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By Subject: Cultural Studies (General)
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September 2023
Visions of Humanity
Historical Cultural Practices since 1850
Gienow-Hecht, J., Jobs, S., & Kunkel, S. (eds)
Since the 19th century the idea of an international history of humanity has influenced policy makers and activists alike. Focusing on the promises and problems, successes and failures of the concept, Visions of Humanity addresses the growing interest in historical ideas and actions targeting international and global audiences in the name of common values, rights, and concerns. Through an international set of contributions, which explore the spaces, materials, actors, and mediations of and on humanity, this volume applies both an historical and cultural lens to the tensions and struggles involved in constructing, invoking, and instrumentalizing the “we” of humanity.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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September 2023
An Anthropology of Intellectual Exchange
Interactions, Transactions and Ethics in Asia and Beyond
Copeman, J., Chau, L. M., Cook, J., Long, N. J. & Marsden, M.(eds)
Dialogues, encounters and interactions through which particular ways of knowing, understanding and thinking about the world are forged lie at the centre of anthropology. Such ‘intellectual exchange’ is also central to anthropologists’ own professional practice: from their interactions with research participants and modes of pedagogy to their engagements with each other and scholars from adjacent disciplines. This collection of essays explores how such processes might best be studied cross-culturally. Foregrounding the diverse interactions, ethical reasoning, and intellectual lives of people from across the continent of Asia, the volume develops an anthropology of intellectual exchange itself.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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August 2023
Shakespeare and Social Engagement
Shaughnessy, R. & Mackenzie, R. (eds)
Shakespeare’s roots in applied and participatory performance practices have been recently explored within a wide variety of educational, theatrical and community settings. Shakespeare and Social Engagement explores these settings, as well as audiences who have largely been excluded from existing accounts of Shakespeare’s performance history. The contributions in this collected volume explore the complicated and vibrant encounters between a canonical cultural force and work that frequently characterizes itself as inclusive and egalitarian.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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July 2023
Once Upon a Time is Now
A Kalahari Memoir
Biesele, M.
Fifty years after her first fieldwork with Ju/'hoan San hunter-gatherers, anthropologist Megan Biesele has written this exceptional memoir based on personal journals she wrote at the time.
The treasure trove of vivid learning experiences and nightly ponderings she found has led to a memoir of rare value to anthropology students and academics as well as to general readers. Her experiences focus on the long-lived healing dance, known to many as the trance dance, and the intricate beliefs, artistry, and social system that support it.
She describes her immersion in a creative community enlivened and kept healthy by that dance, which she calls "one of the great intellectual achievements of humankind."
From the Preface:
A few years ago I finally got around to looking back into the box of personal field journals I had not opened for over forty years. I found a treasure trove. It was an overwhelming experience. So much that I had forgotten came vividly alive: I laughed, wept, and was terrified all over again at my temerity in taking on what I had taken on. To do justice to the richness of these notebooks, I realized, I would have to do a completely different sort of writing from anything I had ever done before.Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Development Studies
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July 2023
If Cars Could Walk
Postsocialist Streets in Transformation
Duijzings, G. & Tuvikene, T. (eds)
In the last 25 years, the explosive rise of car mobility has transformed street life in post-socialist cities. Whereas previously the social fabric of these cities ran on socialist modes of mobility, they are now overtaken by a culture of privately owned cars. If Cars Could Walk uses ethnographic cases studies documenting these changes in terms of street interaction, vehicles used, and the parameters of speed, maneuverability, and cultural and symbolic values. The altered reality of people’s movements, replacing public transport, bicycles and other former ‘socialist’ modes of mobility with privatized mobility reflect an evolving political and cultural imagination, which in turn shapes their current political reality.
Subjects: Transport Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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July 2023
Exceptional Experiences
Engaging with Jolting Events in Art and Fieldwork
Rethmann, P. & Wulff, H. (eds)
Looking at encounters that can puncture or jolt us, this volume uses art as a lens through which to register and understand exceptional experiences. The volume also includes the fieldworker’s experience of unexpected events that can lead to key understandings, as well as revelatory moments that happen during artistic creation and while looking at art. By exploring exceptional experiences through art, the volume asks probing questions for anthropology. In recognizing that art is all-encompassing – including, as it does, narrative, performance, dance and images – Exceptional Experiences situates itself within a number of conversations on methodological and conceptual issues in anthropology and beyond.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2023
Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America
Anthropological Perspectives
Halbmayer, E. & Goletz, A. (eds)
Investigating local Indigenous processes of creation and creativity, this book uses ethnographic and comparative anthropological perspectives to enquire about creative transformative practices in lowland South America. The volume shows how people create and reinforce their conditions of being by employing different genres of transgression and by creatively shifting contexts of significance. Local socio-cosmic orders, the interrelation of creative genres (myth, verbal art, song, ritual, and handicrafts), and their changing frames of reference (from communal celebrations to wider political and commercial realms) demonstrate the relational, generative, and processual quality of Amerindian creativity.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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May 2023
Coproducing Europe
An Ethnography of Film-markets, Creativity and Identity
Sideri, E.
Up until the 1990s, when the EU launched film policies intended to encourage political and cultural collaboration among its member states, film production was based on the cultural and national values of individual nations. Coproducing Europe explores the impact of these EU policies on the coproduction networks that now serve as a driving force in contemporary creative economies. By focusing on regional film markets in Thessasloniki, Sarajevo, and Tbilisi, this comparative ethnography looks beyond the economic nature of film coproductions to their role in Europeanisation, memories of the Cold War, and preconstructed political agendas.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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April 2023
Contesting Moralities
Roma Identities, State and Kinship
Sarafian, I.
Roma identities have often been presented in literature as collectively constructed and in opposition to those who are not Roma. Contesting Moralities challenges these preconceptions about Roma identification by disentangling the binaries between Roma and non-Roma, state and non-state, public and private. It explores topics resonating in contemporary Romani studies that are in need of further exploration through individual perspectives, including history, activism, kinship, childhood, and gender hierarchies. The book paints a complex picture of inequality and how it is negotiated amid conflicting, ambiguous and contradictory regimes of power and moral demands, including those of state and kin.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General)
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April 2023
Working the Fabric
Resourcefulness, Belonging and Island Life in Scotland’s Harris Tweed Industry
Nascimento, J.
Trademark-protected since 1910, the famous woollen cloth known as Harris Tweed can only be produced in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland – yet it is exported to over 50 countries around the world. Examining contemporary experiences of work and life, this book is the first in-depth anthropological study of the renowned textile industry, complementing and updating existing historical and ethnographic research. Drawing on one year of ethnographic fieldwork research in the Outer Hebrides, it offers an intimate account of industry workers’ lived experiences and contributes to anthropological debates on work and labour, cultural production, inclusive belonging and place-making in global capitalism.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General)
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April 2023
The Power of the Story
Writing Disasters in Haiti and the Circum-Caribbean
Joos, V., Munro, M. & Ribó, J. (eds)
A cross-disciplinary volume that combines and puts into dialogue perspectives on disasters, this book includes contributions from anthropology, history, cultural studies, sociology, and literary studies. Offering a rich and diverse set of arguments and analyses on the ever-relevant theme of catastrophe in the circum-Caribbean, it will encourage debate and collaboration between scholars working on disasters from a range of disciplinary perspectives.
Subjects: Political and Economic Anthropology Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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March 2023
In the Meantime
Toward an Anthropology of the Possible
Masquelier, A. & Durham, D. (eds)
The “meantime” represents the gap between what is past and the unknown future. When considered as waiting, the meantime is defined as a period of suspension to be endured. By contrast, the contributors of this volume understand it as a space of “the possible” where calculation coexists with uncertainty, promises with disappointment, and imminence with deferral. Attending to the temporalities of emerging rather than settled facts, they put the stress on the temporal tactics, social commitments, material connections, dispositional orientations, and affective circuits that emerge in the meantime even in the most desperate times.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
January 2023
The Marseille Mosaic
A Mediterranean City at the Crossroads of Cultures
Ingram, M. & Kleppinger, K. (eds)
Formerly the gateway to the French empire, the city of Marseille exemplifies a postcolonial Europe reshaped by immigrants, refugees, and repatriates. The Marseille Mosaic addresses the city’s past and present, exploring the relationship between Marseille and the rest of France, Europe, and the Mediterranean. Proposing new models for the study of place by integrating approaches from the humanities and social sciences, this volume offers an idiosyncratic “mosaic,” which vividly details the challenges facing other French and European cities and the ways residents are developing alternative perspectives and charting new urban futures.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Sociology Urban Studies
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eBook available
January 2023
Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants
Returning to the Jewish Past in Spain and Portugal
Kandiyoti, D. & Benmayor, R. (eds)
In 2015, both Portugal and Spain passed laws enabling descendants of Sephardi Jews to obtain citizenship, an historic offer of reconciliation for Jews who were forced to undergo conversions or expelled from Iberia nearly half a millennia ago. Drawing on the memory of the expulsion from Sepharad, the scholarly and personal essays in Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants analyze the impact of reconciliation laws on descendants and contemporary forms of citizenship.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
January 2023
Polarized Pasts
Heritage and Belonging in Times of Political Polarization
Niklasson, E. (ed)
When questions of belonging enter the forefront of political debates, so too does heritage. This volume draws critical voices from archaeology, anthropology and the classics into a conversation about political uses of the past in times of radical right populism. The authors show how ancient monuments and sites, bygone eras and political regimes, and even your genetic ancestry, can become wrapped up in polarized political debates. They also highlight how heritage, which is often thought of as a common good, can be dangerous in times of political polarization – erasing nuances between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Together, the texts pave the way for a better understanding of the political role of heritage in society.
Subjects: Heritage Studies Cultural Studies (General) Archaeology
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eBook available
January 2023
Calling on the Community
Understanding Participation in the Heritage Sector, an Interactive Governance Perspective
Rodenberg, J., Wagenaar, P., & Burgers, G.-J. (eds)
There is a call in Heritage Studies to democratize heritage practices and place local communities at the forefront; heritage plays an important role in identity formation, and therefore in social inclusion and exclusion. Public participation is often presented as the primary means to prioritize communities. However, studies focusing on public participation are typically descriptive in nature and lack a strong analytical framework that enables us to understand participation. The essays in this volume apply Public Administration theory to collaborative governance and thus contribute to a better understanding of public participation in the heritage sector.
Subjects: Heritage Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2022
Pepsi and the Pill
Motherhood, Politics and Film in Britain and France, 1958–1969
Oliver-Powell, M.
The 1960s was a decade of massive political and cultural change in Western Europe, as seismic shifts took place in in attitudes towards sexuality, gender, and motherhood in everyday life. Through case studies of British and French films, Pepsi and the Pill offers a fresh vision of a pivotal moment in European culture, exploring the many ways in which political activity and celebrated film movements mutually shaped each other in their views on gender, sexuality, and domesticity. As the specter of popular nationalism once again looms across Europe, this book offers a timely account of the legacy of crucial debates over issues including reproductive rights, migration, and reproductive nationalism at the intersection of political discourse, protest, and film.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality
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eBook available
November 2022
Fairies, Ghosts, and Santa Claus
Tinted Glasses, Fetishes, and the Politics of Seeing
Doerr, N. M.
Investigating the politics of seeing and its effects, this book draws on Slavoj Žižek’s notion of fetish and Walter Benjamin’s notion of the optical unconscious to offer newer concepts: “tinted glasses”, through which we see the world; “unit-thinking”, which renders the world as consisting of discrete units; and “coherants”, which help fragmented experiences cohere into something intelligible. Examining experiences at a Japanese heritage language school, a study-abroad trip to Sierra Leone, as well as in college classrooms, this book reveals the workings of unit-thinking and fetishism in diverse contexts and explores possibilities for social change.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Theory and Methodology
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eBook available
October 2022
Football Nation
The Playing Fields of German Culture, History, and Society
Dawson, R., Heinsohn, B., Knabe, O., & McDougall, A. (eds)
Over the past century, the impact of football on Germany has been manifold, influencing the arts, political debates, and even contributing to the construction of cultural memories and national narratives. Football Nation analyses the game’s fluid role in shaping and reflecting German society, and spans its focus on modern German history, from the Wilhelmine era to the early 21st century. Expounding on topics of gender, class, fandom, spectatorship, antisemitism, nationalism, and internationalism, a diverse group of interdisciplinary scholars offer a novel approach to understanding the many influences of football throughout its extensive history which until recently has only been available to a German-speaking readership.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2022
Brewing Socialism
Coffee, East Germans, and Twentieth-Century Globalization
Kloiber, A.
Placing coffee at the center of its analysis, Brewing Socialism links East Germany’s consumption and food culture to its relationship to the wider world. Andrew Kloiber reveals the ways that everyday cultural practices surrounding coffee drinking not only connected East Germans to a global system of exchange, but also perpetuated a set of traditions and values which fit uneasily into the Socialist Unity Party’s conceptualization of a modern Socialist Utopia. Sifting through the relationship between material culture and ideology, this unique work examines the complex tapestry of traditions, history and cultural values that underpinned the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2022
Pacific Spaces
Translations and Transmutations
Engels-Schwarzpaul, A.-C., Lopesi, L., & Refiti, A. L. (eds)
Delving into Pacific spaces from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and interpretations, this book looks at how the anthropological and architectural can be connected. The contributors to this book – architectural practitioners, architectural and spatial design theorists, anthropologists and historians – show not only how new theoretical perspectives can arise out of comparing aspects specific to one discipline with their equivalents of another, but also demonstrate how a space of emergence is created for something that goes beyond both, enhancing both fields of potentialities.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Development Studies
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eBook available
September 2022
Museum, Place, Architecture and Narrative
Nordic Maritime Museums’ Portrayals of Shipping, Seafarers and Maritime Communities
Bünz, A.
A characteristic trait of the maritime museums is that they are often located in a contemporary and/or historical environment from which the collections and narratives originate. The museum can thereby be directly linked to the site and its history. It is therefore vital to investigate the maritime museums in terms of relationships between landscape, architecture, museum and collections. This volume unravels the kinds of worlds and realities the Nordic maritime museums stage, which identities and national myths they depict, and how they make use of both the surrounding maritime environments and the architectural properties of the museum buildings.
Subjects: Museum Studies Archaeology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2022
Puzzling Stories
The Aesthetic Appeal of Cognitive Challenge in Film, Television and Literature
Willemsen, S. & Kiss, M. (eds)
Many films and novels defy our ability to make sense of the plot. While puzzling storytelling, strange incongruities, inviting enigmas and persistent ambiguities have been central to the effects of many literary and cinematic traditions, a great deal of contemporary films and television series bring such qualities to the mainstream—but wherein lies the attractiveness of perplexing works of fiction? This collected volume offers the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and trans-medial approach to the question of cognitive challenge in narrative art, bringing together psychological, philosophical, formal-historical, and empirical perspectives from leading scholars across these fields.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
July 2022
Rethinking Social Movements after '68
Selves and Solidarities in West Germany and Beyond
Davis, B., Brühöfener, F., & Milder, S. (eds)
The year 1968 has widely been viewed as the only major watershed moment during the latter half of the twentieth century. Rethinking Social Movements after ’68 takes on this conventional approach, exploring the spaces, practices, organization, ideas and agendas of numerous activists and movements across the 1970s and 1980s. From the Maoist Communist League to the women’s movement, youth center movement, and gay liberation movement, established and emerging scholars across Europe and North America shed new light on the development of modern European popular politics and social change.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
July 2022
Heritage, Gentrification and Resistance in the Neoliberal City
Hammami, F., Jewesbury, D., & Valli, C. (eds)
What happens when versions of the past become silenced, suppressed, or privileged due to urban restructuring? In what ways are the interpretations and performances of ‘the past’ linked to urban gentrification, marginalization, displacement, and social responses? Authors explore a variety of attempts to interrupt and interrogate urban restructuring, and to imagine alternative forms of urban organization, produced by diverse coalitions of resisting groups and individuals. Armed with historical narratives, oral histories, objects, physical built environment, memorials, and intangible aspects of heritage that include traditions, local knowledge and experiences, memories, authors challenge the ‘devaluation’ of their neighborhoods in official heritage and development narratives.
Subjects: Heritage Studies Cultural Studies (General) History (General)
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eBook available
June 2022
The Cracked Art World
Conflict, Austerity, and Community Arts in Northern Ireland
Rush, K.
This book presents a nuanced view of Northern Ireland, a place at once deeply mired in its past and seeking to forge a new future for itself as a ‘post-post-conflict’ place within the context of a changing United Kingdom, a disintegrating Europe, and a globalized world. This is a Northern Ireland that is conflicted, segregated, and marginalized within modern Europe, but also hopeful and forward looking, seeking to articulate for itself a new place in the contemporary world.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
June 2022
Museum Times
Changing Histories in South Africa
Witz, L.
Museums flourished in post-apartheid South Africa. In older museums, there were renovations on the go, and at least fifty new museums opened. Most sought to depict violence and suffering under apartheid and the growth of resistance. These unlikely journeys are tracked as museums became a primary setting for contesting histories. From the renowned Robben Island Museum to the almost unknown Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, the author demonstrates how an institution concerned with the conservation of the past is simultaneously a site for changing history.
Subjects: Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2022
Shakespeare and the First Hamlet
Bourus, T. (ed)
The first edition of Hamlet – often called ‘Q1’, shorthand for ‘first quarto’ – was published in 1603, in what we might regard as the early modern equivalent of a cheap paperback. Yet this early version of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy is becoming increasingly canonical, not because there is universal agreement about what it is or what it means, but because more and more Shakespearians agree that it is worth arguing about. The essays in this collected volume explore the ways in which we might approach Q1’s Hamlet, from performance to book history, from Shakespeare’s relationships with his contemporaries to the shape of his whole career.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
May 2022
Theorizing Relations in Indigenous South America
González Gálvez, M., Di Giminiani, P., & Bacchiddu, G. (eds)
Whether invented, discovered, implicit, or directly addressed, relations remain the main focus of most anthropological inquiries. These relations, once conceptualized in ethnographic fieldwork as self-evident connections between discrete social units, have been increasingly explored through local ontological theories. This collected volume explores how ethnographies of indigenous South America have helped to inspire this analytic shift, demonstrating the continued importance of ethnographic diversity. Most importantly, this volume asserts that comparative ethnographic research can help illustrate complex questions surrounding relations vis-à-vis the homogenizing effects of modern coloniality.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
May 2022
Hotbeds of Licentiousness
The British Glamour Film and the Permissive Society
Halligan, B.
Hotbeds of Licentiousness is the first substantial critical engagement with British pornography on film across the 1970s, including the “Summer of Love,” the rise and fall of the Permissive Society, the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, and beyond. By focusing on a series of colorful filmmakers whose work, while omnipresent during the 1970s, now remains critically ignored, author Benjamin Halligan discusses pornography in terms of lifestyle aspirations and opportunities which point to radical changes in British society. In this way, pornography is approached as a crucial optic with which to consider recent cultural and social history.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
April 2022
Anglo-American Relations and the Transmission of Ideas
A Shared Political Tradition?
Dobson, A. & Marsh, S. (eds)
Too often, scholarship on Anglo-American political relations has focused on mutual social and economic interests between Britain and the United States as the basis for cooperation. Breaking new ground, Anglo-American Relations and the Transmission of Ideas instead explores how ideas, on either side of the Atlantic have mutually influenced each other. In those transnational interactions, there forms a shared tradition of political ideas, facilitating “a common cast of mind” that has served as the basis for transatlantic relations and socio-political values for decades.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
April 2022
Collecting Educational Media
Making, Storing and Accessing Knowledge
Hertling, A. & Carrier, P. (eds)
Over the last two centuries, collectors from around the world have historicized, politicized, and digitized media in the pursuit of knowledge and education. This collected volume explores collections of educational media and their bearing on the ways in which people learn in both the present and future, how and why material objects have been used worldwide to store and maintain knowledge for politically expedient reasons, and how our understanding of digital collections can be adequately understood only in relation to, and as an extension and adaptation of, the historically contingent material collections from which they emerged.
Subjects: Educational Studies Media Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2022
Self in the World
Connecting Life's Extremes
Hart, K.
Eminent anthropologist Keith Hart draws on the humanities, popular culture and his own experiences to help readers explore their own place in history.
We each embark on two life journeys – one out into the world, the other inward to the self. With these journeys in mind, anthropologist, amateur economist and globetrotter Keith Hart reflects on a life of learning, sharing and remembering to offer readers the means of connecting life’s extremes – individual and society, local and global, personal and impersonal dimensions of existence and explores what it is that makes us fully human.
“This is a work of great originality. Keith Hart has had an unorthodox academic career and it has liberated him in many ways from academic pieties. His background in African ethnography gives him a fascinating angle on all sorts of things, not least the possibility of a more African-influenced global future. The book is full of surprises and mind-shifting observations. I actually couldn't put it down.”—Sherry B. Ortner, UCLA
From the introduction:
People have many sides, but I will focus here on two. Each of us is a biological organism with a historical personality that together make us a unique individual. But we cannot live outside society which shapes us in unfathomable ways. Human beings must learn to be self-reliant (not self-interested) in small and large ways: no-one will brush your teeth for you or save you from being run over while crossing the street. We each must also learn to belong to others, merging personal identity in a plethora of social relations and categories. Modern ideology insists that being individual and mutual is problematic. The culture of capitalist societies anticipates a conflict between them. Yet they are inseparable aspects of human nature.Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2022
Animals, Plants and Afterimages
The Art and Science of Representing Extinction
Bienvenue, V. & Chare, N. (eds)
The sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction is one of the most pervasive issues of our time. Animals, Plants and Afterimages brings together leading scholars in the humanities and life sciences to explore how extinct species are represented in art and visual culture, with a special emphasis on museums. Engaging with celebrated cases of vanished species such as the quagga and the thylacine as well as less well-known examples of animals and plants, these essays explore how representations of recent and ancient extinctions help advance scientific understanding and speak to contemporary ecological and environmental concerns.
Subjects: Media Studies Environmental Studies (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2022
The Aesthetics of Rule and Resistance
Analyzing Political Street Art in Latin America
Bogerts, L.
Effective visual communication has become an essential strategy for grassroots political activists, who use images to publicly express resistance and make their claims visible in the struggle for political power. However, this “aesthetics of resistance” is also employed by political and economic elites for their own purposes, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish from the “aesthetics of rule.” Through illuminating case studies of street art in Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Caracas, and Mexico City, The Aesthetics of Rule and Resistance explores the visual strategies of persuasion and meaning-making employed by both rulers and resisters to foster self-legitimization, identification, and mobilization.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2022
Forging Architectural Tradition
National Narratives, Monument Preservation and Architectural Work in the Nineteenth Century
Damjanović, D. & Łupienko, Al. (eds)
During the nineteenth century, a change developed in the way architectural objects from the distant past were viewed by contemporaries. Such edifices, be they churches, castles, chapels or various other buildings, were not only admired for their aesthetic values, but also for the role they played in ancient times, and their role as reminders of important events from the national past. Architectural heritage often was (and still is) an important element of nation building. Authors address the process of building national myths around certain architectural objects. National narratives are questioned, as is the position architectural heritage played in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.
Subjects: Heritage Studies History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
February 2022
Contested Holdings
Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return
Bodenstein, F., Otoiu, D., & Troelenberg, E.-M. (eds)
Going beyond strictly legal and property-oriented aspects of the restitution debate, restitution is considered as part of a larger set of processes of return that affect museums and collections, as well as notions of heritage and object status. Covering a range of case studies and a global geography, the authors aim to historicize and bring depth to contemporary debates in relation to both the return of material culture and human remains. Defined as contested holdings, differing museum collections ranging from fine arts to physical anthropology provide connections between the treatment and conceptualization of collections that generally occupy separate realms in the museum world.
Subjects: Museum Studies Archaeology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
February 2022
Moving Frames
Photographs in German Cinema
Collenberg-González, C. & Sheehan, M. P. (eds)
As the building blocks of moving pictures, photographs have played an integral role in cinema since the dawn of the medium—a relationship that has grown more complexly connected even as the underlying technologies continue to evolve. Moving Frames explores the use of photographs in German films from Expressionism to the Berlin School, addressing the formal and narrative roles that photographs play as well as the cultural and historical contexts out of which these films emerged. Looking beyond and within the canon, the editors gather stimulating new insights into the politics of surveillance, resistance, representation, and collective memory functioning through photographic rupture and affect in German cinema.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
February 2022
Representing 21st-Century Migration in Europe
Performing Borders, Identities and Texts
González Ortega, N. & Martínez García, A. B. (eds)
The 21st century has witnessed some of the largest human migrations in history. Europe in particular has seen a major influx of refugees, redefining notions of borders and national identity. This interdisciplinary volume brings together leading international scholars of migration from perspectives as varied as literature, linguistics, area and cultural studies, media and communication, visual arts, and film studies. Together, they offer innovative interpretations of migrants and contemporary migration to Europe, enriching today’s political and media landscape, and engaging with the ongoing debate on forced mobility and rights of both extra-European migrants and European citizens.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
February 2022
An American Icon in Puerto Rico
Barbie, Girlhood, and Colonialism at Play
Aguiló-Pérez, E. R.
Since her creation in 1959, Barbie has become an icon of femininity to girls all over the world. In this study, author Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez focuses on a group of multigenerational Puerto Rican women and girls, exploring how playing with Barbie dolls as children has impacted their lives. By documenting the often-complicated relationships girls have with Barbie dolls, Aguiló-Pérez highlights the ways through which women and girls construct their own identities in relation to femininity, body image, race, and nationalism through Barbie play.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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December 2021
Extremism, Society, and the State
Loperfido, G. (ed)
Extremism does not happen in a vacuum. Rather, extremism is a relative concept that often emerges in crisis situations, taking shape within the tense and contradictory relations that tie marginal spaces, state orders, and mainstream culture. This collected volume brings together leading anthropologists and cultural analysts to offer a concise look at the narratives, symbolic, and metaphoric fields related to extremism, systematizing an approach to extremism, and placing these ideologies into historical, political, and geo-systemic contexts.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2021
Cosmic Coherence
A Cognitive Anthropology Through Chinese Divination
Matthews, W.
Humans are unique in their ability to create systematic accounts of the world – theories based on guiding cosmological principles. This book is about the role of cognition in creating cosmologies, and explores this through the ethnography and history of Yijing divination in China. Diviners explain the cosmos in terms of a single substance, qi, unfolding across scales of increasing complexity to create natural phenomena and human experience. Combined with an understanding of human cognition, it shows how this conception of scale offers a new way for anthropologists and other social scientists to think about cosmology, comparison and cultural difference.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2021
Dressing Up
Menswear in the Age of Social Media
Bluteau, J. M.
What does men’s fashion say about contemporary masculinity? How do these notions operate in an increasingly digitized world? To answer these questions, author Joshua M. Bluteau combines theoretical analysis with vibrant narrative, exploring men’s fashion in the online world of social media as well as the offline worlds of retail, production, and the catwalk. Is it time to reassess notions of masculinity? How do we construct ourselves in the online world, and what are the dangers of doing so? From the ateliers of London to the digital landscape of Instagram, Dressing Up re-examines the ways men dress, and the ways men post.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies Anthropology (General)
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eBook available
October 2021
One More for the Road
A Director’s Notes on Exile, Family, and Film
Grlić, R.
Recounts the life and career of Croatian filmmaker Rajko Grlić in the form of a lexicon of film terms tied to anecdotes spanning Grlić’s life.
“I read a lot this year. Old, new, borrowed, blue. This was the best. The paradox of reading something so avidly that you can’t put it down and then I got to the last 20 pages slowing down to a snail’s pace and reading so slowly so that it wouldn’t be over so quickly.”—Mike Downey, European Film Academy
From his post-Nazi-era childhood in Yugoslavia to his college years during the 1968 invasion of Prague, the Yugoslav dissolution wars, and his subsequent exile in the United States, these personal stories combine to provide insight into socialist film industries, contextualizing south Slavic film while also highlighting its contacts with Western filmmakers and film industry.
From the introduction by Aida Vidan:
The one hundred and seventy-seven film terms provide sometimes a direct and at other times a metaphoric path to Grlić’s stories and concurrently serve as a self-referential mechanism to comment on a series of film attributes. The entries can be read in any order, allowing for the reader’s own “montage” of the book’s universe…. Grlić adroitly captures the absurdities and paradoxes in one’s life resulting from the sort of tectonic shifts with which East European history abounds.Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2021
Transnational Railway Cultures
Trains in Music, Literature, Film, and Visual Art
Fraser, B. & Spalding, S. (eds)
Since the advent of train travel, railways have compressed space and crossed national boundaries to become transnational icons, evoking hope, dread, progress, or obsolescence in different cultural domains. Spanning five continents and a diverse range of contexts, this collection offers an unprecedentedly broad survey of global representations of trains. From experimental novels to Hollywood blockbusters, the works studied here chart fascinating routes across a remarkably varied cultural landscape.
Subjects: Mobility Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2021
Transforming Author Museums
From Sites of Pilgrimage to Cultural Hubs
Spring, U., Schimanski, J., & Aarbakke, T. (eds)
Literary museums today must respond to new challenges; the traditional image of the author’s home museum as a sacred place of literary pilgrimage centered around a national hero has been questioned, and literary museums have begun to develop new strategies centered not only on biography, but also literary texts, imagined spaces, different readers, historical contexts, architectural concepts, and artistic interventions. As this volume shows, the changing of spaces asks how literary museums create new ways of interlinking real and literary spaces, texts, objects, readers, and tourists.
Subjects: Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
October 2021
Crafting Chinese Memories
The Art and Materiality of Storytelling
Swancutt, K. (ed)
Through an interdisciplinary conversation with contributors from social anthropology, religious studies, film studies, literary studies, cultural studies, and history, Crafting Chinese Memories is a novel book which addresses how works of art shape memories, and offers new ways of conceptualising storytelling, memory-making, art, and materiality. It explores the memories of artists, filmmakers, novelists, storytellers, and persons who come to terms with their own histories even as they reveal the social memories of watershed events in modern China.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Memory Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
September 2021
Cattle Poetics
How Aesthetics Shapes Politics in Mursiland, Ethiopia
Eczet, J.-B.
