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Contemporary interest in spiritual transformation has been growing in fields as diverse as theology, psychology, education, the health sciences and management theory. There is an emerging recognition of the need for a fuller understanding of the nature and dynamics of spiritual growth and its implications for human development and social change. Transformation has also become the subject of scholarly investigation in the Christian tradition, as churches seek to recover their vitality and relevance in a radically secularized and pluralistic culture. The emerging disciplines of practical theology and Christian spirituality have made major contributions to the current discussion of spiritual transformation. James Fowler s groundbreaking studies in faith development, Benedict Groeschel s exploration of spiritual passages, and Evelyn and James Whitehead s investigations of Christian life patterns are representative of the many efforts being made to clarify the nature of transformation in Christian spiritual experience. Even a cursory survey of the different scholarly approaches in theology and Christian spirituality reveals that the notion of transformation remains ambiguous as a theoretical construct. In some contexts it implies a developmental transition or change in beliefs and values. In other contexts focusing on religious conversion it indicates a structural shift in personality and group affiliation. Therapeutic perspectives focus on the dynamics of healing and addiction research views the process through the lens of recovery. Much literature in the study of Christian spirituality continues to focus on transformation largely through the frameworks of classical sources such as the three-fold way of purgation, illumination and union in monastic spirituality, the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, or the mystical ascent described in studies of figures such Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Very often, the notion of spiritual transformation in these studies is not defined or examined critically. Moreover, most theoretical accounts of transformation, whether theological, psychological or spiritual, tend to remain highly abstract and detached from the relational and communal contexts in which persons actually live. There is also a lack of transdisciplinary perspectives on transformation that integrate theology, psychology and spirituality. In this study, Michael Hryniuk develops a full phenomenological, psychological and theological account of spiritual transformation in the context of L Arche, a federation of Christian communities that welcome persons with learning disabilities. The book begins with a critical examination of current perspectives on spiritual transformation in theology and Christian spirituality and constructs a new, foundational formulation of transformation as a shift in consciousness, identity and behavior. Through extensive analysis of the narratives of the caregiver-assistants who share life with those who are disabled, this case-study reveals an alternative vision of the three-fold way that unfolds through a series of profound awakenings in relationships of mutual care and presence: an awakening to the capacity to love, to bear inner anguish and darkness, and to experience radical human and divine acceptance. The book examines the psychological dimensions of spiritual transformation through the lens of contemporary affect theory and explores how care-givers experience a profound healing of shame in their felt sense of identity and self-worth. It moves finally to a theological investigation of the meaning of transformation in the context of L Arche as a process of synergy with the Holy Spirit in relationships of mutuality with persons who are disabled. By tracing the transformative process in L Arche as one of growth in communion, the book outlines a fully relational ontology of the person, an existential Christology of self-embrace, and a Trinitarian spirituality of community life. This book is an important contribution to the fields of Christian spirituality, practical theology, disability studies, pastoral psychology and religious education.

This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays on the society and cultures of twenty-first century Japanese transnationals: first-generation migrants (Issei), and their descendants who were born and grew up outside Japan (Nikkei); and Japanese nationals who today find themselves living overseas. The authors-international specialists from anthropology, sociology, history, and education-explore how individual and community cultural identities are deeply integrated in ethnic and economic structures, and how cultural heritage is manifested in various Japanese transnational communities. These papers use individual cases to tackle the bigger issues of personal identity, ethnic community, and economic survival in an internationalized global world. This book, then, offers new perspectives on the anthropology, sociology, history, and economics of an important, though largely under-reported, transnational community. While previous studies have focused on a few specific and well-known cases-for example, the World War II internment of Japanese Americans and their attempts at redress, Japanese agriculture workers in Brazil, or temporary "returnee" dekasegi workers-this book examines Japanese transnationalism from a broader perspective, including Japanese nationals living overseas permanently or temporarily, and Europeans of Japanese ancestry who have recently rediscovered their Japanese roots. Besides looking at Japanese and Nikkei migrants in North and South America, this volume examines some little-explored venues such as Indonesia, Spain, and Germany. The connections among all these Japanese transnational communities-real or imagined are explored ethnographically and historically. And instead of simply focusing on social problems resulting from racial discrimination-and the political actions involved in implementing or fighting it-this volume offers more nuanced dialogue about the issues involved with Japanese transnationalism, in particular how ethnic identity is formed and how Japanese transnational communities have been created, and re-created, all over the world. Also, while until now less attention has been paid to fitting the Japanese case into a larger theoretical framework of globalization and migration studies, the papers presented here-along with a detailed theoretical introduction-attempt to rectify this.

