Revitalizations and Mazeways

Revitalizations and Mazeways PDF Author: Anthony F. C. Wallace
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803247925
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
"In sixteen landmark essays Anthony F. C. Wallace illuminates the interconnections between cognition and culture and the formative social conditions of the modern world. Probing the psychological reality (or realities) of culture, Wallace offers incisive analyses of the cognitive foundations of kinship terms and the ability of cultures, past and present, to process complexity. He also examines whether beavers have a culture and reveals how the mazeway of modern American culture equips and enables a routine drive to work. In the volume’s second section, Wallace interrogates the consequences of revolutionary changes in labor, technology, and society in the modern world. A series of essays details the multifaceted, pervasive impact of the Industrial Revolution on the coal-mining communities of Rockdale and Saint Clair, Pennsylvania. He also considers the implications of the disaster-prone coal-mining industry for risky technological enterprises today, such as nuclear power plants. An in-depth comparison between the administrative structures of a modern university and Iroquois-Seneca leadership rounds out this volume."--pub. description.

Revitalizations and Mazeways

Revitalizations and Mazeways PDF Author: Anthony F. C. Wallace
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803247925
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In sixteen landmark essays Anthony F. C. Wallace illuminates the interconnections between cognition and culture and the formative social conditions of the modern world. Probing the psychological reality (or realities) of culture, Wallace offers incisive analyses of the cognitive foundations of kinship terms and the ability of cultures, past and present, to process complexity. He also examines whether beavers have a culture and reveals how the mazeway of modern American culture equips and enables a routine drive to work. In the volume’s second section, Wallace interrogates the consequences of revolutionary changes in labor, technology, and society in the modern world. A series of essays details the multifaceted, pervasive impact of the Industrial Revolution on the coal-mining communities of Rockdale and Saint Clair, Pennsylvania. He also considers the implications of the disaster-prone coal-mining industry for risky technological enterprises today, such as nuclear power plants. An in-depth comparison between the administrative structures of a modern university and Iroquois-Seneca leadership rounds out this volume."--pub. description.

The Social Context of Innovation

The Social Context of Innovation PDF Author:
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803298378
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
The history of technology, Anthony F. C. Wallace contends, must be imagined and investigated within a broader history of society. In these insightful essays, Wallace offers a multigenerational examination of the underlying social forces and everyday settings impelling and enabling early industrial innovation.øøø The gradual development of the steam engine is illuminated through an examination of the far-reaching but unintentional role played by the British royal ordnance and naval establishments. Wallace shows how the efforts of three generations of the Darby family improved iron production. Finally, the sources of failure in industrial innovation are illustrated through the example of deep-shaft coal mining in nineteenth-century Pennsylvania, which went bankrupt because of inadequately financed operators who ignored standard safety procedures.

Dreaming in Christianity and Islam

Dreaming in Christianity and Islam PDF Author: Kelly Bulkeley
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813546109
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Throughout history to the present day, religion has ideologically fueled wars, conquests, and persecutions. Christianity and Islam, the world's largest and geopolitically powerful faiths, are often positioned as mortal enemies locked in an apocalyptic clash of civilizations. Rarely are similarities addressed. Dreaming in Christianity and Islam, the first book to explore dreaming in these religions through original essays, fills this void. The editors reach a plateau by focusing on how studying dreams reveals new aspects of social and political reality. International scholars document the impact of dreams on sacred texts, mystical experiences, therapeutic practices, and doctrinal controversies.

An Archaeology of the Cosmos

An Archaeology of the Cosmos PDF Author: Timothy R. Pauketat
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415521289
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
An Archaeology of the Cosmos seeks answers to two fundamental questions of humanity and human history. The first question concerns that which some use as a defining element of humanity: religious beliefs. Why do so many people believe in supreme beings and holy spirits? The second question concerns changes in those beliefs. What causes beliefs to change? Using archaeological evidence gathered from ancient America, especially case material from the Great Plains and the pre-Columbian American Indian city of Cahokia, Timothy Pauketat explores the logical consequences of these two fundamental questions. Religious beliefs are not more resilient than other aspects of culture and society, and people are not the only causes of historical change. An Archaeology of the Cosmos examines the intimate association of agency and religion by studying how relationships between people, places, and things were bundled together and positioned in ways that constituted the fields of human experience. This rethinking theories of agency and religion provides readers with challenging and thought provoking conclusions that will lead them to reassess the way they approach the past.

