Browse

By Title

• July 2014

  Sacral Kingship Between Disenchantment and Re-enchantment

  The French and English Monarchies 1587-1688

  Asch, R. G.

  France and England are often seen as monarchies standing at opposite ends of the spectrum of seventeenth-century European political culture. On the one hand the Bourbon monarchy took the high road to absolutism, while on the other the Stuarts never quite recovered from the diminution of their royal authority following the regicide of Charles I in 1649.  However, both monarchies shared a common medieval heritage of sacral kingship, and their histories remained deeply entangled throughout the century. This study focuses on the interaction between ideas of monarchy and images of power in the two countries between the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and the Glorious Revolution. It demonstrates that even in periods when politics were seemingly secularized, as in France at the end of the Wars of Religion, and in latter seventeenth- century England, the appeal to religious images and values still lent legitimacy to royal authority by emphasizing the sacral aura or providential role which church and religion conferred on monarchs.

  Subject: Early Modern History

• February 2018

  Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces

  Religious Pluralism in the Post-Soviet Caucasus

  Darieva, T., Mühlfried, F., & Tuite, K. (eds)

  Though long-associated with violence, the Caucasus is a region rich with religious conviviality. Based on fresh ethnographies in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Russian Federation, Sacred Places, Emerging Spaces discusses vanishing and emerging sacred places in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious post-Soviet Caucasus. In exploring the effects of de-secularization, growing institutional control over hybrid sacred sites, and attempts to review social boundaries between the religious and the secular, these essays give way to an emergent Caucasus viewed from the ground up: dynamic, continually remaking itself, within shifting and indefinite frontiers.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Religion Sociology

• January 2006

  Sacred Speakers

  Language and Culture among the ultra-Orthodox in Israel

  Baumel, S.

  Despite its outwardly static and traditional appearance, the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) world is engaged in a constant cultural dialogue with modernity. This dialogue is exceptionally visible in the realm of language as shown in this study that examines the language and culture of four ultra-Orthodox groups found in Israel: the Ashkenazi (European) Mitnagdim-Lithuanians, and the Oriental Sefaradi Haredim. After the presentation of the historical background of the four sects, the author analyzes the public and private domains, focusing on language as used in many different forms and situations, and on the management of language. He furthermore compares the language policies of British, American, and French Haredim belonging to the Habad, Gur, Mitnagdic and Sefaradi sects to those in Israel and finds many similarities between the groups. The book concludes with the proposal of an interdisciplinary model, based on the Haredi case study, which can be used by language planners worldwide to understand the issues of language maintenance and loss among ethnic and ethno-religious minorities.

  Subject: Jewish Studies

• January 2016

  Sacrifice and Rebirth

  The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War

  Cornwall, M. & Newman, J. P. (eds)

  When Austria-Hungary broke up at the end of the First World War, the sacrifice of one million men who had died fighting for the Habsburg monarchy now seemed to be in vain. This book is the first of its kind to analyze how the Great War was interpreted, commemorated, or forgotten across all the ex-Habsburg territories. Each of the book’s twelve chapters focuses on a separate region, studying how the transition to peacetime was managed either by the state, by war veterans, or by national minorities. This “splintered war memory,” where some posed as victors and some as losers, does much to explain the fractious character of interwar Eastern Europe.

  Subject: 20th Century History

• February 2012

  Saltwater Sociality

  A Melanesian Island Ethnography

  Schneider, K.

  The inhabitants of Pororan Island, a small group of ‘saltwater people’ in Papua New Guinea, are intensely interested in the movements of persons across the island and across the sea, both in their everyday lives as fishing people and on ritual occasions. From their observations of human movements, they take their cues about the current state of social relations. Based on detailed ethnography, this study engages current Melanesian anthropological theory and argues that movements are the Pororans’ predominant mode of objectifying relations. Movements on Pororan Island are to its inhabitants what roads are to ‘mainlanders’ on the nearby larger island, and what material objects and images are to others elsewhere in Melanesia.

  Subjects: Environmental Studies General Anthropology

• March 2013

  Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond

  Transnational Media During and After Socialism

  Kind-Kovács, F. & Labov, J. (eds)

  In many ways what is identified today as “cultural globalization” in Eastern Europe has its roots in the Cold War phenomena of samizdat (“do-it-yourself” underground publishing) and tamizdat (publishing abroad). This volume offers a new understanding of how information flowed between East and West during the Cold War, as well as the much broader circulation of cultural products instigated and sustained by these practices. By expanding the definitions of samizdat and tamizdat from explicitly political print publications to include other forms and genres, this volume investigates the wider cultural sphere of alternative and semi-official texts, broadcast media, reproductions of visual art and music, and, in the post-1989 period, new media. The underground circulation of uncensored texts in the Cold War era serves as a useful foundation for comparison when looking at current examples of censorship, independent media, and the use of new media in countries like China, Iran, and the former Yugoslavia.
   

  Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies Media Studies

• June 2004

  Sartre Against Stalinism

  Birchall, I. H.

  Most critics of the political evolution of Jean-Paul Sartre have laid emphasis on his allegedly sympathetic and uncritical attitude to Stalinist Communism due, to a large extent, to their equation of Marxism with Stalinism. It is true that Sartre was guilty of many serious misjudgements with regard to the USSR and the French Communist Party. But his relationship with the Marxist Left was much more complex and co tradictory than most accounts admit. This book offers a political defence of Sartre and shows how, from a relatively apolitical stance in the 1930s, Sartre became increasingly involved in the politics of the Left; though he always distrusted Stalinism, he was sometimes driven to ally himself with it because of the force of its argument.

  Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies

• December 2005

  Sartre Today

  A Centenary Celebration

  Hoven, A. van den & Leak, A.

  Sartre Today is a tribute to Jean-Paul Sartre on the centenary of his birth (1905-2005). With twenty-two contributions from leading Sartre scholars in North America and the United Kingdom, this volume will greatly enhance Sartre scholarship in the English-speaking world.

  The diversity of these chapters reflects the depth and breadth of Sartre's wide-ranging engagement with the political and cultural issues of his time. Yet as these contributions demonstrate, it is clear that Sartre's work still offers an important framework through which to address contemporary issues of a similar magnitude. This applies to Sartre's enduring contribution to philosophy and his conception of violence and terror, as well as analyses of the latest political events in the United States. Other contributions address Sartre's relationship to the contemporary understanding of neuroscience and group therapy as well as his conception of literature, biography, the theater and cinema.

  This rich volume will be of great use not only to all Sartre scholars but also to anyone who has an interest in modern philosophy, politics, psychology, and literature.

  Contributors: Thomas R. Flynn, Joseph S. Catalano, Reidar Due, Steve Martinot, Ronald E. Santoni, David Detmer, John Duncan, Hazel E. Barnes, Betty Cannon, Constance L. Mui, Peter Caws, Ann Jefferson, Dennis A. Gilbert, Colin Davis John Gillespie Ian Birchall, Betsy Bowman and Bob Stone, Azzedine Haddour, Ronald Aronson, William L. McBride

  Subject: General Cultural Studies

• December 2004

  Sartre, Self-formation and Masculinities

  Boulé, J.-P.

  Published on the occasion of Sartre's Centenary, this book helps to understand the man behind the work, offering a psycho-social analysis of Jean-Paul Sartre with an emphasis on his masculinity. It sets out to contextualize Sartre in terms of his psycho-sexual formation and processes of self-constitution in view of his childhood. The main period under detailed study is 1905-1945, before Sartre became the Sartre. It concentrates on his early childhood, his teenage years in La Rochelle, the years at the Ecole Normale, and the first few years of his adulthood, with specific attention on the war years. An analysis of Sartre's relationships follows, with Simone de Beauvoir and other women and men (including love and sex), before a postscript covering the period 1973-1980. This essay is not a reductive account. It tells the story of Jean-Paul Sartre, from the inside out, so that the achievements of one of the major intellectuals of the 20th Century can be measured against his own internal struggles.

  Subjects: General Cultural Studies Gender Studies

• September 2008

  Scandinavian Museums and Cultural Diversity

  Goodnow, K. & Akman, H. (eds)

  Museums face the task of representing the similarities and differences that exist between groups, such as national identities and indigenous and minority voices, material and intangible heritage, and current status and past history. In order to achieve this aim, a complex and not always easily compatible set of interests have to be taken into account, from those of the museum itself, to those of its main audiences, sources of support, and the groups that are, or wish to be, represented. The approach taken by Scandinavian museums in response to this challenge highlights a very active concern for forms of cultural diversity and how they are interrelated.

  By bringing together debates and discussions of diversity, this volume offers insight into the Nordic region and its diverse peoples, from the Sámi and the Inuit to newer immigrants. It presents a set of historical reviews on the formation of national museums and emerging and contested perceptions of national identity. Furthering the general debate on representations of diversity and museums, it also offers museum curators possible ways forward.

  Katherine Goodnow is Professor at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. She has published widely on museums and cultural diversity. Her most recent books in the field include Challenge and transformation: Museums in Cape Town and Sydney and Museums, the media and refugees: Stories of crisis, control and compassion. Goodnow combines research with filmmaking and has produced television series and documentaries for Norwegian national broadcasters.

  Haci Akman is Associate Professor at the Department of Archaeology, History, Culture and Religious Science, University of Bergen. His research interests include migration, diaspora processes, ethnicity, cultural heritage and museums and diversity. Recent publications in these fields focus on Kurdish and Jewish diaspora societies in the United Kingdom and Norway. Akman is currently working on the development of the Norwegian Kurdish Virtual Museum.

  Subject: Museum Studies

• December 2004

  Science, Magic and Religion

  The Ritual Processes of Museum Magic

  Bouquet, M. & Porto, N. (eds)

  For some time now, museums have been recognized as important institutions of western cultural and social life. The idea of the museum as a ritual site is fairly new and has been applied to the art museums in Europe and the United States so far. This volume expands it by exploring a range of contemporary museums in Europe and Africa. The case studies examine the different ways in which various actors involved in cultural production dramatize and ritualize such sites. It turns out that not only museum specialists, but visitors themselves are engaged in complex performances and experiences that make use of museums in often unexpected ways.

  Subjects: Museum Studies Religion General Anthropology

• November 2013

  Science, Seti, and Mathematics

  DeVito, C. L.

  Mathematics is as much a part of our humanity as music and art. And it is our mathematics that might be understandable, even familiar, to a distant race and might provide the basis for mutual communication. This book discusses, in a conversational way, the role of mathematics in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The author explores the science behind that search, its history, and the many questions associated with it, including those regarding the nature of language and the philosophical/psychological motivation behind this search.

  Subject: General Cultural Studies

• September 2018

  Screened Encounters

  The History of the Leipzig Film Festival, 1955-1990

  Moine, C.

  Established in 1955, the Leipzig Film Festival’s location in the German Democratic Republic deeply implicated it in cultural and political competition between East and West Germany, opening a political and artistic exchange that would have otherwise been impossible. Screened Encounters represents the definitive history of this key event, recounting its history from its founding until reunification, and tracing the outsize influence it exerted on international cultural relations during the Cold War.

