- Table View
- List View
Reconfiguring the Silk Road: New Research on East-West Exchange in Antiquity
by Victor H. Mair Jane HickmanFrom the Bronze Age through the Middle Ages, a network of trade and migration routes brought people from across Eurasia into contact. Their commerce included political, social, and artistic ideas, as well as material goods such as metals and textiles. Reconfiguring the Silk Road offers new research on the earliest trade and cultural interactions along these routes, mapping the spread and influence of Silk Road economies and social structures over time. This volume features contributions by renowned scholars uncovering new discoveries related to populations that lived in the Tarim Basin, the advanced state of textile manufacturing in the region, and the diffusion of domesticated grains across Inner Asia. Other chapters include an analysis of the dispersal of languages across the Eurasian Steppe and a detailed examination of the domestication of the horse in the region. Contextualized with a foreword by Colin Renfrew and introduction by Victor Mair, Reconfiguring the Silk Road provides a new assessment of the intercultural evolution along the steppes and beyond.Contributors: David W. Anthony, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Dorcas R. Brown, Peter Brown, Michael D. Frachetti, Jane Hickman, Philip L. Kohl, Victor H. Mair, J. P. Mallory, Joseph G. Manning, Colin Renfrew.
Reconnecting State and Kinship
by Tatjana Thelen Erdmute AlberWithin the social sciences, kinship and statehood are often seen as two distinct modes of social organization, sometimes conceived of as following each other in a temporal line and sometimes as operating on different scales. Kinship is traditionally associated with small-scale communities in stateless societies. The state, meanwhile, is viewed as a development away from kinship as political order toward rational, impersonal, and functional forms of rule. In recent decades, theoretical and empirical scholarship has challenged these notions, but the underlying presumption of a deep-rooted opposition between kinship and the (modern) state has remained surprisingly stable.That this binary is so deeply engrained in Western self-understanding and knowledge production poses a considerable challenge to decoding their coproduction. Reconnecting State and Kinship seeks to trace the historical shifts and boundary work implied in the ongoing reproduction of these supposedly discrete or even opposing units of analysis. Contributors ask whether concepts associated with one sphere —including corruption, patronage, lineage, and incest—surface in the other. Policies and interventions modeled upon the assumed polarity can have lasting consequences for mechanisms of marginalization and exclusion, including decisions about life and death.Reconnecting State and Kinship not only explores the boundary-related and classificatory practices that reinforce the kinship/statehood binary but also tracks the traveling of these concepts and their underlying norms through time and space ultimately demonstrating the ways that kinship and "the state" are intertwined.Contributors: Erdmute Alber, Apostolos Andrikopoulos, Helle Bundgaard, Jeanette Edwards, Karen Fog Olwig, Victoria Goddard, Michael Herzfeld, Eirini Papadaki, Frances Pine, Ivan Rajković, Tatjana Thelen, Thomas Zitelmann.
Reconsideration of Science and Technology II: Scientism and Anti-Scientism (China Perspectives)
by Liu Dachun Ai Zhiqiang Yang HuiliIn reviewing and reconsidering the intellectual history of scientism and antiscientism, the authors assess the process of reasoning and prejudices of these contrasting viewpoints, while discussing the repercussions of scientific hegemony and its contemporary criticism. As the second volume of a three-volume set that proposes to reconsider science and technology and explores how the philosophy of science and technology responds to an ever-changing world, this title focuses on ideological trends centering around scientism and anti-scientism since the 19th century. The six chapters look into the emergence of scientism, instrumental reason, scientific optimism, scientific pessimism, scientific crisis and irrationalism and finally the deconstruction of scientism. The authors provide insight into the connections and biases of these disparate views and critiques, explore the influences of the hegemony of science and contemporary critique of science and evaluate the value of postmodernism and deconstructivism. The volume will appeal to scholars and students interested in the philosophy of science and technology, the ideology of scientism and anti-scientism, modernism and postmodernism, Marxist philosophy and topics related to scientific culture.
