The Cairo Geniza is the largest and richest store of documentary evidence for the medieval Islamic world. This book seeks to revolutionize the way scholars use that treasure trove. Phillip I. Ackerman
Drawing on work in critical theory, feminism and social history, this book traces the lines of tension shot through Victorian culture by the fear that the social world was being reduced to a display window behind which people, their actions and their convictions were exhibited for the economic appetites of others. Affecting the most basic elements of Victorian life - the vagaries of desire, the rationalisation of social life, the gendering of subjectivity, the power of nostalgia, the fear of mortality, the cyclical routines of the household - the ambivalence generated by commodity culture organizes the thematic concerns of these novels and the society they represent. Taking the commodity as their point of departure, chapters on Thackeray, Gaskell, Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, and the Great Exhibition of 1851 suggest that Victorian novels provide us with graphic and enduring images of the power of commodities to affect the varied activities and beliefs of individual and social experience.
Life is currently one of the most active zones of politics and economic production, as biological material is increasingly the subject of engineering, banking, reproduction, and exchange. These developments represent some of the most challenging issues facing humanity in the twenty-first century and call for new forms of engagement - and new anthropologies of life. Reflecting upon the changing human condition, Palsson addresses various conflated zones of life at particular times and scales, from the genome to the human body and the global environment. Using a 'biosocial' perspective, he argues, will help us to capture the hybrid nature of life, enhancing our sensitivity to differences and similarities in hierarchies, the reproduction of bio-objects and the exchange between humans, other species, and the environment. Engaging with topical issues on the public agenda, from personal genomics to human-animal relations to the global environment, the book sets out a compelling case for meani
The question why certain kinds of legal institutions are found in certain kinds of societies has been little explored by anthropologists. In this book Katherine Newman examines a sample of some sixty different preindustrial societies, distributed across the world, in an attempt to explain why their legal systems vary. The key to understanding this variation, Professor Newman argues, is to be found in economic organization. Adopting a Marxian, or materialist, approach, she draws on original ethnographic sources for each culture in order to investigate how legal processes and institutions regulate basic aspects of economic life in societies with differing types of economic organization. She also examines the commonalities of law within various preindustrial 'modes of production' and shows that the patterning of legal institutions arises from underlying tensions in production systems. In offering an explanation of the distribution of legal institutions across preindustrial societies, as w
Antisemitic stereotypes of Jews as capitalists have hindered research into the economic dimension of the Jewish past. The figure of the Jew as trader and financier dominated the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But the economy has been central to Jewish life and the Jewish image in the world; Jews not only made money but spent money. This book is the first to investigate the intersection between consumption, identity, and Jewish history in Europe. It aims to examine the role and place of consumption within Jewish society and the ways consumerism generated and reinforced Jewish notions of belonging from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the new millennium. It shows how the advances of modernization and secularization in the modern period increased the importance of consumption in Jewish life, making it a significant factor in the process of redefining Jewish identity.
Antisemitic stereotypes of Jews as capitalists have hindered research into the economic dimension of the Jewish past. The figure of the Jew as trader and financier dominated the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But the economy has been central to Jewish life and the Jewish image in the world; Jews not only made money but spent money. This book is the first to investigate the intersection between consumption, identity, and Jewish history in Europe. It aims to examine the role and place of consumption within Jewish society and the ways consumerism generated and reinforced Jewish notions of belonging from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the new millennium. It shows how the advances of modernization and secularization in the modern period increased the importance of consumption in Jewish life, making it a significant factor in the process of redefining Jewish identity.
Discussions of class make many Americans uncomfortable. This accessible book makes class visible in everyday life. Solely identifying political and economic inequalities between classes offers an inco
Guanxi, translated as 'social connections,' or 'social networks,' is among the most important studied phenomena in China today. Guanxi lies at the heart of China's social order, its economic structure, and its changing institutional landscape. It is considered important in every realm of life, from politics to business, and officialdom to street life. This volume offers scholarly thinking on the subject by top China sociologists whose work on guanxi has been influential and by scholars offering insights on the topic. The authors examine the role of guanxi in: business decisions among managers and entrepreneurs; the decisions and practices of workers; the construction of new legal institutions; the new social order. Scholars and students of China will find this a rich source of detailed information on the workings of Chinese social relationships and a valuable, new interpretation of the meaning and place of guanxi today.