Loving cows, then killing them. The relation with cattle in Mursi country is shaped by the dichotomy between the value given to it during life and the death imposed upon it. The killing of cattle may be brief and inflicted with few words, but it is preceded by a series of intense aesthetic practices, such as body painting and adornments, colour poetics, poems and oratory art. This book investigates the link between the nurturing and killing of cattle with Mursi daily life and finds that these rituals cut across pastoralism, social organisation and politics in forming the very fabric of Mursi society.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Development Studies
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eBook available
September 2021
Dictionary of Authentic American Proverbs
Mieder, W.
Dictionary of Authentic American Proverbs offers a comprehensive reference guide for distinctly American proverbs. Compiled by Wolfgang Mieder, a key figure in the field of proverb studies, this compendium features nearly 1,500 proverbs with American origins, spanning the 17th century to present day, including a scholarly introduction exploring the history of proverbs in America, the structure and variants of these proverbs, known authors and sources, and cultural values expressed in these proverbs. Along with a comprehensive bibliography of proverb collections and interpretive scholarship, this dictionary offers a glimpse into the history of American social and cultural attitudes through uniquely American language.
Subjects: Literary Studies Heritage Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
September 2021
The Cinematic Language of Theo Angelopoulos
Karalis, V.
Beginning with his first film Reconstruction, released in 1970, Theo Angelopoulos’s notoriously complex cinematic language has long explored Greece’s contemporary history and questioned European culture and society. The Cinematic Language of Theo Angelopoulos offers a detailed study and critical discussion of the acclaimed filmmaker’s cinematic aesthetics as they developed over his career, exploring different styles through which Greek and European history, identity, and loss have been visually articulated throughout his oeuvre, as well as his impact on both European and global cinema.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
September 2021
Bigger Fish to Fry
A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples
Sutton, D. E.
What defines cooking as cooking, and why does cooking matter to the understanding of society, cultural change and everyday life? This book explores these questions by proposing a new theory of the meaning of cooking as a willingness to put oneself and one’s meals at risk on a daily basis. Richly illustrated with examples from the author’s anthropology fieldwork in Greece, Bigger Fish to Fry proposes a new approach to the meaning of cooking and how the study of cooking can reshape our understanding of social processes more generally.
Subjects: Food & Nutrition Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2021
Contemporary Megaprojects
Organization, Vision, and Resistance in the 21st Century
Schindler, S., Fadaere, S., Brockington, D. (eds)
Contemporary megaprojects have evolved from the discreet, modernist projects undertaken in the past by centralized authorities to encompass everything from large-scale construction to space exploration. Contemporary Megaprojects explores how these projects have been impacted by cutting-edge technology, the private sector, and the processes of decentralization and dematerialization. With case studies ranging from mega-plantations in Southeast Asia to ocean mapping to sports events, the contributions in this collected volume demonstrate the increasing ambition and pervasiveness of these projects, as well as their significant impact on both society and the environment.
Subjects: Development Studies Environmental Studies (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2021
Living Like a Girl
Agency, Social Vulnerability and Welfare Measures in Europe and Beyond
Vogel, M. & Arnell, L. (eds)
In recent decades, large-scale social changes have taken place in Europe. Ranging from neoliberal social policies to globalization and the growth of EU, these changes have significantly affected the conditions in which girls shape their lives. Living Like a Girl explores the relationship between changing social conditions and girls’ agency, with a particular focus on social services such as school programs and compulsory institutional care. The contributions in this collected volume seek to expand our understanding of contemporary European girlhood by demonstrating how social problems are managed in different cultural contexts, political and social systems.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Sociology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2021
Stories from an Ancient Land
Perspectives on Wa History and Culture
Fiskesjö, M.
The Wa people have a rich civilization of their own, and a deep history in the mountains of Southeast Asia. Their mythology suggests their land is the first place inhabited by humans, which they care for on behalf of the world. This book introduces aspects of Wa culture, including their approach to the world’s troubles and the lessons others might learn from it. It also presents a new interpretation of Wa headhunting, questioning explanations that see it as a primitive custom, and instead placing it within the fraught history of the last few centuries.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
July 2021
Textures of Belonging
Senses, Objects and Spaces of Romanian Roma
Racleş, A.
The longstanding European conception that Roma and non-Roma are separated by unambiguous socio-cultural distinctions has led to the construction of Roma as “non-belonging others.” Challenging this conception, Textures of Belonging explores how Roma negotiate and feel belonging at the everyday level. Inspired by material culture, sensorial anthropology, and human geography approaches, this book uses ethnographic research to examine the role of domestic material forms and their sensorial qualities in nurturing connections with people and places that transcend socio-political boundaries.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2021
All Tomorrow's Cultures
Anthropological Engagements with the Future
Collins, S. G.
The first edition of All Tomorrow’s Cultures explored the legacy of futures-thinking in anthropology and marked the beginning of a resurgence of interest in anthropological futures. The new edition has been updated to reflect some of the outpouring of work since then, particularly in science and technology studies and in anthropological analyses of indigenous futures. In addition, Collins has updated the final chapter to expand the field of anthropological possibility in an age of both despair and hope.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2021
In Memory of Times to Come
Ironies of History in Southeastern Papua New Guinea
Demian, M.
Drawing on twenty years of research, this book examines the historical perspective of a Pacific people who saw “globalization” come and go. Suau people encountered the leading edge of missionization and colonialism in Papua New Guinea and were active participants in the Second World War. In Memory of Times to Come offers a nuanced account of how people assess their own experience of change over the course of a critical century. It asks two key questions: What does it mean to claim that global connections are in the past rather than the present or the future, and what does it mean to claim that one has lost one’s culture, but not because anyone else took it away or destroyed it?
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
May 2021
Beyond the Veil
Reflexive Studies of Death and Dying
Thamann, A. & Christodoulaki, K. M. (eds)
Looking at the cultural responses to death and dying, this collection explores the emotional aspects that death provokes in humans, whether it is disgust, fear, awe, sadness, anger, or even joy. Whereas most studies of death and dying treat the subject from an objective viewpoint, the scholars in this collection recognize their inherent connection with death which allows for a new and more personal form of study. More broadly, this collection suggests a new paradigm in the study of death and dying.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology of Religion
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eBook available
May 2021
A Twisted Style
The Culture of Dreadlocks in “Western” Societies
Jerrentrup, M. T.
In "western" cultures, some people have chosen a dreadlock hairstyle, despite many in mainstream society looking at it in a negative light. This book deals with contradictions surrounding the hairstyle such as often representing a protest against the prevailing right-wing political systems, yet also emphasizing the white person’s power to appropriate any style. Based on interviews and close observations in social media, the book offers insights into the culture(s) surrounding dreadlocks and ultimately interprets the phenomenon as a postmodern form of individuality.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology (General)
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eBook available
April 2021
Exchanging Objects
Nineteenth-Century Museum Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution
Nichols, C. A.
As an historical account of the exchange of “duplicate specimens” between anthropologists at the Smithsonian Institution and museums, collectors, and schools around the world in the late nineteenth century, this book reveals connections between both well-known museums and little-known local institutions, created through the exchange of museum objects. It explores how anthropologists categorized some objects in their collections as “duplicate specimens,” making them potential candidates for exchange. This historical form of what museum professionals would now call deaccessioning considers the intellectual and technical requirement of classifying objects in museums, and suggests that a deeper understanding of past museum practice can inform mission-driven contemporary museum work.
Subjects: Museum Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2021
Perspectives in Motion
Engaging the Visual in Dance and Music
Stepputat, K & Diettrich, B. (eds)
Focusing on visual approaches to performance in global cultural contexts, Perspectives in Motion explores the work of Adrienne L. Kaeppler, a pioneering researcher who has made a number of interdisciplinary contributions over five decades to dance and performance studies. Through a diverse range of case studies from Oceania, Asia, and Europe, and interdisciplinary approaches, this edited collection offers new critical and ethnographic frameworks for understanding and experiencing practices of music and dance across the globe.
Subjects: Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2021
The Best We Share
Nation, Culture and World-Making in the UNESCO World Heritage Arena
Brumann, C.
The UNESCO World Heritage Convention is one of the most widely ratified international treaties, and a place on the World Heritage List is a widely coveted mark of distinction. Building on ethnographic fieldwork at Committee sessions, interviews and documentary study, the book links the change in operations of the World Heritage Committee with structural nation-centeredness, vulnerable procedures for evaluation, monitoring and decision-making, and loose heritage conceptions that have been inconsistently applied. As the most ambitious study of the World Heritage arena so far, this volume dissects the inner workings of a prominent global body, demonstrating the power of ethnography in the highly formalised and diplomatic context of a multilateral organisation.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2021
Deconstructing Dolls
Girlhoods and the Meanings of Play
Forman-Brunell, M. (ed)
In recent decades, emerging scholarship in the field of girlhood studies has led to a particular interest in dolls as sources of documentary evidence. Deconstructing Dolls pushes the boundaries of doll studies by expanding the definition of dolls, ages of doll players, sites of play, research methods, and application of theory. By utilizing a variety of new approaches, this collected volume seeks to understand the historical and contemporary significance of dolls and girlhood play, particularly as they relate to social meanings in the lives of girls and young women across race, age, time, and culture.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
February 2021
Political Graffiti in Critical Times
The Aesthetics of Street Politics
Campos, R., Pavoni, A., & Zaimakis, Y. (eds)
Whether aesthetically or politically inspired, graffiti is among the oldest forms of expression in human history, one that becomes especially significant during periods of social and political upheaval. With a particular focus on the demographic, ecological, and economic crises of today, this volume provides a wide-ranging exploration of urban space and visual protest. Assembling case studies that cover topics such as gentrification in Cyprus, the convulsions of post-independence East Timor, and opposition to Donald Trump in the American capital, it reveals the diverse ways in which street artists challenge existing social orders and reimagine urban landscapes.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
February 2021
Experiencing Materiality
Museum Perspectives
Gamberi, V.
Representing a cutting-edge study of the junction between theoretical anthropology, material culture studies, religious studies and museum anthropology, this study examines the interaction between the human and the nonhuman in a museum setting usually defined as ‘non-Western’, ‘non-scientific’ and ‘religious.’ Combining an on-site analysis of exhibitive spaces with archival research and interviews with museum curators, the chapters highlight contradictions of museum practices, and suggests that museum practitioners use museum spaces and artefacts as a way of formulating new theoretical stances in material culture studies, thus viewing museums as producers of theories together with affective engagements.
Subjects: Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology (General)
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eBook available
January 2021
Unlocking the Love-Lock
The History and Heritage of a Contemporary Custom
Houlbrook, C.
Explores the worldwide popularity of the love-lock as a ritual token of love and commitment by considering its history, symbolism, and heritage.
“[T]his is an eminently enjoyable and thorough investigation of a popular phenomenon through the lens of heritage and folk tradition.”—Sara De Nardi, Western Sydney University
A padlock is a mundane object, designed to fulfil a specific – and secular – purpose. A contemporary custom has given padlocks new significance. This custom is ‘love-locking’, where padlocks are engraved with names and attached to bridges in declaration of romantic commitment. This custom became popular in the 2000s, and its dissemination was rapid, geographically unbound, and highly divisive, with love-locks emerging in locations as diverse as Paris and Taiwan; New York and Seoul; Melbourne and Moscow.
From the introduction:
I was distractedly perusing the photo frame aisle, my eyes skimming the generically sentimental stock pictures of happy families smiling at the camera, pretty landscapes, cute pets and couples walking hand-in-hand, when I came across one that jumped out at me…. I recognised the image instantly as a photograph of love-locks: the padlocks that had been appearing en masse on bridges and other public structures on a global scale since the early 2000s. And, having been researching the custom known as lovelocking for about five years at that point, it was with a peculiar sense of pride that I realised love-locks had accomplished the status of a stock image.Subjects: Heritage Studies Archaeology Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2020
Ecological Nostalgias
Memory, Affect and Creativity in Times of Ecological Upheavals
Angé, O. & Berliner, D. (eds)
Introducing the study of econostalgias through a variety of rich ethnographic cases, this volume argues that a strictly human centered approach does not account for contemporary longings triggered by ecosystem upheavals. In this time of climate change, this book explores how nostalgia for fading ecologies unfolds into the interstitial spaces between the biological, the political and the social, regret and hope, the past, the present and the future.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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eBook available
November 2020
The Long Journey
Exploring Travel and Travel Writing
Di Bella, M. P. & Yothers, B. (eds)
Travel writing has, for centuries, composed an essential historical record and wide-ranging literary form, reflecting the rich diversity of travel as a social and cultural practice, metaphorical process, and driver of globalization. This interdisciplinary volume brings together anthropologists, literary scholars, social historians, and other scholars to illuminate travel writing in all its forms. With studies ranging from colonial adventurism to the legacies of the Holocaust, The Long Journey offers a unique dual focus on experience and genre as it applies to three key realms: memory and trauma, confrontations with the Other, and the cultivation of cultural perspective.
Subjects: Literary Studies Mobility Studies Cultural Studies (General) Travel and Tourism
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eBook available
November 2020
Sounds German
Popular Music in Postwar Germany at the Crossroads of the National and Transnational
Fulk, K. A. (ed)
For decades, Germany has been shaped and reshaped by the sounds of popular music—whether viewed as uniquely German or an ideological invader from abroad. This collected volume brings together leading figures in the field of German Studies, popular music studies, and cultural studies at large to survey the sociopolitical impact of music on conceptions of the German state and national identity, gender and sexuality, and transnational cultural production and consumption, expanding on the ways in which sounds, technologies, media practices, and exchanges of popular music provide a unique glimpse into the cultural dynamics of postwar Germany.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies
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eBook available
November 2020
Spanish Comics
Historical and Cultural Perspectives
Magnussen, A. (ed)
Spanish comics represent an exciting and diverse field, yet one that is often overlooked outside of Spain. Spanish Comics offers an overview on contemporary scholarship on Spanish comics, focusing on a wide range of comics dating from the Francoist dictatorship, 1939-1975; the Political Transition, 1970-1985; and Democratic Spain since the early 1980s including the emergence of the graphic novel in 2000. Touching on themes of memory, gender, regional identities, and history, the chapters in this collection demonstrate the historical and cultural significance of Spanish comics.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies
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eBook available
November 2020
Engaging with Chaucer
Practice, Authority, Reading
Moseley, C.W.R.D. (ed)
Why do we still read and discuss Chaucer? The answer may be simple: he is fun, and he challenges our intelligence and questions our certainties. This collected volume represents an homage to a toweringly great poet, as well as an acknowledgement of the intellectual excitement, challenges, and pleasure that readers owe to him as even today, his poems have the capacity to change the way we engage with fundamental questions of knowledge, understanding, and beauty.
Subjects: Media Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2020
Histories of a Radical Book
E. P. Thompson and The Making of the English Working Class
Burton, A. & Fortado, S. (eds)
For better or worse, E.P. Thompson’s monumental book The Making of the English Working Class has played an essential role in shaping the intellectual lives of generations of readers since its original publication in 1963. This collected volume explores the complex impact of Thompson’s book, both as an intellectual project and material object, relating it to the social and cultural history of the book form itself—an enduring artifact of English history.
Subject: Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
September 2020
Shakespeare and Biography
Scheil, K. & Holderness, G. (eds)
From Shakespeare’s religion to his wife to his competitors in the world of early modern theatre, biographers have approached the question of the Bard’s life from numerous angles. Shakespeare & Biography offers a fresh look at the biographical questions connected with the famous playwright’s life, through essays and reflections written by prominent international scholars and biographers.
Subjects: Literary Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
September 2020
Nourishing Life
Foodways and Humanity in an African Town
Huhn, A.
In this accessible ethnography of a small town in northern Mozambique, everyday cultural knowledge and behaviors about food, cooking, and eating reveal the deeply human pursuit of a nourishing life. This emerges less through the consumption of specific nutrients than it does in the affective experience of alimentation in contexts that support vitality, compassion, and generative relations. Embedded within central themes in the study of Africa south of the Sahara, the volume combines insights from philosophy and food studies to find textured layers of meaning in a seemingly simple cuisine.
Subjects: Food & Nutrition Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2020
Globalizing Automobilism
Exuberance and the Emergence of Layered Mobility, 1900–1980
Mom, G.
Why has “car society” proven so durable, even in the face of mounting environmental and economic crises? In this follow-up to his magisterial Atlantic Automobilism, Gijs Mom traces the global spread of the automobile in the postwar era and investigates why adopting more sustainable forms of mobility has proven so difficult. Drawing on archival research as well as wide-ranging forays into popular culture, Mom reveals here the roots of the exuberance, excess, and danger that define modern automotive culture.
Subjects: Transport Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Mobility Studies
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eBook available
August 2020
Punks and Skins United
Identity, Class and the Economics of an Eastern German Subculture
Venstel, A.
Germany has one of the liveliest and well-developed punk scenes in the world. However, punk in this country is not just a style-based music community. This book provides an anthropological examination of how punk reflects the larger changes and contradictions in post-reunification Germany, such as social segmentation, east-west tensions and local politics. Punk in eastern Germany is a reaction to the marginalization of the working class. As a cultural, social and economic niche, punks create their own controversial “substitute society” to compensate for their low status in mainstream society.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
July 2020
Modern Lusts
Ernest Borneman: Jazz Critic, Filmmaker, Sexologist
Siegfried, D.
As a jazz musician, filmmaker, anthropologist, sexologist, and crime novelist, the boundlessly curious German autodidact Ernest Borneman exemplified the conflicting cultural and intellectual currents of the twentieth century. In this long-awaited English translation, acclaimed historian Detlef Siegfried chronicles Borneman’s journey from a young Jewish Communist in Nazi Berlin to his emergence as a celebrated (and reliably controversial) transatlantic polymath. Through an innovative structure organized around the human senses, this biography memorably portrays a figure whose far-flung obsessions comprised a microcosm of postwar intellectual life.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Film and Television Studies Media Studies
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eBook available
June 2020
Don't Need No Thought Control
Western Culture in East Germany and the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Horten, G.
The fall of the Berlin Wall is typically understood as the culmination of political-economic trends that fatally weakened the East German state. Meanwhile, comparatively little attention has been paid to the cultural dimension of these dramatic events, particularly the role played by Western mass media and consumer culture. With a focus on the 1970s and 1980s, Don’t Need No Thought Control explores the dynamic interplay of popular unrest, intensifying economic crises, and cultural policies under Erich Honecker. It shows how the widespread influence of (and public demands for) Western cultural products forced GDR leaders into a series of grudging accommodations that undermined state power to a hitherto underappreciated extent.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies Cultural Studies (General) Film and Television Studies
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eBook available
May 2020
Shakespeare and Money
Holderness, G. (ed)
Though better known for his literary merits, Shakespeare made money, wrote about money and enabled money-making by countless others in his name. With chapters by leading scholars on the economic, financial and commercial ramifications of his work, this multifaceted volume connects the Bard to both early modern and contemporary economic conditions, revealing Shakespeare to have been a serious economist in his own right.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
May 2020
Spaces of Solidarity
Karen Activism in the Thailand-Burma Borderlands
Sharples, R.
Exploring notions of activism and space as narrated by Karen displaced persons and refugees in the Thai-Burma borderlands, this book looks beyond refugees as passive victims or a ‘humanitarian case’. Instead, the book examines the active engagement the Karen have with their persecution and displacement and their subsequent emplacement in the borderlands. A key focus of the book is to look at this engagement in terms of spaces of solidarity – constructed through patterns of activism, paths of connectivity and processes of cultural recovery. The book also studies the spatial configuration of borderlands, examining the impact of cross-border activities and their inter-related nature.
Subjects: Sociology Anthropology (General) Refugee and Migration Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
April 2020
In Fading Light
The Films of the Amber Collective
Leggott, J.
For over five decades, the Newcastle-based Amber Film and Photography Collective has been a critical (if often unheralded) force within British documentary filmmaking, producing a variety of innovative works focused on working-class society. Situating their acclaimed output within wider social, political, and historical contexts, In Fading Light provides an accessible introduction to Amber’s output from both national and transnational perspectives, including experimental, low-budget documentaries in the 1970s; more prominent feature films in the 1980s; studies of post-industrial life in the 1990s; and the distinctive perils and opportunities posed by the digital era.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Media Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
April 2020
Permeable Borders
History, Theory, Policy, and Practice in the United States
Otto, P. & Berthier-Foglar, S. (eds)
If the frontier, in all its boundless possibility, was a central organizing metaphor for much of U.S. history, today it is arguably the border that best encapsulates the American experience, as xenophobia, economic inequality, and resurgent nationalism continue to fuel conditions of division and limitation. This boldly interdisciplinary volume explores the ways that historical and contemporary actors in the U.S. have crossed such borders—whether national, cultural, ethnic, racial, or conceptual. Together, these essays suggest new ways to understand borders while encouraging connection and exchange, even as social and political forces continue to try to draw lines around and between people.
Subjects: History (General) Mobility Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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February 2020
Comrades in Arms
Military Masculinities in East German Culture
Smith, T.
Without question, the East German National People’s Army was a profoundly masculine institution that emphasized traditional ideals of stoicism, sacrifice, and physical courage. Nonetheless, as this innovative study demonstrates, depictions of the military in the film and literature of the GDR were far more nuanced and ambivalent. Departing from past studies that have found in such portrayals an unchanging, idealized masculinity, Comrades in Arms shows how cultural works both before and after reunification place violence, physical vulnerability, and military theatricality, as well as conscripts’ powerful emotions and desires, at the center of soldiers’ lives and the military institution itself.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
February 2020
Velvet Retro
Postsocialist Nostalgia and the Politics of Heroism in Czech Popular Culture
Pehe, V.
Scholars of state socialism have frequently invoked “nostalgia” to identify an uncritical longing for the utopian ambitions and lived experience of the former Eastern Bloc. However, this concept seems insufficient to describe memory cultures in the Czech Republic and other contexts in which a “retro” fascination with the past has proven compatible with a steadfast critique of the state socialist era. This innovative study locates a distinctively retro aesthetic in Czech literature, film, and other cultural forms, enriching our understanding of not only the nation’s memory culture, but also the ways in which popular culture can structure collective memory.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Film and Television Studies Memory Studies
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eBook available
January 2020
Management and Morality
An Ethnographic Exploration of Management Consultancy Seminars
Henningsen, E.
Drawing on extended ethnographic studies of management consultancies in the Oslo region of Norway, this book seeks to find a richer understanding of their role in contemporary work life and the attraction their practices exert on people. The author shows that management consultancy is an arena of meaning that should be analysed as a ‘cultural space’. With a detailed investigation into consultancy as a cultural phenomenon, Henningsen argues that its services can be viewed as a ‘micro-utopian’ vision which can lead to a happier working environment for individuals.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Applied Anthropology
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eBook available
January 2020
Sustaining Indigenous Songs
Contemporary Warlpiri Ceremonial Life in Central Australia
Curran, G.
As an ethnography of Central Australian singing traditions and ceremonial contexts, this book asks questions about the vitality of the cultural knowledge and practices highly valued by Warlpiri people and fundamental to their cultural heritage. Set against a discussion of the contemporary vitality of Aboriginal musical traditions in Australia and embedded in the historical background of this region, the book lays out the features of Warlpiri songs and ceremonies, and centers on a focal case study of the Warlpiri Kurdiji ceremony to illustrate the modes in which core cultural themes are being passed on through song to future generations.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2019
Inward Looking
The Impact of Migration on Romanipe from the Romani Perspective
Marinov, A. G.
At present, Roma are an integral part of Europe, though they face structural and social inequalities and different forms of exclusion and discrimination. Inward Looking seeks to understand the relationship between Romani identity, performance and migration. Particularly, it studies the idea of ‘Romanipe’ through the prism of the personal accounts of Romani migrants. It also seeks to understand the relationships between the Romani groups in Europe, due to their increased travel and convergence, and predict the effects of migration on (new) Romani consciousness. The findings are based on qualitative data gathered from Romani migrants from three towns in Bulgaria.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General) Refugee and Migration Studies
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eBook available
October 2019
The World of Children
Foreign Cultures in Nineteenth-Century German Education and Entertainment
Lässig, S. & Weiß, A. (eds)
In an era of rapidly increasing technological advances and international exchange, how did young people come to understand the world beyond their doorsteps? Focusing on Germany through the lens of the history of knowledge, this collection explores various media for children—from textbooks, adventure stories, and other literature to board games, museums, and cultural events—to probe what they aimed to teach young people about different cultures and world regions. These multifaceted contributions from specialists in historical, literary, and cultural studies delve into the ways that children absorbed, combined, and adapted notions of the world.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Cultural Studies (General) Educational Studies
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eBook available
September 2019
Shakespeare and the Ethics of War
Gray, P. (ed)
How does Shakespeare represent war? This volume reviews scholarship to date on the question and introduces new perspectives, looking at contemporary conflict through the lens of the past. Through his haunting depiction of historical bloodshed, including the Trojan War, the fall of the Roman Republic, and the Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare illuminates more recent political violence, ranging from the British occupation of Ireland to the Spanish Civil War, the Balkans War, and the past several decades of U. S. military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can a war be just? What is the relation between the ruler and the ruled? What motivates ethnic violence? Shakespeare’s plays serve as the frame for careful explorations of perennial problems of human co-existence: the politics of honor, the ethics of diplomacy, the responsibility of non-combatants, and the tension between idealism and Realpolitik.
Subjects: Literary Studies Cultural Studies (General) Peace and Conflict Studies Media Studies
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eBook available
September 2019
Shakespeare and Creative Criticism
Conkie, R. & Maisano, S. (eds)
What kinds of critical insights are made possible only or especially via creative strategies? This volume examines how creative modes of writing might facilitate or inform new ways to critically engage with Shakespeare. Creative writing, demonstrated in a series of essays, reflections, stories and scenes, operates as a vehicle for exploring and articulating critical and theoretical ideas. In doing so, Shakespeare’s enduring creative and critical appeal is newly understood and critiqued.
Subjects: Literary Studies Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
September 2019
Constructing Industrial Pasts
Heritage, Historical Culture and Identity in Regions Undergoing Structural Economic Transformation
Berger, S. (ed)
Since the 1960s, nations across the “developed world” have been profoundly shaped by deindustrialization. In regions in which previously dominant industries faced crises or have disappeared altogether, industrial heritage offers a fascinating window into the phenomenon’s cultural dimensions. As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, even as forms of industrial heritage provide anchors of identity for local populations, their meanings remain deeply contested, as both radical and conservative varieties of nostalgia intermingle with critical approaches and straightforward apologias for a past that was often full of pain, exploitation and struggle.
Subject: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Heritage Studies
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eBook available
September 2019
The Vampire
Origins of a European Myth
Bohn, T. M.
“An illuminating contribution to scholarship on the vampire figure.”—Slavic Review
Even before Bram Stoker immortalized Transylvania as the homeland of his fictional Count Dracula, the figure of the vampire was inextricably tied to Eastern Europe in the popular imagination.
Drawing on a wealth of previously neglected sources, this book offers a fascinating account of how vampires—whose various incarnations originally emerged from folk traditions from all over the world—became so strongly identified with Eastern Europe. It demonstrates that the modern conception of the vampire was born in the crucible of the Enlightenment, embodying a mysterious, Eastern otherness that stood opposed to Western rationality.
From the Prologue:
From Original Sin to Eternal Life
For a broad contemporary public, the vampire has become a star, a media sensation from Hollywood. Bestselling authors such as Bram Stoker, Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer continue to fire the imaginations of young and old alike, and bloodsuckers have achieved immortality through films like Dracula, Interview with a Vampireand Twilight. It is no wonder that, in the teenage bedrooms of our globalized world, vampires even steal the show from Harry Potter. They have long since been assigned individual personalities and treated with sympathy. They may possess superhuman powers, but they are also burdened by their immortality and have to learn to come to terms with their craving for blood. Whereas the Southeast European vampire, discovered in the 1730s, underwent an Americanization and domestication in the media landscape of the twentieth century, the creole zombies that first became known through the cheap novels and horror films of the 1920s still continue to serve as brainless horror figures. Do bloodsuckers really exist and should we really be afraid of the dead? These are the questions that I seek to tackle, following the wishes of my daughter, who was ten when I started this project.
Subjects: Sociology Literary Studies History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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September 2019
Entangled Entertainers
Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
Hödl, K.
Viennese popular culture at the turn of the twentieth century was the product of the city’s Jewish and non-Jewish residents alike. While these two communities interacted in a variety of ways to their mutual benefit, Jewish culture was also inevitably shaped by the city’s persistent bouts of antisemitism. This fascinating study explores how Jewish artists, performers, and impresarios reacted to prejudice, showing how they articulated identity through performative engagement rather than anchoring it in origin and descent. In this way, they attempted to transcend a racialized identity even as they indelibly inscribed their Jewish existence into the cultural history of the era.
Subjects: Jewish Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2019
The Museum of Mankind
Man and Boy in the British Museum Ethnography Department
Burt, B.
The Museum of Mankind was an innovative and popular showcase for minority cultures from around the non-Western world from 1970 to 1997. This memoir is a critical appreciation of its achievements in the various roles of a national museum, of the personalities of its staff and of the issues raised in the representation of exotic cultures. Issues of changing museum theory and practice are raised in a detailed case-study that also focuses on the social life of the museum community. This is the first history of a remarkable museum and a memorable interlude in the long history of one of the world’s oldest and greatest museums. Although not presented as an academic study, it should be useful for museum and cultural studies as a well as a wider readership interested in the British Museum.