  Subjects: Film Studies Postwar History

• November 2013

  Screening Nature

  Cinema beyond the Human

  Pick, A. & Narraway, G. (eds)

  Environmentalism and ecology are areas of rapid growth in academia and society at large. Screening Nature is the first comprehensive work that groups together the wide range of concerns in the field of cinema and the environment, and what could be termed “posthuman cinema.” It comprises key readings that highlight the centrality of nature and nonhuman animals to the cinematic medium, and to the language and institution of film. The book offers a fresh and timely intervention into contemporary film theory through a focus on the nonhuman environment as principal register in many filmic texts. Screening Nature offers an extensive resource for teachers, undergraduate students, and more advanced scholars on the intersections between the natural world and the worlds of film. It emphasizes the cross-cultural and geographically diverse relevance of the topic of cinema ecology.

  Subjects: Film Studies General Cultural Studies

• January 2009

  Screening Nostalgia

  Populuxe Props and Technicolor Aesthetics in Contemporary American Film

  Sprengler, C.

  "In this fascinating in-depth study of the impact of nostalgia on contemporary American cinema, Christine Sprengler unpicks the history of the concept and explores its significance in theory and practice. She offers a lucid analysis of the development of nostalgia in American society and culture, navigating a path through the key debates and aligning herself with recent attempts to recuperate its critical potential. This journey opens up the myriad permutations of nostalgia across visual and material culture and their interface with cinema, with the 1950s emerging as a privileged moment. Four case studies (Sin City, Far From Heaven, The Aviator and The Good German) analyse the ways in which aspects of visual design such as props, costume and colour contribute to the nostalgic aesthetic, allowing for both critical distance and emotion. Written with verve, style and impressive attention to detail, Screening Nostalgia is an invaluable addition to existing scholarship. It is also essential reading for anyone interested in the ways in which we access the past through cinema."  ·  Pam Cook, Professor Emerita in Film, University of Southampton

  Subject: Film Studies

• May 2011

  Screening the East

  Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989

  Hodgin, N.

  Screening the East considers German filmmakers’ responses to unification. In particular, it traces the representation of the East German community in films made since 1989 and considers whether these narratives challenge or reinforce the notion of a separate East German identity. The book identifies and analyses a large number of films, from internationally successful box-office hits, to lesser-known productions, many of which are discussed here for the first time. Providing an insight into the films’ historical and political context, it considers related issues such as stereotyping, racism, regional particularism and the Germans’ confrontation with the past.

  Subjects: Film Studies Postwar History

• May 2018

  Searching for a Better Life

  Growing Up in the Slums of Bangkok

  Mahony, S.

  Life in Bangkok for young people is marked by profound, interlocking changes and transitions. This book offers an ethnographic account of growing up in the city’s slums, struggling to get by in a rapidly developing and globalizing economy and trying to fulfil one’s dreams. At the same time, it reflects on the issue of agency, exploring its negative potential when exercised by young people living under severe structural constraint. It offers an antidote to neoliberal ideas around personal responsibility, and the assumed potential for individuals to break through structures of constraint in any sustained way.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Development Studies Urban Studies

• November 2010

  Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy

  Gienow-Hecht, J. E. & Donfried, M. C. (eds)

  Recent studies on the meaning of cultural diplomacy in the twentieth century often focus on the United States and the Cold War, based on the premise that cultural diplomacy was a key instrument of foreign policy in the nation’s effort to contain the Soviet Union. As a result, the term “cultural diplomacy” has become one-dimensional, linked to political manipulation and subordination and relegated to the margin of diplomatic interactions. This volume explores the significance of cultural diplomacy in regions other than the United States or “western” countries, that is, regions that have been neglected by scholars so far—Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. By examining cultural diplomacy in these regions, the contributors show that the function of information and exchange programs differs considerably from area to area depending on historical circumstances and, even more importantly, on the cultural mindsets of the individuals involved.

  Subject: General History

• June 2001

  Secret Spaces, Forbidden Places

  Rethinking Culture

  Lloyd, F. & O'Brien, C. (eds)

  In this highly original approach to the study of the construction of culture, this collection of previously unpublished essays explore the topography of the secret and the forbidden, focusing on specific moments in recent cultural and political history. By bringing together writers from different disciplines and different locations, this volume provides a rich and diverse mapping of how the secret and forbidden operate across different subjects and different geographies, extending far beyond physical locations. It is present in domains ranging from language, literature, and cinema to social and political life. This refreshing and thought-provoking collection of essays will prove invaluable for researchers and students.

  Subject: General Cultural Studies

• November 2010

  Security and Development

  McNeish, J.-A. & Sande Lie, J. H. (eds)

  Since 9/11 ideas of security have focused in part on the development of ungovernable spaces. Important debates are now being had over the nature, impacts, and outcomes of the numerous policy statements made by northern governments, NGOs, and international institutions that view the merging of security with development as both unproblematic and progressive. This volume addresses this new security–development nexus and investigates internal institutional logics, as well as the operation of policy, its dangers, resistances and complicity with other local and national social processes. Drawing on detailed ethnography, the contributors offer new vantage points to understand the workings of multiple, intersecting, and conflicting power structures, which whilst local, are tied to non-local systems and operate across time. This volume is a necessary critique and extension of key themes integral to the security– development nexus debate, highlighting the importance of a situated and substantive understanding of human security.

  Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology

• December 2017

  Seekers and Things

  Spiritual Movements and Aesthetic Difference in Kinshasa

  Lambertz, P.

  Focusing on the intricate presence of a Japanese new religion (Sekai Kyûseikyô) in the densely populated and primarily Christian environment of Kinshasa (DR Congo), this ethnographic study offers a practitioner-orientated perspective to create a localised picture of religious globalization. Guided by an aesthetic approach to religion, the study moves beyond a focus limited to text and offers insights into the role of religious objects, spiritual technologies and aesthetic repertoires in the production and politics of difference. The boundaries between non-Christian religious minorities and the largely Christian public sphere involve fears and suspicion of ‘magic’ and ‘occult sciences’.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Religion Refugee & Migration Studies

• November 2017

  Selfhood and Recognition

  Melanesian and Western Accounts of Relationality

  Galuschek, A. C.

  The disciplines of philosophy and cultural anthropology have one thing in common: human behavior. Yet surprisingly, dialogue between the two fields has remained largely silent until now. Selfhood and Recognition combines philosophical and cultural anthropological accounts of the perception of individual action, exploring the processes through which a person recognizes the self and the other. Touching on humanity as porous, fractal, dividual, and relational, the author sheds new light on the nature of selfhood, recognition, relationality, and human life.

  Subjects: General Anthropology General Cultural Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology

• August 2007

  Selling the Economic Miracle

  Economic Reconstruction and Politics in West Germany, 1949-1957

  Spicka, M. E.

  Through an examination of election campaign propaganda and various public relations campaigns, reflecting new electioneering techniques borrowed from the United States, this work explores how conservative political and economic groups sought to construct and sell a political meaning of the Social Market Economy and the Economic Miracle in West Germany during the 1950s.The political meaning of economics contributed to conservative electoral success, constructed a new belief in the free market economy within West German society, and provided legitimacy and political stability for the new Federal Republic of Germany.

  Subjects: Economic History Postwar History

• July 2018

  Sense and Essence

  Heritage and the Cultural Production of the Real

  Meyer, B. & van de Port, M. (eds)

  Contrary to popular perceptions, cultural heritage is not given, but constantly in the making: a construction subject to dynamic processes of (re)inventing culture within particular social formations and bound to particular forms of mediation. Yet the appeal of cultural heritage often rests on its denial of being a fabrication, its promise to provide an essential ground to social-cultural identities. Taking this paradoxical feature as a point of departure, and anchoring the discussion to two heuristic concepts - the "politics of authentication" and "aesthetics of persuasion," - the chapters herein explore how this tension is central to the dynamics of heritage formation worldwide.

  Subjects: General Anthropology General Cultural Studies Museum Studies

• December 2016

  Sensitive Pasts

  Questioning Heritage in Education

  Boxtel, C. van, Grever, M., & Klein, S. (eds)

  Heritage, as an area of research and learning, often deals with difficult historical questions, due to the strong emotions and political commitments that are often at stake. In this, it poses particular challenges for teachers, museum educators and the publics they serve. Guided by a shared focus on these “sensitive pasts,” the contributors to this volume draw on new theoretical and empirical research to provide valuable insights into heritage pedagogy. Together they demonstrate the potential of heritage as a historical-educational domain that transcends myopic patriotism, parochialism and simplistic relativism, helping to enhance critical and sophisticated historical thinking.

  Subjects: General History Educational Studies

• November 2010

  Settling for Less

  The Planned Resettlement of Israel's Negev Bedouin

  Dinero, S. C.

  The resettlement of the Negev Bedouin (Israel) has been wrought with controversy since its inception in the 1960s. Presenting evidence from a two-decade period, the author addresses how the changes that took place over the past sixty to seventy years have served the needs and interests of the State rather than those of Bedouin community at large. While town living fostered improvements in social and economic development, numerous unintended consequences jeopardized the success of this planning initiative. As a result, the Bedouin community endured excessive hardship and rapid change, abandoning its nomadic lifestyle and traditions in response to the economic, political, and social pressure from the State—and received very little in return.

  Subjects: Development Studies General Anthropology

• March 2015

  Sex and Control

  Venereal Disease, Colonial Physicians, and Indigenous Agency in German Colonialism, 1884-1914

  Walther, D. J.

  In responding to the perceived threat posed by venereal diseases in Germany’s colonies, doctors took a biopolitical approach that employed medical and bourgeois discourses of modernization, health, productivity, and morality. Their goal was to change the behavior of targeted groups, or at least to isolate infected individuals from the healthy population. However, the Africans, Pacific Islanders, and Asians they administered to were not passive recipients of these strategies. Rather, their behavior strongly influenced the efficacy and nature of these public health measures. While an apparent degree of compliance was achieved, over time physicians increasingly relied on disciplinary measures beyond what was possible in Germany in order to enforce their policies. Ultimately, through their discourses and actions they contributed to the justification for and the maintenance of German colonialism.

  Subject: Colonialism

• May 2005

  Sex and the Empire That Is No More

  Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yoruba Religion

  Matory, J. L.

  J. Lorand Matory researches the trans-Atlantic comings and goings of Yoruba religion, as well as ethnic diversity in Black North America. With the support of the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Spencer Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education's Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, he has conducted extensive field research in Brazil, Nigeria, and the United States. Dr. Matory is also the author of Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé (Princeton University Press). He is currently researching a book on the history and experience of Nigerians, Trinidadians, Ethiopians, black Indians, Louisiana Creoles and other ethnic groups that make up black North American society. It focuses on the creative coexistence of these groups at the United States' leading "historically Black university"—Howard University

  Subjects: Religion Gender Studies General Anthropology

• December 2007

  Sex, Thugs & Rock 'n' Roll

  Teenage Rebels in Cold-War East Germany

  Fenemore, M.

  A fascinating and highly readable account of what it was like to be young and hip, growing up in East Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. Living on the frontline of the Cold War, young people were subject to a number of competing influences. For young men from the working class, in particular, a conflict developed between the culture they inherited from their parents and the new official culture taught in schools. Merging with street gangs, new youth cultures took shape, which challenged authority and provided an alternative vision of modernity. Taking their fashion cues, music and icons from the West, they rapidly came into conflict with a didactic and highly controlling party-state. Charting the clashes which occurred between teenage rebels and the authorities, the book explores what happened when gender, sexuality, Nazism, communism and rock 'n' roll collided during a period, which also saw the building of the Berlin Wall.

  Subjects: Postwar History Gender Studies

• February 2012

  Sexual Knowledge

  Feeling, Fact, and Social Reform in Vienna, 1900-1934

  McEwen, B.