The history of Singapore has been widely conflated with the history of its economic success. From its heyday as a nexus of trade during the imperial era to the modern city state that boasts high living standards for most of its citizens, the history of Singapore is commonly viewed through the lens of the ruling elite. Published in two volumes in 1998 and 2000, Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs The Singapore Story epitomizes this top-down definitive narrative of the nation's past. The history of post-war Singapore has largely been reduced to a series of decisions made by the nation's leaders. Few existing studies explore the role and experiences of the ordinary person in Singapore's post-war history. There are none that do this through ethnography, oral history, and collective biography. In a critical study that has no parallel among existing works on Singapore history, this book dispenses with the homogenous historical experience that is commonly presumed in the writing of Singapore's national past after 1945 and explores how the enforcement of a uniform language policy by the Singapore government for cultural and economic purposes has created underappreciated social and economic divides among the Chinese of Singapore both between and within families. It also demonstrates how mapping distinct economic, linguistic, and cultural cleavages within Singaporean Chinese society can add new and critical dimensions to understanding the nation's past and present. Chief among these, the author argues, are the processes behind the creation and entrenchment of class structures in the city state, such as the increasing value of English as a form of opportunity-generating capital.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 1882) was one of the most complex poets and painters of the Victorian period. In the 128 years since his death, at least 30 biographies and critical studies along with hundred of articles on his life, poetry and art, and separate volumes of his correspondence have appeared. There has been continuous interest in Rossetti, but no true understanding of where he stands in the pantheon of literature; whether he is primarily a painter, a poet, or both; and why his life tends to overshadows his work. This work was prompted in part by Lisa Tinker s statement, Each ages get or makes the Rossetti it desires. It is a meta-biography that examines the central question: who are the Rossettis created by the values, obsessions, desires and anxieties of a period? It asserts that, more important than establishing some particular truth about the poet-painter, such an approach can provide a proper understanding of his life and work, it can place him more clearly and correctly into the ever-evolving interpretive schema, and it can shed some light on why Rossetti s work is most often eclipsed by his life. How are the Rossetti stories and legends represented in the different genres; why have the these genres been chosen; and why is he represented at all? These are the questions of this study. Twentieth- and twenty-first century representations of Rossetti himself as a man and artist or of his work have, to this point, remained unexamined. This omission is significant because, although the representations of Rossetti are plentiful and have continued to be created to the present time, they have continued to draw attention away from his work, and there is as yet little integration of the man with his work as both painter and poet. Moreover, there are several different representations of Rossetti, often in stark contrast to each. Rossetti scholarship has not yet attempted this. This book examines the treatment of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his work in twentieth and twenty-first century fiction, drama, music, and film, specifically since 1950. The author uses these genres to examine how text, music, performance, and visual images work as a system of representation. In this book, the author strives to clarify the many Dante Gabriel Rossettis, using thirteen of the thirty easily identifiable roles in this system of representation which the author has identified herself roles by which Rossetti is described and portrayed. The identified portrayals of Rossetti fall easily into five groupings: first, the Italian-English man who is a brother and a loyal friend; second, the poet who is a painter and co-founder of an art movement which afforded him the chance to be a mentor; third, the lover, seducer, husband, oppressor; fourth, the murderer; and fifth, the tortured artist and addict who was mentally ill. These are the portrayals are used throughout this work. Several have chronological boundaries and are discrete representations while others reoccur across the time period covered. Using these categories, the author examines seven works of prose fiction, a feature-length film, two television series, a stage play, and the songs and lyrics of a contemporary band. Re-Presentations of Dante Gabriel Rossetti is an important book for all British literature and art collections.