Reconsideration of Science and Technology III: An Open World (China Perspectives)
by Liu Dachun Yang Huili Fan ShanshanDrawing on debates from traditional and postmodern thoughts on science and technology, the title builds a new theoretical framework to reconsider science and technology, integrating the opposing viewpoints that either justify science or negate it. As the third volume of a three-volume set that proposes to reconsider science and technology and explores how the philosophy of science and technology responds to an ever-changing world, this final volume seeks to restore the cultural implications of science. Across the six chapters, the authors probe the prospect of a pluralistic scientific culture, including discussions of diversified value choices, the tension between reason and unreason, other binary characteristics of scientific knowledge, including objectivity and uniqueness, universality and locality, as well as the loss, awakening and reconstruction of scientific culture. The authors call for a transformation of scientific culture from a dominant culture to an affirmative one and envision a free and open world of science and technology. The volume will appeal to scholars and students interested in the philosophy of science and technology, the ideology of scientism and anti-scientism, modernism and postmodernism, Marxist philosophy and topics related to scientific culture.
Reconsidering Archaeological Fieldwork
by Hannah Cobb Cara Jones Philip Richardson Oliver J. HarrisDigging, recording, and writing are the three main processes that archaeologists undertake to analyze a site, yet the relationships between these processes is rarely considered critically. Reconsidering Archaeological Fieldwork asserts that each of these processes involves at least a bit of subjective interpretation. As a group of archaeologists work together to reconstruct an objective view of the past, at a particular time, at a particular site, their field methods and subjective interpretations affect the final analysis. This volume explores the important nature of the relationship between fieldwork, analysis, and interpretation. Containing contributions from a diverse group of archaeologists, both academic and professional, from Europe and the Americas, it critically analyzes accepted practices in field archaeology, and provide thoughtful and innovative analysis of these procedures. By combining the experiences of both academic and professional archaeologists, Reconsidering Archaeological Fieldwork highlights key differences and key similarities in their concerns, theories, and techniques. This volume will incite discussion on fundamental questions for all archaeologists, both old and new to the field.
Reconsidering Boccaccio: Medieval Contexts and Global Intertexts (Toronto Italian Studies)
by Olivia Holmes Dana StewartReconsidering Boccaccio highlights the great Florentine writer Giovanni Boccaccio’s remarkable achievements in the fourteenth century as a cultural mediator, his exceptional social, geographic, and intellectual range, and the influence of his legacy on numerous cultural networks. Grounded in Boccaccio’s own writings, Reconsidering Boccaccio brings a variety of methodologies and critical approaches to the works of one of the ‘three crowns’ of Italian literature. Containing essays by scholars not only of Italian literature, but also history, law, classics, and Middle Eastern literature, this collection is part of a vital movement to open up a dialogue among researchers in various areas of study that touch on the works of Boccaccio. The volume highlights the necessity of a technical and historical framework when approaching Boccaccio studies, while also shedding new light on the lives of women and their role in the reception of Boccaccio’s works.
Reconsidering Dementia Narratives: Empathy, Identity and Care (Routledge Advances in the Medical Humanities)
by Rebecca BitencReconsidering Dementia Narratives explores the role of narrative in developing new ways of understanding, interacting with, and caring for people with dementia. It asks how the stories we tell about dementia – in fiction, life writing and film – both reflect and shape the way we think about this important condition. Highlighting the need to attend to embodied and relational aspects of identity in dementia, the study further outlines ways in which narratives may contribute to dementia care, while disputing the idea that the modes of empathy fostered by narrative necessarily bring about more humane care practices. This cross-medial analysis represents an interdisciplinary approach to dementia narratives which range across auto/biography, graphic narrative, novel, film, documentary and collaborative storytelling practices. The book aims to clarify the limits and affordances of narrative, and narrative studies, in relation to an ethically driven medical humanities agenda through the use of case studies. Answering the key question of whether dementia narratives align with or run counter to the dominant discourse of dementia as ‘loss of self’, this innovative book will be of interest to anyone interested in dementia studies, ageing studies, narrative studies in health care, and critical medical humanities.
