are situated on
the island of Crete and are linked by the figure of King Minos.
Drawing examples from fiction, poetry, drama, painting, sculpture,
opera, and ballet, Minos and the Moderns is the first book of its
kind to treat the role of the Cretan myths in the modern
imagination.
Universities are unlikely venues for grading, branding, and marketing beauty, bodies, poise, and style. Nonetheless, thousands of college women have sought not only college diplomas but campus beauty titles and tiaras throughout the twentieth century. The cultural power of beauty pageants continues today as campus beauty pageants, especially racial and ethnic pageants and pageants for men, have soared in popularity. In Queens of Academe, Karen W. Tice asks how, and why, does higher education remain in the beauty and body business and with what effects on student bodies and identities. She explores why students compete in and attend pageants such as "Miss Pride" and "Best Bodies on Campus" as well as why websites such as "Campus Chic" and campus-based etiquette and charm schools are flourishing. Based on archival research and interviews with contemporary campus queens and university sponsors as well as hundreds of hours observing college pageants on predominantly black and white campuses, Tice examines how campus pageant contestants express personal ambitions, desires, and, sometimes, racial and political agendas to resolve the incongruities of performing in evening gowns and bathing suits on stage while seeking their degrees. Tice argues the pageants help to illuminate the shifting terrain of class, race, religion, sexuality, and gender braided in campus rituals and student life. Moving beyond a binary of objectification versus empowerment, Tice offers a nuanced analysis of the contradictory politics of education, feminism, empowerment, consumerism, race and ethnicity, class, and popular culture have on students, idealized masculinities and femininities, and the stylization of higher education itself.
What do people do all day? What did women and men do to make a living in early modern Europe, and what did their work mean? As this book shows, the meanings depended both on the worker and on the context. With an innovative analytic method that is yoked to a specially-built database of source materials, this book revises many received opinions about the history of gender and work in Europe. The applied verb-oriented method finds the 'work verbs' that appear incidentally in a wide variety of early modern sources and then analyzes the context in which they appear. By tying information technologies and computer-assisted analysis to the analytic powers - both quantitative and qualitative - of professional historians, the method gets much closer to a participatory observation of the micro-patterns of early modern life than was once believed possible. It directly addresses a number of broad problems often debated by historians of gender and early modern Europe. First, it discusses the problem of assessing more accurately the incidence, character and division of work. Second, it analyzes the configurations of work and human difference. Third, it deals with the extent to which work practices created notions of difference - gender difference but also other forms of difference - and, conversely, to what extent work practices contributed to notions of sameness and gender convergence. Finally, it studies the impact of processes of change. Drawing on sources from Sweden, the authors show the importance of multiple employment, the openness of early modern households, the significance of marriage and marital status, the gendered nature of specific tasks, and the ways in which state formation and commercialization were entangled in people's everyday lives.
Massachusetts's historic graveyards are the final resting places for tales of the strange and supernatural. From Newburyport to Truro, these graveyards often frighten the living, but the dead who rest within them have stories to share with the world they left behind. While Giles Corey is said to haunt the Howard Street Cemetery in Salem, cursing those involved in the infamous witch trials, visitors to the Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain enjoy an arboretum and a burial ground with Victorian-era memorials. One of the oldest cemeteries in Massachusetts, Old Burial Hill in Marblehead, has been the final resting place for residents for nearly 375 years. Author Roxie Zwicker tours the Bay State's oldest burial grounds, exploring the stones, stories and supernatural lore of these hallowed places.
This revised and updated second edition of The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method represents Durkheim's manifesto for sociology. In it he sought to establish sociology's scientific credentials and to provide guiding principles for future research. With a substantial new introduction by the leading Durkheim scholar Steven Lukes, the book explains the original argument and sets it in context. In addition, the still controversial debates about The Rules of Sociological Method's six chapters are examined and their relevance to present-day sociology is discussed. Also included are Durkheim's subsequent thoughts on method in the form of articles, debates with scholars from other disciplines, and letters. This edition contains helpful learning features to help introduce a new generation of sociology students to Durkheim's rich contribution to the field.
