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This book explores humanity's thoughts and ideas about
extraterrestrial life, paying close attention to the ways science
and culture interact with one another to create a context of
imagination and discovery related to life on other worlds. Despite
the recent explosion in our knowledge of other planets and the
seeming era of discovery in which we live, to date we have found no
concrete evidence that we are not alone. Our thinking about life on
other worlds has been and remains the product of a combination of
scientific investigation and human imagination shaped by cultural
values--particularly values of exploration and discovery connected
to American society. The rapid growth in our awareness of other
worlds makes this a crucial moment to think about and assess the
influence of cultural values on the scientific search for
extraterrestrial life. Here the author considers the junction of
science and culture with a focus on two main themes: (1) the
underlying assumptions, many of which are tacitly based upon
cultural values common in American society, that have shaped the
ways researchers in astrobiology and SETI have conceptualized the
nature of their endeavor and represented ideas about the potential
influence contact might have on human civilization, and (2) the
empirical evidence we can access as a way of thinking about the
social impact that contact with alien intelligence might have for
humanity.
Incorporating qualitative and quantitative data and research
methods from both demography and social anthropology, this book
explores demographic trends in contemporary Japan's rapidly aging
society. The contributors describe and analyze trends by addressing
the ways in which demographic change is experienced in the context
of family. The book considers the social effects, welfare issues,
and private and public responses to demographic change and how this
change has influenced the experiences of family caregivers and the
elderly themselves. It offers both a specific regional contribution
to the emerging field of demographic anthropology and an
anthropological contribution to cross-disciplinary research on
aging.
'Imagined Families, Lived Families' takes an interdisciplinary
approach toward these dramatic changes by looking at the Japanese
family from a variety of perspectives, including media studies,
anthropology, political science, literature, and popular culture.
This groundbreaking book offers a critical examination of the
concept of autonomy, one with major implications for biomedical
ethics. Working from the perspectives of ethnography and medical
anthropology, John W. Traphagan argues that the notion of autonomy
as a foundational principle of a common morality, the view dominant
in North America, is inadequate as a universal moral category
because culture deeply influences how people think about autonomy
and the fundamental nature of being human. Drawing from fieldwork
in Japan, Traphagan reveals a notably different sensibility,
demonstrating how Japanese moral concepts and actions are based
upon a deep awareness of the social embeddedness of people and an
aesthetic sensitivity that emphasizes context and situation over
universality in making moral evaluations of behavior. Traphagan
develops data from Japan into a critical examination of how
scholarly research in biomedical ethics, and ethics more generally,
is conducted in North America. Arguing in a vein related to the
emerging area of naturalized biomedical ethics, Traphagan proposes
the creation of an empirically grounded study of moral behavior.
Traphagan (anthropology, California State U.) explores the cultural
construction of categories of senility in modern rural Japan. He
focuses upon those older people who have managed to maintain social
continuity at the level of community membership throughout much of
their adult lives, tie finds that the Japanese have a concept of
illness called boke that, in contrast to western pathological
conceptions, is viewed as a process over which the aged have some
control.
This groundbreaking collection examines the regional dynamics of
state societies, looking at how people use the concepts of urban
and rural, traditional and modern, and industrial and agricultural
to define their existence and the experience of living in
contemporary Japanese society. The book focuses on the Tohoku
(Northeast) region, which many Japanese consider rural, agrarian,
undeveloped economically, and the epitome of the traditional way of
life. While this stereotype overstates the case-the region is home
to one of Japan's largest cities-most Japanese contrast Tohoku
(everything traditional) with Tokyo (everything modern). However,
the contributors show how various regional
phenomena-internationalization, lacquerware production, farming,
enka (modern Japanese ballads), women's roles, and professional
dance -combine the traditional, the modern, and the global.
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Blu-ray disc
R763
R557
Discovery Miles 5 570
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