Subjects: Museum Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2019
Multiple Nature-Cultures, Diverse Anthropologies
Bruun Jensen, C. & Morita, A. (eds)
Over time, the role of nature in anthropology has evolved from being a mere backdrop for social and cultural diversity to being viewed as an integral part of the ontological entanglement of human and nonhuman agents. This transformation of the role of nature offers important insight into the relationships between diverse anthropological traditions. By highlighting natural-cultural worlds alongside these traditions, Multiple Nature-Cultures, Diverse Anthropologies explores the potential for creating more sophisticated conjunctions of anthropological knowledge and practice.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
July 2019
Shakespeare and the Arab World
Hennessey, K. & Litvin, M. (eds)
Offering a variety of perspectives on the history and role of Arab Shakespeare translation, production, adaptation and criticism, this volume explores both international and locally focused Arab/ic appropriations of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. In addition to Egyptian and Palestinian theatre, the contributors to this collection examine everything from an Omani performance in Qatar and an Upper Egyptian television series to the origin of the sonnets to an English-language novel about the Lebanese civil war. Addressing materials produced in several languages from literary Arabic (fuṣḥā) and Egyptian colloquial Arabic (‘ammiyya) to Swedish and French, these scholars and translators vary in discipline and origin, and together exhibit the diversity and vibrancy of this field.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
July 2019
Shakespeare and Commemoration
Calvo, C. & Hoenselaars, T. (eds)
Memory and commemoration play a vital role not only in the work of Shakespeare, but also in the process that has made him a world author. As the contributors of this collection demonstrate, the phenomenon of commemoration has no single approach, as it occurs on many levels, has a long history, and is highly unpredictable in its manifestations. With an international focus and a comparative scope that explores the afterlives also of other artists, this volume shows the diverse modes of commemorative practices involving Shakespeare. Delving into these “cultures of commemoration,” it presents keen insights into the dynamics of authorship, literary fame, and afterlives in its broader socio-historical contexts.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Performance Studies Literary Studies Memory Studies
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eBook available
July 2019
Critique of Identity Thinking
Jackson, M.
Recent world-wide political developments have persuaded many people that we are again living in what Hannah Arendt called “dark times.” Jackson’s response to this age of uncertainty is to remind us how much experience falls outside the concepts and categories we habitually deploy in rendering life manageable and intelligible. Drawing on such critical thinkers as Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Karl Jaspers, whose work was profoundly influenced by the catastrophes that overwhelmed the world in the middle of the last century, Jackson explores the transformative and redemptive power of marginalized voices in the contemporary conversation of humankind.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
July 2019
Shakespeare and Stratford
Scheil, K. (ed)
As the site of literary pilgrimage since the eighteenth century, the home of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the topic of hundreds of imaginary portrayals, Stratford is ripe for analysis, both in terms of its factual existence and its fictional afterlife. The essays in this volume consider the various manifestations of the physical and metaphorical town on the Avon, across time, genre and place, from America to New Zealand, from children’s literature to wartime commemorations. We meet many Stratfords in this collection, real and imaginary, and the interplay between the two generates new visions of the place.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Travel and Tourism Literary Studies
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eBook available
July 2019
Comical Modernity
Popular Humour and the Transformation of Urban Space in Late Nineteenth Century Vienna
Hakkarainen, H.
Though long associated with a small group of coffeehouse elites around the turn of the twentieth century, Viennese “modernist” culture had roots that reached much further back and beyond the rarefied sphere of high culture. In Comical Modernity, Heidi Hakkarainen looks at Vienna in the second half of the nineteenth century, a period of dramatic urban renewal during which the city’s rapidly changing face was a mainstay of humorous magazines, books, and other publications aimed at middle-class audiences. As she shows, humor provided a widely accessible means of negotiating an era of radical change.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Media Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
July 2019
Lewis Henry Morgan's Comparisons
Reassessing Terminology, Anarchy and Worldview in Indigenous Societies of America, Australia and Highland Middle India
Pfeffer, G.
About 150 years ago Lewis Henry Morgan compared relationship terminologies, societal forms and ideas of property to recognize the interdependence of the three domains. From a new perspective, the book re-examines, confirms and criticizes Morgan’s findings to conclude that reciprocal affinal relations determine most ‘classificatory’ terminologies and regulate many non-state societies, their property notions and their rituals. Apart from references to American and Australian features, such holistic socio-cultural constructs are exemplified by elaborate descriptions of little known contemporary Indigenous societies in Highland Middle India, altogether comprising many millions of members.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2019
Encounters with Emotions
Negotiating Cultural Differences since Early Modernity
Gammerl, B., Nielsen, P., & Pernau, M. (eds)
Spanning Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Encounters with Emotions investigates experiences of face-to-face transcultural encounters from the seventeenth century to the present and the emotional dynamics that helped to shape them. Each of the case studies collected here investigates fascinating historiographical questions that arise from the study of emotion, from the strategies people have used to interpret and understand each other’s emotions to the roles that emotions have played in obstructing communication across cultural divides. Together, they explore the cultural aspects of nature as well as the bodily dimensions of nurture and trace the historical trajectories that shape our understandings of current cultural boundaries and effects of globalization.
Subjects: History (General) Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2019
German Division as Shared Experience
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Postwar Everyday
Carter, E., Palmowski, J., & Schreiter, K. (eds)
Despite the nearly three decades since German reunification, there remains little understanding of the ways in which experiences overlapped across East-West divides. German Division as Shared Experience considers everyday life across the two Germanies, using perspectives from history, literary and cultural studies, anthropology and art history to explore how interconnections as well as fractures between East and West Germany after 1945 were experienced, lived and felt. Through its novel approach to historical method, the volume points to new understandings of the place of narrative, form and lived sensibility in shaping Germans’ simultaneously shared and separate experiences of belonging during forty years of division from 1945 to 1990.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2019
24 Bars to Kill
Hip Hop, Aspiration, and Japan's Social Margins
Armstrong, A. B.
The most clearly identifiable and popular form of Japanese hip-hop, “ghetto” or “gangsta” music has much in common with its corresponding American subgenres, including its portrayal of life on the margins, confrontational style, and aspirational “rags-to-riches” narratives. Contrary to depictions of an ethnically and economically homogeneous Japan, gangsta J-hop gives voice to the suffering, deprivation, and social exclusion experienced by many modern Japanese. 24 Bars to Kill offers a fascinating ethnographic account of this music as well as the subculture around it, showing how gangsta hip-hop arises from widespread dissatisfaction and malaise.
Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2019
Money Games
Gambling in a Papua New Guinea Town
Pickles, A. J.
Gambling in Papua New Guinea, despite being completely absent prior to the Colonial era, has come to supersede storytelling as the region’s main nighttime activity. Money Games is an ethnographic monograph which reveals the contemporary importance of gambling in urban Papua New Guinea. Rich ethnographic detail is coupled with cross-cultural comparison which span the globe. This anthropological study of everyday economics in Melanesia thereby intersects with theories of money, value, play, informal economy, social change and leadership.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Political and Economic Anthropology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2019
Names and Naming in Early Modern Germany
Plummer, M. E. & Harrington, J. F. (eds)
Throughout the many political and social upheavals of the early modern era, names were words to conjure by, articulating significant historical trends and helping individuals and societies make sense of often dramatic periods of change. Centered on onomastics—the study of names—in the German-speaking lands, this volume, gathering leading scholars across multiple disciplines, explores the dynamics and impact of naming (and renaming) processes in a variety of contexts—social, artistic, literary, theological, and scientific—in order to enhance our understanding of individual and collective experiences.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
May 2019
One Sound, Two Worlds
The Blues in a Divided Germany, 1945-1990
Rauhut, M.
For all of its apparent simplicity—a few chords, twelve bars, and a supposedly straightforward American character—blues music is a complex phenomenon with cultural significance that has varied greatly across different historical contexts. One Sound, Two Worlds examines the development of the blues in East and West Germany, demonstrating the multiple ways social and political conditions can shape the meaning of music. Based on new archival research and conversations with key figures, this comparative study provides a cultural, historical, and musicological account of the blues and the impact of the genre not only in the two Germanys, but also in debates about the history of globalization.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
April 2019
On the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification
Chun, A.
On the Geopragmatics of Anthropological Identification explores the discursive spaces of our speaking position, or what has routinely been referred to in the literature as the poetics and politics of writing culture. At issue here are its problematic underlying notions of cultural identity, authorial subjectivity and postcolonial critique. Contrary to the widespread assumption that cultural studies and the social sciences share a common discourse of culture and society, Allen Chun argues that 'modern' disciplinary practices and axioms have in fact produced inherently incompatible theories. Anthropology's ethical relativism has also created obstacles for a critical theory of culture and society.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2019
Negotiating the Secular and the Religious in the German Empire
Transnational Approaches
Habermas, R. (ed)
With its rapid industrialization, modernization, and gradual democratization, Imperial Germany has typically been understood in secular terms. However, religion and religious actors actually played crucial roles in the history of the Kaiserreich, a fact that becomes particularly evident when viewed through a transnational lens. In this volume, leading scholars of sociology, religious studies, and history study the interplay of secular and religious worldviews beyond the simple interrelation of practices and ideas. By exploring secular perspectives, belief systems, and rituals in a transnational context, they provide new ways of understanding how the borders between Imperial Germany’s secular and religious spheres were continually made and remade.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2019
Persistently Postwar
Media and the Politics of Memory in Japan
Guarné, B., Lozano-Méndez, A., & Martinez, D. P. (eds)
From melodramas to experimental documentaries to anime, mass media in Japan constitute a key site in which the nation’s social memory is articulated, disseminated, and contested. Through a series of stimulating case studies, this volume examines the political and cultural representations of Japan’s past, showing how they have reinforced personal and collective narratives while also formulating new cultural meanings, both on a local scale and in the context of transnational media production and consumption. Drawing upon diverse disciplinary insights and methodologies, these studies collectively offer a nuanced account in which mass media function as much more than a simple ideological tool.
Subjects: Media Studies Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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eBook available
March 2019
Raccomandazione
Clientelism and Connections in Italy
Zinn, D. L.
The issue of patronage-clientelism has long been of interest in the social sciences. Based on long-term ethnographic research in southern Italy, this book examines the concept and practice of raccomandazione: the omnipresent social institution of using connections to get things done. Viewing the practice both from an indigenous perspective – as a morally ambivalent social fact – and considering it in light of the power relations that position southern Italy within the nesting relations of global Norths and Souths, it builds on and extends past scholarship to consider the nature of patronage in a contemporary society and its relationship to corruption.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Applied Anthropology
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eBook available
March 2019
How Materials Matter
Design, Innovation and Materiality in the Pacific
Were, G.
How does design and innovation shape people’s lives in the Pacific? Focusing on plant materials from the region, How Materials Matter reveals ways in which a variety of people – from craftswomen and scientists to architects and politicians – work with materials to transform worlds. Recognizing the fragile and ephemeral nature of plant fibres, this work delves into how the biophysical properties of certain leaves and their aesthetic appearance are utilized to communicate information and manage different forms of relations. It breaks new ground by situating plant materials at the centre of innovation in a region.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2019
Rampart Nations
Bulwark Myths of East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism
Berezhnaya, L. & Hein-Kircher, H. (eds)
The “bulwark” or antemurale myth—whereby a region is imagined as a defensive barrier against a dangerous Other—has been a persistent strand in the development of Eastern European nationalisms. While historical studies of the topic have typically focused on clashes and overlaps between sociocultural and religious formations, Rampart Nations delves deeper to uncover the mutual transfers and multi-sided national and interconfessional conflicts that helped to spread bulwark myths through Europe’s eastern periphery over several centuries. Ranging from art history to theology to political science, this volume offers new ways of understanding the political, social, and religious forces that continue to shape identity in Eastern Europe.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
February 2019
Screening Art
Modernist Aesthetics and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema
Allan, S.
With internationalist aspirations and wide-ranging historical perspectives, East German films about artists and their work became hotly contested spaces in which filmmakers could look beyond the GDR and debate the impact of contemporary cultural policy on the reception of their pre-war cultural heritage. Spanning newsreels, documentaries, and feature films, Screening Art is the first full-length investigation into a genre that has been largely overlooked in studies of DEFA, the state-owned Eastern German film studio. As it shows, “artist-films” played an essential role in the development of new paradigms of socialist art in postwar Europe.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
January 2019
The Arkansas Regulators
Gerstäcker, F.
Adams, C. & Irmscher, C. (eds)The Arkansas Regulators is a rousing tale of frontier adventure, first published in German in 1846, but virtually lost to English readers for well over a century. Written in the tradition of James Fenimore Cooper, but offering a much darker and more violent image of the American frontier, this was the first novel produced by Friedrich Gerstäcker, who would go on to become one of Germany’s most famous and prolific authors. A crucial piece of a nineteenth-century transatlantic literary tradition, this long-awaited translation and scholarly edition of the novel offers a startling revision of the frontier myth from a European perspective.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
December 2018
Conceptualizing the World
An Exploration across Disciplines
Jordheim, H. & Sandmo, E. (eds)
What is—and what was—“the world”? Though often treated as interchangeable with the ongoing and inexorable progress of globalization, concepts of “world,” “globe,” or “earth” instead suggest something limited and absolute. This innovative and interdisciplinary volume concerns itself with this central paradox: that the complex, heterogeneous, and purportedly transhistorical dynamics of globalization have given rise to the idea and reality of a finite—and thus vulnerable—world. Through studies of illuminating historical moments that range from antiquity to the era of Google Earth, each contribution helps to trace the emergence of the world in multitudinous representations, practices, and human experiences.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology (General)
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eBook available
December 2018
Dreams of Germany
Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor
Gregor, N. & Irvine, T. (eds)
For many centuries, Germany has enjoyed a reputation as the ‘land of music’. But just how was this reputation established and transformed over time, and to what extent was it produced within or outside of Germany? Through case studies that range from Bruckner to the Beatles and from symphonies to dance-club music, this volume looks at how German musicians and their audiences responded to the most significant developments of the twentieth century, including mass media, technological advances, fascism, and war on an unprecedented scale.
Subjects: Media Studies History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Performance Studies
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eBook available
November 2018
Sofia Coppola
The Politics of Visual Pleasure
Backman Rogers, A.
A feminist study of the mood, texture, tone, and multifaceted meaning of director Sofia Coppola’s aesthetic through her most influential and well-known films.
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2019
“With this book Rogers has produced a sophisticated and impassioned analysis of Coppola’s work… Rogers’s main argument – that Coppola manipulates pleasurable images to unsettle rather than mollify us – is utterly convincing. If nothing else, this certainly hits home in relation to my own enchantment with Coppola’s work.”—Bright Lights Film Journal
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 misconstrues 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.
From the Introduction:
Sofia Coppola possesses a highly sophisticated and intricate knowledge of how images come to work on us; that is, she understands precisely how to construct an image – what to add in and what to remove – in order to achieve specific moods, tones and cinematic affects. She knows that similar kinds of images can have vastly different effects on the viewer depending on their context…. This monograph is an extended study of Coppola’s outstanding ability to think through and in images.Subjects: Film and Television Studies Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2018
Curating Live Arts
Critical Perspectives, Essays, and Conversations on Theory and Practice
Davida, D., Pronovost, M., Hudom, V., & Gabriels, J. (eds)
Situated at the crossroads of performance practice, museology, and cultural studies, live arts curation has grown in recent years to become a vibrant interdisciplinary project and a genuine global phenomenon. Curating Live Arts brings together bold and innovative essays from an international group of theorist-practitioners to pose vital questions, propose future visions, and survey the landscape of this rapidly evolving discipline. Reflecting the field’s characteristic eclecticism, the writings assembled here offer practical and insightful investigations into the curation of theatre, dance, sound art, music, and other performance forms—not only in museums, but in community, site-specific, and time-based contexts, placing it at the forefront of contemporary dialogue and discourse.
Subjects: Performance Studies Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2018
Non-Humans in Amerindian South America
Ethnographies of Indigenous Cosmologies, Rituals and Songs
Rivera Andía, J. J. (ed)
Drawing on fieldwork from diverse Amerindian societies whose lives and worlds are undergoing processes of transformation, adaptation, and deterioration, this volume offers new insights into the indigenous constitutions of humanity, personhood, and environment characteristic of the South American highlands and lowlands. The resulting ethnographies – depicting non-human entities emerging in ritual, oral tradition, cosmology, shamanism and music – explore the conditions and effects of unequally ranked life forms, increased extraction of resources, continuous migration to urban centers, and the (usually) forced incorporation of current expressions of modernity into indigenous societies.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2018
The Art of Resistance
Cultural Protest against the Austrian Far Right in the Early Twenty-First Century
Fiddler, A.
Well before the far-right resurgence that has most recently transformed European politics, Austria’s 1999 parliamentary elections surprised the world with the unexpected success of the Freedom Party of Austria and its charismatic leader, Jörg Haider. The party’s perceived xenophobia, isolationism, and unabashed nationalism in turn inspired a massive protest movement that expressed opposition not only through street protests but also in novels, plays, films, and music. Through careful readings of this varied cultural output, The Art of Resistance traces the aesthetic styles and strategies deployed during this time, providing critical context for understanding modern Austrian history as well as the European protest movements of today.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2018
Polish Cinema
A History
Haltof, M.
First published in 2002, Marek Haltof’s seminal volume was the first comprehensive English-language study of Polish cinema, providing a much-needed survey of one of Europe’s most distinguished—yet unjustly neglected—film cultures. Since then, seismic changes have reshaped Polish society, European politics, and the global film industry. This thoroughly revised and updated edition takes stock of these dramatic shifts to provide an essential account of Polish cinema from the nineteenth century to today, covering such renowned figures as Kieślowski, Skolimowski, and Wajda along with vastly expanded coverage of documentaries, animation, and television, all set against the backdrop of an ever-more transnational film culture.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
August 2018
The Wheel of Autonomy
Rhetoric and Ethnicity in the Omo Valley
Girke, F.
How do the Kara, a small population residing on the eastern bank of the Omo River in southern Ethiopia, manage to be neither annexed nor exterminated by any of the larger groups that surround them? Through the theoretical lens of rhetoric, this book offers an interactionalist analysis of how the Kara negotiate ethnic and non-ethnic differences among themselves, the relations with their various neighbors, and eventually their integration in the Ethiopian state. The model of the “Wheel of Autonomy” captures the interplay of distinction, agency and autonomy that drives these dynamics and offers an innovative perspective on social relations.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2018
Mirrors of Passing
Unlocking the Mysteries of Death, Materiality, and Time
Seebach, S. & Willerslev, R. (eds)
Without exception, all people are faced with the inevitability of death, a stark fact that has immeasurably shaped societies and individual consciousness for the whole of human history. Mirrors of Passing offers a powerful window into this oldest of human preoccupations by investigating the interrelationships of death, materiality, and temporality across far-flung times and places. Stretching as far back as Ancient Egypt and Greece and moving through present-day locales as diverse as Western Europe, Central Asia, and the Arctic, each of the richly illustrated essays collected here draw on a range of disciplinary insights to explore some of the most fundamental, universal questions that confront us.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology of Religion
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eBook available
July 2018
Ethnographies of Movement, Sociality and Space
Place-Making in the New Northern Ireland
Komarova, M. & Svašek, M. (eds)
Exploring the complex dynamics of twenty-first century spatial sociality, this volume provides a much-needed multi-dimensional perspective that undermines the dominant image of Northern Ireland as a conflict-ridden place. Despite touching on memories of “the Troubles” and continuing unionist-nationalist tensions, the volume refuses to consider people in the region as purely political beings, or to understand processes of placemaking solely through ethnic or national contestations and territoriality. Topics such as the significance of friendship, gender, and popular culture in spatial practices are considered, against the backdrop of the growing presence of migrants, refugees and diasporic groups.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
May 2018
Dreams Made Small
The Education of Papuan Highlanders in Indonesia
Munro, J.
For the last five decades, the Dani of the central highlands of West Papua, along with other Papuans, have struggled with the oppressive conditions of Indonesian rule. Formal education holds the promise of escape from stigmatization and violence. Dreams Made Small offers an in-depth, ethnographic look at journeys of education among young Dani men and women, asking us to think differently about education as a trajectory for transformation and belonging, and ultimately revealing how dreams of equality are shaped and reshaped in the face of multiple constraints.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Educational Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
April 2018
Burgundy
The Global Story of Terroir
Demossier, M.
“Demossier’s engrossing analysis of Burgundy—the wine, the place, the brand—should be imbibed (pun intended!) on many levels—and slowly, for best appreciation.”—foodanthro.com
Drawing on more than twenty years of fieldwork, this book explores the professional, social, and cultural world of Burgundy wines, the role of terroir (the environmental factors that affect a crop's character), and its transnational deployment in China, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand.
It demystifies the terroir ideology by providing a unique long-term ethnographic analysis of what lies behind the concept. While the Burgundian model of terroir has gone global by acquiring UNESCO world heritage status, its very legitimacy is now being challenged amongst the vineyards where it first took root.
From the introduction:
Superficially then, Burgundy might appear to be simply acquiring recognition for its unchanging landscape, tradition and culture. Yet, for all the power of its rich local identity, folklore and culture which is broadcast to the world, there hides underneath the comforting blanket of this seamless place, untouched by change or conflict, a far more complex reality. Burgundy’s listing as a World Heritage landscape emphasises its international reputation as a traditional and historical site of wine production and opens a new chapter in the production and marketing of its quality, differentiation and authenticity. It is also about readjusting Burgundy and the grands crus in response to a changing global market and the shifting kaleidoscope of world wine values.Subjects: Anthropology (General) Food & Nutrition Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
April 2018
The Virago Story
Assessing the Impact of a Feminist Publishing Phenomenon
Riley, C.
The 1970s witnessed a renaissance in women’s print culture, as feminist presses and bookshops sprang up in the wake of the second-wave women’s movement. At four decades’ remove from that heady era, however, the landscape looks dramatically different, with only one press from the period still active in contemporary publishing: Virago. This engaging history explains how, from modest beginnings, Virago managed to weather epochal transformations in gender politics, literary culture, and the book publishing business. Drawing on original interviews with many of the press's principal figures, it gives a compelling account of Virago’s place in recent women's history while also reflecting on the fraught relationship between activism and commerce.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
March 2018
Heading for the Scene of the Crash
The Cultural Analysis of America
Drummond, L.
American anthropologists have long advocated cultural anthropology as a tool for cultural critique, yet seldom has that approach been employed in discussions of major events and cultural productions that impact the lives of tens of millions of Americans. This collection of essays aims to refashion cultural analysis into a hard-edged tool for the study of American society and culture, addressing topics including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, abortion, sports doping, and the Jonestown massacre-suicides. Grounded in the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, the essays advance an inquiry into the nature of culture in American society.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2018
Money at the Margins
Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion, and Design
Maurer, B., Musaraj, S., & Small, I. V. (eds)
Mobile money, e-commerce, cash cards, retail credit cards, and more—as new monetary technologies become increasingly available, the global South has cautiously embraced these mediums as a potential solution to the issue of financial inclusion. How, if at all, do new forms of dematerialized money impact people’s everyday financial lives? In what way do technologies interact with financial repertoires and other socio-cultural institutions? How do these technologies of financial inclusion shape the global politics and geographies of difference and inequality? These questions are at the heart of Money at the Margins, a groundbreaking exploration of the uses and socio-cultural impact of new forms of money and financial services.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Political and Economic Anthropology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
January 2018
Contrarian Anthropology
The Unwritten Rules of Academia
Nader, L.
Analyzing the workings of boundary maintenance in the areas of anthropology, energy, gender, and law, Nader contrasts dominant trends in academia with work that pushes the boundaries of acceptable methods and theories. Although the selections illustrate the history of one anthropologist’s work over half a century, the wider intent is to label a field as contrarian to reveal unwritten rules that sometimes hinder transformative thinking and to stimulate boundary crossing in others.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
December 2017
Returning Life
Language, Life Force and History in Kilimanjaro
Myhre, K. C.
A group of Chagga-speaking men descend the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro to butcher animals and pour milk, beer, and blood on the ground, requesting rain for their continued existence. Returning Life explores how this event engages activities where life force is transferred and transformed to afford and affect beings of different kinds. Historical sources demonstrate how the phenomenon of life force encompasses coffee cash-cropping, Catholic Christianity, and colonial and post-colonial rule, and features in cognate languages from throughout the area. As this vivid ethnography explores how life projects through beings of different kinds, it brings to life concepts and practices that extend through time and space, transcending established analytics.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
November 2017
Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin
Bauer, K. & Hosek, J. R. (eds)
Since Unification and the end of the Cold War, Berlin has witnessed a series of uncommonly intense social, political, and cultural transformations. While positioning itself as a creative center populated by young and cosmopolitan global citizens, the “New Berlin” is at the same time a rich site of historical memory, defined inescapably by its past even as it articulates German and European hopes for the future. Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin presents a fascinating cross-section of life in Germany’s largest city, revealing the complex ways in which globalization, ethnicity, economics, memory, and national identity inflect how its urban spaces are inhabited and depicted.
Subjects: Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
November 2017
Vital Diplomacy
The Ritual Everyday on a Dammed River in Amazonia
Nahum-Claudel. C.
In Brazil, where forest meets savanna, new towns, agribusiness and hydroelectricity plants form a patchwork with the indigenous territories. Here, agricultural work, fishing, songs, feasts and exchanges occupy the Enawenê-nawê for eight months of each year, during a season called Yankwa. Vital Diplomacy focuses on this major ceremonial cycle to shed new light on classic Amazonian themes such as kinship, gender, manioc cultivation and cuisine, relations with non-humans and foreigners, and the interplay of myth and practice, exploring how ritual contains and diverts the threat of violence by reconciling antagonistic spirits, coordinating social and gender divides, and channelling foreign relations and resources.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2017
Culture Change and Ex-Change
Syncretism and Anti-Syncretism in Bena, Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea
Knapp, R.
How is cultural change perceived and performed by members of the Bena Bena language group, who live in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea? In her analysis, Knapp draws upon existing bodies of work on ‘culture change’, ‘exchange’ and ‘person’ in Melanesia but brings them together in a new way by conjoining traditional models with theoretical approaches of the new Melanesian ethnography and with collaborative, reflexive and reverse anthropology.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology of Religion
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eBook available
October 2017
Foucault's Orient
The Conundrum of Cultural Difference, From Tunisia to Japan
Lazreg, M.
Foucault lived in Tunisia for two years and travelled to Japan and Iran more than once. Yet throughout his critical scholarship, he insisted that the cultures of the “Orient” constitute the “limit” of Western rationality. Using archival research supplemented by interviews with key scholars in Tunisia, Japan and France, this book examines the philosophical sources, evolution as well as contradictions of Foucault’s experience with non-Western cultures. Beyond tracing Foucault’s journey into the world of otherness, the book reveals the personal, political as well as methodological effects of a radical conception of cultural difference that extolled the local over the cosmopolitan.
Subjects: Sociology Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2017
Mimesis and Pacific Transcultural Encounters
Making Likenesses in Time, Trade, and Ritual Reconfigurations
Mageo, J. & Hermann, E. (eds)
How do images circulating in Pacific cultures and exchanged between them and their many visitors transform meanings for all involved? This fascinating collection explores how through mimesis, wayfarers and locales alike borrow images from one another to expand their cultural repertoire of meanings or borrow images from their own past to validate their identities.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2017
Eastern Europe Unmapped
Beyond Borders and Peripheries
Kacandes, I. & Komska, Y. (eds)
Arguably more than any other region, the area known as Eastern Europe has been defined by its location on the map. Yet its inhabitants, from statesmen to literati and from cultural-economic elites to the poorest emigrants, have consistently forged or fathomed links to distant lands, populations, and intellectual traditions. Through a series of inventive cultural and historical explorations, Eastern Europe Unmapped dispenses with scholars’ long-time preoccupation with national and regional borders, instead raising provocative questions about the area’s non-contiguous—and frequently global or extraterritorial—entanglements.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
October 2017
Gender in Georgia
Feminist Perspectives on Culture, Nation, and History in the South Caucasus
Barkaia, M. & Waterston, A. (eds)
As Georgia seeks to reinvent itself as a nation-state in the post-Soviet period, Georgian women are maneuvering, adjusting, resisting and transforming the new economic, social and political order. In Gender in Georgia, editors Maia Barkaia and Alisse Waterston bring together an international group of feminist scholars to explore the socio-political and cultural conditions that have shaped gender dynamics in Georgia from the late 19th century to the present. In doing so, they provide the first-ever woman-centered collection of research on Georgia, offering a feminist critique of power in its many manifestations, and an assessment of women’s political agency in Georgia.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2017
Moral Engines
Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life
Mattingly, C., Dyring, R., Louw, M., & Schwarz Wentzer, T. (eds)
In the past fifteen years, there has been a virtual explosion of anthropological literature arguing that morality should be considered central to human practice. Out of this explosion new and invigorating conversations have emerged between anthropologists and philosophers. Moral Engines: Exploring the Ethical Drives in Human Life includes essays from some of the foremost voices in the anthropology of morality, offering unique interdisciplinary conversations between anthropologists and philosophers about the moral engines of ethical life, addressing the question: What propels humans to act in light of ethical ideals?
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2017
The Anthropology of the Fetus
Biology, Culture, and Society
Han, S., Betsinger, T. K., & Scott, A. B. (eds)
As a biological, cultural, and social entity, the human fetus is a multifaceted subject which calls for equally diverse perspectives to fully understand. Anthropology of the Fetus seeks to achieve this by bringing together specialists in biological anthropology, archaeology, and cultural anthropology. Contributors draw on research in prehistoric, historic, and contemporary sites in Europe, Asia, North Africa, and North America to explore the biological and cultural phenomenon of the fetus, raising methodological and theoretical concerns with the ultimate goal of developing a holistic anthropology of the fetus.
Subjects: Medical Anthropology Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2017
Cultural Borders of Europe
Narratives, Concepts and Practices in the Present and the Past
Andrén, M., Lindkvist, T., Söhrman, I. & Vajta, K. (eds)
The cultural borders of Europe are today more visible than ever, and with them comes a sense of uncertainty with respect to liberal democratic traditions: whether treated as abstractions or concrete realities, cultural divisions challenge concepts of legitimacy and political representation as well as the legal bases for citizenship. Thus, an understanding of such borders and their consequences is of utmost importance for promoting the evolution of democracy. Cultural Borders of Europe provides a wide-ranging exploration of these lines of demarcation in a variety of regions and historical eras, providing essential insights into the state of European intercultural relations today.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2017
A Goddess in Motion
Visual Creativity in the Cult of María Lionza
Canals, R.
