Society and culture: general Books

Despite an outpouring in recent years of history and cultural criticism related to the Holocaust, Italian women's literary representations and testimonies have not received their proper due. This project fills this gap by analyzing Italian...

Looking beyond the materialistic boundary of the conventional development paradigm, this book identifies our spiritual underdevelopment which is being reflected as self-centeredness and greed, as the root cause of conventional development's failure to...

Decadence is a concept that designates a given historical moment as a phase of decay and valorizes the past as an irretrievable golden age. This study offers an innovative examination of a century of Japanese fiction through the analytical prism of...

Salsa is both an American and transnational phenomenon, however women in salsa have been neglected. To explore how female singers negotiate issues of gender, race, and nation through their performances, Poey engages with the ways they problematize the...

The first ethnographic study of the trend toward religious, parochial schooling in urban Pakistan, this book provides data from over fifty-Karachi area schools to establish the complex reasons middle- and upper-class families enroll in religious Islamic...

In this dynamic and wide-ranging collection of essays, prominent scholars examine the condition of church-state relations in the United States, France, and Israel. Their analyses are rooted in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from ethnography and...

Authors from a variety of disciplines dealing with diverse historical cases engage with the spatial deployment of violence and the possibilities for memory and resistance in contexts of state sponsored violence, enforced disappearances and regimes of...

Natural disasters in Asian countries have brought global attention to the work of local Buddhist communities and groups. Here, the contributors examine local Buddhist communities and international Buddhist organizations engaged in a variety of relief...

Stars and Masculinities in Contemporary Italian Cinema is the first book to explore contemporary male stars and cinematic constructions of masculinity in Italy. Uniting star analysis with a detailed consideration of the masculinities that are dominating...

An historical and contemporary account of migrant crime in Australia, this book explores a range of issues from mental health and victimology to immigration policy and legal analysis, arguing that it is birthplace, not race, which impacts upon crimes...

Aneji Eko was technically illiterate, but she represents a resource for understanding the complexities of African and Nigerian cultures. This is an account of matriarchy and the complex ties of kinship, their influences in shaping childhood culture, and...

Examining how leading developing countries are increasingly shaping international economic negotiations, this book uses the case studies of India and South Africa to demonstrate the ability of states to exert diplomatic influence through different...

This volume presents an extended reflection on human dependency and the need to 'care' and be 'cared for'. Philosophers, theologians, social theorists, economists, and professional caregivers to discuss the challenges of professional caregiving,...

This book examines the multiple relationships between education, pedagogy, and social change in Latin America and beyond through a discussion of critical theory in education and its uses in Latin American society today. An international group of...

Urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa has historic roots, and though it has accelerated in recent decades, it retains distinctive forms. This book explores sub-Saharan urbanism through a detailed and wide-ranging study of Maputo, Mozambique, covering...

Shakespearean Echoes assembles a global cast of established and emerging scholars to explore new connections between Shakespeare and contemporary culture, reflecting the complexities and conflicts of Shakespeare's current international afterlife.

Joining a timely conversation within the field of intra-American literature, this study takes a fresh look at Latin America by locating fragments and making evident the mostly untold story of horizontal (south-south) contacts across a multilingual,...

Drawing on hundreds of interviews with 15-22 year old straight and gay male athletes in both the United States and the United Kingdom, this book explores how jocks have redefined heterosexuality, and no longer fear being thought gay for behaviors that...

Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa focuses on a body of performance work, the work of Magnet Theatre in particular but also work by other artists in Cape Town and other parts of the continent or the world, that engages with the Cape as a real or...

This collection of original scholarly work and first-person accounts takes globalization processes and the transnational links these processes create as the jumping-off point for an examination of what it means to be, have, or aspire to a beautiful body.

This book examines the leading role of the Quaker American Friends Service Committee in the United Nations relief program for Palestine Arab refugees in 1948-1950 in the Gaza Strip. Using archival data, oral histories, and biographical accounts, it...

Markus Seidel provides a detailed critique of epistemic relativism in the sociology of scientific knowledge. In addition to scrutinizing the main arguments for epistemic relativism he provides an absolutist account that nevertheless aims at...

This book sets out an integrated systems model which utilizes a public health approach and 'whole of society' philosophy for preventing and responding to child sexual abuse. It guides those engaged in policy, practice and planning concerning gender based...