Reconsidering English Studies in Indian Higher Education (Routledge Research in Higher Education)
by Suman Gupta Richard Allen Subarno Chattarji Supriya ChaudhuriThis book examines the status of English Studies in India, aspirations pinned on the subject by students, teachers, policy-makers and society in general, and how these are addressed at the higher education level. It presents analytical background discussions of the history and policy environment, and offers open-ended, multi-faceted and multi-vocal accounts of particular aspects of contemporary Indian English Studies, including curriculum, pedagogy, research, employment, relation to Indian vernaculars and translation studies. Reconsidering English Studies in Indian Higher Education is an invaluable source for anyone interested in: The relevant histories and higher education policies Professional concerns, including employment, management, teaching and scholarly practices, and negotiations in terms of socio-cultural life Student attitudes, experiences and aspirations Management ethos and academic work in a comparative perspective, informed by the situation and debates in the United Kingdom and United States of America The context of global English Studies and globalization The book will be of primary interest to academic readers such as students, teachers and researchers in English Studies in India, Britain and wherever the discipline is pursued at higher education level Suman Gupta is Professor and Chair in Literature and Cultural History at The Open University. Richard Allen is Professor Emeritus at the Department of English at The Open University. Subarno Chattarji is Associate Professor at the Department of English, University of Delhi. Supriya Chaudhuri is Professor Emeritus at the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
Reconsidering Extinction in Terms of the History of Global Bioethics (Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics)
by Chris Mounsey Stan BoothReconsidering Extinction in Terms of the History of Global Bioethics continues the Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics series by exploring approaches to the bioethics of extinction from disparate disciplines, from literature, to social sciences, to history, to sustainability studies, to linguistics. Van Rensselaer Potter coined the phrase “Global Bioethics” to define human relationships with their contexts. This and subsequent volumes return to Potter’s founding vision from historical perspectives, and asks, how did we get here from then? Extinction can be understood in terms of an everlasting termination of shape, form, and function; however, until now life has gone on. Where would we humans be if the dinosaurs had not become extinct? And we still manage to communicate, only not in proto-Indo-European, but in a myriad of languages, some more common than others. The answer is simple, after extinction events, evolution continues. But will it always be so? Has the human race set planet earth on a collision course with nothingness? This volume explores areas of bioethical interpretation in relation to the complex concept of extinction.
Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor
by Marshall Bruce GentryContributions by Lindsay Alexander, Alison Arant, Alicia Matheny Beeson, Eric Bennett, Gina Caison, Jordan Cofer, Doug Davis, Doreen Fowler, Marshall Bruce Gentry, Bruce Henderson, Monica C. Miller, William Murray, Carol Shloss, Alison Staudinger, and Rachel Watson The National Endowment for the Humanities has funded two Summer Institutes titled "Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor," which invited scholars to rethink approaches to Flannery O’Connor’s work. Drawing largely on research that started as part of the 2014 NEH Institute, this collection shares its title and its mission. Featuring fourteen new essays, Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor disrupts a few commonplace assumptions of O’Connor studies while also circling back to some old questions that are due for new attention. The volume opens with “New Methodologies,” which features theoretical approaches not typically associated with O’Connor’s fiction in order to gain new insights into her work. The second section, “New Contexts,” stretches expectations on literary genre, on popular archetypes in her stories, and on how we should interpret her work. The third section, lovingly called “Strange Bedfellows,” puts O’Connor in dialogue with overlooked or neglected conversation partners, while the final section, “O’Connor’s Legacy,” reconsiders her personal views on creative writing and her wishes regarding the handling of her estate upon death. With these final essays, the collection comes full circle, attesting to the hazards that come from overly relying on O’Connor’s interpretation of her own work but also from ignoring her views and desires. Through these reconsiderations, some of which draw on previously unpublished archival material, the collection attests to and promotes the vitality of scholarship on Flannery O’Connor.