The current practice of the cult of María Lionza is one of the most important and yet unexplored religious practices in Venezuela. Based on long-term fieldwork, this book explores the role of images and visual culture within the cult. By adopting a relational approach, A Goddess in Motion shows how the innumerable images of this goddess—represented as an Indian, white or mestizo woman—move constantly from objects to bodies, from bodies to dreams, and from the religion domain to the art world. In short, this book is a fascinating study that sheds light on the role of visual creativity in contemporary religious manifestations.
Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
July 2017
Travel and Representation
Lean, G., Staiff, R., & Waterton, E. (eds)
Travel and Representation is a timely volume of essays that explores and re-examines the various convergences between literature, art, photography, television, cinema and travel. The essays do so in a way that appreciates the entanglement of representations and travel at a juncture in theoretical work that recognizes the limits of representation, things that lie outside of representation and the continuing power of representation. The emphasis is on the myriad ways travelers/scholars employ representation in their writing/analyses as they re-think the intersections between travelers, fields of representation, imagination, emotions and corporeal experiences in the past, the present and the future.
Subjects: Heritage Studies Travel and Tourism Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
June 2017
Organic Cinema
Film, Architecture, and the Work of Béla Tarr
Botz-Bornstein, T.
The “organic” is by now a venerable concept within aesthetics, architecture, and art history, but what might such a term mean within the spatialities and temporalities of film? By way of an answer, this concise and innovative study locates organicity in the work of Béla Tarr, the renowned Hungarian filmmaker and pioneer of the “slow cinema” movement. Through a wholly original analysis of the long take and other signature features of Tarr’s work, author Thorsten Botz-Bornstein establishes compelling links between the seemingly remote spheres of film and architecture, revealing shared organic principles that emphasize the transcendence of boundaries.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
May 2017
Redescribing Relations
Strathernian Conversations on Ethnography, Knowledge and Politics
Lebner, A. (ed)
Marilyn Strathern is among the most creative and celebrated contemporary anthropologists, and her work draws interest from across the humanities and social sciences. Redescribing Relations brings some of Strathern’s most committed and renowned readers into conversation in her honour – especially on themes she has rarely engaged. The volume not only deepens our understanding of Strathern’s work, it also offers models of how to extend her relational insights to new terrains. With a comprehensive introduction, a complete list of Strathern's publications and a historic interview published in English for the first time, this is an invaluable resource for Strathern’s old and new interlocutors alike.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
February 2017
Reluctant Skeptic
Siegfried Kracauer and the Crises of Weimar Culture
Craver, H. T.
The journalist and critic Siegfried Kracauer is best remembered today for his investigations of film and other popular media, and for his seminal influence on Frankfurt School thinkers like Theodor Adorno. Less well known is his earlier work, which offered a seismographic reading of cultural fault lines in Weimar-era Germany, with an eye to the confrontation between religious revival and secular modernity. In this discerning study, historian Harry T. Craver reconstructs and richly contextualizes Kracauer’s early output, showing how he embodied the contradictions of modernity and identified the quasi-theological impulses underlying the cultural ferment of the 1920s.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies
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eBook available
December 2016
Breaking Rocks
Music, Ideology and Economic Collapse, from Paris to Kinshasa
Trapido, J.
Based on fieldwork in Kinshasa and Paris, Breaking Rocks examines patronage payments within Congolese popular music, where a love song dedication can cost 6,000 dollars and a simple name check can trade for 500 or 600 dollars. Tracing this system of prestige through networks of musicians and patrons – who include gangsters based in Europe, kleptocratic politicians in Congo, and lawless diamond dealers in northern Angola – this book offers insights into ideologies of power and value in central Africa’s troubled post-colonial political economy, as well as a glimpse into the economic flows that make up the hidden side of the globalization.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Political and Economic Anthropology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
December 2016
Against Exoticism
Toward the Transcendence of Relativism and Universalism in Anthropology
Kapferer, B. & Theodossopoulos, D. (eds)
Anthropology begins in the encounter with the ‘exotic’: what stands outside of—and challenges—conventional or established understandings. This volume confronts the distortions of orientalism, ethnocentrism, and romantic nostalgia to expose exoticism, defined as the construction of false and unsubstantiated difference. Its aim is to re-found the importance of the exotic in the development of anthropological knowledge and to overcome methodological dualisms and dualistic approaches.
Chapters look at the risk of exoticism in the perspectivist approach, the significant exotic corrective of Lévi-Strauss vis-à-vis an imperializing Eurocentrism, our nostalgic relationship with the ethnographic record, and the attempts of local communities to readapt previous exoticized referents, renegotiate their identity, and ‘counter-exoticize.’ This volume demonstrates a range of approaches that will be valuable for researchers and students seeking to effectively establish comparative methodological frameworks that transcend issues of relativism and universalism.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
November 2016
War Stories
The War Memoir in History and Literature
Dwyer, P. (ed)
Although war memoirs constitute a rich, varied literary form, they are often dismissed by historians as unreliable. This collection of essays is one of the first to explore the modern war memoir, revealing the genre’s surprising capacity for breadth and sophistication while remaining sensitive to the challenges it poses for scholars. Covering conflicts from the Napoleonic era to today, the studies gathered here consider how memoirs have been used to transmit particular views of war even as they have emerged within specific social and political contexts.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies Memory Studies
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eBook available
November 2016
Memory Unbound
Tracing the Dynamics of Memory Studies
Bond, L., Craps, S., & Vermeulen, P. (eds)
Though still a relatively young field, memory studies has undergone significant transformations since it first coalesced as an area of inquiry. Increasingly, scholars understand memory to be a fluid, dynamic, unbound phenomenon—a process rather than a reified object. Embodying just such an elastic approach, this state-of-the-field collection systematically explores the transcultural, transgenerational, transmedial, and transdisciplinary dimensions of memory—four key dynamics that have sometimes been studied in isolation but never in such an integrated manner. Memory Unbound places leading researchers in conversation with emerging voices in the field to recast our understanding of memory’s distinctive variability.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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eBook available
July 2016
The Total Work of Art
Foundations, Articulations, Inspirations
Imhoof, D., Menninger, M. E., & Steinhoff, A. J. (eds)
For two centuries, Gesamtkunstwerk—the ideal of the “total work of art”—has exerted a powerful influence over artistic discourse and practice, spurring new forms of collaboration and provoking debates over the political instrumentalization of art. Despite its popular conflation with the work of Richard Wagner, Gesamtkunstwerk’s lineage and legacies extend well beyond German Romanticism, as this wide-ranging collection demonstrates. In eleven compact chapters, scholars from a variety of disciplines trace the idea’s evolution in German-speaking Europe, from its foundations in the early nineteenth century to its manifold articulations and reimaginings in the twentieth century and beyond, providing an uncommonly broad perspective on a distinctly modern cultural form.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Performance Studies
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eBook available
July 2016
Creativity in Transition
Politics and Aesthetics of Cultural Production Across the Globe
Svašek, M. & Meyer, B. (eds)
In an era of intensifying globalization and transnational connectivity, the dynamics of cultural production and the very notion of creativity are in transition. Exploring creative practices in various settings, the book does not only call attention to the spread of modernist discourses of creativity, from the colonial era to the current obsession with ‘innovation’ in neo-liberal capitalist cultural politics, but also to the less visible practices of copying, recycling and reproduction that occur as part and parcel of creative improvization.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2016
Designing Worlds
National Design Histories in an Age of Globalization
Fallan, K. & Lees-Maffei, G. (eds)
From consumer products to architecture to advertising to digital technology, design is an undeniably global phenomenon. Yet despite their professed transnational perspective, historical studies of design have all too often succumbed to a bias toward Western, industrialized nations. This diverse but rigorously curated collection recalibrates our understanding of design history, reassessing regional and national cultures while situating them within an international context. Here, contributors from five continents offer nuanced studies that range from South Africa to the Czech Republic, all the while sensitive to the complexities of local variation and the role of nation-states in identity construction.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies
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eBook available
May 2016
Tropics of Vienna
Colonial Utopias of the Habsburg Empire
Bach, U. E.
The Austrian Empire was not a colonial power in the sense that fellow actors like 19th-century England and France were. It nevertheless oversaw a multinational federation where the capital of Vienna was unmistakably linked with its eastern periphery in a quasi-colonial arrangement that inevitably shaped the cultural and intellectual life of the Habsburg Empire. This was particularly evident in the era’s colonial utopian writing, and Tropics of Vienna blends literary criticism, cultural theory, and historical analysis to illuminate this curious genre. By analyzing the works of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Theodor Herzl, Joseph Roth, and other representative Austrian writers, it reveals a shared longing for alternative social and spatial configurations beyond the concept of the “nation-state” prevalent at the time.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present
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eBook available
April 2016
Humour, Comedy and Laughter
Obscenities, Paradoxes, Insights and the Renewal of Life
Sciama, L.D. (ed)
Anthropological writings on humor are not very numerous or extensive, but they do contain a great deal of insight into the diverse mental and social processes that underlie joking and laughter. On the basis of a wide range of ethnographic and textual materials, the chapters examine the cognitive, social, and moral aspects of humor and its potential to bring about a sense of amity and mutual understanding, even among different and possibly hostile people. Unfortunately, though, cartoons, jokes, and parodies can cause irremediable distress and offence. Nevertheless, contributors’ cross-cultural evidence confirms that the positive aspects of humor far outweigh the danger of deepening divisions and fueling hostilities
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies
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eBook available
March 2016
Cutting and Connecting
'Afrinesian' Perspectives on Networks, Relationality, and Exchange
Myhre, K. C. (ed)
Questions regarding the origins, mobility, and effects of analytical concepts continue to emerge as anthropology endeavors to describe similarities and differences in social life around the world. Cutting and Connecting rethinks this comparative enterprise by calling in a conceptual debt that theoretical innovations from Melanesian anthropology owe to network analysis originally developed in African contexts. On this basis, the contributors adopt and employ concepts from recent studies of Melanesia to analyze contemporary life on the African continent and to explore how this exchange influences the borrowed anthropological perspectives. By focusing on ways in which networks are cut and connections are made, these empirical investigations show how particular relationships are created in today’s Africa. In addition, the volume aims for an approach that recasts relationships between theory and place and concepts and ethnography, in a manner that destabilizes the distinction between fieldwork and writing.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
December 2015
Russian Postmodernism
New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture
Epstein, M., Genis, A. A., & Vladiv-Glover-, S. M.
Recent decades have been decisive for Russia not only politically but culturally as well. The end of the Cold War has enabled Russia to take part in the global rise and crystallization of postmodernism. This volume investigates the manifestations of this crucial trend in Russian fiction, poetry, art, and spirituality, demonstrating how Russian postmodernism is its own unique entity. It offers a point of departure and valuable guide to an area of contemporary literary-cultural studies insufficiently represented in English-language scholarship. This second edition includes additional essays on the topic and a new introduction examining the most recent developments.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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December 2015
The Long Aftermath
Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936-2016
Bragança, M. & Tame, P. (eds)
In its totality, the “Long Second World War”—extending from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War to the end of hostilities in 1945—has exerted enormous influence over European culture. Bringing together leading historians, sociologists, and literary and film scholars, this broadly interdisciplinary volume investigates Europeans’ individual and collective memories and the ways in which they have shaped the continent’s cultural heritage. Focusing on the major combatant nations—Spain, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Russia—it offers thoroughly contextualized explorations of novels, memoirs, films, and a host of other cultural forms to illuminate European public memory.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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November 2015
New Hong Kong Cinema
Transitions to Becoming Chinese in 21st-Century East Asia
Cheung, R.
The trajectory of Hong Kong films had been drastically affected long before the city’s official sovereignty transfer from the British to the Chinese in 1997. The change in course has become more visible in recent years as China has aggressively developed its national film industry and assumed the role of powerhouse in East Asia’s cinematic landscape. The author introduces the “Cinema of Transitions” to study the New Hong Kong Cinema and on- and off-screen life against this background. Using examples from the 1980s to the present, this book offers a fresh perspective on how Hong Kong-related Chinese-language films, filmmakers, audiences, and the workings of film business in East Asia have become major platforms on which “transitions” are negotiated.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2015
Time and the Field
Dalsgaard, S. & Nielsen, M. (eds)
In recent years, ethnographic fieldwork has been subjected to analytical scrutiny in anthropology. Ethnography remains anchored in tropes of spatiality with the association between field and fieldworker characterized by distances in space. With updates on the discussion of contemporary requirements to ethnographic research practice, Time and the Field rethinks the notion of the field in terms of time rather than space. Such an approach not only implies a particular attention to the methodology of studying local (social and ontological) imaginaries of time, but furthermore destabilitizes the relationship between fieldworker and fieldsite, allowing it to emerge as a dynamic and ever-shifting constellation.
Subjects: Applied Anthropology Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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October 2015
Recovered Territory
A German-Polish Conflict over Land and Culture, 1919-1989
Polak-Springer, P.
Upper Silesia, one of Central Europe’s most important industrial borderlands, was at the center of heated conflict between Germany and Poland and experienced annexations and border re-drawings in 1922, 1939, and 1945. This transnational history examines these episodes of territorial re-nationalization and their cumulative impacts on the region and nations involved, as well as their use by the Nazi and postwar communist regimes to legitimate violent ethnic cleansing. In their interaction with—and mutual influence on—one another, political and cultural actors from both nations developed a transnational culture of territorial rivalry. Architecture, spaces of memory, films, museums, folklore, language policy, mass rallies, and archeological digs were some of the means they used to give the borderland a “German”/“Polish” face. Representative of the wider politics of twentieth-century Europe, the situation in Upper Silesia played a critical role in the making of history’s most violent and uprooting eras, 1939–1950.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2015
Culture, Catastrophe, and Rhetoric
The Texture of Political Action
Hariman, R. & Cintron, R. (eds)
This volume explores political culture, especially the catastrophic elements of the global social order emerging in the twenty-first century. By emphasizing the texture of political action, the book theorizes how social context becomes evident on the surface of events and analyzes the performative dimensions of political experience. The attention to catastrophe allows for an understanding of how ordinary people contend with normal system operation once it is indistinguishable from system breakdown. Through an array of case studies, the book provides an account of change as it is experienced, negotiated, and resisted in specific settings that define a society’s capacity for political action.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
September 2015
The Event of Charlie Hebdo
Imaginaries of Freedom and Control
Zagato, A. (ed)
The January 2015 shooting at the headquarters of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and the subsequent attacks that took place in the Île-de-France region were staggeringly violent events. They sparked an enormous discussion among citizens and intellectuals from around Europe and beyond. By analyzing the effects the attacks have had in various spheres of social life, including the political, ideology, collective imaginaries, the media, and education, this collection of essays aims to serve as a contribution as well as a critical response to that discussion. The volume observes that the events being attributed to Charlie Hebdo go beyond sensationalist reports of the mainstream media, transcend the spatial confines of nation states, and lend themselves to an ever-expanding number of mutating discursive formations.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
August 2015
Topographies of Suffering
Buchenwald, Babi Yar, Lidice
Rapson, J.
Commentary on memorials to the Holocaust has been plagued with a sense of “monument fatigue”, a feeling that landscape settings and national spaces provide little opportunity for meaningful engagement between present visitors and past victims. This book examines the Holocaust via three sites of murder by the Nazis: the former concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany; the mass grave at Babi Yar, Ukraine; and the razed village of Lidice, Czech Republic. Bringing together recent scholarship from cultural memory and cultural geography, the author focuses on the way these violent histories are remembered, allowing these sites to emerge as dynamic transcultural landscapes of encounter in which difficult pasts can be represented and comprehended in the present. This leads to an examination of the role of the environment, or, more particularly, the ways in which the natural environment, co-opted in the process of killing, becomes a medium for remembrance.
Subjects: Genocide History Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2015
New Imaginaries
Youthful Reinvention of Ukraine's Cultural Paradigm
Rubchak, M.J. (ed)
Having been spared the constraints imposed on intellectual discourse by the totalitarian regime of the past, young Ukrainian scholars now engage with many Western ideological theories and practices in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom and uncensored scholarship. Displacing the Soviet legacy of prescribed thought and practices, this volume’s female contributors have infused their work with Western elements, although vestiges of Soviet-style ideas, research methodology, and writing linger. The result is the articulation of a “New Imaginaries” — neither Soviet nor Western — that offers a unique approach to the study of gender by presenting a portrait of Ukrainian society as seen through the eyes of a new generation of feminist scholars.
Subjects: Sociology Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General)
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May 2015
Fellow Tribesmen
The Image of Native Americans, National Identity, and Nazi Ideology in Germany
Usbeck, F.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Germans exhibited a widespread cultural passion for tales and representations of Native Americans. This book explores the evolution of German national identity and its relationship with the ideas and cultural practices around “Indianthusiasm.” Pervasive and adaptable, imagery of Native Americans was appropriated by Nazi propaganda and merged with exceptionalist notions of German tribalism, oxymoronically promoting the Nazis’ racial ideology. This book combines cultural and intellectual history to scrutinize the motifs of Native American imagery in German literature, media, and scholarship, and analyzes how these motifs facilitated the propaganda effort to nurture national pride, racial thought, militarism, and hatred against the Allied powers among the German populace.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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February 2015
Objects and Imagination
Perspectives on Materialization and Meaning
Fuglerud, Ø. & Wainwright, L. (eds)
Despite the wide interest in material culture, art, and aesthetics, few studies have considered them in light of the importance of the social imagination - the complex ways in which we conceptualize our social surroundings. This collection engages the “material turn” in the arts, humanities, and social sciences through a range of original contributions on creativity in diverse global and contemporary social settings. The authors engage with everyday objects, art, rituals, and ethnographic exhibitions to analyze the relationship between material culture and the social imagination. What results is a better understanding of how the material embodies and influences our idea of the social world.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Museum Studies
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November 2014
Bloom and Bust
Urban Landscapes in the East since German Reunification
Cliver, G. & Smith-Prei, C. (eds)
More than two decades of deconstruction, renovation, and reconstruction have left the urban environments in the former German Democratic Republic completely transformed. This volume considers the changing urban landscapes in the former East — and how the filling of previous absences and the absence of previous presence — creates the cultural landscape of modern unified Germany. This broadens our understanding of this transformation by examining often-neglected cities, spaces, or structures, and historical narration and preservation.
Subjects: Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2014
The Power of Death
Contemporary Reflections on Death in Western Society
Blanco, M.-J. & Vidal, R. (eds)
The social and cultural changes of the last century have transformed death from an everyday fact to something hidden from view. Shifting between the practical and the theoretical, the professional and the intimate, the real and the fictitious, this collection of essays explores the continued power of death over our lives. It examines the idea and experience of death from an interdisciplinary perspective, including studies of changing burial customs throughout Europe; an account of a“dying party” in the Netherlands; examinations of the fascination with violent death in crime fiction and the phenomenon of serial killer art; analyses of death and bereavement in poetry, fiction, and autobiography; and a look at audience reactions to depictions of death on screen. By studying and considering how death is thought about in the contemporary era, we might restore the natural place it has in our lives.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Sociology Literary Studies
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eBook available
October 2014
Anthropology Now and Next
Essays in Honor of Ulf Hannerz
Eriksen, T. H., Garsten, C. & Randeria, S. (eds)
The scholarship of Ulf Hannerz is characterized by its extraordinary breadth and visionary nature. He has contributed to the understanding of urban life and transnational networks, and the role of media, paradoxes of identity and new forms of community, suggesting to see culture in terms of flows rather than as bounded entities. Contributions honor Hannerz’ legacy by addressing theoretical, epistemological, ethical and methodological challenges facing anthropological inquiry on topics from cultural diversity policies in Europe to transnational networks in Yemen, and from pottery and literature to multinational corporations.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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September 2014
Belonging in Oceania
Movement, Place-Making and Multiple Identifications
Hermann, E., Kempf, W. & Meijl, T. van (eds)
Ethnographic case studies explore what it means to “belong” in Oceania, as contributors consider ongoing formations of place, self and community in connection with travelling, internal and international migration. The chapters apply the multi-dimensional concepts of movement, place-making and cultural identifications to explain contemporary life in Oceanic societies. The volume closes by suggesting that constructions of multiple belongings—and, with these, the relevant forms of mobility, place-making and identifications—are being recontextualized and modified by emerging discourses of climate change and sea-level rise.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Mobility Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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August 2014
A Revolution of Perception?
Consequences and Echoes of 1968
Gilcher-Holtey, I. (ed)
The year “1968” marked the climax of protests that simultaneously captured most industrialized Western countries. The protesters challenged the institutions of Western democracies, confronting powerful, established parties and groups with an opposing force and public presence that negated traditional structures of institutional authority and criticized the basic assumptions of the post-war order. Exploring the effects the protest movement of 1968 had on the political, social, and symbolic order of the societies they called into question, this volume focuses on the consequences and echoes of 1968 from different perspectives, including history, sociology, and linguistics.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
August 2014
Vehicles
Cars, Canoes, and Other Metaphors of Moral Imagination
Lipset, D. & Handler, R. (eds)
Metaphor, as an act of human fancy, combines ideas in improbable ways to sharpen meanings of life and experience. Theoretically, this arises from an association between a sign—for example, a cattle car—and its referent, the Holocaust. These “sign-vehicles” serve as modes of semiotic transportation through conceptual space. Likewise, on-the-ground vehicles can be rich metaphors for the moral imagination. Following on this insight, Vehicles presents a collection of ethnographic essays on the metaphoric significance of vehicles in different cultures. Analyses include canoes in Papua New Guinea, pedestrians and airplanes in North America, lowriders among Mexican-Americans, and cars in contemporary China, Japan, and Eastern Europe, as well as among African-Americans in the South. Vehicles not only “carry people around,” but also “carry” how they are understood in relation to the dynamics of culture, politics and history.
Subjects: Transport Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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July 2014
Beyond Alterity
German Encounters with Modern East Asia
Shen, Q. & Rosenstock, M. (eds)
With the economic and political rise of East Asia in the second half of the twentieth century, many Western countries have re-evaluated their links to their Eastern counterparts. Thus, in recent years, Asian German Studies has emerged as a promising branch within interdisciplinary German Studies. This collection of essays examines German-language cultural production pertaining to modern China and Japan, and explicitly challenges orientalist notions by proposing a conception of East and West not as opposites, but as complementary elements of global culture, thereby urging a move beyond national paradigms in cultural studies. Essays focus on the mid-century German-Japanese alliance, Chinese-German Leftist collaborations, global capitalism, travel, identity, and cultural hybridity. The authors include historians and scholars of film and literature, and employ a wide array of approaches from postcolonial, globalization, media, and gender studies. The collection sheds new light on a complex and ambivalentset of international relationships, while also testifying to the potential of Asian German Studies.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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March 2014
Chiasmus and Culture
Wiseman, B. & Paul, A. (eds)
Anyone who has heard of chiasmus is likely to think of it as no more than a piece of rhetorical playfulness, at times challenging, though useful for supplying a memorable sententious note or for performing a pirouette of syntax and thought. Going beyond traditional rhetoric, this volume is concerned with the possibility of using the figure of chiasmus to model a broad array of phenomena, from human relations to artistic creation. In the process, it provides the first book-length study not of chiasmus, the rhetorical figure, but of chiastic thought. The contributors are concerned with chiastic inversion and its place in social interactions, cultural creation, and more generally human thought and experience.They explore from a variety of angles what the unsettling logic of chiasmus (from the Greek meaning “cross-wise”), has to tell us about the world, human relations, cultural patterns, psychology, and artistic and poetic creation.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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March 2014
Connecting Histories of Education
Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post)Colonial Education
Bagchi, B., Fuchs, E. & Rousmaniere, K. (eds)
The history of education in the modern world is a history of transnational and cross-cultural influence. This collection explores those influences in (post) colonial and indigenous education across different geographical contexts. The authors emphasize how local actors constructed their own adaptation of colonialism, identity, and autonomy, creating a multi-centric and entangled history of modern education. In both formal as well as informal aspects, they demonstrate that transnational and cross-cultural exchanges in education have been characterized by appropriation, re-contextualization, and hybridization, thereby rejecting traditional notions of colonial education as an export of pre-existing metropolitan educational systems.
Subjects: Colonial History Educational Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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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: Memory Studies Media Studies Sociology Cultural Studies (General)
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January 2014
Metallic Modern
Everyday Machines in Colonial Sri Lanka
Wickramasinghe, N.
Everyday life in the Crown colony of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was characterized by a direct encounter of people with modernity through the consumption and use of foreign machines – in particular, the Singer sewing machine, but also the gramophone, tramway, bicycle and varieties of industrial equipment. The ‘metallic modern’ of the 19th and early 20th century Ceylon encompassed multiple worlds of belonging and imagination; and enabled diverse conceptions of time to coexist through encounters with Siam, the United States and Japan as well as a new conception of urban space in Colombo. Metallic Modern describes the modern as it was lived and experienced by non-elite groups – tailors, seamstresses, shopkeepers, workers – and suggests that their idea of the modern was nurtured by a changing material world.
Subjects: Colonial History Cultural Studies (General) Development Studies
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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 and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2013
Children of the Dictatorship
Student Resistance, Cultural Politics and the 'Long 1960s' in Greece
Kornetis, K.
Putting Greece back on the cultural and political map of the “Long 1960s,” this book traces the dissent and activism of anti-regime students during the dictatorship of the Colonels (1967-74). It explores the cultural as well as ideological protest of Greek student activists, illustrating how these “children of the dictatorship” managed to re-appropriate indigenous folk tradition for their “progressive” purposes and how their transnational exchange molded a particular local protest culture. It examines how the students’ social and political practices became a major source of pressure on the Colonels’ regime, finding its apogee in the three day Polytechnic uprising of November 1973 which laid the foundations for a total reshaping of Greek political culture in the following decades.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
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.
Subjects: Archaeology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2013
Transcultural Montage
Suhr, C. & Willerslev, R. (eds)
The disruptive power of montage has often been regarded as a threat to scholarly representations of the social world. This volume asserts the opposite: that the destabilization of commonsense perception is the very precondition for transcending social and cultural categories. The contributors—anthropologists, filmmakers, photographers, and curators—explore the use of montage as a heuristic tool for comparative analysis in anthropological writing, film, and exhibition making. Exploring phenomena such as human perception, memory, visuality, ritual, time, and globalization, they apply montage to restructure our basic understanding of social reality. Furthermore, as George E. Marcus suggests in the afterword, the power of montage that this volume exposes lies in its ability to open the very “combustion chamber” of social theory by juxtaposing one’s claims to knowledge with the path undertaken to arrive at those claims.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Film and Television Studies Museum Studies
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October 2013
Ethno-Baroque
Materiality, Aesthetics and Conflict in Modern-Day Macedonia
Dimova, R.
In post-1991 Macedonia, Barok furniture came to represent affluence and success during a period of transition to a new market economy. This furniture marked the beginning of a larger Baroque style that influenced not only interior decorations in people’s homes but also architecture and public spaces. By tracing the signifier Baroque, the book examines the reconfiguration of hierarchical relations among (ethnic) groups, genders, and countries in a transnational context. Investigating how Baroque has come to signify larger social processes and transformations in the current rebranding of the country, the book reveals the close link between aesthetics and politics, and how ethno-national conflicts are reflected in visually appealing ornamentation.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology (General) Media Studies
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eBook available
August 2013
Durkheim, the Durkheimians, and the Arts
Riley, A.T., Pickering, W.S.F., & Watts Miller, W. (eds)
Using a broad definition of the Durkheimian tradition, this book offers the first systematic attempt to explore the Durkheimians’ engagement with art. It focuses on both Durkheim and his contemporaries as well as later thinkers influenced by his work. The first five chapters consider Durkheim’s own exploration of art; the remaining six look at other Durkheimian thinkers, including Marcel Mauss, Henri Hubert, Maurice Halbwachs, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Leiris, and Georges Bataille. The contributors—scholars from a range of theoretical orientations and disciplinary perspectives—are known for having already produced significant contributions to the study of Durkheim. This book will interest not only scholars of Durkheim and his tradition but also those concerned with aesthetic theory and the sociology and history of art.
Subjects: Sociology Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2013
Astonishment and Evocation
The Spell of Culture in Art and Anthropology
Strecker, I. & Verne, M. (eds)
All societies are shaped by arts, media, and other persuasive practices that can awe, captivate, enchant or otherwise seem to cast a spell on the audience. Likewise, scholarship itself often is driven by a sense of wonder and a willingness to be open to what lies beyond the obvious. This book broadens and deepens this perspective. Inspired by Stephen Tyler’s view of ethnography as an art of evocation, international scholars from the fields of aesthetics, anthropology, and rhetoric explore the spellbinding power of elusive meanings as people experience them in daily life and while gazing at works of art, watching films or studying other cultures. The book is divided into three parts covering the evocative power of visual art, the immersion in ritual and performance, and the reading, writing, and interpretation of texts. Taken as a whole, the contributions to the book demonstrate how astonishment and evocation deserve an important place in the conceptual repertoire of the human sciences.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology (General) Media Studies
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eBook available
May 2013
Race, Color, Identity
Rethinking Discourses about 'Jews' in the Twenty-First Century
Sicher, E. (ed)
Advances in genetics are renewing controversies over inherited characteristics, and the discourse around science and technological innovations has taken on racial overtones, such as attributing inherited physiological traits to certain ethnic groups or using DNA testing to determine biological links with ethnic ancestry. This book contributes to the discussion by opening up previously locked concepts of the relation between the terms color, race, and “Jews”, and by engaging with globalism, multiculturalism, hybridity, and diaspora. The contributors—leading scholars in anthropology, sociology, history, literature, and cultural studies—discuss how it is not merely a question of whether Jews are acknowledged to be interracial, but how to address academic and social discourses that continue to place Jews and others in a race/color category.
Subjects: Jewish Studies Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
April 2013
Irish/ness Is All Around Us
Language Revivalism and the Culture of Ethnic Identity in Northern Ireland
Zenker, O.