Author Ray John de Aragon has collected various folkloric stories from all regions of New Mexico throughout its changing history, most of them foreboding or cautionary tales of witches and specters. Stories rooted in the folklore of Native American culture, the Spanish colonial era, Mexican period, and the Wild West and epic-ranching years of New Mexico's past have been gathered by the author from all corners of the state. He frames them with historical context, old traditions, and other information to explain how they were promulgated among the peoples of specific times and places.
Design and Analysis of Time Series Experiments presents the elements of statistical time series analysis while also addressing recent developments in research design and causal modeling. A distinguishing feature of the book is its integration of design and analysis of time series experiments. Drawing examples from criminology, economics, education, pharmacology, public policy, program evaluation, public health, and psychology, Design and Analysis of Time Series Experiments is addressed to researchers and graduate students in a wide range of behavioral, biomedical and social sciences. Readers learn not only how-to skills but, also the underlying rationales for the design features and the analytical methods. ARIMA algebra, Box-Jenkins-Tiao models and model-building strategies, forecasting, and Box-Tiao impact models are developed in separate chapters. The presentation of the models and model-building assumes only exposure to an introductory statistics course, with more difficult mathematical material relegated to appendices. Separate chapters cover threats to statistical conclusion validity, internal validity, construct validity, and external validity with an emphasis on how these threats arise in time series experiments. Design structures for controlling the threats are presented and illustrated through examples. The chapters on statistical conclusion validity and internal validity introduce Bayesian methods, counterfactual causality and synthetic control group designs. Building on the earlier of the authors, Design and Analysis of Time Series Experiments includes more recent developments in modeling, and considers design issues in greater detail than any existing work. Additionally, the book appeals to those who want to conduct or interpret time series experiments, as well as to those interested in research designs for causal inference.
Although Tijuana has historically been one of the primary crossing points between Mexico and the United States for undocumented migrants, representations of the city primarily focus on its reputation for sex, drugs, and crime, excluding its significance in the international migration dynamic. In Border Lives, Sergio Chavez moves beyond Tijuana's infamous image to tell the story of a diverse group of individuals who live in Tijuana and use both sides of the border as a resource to construct their livelihoods. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, Chavez explores the complex and often contradictory ways in which the border shapes the lives of border crossers. Due to the precarious nature of access to the border, some were only able to use the border as a resource in the past, while others continue to seek ways to access the border in the future. Yet for all of these border crossers-past, present, and future-the border itself plays a significant role not only in their livelihood strategies, but also their lifestyles. The border shapes respondents' knowledge and relationships, controls their time, and allows them to convert U.S. wages into a Mexican standard of living without losing the social and cultural comforts of Tijuana as their home. Beyond mere ethnography, this book provides empirical grounding to theories of how the border shapes human action, offering a substantial contribution to migration and labor theory.
For the past several years, child advocates, parents, and educators
have expressed concern over the sexualization of girls. Has the
cultural sexual objectification of girls and women increased? Are
younger and younger girls sold a "sexed-up" version of femininity,
and are adult women sold a girlish sexuality?