Reconsidering Interpretation of Heritage Sites: America in the Eighteenth Century
by Anne LindsayReconsidering Interpretation of Heritage Sites chronicles and problematizes the representation of the eighteenth century in museums and heritage sites while also challenging public historians to alter their perceptions of what might be possible when interpreting such sites. Much of the history consumed at eighteenth-century historic sites is one-dimensional, white, male, heteronormative, and very focused on power and wealth. Anne Lindsay argues that this narrative may be challenged through an engagement with the everyday life of the past, creating thought-provoking and challenging experiences that will connect with the modern visitor on a deeper level. Unlike other work that has been done in the field, the book provides a constructive study that engages in a horizontal analysis of a century over a geographic region. As a result, Lindsay provides a unique opportunity for scholars and practitioners to reflect on the types and tone of messages usually conveyed about the eighteenth century. Reconsidering Interpretation of Heritage Sites will be invaluable to scholars and practitioners working in the fields of museum and heritage studies and history. It will be particularly interesting to those who want to know more about how the lived experience of the past may be interpreted at historic sites, and how this could be used to engage with contentious histories.
Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture: The Unborn, Women, and Creation
by Tate Carolyn E.Recently, scholars of Olmec visual culture have identified symbols for umbilical cords, bundles, and cave-wombs, as well as a significant number of women portrayed on monuments and as figurines. In this groundbreaking study, Carolyn Tate demonstrates that these subjects were part of a major emphasis on gestational imagery in Formative Period Mesoamerica. In Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, she identifies the presence of women, human embryos, and fetuses in monuments and portable objects dating from 1400 to 400 BC and originating throughout much of Mesoamerica. This highly original study sheds new light on the prominent roles that women and gestational beings played in Early Formative societies, revealing female shamanic practices, the generative concepts that motivated caching and bundling, and the expression of feminine knowledge in the 260-day cycle and related divinatory and ritual activities. Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture is the first study that situates the unique hollow babies of Formative Mesoamerica within the context of prominent females and the prevalent imagery of gestation and birth. It is also the first major art historical study of La Venta and the first to identify Mesoamerica's earliest creation narrative. It provides a more nuanced understanding of how later societies, including Teotihuacan and West Mexico, as well as the Maya, either rejected certain Formative Period visual forms, rituals, social roles, and concepts or adopted and transformed them into the enduring themes of Mesoamerican symbol systems.
Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump
by Daniel S. LucksA long-overdue and sober examination of President Ronald Reagan's racist politics that continue to harm communities today and helped shape the modern conservative movement.Ronald Reagan is hailed as a transformative president and an American icon, but within his 20th century politics lies a racial legacy that is rarely discussed. Both political parties point to Reagan as the "right" kind of conservative but fail to acknowledge his political attacks on people of color prior to and during his presidency. Reconsidering Reagan corrects that narrative and reveals how his views, policies, and actions were devastating for Black Americans and racial minorities, and that the effects continue to resonate today. Using research from previously untapped resources including the black press which critically covered Reagan's entire political career, Daniel S. Lucks traces Reagan's gradual embrace of conservatism, his opposition to landmark civil rights legislation, his coziness with segregationists, and his skill in tapping into white anxiety about race, riding a wave of "white backlash" all the way to the Presidency. He argues that Reagan has the worst civil rights record of any President since the 1920s--including supporting South African apartheid, packing courts with conservatives, targeting laws prohibiting discrimination in education and housing, and launching the "War on Drugs"--which had cataclysmic consequences on the lives of Black and Brown people.Linking the past to the present, Lucks expertly examines how Reagan set the blueprint for President Trump and proves that he is not an anomaly, but in fact the logical successor to bring back the racially tumultuous America that Reagan conceptualized.