Colonialism on the Prairies

Colonialism on the Prairies PDF Author: Blanca Tovias
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1836241585
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This book spans a century in the history of the Blackfoot First Nations of present-day Montana and Alberta. It maps out specific ways in which Blackfoot culture persisted amid the drastic transformations of colonisation, with its concomitant forced assimilation in both Canada and the United States. It portrays the strategies and tactics adopted by the Blackfoot in order to navigate political, cultural and social change during the hard transition from traditional life-ways to life on reserves and reservations. Cultural continuity is the thread that binds the four case studies presented, encompassing Blackfoot sacred beliefs and ritual; dress practices; the transmission of knowledge; and the relationship between oral stories and contemporary fiction. Blackfoot voices emerge forcefully from the extensive array of primary and secondary sources consulted, resulting in an inclusive history wherein Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholarship enter into dialogue. Blanca Tovias combines historical research with literary criticism, a strategy that is justified by the interrelationship between Blackfoot history and the stories from their oral tradition. Chapters devoted to examining cultural continuity discuss the ways in which oral stories continue to inspire contemporary Native American fiction. This interdisciplinary study is a celebration of Blackfoot culture and knowledge that seeks to revalourise the past by documenting Blackfoot resistance and persistence across a wide spectrum of cultural practice. The volume is essential reading for all scholars working in the fields of Native American studies, colonial and postcolonial history, ethnology and literature.

Yuchi Folklore

Yuchi Folklore PDF Author: Jason Baird Jackson
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806150955
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
In countless ways, the Yuchi (Euchee) people are unique among their fellow Oklahomans and Native peoples of North America. Inheritors of a language unrelated to any other, the Yuchi preserve a strong cultural identity. In part because they have not yet won federal recognition as a tribe, the Yuchi are largely unknown among their non-Native neighbors and often misunderstood in scholarship. Jason Baird Jackson’s Yuchi Folklore, the result of twenty years of collaboration with Yuchi people and one of just a handful of works considering their experience, brings Yuchi cultural expression to light. Yuchi Folklore examines expressive genres and customs that have long been of special interest to Yuchi people themselves. Beginning with an overview of Yuchi history and ethnography, the book explores four categories of cultural expression: verbal or spoken art, material culture, cultural performance, and worldview. In describing oratory, food, architecture, and dance, Jackson visits and revisits the themes of cultural persistence and social interaction, initially between Yuchi and other peoples east of the Mississippi and now in northeastern Oklahoma. The Yuchi exist in a complex, shifting relationship with the federally recognized Muscogee (Creek) Nation, with which they were removed to Indian Territory in the 1830s. Jackson shows how Yuchi cultural forms, values, customs, and practices constantly combine as Yuchi people adapt to new circumstances and everyday life. To be Yuchi today is, for example, to successfully negotiate a world where commercial rap and country music coexist with Native-language hymns and doctoring songs. While centered on Yuchi community life, this volume of essays also illustrates the discipline of folklore studies and offers perspectives for advancing a broader understanding of Woodlands peoples across the breadth of the American South and East.