Waging war has historically been an almost exclusively male endeavor. Yet, over the past several decades women have joined insurgent armies in significant and surprising numbers. Why do women become guerrilla insurgents? What experiences do they have in guerrilla armies? And what happens to these women when the fighting ends? Women in War answers these questions while providing a rare look at guerrilla life from the viewpoint of rank-and-file participants. From 230 in-depth interviews with men and women guerrillas, guerrilla supporters, and non-participants in rural El Salvador, Jocelyn Viterna investigates why some women were able to channel their wartime actions into post-war gains, and how those patterns differ from the benefits that accrued to men. By accounting for these variations, Viterna helps resolve debates about the effects of war on women, and by extension, develops our nascent understanding of the effects of women combatants on warfare, political violence, and gender systems. Women in War also develops a new model for investigating micro-level mobilization processes that has applications to many movement settings. Micro-level mobilization processes are often ignored in the social movement literature in favor of more macro- and meso-level analyses. Yet individuals who share the same macro-level context, and who are embedded in the same meso-level networks, often have strikingly different mobilization experiences. Only a portion are ever moved to activism, and those who do mobilize vary according to which paths they follow to mobilization, what skills and social ties they forge through participation, and whether they continue their political activism after the movement ends. By examining these individual variations, a micro theory of mobilization can extend the findings of macro- and meso-level analyses, and improve our understanding of how social movements begin, why they endure, and whether they change the societies they target.
This book examines pressures for convergence and divergence in contemporary societies focusing on the rapidly changing relationship betwen work and welfare. The countries selected for in-depth comparative analysis are Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK, each representative of different labour market and welfare regimes. Beginning with an overview of those departmenst in the post-second world war period which shed light on the different social and institutional structures, economic directions and policy orientations of the countries concerned, the book goes on to explore changing patterns of work and employment in particular in relation to labour market reforms, new forms of production and women's participation in paid work. In its last section, it looks at current issues of social policy in Europe, including gender and poverty. Integrating material from sociological perspectives on work and employment with comparative welfare analysis, feminist critiques and recent debates on social exclusion, the book will be of particular relevance and usefulness to students of European Studies, Sociology and Social Policy.
American living standards improved considerably between 1900 and 2000. While most observers focus on gains in per-capita income as a measure of economic well-being, economists have used other measures of well-being: height, weight, and longevity. The increased amount of leisure time per week and across people's lifetimes, however, has been an unsung aspect of the improved standard of living in America. In Century of the Leisured Masses, David George Surdam explores the growing presence of leisure activities in Americans' lives and how this development came out throughout the twentieth century. Most Americans have gone from working fifty-five or more hours per week to working fewer than forty, although many Americans at the top rungs of the economic ladder continue to work long hours. Not only do more Americans have more time to devote to other activities, they are able to enjoy higher-quality leisure. New forms of leisure have given Americans more choices, better quality, and greater convenience. For instance, in addition to producing music themselves, they can now listen to the most talented musicians when and where they want. Television began as black and white on small screens; within fifty years, Americans had a cast of dozens of channels to choose from. They could also purchase favorite shows and movies to watch at their convenience. Even Americans with low incomes enjoyed television and other new forms of leisure. This growth of leisure resulted from a combination of growing productivity, better health, and technology. American workers became more productive and chose to spend their improved productivity and higher wages by consuming more, taking more time off, and enjoying better working conditions. By century's end, relatively few Americans were engaged in arduous, dangerous, and stultifying occupations. The reign of tyranny on the shop floor, in retail shops, and in offices was mitigated; many Americans could even enjoy leisure activities during work hours. Failure to consider the gains in leisure time and leisure consumption understates the gains in American living standards. With Century of the Leisured Masses, Surdam has comprehensively documented and examined the developments in this important marker of well-being throughout the past century.
Urban ethnography is one of the oldest traditions of American social science and has helped define how we think about cities and city dwellers since its inception in the early twentieth century. Renewed interest in urban poverty, the immigrant experience, and gentrification among the public and scholars alike has focused attention on qualitative methods in the social sciences, and the field of urban ethnography in particular receives more attention now than at any point since its inception. The Urban Ethnography Reader assembles the very best of American ethnographic writing, from classic works to contemporary research, and aims to present ethnography as social science, social history, and literature alongside its traditional place as methodology. In addition to an original introduction that highlights the importance and development of the field, Kasinitz, Duneier, and Murphy also provide introductions to each section of the book. The section introductions will cover the period's historical events and how they influenced the study of the city, the major themes and preoccupations of ethnography, what was happening in the social sciences as a whole, and how the excerpts chosen fit into the larger work in which they were originally published. A valuable companion to a wide range of courses on cities across the social sciences, The Urban Ethnography Reader captures the diversity, the historical development, and the continuing importance of the ethnographic approach to understanding American communities.