  Vienna’s unique intellectual, political, and religious traditions had a powerful impact on the transformation of sexual knowledge in the early twentieth century. Whereas turn-of-the-century sexology, as practiced in Vienna as a medical science, sought to classify and heal individuals, during the interwar years, sexual knowledge was employed by a variety of actors to heal the social body: the truncated, diseased, and impoverished population of the newly created Republic of Austria. Based on rich source material, this book charts cultural changes that are hallmarks of the modern era, such as the rise of the companionate marriage, the role of expert advice in intimate matters, and the body as a source of pleasure and anxiety. These changes are evidence of a dramatic shift in attitudes from a form of scientific inquiry largely practiced by medical specialists to a social reform movement led by and intended for a wider audience that included workers, women, and children.

  Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies

• February 1996

  Sexual Politics and the European Union

  The New Feminist Challenge

  Elman, R. A.

  Just as feminist scholars began to develop an analysis of "the state" and women in Europe gained access to its political, legal and bureaucratic arenas, increased attention and reliance on European institutions have begun to take precedence over the more parochial concerns of the nation state. With the creation of the European super-state, feminist scholars will have to enhance their understanding of the European Union while activists will increasingly focus their efforts upon its institutions. This volume provides a comprehensive examination of EU policy implications for some of the most burning issues concerning women. This is the first book to transcend the emphasis on economics, the conventional basis for EU public policy discussions, thus providing a basis upon which one can begin to assess the politics of European integration from a feminist perspective.

  Subject: Gender Studies

• February 1996

  Sexual Subordination and State Intervention

  Comparing Sweden and the United States

  Elman, R. A.

  One would expect a welfare state such as Sweden to compare favorably with the United States regarding implementation of public policies and programs. Surprisingly, the author comes to quite different conclusions: in studying the treatment of battered, raped and sexually-harassed women in the two countries, she has found that, contrary to conventional expectation, the ability of the decentralized American state to innovate effectively has been consistently underestimated, whereas Sweden's ability to do the same has often been exaggerated.

  Subjects: Gender Studies General Cultural Studies

• November 2004

  Sexuality and German Fascism

  Herzog, D. (ed)

  The interrelationship of fascism and sexuality has attracted a great deal of interest for some time now. This collection offers fresh perspectives by leading scholars on the history of sexuality under national socialism on such topics as the persecution of Jewish-gentile sex in the "race defilement" trials, homophobic propaganda and the prosecution of same-sex activity within the Wehrmacht and SS, representations of female sexuality in film, prostitution on home and battle fronts, sexual relations between Germans and foreign forced laborers, and reproductive practices among Jewish survivors. Moreover, the authors provide new insights into the relationships between Nazi sexual politics and antisemitism and challenge assumptions of Nazism as sexually repressive; instead they emphasize the interrelationships between incitement to sexual activity and persecution and mass murder.

  Subjects: WWII History Gender Studies General Cultural Studies Gender Studies

• December 2007

  Shades of Indignation

  Political Scandals in France, Past and Present

  Jankowski, P.

  At the end of the twentieth century France found itself in the midst of another scandalous fin de siècle, awash with rumors and revelations of wrongdoing in high places. As the millennium expired, the Republic’s servants, some sitting, others retired, received much condemnation, whether welcomed or resented. When taken together, surely les affaires now approximate in political significance (if not in noise or invective) those of the Dreyfus or Panama scandals a century ago? Yet the author argues this is not so. Today, treason has vanished and is slowly giving way to a transgression different in kind, but equivalent in gravamen: the crime against humanity. Corruption is far from disappearing, yet now it inspires resignation rather than indignation - and as such, it has lost its power to scandalize. Jankowski claims that such transformations tell a tale. The state that once aspired to pre-eminence as the sole magnet of loyalty, touchstone of probity, and guarantor of right, has yielded significant ground to the individual who is now more likely to elevate his own dignity and cry scandal on his own behalf. [In these times,] Individualism is de-politicizing the group and [ultimately] diluting the mystique of France, the nation-state par excellence.

  Subject: General History

• January 2016

  Shadowlands

  Memory and History in Post-Soviet Estonia

  Wulf, M.

  Located within the forgotten half of Europe, historically trapped between Germany and Russia, Estonia has been profoundly shaped by the violent conflicts and shifting political fortunes of the last century. This innovative study traces the tangled interaction of Estonian historical memory and national identity in a sweeping analysis extending from the Great War to the present day. At its heart is the enduring anguish of World War Two and the subsequent half-century of Soviet rule. Shadowlands tells this story by foregrounding the experiences of the country’s intellectuals, who were instrumental in sustaining Estonian historical memory, but who until fairly recently could not openly grapple with their nation’s complex, difficult past.

  Subject: Postwar History

• March 1999

  Shamanism

  Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing

  Jakobsen†, M.

  Shamanism has always been of great interest to anthropologists. More recently it has been "discovered" by westerners, especially New Age followers. This book breaks new ground byexamining pristine shamanism in Greenland, among people contacted late by Western missionaries and settlers. On the basis of material only available in Danish, and presented herein English for the first time, the author questions Mircea Eliade's well-known definition of the shaman as the master of ecstasy and suggests that his role has to be seen as that of a master of spirits.

  The ambivalent nature of the shaman and the spirit world in the tough Arctic environment is then contrasted with the more benign attitude to shamanism in the New Age movement. After presenting descriptions of their organizations and accounts by participants, the author critically analyses the role of neo-shamanic courses and concludes that it is doubtful to consider what isoffered as shamanism.

  Subjects: Religion Theory & Methodology in Anthropology

• February 2017

  Shaping Taxpayers

  Values in Action at the Swedish Tax Agency

  Björklund Larsen, L.

  How do you make taxpayers comply? This ethnography offers a vivid, yet nuanced account of knowledge making at one of Sweden’s most esteemed bureaucracies – the Swedish Tax Agency. In its aim to collect taxes and minimize tax faults, the Agency mediates the application of tax law to ensure compliance and maintain legitimacy in society. This volume follows one risk assessment project’s passage through the Agency, from its inception, through the research phase, in discussions with management to its final abandonment. With its fiscal anthropological approach, Shaping Taxpayers reveals how diverse knowledge claims – legal, economic, cultural – compete to shape taxpayer behaviour.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Political Economy

• October 1996

  Shaping the Novel

  Receptions of the Essais

  Mitchell, C. T. & Côté, P. R.

  The dialogue between form and message is intrinsic to the novel as genre. Yet the strength of that discourse has been shaken in the twentieth century by an increasing doubt about affirmations of any kind and a growing awareness of the relativity of knowledge and perception. The novel reflects this intellectual current by turning its glance inward to mediate on the creative act as a form of self-contained assertion of its own particular significance. The three writers on whom this study focuses, all major twentieth century authors, were chosen because they can be considered as important representatives of this novelistic self-consciousness. Building on André Malraux's vision of the colloquium as an open-ended verbal interchange, this study calls upon the voices of Anne Hérbert and Patrick Modiano to enter into a dialogue on novelistic form.

  Subject: General Cultural Studies

• December 2014

  Shaping the Transnational Sphere

  Experts, Networks and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s

  Rodogno, D., Struck, B. & Vogel, J. (eds)

  In the second half of the nineteenth century a new kind of social and cultural actor came to the fore: the expert. During this period complex processes of modernization, industrialization, urbanization, and nation-building gained pace, particularly in Western Europe and North America. These processes created new forms of specialized expertise that grew in demand and became indispensible in fields like sanitation, incarceration, urban planning, and education. Often the expertise needed stemmed from problems at a local or regional level, but many transcended nation-state borders. Experts helped shape a new transnational sphere by creating communities that crossed borders and languages, sharing knowledge and resources through those new communities, and by participating in special events such as congresses and world fairs.

  Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History

• July 2012

  Sharing the Sacra

  The Politics and Pragmatics of Intercommunal Relations around Holy Places

  Bowman, G. (ed)

  “Shared” sites, where members of distinct, or factionally opposed, religious communities interact—or fail to interact—is the focus of this volume. Chapters based on fieldwork from such diverse sites as India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, China, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, and Vietnam demonstrate how sharing and tolerance are both more complex and multifaceted than they are often recognized to be. By including both historical processes (the development of Chinese funerals in late imperial Beijing or the refashioning of memorial commemoration in the wake of the Vietnam war) and particular events (the visit of Pope John Paul II to shared shrines in Sri Lanka or the Al-Qaeda bombing of an ancient Jewish synagogue on the Island of Djerba in Tunisia), the volume demonstrates the importance of understanding the wider contexts within which social interactions take place and shows that tolerance and intercommunalism are simultaneously possible and perpetually under threat.

  Subjects: Religion General Anthropology Sociology

• September 2000

  Shedding Light on the Darkness

  A Guide to Teaching the Holocaust

  Lauckner, N. & Jokiniemi†, M.

  Increasingly, German Studies programs include courses on the Holocaust, but suitable course materials are often difficult to find. Teachers in higher education will therefore very much welcome this volume that examines and reflects both the practical and theoretical aspects of teaching about the Holocaust. Though designed primarily by and for North American Germanists and German Studies specialists, this book will prove no less useful for teachers in other countries and associated disciplines. It presents and describes successful Holocaust-related courses that have been developed and taught at U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities, demonstrating the depth, breadth, and variety of such offerings, while remaining mindful of the instructor's special moral responsibilities. Reflecting as it does, the innovative Holocaust pedagogy in North American German and German Studies, this collection serves the needs of educators who wish to revise or update their existing Holocaust courses and of those who are seeking guidance, ideas, and resources to enable them to develop their first Holocaust course or unit.

  Subjects: Genocide Studies Jewish Studies

• March 2011

  Sibling Relations and the Transformations of European Kinship, 1300-1900

  Johnson, C. H. & Sabean, D. W. (eds)

  Recently considerable interest has developed about the degree to which anthropological approaches to kinship can be used for the study of the long-term development of European history. From the late middle ages to the dawn of the twentieth century, kinship - rather than declining, as is often assumed - was twice reconfigured in dramatic ways and became increasingly significant as a force in historical change, with remarkable similarities across European society. Applying interdisciplinary approaches from social and cultural history and literature and focusing on sibling relationships, this volume takes up the challenge of examining the systemic and structural development of kinship over the long term by looking at the close inner-familial dynamics of ruling families (the Hohenzollerns), cultural leaders (the Mendelssohns), business and professional classes, and political figures (the Gladstones)in France, Italy, Germany, and England. It offers insight into the current issues in kinship studies and draws from a wide range of personal documents: letters, autobiographies, testaments, memoirs, as well as genealogies and works of art.

  Subject: General History

• March 2000

  Sight and Sound Entwined

  Studies of the New Russian Poetry

  Janecek, G.

  Notwithstanding the economic hardship Russian people are experiencing, their cultural life is as rich and alive as ever, as Gerald Janecek shows us in this collection of his articles on contemporary Russian poetry, which are especially written for this publication or so far only available in Russian. These articles focus on works in which sonic-musical, resp. visual-typographical features are used to produce interesting new effects and range from a musical analysis of the way Joseph Brodsky recited his poems to quasi-musical principles of organization (as in the works by Mnatsakanova and Nikonova) to layout designs that reflect the way a poem is recited (as in the case of Khudyakov, Volohovsky, Brodsky, Nekrasov, and Aigi) and perceived. As the first serious scholarly examination of the poets presented, this volume offers an important introduction to Russian avant-garde poetry.