Focusing on Irish speakers in Catholic West Belfast, this ethnography on Irish language and identity explores the complexities of changing, and contradictory, senses of Irishness and shifting practices of 'Irish culture' in the domains of language, music, dance and sports. The author’s theoretical approach to ethnicity and ethnic revivals presents an expanded explanatory framework for the social (re)production of ethnicity, theorizing the mutual interrelations between representations and cultural practices regarding their combined capacity to engender ethnic revivals. Relevant not only to readers with an interest in the intricacies of the Northern Irish situation, this book also appeals to a broader readership in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, history and political science concerned with the mechanisms behind ethnonational conflict and the politics of culture and identity in general.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Peace and Conflict Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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April 2013
From Fidelity to History
Film Adaptations as Cultural Events in the Twentieth Century
Scholz, A.-M.
Scholarly approaches to the relationship between literature and film, ranging from the traditional focus upon fidelity to more recent issues of intertextuality, all contain a significant blind spot: a lack of theoretical and methodological attention to adaptation as an historical and transnational phenomenon. This book argues for a historically informed approach to American popular culture that reconfigures the classically defined adaptation phenomenon as a form of transnational reception. Focusing on several case studies— including the films Sense and Sensibility (1995) and The Portrait of a Lady (1997), and the classics The Third Man (1949) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)—the author demonstrates the ways adapted literary works function as social and cultural events in history and how these become important sites of cultural negotiation and struggle.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present Film and Television Studies
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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: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies
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eBook available
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: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
January 2013
The Viennese Café and Fin-de-Siècle Culture
Ashby, C., Gronberg, T. & Shaw-Miller, S. (eds)
The Viennese café was a key site of urban modernity around 1900. In the rapidly growing city it functioned simultaneously as home and workplace, affording opportunities for both leisure and intellectual exchange. This volume explores the nature and function of the coffeehouse in the social, cultural, and political world of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Just as the café served as a creative meeting place within the city, so this volume initiates conversations between different disciplines focusing on Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century. Contributions are drawn from the fields of social and cultural history, literary studies, Jewish studies and art, and architectural and design history. A fresh perspective is also provided by a selection of comparative articles exploring coffeehouse culture elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Media Studies Literary Studies
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December 2012
Culture in Dark Times
Nazi Fascism, Inner Emigration, and Exile
Hermand, J.
BETWEEN 1933 AND 1945 MEMBERS OF THREE GROUPS—THE Nazi fascists, Inner Emigration, and Exiles—fought with equal fervor over who could definitively claim to represent the authentically “great German culture,” as it was culture that imparted real value to both the state and the individual. But when authorities made pronouncements about “culture” were they really talking about high art? This book analyzes the highly complex interconnections among the cultural-political concepts of these various ideological groups and asks why the most artistically ambitious art forms were viewed as politically important by all cultured (or even semi-cultured) Germans in the period from 1933 to 1945, with their ownership the object of a bitter struggle between key figures in the Nazi fascist regime, representatives of Inner Emigration, and Germans driven out of the Third Reich.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2012
Beyond Habermas
Democracy, Knowledge, and the Public Sphere
Emden, C. J. & Midgely, D. (eds)
During the 1960s the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas introduced the notion of a “bourgeois public sphere” in order to describe the symbolic arena of political life and conversation that originated with the cultural institutions of the early eighteenth-century; since then the “public sphere” itself has become perhaps one of the most debated concepts at the very heart of modernity. For Habermas, the tension between the administrative power of the state, with its understanding of sovereignty, and the emerging institutions of the bourgeoisie—coffee houses, periodicals, encyclopedias, literary culture, etc.—was seen as being mediated by the public sphere, making it a symbolic site of public reasoning. This volume examines whether the “public sphere” remains a central explanatory model in the social sciences, political theory, and the humanities.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Media Studies Literary Studies
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eBook available
July 2012
After The History of Sexuality
German Genealogies with and Beyond Foucault
Spector, S., Puff, H. & Herzog, D. (eds)
Michel Foucault’s seminal The History of Sexuality (1976–1984) has since its publication provided a context for the emergence of critical historical studies of sexuality. This collection reassesses the state of the historiography on sexuality—a field in which the German case has been traditionally central. In many diverse ways, the Foucauldian intervention has governed the formation of questions in the field as well as the assumptions about how some of these questions should be answered. It can be argued, however, that some of these revolutionary insights have ossified into dogmas or truisms within the field. Yet, as these contributions meticulously reveal, those very truisms, when revisited with a fresh eye, can lead to new, unexpected insights into the history of sexuality, necessitating a return to and reinterpretation of Foucault’s richly complex work. This volume will be necessary reading for students of historical sexuality as well as for those readers in German history and German studies generally who have an interest in the history of sexuality.
Subjects: History (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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July 2012
Changing Perceptions of the Public Sphere
Emden, C. J. & Midgley, D. (eds)
Initially propounded by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas in 1962 in order to describe the realm of social discourse between the state on one hand, and the private sphere of the market and the family on the other, the concept of a bourgeois public sphere quickly became a central point of reference in the humanities and social sciences. This volume reassesses the validity and reach of Habermas’s concept beyond political theory by exploring concrete literary and cultural manifestations in early modern and modern Europe. The contributors ask whether, and in what forms, a social formation that rightfully can be called the “public sphere” really existed at particular historical junctures, and consider the senses in which the “public sphere” should rather be replaced by a multitude of interacting cultural and social “publics.” This volume offers insights into the current status of the “public sphere” within the disciplinary formation of the humanities and social sciences at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
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eBook available
June 2012
Journeys Into Madness
Mapping Mental Illness in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Blackshaw, G. & Wieber, S. (eds)
At the turn of the century, Sigmund Freud’s investigation of the mind represented a particular journey into mental illness, but it was not the only exploration of this ‘territory’ in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Sanatoriums were the new tourism destinations, psychiatrists were collecting art works produced by patients and writers were developing innovative literary techniques to convey a character’s interior life. This collection of essays uses the framework of journeys in order to highlight the diverse artistic, cultural and medical responses to a peculiarly Viennese anxiety about the madness of modern times. The travellers of these journeys vary from patients to doctors, artists to writers, architects to composers and royalty to tourists; in engaging with their histories, the contributors reveal the different ways in which madness was experienced and represented in ‘Vienna 1900’.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
June 2012
Cultures of Colour
Visual, Material, Textual
Horrocks, C. (ed)
Colour permeates contemporary visual and material culture and affects our senses beyond the superficial encounter by infiltrating our perceptions and memories and becoming deeply rooted in thought processes that categorise and divide along culturally constructed lines. Colour exists as a cultural as well as psycho-physical phenomenon and acquires a multitude of meanings within differing historical and cultural contexts. The contributors examine how colour becomes imbued with specific symbolic and material meanings that tint our constructions of race, gender, ideal bodies, the relationship of the self to others and of the self to technology and the built environment. By highlighting the relationship of colour across media and material culture, this volume reveals the complex interplay of cultural connotations, discursive practices and socio-psychological dynamics of colour in an international context.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Sociology
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eBook available
May 2012
Moving Subjects, Moving Objects
Transnationalism, Cultural Production and Emotions
Svašek, M. (ed)
In recent years an increasing number of scholars have incorporated a focus on emotions in their theories of material culture, transnationalism and globalization, and this book aims to contribute to this field of inquiry. It examines how ‘emotions’ can be theorized, and serves as a useful analytical tool for understanding the interrelated mobility of humans, objects and images. Ethnographically rich, and theoretically grounded case studies offer new perspectives on the relations between migration, material culture and emotions. While some chapters address the many different ways in which migrants and migrant artists express their emotions through objects and images in transnational contexts, other chapters focus on how particular works of art, everyday objects and artefacts can evoke feelings specific to particular migrant groups and communities. Case studies also analyse how artists, academics and policy makers can stimulate positive interaction between migrants and non-migrant communities.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Mobility Studies Sociology
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eBook available
April 2012
Images of Power and the Power of Images
Control, Ownership, and Public Space
Kapferer, J. (ed)
Real places and events are constructed and used to symbolize abstract formulations of power and authority in politics, corporate practice, the arts, religion, and community. By analyzing the aesthetics of public space in contexts both mundane and remarkable, the contributors examine the social relationship between public and private activities that impart meaning to groups of people beyond their individual or local circumstances. From a range of perspectives—anthropological, sociological, and socio-cultural—the contributors discuss road-making in Peru, mass housing in Britain, an unsettling traveling exhibition, and an art fair in London; we explore the meaning of walls in Jerusalem, a Zen garden in Japan, and religious themes in Europe and India. Literally and figuratively, these situations influence the ways in which ordinary people interpret their everyday worlds. By deconstructing the taken for- granted definitions of social value (democracy, equality, individualism, fortune), the authors reveal the ideological role of imagery and imagination in a globalized political context.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
April 2012
Crafting 'The Indian'
Knowledge, Desire, and Play in Indianist Reenactment
Kalshoven, P. T.
In Europe, Indian hobbyism, or Indianism, has developed out of a strong fascination with Native American life in the 18th and 19th centuries. “Indian hobbyists” dress in homemade replicas of clothing, craft museum-quality replicas of artifacts, meet in fields dotted with tepees and reenact aspects of North American Indian lifeworlds, using ethnographies, travel diaries, and museum collections as resources. Grounded in fieldwork set among networks of Indian hobbyists in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the Czech Republic, this ethnography analyzes this contemporary practice of serious leisure with respect to the general human desire for play, metaphor, and allusion. It provides insights into the increasing popularity of reenactment practices as they relate to a deeper understanding of human perception, imagination, and creativity.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Museum Studies
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April 2012
Transatlantic Echoes
Alexander von Humboldt in World Literature
Clark, R. & Lubrich, O. (eds)
Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was a world traveler, bestselling writer, and versatile researcher, a European salon sensation, and global celebrity. Yet the enormous literary echo he generated has remained largely unexplored. Humboldt inspired generations of authors, from Goethe and Byron to Enzensberger and García Márquez, to reflect on cultural difference, colonial ideology, and the relation between aesthetics and science. This collection of one-hundred texts features tales of adventure, travel reports, novellas, memoirs, letters, poetry, drama, screenplays, and even comics—many for the first time in English. The selection covers the foundational myths and magical realism of Latin America, the intellectual independence of Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, and Whitman in the United States, discourses in Imperial, Weimar, Nazi, East, and West Germany, as well as recent films and fiction. This documented source book addresses scholars in cultural and postcolonial studies as well as readers in history and comparative literature.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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April 2012
Cosmos and Colonialism
Alexander von Humboldt in Cultural Criticism
Clark, R. & Lubrich, O. (eds)
Alexander von Humboldt explored the Spanish Empire on the verge of its collapse (1799–1804). He is the most significant German travel writer and the most important mediator between Europe and the Americas of the nineteenth century. His works integrated knowledge from two dozen domains. Today, he is at the center of debates on imperial discourse, postcolonialism, and globalization. This collection of fifty essays brings together a range of responses, many presented here for the first time in English. Authors from Schiller, Chateaubriand, Sarmiento, and Nietzsche, to Robert Musil, Kurt Tucholsky, Ernst Bloch, and Alejo Carpentier paint the historical background. Essays by contemporary travel writers and recent critics outline the current controversies on Humboldt. The source materials collected here will be indispensable to scholars of German, French, and Latin and North American literature as well as cultural and postcolonial studies, history, art history, and the history of science.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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April 2012
Myth and Modernity
Barlach's Drawings on the Nibelungen
Paret, P. & Thieme, H.
In interpreting its own age art often turns to the past. At the beginning of the twentieth century one of these encounters between present and past was prompted by the interest a major figure in German modernism, the sculptor Ernst Barlach, came to take in the medieval epic The Song of the Nibelungen. There exists no statement by Barlach to explain what prompted his interest and the resulting sequence of large drawings on the epic’s climactic final segment, reproduced here. In conception and execution these drawings stand out in Barlach’s graphic oeuvre, as they stand apart from the multitude of interpretations the Nibelungen inspired in art, literature, and music. This book discusses the epic and its course through German history, the artist’s biography and the course of his work, as well as the place the drawings occupy in the art, culture, and politics of Germany in the 1920s and 30s and beyond to the ideological and political crises of Central Europe before and after the First World War.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
March 2012
Writing the Dark Side of Travel
Skinner, J. (ed)
The travel experience filled with personal trauma; the pilgrimage through a war-torn place; the journey with those suffering: these represent the darker sides of travel. What is their allure and how are they represented? This volume takes an ethnographic and interdisciplinary approach to explore the writings and texts of dark journeys and travels. In traveling over the dead, amongst the dying, and alongside the suffering, the authors give us a tour of humanity’s violence and misery. And yet, from this dark side, there comes great beauty and poignancy in the characterization of plight; creativity in the comic, graphic, and graffiti sketches and comments on life; and the sense of profound and spiritual journeys being undertaken, recorded, and memorialized.
Subjects: Travel and Tourism Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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eBook available
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: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
January 2012
Concentrationary Cinema
Aesthetics as Political Resistance in Alain Resnais's Night and Fog
Pollock, G. & Silverman, M. (eds)
Since its completion in 1955, Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) has been considered one of the most important films to confront the catastrophe and atrocities of the Nazi era. But was it a film about the Holocaust that failed to recognize the racist genocide? Or was the film not about the Holocaust as we know it today but a political and aesthetic response to what David Rousset, the French political prisoner from Buchenwald, identified on his return in 1945 as the ‘concentrationary universe’ which, now actualized, might release its totalitarian plague any time and anywhere? What kind of memory does the film create to warn us of the continued presence of this concentrationary universe? This international collection re-examines Resnais’s benchmark film in terms of both its political and historical context of representation of the camps and of other instances of the concentrationary in contemporary cinema. Through a range of critical readings, Concentrationary Cinema explores the cinematic aesthetics of political resistance not to the Holocaust as such but to the political novelty of absolute power represented by the concentrationary system and its assault on the human condition.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Genocide History Cultural Studies (General)
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November 2011
Reconstructing the House of Culture
Community, Self, and the Makings of Culture in Russia and Beyond
Donahoe, B. & Habeck, J. O. (eds)
Notions of culture, rituals and their meanings, the workings of ideology in everyday life, public representations of tradition and ethnicity, and the social consequences of economic transition— these are critical issues in the social anthropology of Russia and other postsocialist countries. Engaged in the negotiation of all these is the House of Culture, which was the key institution for cultural activities and implementation of state cultural policies in all socialist states. The House of Culture was officially responsible for cultural enlightenment, moral edification, and personal cultivation—in short, for implementing the socialist state’s program of “bringing culture to the masses.” Surprisingly, little is known about its past and present condition. This collection of ethnographically rich accounts examines the social significance and everyday performance of Houses of Culture and how they have changed in recent decades. In the years immediately following the end of the Soviet Union, they underwent a deep economic and symbolic crisis, and many closed. Recently, however, there have been signs of a revitalization of the Houses of Culture and a re-orientation of their missions and programs. The contributions to this volume investigate the changing functions and meanings of these vital institutions for the communities that they serve.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General)
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October 2011
Ernst L. Freud, Architect
The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home
Welter, V. M.
Ernst L. Freud (1892–1970) was a son of Sigmund Freud and the father of painter Lucian Freud and the late Sir Clement Freud, politician and broadcaster. After his studies in Munich and Vienna, where he and his friend Richard Neutra attended Adolf Loos’s private Bauschule, Freud practiced in Berlin and, after 1933, in London. Even though his work focused on domestic architecture and interiors, Freud was possibly the first architect to design psychoanalytical consulting rooms—including the customary couches—a subject dealt with here for the first time. By interweaving an account of Freud’s professional and personal life in Vienna, Berlin, and London with a critical discussion of selected examples of his domestic architecture, interior designs, and psychoanalytic consulting rooms, the author offers a rich tapestry of Ernst L. Freud’s world. His clients constituted a “Who’s Who” of the Jewish and non-Jewish bourgeoisie in 1920s Berlin and later in London, among them the S. Fischer publisher family, Melanie Klein, Ernest Jones, the Spenders, and Julian Huxley. While moving within a social class known for its cultural and avant-garde activities, Freud refrained from spatial, formal, or technological experiments. Instead, he focused on creating modern homes for his bourgeois clients.
Subjects: Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General) History (General)
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August 2011
Ecofeminism and Rhetoric
Critical Perspectives on Sex, Technology, and Discourse
Vakoch, D. A. (ed)
By drawing on the complex interplay of ecology and feminism, ecofeminists identify links between the domination of nature and the oppression of women. This volume introduces a variety of innovative approaches for advancing ecofeminist activism, demonstrating how words exert power in the world. Contributors explore the interconnections between the dualisms of nature/culture and masculine/feminine, providing new insights into sex and technology through such wide-ranging topics as canine reproduction, orangutan motherhood and energy conservation. Ecofeminist rhetorics of care address environmental problems through cooperation and partnership, rather than hierarchical subordination, encouraging forms of communication that value mutual understanding over persuasion and control. By critically examining ways that theory can help deconstruct domineering practices—exposing the underlying ideologies—a new generation of ecofeminist scholarship illuminates the transformative capacity of language to foster emancipation and liberation.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Environmental Studies (General) Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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May 2011
Russia Before The 'Radiant Future'
Essays in Modern History, Culture, and Society
Confino, M.
One of the major historians of prerevolutionary Russia has collected in this volume some of his most important essays. Written over a number of years, these pioneering works have been revised and updated and are complemented by others being published for the first time. Thematically, they cover major subjects in Imperial Russian history and in historical writing, such as ideas and their role in historical change; the intelligentsia, the nobility, and peasant society; and historiography. The twelve essays raise cardinal questions about current scholarship on Russian history before the upheavals of 1917 and offer original interpretations that are of interest to the educated layman as well as the professional historian.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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May 2011
Max Liebermann and International Modernism
An Artist's Career from Empire to Third Reich
Deshmukh, M., Forster-Hahn, F. & Gaehtgens, B. (eds)
Although Max Liebermann (1847–1935) began his career as a realist painter depicting scenes of rural labor, Dutch village life, and the countryside, by the turn of the century, his paintings had evolved into colorful images of bourgeois life and leisure that critics associated with French impressionism. During a time of increasing German nationalism, his paintings and cultural politics sparked numerous aesthetic and political controversies. His eminent career and his reputation intersected with the dramatic and violent events of modern German history from the Empire to the Third Reich. The Nazis’ persecution of modern and Jewish artists led to the obliteration of Liebermann from the narratives of modern art, but this volume contributes to the recent wave of scholarly literature that works to recover his role and his oeuvre from an international perspective.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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May 2011
The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture
Meyer, C. & Girke, F. (eds)
“Just as rhetoric is founded in culture, culture is founded in rhetoric” - the first half of this central statement from the International Rhetoric Culture Project is abundantly evidenced. It is the latter half that this volume explores: how does culture emerge out of rhetorical action, out of seemingly dispersed individual actions and interactions? The contributors do not rely on rhetorical “text” alone but engage the situational, bodily, and often antagonistic character of cultural and communicative practices. The social situation itself is argued to be the fundamental site of cultural creation, as will-driven social processes are shaped by cognitive dispositions and shape them in turn. Drawing on expertise in a variety of disciplines and regions, the contributors critically engage dialogical approaches in their emphasis on how a view from rhetoric changes our perception of people's intersubjective and conjoint creation of culture.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
May 2011
The Devil's Captain
Ernst Jünger in Nazi Paris, 1941-1944
Mitchell, A.
Author of Nazi Paris, a Choice Academic Book of the Year, Allan Mitchell has researched a companion volume concerning the acclaimed and controversial German author Ernst Jünger who, if not the greatest German writer of the twentieth century, certainly was the most controversial. His service as a military officer during the occupation of Paris, where his principal duty was to mingle with French intellectuals such as Jean Cocteau and with visiting German celebrities like Martin Heidegger, was at the center of disputes concerning his career. Spending more than three years in the French capital, he regularly recorded in a journal revealing impressions of Parisian life and also managed to establish various meaningful social contacts, with the intriguing Sophie Ravoux for one. By focusing on this episode, the most important of Jünger’s adult life, the author brings to bear a wide reading of journals and correspondence to reveal Jünger’s professional and personal experience in wartime and thereafter. This new perspective on the war years adds significantly to our understanding of France's darkest hour.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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April 2011
Beyond Pleasure
Cultures of Modern Asceticism
Peeters, E., van Molle, L. & Wils, K. (eds)
Asceticism, so it is argued in this volume, is a modern category. The ubiquitous cult of the body, of fitness and diet equally evokes the ongoing success of ascetic practices and beliefs. Nostalgic memories of hardship and discipline in the army, youth movements or boarding schools remain as present as the fashionable irritation with the presumed modern-day laziness. In the very texture of contemporary culture, age-old asceticism proves to be remarkably alive. Old ascetic forms were remoulded to serve modern desires for personal authenticity, an authenticity that disconnected asceticism in the course of the nineteenth century from two traditions that had underpinned it since classical antiquity: the public, republican austerity of antiquity and the private, religious asceticism of Christianity. Exploring various aspects such as the history of the body, of aesthetics, science, and social thought in several European countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Belgium), the authors show that modern asceticism remains a deeply ambivalent category. Apart from self-realisation, classical and religious examples continue to haunt the ascetic mind.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Sociology
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eBook available
December 2010
Popular Historiographies in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Cultural Meanings, Social Practices
Paletschek, S. (ed)
Popular presentations of history have recently been discovered as a new field of research, and even though interest in it has been growing noticeably very little has been published on this topic. This volume is one of the first to open up this new area of historical research, introducing some of the work that has emerged in Germany over the past few years. While mainly focusing on Germany (though not exclusively), the authors analyze different forms of popular historiographies and popular presentations of history since 1800 and the interrelation between popular and academic historiography, exploring in particular popular histories in different media and popular historiography as part of memory culture.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2010
The Future of Memory
Crownshaw, R., Kilby, J. & Rowland, A. (eds)
Memory studies has become a rapidly growing area of scholarly as well as public interest. This volume brings together world experts to explore the current critical trends in this new academic field. It embraces work on diverse but interconnected phenomena, such as twenty-first century museums, shocking memorials in present-day Rwanda and the firsthand testimony of the victims of genocidal conflicts. The collection engages with pressing ‘real world’ issues, such as the furor around the recent 9/11 memorial, and what we really mean when we talk about ‘trauma’.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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October 2010
New Dangerous Liaisons
Discourses on Europe and Love in the Twentieth Century
Passerini, L., Ellena, L., & Geppert, A. (eds)
In Europe, love has been given a prominent place in European self-representations from the Enlightenment onwards. The category of love, stemming from private and personal spheres, was given a public function and used to distinguish European civilisation from others. Contributors to this volume trace historical links and analyse specific connections between the two discourses on love and Europe over the course of the twentieth century, exploring the distinctions made between the public and private, the political and personal. In doing so, this volume develops an innovative historiography that includes such resources as autobiographies, love letters, and cinematic representations, and takes issue with the exclusivity of Eurocentrism. Its contributors put forth hypotheses about the historical pre-eminence of emotions and consider this history as a basis for a non-Eurocentric understanding of new possible European identities.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
August 2010
The Ways of Friendship
Anthropological Perspectives
Desai, A. & Killick, E. (eds)
Friendship is an essential part of human experience, involving ideas of love and morality as well as material and pragmatic concerns. Making and having friends is a central aspect of everyday life in all human societies. Yet friendship is often considered of secondary significance in comparison to domains such as kinship, economics and politics. How important are friends in different cultural contexts? What would a study of society viewed through the lens of friendship look like? Does friendship affect the shape of society as much as society moulds friendship? Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe, this volume offers answers to these questions and examines the ideology and practice of friendship as it is embedded in wider social contexts and transformations.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Sociology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
July 2010
Comics in French
The European Bande Dessinée in Context
Grove, L.
Whereas in English-speaking countries comics are for children or adults ‘who should know better’, in France and Belgium the form is recognized as the ‘Ninth Art’ and follows in the path of poetry, architecture, painting and cinema. The bande dessinée [comic strip] has its own national institutions, regularly obtains front-page coverage and has received the accolades of statesmen from De Gaulle onwards. On the way to providing a comprehensive introduction to the most francophone of cultural phenomena, this book considers national specificity as relevant to an anglophone reader, whilst exploring related issues such as text/image expression, historical precedents and sociological implication. To do so it presents and analyses priceless manuscripts, a Franco- American rodent, Nazi propaganda, a museum-piece urinal, intellectual gay porn and a prehistoric warrior who's really Zinedine Zidane.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies Literary Studies
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eBook available
June 2010
Historical Memory in Africa
Dealing with the Past, Reaching for the Future in an Intercultural Context
Diawara, M., Lategan, B., & Rüsen, J. (eds)
A vast amount of literature—both scholarly and popular—now exists on the subject of historical memory, but there is remarkably little available that is written from an African perspective. This volume explores the inner dynamics of memory in all its variations, from its most destructive and divisive impact to its remarkable potential to heal and reconcile. It addresses issues on both the conceptual and the pragmatic level and its theoretical observations and reflections are informed by first-hand experiences and comparative reflections from a German, Indian, and Korean perspective. A new insight is the importance of the future dimension of memory and hence the need to develop the ability to ‘remember with the future in mind’. Historical memory in an African context provides a rich kaleidoscope of the diverse experiences and perspectives—and yet there are recurring themes and similar conclusions, connecting it to a global dialogue to which it has much to contribute, but from which it also has much to receive.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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eBook available
May 2010
Cultural Diversity in Russian Cities
The Urban Landscape in the post-Soviet Era
Gdaniec, C. (ed)
Cultural diversity — the multitude of different lifestyles that are not necessarily based on ethnic culture — is a catchphrase increasingly used in place of multiculturalism and in conjunction with globalization. Even though it is often used as a slogan it does capture a widespread phenomenon that cities must contend with in dealing with their increasingly diverse populations. The contributors examine how Russian cities are responding and through case studies from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Sochi explore the ways in which different cultures are inscribed into urban spaces, when and where they are present in public space, and where and how they carve out their private spaces. Through its unique exploration of the Russian example, this volume addresses the implications of the fragmented urban landscape on cultural practices and discourses, ethnicity, lifestyles and subcultures, and economic practices, and in doing so provides important insights applicable to a global context.
Subjects: Urban Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
April 2010
A European Memory?
Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance
Pakier, M. & Stråth, B. (eds)
An examination of the role of history and memory is vital in order to better understand why the grand design of a United Europe—with a common foreign policy and market yet enough diversity to allow for cultural and social differences—was overwhelmingly turned down by its citizens. The authors argue that this rejection of the European constitution was to a certain extent a challenge to the current historical grounding used for further integration and further demonstrates the lack of understanding by European bureaucrats of the historical complexity and divisiveness of Europe’s past. A critical European history is therefore urgently needed to confront and re-imagine Europe, not as a harmonious continent but as the outcome of violent and bloody conflicts, both within Europe as well as with its Others. As the authors show, these dark shadows of Europe’s past must be integrated, and the fact that memories of Europe are contested must be accepted if any new attempts at a United Europe are to be successful.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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April 2010
Emotions in American History
An International Assessment
Gienow-Hecht, J. C. (ed)
The study of emotions has attracted anew the interest of scholars in various disciplines, igniting a lively public debate on the constructive and destructive power of emotions in society as well as within each of us. Most of the contributors to this volume do not hail from the United States but look at the nation from abroad. They explore the role of emotions in history and ask how that exploration changes what we know about national and international history, and in turn how that affects the methodological study of history. In particular they focus on emotions in American history between the 18th century and the present: in war, in social and political discourse, as well as in art and the media. In addition to case studies, the volume includes a review of their fields by senior scholars, who offer new insights regarding future research projects.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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March 2010
Materialising Exile
Material Culture and Embodied Experience among Karenni Refugees in Thailand
Dudley, S.
Focusing on the highly diverse Karenni refugee population living in camps on the Thai-Burma border, this innovative book explores materiality, embodiment, memory, imagination, and identity among refugees, providing new and important ways of understanding how refugees make sense of experience, self, and other. It examines how and to what ends refugees perceive, represent, manipulate, use as metaphor, and otherwise engage with material objects and spaces, and includes a focus on the real and metaphorical journeys that bring about and perpetuate exile.
The combined emphasis on both displacement and materiality, and the analysis of the cultural construction and intersections of exilic objects, spaces, and bodies, are unique in the study of both refugees and material culture. Drawing theoretical influences from phenomenology, aesthetics, and beyond, as well as from refugee studies and anthropology, the author addresses the current lack of theoretical analysis of the material, visual, spatial, and embodied aspects of forced migration, providing a fundamentally interlinked analysis of enforced exile and materiality.
Subjects: Refugee and Migration Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2010
Culture Wars
Context, Models and Anthropologists' Accounts
James, D. Plaice, E. & Toren C. (eds)
The relationship between anthropologists’ ethnographic investigations and the lived social worlds in which these originate is a fundamental issue for anthropology. Where some claim that only native voices may offer authentic accounts of culture and hence that ethnographers are only ever interpreters of it, others point out that anthropologists are, themselves, implanted within specific cultural contexts which generate particular kinds of theoretical discussions. The contributors to this volume reject the premise that ethnographer and informant occupy different and incommensurable “cultural worlds.” Instead they investigate the relationship between culture, context, and anthropologists’ models and accounts in new ways. In doing so, they offer fresh insights into this key area of anthropological research.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
February 2010
Rhodes Scholars, Oxford, and the Creation of an American Elite
Schaeper, T. & Schaeper, K.
Each year thirty-two seniors at American universities are awarded Rhodes Scholarships, which entitle them to spend two or three years studying at the University of Oxford. The program, founded by the British colonialist and entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes and established in 1903, has become the world's most famous academic scholarship and has brought thousands of young Americans to study in England. Many of these later became national leaders in government, law, education, literature, and other fields. Among them were the politicians J. William Fulbright, Bill Bradley, and Bill Clinton; the public policy analysts Robert Reich and George Stephanopoulos; the writer Robert Penn Warren; the entertainer Kris Kristofferson; and the Supreme Court Justices Byron White and David Souter.