According to Max Weber, charisma is opposed to bureaucratic order. This collection reveals the limits of that formula. The contributors show how charisma is a part of cultural frameworks while retaining its ecstatic character among American and Italian...

This book explores sociological debates in relation to culture, taste and value. It argues that sociology can contribute to debates about aesthetic value and to an understanding of how people evaluate.  

How has popular film, television and fiction responded to the realities of an ageing Western population? This volume analyses this field of representation to argue that, while celebrations of ageing as an inspirational journey are increasing, most...

Placing struggles for communication rights within the broader context of human rights struggles in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this broad-based collection offers a rich range of illustrations of national, regional and global struggles to...

Soul music and country music propel American popular culture. Using ethnomusicological tools, Shonekan examines their socio-cultural influences and consequences: the perception of and resistance to hegemonic structures from within their respective...

3D Cinema: Optical Illusions and Tactile Experiences questions the common frameworks used for discussing 3D cinema, realism and spectacle, in order to fully understand the embodied and sensory dimensions of 3D cinema's unique visuality.

Contemporary African Literature in English explores the contours of representation in contemporary Anglophone African literature, drawing on a wide range of authors including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Aminatta Forna, Brian Chikwava, Ngug? wa Thiong'o,...

What does it mean to live as a ghost? Exploring spectrality as a metaphor in the contemporary British and American cultural imagination, Peeren proposes that certain subjects - migrants, servants, mediums and missing persons - are perceived as living...

Far from being the preserve of middle-class women from Northern Europe, au pairing is now booming worldwide. This collection, the first dedicated entirely to examining the lives of au pairs, traces their experiences across five continents showing how...

Through case studies, theoretical research and interviews with leading players in science and governance, this book introduces a new understanding of change in governance of bioscience research. In particular it examines change as it is shaped by...

Homeless Lives in American Cities explores how the American discourse on homelessness arose from Victorian social and political anxieties about the impacts of immigration and urbanization on the middle class family. It demonstrates how contemporary...

MSIA, the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, has been called the Cadillac of cults. Those interested in new religions may only know of MSIA from these kinds of labels. However, when looked at from a qualitative sociological perspective, a more...

Not all original works invoke the encore impulse in their audiences. Those that do generally spawn replications - sequels, spin-offs, or re-makes. This book presents a theory of why some replications succeed and others fail across genres and media.

This collection explores whether and how religious and secular worldviews and political ideologies held by scientists, citizens, decision-makers and politicians influence science as practiced and understood today. Contributors explore the social and...

This collection of essays is dedicated to examining the recent literary phenomenon of the 'neo-historical' novel, a sub-genre of contemporary historical fiction which critically re-imagines specific periods of history.

Religion and social action is both empowering and limiting for women. This study shows the Guadalupanas' awareness of themselves as agents for change and their difficulties in understanding and maintaining their limited gendered roles within church and...

Re-imagining the Family explores contemporary films and literature about the effects of legal and illegal immigration on the structure and the stories of the contemporary 'European' family, with a focus on Germany.

Anatomy of Dissent in Islam is an interdisciplinary study of political and legal dissent in Islamic civilization from the seventh century on. (7th century). Using Ibadism as a case study, this work explores the events and teachings that shaped legitimacy...

This edited collection provides the first in-depth analysis of social policies and the risks faced by young people. The book explores the effects of both the economic crisis and austerity policies on the lives of young Europeans, examining both the...

Exploring recent contemporary debates on gender and migration, this book scrutinizes the relationship between women's work in ethnic economies and social integration, arguing that women in Britain zigzag their way to social integration.

Crumbling business models mean news media structures must change. Gavin Ellis explores the past and present use of newspaper trusts - drawing on case studies such as the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Pulitzer Prize winning Tampa Bay Times - to make...

The concept of "care" defines our humanity. Covering topics as diverse as familial care, medical care, artistic care, scientific care, and various other permutations of the term, this book examines the word and concept of "care" from...

Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism offers a typology of alien encounters and addresses a range of texts including classic novels of alien encounter by H.G. Wells and Robert Heinlein; recent blockbusters by Greg Bear,...

This is the first book to explore the multitude of narrative media forms created by and that feature Latinos in the twenty-first century - a radically different cultural landscape to earlier epochs. The essays present a fresh take informed by the...

Film, media, and cultural theorists have long appealed to Lacanian theory in order to discern processes of subjectivization, representation, and ideological interpellation. Here, the contributors take up a Zizekian approach to studies of cinema and...