  Subject: General Cultural Studies

• December 2005

  Silence

  The Currency Of Power

  Achino-Loeb, M.-L. (ed)

  This book is about silence and power and how they interact. It argues that only by studying how silence works—how it is implicated in the construction of meaning—can we arrive at the elusive roots of power in all its dimensions. Silence becomes the currency of power by delineating the margins or what we perceive and through a sleight of hand wherein behaviors undertaken in the service of self-interest appear instead as inevitable and devoid of human agency. The theoretical load of this argument is carried by vivid ethnographic material dealing with music, linguistic behavior, racial conflicts, work dislocations, and the construction of anthropological subjects and texts.

  Subjects: General Anthropology General Cultural Studies Sociology

• February 2014

  Silence, Screen, and Spectacle

  Rethinking Social Memory in the Age of Information

  Freeman, L. A., Nienass, B., & Daniell, R. (eds)

  In an age of information and new media the relationships between remembering and forgetting have changed. This volume addresses the tension between loud and often spectacular histories and those forgotten pasts we strain to hear. Employing social and cultural analysis, the essays within examine mnemonic technologies both new and old, and cover subjects as diverse as U.S. internment camps for Japanese Americans in WWII, the Canadian Indian Residential School system, Israeli memorial videos, and the desaparecidos in Argentina. Through these cases, the contributors argue for a re-interpretation of Guy Debord’s notion of the spectacle as a conceptual apparatus through which to examine the contemporary landscape of social memory, arguing that the concept of spectacle might be developed in an age seen as dissatisfied with the present, nervous about the future, and obsessed with the past. Perhaps now “spectacle” can be thought of not as a tool of distraction employed solely by hegemonic powers, but instead as a device used to answer Walter Benjamin’s plea to “explode the continuum of history” and bring our attention to now-time.

  Subjects: Media Studies General Cultural Studies Sociology

• October 2017

  Silenced Communities

  Legacies of Militarization and Militarism in a Rural Guatemalan Town

  Esparza, M.

  Although the Guatemalan Civil War ended more than two decades ago, its bloody legacy continues to resonate even today. In Silenced Communities, author Marcia Esparza offers an ethnographic account of the failed demilitarization of the rural militia in the town of Santo Tomás Chichicastenango following the conflict. Combining insights from postcolonialism, subaltern studies, and theories of internal colonialism, Esparza explores the remarkable resilience of ideologies and practices engendered in the context of the Cold War, demonstrating how the lingering effects of grassroots militarization affect indigenous communities that continue to struggle with inequality and marginalization.

  Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Postwar History

• December 2001

  Simulated Dreams

  Zionist Dreams for Israeli Youth

  Hazan, H.

  At the core of the author's concern stands the question of cultural transmutation in an era riddled with media channels and all-embracing messages. Fragments of the Israeli experience are pieced together in this provocative essay to provide a socio-anthropological agenda for some of the issues involved in the manufacturing of items of symbolic solidarity and common national imagery in an epoch of social disunification and cultural pastiche. The author argues that even though the aesthetic forms of major cultural idioms have unrecognizably altered and are accommodated to befit the shape and style of post-modern living, the basic programs underlying them have remained immutable. Furthermore, it is the quality of adaptability to changing aesthetic conventions that allow such symbolic corner-stones to be left unturned. The case of the youth culture is chose here as a yardstick for examining the double voice of such process - the global versus the tribal.

  Subject: General Anthropology

• December 2017

  Singing Ideas

  Performance, Politics and Oral Poetry

  Ní Shíocháin, T.

  Considered by many to be the greatest Irish song poet of her generation, Máire Bhuí Ní Laeire (Yellow Mary O’Leary; 1774–1848) was an illiterate woman unconnected to elite literary and philosophical circles who powerfully engaged the politics of her own society through song.  As an oral arts practitioner, Máire Bhuí composed songs whose ecstatic, radical vision stirred her community to revolt and helped to shape nineteenth-century Irish anti-colonial thought. This provocative and richly theorized study explores the re-creative, liminal aspect of song, treating it as a performative social process that cuts to the very root of identity and thought formation, thus re-imagining the history of ideas in society.

  Subjects: Performance Studies 18th/19th Century History General Anthropology

• September 1998

  Sinti and Roma

  Gypsies in German-speaking Society and Literature

  Tebbutt, S. (ed)

  According to opinion polls, Germans are less favorably disposed towards the Sinti and Roma than towards any other ethnic group, despite the fact that few Germans have any personal knowledge of them or even realize that the Sinti and Roma in Germany include both Germans and non-Germans. The image of the Sinti and Roma prevalent in German society and literature is one similarly founded on misconceptions and stereotypes. This volume deals in depth with the life of the Sinti and Roma in Germany and their representation in German literature, giving the background to the maltreatment, underlining the fact that the persecution of Gypsies during the Nazi period, which until the 1980s has been totally marginalized by historians, did not cease in 1945. The continuity of anti-Gypsyism is traced to the present day, and the efforts, achievements and aspirations of the Sinti and Roma civil rights movement are highlighted.

  Subjects: General Cultural Studies Sociology

• May 2017

  Sisters in Arms

  Militant Feminisms in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1968

  Karcher, K.

  Few figures in modern German history are as central to the public memory of radical protest than Ulrike Meinhof, but she was only the most prominent of the countless German women—and militant male feminists—who supported and joined in revolutionary actions from the 1960s onward. Sisters in Arms gives a bracing account of how feminist ideas were enacted by West German leftist organizations from the infamous Red Army Faction to less well-known groups such as the Red Zora. It analyzes their confrontational and violent tactics in challenging the abortion ban, opposing violence against women, and campaigning for solidarity with Third World women workers. Though these groups often diverged ideologically and tactically, they all demonstrated the potency of militant feminism within postwar protest movements.

  Subjects: Postwar History Gender Studies

• January 2007

  Skilled Visions

  Between Apprenticeship and Standards

  Grasseni, C. (ed)

  Most arguments for a rediscovery of the body and the senses hinge on a critique of “visualism” in our globalized, technified society. This approach has led to a lack of actual research on the processes of visual “enskillment.” Providing a comprehensive spectrum of case studies in relevant contexts, this volume raises the issue of the rehabilitation of vision and contextualizes vision in the contemporary debate on the construction of local knowledge vs. the hegemony of the socio-technical network. By maintaining an ethnographic approach, the book provides practical examples that are both accessible to undergraduate students and informative for an academic audience.

  Subject: Applied Anthropology

• June 2013

  Slavery and Antislavery in Spain's Atlantic Empire

  Fradera, J. M. & Schmidt-Nowara†, C. (eds)

  African slavery was pervasive in Spain’s Atlantic empire yet remained in the margins of the imperial economy until the end of the eighteenth century when the plantation revolution in the Caribbean colonies put the slave traffic and the plantation at the center of colonial exploitation and conflict. The international group of scholars brought together in this volume explain Spain’s role as a colonial pioneer in the Atlantic world and its latecomer status as a slave-trading, plantation-based empire. These contributors map the broad contours and transformations of slave-trafficking, the plantation, and antislavery in the Hispanic Atlantic while also delving into specific topics that include: the institutional and economic foundations of colonial slavery; the law and religion; the influences of the Haitian Revolution and British abolitionism; antislavery and proslavery movements in Spain; race and citizenship; and the business of the illegal slave trade.

  Subjects: Colonialism General History

• November 2008

  Slipping Away

  Banana Politics and Fair Trade in the Eastern Caribbean

  Moberg, M.

  During the 1990s, the Eastern Caribbean was caught in a bitter trade dispute between the US and EU over the European banana market. When the World Trade Organization rejected preferential access for Caribbean growers in 1998 the effect on the region’s rural communities was devastating. This volume examines the “banana wars” from the vantage point of St. Lucia’s Mabouya Valley, whose recent, turbulent history reveals the impact of global forces. The author investigates how the contemporary structure of the island’s banana industry originated in colonial policies to create a politically “stable” peasantry, followed by politicians’ efforts to mobilize rural voters. These political strategies left farmers dependent on institutional and market protection, leaving them vulnerable to any alteration in trade policy. This history gave way to a new harsh reality, in which neoliberal policies privilege price and quantity over human rights and the environment. However, against these challenges, the author shows how the rural poor have responded in creative ways, including new social movements and Fair Trade farming, in order to negotiate a stronger position for themselves in the in a shifting global economy.

  Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Development Studies

• April 2012

  Small Town and Village in Bavaria

  The Passing of a Way of Life

  Merkl, P. H.

  At the center of this investigation is the great modernization effort of a West German state, Bavaria, in the 1970s and 1980s, by means of a reform of the smaller units of local government. The reforms were meant to abolish all autonomous local governments serving populations of fewer than 3,000, thereby reducing the number of local governments in Bavaria from more than 7,000 to less than 2,000. Based on interviews, surveys, and statistical research, this study chronicles fifteen communities and their challenges, developments, and social changes from post-1945 up to the present. While this book explores the decline of the iconic village community, it also reveals the survival of medieval towns in a contemporary world, and despite the modern desire for comprehensive and well-integrated services, there remains a seemingly perennial appeal of small town and village life.

  Subject: General History

• March 2009

  Social Bodies

  Lambert, H. & McDonald, M. (eds)

  A proliferation of press headlines, social science texts and “ethical” concerns about the social implications of recent developments in human genetics and biomedicine have created a sense that, at least in European and American contexts, both the way we treat the human body and our attitudes towards it have changed.

  This volume asks what really happens to social relations in the face of new types of transaction – such as organ donation, forensic identification and other new medical and reproductive technologies - that involve the use of corporeal material. Drawing on comparative insights into how human biological material is treated, it aims to consider how far human bodies and their components are themselves inherently “social.”

  The case studies – ranging from animal-human transformations in Amazonia to forensic reconstruction in post-conflict Serbia and the treatment of Native American specimens in English museums – all underline that, without social relations, there are no bodies but only “human remains.” The volume gives us new and striking ethnographic insights into bodies as sociality, as well as a potentially powerful analytical reconsideration of notions of embodiment. It makes a novel contribution, too, to “science and society” debates.

  Subjects: Medical Anthropology

• August 2015

  Social Bonds as Freedom

  Revisiting the Dichotomy of the Universal and the Particular

  Dumouchel, P. & Gotoh, R. (eds)

  Central to discussions of multiculturalism and minority rights in modern liberal societies is the idea that the particular demands of minority groups contradict the requirements of equality, anonymity, and universality for citizenship and belonging. The contributors to this volume question the significance of this dichotomy between the universal and the particular, arguing that it reflects how the modern state has instituted the basic rights and obligations of its members and that these institutions are undergoing fundamental transformations under the pressure of globalization. They show that the social bonds uniting groups constitute the means of our freedom, rather than obstacles to achieving the universal.

  Subject: Sociology

• December 2001

  Social Democracy and Monetary Union

  Notermans, T. (ed)

  Since the late 1960s social democrats have become the dominant political force in the European Union. In fact, Social Democrats govern in no less than 11 of the 15 member states. Simultaneously, the EU has embarked on its most far-reaching project yet, namely Economic and Monetary Union (EMU); a project that was designed mainly by non-Social Democratic governments. This volume provides the first in-depth and comparative analysis of the views and policies of nine European Social Democratic parties concerning economic governance under Europe's new single currency and of the impact of the new political and institutional constellation in the EU on the process of economic integration and European social democracy.