In Marblehead Myths, Legends and Lore, author Pam Peterson recounts the oral and written accounts that Marbleheaders have handed down over the past four hundred years. Here you will find stories of magic and witches, sailors, pirates and shipwrecks. Compiled with meticulous care, Marblehead Myths, Legends and Lore offers a diverse sampling of tales from one of New England's maritime treasures.
An examination of the ways that digital technologies play an increasingly important role in the lives of precarious workers, far beyond the gig economy apps like Uber and Lyft. Over the past three decades, digital technologies like smartphones and laptops have transformed the way we work in the US. At the same time, workers at both ends of the income ladder have experienced rising levels of job insecurity and anxiety about their economic futures. In Left to Our Own Devices, Julia Ticona explores the ways that workers use their digital technologies to navigate insecure and flexible labor markets. Through 100 interviews with high and low-wage precarious workers across the US, she explores the surprisingly similar "digital hustles" they use to find work and maintain a sense of dignity and identity. Ticona then reveals how the digital hustle ultimately reproduces inequalities between workers at either end of polarized labor markets. A moving and accessible look at the intimate consequences of contemporary capitalism, Left to Our Own Devices will be of interest to sociologists, communication and media studies scholars, as well as a general audience of readers interested in digital technologies, inequality, and the future of work in the US.
The relationship between new religious movements (NRMs) and violence has long been a topic of intense public interest--an interest heavily fueled by multiple incidents of mass violence involving certain groups. Some of these incidents have made international headlines. When New Religious Movements make the news, it's usually because of some violent episode. Some of the most famous NRMs are known much more for the violent way they came to an end than for anything else. Violence and New Religious Movements offers a comprehensive examination of violence by-and against-new religious movements. The book begins with theoretical essays on the relationship between violence and NRMs and then moves on to examine particular groups. There are essays on the "Big Five"--the most well-known cases of violent incidents involving NRMs: Jonestown, Waco, Solar Temple, the Aum Shunrikyo subway attack, and the Heaven's Gate suicides. But the book also provides a richer survey by examining a host of lesser-known groups. This volume is the culmination of decades of research by scholars of New Religious Movements.
See the author featured in the "New Books in History" podcast:
When governments use eminent domain to transfer property between private owners, Americans are outraged-or so most media and academic accounts would have us believe. But these accounts obscure a much more complex reality in American conceptions of property. In this book, Debbie Becher presents the first comprehensive study of a city's eminent domain acquisitions, exploring how and why the City of Philadelphia took properties between 1992 and 2007 and which takings led to protests. She uses original data-collected from city offices and interviews with over a hundred residents, business owners, community leaders, government representatives, attorneys, and appraisers-to explore how eminent domain really works. Becher surprises readers by finding that the city took over 4,000 private properties, or one out of every hundred such properties in Philadelphia, during her study period. Furthermore, these takings only rarely provoked opposition-a fact that established views on property are ill-equipped to explain. To investigate how Americans judge the legitimacy of eminent domain, Becher devotes several chapters to two highly controversial sets of takings for redevelopment projects. The American Street takings were intended to win popular support for redevelopment and initially succeeded in doing so, but it ended as a near total failure and embarrassment. The Jefferson Square takings initially faced vociferous opposition, but they eventually earned residents' approval and became a political showpiece. Becher uncovers evidence that Americans judge eminent domain through a social conception of property as an investment of value, committed over time, that government is responsible for protecting. This conception has never been described in sociological, legal, political, or economic scholarship, and it stands in stark contrast to the arguments of libertarian and left-leaning activists and academics. But recognizing property as investment, Becher argues, may offer a firm new foundation for more progressive urban policies. |
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