Based on extensive research in published and unpublished documents and on hundreds of interviews, this book traces the history of the program and the stories of many individuals. In addition it addresses a host of questions such as: how important was the Oxford experience for the individual scholars? To what extent has the program created an old-boy (-girl since 1976) network that propels its members to success? How many Rhodes Scholars have cracked under the strain and failed to live up to expectations? How have the Americans coped with life in Oxford and what have they thought of Britain in general? Beyond the history of the program and the individuals involved, this book also offers a valuable examination of the American-British cultural encounter.
Subjects: Educational Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
February 2010
When Women Held the Dragon's Tongue
and Other Essays in Historical Anthropology
Rebel, H.
“Peasants tell tales,” one prominent cultural historian tells us (Robert Darnton). Scholars must then determine and analyze what it is they are saying and whether or not to incorporate such tellings into their histories and ethnographies. Challenging the dominant culturalist approach associated with Clifford Geertz and Marshall Sahlins among others, this book presents a critical rethinking of the philosophical anthropologies found in specific histories and ethnographies and thereby bridges the current gap between approaches to studies of peasant society and popular culture. In challenging the methodology and theoretical frameworks currently used by social scientists interested in aspects of popular culture, the author suggests a common discursive ground can be found in an historical anthropology that recognizes how myths, fairytales and histories speak to a universal need for imagining oneself in different timescapes and for linking one’s local world with a “known” larger world.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) History (General) Literary Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
January 2010
Kristeva in Focus
From Theory to Film Analysis
Goodnow, K.
Dealing with some of the major themes in film narratives, this book draws on the theories of French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva. It looks at how narratives have changed over time, and considers the sources of our variable reactions to themes and representations of horror, strangers, and love.
In addition to a selection of contemporary mainstream films, the major films for analysis are New Zealand “New Wave” films such as Alison Maclean’s Kitchen Sink and Crush; Vincent Ward’s Vigil; and Jane Campion’s Sweety, An Angel at My Table, and The Piano.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality
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October 2009
The Surplus Woman
Unmarried in Imperial Germany, 1871-1918
Dollard, C. L.
The first German women’s movement embraced the belief in a demographic surplus of unwed women, known as the Frauenüberschuß, as a central leitmotif in the campaign for reform. Proponents of the female surplus held that the advances of industry and urbanization had upset traditional marriage patterns and left too many bourgeois women without a husband. This book explores the ways in which the realms of literature, sexology, demography, socialism, and female activism addressed the perceived plight of unwed women. Case studies of reformers, including Lily Braun, Ruth Bré, Elisabeth Gnauck-Kühne, Helene Lange, Alice Salomon, Helene Stöcker, and Clara Zetkin, demonstrate the expansive influence of the discourse surrounding a female surfeit. By combining the approaches of cultural, social, and gender history, The Surplus Woman provides the first sustained analysis of the ways in which imperial Germans conceptualized anxiety about female marital status as both a product and a reflection of changing times.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
July 2009
A Walk to the River in Amazonia
Ordinary Reality for the Mehinaku Indians
Stang, C. D.
Our lives are mostly composed of ordinary reality — the flow of moment-to-moment existence — and yet it has been largely overlooked as a subject in itself for anthropological study. In this work, the author achieves an understanding of this part of reality for the Mehinaku Indians, an Amazonian people, in two stages: first by observing various aspects of their experience and second by relating how these different facets come to play in a stream of ordinary consciousness, a walk to the river. In this way, abstract schemata such as ‘cosmology,’ ‘sociality,’ ‘gender,’ and the ‘everyday’ are understood as they are actually lived. This book contributes to the ethnography of the Amazon, specifically the Upper Xingu, with an approach that crosses disciplinary boundaries between anthropology, philosophy, and psychology. In doing so it attempts to comprehend what Malinowski called the ‘imponderabilia of actual life.’
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
July 2009
Culture and Rhetoric
Strecker, I. & Tyler, S. (eds)
While some scholars have said that there is no such thing as culture and have urged to abandon the concept altogether, the contributors to this volume overcome this impasse by understanding cultures and their representations for what they ultimately are – rhetorical constructs. These senior, international scholars explore the complex relationships between culture and rhetoric arguing that just as rhetoric is founded in culture, culture is founded in rhetoric. This intersection constitutes the central theme of the first part of the book, while the second is dedicated to the study of figuration as a common ground of rhetoric and anthropology. The book offers a compelling range of theoretical reflections, historical vistas, and empirical investigations, which aim to show how people talk themselves and others into particular modalities of thought and action, and how rhetoric and culture, in this way, are co-emergent. It thus turns a new page in the history of academic discourse by bringing two disciplines – anthropology and rhetoric – together in a way that has never been done before.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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July 2009
Colette's Republic
Work, Gender, and Popular Culture in France, 1870-1914
Tilburg, P. A.
In France’s Third Republic, secularism was, for its adherents, a new faith, a civic religion founded on a rabid belief in progress and the Enlightenment conviction that men (and women) could remake their world. And yet with all of its pragmatic smoothing over of the supernatural edges of Catholicism, the Third Republic engendered its own fantastical ways of seeing by embracing observation, corporeal dynamism, and imaginative introspection. How these republican ideals and the new national education system of the 1870s and 80s - the structure meant to impart these ideals - shaped belle époque popular culture is the focus of this book. The author reassesses the meaning of secularization and offers a cultural history of this period by way of an interrogation of several fraught episodes which, although seemingly disconnected, shared an attachment to the potent moral and aesthetic directives of French republicanism: a village’s battle to secularize its schools, a scandalous novel, a vaudeville hit featuring a nude celebrity, and a craze for female boxing. Beginning with the writer and performer Colette (1873–1954) as a point of entry, this re-evaluation of belle époque popular culture probes the startling connections between republican values of labor and physical health on the one hand, and the cultural innovations of the decades preceding World War I on the other.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History: 18th/19th Century Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
June 2009
Culture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life
Carrithers, M. (ed)
Inspired by the Rhetoric Culture Project, this volume focuses on the use of imagery, narrative, and cultural schemes to deal with predicaments that arise during the course of life. The contributors explore how people muster their resources to understand and deal with emergencies such as illness, displacement, or genocide. In dealing with such circumstances, people can develop new rhetorical forms and, in the process, establish new cultural resources for succeeding generations. Several of the contributions show how rhetorical cultural forms can themselves create emergencies. The contributors bring expertise from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology and communications studies, underlining the volume’s wider relevance as a reflection on the human condition.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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May 2009
Indispensable Eyesores
An Anthropology of Undesired Buildings
Hoorn, M. v der
Collapsing concrete colossuses, run-down overgrown skeletons, immutable architectural misfits: the outcasts from our built environment, which we are dying to dispose of — and yet cannot do without — have inspired many ghost stories, crime novels and urban legends. Such narratives reveal the significance of architectural eyesores for the people who live or work in or near them. After exploring various approaches to building lives and deaths, the author presents a rich variety of undesired edifices in Germany, Hungary, Austria and Bosnia-Herzegovina and investigates the different methods used to dispose of them: eliminating, damaging, transforming or ‘reframing’ them, abandoning them to progressive dilapidation or virtually rejecting them. Discarding an edifice, however, need not bring its social life to an end. This analysis continues with a reflection on the afterlife of unwanted buildings, and concludes with a discussion on the life expectancy of buildings, their multi-sensory materiality and ‘thingly’ agency.
Subjects: Urban Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2009
The Frightful Stage
Political Censorship of the Theater in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Goldstein, R. J. (ed)
In nineteenth-century Europe the ruling elites viewed the theater as a form of communication which had enormous importance. The theater provided the most significant form of mass entertainment and was the only arena aside from the church in which regular mass gatherings were possible. Therefore, drama censorship occupied a great deal of the ruling class’s time and energy, with a particularly focus on proposed scripts that potentially threatened the existing political, legal, and social order. This volume provides the first comprehensive examination of nineteenth-century political theater censorship at a time, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when the European population was becoming increasingly politically active.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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March 2009
Bringing Culture to the Masses
Control, Compromise and Participation in the GDR
Richthofen, E. von
Cultural life in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was strictly controlled by the ruling party, the SED, who attempted to dictate how people spent their free time by prohibiting privately organized leisure time pursuits and offering instead cultural activities in state institutions and organizations. By exploring the nature of dictatorial rule in the GDR and analysing the population’s engagement with state-organized cultural activity, this book challenges the current assumptions about the GDR’s social and institutional history that ignore the interaction and inter-dependence between ‘rulers’ and ‘ruled’. The author argues that the people’s cultural life in the GDR developed a dynamic of its own; it was determined by their own interests and by the input of cultural functionaries, who often aimed to satisfy popular demands, even if they were at odds with the SED’s cultural policy. Gradually, these developments affected SED cultural policy, which in the 1960s became less focused on educationalist goals and increasingly oriented towards popular interests.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
March 2009
Banned in Berlin
Literary Censorship in Imperial Germany, 1871-1918
Stark, G. D.
Imperial Germany’s governing elite frequently sought to censor literature that threatened established political, social, religious, and moral norms in the name of public peace, order, and security. It claimed and exercised a prerogative to intervene in literary life that was broader than that of its Western neighbors, but still not broad enough to prevent the literary community from challenging and subverting many of the social norms the state was most determined to defend. This study is the first systematic analysis in any language of state censorship of literature and theater in imperial Germany (1871–1918). To assess the role that formal state controls played in German literary and political life during this period, it examines the intent, function, contested legal basis, institutions, and everyday operations of literary censorship as well as its effectiveness and its impact on authors, publishers, and theater directors.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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March 2009
The Return of Jazz
Joachim-Ernst Berendt and West German Cultural Change
Wright Hurley, A.
Jazz has had a peculiar and fascinating history in Germany. The influential but controversial German writer, broadcaster, and record producer, Joachim-Ernst Berendt (1922–2000), author of the world’s best-selling jazz book, labored to legitimize jazz in West Germany after its ideological renunciation during the Nazi era. German musicians began, in a highly productive way, to question their all-too-eager adoption of American culture and how they sought to make valid artistic statements reflecting their identity as Europeans. This book explores the significance of some of Berendt’s most important writings and record productions. Particular attention is given to the “Jazz Meets the World” encounters that he engineered with musicians from Japan, Tunisia, Brazil, Indonesia, and India. This proto-“world music” demonstrates how some West Germans went about creating a post-nationalist identity after the Third Reich. Berendt’s powerful role as the West German “Jazz Pope” is explored, as is the groundswell of criticism directed at him in the wake of 1968.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Performance Studies History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2008
Against Machismo
Young Adult Voices in Mexico City
Ramirez, J.
Based on fieldwork conducted among middle-class university students primarily at the national university (UNAM) in Mexico City, this study explores gender relations as reflected in the words macho and machismo. The author concludes that the students use them to denote aspects of their families of origin that they consider unfavorable and aspects of the cultural past that they wish to leave behind in their own lives. In capturing the lively and revealing conversations of these young voices, the author offers a compelling analysis of how gender concepts and identities are changing in contemporary Mexico City.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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December 2008
Women and Men in Love
European Identities in the Twentieth Century
Passerini, L.
It has often been assumed that Europeans invented and had the exclusive monopoly over courtly and romantic love, commonly considered to be the highest form of relations between men and women. This view was particularly prevalent between 1770 and the mid-twentieth century, but was challenged in the 1960s when romantic love came to be seen as a universal sentiment that can be found in all cultures in the world. However, there remains the historical problem that the Europeans used this concept of love as a fundamental part of their self-image over a long period (traces of it still remain) and it became very much caught up in the concept of marriage. This book challenges the underlying Eurocentrism of this notion while exploring in a more general sense the connection between identity and emotions.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality
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October 2008
German Literature in a New Century
Trends, Traditions, Transitions, Transformations
Gerstenberger, K. & Herminghouse, P. (eds)
While the first decade after the fall of the Berlin wall was marked by the challenges of unification and the often difficult process of reconciling East and West German experiences, many Germans expected that the “new century” would achieve “normalization.” The essays in this volume take a closer look at Germany’s new normalcy and argue for a more nuanced picture that considers the ruptures as well as the continuities. Germany’s new generation of writers is more diverse than ever before, and their texts often not only speak of a Germany that is multicultural but also take a more playful attitude toward notions of identity. Written with an eye toward similar and dissimilar developments and traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, this volume balances overviews of significant trends in present-day cultural life with illustrative analyses of individual writers and texts.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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September 2008
Biography Between Structure and Agency
Central European Lives in International Historiography
Berghahn, V. R. & Lässig, S. (eds)
While bookstore shelves around the world have never ceased to display best-selling “life-and-letters” biographies in prominent positions, the genre became less popular among academic historians during the Cold War decades. Their main concern then was with political and socioeconomic structures, institutions, and organizations, or—more recently—with the daily lives of ordinary people and small communities. The contributors to this volume—all well known senior historians—offer self-critical reflections on problems they encountered when writing biographies themselves. Some of them also deal with topics specific to Central Europe, such as the challenges of writing about the lives of both victims and perpetrators. Although the volume concentrates on European historiography, its strong methodological and conceptual focus will be of great interest to non-European historians wrestling with the old “structure-versus-agency” question in their own work.
Contributors: Volker R. Berghahn, Hartmut Berghoff, Hilary Earl, Jan Eckel, Willem Frijhoff, Ian Kershaw, Simone Lässig, Karl Heinrich Pohl, John C. G. Röhl, Angelika Schaser, Joachim Radkau, Cornelia Rauh-Kühne, Mark Roseman, Christoph Strupp and Michael Wildt.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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August 2008
Rebirth of a Culture
Jewish Identity and Jewish Writing in Germany and Austria today
Herzog, H. H., Herzog, T. & Lapp, B. (eds)
After 1945, Jewish writing in German was almost unimaginable—and then only in reference to the Shoah. Only in the 1980s, after a period of mourning, silence, and processing of the trauma, did a new Jewish literature evolve in Germany and Austria. This volume focuses on the re-emergence of a lively Jewish cultural scene in the German-speaking countries and the various cultural forms of expression that have developed around it. Topics include current debates such as the emergence of a post-Waldheim Jewish discourse in Austria and Jewish responses to German unification and the Gulf wars. Other significant themes addressed are the memorialization of the Holocaust in Berlin and Vienna, the uses of Kafka in contemporary German literature, and the German and American-Jewish dialogue as representative of both the history of exile and the globalization of postmodern civilization. The volume is enhanced by contributions from some of the most significant representatives of German-Jewish writing today such as Esther Dischereit, Barbara Honigmann, Jeanette Lander, and Doron Rabinovici. The result is a lively dialogue between European and North American scholars and writers that captures the complexity and dynamism of Jewish culture in Germany and Austria at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Subjects: Jewish Studies Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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eBook available
August 2008
The State and the Arts
Articulating Power and Subversion
Kapferer, J.
Judith Kapferer and her collaborators present an insightful volume that interrogates relations between the state and the arts in diverse national and cultural settings. The authors critique the taken-for-granted assumption about the place of the arts in liberal or social democratic states and the role of the arts in supporting or opposing the ideological work of government and non-government institutions. This innovative volume explores the challenges posed by the state to the arts and by the arts to the state, focusing on several transformations of the interrelations between state and commercial arts policies in the current era. These ongoing challenges include the control of repressive tolerance, complicity with and resistance to state power, and the commoditization of the arts, including their accommodation to market and state apparatuses. While endeavouring to avoid the currently dominant pragmatic and didactic priorities of officialdom, the contributors tackle social and cultural policy and practice in the arts as well as connections between national states and dissenting art from a range of genres.
Subjects: Urban Studies Sociology Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
July 2008
Between Mass Death and Individual Loss
The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany
Confino, A., Betts, P. & Schumann, D. (eds)
Recent years have witnessed growing scholarly interest in the history of death. Increasing academic attention toward death as a historical subject in its own right is very much linked to its pre-eminent place in 20th-century history, and Germany, predictably, occupies a special place in these inquiries. This collection of essays explores how German mourning changed over the 20th century in different contexts, with a particular view to how death was linked to larger issues of social order and cultural self-understanding. It contributes to a history of death in 20th-century Germany that does not begin and end with the Third Reich.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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eBook available
May 2008
Border Interrogations
Questioning Spanish Frontiers
Sampedro, B. & Doubleday, S. (eds)
Under the current cartographies of globalism, where frontiers mutate, vacillate, and mark the contiguity of discourse, questioning the Spanish border seems a particularly urgent task. The volume engages a wide spectrum of ambivalent regions—subjects that currently are, or have been seen in the past, as spaces of negotiation and contestation. However, they converge in their perception of the “Spanish” nation-space as a historical and ideological construct that is perpetually going through transformations and reformations. This volume advocates the position that intellectual responsibility must lead us to engage openly in the issues underlying current social and political tensions.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Refugee and Migration Studies History (General)
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April 2008
Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance
St John, G. (ed)
Upon the 25th anniversary of his passing, this collection addresses the wide application of Victor Turner’s thought to cultural performance in the early 21st century. From anthropology, sociology, and religious studies to performance, cultural, and media studies, Turner’s ideas have had a prodigious interdisciplinary impact. Examining his relevance in studies of performance and popular culture, media, and religion, along with the role of Edith Turner in the Turnerian project, contributors explore how these ideas have been re-engaged, renovated, and repurposed in studies of contemporary cultural performance.
Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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April 2008
Exploring Regimes of Discipline
The Dynamics of Restraint
Dyck, N.
The pursuit and practice of discipline have become near ubiquitous elements of contemporary social life and parlance, as discipline has become a commonplace and ever sought-after social technology. From the celebrated “discipline of the market” proclaimed by neo-liberal politicians, to self-actualizing experiences of embodied discipline proffered by martial arts instructors, this volume showcases highly varied and complex disciplinary practices and relationships in a set of ethnographic studies. Interrogating the respective fields of work, religion, governance, leisure, education and child rearing, together the essays in this volume explore and offer new ways of thinking about discipline in everyday life.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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March 2008
Multiculturalism in the New Japan
Crossing the Boundaries Within
Graburn, N., Ertl, J. & Tierney, R. K. (ed)
Like other industrial nations, Japan is experiencing its own forms of, and problems with, internationalization and multiculturalism. This volume focuses on several aspects of this process and examines the immigrant minorities as well as their Japanese recipient communities. Multiculturalism is considered broadly, and includes topics often neglected in other works, such as: religious pluralism, domestic and international tourism, political regionalism and decentralization, sports, business styles in the post-Bubble era, and the education of immigrant minorities.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
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: History: 20th Century to Present Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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January 2008
Time and History
The Variety of Cultures
Rüsen, J. (ed)
This series aims at bridging the gap between historical theory and the study of historical memory as well as western and non-western concepts, for which this volume offers a particularly good example. It explores cultural differences in conceptualizing time and history in countries such as China, Japan, and India as well as pre-modern societies.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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December 2007
Cultural Diversity and the Empowerment of Minorities
Perspectives from Israel and Germany
Al-Haj, M. & Mielke, R. (eds)
Conflicts between different racial, ethnic, national and other social groups are becoming more and more salient. One of the main sources of these internal conflicts is social and economic inequality, in particular the increasing disparities between majority and minority groups. Even societies that had been successful in dealing with external conflicts and making the transition from war to peace have realized that this does not automatically resolve internal conflicts. On the contrary, the resolution of external conflicts may even sharpen the internal ones. This volume, a joint publication of the University of Haifa and the International Center for Graduate Studies (ICGS) at the University of Hamburg, addresses questions of how to deal with internal issues of social inequality and cultural diversity and, at the same time, how to build a shared civility among their different national, ethnic, religious and social groups.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Educational Studies Sociology
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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: History: 20th Century to Present Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General)
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December 2007
Between Tradition and Modernity
Aby Warburg and the Public Purposes of Art in Hamburg
Russell, M. A.
Aby Warburg (1866-1929), founder of the Warburg Institute, was one of the most influential cultural historians of the twentieth century. Focusing on the period 1896-1918, this is the first in-depth, book-length study of his response to German political, social and cultural modernism. It analyses Warburg's response to the effects of these phenomena through a study of his involvement with the creation of some of the most important public artworks in Germany. Using a wide array of archival sources, including many of his unpublished working papers and much of his correspondence, the author demonstrates that Warburg's thinking on contemporary art was the product of two important influences: his engagement with Hamburg's civic affairs and his affinity with influential reform movements seeking a greater role for the middle classes in the political, social and cultural leadership of the nation. Thus a lively picture of Hamburg’s cultural life emerges as it responded to artistic modernism, animated by private initiative and public discourse, and charged with debate.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2007
The Limits of Loyalty
Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy
Cole, L. & Unowsky, D. (eds)
The overwhelming majority of historical work on the late Habsburg Monarchy has focused primarily on national movements and ethnic conflicts, with the result that too little attention has been devoted to the state and ruling dynasty. This volume is the first of its kind to concentrate on attempts by the imperial government to generate a dynastic-oriented state patriotism in the multinational Habsburg Monarchy. It examines those forces in state and society which tended toward the promotion of state unity and loyalty towards the ruling house. These essays, all original contributions and written by an international group of historians, provide a critical examination of the phenomenon of “dynastic patriotism” and offer a richly nuanced treatment of the multinational empire in its final phase.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
October 2007
Empire and After
Englishness in Postcolonial Perspective
MacPhee, G. & Poddar, P. (eds)
The growing debate over British national identity, and the place of "Englishness" within it, raises crucial questions about multiculturalism, postimperial culture and identity, and the past and future histories of globalization. However, discussions of Englishness have too often been limited by insular conceptions of national literature, culture, and history, which serve to erase or marginalize the colonial and postcolonial locations in which British national identity has been articulated. This volume breaks new ground by drawing together a range of disciplinary approaches in order to resituate the relationship between British national identity and Englishness within a global framework. Ranging from the literature and history of empire to analyses of contemporary culture, postcolonial writing, political rhetoric, and postimperial memory after 9/11, this collection demonstrates that far from being parochial or self-involved, the question of Englishness offers an important avenue for thinking about the politics of national identity in our postcolonial and globalized world.
Subjects: Colonial History Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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June 2007
Portraits of Hope
Armenians in the Contemporary World
Voss, Huberta von (ed)
Elie Wiesel called the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War ‘the Holocaust before the Holocaust’. Around one and a half million Armenians - men, women and children – were slaughtered at the time of the First World War. This book outlines some of the historical facts and consequences of the massacres but sees it as its main objective to present the Armenians to the foreign reader, their history but also their lives and achievements in the present that finds most Armenians dispersed throughout the world. 3000 years after their appearance in history, 1700 years after adopting Christianity and almost 90 years after the greatest catastrophe in their history, these 50 ‘biographical sketches of intellectuals, artists, journalists, and others…produce a complicated kaleidoscope of a divided but lively people that is trying once again, to rediscover its ethnic coherence. Armenian civilization does not consist solely of stories about a far-off past, but also of traditions and a national conscience suggestive of a future that will transcend the present.’ [from the Preface]
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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May 2007
Intersected Identities
Strategies of Visualisation in 19th and 20th Century Mexican Culture
Segre, E.
There has always been an important visual element to the construction and questioning of national identity in post-Independence Mexico, though one that has not always been given its due, outside of the celebrated and much-studied muralists. Ranging from the early nineteenth century to the present – from the vogue for the picturesque, illustrated periodicals and the influential writings of Altamirano to a wealth of twentieth-century graphic artists, filmmakers and photographers – this book re-examines the complex variety of ways in which that visual element has operated. In particular, it looks at the ways in which discourses concerning ethnicity and cultural hybridity have been echoed and transformed in Mexican visual culture, resulting in fields of visual discourse which are eclectic and increasingly self-reflexive.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies
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December 2006
Mozart
The First Biography
Niemetschek, F.
Franz Xaver Niemetschek was born in 1766 in what is now the Czech Republic and came from a musical family, which gave him a deep appreciation and admiration for Mozart's genius. In 1798 he published his biography on Mozart, with a touching dedication to Haydn, the only one written by an eyewitness, and authorized by Mozart's widow Constanze. It is one of the earliest specimens of musical biography which, compared with other branches of biography, was still in its infancy even in the later part of the 19th century. In this sense, it is an important document of music history. However, this loving and intimate portrait of Mozart, based on documents, letters and other original sources, also conveys a vivid picture of the social and especially courtly life that formed the background of Mozart's sheer magical talents as composer and virtuoso.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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December 2006
Locating Memory
Photographic Acts
Kuhn, A. & McAllister, K. (eds)
As a visual medium, the photograph has many culturally resonant properties that it shares with no other medium. These essays develop innovative cultural strategies for reading, re-reading and re-using photographs, as well as for (re)creating photographs and other artworks and evoke varied sites of memory in contemporary landscapes: from sites of war and other violence through the lost places of indigenous peoples to the once-familiar everyday places of home, family, neighborhood and community. Paying close attention to the settings in which such photographs are made and used--family collections, public archives, museums, newspapers, art galleries--the contributors consider how meanings in photographs may be shifted, challenged and renewed over time and for different purposes--from historical inquiry to quests for personal, familial, ethnic and national identity.
Subjects: Media Studies Cultural Studies (General) Film and Television Studies Memory Studies
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December 2006
The Meanings of Magic
From the Bible to Buffalo Bill
Wygant, A. (ed)
The notion of "magic" is a current popular culture phenomenon. Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, the commercial glamour of the footballer and the pop idol surround us with their charisma, enchantment, and charm. But magic also exerts a terrifying political hold upon us: bin Laden's alleged March 28 e-mail message spoke of the attacks on America in form of "crushing its towers, disgracing its arrogance, undoing its magic." The nine scholars included in this volume consider the cultural power of magic, from early Christianity and the ancient Mediterranean to the curious film career of Buffalo Bill, focusing on topics such as Surrealism, France in the classical age, alchemy, and American fundamentalism, ranging from popular to elite magic, from theory to practice, from demonology to exoticism, from the magic of memory to the magic of the stage. As these essays show, magic defines the limit of both science and religion but as such remains indefinable.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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November 2006
Names and Nunavut
Culture and Identity in the Inuit Homeland
Alia, V.
On the surface, naming is simply a way to classify people and their environments. The premise of this study is that it is much more — a form of social control, a political activity, a key to identity maintenance and transformation. Governments legislate and regulate naming; people fight to take, keep, or change their names. A name change can indicate subjugation or liberation, depending on the circumstances. But it always signifies a change in power relations. Since the late 1970s, the author has looked at naming and renaming, cross-culturally and internationally, with particular attention to the effects of colonisation and liberation. The experience of Inuit in Canada is an example of both. Colonisation is only part of the Nunavut experience. Contrary to the dire predictions of cultural genocide theorists, Inuit culture — particularly traditional naming — has remained extremely strong, and is in the midst of a renaissance. Here is a ground-breaking study by the founder of the discipline of political onomastics.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
November 2006
The Arts in Nazi Germany
Continuity, Conformity, Change
Huener, J. & Nicosia, F. (eds)
Culture and the arts played a central role in the ideology and propaganda of National Socialism from the early years of the movement until the last months of the Third Reich in 1945. Hitler and his followers believed that art and culture were expressions of race, and that “Aryans” alone were capable of creating true art and preserving true German culture. This volume’s essays explore these and other aspects of the arts and cultural life under National Socialism, and are authored by some of the most respected authorities in the field: Alan Steinweis, Michael Kater, Eric Rentschler, Pamela Potter, Frank Trommler, and Jonathan Petropoulos. The result is a volume that offers students and interested readers a brief but focused introduction to this important aspect of the history of Nazi Germany.
Subjects: History: World War II Cultural Studies (General)
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August 2006
Civil Society
Berlin Perspectives
Keane, J. (eds)
At the moment, no other European city attracts so much fascination as the city of Berlin. An unrivalled symbol of modern urban life, Berlin is a dynamic city whose inhabitants, in the course of the past two centuries, have lived through both the rapid growth and the violent destruction of the institutions of civil society, several times over. This volume situates itself within these developments by presenting, for the first time in English, a sample of the best, recently written essays on contemporary civil societies, their structural problems, and their uncertain future, written by scholars with a close, long-standing relationship with the city. They are pre-occupied with a broad sweep of substantive themes, but in each case they focus upon one or other of the key trends that are shaping actually existing civil societies.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Urban Studies
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May 2006
Turning the Kaleidoscope
Perspectives on European Jewry
Lustig, S. & Leveson, I. (eds)
Far from being a blank space on the Jewish map, or a void in the Jewish cultural world, post-Shoah Europe is a place where Jewry has continued to develop, even though it is facing different challenges and opportunities than elsewhere. Living on a continent characterized by highly diverse patterns of culture, language, history, and relations to Jews, European Jewry mirrors that kaleidoscopic diversity. This volume explores such key questions as the new roles for Jews in Europe; models of Jewish community organization in Europe; concepts of diaspora and galut; a European-Jewish way of life in the era of globalization; and European Jews' relationship to Israel and to non-Jews. Some contributions highlight experiences of Jews in Britain, Sweden, Norway, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands. Helping us to understand the special and common characteristics of European Jewry, this collection offers a valuable contribution to the continued rebuilding of Jewish life in the postwar era.
Subjects: Jewish Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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May 2006
Languages of Civil Society
Wagner, P. (ed)
The past two decades have witnessed a revival of the concept of ‘civil society’. From East Central Europe to Latin America and East Asia to the recent calls for a ‘European civil society’ and a ‘global civil society’, the concept signifies the need for national and supra–national forms of civic commitment against both unjustified state domination and neo–liberal marketization. Reviewing the long history of the concept, its use in various regional contexts and its place in critical political theory, this book takes comprehensive stock of these debates and asks about the potential of the concept of civil society in guiding political transformations towards fuller understandings of liberty and democracy.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
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April 2006
The Body of the Queen
Gender and Rule in the Courtly World, 1500-2000
Schulte R. (ed)
How many “bodies” does a queen have? What is the significance of multiple “bodies”? How has the gendered body been constructed and perceived within the context of the European courts during the course of the past five centuries? These are some of the questions addressed in this anthology, a contribution to the ongoing debate provoked by Ernst H. Kantorowicz in his seminal work from 1957, The King’s Two Bodies. On the basis of both textual self-presentations and visual representations a gradual transformation of the queen appears: A sacred/providential figure in medieval and early modern period, an ideal bourgeois wife during the late-18th and 19th Centuries, and a star-like (re-) presentation of royalty during the past century. Twentieth-century mass media has produced the celebrity and film star queens personified by the contested and enigmatic Nefertiti of ancient Egypt, the mysterious Elizabeth (Sisi) of Austria, Grace Kelly as Queen of both Hollywood and Monaco and Romy Schneider as the invented Empress.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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April 2006
Claims to Memory
Beyond Slavery and Emancipation in the French Caribbean
Reinhardt C.