  Subject: Postwar History

• October 2018

  Social DNA

  Rethinking Our Evolutionary Past

  Martin, M. K.

  What set our ancestors off on a separate evolutionary trajectory was the ability to flex their reproductive and social strategies in response to changing environmental conditions. Exploring new cross-disciplinary research that links this capacity to critical changes in the organization of the primate brain, Social DNA presents a new synthesis of ideas on human social origins – challenging models that trace our beginnings to traits shaped by ancient hunting economies, or to genetic platforms shared with contemporary apes.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Archaeology

• January 2001

  Social Identities and Political Cultures in Italy

  Catholic, Communist, and 'Leghist' Communities between Civicness and Localism

  Cento Bull, A.

  Since the demise of the First Republic, Italy's social and political developments have appeared both intriguing and contradictory to the outside world, resulting in controversial interpretations of the current changes. Based on a study of two northern areas characterized until recently by a proletarian/communist subculture and an interclassist/Catholic one, this book offers important perspectives as a result of new research. Political change has often been spectacular. However, the author argues, it has been accompanied by a high degree of continuity in the sphere of kinship and social networks, thus remaining embedded in unchanging social structures. She arrived at her findings by going beyond traditional methods of analyzing political change and addressing the more fundamental question of the underlying behavior and attitudes in family and social relations, moral and religious beliefs and values, and forms of political socialization and identity. By examining the concepts such as "social capital" and "civicness," recently popularized and applied to Italy by Robert Putnam, and the role of subculture, she comes to the conclusion that Italian "civicness" is inextricably bound up with cultural and political localism and that the linear development from collective, socially-embedded political behaviour towards pluralism and individuals, as envisaged by many political commentators, does not hold in the light of thorough research; the relationship between pluralistic and collectivist behaviour is much more complex than has been generally believed so far.

  Subjects: General Cultural Studies Sociology

• January 2005

  Social Limits to Learning

  Essays on the Archeology of Domination, Resistance, and Experience

  Mergner, G.

  At the heart of the historical and social sciences lies the remarkable gray area of learning processes. "Learning" is usually perceived as individual childhood development at home and at school and has been written about extensively. However, little is known about learning processes outside primary and secondary socialization although insight into these learning processes appears indispensable for an understanding of social changes or the lack thereof. On the basis of historical and current case studies, philosophical reflections, and critical commentaries, Mergner (1940–1999) opened up this important area through his "theory of social limits to learning," designed to explain not only why people accept or reject structures of domination but also why people trying to emancipate themselves nonetheless form and accept new structures of domination. This anthology presents Mergner's seminal work to the non-German speaking world for the first time in order to give it the wider recognition it so clearly deserves.

  Subjects: Educational Studies General Cultural Studies Sociology

• March 2016

  Social Movement Studies in Europe

  The State of the Art

  Fillieule, O. & Accornero, G. (eds)

  Bringing together over forty established and emerging scholars, this landmark volume is the first to comprehensively examine the evolution and current practice of social movement studies in a specifically European context. While its first half offers comparative approaches to an array of significant issues and movements, its second half assembles focused national studies that include most major European states. Throughout, these contributions are guided by a shared set of historical and social-scientific questions with a particular emphasis on political sociology, thus offering a bold and uncommonly unified survey that will be essential for scholars and students of European social movements.

  Subjects: Postwar History Sociology

• December 2011

  Social Policy in the Smaller European Union States

  Cohen, G. B., Ansell, B. W., Cox, R. H. & Gingrich, J. (eds)

  In Europe and around the world, social policies and welfare services have faced increasing pressure in recent years as a result of political, economic, and social changes. Just as Europe was a leader in the development of the welfare state and the supportive structures of corporatist politics from the 1920s onward, Europe in particular has experienced stresses from globalization and striking innovation in welfare policies. While debates in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France often attract wide international attention, smaller European countries—Belgium, Denmark, Austria, or Finland—are often overlooked. This volume seeks to correct this unfortunate oversight as these smaller countries serve as models for reform, undertaking experiments that only later gain the attention of stymied reformers in the larger countries.

  Subject: General History

• July 2015

  Social Quality Theory

  A New Perspective on Social Development

  Herrmann, P. & Lin, K. (eds)

  Social quality thinking emerged from a critique of one-sided policies by breaking through the limitations previously set by purely economistic paradigms. By tracing its expansion and presenting different aspects of social quality theory, this volume provides an overview of a more nuanced approach,  which assesses societal progress and introduces proposals that are relevant for policy making. Crucially, important components emerge with research by scholars from Asia, particularly China, eastern Europe, and other regions beyond western Europe, the theory’s place of origin. As this volume shows, this rich diversity of approaches and their cross-national comparisons reveal the increasingly important role of social quality theory for informing political debates on development and sustainability.

  Subjects: Sociology Development Studies

• June 2009

  Social Security in Religious Networks

  Anthropological Perspectives on New Risks and Ambivalences

  Leutloff-Grandits, C., Peleikis, A. & Thelen, T. (eds)

  During the last decades, the world has been facing tremendous political transformations and new risks: epidemics such as HIV/Aids have had destabilizing effect on the caretaking role of kin; in post-socialist countries political reforms have made unemployment a new source of insecurity. Furthermore, the state’s withdrawal from providing social security is taking place throughout the world. One response to these developments has been increased migration, which poses further challenges to kinship-based social support systems. This innovative volume focuses on the ambiguous role of religious networks in social security and traces the interrelatedness of religious networks and state and family support systems. Particularly timely, it describes these challenges as well as social security arrangements in the context of globalization and migration. The wide range of case studies from various parts of the world that examine various religious groups offers an important comparative contribution to the understanding of religious networks as providers of social security.

  Subjects: Religion Refugee & Migration Studies

• April 2009

  Social Torture

  The Case of Northern Uganda, 1986-2006

  Dolan, C.

  As Director of the Refugee Law Project at the University of Makerere, Kampala, Uganda, Dolan offers a behind-the-scenes, cross-disciplinary study of one of Africa's longest running and most intractable conflicts. This book shows how, alongside the activities of the Lord's Resistance Army, government decisions and actions on the ground, consolidated by humanitarian interventions and silences, played a central role in creating a massive yet only very belatedly recognized humanitarian crisis. Not only individuals, but society as a whole, came to exhibit symptoms typical of torture, and the perpetrator-victim dichotomy became blurred. It is such phenomena, and the complex of social, political, economic and cultural dynamics which underpin them, which the author describes as social torture. Building on political economy, social anthropology, discourse analysis, international relations and psychoanalytic approaches to violence, this book offers an important analytical instrument for all those seeking entry points through which to address entrenched conflicts, whether from a conflict resolution, post-conflict recovery or transitional justice perspective.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Refugee & Migration Studies

• March 2013

  Socialist Escapes

  Breaking Away from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989

  Giustino, C. M., Plum, C. J., & Vari, A. (eds)

  During much of the Cold War, physical escape from countries in the Eastern Bloc was a nearly impossible act. There remained, however, possibilities for other socialist escapes, particularly time spent free from party ideology and the mundane routines of everyday life. The essays in this volume examine sites of socialist escapes, such as beaches, campgrounds, nightclubs, concerts, castles, cars, and soccer matches. The chapters explore the effectiveness of state efforts to engineer society through leisure, entertainment, and related forms of cultural programming and consumption. They lead to a deeper understanding of state–society relations in the Soviet sphere, where the state did not simply “dictate from above” and inhabitants had some opportunities to shape solidarities, identities, and meaning.

  Subjects: Postwar History General Cultural Studies

• December 2012

  Sociality

  New Directions

  Long, N. J. & Moore, H. L. (eds)

  The notion of 'sociality' is now widely used within the social sciences and humanities. However, what is meant by the term varies radically, and the contributors here, through compelling and wide ranging essays, identify the strengths and weaknesses of current definitions and their deployment in the social sciences. By developing their own rigorous and innovative theory of human sociality, they re-set the framework of the debate and open up new possibilities for conceptualizing other forms of sociality, such as that of animals or materials. Cases from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe explore the new directions of human sociality, illuminating how and why it is transformed when human beings engage with such major issues as economic downturn, climate change, new regimes of occupational and psychological therapy, technological innovations in robotics and the creation of new online, 'virtual' environments. This book is an invaluable resource, not only for research and teaching, but for anyone interested in the question of what makes us social.

  Subject: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology

• November 2018

  Sofia Coppola

  The Politics of Visual Pleasure

  Backman Rogers, A.

  All too often, the movies of Sofia Coppola have been dismissed as “all style, no substance.” But such an easy caricature, as this engaging and accessible survey of Coppola’s oeuvre demonstrates, fundamentally miscontrues what are rich, ambiguous, meaningful films. Drawing on insights from feminist philosophy and psychology, the author here takes an original approach to Coppola, exploring vital themes from the subversion of patriarchy in The Virgin Suicides to the “female gothic” in The Beguiled. As Rogers shows, far from endorsing a facile and depoliticized postfeminism, Coppola’s films instead deploy beguilement, mood, and pleasure in the service of a robustly feminist philosophy.

  Subjects: Film Studies Gender Studies General Cultural Studies

• July 2013

  Soldiering Under Occupation

  Processes of Numbing among Israeli Soldiers in the Al-Aqsa Intifada

  Grassiani, E.

  Often, violent behavior or harassment from a soldier is dismissed by the military as unacceptable acts by individuals termed, “rotten apples.” In this study, the author argues that this dismissal is unsatisfactory and that there is an urgent need to look at the (mis)behavior of soldiers from a structural point of view. When soldiers serve as an occupational force, they find themselves in a particular situation influenced by structural circumstances that heavily influence their behavior and moral decision-making. This study focuses on young Israeli men and their experiences as combat soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), particularly those who served in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” (OPT) during the “Al Aqsa Intifada,” which broke out in 2000. In describing the soldiers’ circumstances, especially focusing on space, the study shows how processes of numbing on different levels influence the (moral) behavior of these soldiers.

  Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies General Anthropology

• November 2004

  Sound Matters

  Essays on the Acoustics of German Culture

  Alter, N. & Koepnick, L. (eds)

  The sounds of music and the German language have played a significant role in the developing symbolism of the German nation. In light of the historical division of Germany into many disparate political entities and regional groups, German artists and intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries conceived of musical and linguistic dispositions as the nation's most palpable common ground. According to this view, the peculiar sounds of German music and of the German language provided a direct conduit to national identity, to the deepest recesses of the German soul. So strong is this legacy of sound is still prevalent in modern German culture that philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, in a recent essay, did not even hesitate to describe post-wall Germany as an "acoustical body."

  This volume gathers the work of scholars from the US, Germany, and the United Kingdom to explore the role of sound in modern and postmodern German cultural production. Working across established disciplines and methodological divides, the essays of Sound Matters investigate the ways in which texts, artists, and performers in all kinds of media have utilized sonic materials in order to enforce or complicate dominant notions of German cultural and national identity.

  Subjects: General Cultural Studies Media Studies

• September 2014

  Sounds of Modern History

  Auditory Cultures in 19th- and 20th-Century Europe

  Morat, D. (ed)

  Long ignored by scholars in the humanities, sound has just begun to take its place as an important object of study in the last few years. Since the late 19th century, there has been a paradigmatic shift in auditory cultures and practices in European societies. This change was brought about by modern phenomena such as urbanization, industrialization and mechanization, the rise of modern sciences, and of course the emergence of new sound recording and transmission media. This book contributes to our understanding of modern European history through the lens of sound by examining diverse subjects such as performed and recorded music, auditory technologies like the telephone and stethoscope, and the ambient noise of the city.

  Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Media Studies

• February 2018

  Soup, Love, and a Helping Hand

  Social Relations and Support in Guangzhou, China

  Fleischer, F.

  Despite growing affluence, a large number of urban Chinese have problems making ends meet. Based on ethnographic research among several different types of communities in Guangzhou, China, Soup, Love and a Helping Hand examines different modes and ideologies of help/support, as well as the related issues of reciprocity, relatedness (kinship), and changing state-society relations in contemporary China. With an emphasis on the subjective experience, Fleischer’s research carefully explores people’s ideas about moral obligations, social expectations, and visions of urban Chinese society.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Sociology

• June 2017

  Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History

  Lässig, S. & Rürup, M. (eds)

  What makes a space Jewish? This wide-ranging volume revisits literal as well as metaphorical spaces in modern German history to examine the ways in which Jewishness has been attributed to them both within and outside of Jewish communities, and what the implications have been across different eras and social contexts. Working from an expansive concept of “the spatial,” these contributions look not only at physical sites but at professional, political, institutional, and imaginative realms, as well as historical Jewish experiences of spacelessness. Together, they encompass spaces as varied as early modern print shops and Weimar cinema, always pointing to the complex intertwining of German and Jewish identity.

  Subjects: Jewish Studies 20th Century History 18th/19th Century History

• September 1999

  Spain in International Context, 1936-1959

  Leitz, C. & Dunthorn, D. (eds)

  This collection of articles covers a crucial period of Spain's history, from the rise of Franco to the crucial Stabilization Plan of 1959. Separated into four chronologically divided sections, it focuses largely on the international reactions to and the involvement of other powers in the Spanish Civil War, including an examination of French and British reactions to the situation in Spain, and Soviet, German and Italian involvement and the period of the Second World War, with a particular focus on Spain's relations to the Axis and Vichy France especially during the period of 1940/41 when a Spanish entry in to the war was most likely. The fate of the Spanish refugees and exiles in Britain and France is also highlighted, as is Spain's international position in the aftermath of the Second World War and particularly the attitude of the former Allies, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the USA. The volume ends with Spain's response to the unfolding economic co-operation and integration in Western Europe.

  Subject: General History

• September 2017

  Spanish Lessons

  Cinema and Television in Contemporary Spain

  Smith, P. J.

  Though unjustly neglected by English-language audiences, Spanish film and television not only represent a remarkably influential and vibrant cultural industry; they are also a fertile site of innovation in the production of “transmedia” works that bridge narrative forms. In Spanish Lessons, Paul Julian Smith provides an engaging exploration of visual culture in an era of collapsing genre boundaries, accelerating technological change, and political-economic tumult. Whether generating new insights into the work of key figures like Pedro Almodóvar, comparing media depictions of Spain’s economic woes, or giving long-overdue critical attention to quality television series, Smith’s book is a consistently lively and accessible cultural investigation.

  Subjects: Media Studies Film Studies

• May 2008

  Spirits and Letters

  Reading, Writing and Charisma in African Christianity

  Kirsch, T. G.

  Studies of religion have a tendency to conceptualise ‘the Spirit’ and ‘the Letter’ as mutually exclusive and intrinsically antagonistic. However, the history of religions abounds in cases where charismatic leaders deliberately refer to and make use of writings. This book challenges prevailing scholarly notions of the relationship between ‘charisma’ and ‘institution’ by analysing reading and writing practices in contemporary Christianity. Taking up the continuing anthropological interest in Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity, and representing the first book-length treatment of literacy practices among African Christians, this volume explores how church leaders in Zambia refer to the Bible and other religious literature, and how they organise a church bureaucracy in the Pentecostal-charismatic mode. Thus, by examining social processes and conflicts that revolve around the conjunction of Pentecostal-charismatic and literacy practices in Africa, Spirits and Letters reconsiders influential conceptual dichotomies in the social sciences and the humanities and is therefore of interest not only to anthropologists but also to scholars working in the fields of African studies, religious studies, and the sociology of religion.

  Subjects: Religion General Anthropology

• December 2017

  Staging Citizenship

  Roma, Performance and Belonging in EU Romania

  Szeman, I.

  Based on over a decade of fieldwork conducted with urban Roma, Staging Citizenship offers a powerful new perspective on one of the European Union’s most marginal and disenfranchised communities. Focusing on “performance” broadly conceived, it follows members of a squatter’s settlement in Transylvania as they navigate precarious circumstances in a postsocialist state. Through accounts of music and dance performances, media representations, activism, and interactions with both non-governmental organizations and state agencies, author Ioana Szeman grounds broad themes of political economy, citizenship, resistance, and neoliberalism in her subjects’ remarkably varied lives and experiences.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Performance Studies

• February 2008

  Stardom in Postwar France

  Gaffney, J. & Holmes, D. (eds)

  The 1950s and 1960s were a key moment in the development of postwar France. The period was one of rapid change, derived from post-World War II economic and social modernization; yet many traditional characteristics were retained. By analyzing the eruption of the new postwar world in the context of a France that was both modern and traditional, we can see how these worlds met and interacted, and how they set the scene for the turbulent 1960s and 70s. The examination of the development of mass culture in post-war France, undertaken in this volume, offers a valuable insight into the shifts that took place. By exploring stardom from the domain of cinema and other fields, represented here by famous figures such as Brigitte Bardot, Johnny Hallyday or Jean-Luc Godard, and less conventionally treated areas of enquiry (politics [de Gaulle], literary [Françoise Sagan], and intellectual culture [Lévi-Strauss]) the reader is provided with a broad understanding of the mechanisms of popularity and success, and their cultural, social, and political roles. The picture that emerges shows that many cultural articulations remained or became identifiably "French," in spite of the American mass-culture origins of these social, economic, and cultural transformations.

  Subjects: Postwar History Film Studies General Cultural Studies

• April 2017

  Starry Nights

  Critical Structural Realism in Anthropology

  Reyna, S. P.

  Starry Nights: Critical Structural Realism in Anthropology offers nothing less than a reinventing of the discipline of anthropology. In these six essays – four published here for the first time – Stephen Reyna critiques the postmodern tenets of anthropology, while devising a new strategy for conducting research. Combative and clear, Starry Nights provides an important critique of mainstream anthropology as represented by Geertz and the postmodern legacy, and envisions a mode of anthropological research that addresses social, cultural and biological questions with techniques that are theoretically rigorous and practically useful.

  Subject: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology

• December 2016

  Stars and Stardom in Brazilian Cinema

  Bergfelder, T., Shaw, L. & Viera, J. L. (eds)

  Despite the recent explosion of scholarly interest in “star studies,” Brazilian film has received comparatively little attention. As this volume demonstrates, however, the richness of Brazilian stardom extends well beyond the ubiquitous Carmen Miranda. Among the studies assembled here are fascinating explorations of figures such as Eliane Lage (the star attraction of São Paulo’s Vera Cruz studios), cult horror movie auteur Coffin Joe, and Lázaro Ramos, the most visible Afro-Brazilian actor today. At the same time, contributors interrogate the inner workings of the star system in Brazil, from the pioneering efforts of silent-era actresses to the recent advent of the non-professional movie star.

  Subjects: Film Studies Media Studies

• April 2007

  Starstruck

  Cosmic Visions in Science, Religion, and Folklore

  Harrison, A. A.

  We live in an era of exploding scientific knowledge about the universe, and our place and future within it. Much of this new knowledge conflicts with earlier wisdom, and some has frightening implications. Cosmic evolution, space exploration, the search for extraterrestrial life, and concerns about humanity’s future prompt us to seek new answers to old existential questions. Where did we come from? Why are we here? Are we alone? What will become of us? In our search for answers, we turn to science, religion, myth, and varying combinations thereof. Exploring an ambiguous region between recognized findings and unfettered imagination, Starstruck explores the multifaceted, far-reaching, and often contentious attempts of people with contrasting worldviews to develop convincing and satisfying interpretations of rapidly accumulating discoveries in physics, astronomy, and biology.

  Subjects: Religion General Anthropology

• January 2007

  State and Civil Society in Northern Europe

  The Swedish Model Reconsidered

  Trägårdh, L. (ed)

  In the current neo-liberal political and economic climate, it is often suggested that a large and strong state stands in opposition to an autonomous and vibrant civil society. However, the simultaneous presence in Sweden of both a famously large public sector and an unusually vital civil society poses an interesting and important theoretical challenge to these views with serious political and policy implications. Studies show that in a comparative context Sweden scores very highly when it comes to the strength and vitality of its civil society as well as social capital, as measured in terms of trust, lack of corruption, and membership of voluntary associations. The “Swedish Model,” therefore, offers important insights into the dynamics of state and civil society relations, which go against current trends of undermining the importance of the welfare state, and presents autonomous civic participation as the only way forward.

  Subject: Sociology

• August 2011

  State and Minorities in Communist East Germany

  Dennis, M. & LaPorte, N.

  Based on interviews and the voluminous materials in the archives of the SED, the Stasi and central and regional authorities, this volume focuses on several contrasting minorities (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, ‘guest’ workers from Vietnam and Mozambique, football fans, punks, and skinheads) and their interaction with state and party bodies during Erich Honecker’s rule over the communist system. It explores how they were able to resist persecution and surveillance by instruments of the state, thus illustrating the limits on the power of the East German dictatorship and shedding light on the notion of authority as social practice.

  Subject: 20th Century History

• May 2009

  State Collapse and Reconstruction in the Periphery

  Political Economy, Ethnicity and Development in Yugoslavia, Serbia and Kosovo

  Sörensen, J. S.

  In the 1990s, Yugoslavia, which had once been a role model for development, became a symbol for state collapse, external intervention and post-war reconstruction. Today the region has two international protectorates, contested states and borders, severe ethnic polarization and minority concerns. In this first in-depth critical analysis of international administration, aid and reconstruction policies in Kosovo, Jens Stilhoff Sörensen argues that the region must be analyzed as a whole, and that the process of state collapse and recent changes in aid policy must be interpreted in connection to the wider transformation of the global political economy and world order. He examines the shifting inter- and intracommunity relations, the emergence of a "political economy" of conflict, and of informal clientelist arrangements in Serbia and Kosovo and provides a framework for interpreting the collapse of the Yugoslav state, the emergence of ethnic conflict and shadow economies, and the character of western aid and intervention. Western governments and agencies have built policies on conceptions and assumptions for which there is no genuine historical or contemporary economic, social or political basis in the region. As the author persuasively argues, this discrepancy has exacerbated and cemented problems in the region and provided further complications that are likely to remain for years to come.

  Subject: Political Economy

• September 2006

  State Practices and Zionist Images

  Shaping Economic Development in Arab Towns in Israel

  Wesley, D.A.