Reconsidering Regions in an Era of New Nationalism
by Alex Finkelstein Anne F. HydeRegions connect and divide us even as global economies, weather, and germs batter us. Historians, literary scholars, and social scientists use region to ground and challenge ideas about national belonging. In Reconsidering Regions in an Era of New Nationalism Alexander Finkelstein and Anne F. Hyde have assembled leading scholars of regionalism to discuss the relationship of region to nation. The contributors explore how historical forces have changed regional associations and how regional associations have changed culture and history. The themes of culture, space, and institutions organize this volume: contributors historicize how race and racial thinking have evolved as a major force to define region and nation over time; the essays raise questions about the stability and validity of &“canonical regions&” in U.S. history to find new complexity in how these blocs form and how they understand themselves; and they focus on historicist and conjunctural trends and how institutions and ordinary people shape regional identities through politics and cultural change throughout history. Challenging ideas about both national belonging and local association, the contributors emphasize how regional analysis deepens understanding of migration, race, borders, infrastructure, climate, and Native sovereignty.
Reconsidering Social Constructionism: Social Problems and Social Issues (Social Problems And Social Issues Ser.)
by Gale MillerWith the impact of social interactionist and ethnographic methodology twenty-five years ago, the research agenda in social problems began to shift its focus, giving rise to the Social Constructionism movement. The present volume and the related shorter text, Constructionist Controversies, review the substantial contributions made by social constructionist theorists over that period, as well as recent debates about the future of the perspective. These contributions redefine the purpose and central questions of social problems theory and articulate a research program for analyzing social problems as social constructions. A generation of theorists has been trained in the constructionist perspective and has extended it through numerous analyses of diverse aspects of contemporary social life.The debates in this volume pose fundamental questions about the major assumptions of the perspective, the ways in which it is practiced, and the purposes of social problems theory. Their point of departure is Ibarra and Kitsuse's essay, cutting new theoretical ground in calling for ""investigating vernacular resources, especially rhetorical forms, in the social problems process.""Contributors are forceful proponents both within and outside of the social constructionist community, who take a broad array of positions on the current state of social problems theory and on the rhetorical forms that need exploring. They also lay down the general lines for diverse and often competing programs for the future development of the constructionist agenda.
Reconsidering Social Identification: Race, Gender, Class and Caste (Critical Interventions In Theory And Praxis Ser.)
by Abdul R. JanMohamedThis volume investigates how four socially constructed identities (race, gender, class and caste) can be rethought as matrices designed to accumulate various kinds of socio-economic values and to translate and transfer these values from one group to another. Essays in the anthology also attempt to compare the mechanisms deployed by various groups to consolidate identificatory investments. Drawn mainly for the fields of literary and cultural studies, the essays are grouped in four categories. Essays collected under ‘Theoretical Approaches’ scrutinize the relative value of various approaches; those collected under ‘Considerations of Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation’ examine the interaction between these three categories in formation of identities; those grouped under ‘Comparative Analysis of African-American and Dalit Writing’ provide comparative analyses of the literary productions of these two oppressed groups; and, finally, those under ‘The Persistence of Racialized Perceptions’ focus on the role of ideologically inflected perception of European colonizers and the persistence of such perception in the categorization and treatment of colonial migrants to the metropolis.
Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power
by Matthew Hild and Keri Leigh MerrittUnited Association for Labor Education Best Book Award The American Dream of reaching success through sheer sweat and determination rings false for countless members of the working classes. This volume shows that many of the difficulties facing workers today have deep roots in the history of the exploitation of labor in the South. Contributors make the case that the problems that have long beset southern labor, including the legacy of slavery, low wages, lack of collective bargaining rights, and repression of organized unions, have become the problems of workers across the country. Spanning nearly all of U.S. history, the essays in this collection range from West Virginia to Florida to Texas. They examine vagrancy laws in the early republic, inmate labor at state penitentiaries, mine workers and union membership, and strikes and the often-violent strikebreaking that followed. They also look at pesticide exposure among farmworkers, labor activism during the civil rights movement, and foreign-owned auto factories in the rural South. They distinguish between different struggles experienced by women and men, as well as by African American, Latino, and white workers. The broad chronological sweep and comprehensive nature of Reconsidering Southern Labor History set this volume apart from any other collection on the topic in the past forty years. Presenting the latest trends in the study of the working-class South by a new generation of scholars, this volume is a surprising revelation of the historical forces behind the labor inequalities inherent today. Contributors: David M. Anderson | Deborah Beckel | Thomas Brown | Dana M. Caldemeyer | Adam Carson | Theresa Case | Erin L. Conlin | Brett J. Derbes | Maria Angela Diaz | Alan Draper | Matthew Hild | Joseph E. Hower | T.R.C. Hutton | Stuart MacKay | Andrew C. McKevitt | Keri Leigh Merritt | Bethany Moreton | Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan | Michael Sistrom | Joseph M. Thompson | Linda Tvrdy
Reconsidering the Limits to Growth: A Report to the Russian Association of the Club of Rome (World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures)
by Viktor Sadovnichy Askar Akaev Ilya Ilyin Sergey Malkov Leonid Grinin Andrey KorotayevEchoing the famous "The Limits to Growth" report from 1972, this edited volume analyses the changes that the World System has undergone to the present, on the fiftieth anniversary of the original report. During the past fifty years, both the concept and understanding of these limits have significantly changed. This book highlights that the evolution of the World System has approached a new critical milestone, moving into a fundamentally new phase of historical development, when the old economic and social technologies no longer work as efficiently as before or even begin to function counterproductively, which leads the World System into a systemic crisis. The book discusses the transition of human society to a new phase state, the shape of which has not yet been determined. New approaches are needed for both, for the analysis of the global situation, and for forecasts. The book is based on an integrated approach including the world-systems, historical and evolutionary perspectives, as well as a systematic view of society, in which changes in one subsystem cause transformations in others. Through mathematical modeling, it defines the main vectors of transformations of the World System; makes a detailed forecast of the development of all the main subsystems of the society and the World System, while presenting horizons of changes from short-term to ultra-long-term; and presents different development scenarios as well as recommendations on how to achieve a transition to the most favorable scenario. The book will appeal to members and followers of the Club of Rome, policy-makers, as well as to scholars from various disciplines interested in a better understanding of the World System evolution, global futures, development studies, climate change, and future societies.
Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age (Dynamics of Virtual Work)
by Eran Fisher Christian FuchsThis volume explores current interventions into the digital labour theory of value, proposing theoretical and empirical work that contributes to our understanding of Marx's labour theory of value, proposes how labour and value are transformed under conditions of virtuality, and employ the theory in order to shed light on specific practices.
Reconstituting Rurality
by Jonathan Murdoch Terry MarsdenThe second in the "Restructuring Rural Areas" series, this work presents an examination of the way in which the rural, and the concept of rurality is being reconstructed within urban regions.; It argues that the rural is not a fixed category but the outcome of political, economic and socio- cultural pressures. These pressures are exacerbated in southeast England - an area dominated by London and the patterns of growth associated with that city. Through close analysis of key land development processes and a series of village studies, the authors give a forceful demonstration of the way in which certain social groups are becoming increasingly influential in determining the material and social shape of rural areas in the United Kingdom. The formation of class identity, it is argued, is closely bound up with the formation of certain local spaces; class and space must be considered as combined elements in the development of rural locales. To illustrate this the authors document in detail the means by which dominant groups represent themselves within the development process and show how the exclusion of certain kinds of development leads to the exclusion of certain social groups.