How does the literature and culture of early Victorian Britain look different if viewed from below? Exploring the interplay between canonical social problem novels and the journalism and fiction appearing in the periodical press associated with working-class protest movements, Gregory Vargo challenges long-held assumptions about the cultural separation between the 'two nations' of rich and poor in the Victorian era. The flourishing radical press was home to daring literary experiments that embraced themes including empire and economic inequality, helping to shape mainstream literature. Reconstructing social and institutional networks that connected middle-class writers to the world of working-class politics, this book reveals for the first time acknowledged and unacknowledged debts to the radical canon in the work of such authors as Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle, Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Gaskell. What emerges is a new vision of Victorian social life, in which fierce debates an
Guanxi, translated as 'social connections,' or 'social networks,' is among the most important studied phenomena in China today. Guanxi lies at the heart of China's social order, its economic structure, and its changing institutional landscape. It is considered important in every realm of life, from politics to business, and officialdom to street life. This volume offers scholarly thinking on the subject by top China sociologists whose work on guanxi has been influential and by scholars offering insights on the topic. The authors examine the role of guanxi in: business decisions among managers and entrepreneurs; the decisions and practices of workers; the construction of new legal institutions; the new social order. Scholars and students of China will find this a rich source of detailed information on the workings of Chinese social relationships and a valuable, new interpretation of the meaning and place of guanxi today.
"While usually associated with facets of commercial culture, pop culture can and must be analyzed as an important part of material, economic, and political culture. The author begins by defining popul
Throughout his career Grahame Clark has pioneered on a world scale the use of the archaeological record to document the economic and social life of prehistoric communities. In Europe he was the first to employ the concept of the ecosystem in archaeology and to underscore the necessarily reciprocal relationship that exists between culture and environment. In Britain he has played a major role in moving archaeology away from its preoccupation with typology and spurring on the newly emergent discipline of bioarchaeology. Economic Prehistory reflects all these concerns. Following a comprehensive bibliography of Professor Clark's writing, the volume opens with a series of classic papers on basic subsistence activities such as seal hunting, whaling, fowling, fishing, forest clearance, farming and stock raising. Subsequent sections then deal with world prehistory and the thorny relationship between archaeology, education and society. The volume closes with a retrospective which looks critical
One of the leading artifacts of modern technology, the automobile has shaped our physical, economic, social, and cultural environment. The history of the automobile demonstrates how the decisions of g
The first thirty years of the twentieth century was a key period in the development of Japanese society, during which it began to face directly the political, economic and cultural power of the West i
Starting in the late 1970s, tens of thousands of American industrial workers lost jobs in factories and mines. Deindustrialization had dramatic effects on those workers and their communities, but its
Starting in the late 1970s, tens of thousands of American industrial workers lost jobs in factories and mines. Deindustrialization had dramatic effects on those workers and their communities, but its
Many critics argue that the modernist avant-garde were always in opposition to the commercial values of market-driven society. For John Xiros Cooper, the avant-garde bears a more complex relation to capitalist culture than previously acknowledged. He argues that in their personal relationships, gender roles and sexual contacts, the modernist avant-garde epitomised the impact of capitalism on everyday life. Cooper shows how the new social, cultural and economic practices aimed to defend cultural values in a commercial age, but, in this task, modernism became the subject of a profound historical irony. Its own characterising techniques, styles and experiments, deployed to resist the new nihilism of the capitalist market, eventually became the preferred cultural style of the very market culture which the first modernists opposed. In this broad-ranging 2004 study John Xiros Cooper explores this provocative theme across a wide range of Modernist authors, including Joyce, Eliot, Stein and Ba
Israelis with a Russian accent have been part of Israel's social, cultural and economic landscape for over 20 years. They are found in all walks of life: as controversial politicians, senior physicia
Drawing on rich empirical material, this revealing book builds up a critical theory, arguing that brands have become an important tool for transforming everyday life into economic value.When branding