  Although the Israeli state subscribes to the principles of administrative fairness and equality for Jews and Arabs before the law, the reality looks very different. Focusing on Arab land loss inside Israel proper and the struggle over development resources, this study explores the interaction between Arab local authorities, their Jewish neighbors, and the agencies of the national government in regard to developing local and regional industrial areas. The author avoids reduction to simple models of binary domination, revealing instead a complex, multi-dimensional field of relations and ever-shifting lines of political maneuver and confrontation. He examines the prevailing concept of ethnic traditionalism and argues that the image of Arab traditionalism erects imaginary boundaries around the Arab localities, making government incursion disappear from view, while underpinning and rationalizing the exclusion of the Arab towns from development planning. Moreover, he shows how images of environmental protection mesh with and support such exclusion. The study includes a chronology of events, tables, maps, and photographs.

  This revised paperback edition with a new epilogue brings accounts of Arab land loss and struggles for economic development up to date. The author also deals with the challenges of life and research in Israel and examines the possibilities of sharing the land as the homeland of both Jews and Palestinians.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Political Economy

• October 2004

  State, Sovereignty, War

  Civil Violence in Emerging Global Realities

  Kapferer, B. (ed)

  The very institution of the state is widely conceived of as inseparable from war. If it constitutes peace within the borders or order of its sovereignty, this very peace may be the condition for its potential for war with those other states and social formation outside it. This volume represents different analytical standpoints and positions within global processes, inviting further discussion on contemporary realities and the development of new formations of war and violence.

  Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies Theory & Methodology in Anthropology

• November 2017

  Stategraphy

  Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State

  Thelen, T., Vetters, L., & Benda-Beckmann, K. von (eds)

  Stategraphy—the ethnographic exploration of relational modes, boundary work, and forms of embeddedness of actors—offers crucial analytical avenues for researching the state. By exploring interactions and negotiations of local actors in different institutional settings, the contributors explore state transformations in relation to social security in a variety of locations spanning from Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans to the United Kingdom and France. Fusing grounded empirical studies with rigorous theorizing, the volume provides new perspectives to broader related debates in social research and political analysis.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Sociology

• August 2016

  Staying at Home

  Identities, Memories and Social Networks of Kazakhstani Germans

  Sanders, R.

  Despite economic growth in Kazakhstan, more than 80 per cent of Kazakhstan’s ethnic Germans have emigrated to Germany to date. Disappointing experiences of the migrants, along with other aspects of life in Germany, have been transmitted through transnational networks to ethnic Germans still living in Kazakhstan. Consequently, Germans in Kazakhstan today feel more alienated than ever from their ‘historic homeland’. This book explores the interplay of those memories, social networks and state policies, which play a role in the ‘construction’ of a Kazakhstani German identity.

  Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies General Anthropology

• November 2014

  Still Waiting for the Transformation

  Fusaro, C. & Kreppel, A. (eds)

  Italy in 2013 seemed to be continually on the cusp of substantive reform and forward motion, but never quite achieved it. The previous two years had seen the fall of the Berlusconi government and the beginning of the end of the Second Republic, followed by the predominance of technocrats in office. In contrast, 2013 proved to be a year of incomplete transitions, marked by a period during which the Italian political and institutional system reached a near complete stalemate. Grand coalitions were incapable of substantive decision-making, bold initiatives languished in the legislature, foreign policy actions faltered and failed, and the government showed a continued inability to effectively tackle the real economic and social issues that faced the country. Thus, in many ways, Italy has been muddling through as it did following the fall of the First Republic. Although some of the political developments that took place in the waning months of the year may prove to be the foundation for future momentous changes, it is very likely that 2014 will prove to be a further continuation of the seemingly endless transitional period in Italy.

  Subject: Postwar History

• June 2017

  Stories Make the World

  Reflections on Storytelling and the Art of the Documentary

  Most, S.

  Since the beginning of human history, stories have helped people make sense of their lives and their world. Today, an understanding of storytelling is invaluable as we seek to orient ourselves within a flood of raw information and an unprecedented variety of supposedly true accounts. In Stories Make the World, award-winning screenwriter Stephen Most offers a captivating, refreshingly heartfelt exploration of how documentary filmmakers and other storytellers come to understand their subjects and cast light on the world through their art. Drawing on the author’s decades of experience behind the scenes of television and film documentaries, this is an indispensable account of the principles and paradoxes that attend the quest to represent reality truthfully.

  Subjects: Film Studies General Cultural Studies

• August 2007

  Strangers Either Way

  The Lives of Croatian Refugees in their New Home

  Capo Žmegač, J.

  Croatia gained the world's attention during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. In this context its image has been overshadowed by visions of ethnic conflict and cleansing, war crimes, virulent nationalism, and occasionally even emergent regionalism. Instead of the norm, this book offers a diverse insight into Croatia in the 1990s by dealing with one of the consequences of the war: the more or less forcible migration of Croats from Serbia and their settlement in Croatia, their "ethnic homeland." This important study shows that at a time in which Croatia was perceived as a homogenized nation-in-the-making, there were tensions and ruptures within Croatian society caused by newly arrived refugees and displaced persons from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Refugees who, in spite of their common ethnicity with the homeland population, were treated as foreigners; indeed, as unwanted aliens.

  Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies General Anthropology

• October 2017

  Straying from the Straight Path

  How Senses of Failure Invigorate Lived Religion

  Beekers, D. & Kloos, D. (eds)

  If piety, faith, and conviction constitute one side of the religious coin, then imperfection, uncertainty, and ambivalence constitute the other. Yet, scholars tend to separate these two domains and place experiences of inadequacy in everyday religious life – such as a wavering commitment, religious negligence or weakness in faith – outside the domain of religion ‘proper.’

  Straying from the Straight Path breaks with this tendency by examining how self-perceived failure is, in many cases, part and parcel of religious practice and experience. Responding to the need for comparative approaches in the face of the largely separated fields of the anthropology of Islam and Christianity, this volume gives full attention to moral failure as a constitutive and potentially energizing force in the religious lives of both Muslims and Christians in different parts of the world.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Religion

• October 2015

  Street Vending in the Neoliberal City

  A Global Perspective on the Practices and Policies of a Marginalized Economy

  Graaff, K. & Ha, N. (eds)

  Examining street vending as a global, urban, and informalized practice found both in the Global North and Global South, this volume presents contributions from international scholars working in cities as diverse as Berlin, Dhaka, New York City, Los Angeles, Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico City. The aim of this global approach is to repudiate the assumption that street vending is usually carried out in the Southern hemisphere and to reveal how it also represents an essential—and constantly growing—economic practice in urban centers of the Global North. Although street vending activities vary due to local specificities, this anthology illustrates how these urban practices can also reveal global ties and developments.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Urban Studies

• July 2015

  Strike Action and Nation Building

  Labor Unrest in Palestine/Israel, 1899-1951

  De Vries, D.

  Strike-action has long been a notable phenomenon in Israeli society, despite forces that have weakened its recurrence, such as the Arab-Jewish conflict, the decline of organized labor, and the increasing precariousness of employment. While the impact of strikes was not always immense, they are deeply rooted in Israel's past during the Ottoman Empire and Mandate Palestine. Workers persist in using them for material improvement and to gain power in both the private and public sectors, reproducing a vibrant social practice whose codes have withstood the test of time. This book unravels the trajectory of the strikes as a rich source for the social-historical analysis of an otherwise nation-oriented and highly politicized history.

  Subject: 20th Century History

• October 2008

  Struggles for Home

  Violence, Hope and the Movement of People

  Jansen, S. & Löfving, S. (eds)

  Based on anthropological studies across the globe, this book explores the social practice of home-making amongst people whose lives are characterized by movement and violence. Social scientific and policy understandings of home and migration tend to focus on territory, culture and nation, often carrying implicit 'sedentarist' assumptions of a naturalised link between people and particular places. This book challenges such views, drawing attention instead to unpredictable forms of dwelling in the often violent processes that connect yet differently affect the movement of people and capital. Taking seriously the political implications of this challenge, the authors do not resort to a free floating, placeless approach. Instead, through the detailed ethnography of lived experiences of displacement and emplacement, *Struggles for Home* investigates the power sedentarism may have to provide or prohibit hope. Research conducted in Sri Lanka, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Zambia, Cyprus, the Palestinian West Bank, Guatemala, and amongst Romanians and Moroccans in Spain articulates a novel theoretical framework for the development of a critical political anthropology of one of the most controversial and fascinating issues of our time - the remaking of home in migration.

  Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies General Anthropology

• May 2008

  Struggling for Recognition

  The Alevi Movement in Germany and in Transnational Space

  Sökefeld, M.

  As a religious and cultural minority in Turkey, the Alevis have suffered a long history of persecution and discrimination. In the late 1980s they started a movement for the recognition of Alevi identity in both Germany and Turkey. Today, they constitute a significant segment of Germany’s Turkish immigrant population. In a departure from the current debate on identity and diaspora, Sökefeld offers a rich account of the emergence and institutionalization of the Alevi movement in Germany, giving particular attention to its politics of recognition within Germany and in a transnational context. The book deftly combines empirical findings with innovative theoretical arguments and addresses current questions of migration, diaspora, transnationalism, and identity.

  Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies General Anthropology

• December 2003

  Studying Contemporary Western Society

  Method and Theory

  Mead, M.

  Few anthropologists today realize the pioneering role Margaret Mead played in the investigation of contemporary cultures. This volume collects and presents a variety of her essays on research methodology relating to contemporary culture. Many of these essays were printed originally in limited circulation journals, research reports and books edited by others. They reflect Mead's continuing commitment to searching out methods for studying and extending the anthropologist's tools of investigation for use in complex societies. Essays on American and European societies, intergenerational relations, architecture and social space, industrialization, and interracial relations are included in this varied and exciting collection.

  Subjects: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology General Cultural Studies

• March 2014

  Subjective Realist Cinema

  From Expressionism to Inception

  Campora, M.

  Subjective Realist Cinema looks at the fragmented narratives and multiple realities of a wide range of films that depict subjective experience and employ “subjective realist” narration, including recent examples such as Mulholland Drive, Memento, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The author proposes that an understanding of the narrative structures of these films, particularly their use of mixed and multiple realities, enhances viewers’ enjoyment and comprehension of such films, and that such comprehension offers a key to understanding contemporary filmmaking.

  Subject: Film Studies

• November 2017

  Subjects, Citizens, and Others

  Administering Ethnic Heterogeneity in the British and Habsburg Empires, 1867-1918

  Gammerl, B.

  Bosnian Muslims, East African Masai, Czech-speaking Austrians, North American indigenous peoples, and Jewish immigrants from across Europe—the nineteenth-century British and Habsburg Empires were characterized by incredible cultural and racial-ethnic diversity. Notwithstanding their many differences, both empires faced similar administrative questions as a result: Who was excluded or admitted? What advantages were granted to which groups? And how could diversity be reconciled with demands for national autonomy and democratic participation? In this pioneering study, Benno Gammerl compares Habsburg and British approaches to governing their diverse populations, analyzing imperial formations to reveal the legal and political conditions that fostered heterogeneity.

  Subjects: 18th/19th Century History Colonialism 20th Century History

• July 2009

  Substantial Justice

  An Anthropology of Village Courts in Papua New Guinea

  Goddard, M.

  Papua New Guinea's village court system was introduced in 1974, partly in an effort to overcome the legal, geographical, and social distance between village societies and the country's formal courts. There are now more than 1100 village courts all over PNG, hearing thousands of cases each week. This anthropological study is grounded in ethnographic research on three different village courts and the communities they serve. It also explores the colonial historical background to the establishment of the village court system, and the local and global processes influencing the efforts of village courts to deal with everyday disputes among grassroots Melanesians.