Why do the people of the French Caribbean still continue to be haunted by the memory of their slave past more than one hundred and fifty years after the abolition of slavery? What process led to the divorce of their collective memory of slavery and emancipation from France's portrayal of these historical phenomena? How are Martinicans and Guadeloupeans today transforming the silences of the past into historical and cultural manifestations rooted in the Caribbean? This book answers these questions by relating the 1998 controversy surrounding the 150th anniversary of France's abolition of slavery to the period of the slave regime spanning the late Enlightenment and the French Revolution. By comparing a diversity of documents—including letters by slaves, free people of color, and planters, as well as writings by the philosophes, royal decrees, and court cases—the author untangles the complex forces of the slave regime that have shaped collective memory. The current nationalization of the memory of slavery in France has turned these once peripheral claims into passionate political and cultural debates.
Subjects: Colonial History Cultural Studies (General) Memory Studies
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eBook available
March 2006
Postsocialism
Politics and Emotions in Central and Eastern Europe
Svasek M. (ed)
In many parts of post-socialist Europe the tumultuous political and economic developments have generated strong emotions, ranging from hope and euphoria to disappointment, envy, disillusionment, sorrow, loneliness, and hatred. Yet these aspects have been largely neglected in analyses of the profound transformations that have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990. Based on a wide variety of ethnographic case studies focusing on Russian, Siberian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Croatian, Czech, and Polish communities, this volume proves the significance of emotions to post-socialist political processes as an inherent part of the transformations and sheds new light on the impact of local, national, and transnational political forces that have given rise to the resurgence of nationalist sentiments, increasing poverty and marginalization, conflicts arising from the restitution of state property, constitutional changes, and economic deprivation.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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March 2006
Remapping Knowledge
Intercultural Studies for a Global Age
Spariosu, Mihai I.
The growing interdependence of the local and the global demand innovative approaches to human development. Such approaches, the author argues, ought to be based on the emerging ethics of global intelligence, defined as the ability to understand, respond to, and work toward what will benefit all human beings and will support and enrich all life on this planet. As no national or supranational authority can predefine or predetermine it, global intelligence involves long-term, collective learning processes and can emerge only from continuing intercultural research, dialogue, and cooperation. In this book, the author elaborates the basic principles of a new field of intercultural studies, oriented toward global intelligence. He proposes concrete research and educational programs that would help create intercultural learning environments designed to stimulate sustainable human development throughout the world.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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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.
Subjects: Jewish Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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eBook available
January 2006
A Belle Epoque?
Women and Feminism in French Society and Culture 1890-1914
Holmes, D. & Tarr, C. (eds)
The Third Republic, known as the ‘belle époque’, was a period of lively, articulate and surprisingly radical feminist activity in France, borne out of the contradiction between the Republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity and the reality of intense and systematic gender discrimination. Yet, it also was a period of intense and varied artistic production, with women disproving the critical nearconsensus that art was a masculine activity by writing, painting, performing, sculpting, and even displaying an interest in the new "seventh art" of cinema. This book explores all these facets of the period, weaving them into a complex, multi-stranded argument about the importance of this rich period of French women’s history.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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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: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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December 2005
Music and Manipulation
On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music
Brown, S. & Volgsten, U. (eds)
Since the beginning of human civilization, music has been used as a device to control social behavior, where it has operated as much to promote solidarity within groups as hostility between competing groups. Music is an emotive manipulator that influences attitude, motivation and behavior at many levels and in many contexts. This volume is the first to address the social ramifications of music’s behaviorally manipulative effects, its morally questionable uses and control mechanisms, and its economic and artistic regulation through commercialization, thus highlighting not only music’s diverse uses at the social level but also the ever-fragile relationship between aesthetics and morality.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies Sociology Anthropology (General)
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December 2005
Reading Germany
Literature and Consumer Culture in Germany before 1933
Reuveni, G.
By closely examining the interaction between intellectual and material culture in the period before the Nazis came to power in Germany, the author comes to the conclusion that, contrary to widely held assumptions, consumer culture in the Weimar period, far from undermining reading, used reading culture to enhance its goods and values. Reading material was marked as a consumer good, while reading as an activity, raising expectations as it did, influenced consumer culture. Consequently, consumption contributed to the diffusion of reading culture, while at the same time a popular reading culture strengthened consumption and its values.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies Media Studies
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eBook available
December 2005
Between Marx and Coca-Cola
Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies, 1960-1980
Schildt, A. & Siegfried, D. (eds)
In the 1960s and 1970s, Western Europe's "Golden Age" (Eric Hobsbawm), a new youth consciousness emerged, which gave this period its distinctive character. Offering rich and new material, this volume moves beyond the easy conflation of youth culture and "Americanization" and instead sets out to show, for the first time, how international developments fused with national traditions to produce specific youth cultures that became the leading trendsetters of emergent post-industrial Western societies. It presents a multi-faceted portrait of European youth cultures, colored by differences in gender, class, and education, and points out the tension between emerging consumerism and growing politicisation, succinctly expressed by Jean-Luc Godard in his 1967 pairing of "Marx and Coca-Cola."
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies Sociology
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eBook available
December 2005
The Americanization of Europe
Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism after 1945
Stephan, A (ed)
Recent tensions between the U.S. and Europe seem to have opened up an insuperable rift, while Americanization, deplored by some, welcomed by others, seems to progress unabated. This volume explores, for the first time and in a comparative manner, the role American culture and anti-Americanism play in eleven representative European countries, including major powers like Great Britain, France, (West) Germany, Russia/Soviet Union, and Italy as well as smaller countries like Austria, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Sweden, and Poland. Each contributor to the volume, all of them highly respected experts in their field, was asked to address the following four topics: the role of American public diplomacy, the transfer of American “high culture,” the impact of “popular culture” ranging from Hollywood movies and TV to pop music and life-style issues, and the country specific features and history of anti-Americanism. The volume is enhanced by a substantial introduction by the editor, which looks both at the general “culture clash” between the United States and Europe and at adaptations and blending processes that seem to have occurred in individual countries.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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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
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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October 2005
Free Will, Consciousness and Self
Anthropological Perspectives on Psychology
Bertelsen, P.
What is it to be human? How do we relate to the world, to each other and to our self in a human – in everyday life and when faced with life’s big questions? In this book, the author develops a general theoretical model that might be able to offer a better understanding of the human condition and of the underlying principles of human behavior. The author shows that general psychology, bridging the natural sciences and the social sciences, can make a significant contribution to a general anthropology.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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October 2005
The Art of the Project
Projects and Experiments in Modern French Culture
Gratton, J. & Sheringham, M. (eds)
The idea of the ‘project’ crosses generic, disciplinary and cultural frontiers. At a time when writers and artists are increasingly describing their practices as ‘projects’, remarkably little critical attention has been paid to the actual idea of the ‘project’. This collection of essays responds to an urgent need by suggesting a framework for evaluating the notion of the project in the light of various modernist and postmodernist cultural practices, drawn mainly but not exclusively from the French-speaking domain. The overview offered by this volume promises to makes an original and thought-provoking contribution to contemporary literary, artistic and cultural criticism.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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July 2005
Thinking Utopia
Steps into Other Worlds
Rüsen, J., Fehr, M. & Rieger, T. W. (eds)
After the breakdown of socialist and communist systems in the East, it had become fashionable to declare the so-called "end of utopia" ("end of history," "end of narratives"). The authors of this volume do not share this view but think that it is time to rehabilitate utopian thought. The political concept of Utopia that has given its name to these transcendental projections onto the world has been too narrow to describe and analyze the moving forces of the mind perceiving human existence beyond reality. By broadening the perspectives of utopian studies, these essays enable the reader to reconstruct scholarly paradigms and strategies of utopian, complex and holistic thinking in modern cosmology, philosophy, sociology, in literary, historical and political sciences, and to compare traditions and ways of Western utopian thought to the practice in the East.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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July 2005
The World Ahead
An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future
Mead, M.
Born in the first year of the 20th century, it is fitting that Margaret Mead should have been one of the first anthropologists to use anthropological analysis to study the future course of human civilization. This volume collects, for the first time, her writings on the future of humanity and how humans can shape that future through purposeful action. For Mead, the study of the future was born out of her lifelong interest in processes of change. Many of these papers were originally published as conference proceedings or in limited-circulation journals, testimony before government bodies and chapters in works edited by others. They show Mead's wisdom, prescience and concern for the future of humanity.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2005
Aesthetics in Performance
Formations of Symbolic Construction and Experience
Hobart, A. & Kapferer, B. (eds)
In various ways, the essays presented in this volume explore the structures and aesthetic possibilities of music, dance and dramatic representation in ritual and theatrical situations in a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Each essay enters into a discussion of the “logic” of aesthetic processes exploring their social and political and symbolic import. The aim is above all to explore the way artistic and aesthetic practices in performance produce and structure experience.
Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2005
Narration, Identity, and Historical Consciousness
Straub, J. (ed)
A generally acknowledged characteristic of modern life, namely the temporalization of experience, inextricable from our intensified experience of contingency and difference, has until now remained largely outside psychology’s purview. Wherever questions about the development, structure, and function of the concept of time have been posed – for example by Piaget and other founders of genetic structuralism – they have been concerned predominantly with concepts of "physical", chronometrical time, and related concepts (e.g., "velocity"). All the contributions to the present volume attempt to close this gap. A larger number are especially interested in the narration of stories. Overviews of the relevant literature, as well as empirical case studies, appear alongside theoretical and methodological reflections. Most contributions refer to specifically historical phenomena and meaning-constructions. Some touch on the subjects of biographical memory and biographical constructions of reality. Of all the various affinities between the contributions collected here, the most important is their consistent attention to issues of the constitution and representation of temporal experience.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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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 Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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December 2004
Images of Power
Iconography, Culture and the State in Latin America
Andermann, J. & Rowe, W. (eds)
In Latin America, where even today writing has remained a restricted form of expression, the task of generating consent and imposing the emergent nation-state as the exclusive form of the political, was largely conferred to the image. Furthermore, at the moment of its historical demise, the new, 'postmodern' forms of sovereignty appear to rely even more heavily on visual discourses of power. However, a critique of the iconography of the modern state-form has been missing. This volume is the first concerted attempt by cultural, historical and visual scholars to address the political dimension of visual culture in Latin America, in a comparative perspective spanning various regions and historical stages. The case studies are divided into four sections, analysing the formation of a public sphere, the visual politics of avant-garde art, the impact of mass society on political iconography, and the consolidation and crisis of territory as a key icon of the state.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Media Studies
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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: Cultural Studies (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality Sociology
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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: Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies
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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: History: World War II Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality
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November 2004
Nature Knowledge
Ethnoscience, Cognition, and Utility
Sanga, G. & Ortalli, G. (eds)
Numerous scholars, in particular anthropologists, historians, economists, linguists, and biologists, have, over the last few years, studied forms of knowledge and use of nature, and of the ways nature can be protected and conserved. Some of the most prominent scholars have come together in this volume to reflect on what has been achieved so far, to compare the work carried out in the past, to discuss the problems that have emerged from different research projects, and to map out the way forward.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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November 2004
Americanization and Anti-americanism
The German Encounter with American Culture after 1945
Stephan, A. (ed)
The ongoing discussions about globalization, American hegemony and September 11 and its aftermath have moved the debate about the export of American culture and cultural anti-Americanism to center stage of world politics. At such a time, it is crucial to understand the process of culture transfer and its effects on local societies and their attitudes toward the United States.
This volume presents Germany as a case study of the impact of American culture throughout a period characterized by a totalitarian system, two unusually destructive wars, massive ethnic cleansing, and economic disaster. Drawing on examples from history, culture studies, film, radio, and the arts, the authors explore the political and cultural parameters of Americanization and anti-Americanism, as reflected in the reception and rejection of American popular culture and, more generally, in European-American relations in the "American Century."
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2004
Culture and Politics
Identity and Conflict in a Multicultural World
Pinxten, R. & Verstraete, G. & Longman, C. (eds)
With "race" being discredited as a rallying cry for populist movements because of the atrocities committed in its name during World War II, "culture" has been adopted by right-wing groups instead, but used in the same exclusionary manner as racism was. This volume examines the essentialism, which is implicit in racial theories and re-emerges in the ideological use of cultural identity in new rightist movements, and presents case studies from different parts of the world where researchers were confronted with racism and worked out ways of coping with it.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology (General) Sociology
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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: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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April 2004
The Many Faces of Germany
McCarthy, J. A., Grûnzweig, W. & Koebner, T. (eds)
With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the shifting of American foreign policy away from "old" Europe, long-established patterns of interaction between Germany and the U.S. have come under review. Although seemingly disconnected from the cultural and intellectual world, political developments were not without their influence on the humanities and their curricula during the past century. In retrospect, we can speak of the many different roles Germany has played in American eyes. The Many Faces of Germany seeks to acknowledge the importance of those incarnations for the study of German culture and history on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the major questions raised by the contributors is whether the transformations in the transatlantic dynamics and in the importance of Germany for the U.S. have had a major influence on the study of things German in the U.S. internally. The volume gathers together leading voices of the older and younger generations of social historians, literary scholars, film critics, and cultural historians.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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April 2004
Cultures of Exile
Images of Displacement
Everett, W. & Wagstaff, P. (eds)
Exile is the dominant theme of our times. It can be found in the forced migration of populations but also in the temporal, cultural and physical alienation of the individual's experiences of the postmodern world. This is a world of unstable, shifting identities dominated, and perhaps most acutely expressed by, the fluidity of the visual image. The essays in this volume examine issues such as remembering and forgetting trauma and nostalgia, time and space, social and sexual exclusion in relation to visual media and new technologies, cinema and the visual arts. The multi-facetted and interdisciplinary exploration of exile and displacement — whether geographical, temporal, corporeal or performative — provides an important analysis of a significant and fascinating aspect of contemporary culture.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Refugee and Migration Studies Film and Television Studies
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February 2004
More Than a Music Box
Radio Cultures and Communities in a Multi-Media World
Crisell, A. (ed)
Since the rise of television, much radio consists of 'capsule' news and music formats which are heard as background to other activities. However the medium offers a great deal more. This collection of essays shows how in North America, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and the South Pacific, radio continues to provide distinctive forms of content for the individual listener, yet also enables ethnic and cultural groups to maintain their sense of identity. Ranging from radio among the primordial communities to digital broadcasting and the internet, these essays suggest that the benefits and gratifications which radio confers remain unique and irreplaceable in this multi-media age.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Media Studies
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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 and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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November 2003
Illness and Irony
On the Ambiguity of Suffering in Culture
Lambek, M. & Antze, P. (ed)
Theories of illness and therapy since Freud have included the possibility that sufferers are complicit in their conditions. The studies in this volume explore the ways in which illness and therapy may be characterized as sites at which ironies of the human condition are produced, encountered, acknowledged – or discounted in favor of more literal readings. They ask what these sites can teach us about questions of human agency and about the broader importance of irony for theory.
Encompassing a variety of perspectives, the contributors included in Illness and Irony apply theories of irony to a myriad of cultural contexts, ranging from Freud’s consulting room and the Lacanian clinics of Buenos Aires to fright illness in a Yemeni village and spirit possession on the island of Mayotte. An introductory chapter by Michael Lambek establishes a contextual viewpoint on irony, arising from the writings of Thomas Mann, Alexander Nehamas and others. Vincent Crapanzano concludes the volume by linking the contributions to current debates about irony in rhetoric, linguistics and comparative literature.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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October 2003
An Invitation to Anthropology
The Structure, Evolution and Cultural Identity of Human Societies
Llobera, J.
Synthesizing British, French and American traditions, this stimulating and accessible text presents a comprehensive and fascinating introduction to social and cultural anthropology. It offers an original approach through integrating knowledge produced from a variety of perspectives, placing cultural and social anthropology in a wider context including macro-sociological concepts and reference to biological evolution. Written in a clear and concise style, it conveys to the student the complexities of a discipline focusing on the structure, evolution and cultural identity of human societies up to the present day.
The text consists of four major parts: the scope and method of anthropology, a conceptual and institutional overview, the evolution of the structure of human societies, and the cultural politics of race, ethnicity, nationalism and multiculturalism.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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September 2003
The Historical Practice of Diversity
Transcultural Interactions from the Early Modern Mediterranean to the Postcolonial World
Hoerder, D., Harzig, C. & Shubert, A. (eds)
While multicultural composition of nations has become a catchword in public debates, few educators, not to speak of the general public, realize that cultural interaction was the rule throughout history. Starting with the Islam-Christian-Jewish Mediterranean world of the early modern period, this volume moves to the empires of the 18th and 19th centuries and the African Diaspora of the Black Atlantic. It ends with questioning assumptions about citizenship and underlying homogeneous "received" cultures through the analysis of the changes in various literatures. This volume clearly shows that the life-worlds of settled as well as migrant populations in the past were characterized by cultural change and exchange whether conflictual or peaceful. Societies reflected on such change in their literatures as well as in their concepts of citizenship.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern Cultural Studies (General) Colonial History
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eBook available
September 2003
On Prayer
Text and Commentary
Mauss, M.
Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) never completed his Doctoral thesis on prayer. Yet his scarcely mentioned introduction (Books I and II) of 176 pages and privately printed in 1909, can be seen as some of his most important work. His argument that much of prayer is a social act will be of great interest to anthropologists, sociologists and theologians.
Here, the first English translation to be published, is preceded by a general introduction by W.S.F.Pickering and finally a specific commentary on Mauss's use of ethnographic material.
Subjects: Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology of Religion Sociology
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August 2003
An Ordinary Country
Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa
Alexander, N.
Disputing the notion of a 'miracle' transition in South Africa, the author argues that the new South Africa had to happen as it did because of the socio-historical make-up of the country and the leading players involved.He identifies and explains some of the turning points at which critical choices were made by local and international forces. Alexander, a former leading political activist and commentator who spent time on Robben Island, goes beyond what he calls 'the effervescence of parliamentary debate and grandstanding' and explores a range of issues in post-apartheid South Africa including national identity and the rainbow nation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the role and status of language, showing the volatility, the tentativeness,and the fluidity of the evolving situation.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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May 2003
Culture and International History
Gienow-Hecht, J.E. & Schumacher, F. (eds)
Combining the perspectives of 18 international scholars from Europe and the United States with a critical discussion of the role of culture in international relations, this volume introduces recent trends in the study of Culture and International History. It systematically explores the cultural dimension of international history, mapping existing approaches and conceptual lenses for the study of cultural factors and thus hopes to sharpen the awareness for the cultural approach to international history among both American and non-American scholars.
The first part provides a methodological introduction, explores the cultural underpinnings of foreign policy, and the role of culture in international affairs by reviewing the historiography and examining the meaning of the word culture in the context of foreign relations. In the second part, contributors analyze culture as a tool of foreign policy. They demonstrate how culture was instrumentalized for diplomatic goals and purposes in different historical periods and world regions. The essays in the third part expand the state-centered view and retrace informal cultural relations among nations and peoples. This exploration of non-state cultural interaction focuses on the role of science, art, religion, and tourism. The fourth part collects the findings and arguments of part one, two, and three to define a roadmap for further scholarly inquiry. A group of" commentators" survey the preceding essays, place them into a larger research context, and address the question "Where do we go from here?" The last and fifth part presents a selection of primary sources along with individual comments highlighting a new genre of resources scholars interested in culture and international relations can consult.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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March 2003
Group Identities on French and British Television
Scriven, M. & Roberts, E. (eds)
Advances in audiovisual technology, most notably the advent of the popular usage of digital technology in the last few years, have altered the face of popular television. Thanks to cable, satellite and now digital technology, television broadcasts can reach an international audience. The reaction from cultural critics has been mixed. As the debate concerning the effects of new telecommunications and audiovisual technology continues unabated, this book examines the underlying hypothesis that collective allegiances are moving away from the national paradigm towards the global/local model and provides a balanced appraisal of the depiction of a select number of group identities on television in Britain and France.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General) Sociology Media Studies
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December 2002
The Peirce Seminar Papers
Volume V: Essays in Semiotic Analysis
Shapiro, M. (ed)
Philosophers and linguists have come together for this volume to provide a glimpse of current thinking about language in a semiotic mode and of the analyses that result from applying the theory of signs of the American philosopher-scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) to subjects that Peirce himself did not explore in any depth. Contributors include Victor Friedman, Laura Janda, Tony Jappy, Dinès Johansen, Dan Nesher, Joáo Queiroz, Joëlle Réthoré, Michael Shapiro, and Nils Thelin.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century Literary Studies
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December 2002
Culture and Crisis
The Case of Germany and Sweden
Witoszek, N. & Trägårdh, L. (eds)
It is often argued that Germany and Scandinavia stand at two opposite ends of a spectrum with regard to their response to social-economic disruptions and cultural challenges. Though, in many respects, they have a shared cultural inheritance, it is nevertheless the case that they mobilize different mythologies and different modes of coping when faced with breakdown and disorder. The authors argue that it is at these "critical junctures," points of crisis and innovation in the life of communities, that the tradition and identity of national and local communities are formed, polarized, and revalued; it is here that social change takes a particular direction.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2002
The Culture of German Environmentalism
Anxieties, Visions, Realities
Goodbody, A.
Though much has been written about the Green Party in Germany, less is known about the changes in individuals' attitudes towards the environment that led to the rise of environmental movement, or of its cultural roots. This volume draws attention to the breadth of environmentalism in contemporary Germany and its significance for German political culture by focusing on the treatment of "green" issues in literature, the media and film, against the background of Green politics and the environmental movement. The volume includes an interview with Carl Amery, the Bavarian Green and science fiction writer, a short text by him and an account of his activities as writer and campaigner.
Subjects: Environmental Studies (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2002
Western Historical Thinking
An Intercultural Debate
Rüsen, J. (ed)
What is history – a question historians have been asking themselves time and again. Does "history" as an academic discipline, as it has evolved in the West over the centuries, represent a specific mode of historical thinking that can bedefined in contrast to other forms of historical consciousness?
In this volume, Peter Burke, a prominent "Western" historian, offers ten hypotheses that attempt to constitute specifically "Western Historical Thinking." Scholars from Asia and Africa comment on his position in the light of their own ideas of the sense and meaning of historical thinking. The volume is rounded off by Peter Burke's comments on the questions and issues raised by the authors and his suggestions for the way forward towards a common ground for intercultural communication.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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April 2002
Writing Mothers and Daughters
Renegotiating the Mother in Western European Narratives by Women
Giorgio, A. (ed)
The psychoanalytic discovery of the importance of the pre-oedipal mother-daughter bond in the 1970s generated a vast amount of feminist theory attempting to identify the specificity of, and give value to, the daughter's relationship to her mother. At the same time women writers engaged in the complex task of representing this highly conflictual relationship which had been largely absent in women's narrative until then. Although much criticism has been written on individual texts, no systematic study of the development of this theme in Western European fiction exists.
This book offers the first comparative assessment of the subject-matter in England, France, Germany and Austria, Ireland, Italy, and Spain in the second half of last century. The six main chapters explore the interplay between narrative strategies, psychic structures, and socio-political and cultural processes in the textual representation of the relationship in each country, thus providing original interpretations both of classic texts by established writers and of more recent narratives by new or emerging authors. Among the writers featured are Steedman, Diski, Winterson, Tennant, de Beauvoir, Leduc, Djura, Wolf, Jelinek, Mitgutsch, Novak, Lavin, O'Brien, O'Faoláin, Morante, Sanvitale, Ramondino, Chacel, Rodoreda, Martín Gaite.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General)
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February 2002
Plural Identities - Singular Narratives
The Case of Northern Ireland
Nic Craith, M.
Northern Ireland is frequently characterized in terms of a "two traditions" paradigm, representing the conflict as being between two discrete cultures. Proceeding from an analysis of the historical and religious context, this study demonstrates the reductionist nature of the "two traditions" model, highlighting instead the complexity of ethnic identities and cultural traditions.
It thus shows why attempts at reconciliation like the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which seeks to promote the concept of a "parity of esteem" based on this identity model., are fraught with difficulties. Reflecting on the applicability of the concept of multiculturalism in the context of Northern Ireland, the author proposes a re-conceptualisation of Northern Irish culture along lines that steer clear of binary oppositions.
From the Contents: 'Webs of Significance'; Dis-membering the Past; Divided by Common Cosmologies; A Discourse in Difference; The Process if 'Cruthinitude'; Un Unclaimed Tradition; Ethnic Nationality; The 'Fuzzy Frontier'; The 'Common Ground'
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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December 2001
Academic Anthropology and the Museum
Back to the Future
Bouquet, M. (ed)
The museum boom, with its accompanying objectification and politicization of culture, finds its counterpart in the growing interest by social scientists in material culture, much of which is to be found in museums. Not surprisingly, anthropologists in particular are turning their attention again to museums, after decades of neglect, during which fieldwork became the hallmark of modern anthropology - so much so that the "social" and the "material" parted company so radically as to produce a kind of knowledge gap between historical collections and the intellectuals who might have benefitted from working on these material representations of culture. Moreover it was forgotten that museums do not only present the "pastness" of things. A great deal of what goes on in contemporary museums is literally about planning the shape of the future: making culture materialize involves mixing things from the past, taking into account current visions, and knowing that the scenes constructed will shape the perspectives of future generations. However, the (re-)invention of museum anthropology presents a series of challenges for academic teaching and research, as well as for the work of cultural production in contemporary museums - issues that are explored in this volume.
Subjects: Museum Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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October 2001
Themes in French Culture
A Preface to a Study of French Community
Mead, M. & Metraux, R.
Margaret Mead collaborated with her long-time colleague Rhoda Métraux in this unique study of French culture. The Hoover Institute at Stanford University originally published this volume, which grew out of the Columbia University project on Research of Contemporary Cultures in 1954. It is one of the few works by American social scientists dealing with broad themes of French life.
Mead and Métraux present a vivid picture of the French starting with the organization of the house and its architecture, and drawing original conclusions for the structure of French families and overall cultural values. This work, long out of print, is a fascinating and penetrating portrait of a contemporary European society.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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July 2001
Russian Culture
Mead, M. & Gorer, G.
This volume brings together two classic works on the culture of the Russian people which have been long out of print. Gorer's Great Russian Culture and Mead's Soviet Attitudes towards Authority: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet Character were among the first attempts by anthropologists to analyze Russian society.
They were influential both for several generations of anthropologists and in shaping American governmental attitudes toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War period. Additionally they offer fascinating insights into the early anthropological use of psychological data to analyze cultural patterns. Read as part of the history of the anthropology of complex contemporary societies, they are as fascinating for their more questionable conclusions as for their accurate characterizations of Russian life.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2001
Critical Theory
Current State and Future Prospects
Hohendahl, P.-U. & Fisher, J. (eds)
The retirement of the distinguished philosopher Jürgen Habermas from his chair at the University of Frankfurt signalled an important caesura in the history of Critical Theory: the transition from the Habermasian project, to different forms of inquiry in the work of the next generation. This change-over happens at a time when it has become clear that Habermas's systematic exploration of communicative rationality has reached the point where both its achievements and its limitations had become evident. The essays collected in this volume address the problems connected with this transition, partly by returning to the insights of the first generation (Adorno and Benjamin), partly by focusing on questions raised by Habermas's work. Whatever the difference in the authors' positions, this collection gains its unity through their common interest in the significance and value of Critical Theory today and in its future as a philosophical project.
Subject: Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2001
German Minorities in Europe
Ethnic Identity and Cultural Belonging
Wolff, S. (ed)
The study of ethnic minorities and their role in the domestic politics of their host states has long attracted scholars from a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. By contrast, national (or external) minorities, have been under-represented in the literature on ethnic minorities, although the interest has increased since the collapse of communism and more recently since the eruption of violent conflict in Kosovo. Ethnic Germans in particular, although still numbering millions and spread over twenty countries in western, central, and eastern Europe, have attracted only little attention.
This volume addresses the issue of Germany's external minorities, exploring the complex interrelationship between their ethnic identity and sense of cultural belonging on the one hand, and the political, economic, legal, and social situation in their respective societies, on the other. Leading specialists, representing a wide spectrum of viewpoints on the social and political conditions under which German minorities live today, provide case studies of all the major individual minority groups. In this way, a comprehensive picture of Germans and German culture in Europe emerges that provides both historical and contemporary perspectives on a diaspora community with an uncertain future between assimilation, segregation, and emigration.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Refugee and Migration Studies
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June 2001
Women and Modernity in Weimar Germany
Reality and its Representation in Popular Fiction
Petersen, V. R.
This book focuses on the popular fiction of Weimar Germany and explores the relationship between women, the texts they read, and the society in which they lived. A complex picture emerges that shows women talking center stage, not only in the fiction but also in the reality that shaped its fictional representations. One of the author's significant conclusions is that it was the growing strength of female subjectivity, its strong positioning, and its insistent claim to visibility that occupied the imaginations and fears of Weimar culture and contributed in an important way to the crisis that afflicted the Weimar Republic.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General)
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June 2001
Human Nature and the French Revolution
From the Enlightenment to the Napoleonic Code
Martin, X.