Winner of Sarasvati Award for the Best Nonfiction Book in Women and Mythology! This book discusses erotic and magical goddesses and heroines in several ancient cultures, from the Near East and Asia, and throughout ancient Europe; in prehistoric and early historic iconography, their magical qualities are often indicated by a magical dance or stance. It is a look at female display figures both cross-culturally and cross-temporally, through texts and iconography, beginning with figures depicted in very early Neolithic Anatolia, early and middle Neolithic southeast Europe Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia continuing through the late Neolithic in East Asia, and into early historic Greece, India, and Ireland, and elsewhere across the world. These very similar female figures were depicted in Anatolia, Europe, Southern Asia, and East Asia, in a broad chronological sweep, beginning with the pre-pottery Neolithic, ca. 9000 BCE, and existing from the beginning of the second millennium of this era up to the present era. The authors find several new cross-cultural reference points to a group of related female figures. In comparing written descriptions of these female figures, the authors examine texts from the Old Irish tale, The Destruction of Da Derga s Hostel, the text of an erotic Scandinavian story and a text describing the birth of Kali. The iconography of these female figures depicts a similar crouching or bent-knee position. Old Irish and Greek texts describe the act of "e;anasyrma,"e; a woman's lifting up of her skirt to boldly display her genitals, in order to frighten off an enemy. Parallels to these terrifying, yet empowering, figures in Anatolia, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia are enigmatic Central Asian and East Asian representations of women exposing themselves, some of which go back to as early as the third millennium BCE. One particularly curious aspect of the motif of female sexual exposure is that it can occur both in East Asia and Europe in the context of war, either to frighten the enemy or to embolden one's own troops. This book demonstrates the extraordinary similarities, in a broad geographic range, of depictions and descriptions of magical female figures who give fertility and strength to the peoples of their cultures by means of their magical erotic powers. This book uniquely contains translations of texts which describe these ancient female figures, from a multitude of Indo-European, Near Eastern, and East Asian works, a feat only possible given the authors' formidable combined linguistic expertise in over thirty languages. The book contains many photographs of these geographically different, but functionally and artistically similar, female figures. Many current books (academic and otherwise) explore some of the female figures the authors discuss in their book, but such a wide-ranging cross-cultural and cross-temporal view of this genre of female figures has never been undertaken until now. The sexual display of these female figures reflects the huge numinosity of the prehistoric divine feminine, and of her magical genitalia. The functions of fertility and apotropaia, which count among the functions of the early historic display and dancing figures, grow out of this numinosity and reflect the belief in and honoring of the powers of the ancient divine feminine.

J. M. Coetzee was born in South Africa in 1940 and is the author of fourteen works of narrative fiction (some of which masquerade as memoirs) and several books of literary essays. He has won the prestigious Man Booker Prize twice (for Life &Times of Michael K and Disgrace) and he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003. As a novelist born in and living most of his life in South Africa, Coetzee has been viewed by many readers and critics through an ideological lens, which he has always resisted to a greater or lesser extent. Much excellent criticism of Coetzee puts his work in context; historical, political, literary and theoretical. J.M. Coetzee and the Power of Narrative differs from that of most commentators in that it does not concentrate mainly on the political or post-colonial aspects of his work, and resists allegorical readings--which so often ignore style, language, point of view, and narrative structure. This book is a consideration of various themes and techniques ranging across Coetzee s whole oeuvre. It aims to discover the how rather than what or why : where does Coetzee s work derive its power? A discussion of themes, influences, and allegorical meanings tends to bleach out the experience of reading; and this experience is surely the only reason for choosing Coetzee s narratives over anyone else s. It examines the type of resistance to be found in his work, a resistance which seems to have little basis in a political belief or a rational philosophy of justice. The book also traces the effects of Coetzee s choice of point of view in each of his books how it interacts with questions of complicity and impressions of realism, as well as how it relates to the subject matter and characters he is dealing with in each case. It is also an exploration of the place of the comic arts in Coetzee s work. This is a subject which has routinely been dismissed by critics who have failed to discern any humor in the novels. The contention is that a sense of the ridiculous and absurd is implicit in much of Coetzee s narrative prose and can be seen in the underlying structure of all his books. This study delves into his use of language and languages: the choice of tenses, the surprising flights of imagery to be found amidst the taut elegance of his narrative style; and also the multilingual sensibilities he shares with many of his characters, not excluding the non-verbal language of music. The subject of sex and desire has attracted less critical attention than various other themes, and, of those critics who have considered it, most seem bent on extracting allegories of sexual politics which are not necessarily warranted by a close examination of the texts. This book disputes some of these readings and suggests considering the subject in other ways. It also looks at another uncomfortable aspect of Coetzee s books: his treatment of the bond between parents and children. J. M. Coetzee and the Power of Narrative will appeal to scholars and general readers who are interested in exploring Coetzee s work without necessarily having an extensive knowledge of literary theory.