Reconstructing a Maritime Past
by Matthew HarpsterReconstructing a Maritime Past argues that rather than applying geo-ethnic labels to shipwrecks to describe “Greek” or “Roman” seafaring, a more intriguing alternative emphasizes a maritime culture’s valorization of the Mediterranean Sea. Doing so creates new questions and research agendas to understand the past human relationship with the sea. This study makes this argument in three sections. Chapters 1 and 2, contrasting intellectual histories of maritime archaeological interpretive approaches common in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, propose that the former perspective – which embodies contemporary and fluid perceptions of culture – is a better theoretical framework for future research. Chapters 3–5 re-interpret the corpus of submerged sites in the Mediterranean Sea with this approach, arguing that this dataset does not represent “Phoenician,” “Muslim,” or “Byzantine” seafaring, but the practices of a maritime culture. Key to this section is the author’s method that utilizes superimposed polygons to model patterns of maritime activity, generating centennial results at different scales. Having built the models of a maritime culture’s valorization of the Mediterranean Sea, Chapter 6 contains the first comparisons of these models to other datasets, questioning the relevance of textual media to understand maritime activity, while finding closer analogues with other archaeological corpora. By deconstructing interpretive methods in maritime archaeology, offering a new synthesizing interpretive approach that is scalable and decoupled from past perceptions, and critically examining the applicability of various media to illuminate the past maritime experience, this book will appeal to scholars at various stages of their careers.
Reconstructing Adult Masculinities: Part-time Work in Contemporary Japan (Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies)
by Emma CookOver the past two decades, Japan’s socioeconomic environment has undergone considerable changes prompted by both a long recession and the relaxation of particular labour laws in the 1990s and 2000s. Within this context, "freeters", part-time workers aged between fifteen and thirty-four who are not housewives or students, emerged into the public arena as a social problem. This book, drawing on six years of ethnographic research, takes the lives of male freeters as a lens to examine contemporary ideas and experiences of adult masculinities. It queries how notions of adulthood and masculinity are interwoven and how these ideals are changing in the face of large-scale employment shifts. Highlighting the continuing importance of productivity and labour in understandings of masculinities, it argues that men experience and practice multiple masculinities which are often contradictory, sometimes limiting, and change as they age and in interaction with others, and with social structures, institutions, and expectations. Providing a fascinating alternative to the stereotypical idea of the Japanese male as a salaryman, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, social and cultural anthropology, gender and men's studies.
Reconstructing Gender: A Multicultural Anthology
by Estelle DischReconstructing Gender is an anthology that addresses the contemporary experiences from a variety of women and men. Drawing from a wide range of sources including research articles, critical essays, and personal narratives, Disch has chosen accessible, engaging, and provocative readings that represent many perspectives and experiences. Eleven part-opening introductions identify important issues in the general field of study, describe the readings, remind the reader about some of the central themes emerging throughout the book, and raise questions for students to consider.
Reconstructing Homes: Affective Materiality and Atmospheres of Belonging (Material Mediations: People and Things in a World of Movement #15)
by Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Kristiina Korjonen-Kuusipuro, Viktorija L.A. Čeginskas, Anna Kajander Helmut De NardiIn the practice of constructing the idea of home and the emotions surrounding it, sensory experiences and materiality intertwine to form layers of memory and affective atmospheres. People in different life stages and situations create continuity and a sense of home by engaging with materiality and objects in their own unique way. Reconstructing Homes takes on a multidisciplinary approach of sensory ethnography, visual methods and autoethnography methodologies to explore affective engagements with materiality in the context of home and the idea of belonging.
Reconstructing Lives, Recapturing Meaning: Refugee Identity, Gender, and Culture Change
by Linda A. Camino Ruth M. KrulfeldReconstructing Lives, Recapturing Meaning presents the first systematic investigation of refugees' loss of their old identities and their efforts to construct new ones. Edited by the Chair and Vice Chair of the Committee on Refugee Issues (CORI) of the American Anthropological Association, it critically examines the interplay between cultural, ethnic, and gender constructions among resettled refugee populations. Each chapter is grounded in anthropological theory and method, and the book's framework demonstrates the relationship between the dynamics of forced migration and the ways in which ethnic and gender identities are reinvented in new socio-cultural settings. Unanimous in their perception of boundary maintenance as central to identity formation, these essays allow readers to view refugee resettlement as a creative, experimental process.