  Subjects: General Anthropology

• September 2009

  Substitute Parents

  Biological and Social Perspectives on Alloparenting in Human Societies

  Bentley, G. & Mace, R. (eds)

  From a comparative perspective, human life histories are unique and raising offspring is unusually costly: humans have relatively short birth intervals compared to other apes, childhood is long, mothers care simultaneously for many dependent children (other apes raise one offspring at a time), infant mortality is high in natural fertility/mortality populations, and human females have a long post-reproductive lifespan. These features conspire to make child raising very burdensome. Mothers frequently defray these costs with paternal help (not usual in other ape species), although this contribution is not always enough. Grandmothers, elder siblings, paid allocarers, or society as a whole, help to defray the costs of childcare, both in our evolutionary past and now. Studying offspring care in a various human societies, and other mammalian species, a wide range of specialists such as anthropologists, psychologists, animal behaviorists, evolutionary ecologists, economists and sociologists, have contributed to this volume, offering new insights into and a better understanding of one of the key areas of human society.

  Subjects: Sociology General Anthropology

• October 2008

  Suffering and Evil

  The Durkheimian Legacy

  Pickering†, W. S. F. & Rosati†, M. (eds)

  Until recently the subject of suffering and evil was neglected in the sociological world and was almost absent in Durkheimian studies as well. This book aims to fill the gap, with particular reference to the Durkheimian tradition, by exploring the different meanings that the concepts of evil and suffering have in Durkheim's works, together with the general role they play in his sociology. It also examines the meanings and roles of these concepts in relation to suffering and evil in the work of other authors within the group of the Année sociologique up until the beginning of World War II. Finally, the Durkheimian legacy in its wider aspects is assessed, with particular reference to the importance of the Durkheimian categories in understanding and conceptualizing contemporary forms of evil and suffering.

  Subjects: Sociology Theory & Methodology in Anthropology

• October 2007

  Sugarlandia Revisited

  Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800-1940

  Bosma, U., Giusti-Cordero, J, & Knight, G.K. (eds)

  Sugar was the single most valuable bulk commodity traded internationally before oil became the world’s prime resource. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, cane sugar production was pre-eminent in the Atlantic Islands, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Subsequently, cane sugar industries in the Americas were transformed by a fusion of new and old forces of production, as the international sugar economy incorporated production areas in Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Sugar’s global economic importance and its intimate relationship with colonialism offer an important context for probing the nature of colonial societies. This book questions some major assumptions about the nexus between sugar production and colonial societies in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, especially in the second (post-1800) colonial era.

  Subject: Colonialism

• May 2013

  Supercinema

  Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age

  Brown, W.

  Drawing on a variety of popular films, including Avatar, Enter the Void, Fight Club, The Matrix, Speed Racer, X-Men and War of the Worlds, Supercinema studies the ways in which digital special effects and editing techniques require a new theoretical framework in order to be properly understood. Here William Brown proposes that while analogue cinema often tried to hide the technological limitations of its creation through ingenious methods, digital cinema hides its technological omnipotence through the use of continued conventions more suited to analogue cinema, in a way that is analogous to that of Superman hiding his powers behind the persona of Clark Kent. Locating itself on the cusp of film theory, film-philosophy and cognitive approaches to cinema, Supercinema also looks at the relationship between the spectator and film that utilizes digital technology to maximum, ‘supercinematic’ effect.

  Subject: Film Studies

• August 2009

  Supervision and Authority in Industry

  Western European Experiences, 1830-1939

  Eeckhout, P. Van den (ed)

  The number of studies discussing the labour relationship under industrial capitalism is overwhelming, but the literature on labour and its concrete, day-today shop-floor practices is much less abundant. How and by whom workers were supervised is one of the neglected aspects in the history of labour relations. After an insightful introductory chapter discussing the different forms of supervision in the United States, Britain, France and Germany before the First World War, the case studies in this volume focus on foremen: vital, but largely unstudied figures in the history of factory life, labour relations and management. Illustrating the multiple faces of the foreman, the contributors examine the artisanal sector, textiles, mining, printing, engineering, heavy manufacturing and car industries in Western Europe and show that the foreman was a multifaceted character who possessed technical expertise in addition to educational and organizational qualities. This comprehensive volume is further enhanced by comparisons with practices of supervision in Russia, Japan, China and India.

  Subjects: Economic History 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History

• April 2007

  Sustainability and Communities of Place

  Maida, C. (ed)

  The concept of sustainability holds that the social, economic, and environmental factors within human communities must be viewed interactively and systematically. Sustainable development cannot be understood apart from a community, its ethos, and ways of life. Although broadly conceived, the pursuit of sustainable development is a local practice because every community has different needs and quality of life concerns. Within this framework, contributors representing the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, geography, economics, law, public policy, architecture, and urban studies explore sustainability in communities in the Pacific, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and North America.

  Contributors: Janet E. Benson, Karla Caser, Snjezana Colic, Angela Ferreira, Johanna Gibson, Krista Harper, Paulo Lana, Barbara Yablon Maida, Carl A. Maida, Kenneth A. Meter, Dario Novellino, Deborah Pellow, Claude Raynaut, Thomas F. Thornton, Richard Westra, Magda Zanoni

  Subjects: Environmental Studies Development Studies General Anthropology

• August 2014

  Sustainable Development

  An Appraisal from the Gulf Region

  Sillitoe, P. (ed)

  With growing evidence of unsustainable use of the world’s resources, such as hydrocarbon reserves, and related environmental pollution, as in alarming climate change predictions, sustainable development is arguably the prominent issue of the 21st century.  This volume gives a wide ranging introduction focusing on the arid Gulf region, where the challenges of sustainable development are starkly evident. The Gulf relies on non-renewable oil and gas exports to supply the world’s insatiable CO2 emitting energy demands, and has built unsustainable conurbations with water supplies dependent on energy hungry desalination plants and deep aquifers pumped beyond natural replenishment rates. Sustainable Development has an interdisciplinary focus, bringing together university faculty and government personnel from the Gulf, Europe, and North America -- including social and natural scientists, environmentalists and economists, architects and planners -- to discuss topics such as sustainable natural resource use and urbanization, industrial and technological development, economy and politics, history and geography. 

  Subjects: Environmental Studies Development Studies General Geography

• November 2016

  Sustaining Russia's Arctic Cities

  Resource Politics, Migration, and Climate Change

  Orrtung, R. (ed)

  Urban areas in Arctic Russia are experiencing unprecedented social and ecological change. This collection outlines the key challenges that city managers will face in navigating this shifting political, economic, social, and environmental terrain. In particular, the volume examines how energy production drives a boom-bust cycle in the Arctic economy, explores how migrants from Muslim cultures are reshaping the social fabric of northern cities, and provides a detailed analysis of climate change and its impact on urban and industrial infrastructure.

  Subjects: Urban Studies Political Economy Refugee & Migration Studies

• June 2016

  Sweden after Nazism

  Politics and Culture in the Wake of the Second World War

  Östling, J.

  As a nominally neutral power during the Second World War, Sweden in the early postwar era has received comparatively little attention from historians. Nonetheless, as this definitive study shows, the war—and particularly the specter of Nazism—changed Swedish society profoundly. Prior to 1939, many Swedes shared an unmistakable affinity for German culture, and even after the outbreak of hostilities there remained prominent apologists for the Third Reich. After the Allied victory, however, Swedish intellectuals reframed Nazism as a discredited, distinctively German phenomenon rooted in militarism and Romanticism. Accordingly, Swedes’ self-conception underwent a dramatic reformulation. From this interplay of suppressed traditions and bright dreams for the future, postwar Sweden emerged.

  Subject: Postwar History

• August 2002

  Swedish Ventures in Cameroon, 1883-1923

  Trade and Travel, People and Politics

  Ardener, S. (ed)

  The 1880s were a critical time in Cameroon. A German warship arrived in the Douala estuary and proclaimed Cameroon a protectorate. At that time, two Swedes, Knutson and Waldau, were living on the upper slopes of the Cameroon Mountain. Very little is known about their activities. One, Knutson, wrote a long memoir of his time in Cameroon (1883-1895) which is published here for the first time. It gives fascinating insights into everyday life in Cameroon and into the multifaceted relationships among the various Europeans, and between them and the Africans, at the end of the 19th century; we learn about the Swedes' quarrels first with the Germans and later with the British, over land purchases, thus revealing the origins of long on-going disputes over Bakweri lands. We are given vivid descriptions of Bakweri notables and their, and the Europeans', cultural practices, a rare eye-witness account of the sasswood witchcraft ordeal, and learn about Knutson's friendships with slaves. Together with appended contemporary correspondence, legal opinions, and early (translated) texts, this memoir must be considered as a unique and invaluable primary source for the pre-colonial history of Cameroon.

  Subjects: General Anthropology Colonialism Travel & Tourism

• February 2003

  Switzerland: National Socialism and the Second World War

  Final Report of the Independent Commission of Experts

  Commission of Switzerland, The

  In continuation of a long-standing national self-image, Switzerland saw itself after 1945 as a "small neutral state," which because of its will to resist and a clever policy managed not to be drawn into the Second World War. However, this self-image has been the subject of an increasingly heated debate since the 1970s. The argument that Switzerland had above all been a "victim of developments in world politics," was increasingly confronted with the counter-argument that this country had aided the perpetrators in important – mainly economic – areas. More recently, dealings in looted gold and the issue of dormant bank accounts and stolen cultural assets have come into focus, in addition to inquiries into the mysterious disappearance of the assets of victims of persecution and extermination.

  In this situation, the Swiss Parliament and Government set up, at the end of 1996, an internationally composed Independent Commission of Experts whose five-year assignment was to investigate these allegations in their historical and legal context. Thanks to the unique privilege of access to archives, it was possible for the first time to overcome the obstacle of Swiss banking secrecy – believed to be insurmountable until then – and to extend the research to the archives of banks and other companies. A crucial document on 20th-centruy European history, this volume presents the full and final report of the Commission, illustrating Switzerland's predicament as a country not only with strong economic, but also close cultural ties to Germany, the neighbor that threatened the country's very survival. A multifaceted picture emerges of the challenges of those dark years – challenges that Switzerland met with varying degrees of success.

  Distributed for Pendo Verlag, Switzerland

  Subject: WWII History

• December 2001

  Symbiosis and Ambivalence

  Poles and Jews in a Small Galician Town

  Lehmann, R.

  In Poland and elsewhere there has been a noticeable increase of interest in various aspects of the Polish-Jewish past which can be explained, the author argues, in terms of a broader intellectual need to explore the "blank spots" of Poland's national history. This quest begins and ends with Polish anti-Semitism and the Shoah, during which most of Europe's Jews were annihilated on Polish soil, but also focuses on the events of 1946-1968, the years of pogroms, anti-Semitic campaigns, and mass emigration of the Jews from Poland. All these became main issues of public reflection in Poland after a silence for almost forty years and led to the widespread view that Polish-Jewish relations are irredeemably poisoned by anti-Semitism.

  If this is the case, how is it possible then, the author asks, that Jews still play an important role in the cultural expressions and the consciousness of the Polish people? To find an answer, she explored Polish-Jewish relations in a small Galacian town from the early 19th century to the end of World War II. Detailed analysis of archival materials as well as interviews with Polish inhabitants of this town and Jewish survivors living elsewhere reveal a pattern of Polish-Jewish interdependence that has led to a far more complex picture than is generally assumed.

  Subjects: Jewish Studies Genocide Studies