Edible Identities: Food as Cultural Heritage

Edible Identities: Food as Cultural Heritage PDF Author: Ronda L. Brulotte
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317145984
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Food - its cultivation, preparation and communal consumption - has long been considered a form of cultural heritage. A dynamic, living product, food creates social bonds as it simultaneously marks off and maintains cultural difference. In bringing together anthropologists, historians and other scholars of food and heritage, this volume closely examines the ways in which the cultivation, preparation, and consumption of food is used to create identity claims of 'cultural heritage' on local, regional, national and international scales. Contributors explore a range of themes, including how food is used to mark insiders and outsiders within an ethnic group; how the same food's meanings change within a particular society based on class, gender or taste; and how traditions are 'invented' for the revitalization of a community during periods of cultural pressure. Featuring case studies from Europe, Asia and the Americas, this timely volume also addresses the complex processes of classifying, designating, and valorizing food as 'terroir,' 'slow food,' or as intangible cultural heritage through UNESCO. By effectively analyzing food and foodways through the perspectives of critical heritage studies, this collection productively brings two overlapping but frequently separate theoretical frameworks into conversation.

Trauma, Religion and Spirituality in Germany during the First World War

Trauma, Religion and Spirituality in Germany during the First World War PDF Author: Jason Crouthamel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350083712
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This book explores the impact of violence on the religious beliefs of front soldiers and civilians in Germany during the First World War. The central argument is that religion was the main prism through which men and women in the Great War articulated and processed trauma. Inspired by trauma studies, the history of emotions, and the social and cultural history of religion, this book moves away from the history of clerical authorities and institutions at war and instead focuses on the history of religion and war 'from below.' Jason Crouthamel provides a fascinating exploration into the language and belief systems used by ordinary people to explain the inexplicable. From Judeo-Christian traditions to popular beliefs and 'superstitions,' German soldiers and civilians depended on a malleable psychological toolbox that included a hybrid of ideas stitched together using prewar concepts mixed with images or experiences derived from the surreal environment of modern combat. Perhaps most interestingly, studying the front experience exposes not only lived religion, but also how religious beliefs are invented. Front soldiers in particular constructed new, subjective spiritual and religious concepts based on encounters with industrialized weapons, the sacred experience of comradeship, and immersion in mass death, which profoundly altered their sense of self and the supernatural. More than just a coping mechanism, religious language and beliefs enabled victims, and perpetrators, of violence to narrate concepts of psychological renewal and rebirth. In the wake of defeat and revolution, religious concepts shaped by the war experience also became a cornerstone of visions for radical political movements, including the National Socialists, to transform a shattered and embittered German nation. Making use of letters between soldiers and civilians, diaries, memoirs and front newspapers, Trauma, Religion and Spirituality in Germany during the First World War offers a unique glimpse into the belief systems of men and women at a turning point in European history.

Religious Transformation in Maya Guatemala

Religious Transformation in Maya Guatemala PDF Author: John P. Hawkins
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826362265
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Mayas, and indeed all Guatemalans, are currently experiencing the collapse of their way of life. This collapse is disrupting ideologies, symbols, life practices, and social structures that have undergirded their society for almost five hundred years, and it is causing rapid and massive religious transformation among the K’iche’ Maya living in highland western Guatemala. Many Maya are converting to Christian Pentecostal faiths in which adherents and leaders become bodily agitated during worship. Drawing on over fifty years of research and data collected by field-school students, Hawkins argues that two factors—cultural collapse and systematic social and economic exclusion—explain the recent religious transformation of Maya Guatemala and the style and emotional intensity through which that transformation is expressed. Guatemala serves as a window on religious change around the world, and Hawkins examines the rapid pentecostalization of Christianity not only within Guatemala but also throughout the global South. The “pentecostal wail,” as he describes it, is ultimately an acknowledgment of the angst and insecurity of contemporary Maya.

Tourism Imaginaries

Tourism Imaginaries PDF Author: Noel B. Salazar
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782383689
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
It is hard to imagine tourism without the creative use of seductive, as well as restrictive, imaginaries about peoples and places. These socially shared assemblages are collaboratively produced and consumed by a diverse range of actors around the globe. As a nexus of social practices through which individuals and groups establish places and peoples as credible objects of tourism, “tourism imaginaries” have yet to be fully explored. Presenting innovative conceptual approaches, this volume advances ethnographic research methods and critical scholarship regarding tourism and the imaginaries that drive it. The various authors contribute methodologically as well as conceptually to anthropology’s grasp of the images, forces, and encounters of the contemporary world.