What view of man did the French Revolutionaries hold? Anyone who purports to be interested in the "Rights of Man" could be expected to see this question as crucial and yet, surprisingly, it is rarely raised. Through his work as a legal historian, Xavier Martin came to realize that there is no unified view of man and that, alongside the "official" revolutionary discourse, very divergent views can be traced in a variety of sources from the Enlightenment to the Napoleonic Code. Michelet's phrases, "Know men in order to act upon them" sums up the problem that Martin's study constantly seeks to elucidate and illustrate: it reveals the prevailing tendency to see men as passive, giving legislators and medical people alike free rein to manipulate them at will. His analysis impels the reader to revaluate the Enlightenment concept of humanism. By drawing on a variety of sources, the author shows how the anthropology of Enlightenment and revolutionary France often conflicts with concurrent discourses.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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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.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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June 2001
Relative Points of View
Linguistic Representations of Culture
Stroinska, M. (ed)
The relationship between language and various kinds of non-linguistic behavior has been of great fascination for many of those working in the fields of cultural anthropology, linguistics, and philosophy, or, broadly understood, cultural studies. The authors in this volume explore this relationship in a number of cultures and social contexts and discuss the problem of linguistic relativism and its application to several areas of social interaction across cultures. The authors deal with such questions as how language and culture intersect resulting in different points of view on reality that are all equally authentic and rooted in experience. The question of the influence of language and culture on our perceptino of physical and social reality is re-examined for such domains as politics, commerce, working with people, religion, and gender relations.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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April 2001
Creating Our Common Future
Educating for Unity in Diversity
Campbell, J. (ed)
Looking back at the last century with its devastating wars, genocides, environmental disasters, more often than not caused by humans, an urgent need for a paradigmatic shift in human relationships suggests itself. Other factors point in the same direction, such as movement towards globalization, reflected in greater fragmentation of society, of growing migration of persons across state boundaries, resulting in ethnic clashes of culture and competing claims over territories. This means that greater social cohesion is needed while at the same time a heightened awareness of difference and mutual respect has to be fostered.
It is widely accepted that education is a crucial agency in developing a new awareness of "the self" and "the other" - education at the formal, informal and non-formal level. The essays in this collection reflect on the possibilities of a "common future" and on educational programs and projects that are aimed at transforming the vision of a more humane world into reality.
Subjects: Educational Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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February 2001
Expanding Suburbia
Reviewing Suburban Narratives
Webster, R. (ed)
During the last few decades suburbia has grown enormously and become a phenomenon attracting the attention of scholars as well as practitioners by whom it is seen as an increasingly significant and complex area of modern life. The essays in this volume consider a range of representations of suburban life from the late nineteenth century to the present day, including fiction, film, and popular music, drawn from America and Australia as well as Britain. They explore and challenge traditional views of suburbia so that, rather than a location of conformity and stereotypicality, it can be viewed as a site of social conflict, division, and ambiguity as well as a source of significant creativity across a range of cultural texts. The volume takes a thematic approach, considering the rise of suburbia, imagined and real suburbias, alternative suburbias: all of the essays have a strong historical dimension and the overall approach is characterized by interdisciplinarity.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Urban Studies
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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: Cultural Studies (General) Sociology Political and Economic Anthropology
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January 2001
Echoes of Narcissus
Spaas, L. (ed)
In Greek mythology the beautiful Narcissus glimpsed his own reflection in the waters of a spring and fell in love. But his was an impossible passion and, filled with despair, he pined away. Over the years the myth has inspired painters, writers, and film directors, as well as philosophers and psychoanalysts. The tragic story of Narcissus, in love with himself, and of Echo, the nymph in love with him, lies at the heart of this collection of essays exploring the origins of the myth and some of its many cultural manifestations and meanings relating to the self and the self's relationship to the other. Through their discussion of the myth and its ramifications, the contributors to this volume broaden our understanding of one of the fundamental myths of Western culture.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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January 2001
Poems in Steel
National Socialism and the Politics of Inventing from Weimar to Bonn
Gispen, K.
The role of National Socialism in the development of German society remains a central question of historical inquiry. This study presents original answers by examining the politics of inventing, a crucial but long ignored problem at the intersection of the history of technology, legal, political, and business history. The analysis of conflicts over the rights of inventors and the meaning of inventing from the 1920s to the 1950s reveals a deep chasm, reaching back to the late nineteenth century, between the forces of capital and big business on one hand and the exponents of intellectual capital - inventors, engineers, industrial scientists - on the other.
Subjects: History (General) History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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July 2000
The Study of Culture At a Distance
Mead, M. & Métraux, R. (eds)
The United States on the eve of the Second World War was still a society largely isolated from the world. Facing enemies with unfamiliar cultural traditions, the U.S. government turned to anthropologists for insight. The result was a research effort that continued long after the war, aimed, in the words of Margaret Mead, at analyzing the cultural regularities in the characters of individuals who are members of societies that are inaccessible to direct observation. In 1953, Margaret Mead and Rhoda Métraux produced The Study of Culture at a Distance, a compilation of research from this period. This remarkable work, long unavailable, presents a rich and complex methodology for the study of cultures through literature, film, informant interviews, focus groups, and projective techniques. The book also provides fascinating insights into such diverse cultures as China, Thailand, Italy, Syria, France, Germany, Russia, Romania, and Great Britain, and includes some highly original analysis such as that of the Soviet style of chess, a study of Jean Cocteau's classic film La Belle et la Bête, and the cultural interpretations of Rorschach tests administered to Chinese subjects.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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July 2000
And Keep Your Powder Dry
An Anthropologist Looks at America
Mead, M.
Margaret Mead wrote this comprehensive sketch of the culture of the United States - the first since de Tocqueville - in 1942 at the beginnning of the Second World War, when Americans were confronted by foreign powers from both Europe and Asia in a particularly challenging manner. Mead's work became an instant classic. It was required reading for anthropology students for nearly two decades, and was widely translated. It was revised and expanded in 1965 for a second generation of readers. Among the more controversial conclusions of her analysis are the denial of class as a motivating force in American culture, and her contention that culture is the primary determinant for individual character formation. Her process remains lucid, vivid, and arresting. As a classic study of a complex western society, it remains a monument to anthropological analysis.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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May 2000
A Reversal of Fortunes?
Women, Work, and Change in East Germany
Alsop, R.
German unification brought fundamental, often traumatic changes for the people in eastern Germany. Women as a group were arguably more deeply affected by the changes than any other, and in one area in particular: that of work, which had far-reaching effects on them and their families' economic situation. Rachel Alsop critically examines the processes behind women's changing relationship to the labor market in eastern Germany following the collapse of state socialism and the transition to a market economy. By the 1980s women made up virtually half of the East German work force. The collapse of the GDR transformed the field of work, drastically diminishing the general demand for labor. Yet while economic and political restructuring reduced the volume of both male and female employment, it was women who bore the brunt of unemployment. In the immediate transitional period a re-masculinization of the workforce was evident, with women constituting the large part of the unemployed.
Using an extensive range of both quantitative and qualitative data, the author explores the gender dynamics of the social, economic, and political restructuring of eastern Germany, thereby producing an important new context in which to examine contemporary debates on gender and work.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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May 2000
Cold Fusion
Aspects of the German Cultural Presence in Russia
Barabtarlo, G. (ed)
While historical and political aspects of the Russo-German relationship over the past three to four centuries have received due attention from scholars, the range of the far more diverse, important, and peculiar cultural relations still awaits full assessment. This volume shows how enriching these cultural influences were for both countries, affecting many spheres of intellectual and daily life such as philosophy and religion, education and ideology, sciences and their application, arts and letters, custom and language. The German-Russian relationship has always been particularly intense. Oscillating as it has between infatuation and contempt, it has always been marked by a singular paradox: a German cultural presence in Russia resulting either in a more or less complete fusion, as in the case of Russifield German, or in a pronounced mutual repulsion, accompanied by the denigration of each other's culture as inferior. It is this curious paradox that determines the perspectives of the articles that were specially written for this volume, providing it with a unifying focus.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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April 2000
Challenging Modernity
Dada between Modern and Postmodern
Pegrum, M. A.
When Dada burst onto the European stage in 1916, it shocked and scandalized the public of its day with art forms, ideas, and attitudes which were so revolutionary that it is only in recent decades that they have begun to find recognition within the broad cultural movement known as postmodernism. In fact, many postmodern artistic and intellectual tendencies can be seen to have descended via an underground tradition from the experiments of the Dadaists earlier this century. Yet, the existence of this close link has been largely neglected by scholars.
This book, for the first time, examines in depth the link between modernism and postmodernism and demonstrates the extensive similarities, as well as the few crucial differences between the ideas and art of the Dadaists on the one hand, and those of contemporary postmodern thinkers and artists on the other. Although they did not have access to postmodern terminology, it is clear that many Dadaists were essentially attempting to escape constrictive Enlightenment and modern(ist)structures in order to create a proto-postmodern space of différence, otherness, and flux. Their successes, failures, and compromises in this respect are very illustrative for anyone interested in the progress of our own intellectual and artistic culture in its wavering between modern and postmodern. This book offers a much-needed historical perspective and solid basis for the on-going debate on postmodernism.
Subject: Cultural Studies (General)
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April 2000
The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1492-1800
Gray, E. & Fiering, N. (eds)
When Columbus arrived in the Americas there were, it is believed, as many as 2,000 distinct, mutually unintelligible tongues spoken in the western hemisphere, encompassing the entire area from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. This astonishing fact has generally escaped the attention of historians, in part because many of these indigenous languages have since become extinct. And yet the burden of overcoming America's language barriers was perhaps the one problem faced by all peoples of the New World in the early modern era: African slaves and Native Americans in the Lower Mississippi Valley; Jesuit missionaries and Huron-speaking peoples in New France; Spanish conquistadors and the Aztec rulers. All of these groups confronted America's complex linguistic environment, and all of them had to devise ways of transcending that environment - a problem that arose often with life or death implications.
For the first time, historians, anthropologists, literature specialists, and linguists have come together to reflect, in the fifteen original essays presented in this volume, on the various modes of contact and communication that took place between the Europeans and the "Natives." A particularly important aspect of this fascinating collection is the way it demonstrates the interactive nature of the encounter and how Native peoples found ways to shape and adapt imported systems of spoken and written communication to their own spiritual and material needs.
Subjects: History: Medieval/Early Modern Colonial History Cultural Studies (General) Refugee and Migration Studies
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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.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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January 2000
Productive Men and Reproductive Women
The Agrarian Household and the Emergence of Separate Spheres during the German Enlightenment
Gray, M.
The debate on the origins of modern gender norms continues unabated across the academic disciplines. This book adds an important and hitherto neglected dimension. Focusing on rural life and its values, the author argues that the modern ideal of separate spheres originated in the era of the Enlightenment. Prior to the eighteenth century, cultural norms prescribed active,interdependent economic roles for both women and men. Enlightenment economists transformed these gender paradigms as they postulated a market exchange system directed exclusively by men. By the early nineteenth century, the emerging bourgeois value system affirmed the new civil society and the market place as exclusively male realms. These standards defined women's options largely as marriage and motherhood.
Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Cultural Studies (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality
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January 2000
Paradoxes of Civil Society
New Perspectives on Modern German and British History
Trentmann, F. (ed)
"Civil Society" has been experiencing a global renaissance among social movements and political thinkers during the last two decades. This collection of original papers by junior and senior scholars offers an important comparative-historical dimension to the debate by examining the historical roots of civil society in Germany and Britain from the seventeenth-century revolutions to the beginning of the welfare state.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History (General)
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December 1999
The Lion and the Eagle
German-Spanish Relations Over the Centuries: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Kent, C., Wolber, T. & Hewitt, C. (eds)
The German and Spanish-speaking worlds have, over the centuries, developed an intrinsic relationship, one which predates the Habsburg dynasty and the Renaissance and baroque periods. The cross-fertilization and challenges have been both fruitful and complex with novel inventions surfacing in one culture often achieving their greatest prosperity in the other: Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation stimulated a response in Spain that was to define the European Counter Reformation; Spanish Baroque writers were seminal in the development of German Romanticism; Carl Christian Friedrich Krause and other nineteenth-century liberals provided the foundation for Spanish reformist efforts on the one hand, while German conservatives like Novalis and Adam Müller inspired conservatvies on the other; the music of Richard Wagner transformed Spanish music and the Spanish stage at the turn of the twentieth century; Pablo Picasso and other artists of the Spanish avant-garde sparkled the enthusiasm of the Germans before the Nazi era. Today, German and Spanish intellectuals and writers share a similar commitment to the creation of a European culture in the face of resistance from other members of the European Union.
Viewed from a variety of disciplines this volume explores the relentlessly consistent, albeit often forgotten connections between the two linguistic and cultural groups revealing the myriad of ways in which they have shared and transformed literature, art, culture, politics, and history.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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April 1999
From World War to Waldheim
Culture and Politics in Austria and the United States
Good, D. & Wodak, R. (eds)
The growing internationalization of the world poses a fundamental question, i.e., through what mechanisms does culture diffuse across political boundaries and what is the role of politics in shaping this diffusion? This volume offers some answers through the case study of the relationship between two quite different states during the Cold War era - Austria, a small neutral country, and the United States, the reigning superpower. The authors challenge naive notions of cultural diffusion that posit the submission of small "peripheral" areas to the dictates of hegemonic powers at the "core." "Americanization" has no doubt taken place since 1945; however, local forces crucially shaped this process, and Austrian elites enjoyed considerable leeway in pursuing "Austrian" political objectives. On the other hand, with the expulsion of Vienna's cultural and intellectual elite after the Anschluß, the United States, more than any othercountry, became heir to the rich cultural legacy of "Vienna 1900," which profoundly shaped politics and culture in both its "high" and popular forms in postwar America. The relationship climaxed and came full circle with the unfolding of the Waldheim affair, which forced Americans and Austrians to reinterpret the meaning of the Nazi era for their own history in a confrontation with the "other."
Subjects: History: World War I Cultural Studies (General)
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December 1998
Multiculturalism in Transit
A German-American Exchange
Milich, K. & Peck, J. (eds)
Multiculturalism is one of the most controversial topics in both the United States and Germany.This interdisciplinary collection of essays by German scholars in American Studies and American scholars in German Studies analyze the "other" from this dual perspective and from their respective disciplines such as literary and cultural studies, political science, anthropology,and history. More particularly they examine multiculturalism in terms of national and ethnic identities, as well as gender and race, and look at the disciplines and institutions that produce and legitimize discourses on subjects such as minority literatures, feminism, and the notion of foreignness itself. What becomes clear is the fact that careful attention must be paid to the particular conditions and different ideological concepts that shape this term, i.e., the "national" historical, political, social, and institutional contexts in which it appears, circulates, and accrues meanings.
Contributors: G. Welz, T. Brennan, B. Ostendorf, R. Hof, S. Lennox, A. Koenen, F. Hajek, C.Gersdorf, G. H. Lenz, F. Trommler, H. C. Seeba, A. Seyhan, A. Hornung, B. Thomas, G. O. Kvistad, H.-J. Puhle
Subject: Cultural Studies (General)
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November 1998
Women and Russian Culture
Projections and Self-Perceptions
Marsh, R. (ed)
The image of women in Russian culture has undergone profound changes: from the origins of modern Russian literature in the eighteenth century until the Revolution of 1917, when women were a source of fascination for Russian writers, to the socialist realism period, during which public discussion of the representation of women in literature rapidly declined and the "woman question" was declared to have been "resolved," to a reappraisal of the position of women since the 1980s.
This collection of essays by leading western and Russian specialists contains new insights and updates previous research into the role of women in Russian culture in the last two centuries and contributes to two exciting and growing research areas: the feminist critique of work by Russian male authors and the study of Russian women writers. Moreover, whereas most previous studies have concentrated on the aesthetic qualities of works by women writers, this collection includes both close textual analysis and the discussion of biographical, historical, and political questions relating both to the representation of women and women's culture. The aim is not to present aunified manifesto, but rather to bring together a spectrum of approaches and positions within their common focus on the relationship between women and culture in Russia.
Contributors: R. Marsh, A. Barker, J. Andrew, D. Greene, I. Kazakova, C. Schuler, S. Graham, K. Hodgson, N. Kolchevska, N. Cornwell, J. Curtis, M. Katz, M. Ledkovsky, P.I. Barta, A. Darmodekhina, D. Gillespie, N. Zhuravkina, B. Lanin, S. Carsten, A. Tait
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General)
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October 1998
Models and Mirrors
Towards an Anthropology of Public Events
Handelman, D.
Ritual is one of the most discussed cultural practices, yet its treatment in anthropological terms has been seriously limited, characterized by a host of narrow conceptual distinctions. One major reason for this situation has been the prevalence of positivist anthropologies that have viewed and summarized ritual occasions first and foremost in terms of their declared and assumed functions. By contrast, this book, which has become a classic, investigates them as epistemological phenomena in their own right. Comparing public events - a domain which includes ritual and related occasions - the author argues that any public event must first be comprehended through the logic of its design. It is the logic of organization of an occasion which establishes in large measure what that occasion is able to do in relation to the world within which it is created and practiced.
Subjects: Theory and Methodology Cultural Studies (General)
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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: Cultural Studies (General) Sociology Literary Studies
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July 1998
Postmodernism in the Cinema
Degli-Esposti, C. (ed)
Although "Postmodernism" has been a widely used catch word and its concept extensively discussed in philosophy, political thought, and the arts, many scholars still feel uneasy about it
Despite the fact that the concept can be traced back to Arnold Toynbee's 1939 edition of A Study of History, or even back into the nineteenth century, its amorphous nature continues to confound many scholars, not least because there are not one but several kinds of postmodernism, each one pointing to different states of questioning and to diverse ways of remembering, interpreting, and representing. This anthology makes a significant contribution to the current debate in that it offers sophisticated and multi-faceted discussions of a number of key issues in relation to cinema such as auteurism, national cinemas, metacinema, the parodic, history, and colonization.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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February 1998
Gender and Germanness
Cultural Productions of Nation
Herminghouse, P. & Mueller, M. (eds)
Cultural Studies have been preoccupied with questions of national identity and cultural representations. At the same time, feminist studies have insisted upon the entanglement of gender with issues of nation, class, and ethnicity. Developments in the wake of German unification demand a reassessment of the nexus of gender, Germanness and nationhood. The contributors to this volume pursue these strands of the cultural debate in German history, literature, visual arts, and language over a period of three hundred years in sections devoted to History and the Canon, Visual Culture, Germany and Her "Others," and Language and Power.
Contributors: L. Adelson, A. Taylor Allen, K. Bauer, R. Berman, B. Byg, M. Denman, E. Frederiksen, S. Friedrichsmeyer, E. Kaufmann, L. Koepnick, B. Kosta, S. Lefko, A. M.O'Sickey, B. Mennel, H. M. Müller, B. Peterson, L. Pusch, D. Sweet, H. Watt, S. Zantop.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) History (General) Gender Studies and Sexuality
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January 1998
Towards Emancipation
German Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century
Diethe, C.
No doubt, the feminist movement has come a long way, even though many of its aims have not been realized or, in fact, are still debated by its supporters and critics. It is sobering andinstructive to look back and examine the aspirations, achievements and failures of women of earlier generations, especially in the nineteenth century, on which subsequent generations of women have built. Although Germany has produced some famous and influential women writers and thinkers, no recent study exists that analyzes their work in a systematic way. This book fills the gap by discussing some of the major writers in the nineteenth century, beginning with late-Romantic writers, such as Bettina von Arnim and Johanna Schopenhauer, and goes on to discuss writers who were active in the 1848 Revolution such as Malwida von Meysenbug and Johanna Kinkel. With regard to the idea of emancipation the attitudes of mainstream writers examined range from lukewarm, such as the enormously popular Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach and Gabriele Reuter, to downright hostile, such as Lou Andreas-Salomé and Franziska zu Reventlow. The heart of the book is devoted to the leading proponents of emancipation, HedwigDohm, Helene Böhlau, and the prolific Louise Otto-Peters.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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January 1998
Enemy Images in American History
Fiebig-von Hase, R. & Lehmkuhl, U. (eds)
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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March 1997
The Policing of Politics in the Twentieth Century
Historical Perspectives
Mazower, M. (ed)
The role of the police has, from its beginnings, been ambiguous, even janus-faced. This volume focuses on one of its controversial aspects by showing how the police have been utilized in the past by regimes in Europe, the USA and the British Empire to check political dissent and social unrest. Ideologies such as anti-Communism emerge as significant influences in both democracies and dictatorships. And by shedding new light on policing continuities in twentieth-century Germany and Italy, as well as Interpol, this volume questions the compatibility of democratic government and political policing.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 20th Century to Present
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March 1997
Post-war Women's Writing in German
Feminist Critical Approaches
Weedon, C. (ed)
Women in the Federal Republic, the former GDR, Switzerland and Austria have initiated a remarkable literary movement, especially after 1968, which is also attracting growing attention elsewhere. Informed by critical feminist and literary theory, this broad-ranging collection, the first of its kind, examines the history of these writings in the context of the social and political developments in the respective countries. It combines survey chapters with detailed studies of prominent authors whose work is often unavailable in English.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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December 1996
From Caligari to California
Eric Pommer's Life in the International Film Wars
Hardt, U.
Known as one of the great producers and promoters of the film industry, Eric Pommer had a life-long commitment to German film - despite his emigration in 1933 - and worked in France and Britian, as well as the United States.
As German producer, studio executive, and film politician in the pre-Hitler era Erich (later Eric) Pommer (1889-1966), a native of Germany, was an innovator and pioneer, a vital force in leading German cinema to international acclaim with successes such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, The Nibelungen and The Blue Angel. As Motion Picture Control Officer of the US Military Government he undertook , from 1946-49, the difficult task of rebuilding West Germany's film industry from the ashes of the Second World War. He succeeded brilliantly, but not without paying the hefty price of becoming embroiled in the turmoil of postwar German politics which made him many friends, but also many enemies. This book is the first detailed account in English of the remarkable career of Pommer who became a legend in his own lifetime.
Subjects: Film and Television Studies History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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October 1996
A Poet Or Nothing At All
The Tübingen and Basel Years of Herman Hesse
Helt, R. C.
The most original, new work on Hesse in many years and the definitive study of the young Herman Hesse, offering much previously unknown material such as his "neo-Romantic" poetry of which two dozen are published here for the first time in the original.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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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.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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May 1996
Taboos in German Literature
Jackson, D. (ed)
Students of German Literature will have asked themselves at one stage or another why certain topics have received saturation treatment of the last two centuries while others have been either ignored entirely or at best grossly neglected. This book tackles this fascinating issue and illuminates why, at various junctures, specific topics and attitudes were regarded by influential sections of society as being either inadmissable or presentable only in particular, prescribed ways. While the presentation of sexual matters such as homosexuality and lesbianism is inevitably at the heart of the book, political, social, and ideological issues also loom large. The editor has recruited a team of prominent scholars to provide a penetrating, comprehensive focus that ranges from individual writers and their works, i.e., Goethe, Hölderlin, Kafka, and Thomas Mann, to specific issues, movements and periods.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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May 1996
Turkish Culture in German Society
Horrocks, D. & Kolinsky, E. (eds)
For many decades Germany has had a sizeable Turkish minority that lives in an uneasy co-existence with the Germans around them and as such has attracted considerable interest abroadwhere it tends to be seen as a measure of German tolerance. However, little is known about theactual situation of the Turks. This volume provides valuable information, presented in a mostoriginal manner in that it combines literary and cultural studies with social and political analysis.It focuses on the Turkish-born writer Emine Sevgi Özdamar, who writes in German and whosework, especially her highly acclaimed novel Das ist eine Karawanserei, is examined criticallyand situated in the context of German "migrant literature".
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Sociology
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April 1996
Futurism and Politics
Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909-1944
Berghaus, G.
"Futurism was the state of the Fascist regime" - this is the view one encounters in most books written on Futurist art and literature. Whilst there can be no doubt about Futurist involvement with the founding of the fascist movement, little is known about the internal relationship between Futurists and Fascists in the years 1918-22, nor about the reasons for the Futurists' departure from the Fascist movement in 1920, or about Futurist opposition to (and even armed struggle against) the Fascist regime after 1924. Whilst the public documents testifying to Futurist support of Mussolini are well known, little has been written about Futurist anti-fascism camouflaged as official adherence to the regime. This study, based primarily on unknown or unpublished documents discovered in state archives and private collections, presents a new andfar more complex picture of the relationship of the two movements than has previously been shown by critics and historians.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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April 1996
Tolerance Between Intolerance and the Intolerable
Ricoeur, P. (ed)
It seems more urgent than ever before to fend off the rising wave of intolerance and at the same time determine the nature of tolerance and its limits. As Ricoeur says in his Foreword: "Tolerance is a tricky subject: too easy or too difficult. It is indeed too easy to deplore intolerance, without putting oneself into question, oneself and the different allegiances with which each person identifies." In order to explore these complexities, he has gathered together a number of prominent thinkers from various parts of the world and areas of activity and invited them to reflect on the "obstacles and limits to tolerance." The Declaration of Principles on Tolerance, issued by the United Nations in 1995, rounds up this remarkable collection of essays.
Contributors: Norberto Bobbio, Vaclav Havel, Jeanne Hersch, Bernard Williams, Octavio Paz, Ghislain Waterlot, Antoine Garapon, Mario Bettati, Yehudi Menuhin, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Hans Küng, Wole Soyinka, Ionna Kuçuradi, Monique Canto-Sperber, Paul Ricoeur, Desmond Tutu.
DIOGENES LIBRARY
Subjects: Peace and Conflict Studies Cultural Studies (General)
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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 and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General)
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October 1995
Women of Prague
Ethnic Diversity and Social Change from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
Iggers, W.
For many centuries Prague has exerted a particular fascination because of its beauty and therichness of its culture and history. Its famous group of German and Czech writers of mostly Jewish extraction in the earlier part of this century has deeply influenced Western culture.However, little attention has so far been paid to the roles of women in the history of thisethnically diverse area in around Prague. Based on largely autobiographical writings and letters by women and enhanced by extensive historical introduction, this book redresses a serious imbalance. The vivid and often moving portraits, which emerge from the varied material used bythe author, offer fascinating and new insights into the social and cultural history of this region.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century
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August 1995
Women in Contemporary Russia
Koval, V. (ed)
The position of Russia has always been difficult. In spite of the Revolution in 1917, the legal, economic, social and political inequalities between men and women have remained severe. For more than seventy years the official propaganda of the Soviet system deliberately concealed from the public, in the West as well as the East, the actual position of women, presenting it in rose-colored hues and proclaiming that, under socialism, the issue of the position of women in society had been resolved once and for all. However, the opposite was true: women increasingly suffered from overt and covert discrimination. In fact, the discrepancy between the official and actual positioning of working women became so acute that it led to serious social problems. The democratic reforms of the mid-1980s brought some positive changes at last; for the first time, the "women's issue" was recognized as an urgent socio-political problem requiring serious investigation and practical measures.
The authors of this collection of original essays, most of whom are social scientists at the Moscow Academy of Science, examine those aspects of life of women in Russia today which aremost pressing, not least those arising from the multi-ethnic composition of the Russian Federation that comprises more than one hundred different nationalities and in which women constitute fifty-three per cent of the population.
Subjects: Gender Studies and Sexuality Cultural Studies (General)
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May 1995
History and Modernity in Latin America
Barloewen, C. von
Why is it that Japan, with few natural resources, has become one of the world's leading economies but not Latin America, which is so rich in natural resources? This anthropological essay questions the Euro-centric notion of modernity and modernization and argues that Latin America has to find its own form of modernity, one which accepts and reflects its owntraditions. As long as a Western Model is grafted on to Latin American societies, modernization is bound to fail. After examining the history and peculiarities of these societies and their cultures, from the pre-Colombian era to the present, the author develops what could become the framework for a future, "indigenous" model.
Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General)
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January 1995
The American Impact on Postwar Germany
Pommerin, R. (ed)
It is only with the benefit of hindsight that the Germans have become acutely aware of how profound and comprehensive was the impact of the United States on their society after 1945.This volume reflect the ubiquitousness of this impact and examines the German responses to it.
Contributions by well-known scholars cover politics, industry, social life and mass culture.
Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Cultural Studies (General)
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January 1995
The Peirce Seminar Papers
Volume II: An Annual of Semiotic Analysis
Shapiro, M. (ed)
Since the modern founding of the theory of signs by the American philosopher-scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), the field of semiotics has become increasingly prominent as a method of interdisciplinary research and study, bridging the humanities, the fine arts, and the natural and social sciences. It is also truly international, with faculty representation at many universities, research institutes, and scholarly societies throughout the world. These two volumes reflect the continuing appeal of Peirce's sign theory bringing together as they do a great variety of authors from all over the world whose aim is to set the stage for a productive collaboration among linguists and cognitive scientists.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) History: 18th/19th Century Literary Studies
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January 1995
Toward a Global Civil Society
Walzer, M. (ed)
The demise of Communism has not only affected Eastern Europe but also the countries of the West where a far-reaching examination of political and economic systems has begun. This collection of essays by internationally renowned scholars of political theory from Europe and the United States explores both the concept and the reality of civil society and its institutions.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Political and Economic Anthropology
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December 1994
Montaigne Amongst the Moderns
Receptions of the Essays
Marchi, D.
Montaigne is one of the most cross-cultural writers ever – both in the assimilation of writings from other cultures into his own work and in the subsequent translations, critical receptions, and creative adaptations of the Essais by other writers throughout the world for the last four hundred years. His work is generally considered as exemplary of the European Renaissance, yet also demonstrates a remarkable relevance to the literary and intellectual activity at the present time. However, whereas there has been an abundance of commentary on Montaigne during the first centuries after his death, much less attention has been paid to his impact on writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly those outside France. This study redresses the imbalance.
By establishing a stylistic and ideological relationship between Montaigne’s work and that of such writers as Emerson, Nietzsche, Pater, Woolf, and Sollers, we not only gain a greater appreciation of the richness of the Essays, but also of some of the roots of modernist and postmodernist writing.
Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies
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October 1994
The Gate to Perfection
The Idea of Peace in Jewish Thought
Homolka, W. & Friedlander, A.
A timely book: as Israelis and Arabs are moving towards a settlement, this study offers a valuable historical dimension, from the Jewish point of view, to the main issue involved, i.e., the idea of peace. The authors maintain that peace has always played an important role in Jewish thought, that in fact Judaism as a religion is characterized by the striving for peace. They reach this conclusion after having examined a variety of sources, ranging from the biblical texts of Old Israel to the Talmudic tradition and Jewish Philosophy of Religion up until the twentieth century.
Subjects: Jewish Studies Cultural Studies (General)