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was the most influential, challenging, and provocative pacifist of his generation. The most famous person alive at the dawn of the twentieth century, his international stature came not only from his great novels but from his rejection of violence and the state. Tolstoy was a strict pacifist in the last three decades of his life, and wrote at length on a central issue of politics, namely, the use of violence to maintain order, to promote justice, and to ensure the survival of society, civilization, and the human species. He unreservedly rejected the use of physical force to these or any ends. Tolstoy was a religious pacifist rather than an ethical or political one. His pacifism was rooted not in a moral doctrine or political theory but in his straightforward reading of the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. Despite his fame, Tolstoy's pacifism remains insufficiently studied. A hundred years after his death, Tolstoy is a figure unfamiliar in political science, encountered, if at all, as the author of hortatory quotations on the wrongness of political violence or of allegiance to the state. This work of political science offers an account of Leo Tolstoy as a Christian thinker on political violence. It presents Tolstoy's pacifism as a striking case of the impact of religious idealism on political attitudes. The Russian novelist offers an instructive case study in Christian pacifism and in the attractions and failings of strict, literalist, and simplistic religious approaches to the many and complex issues of politics. Today, the political implications of religious fundamentalism, scriptural literalism, and Christian faith are very much live issues and the contemporary discussion of them should not omit pacifism. In this first study of Tolstoy's pacifism by a political scientist, Colm McKeogh unravels the complexities of Tolstoy's writings on Christianity and political violence. This work serves scholars of political science by bringing together relevant extracts from Tolstoy's writings and providing a succinct treatment of the core political issues. It establishes that Tolstoy's stance is primarily one of non-violence rather than non-resistance. McKeogh's work then assesses the internal consistency of Tolstoy's pacifism, its grounding in the Gospels and Christian tradition, its political and anti-political implications, and the meaning in life that it offers. It finds that Tolstoy does great service to the pacifist cause (with his defense of peace as close to the centre of Christ's message) and yet harm to it too (by divorcing peace from the love that is even more central to Christ's message). Tolstoy's political and religious legacy is not that of a prophet, a social activist, a moral reformer, a political idealist or pacifist theorist but that of a dissident. Tolstoy stands as one of the great dissidents of twentieth-century Russia, a man who condemned the system utterly and who refused to perform any act that could be construed as compromising with it. He left behind a powerful statement of the urgent human need to connect our daily living to a deep and fulfilling conception of the meaning of life. Tolstoy's Pacifism is important for political science, Christian ethics, literature, and Russian collections.

This book constitutes a major reassessment of the mortuary remains from the two X-Group royal cemeteries at Qustul and Ballana in Lower Nubia (c. AD 380-500). Since their excavation more than seventy years ago, and the subsequent flooding of the sites following the building of the Aswan High Dam, and despite the spectacular nature of the finds, the sites have received remarkably little scholarly attention. This book offers the first interpretation of social life at these key sites, and proposes a series of innovative, theoretically informed frames for exploring the significance of the material remains found there. In doing so, it sheds new light on a culture which, although less well known than the Meroitic Empire that preceded it and the subsequent development of the Christian Kingdoms of the Sudan, is nevertheless of considerable archaeological and historical significance. The sites present a series of archaeologically unique monumental tumuli and multi-chambered tomb structures containing evidence of human and animal sacrifice, as well as a highly sophisticated material culture. The interpretations presented here draw on the emergent field of sensory archaeology to address the key issue of identity formation. It makes a case for the heretofore unrecognised significance of an 'aesthetic' identity mediated by material culture. It approaches X-Group culture as a materially complex indigenous culture that created and altered identities through time via the manipulation of materials, colours and patterns (the 'aesthetic' basis of identity). This study explores the relationships between humans, animals, and artefacts. It demonstrates how a less stable society, which based control on aggressive public displays, became a more stable state, as power was mediated by magico-ritual performances, festal occasions, and the rise of certain individuals. The interpretations put forward here are based on a systematic quantitative analysis of the archaeological material from the sites. These analyses draw on complex typologies differentiating objects according to use, ware, colour, decoration method, designs, surface finish, contents, grafitto, location in a tomb, location near a body, etc. Such a quantification and synthesis of tens of thousands of individual pieces of data enabled the identification of key trends in the dataset--the empirical basis for the modelling of socio-political change undertaken here. The study was undertaken to combat the limited and unsatisfactory set of questions posed by previous debates about the activities at Qustul and Ballana. It constitutes a significant departure from previous work which restricted the discussion of life at the sites to a limited debate about the identity of tribal groups and the chronology of activity at the sites. In contrast, this research demonstrates that the way in which the X-Group(s) dynamically created, maintained, and altered their identity through various forms of praxis. The book is essential reading for anybody researching ancient Sudanese civilisations. It has a wider appeal for researchers and graduate students interested in new developments in approaches to the archaeology of North-East Africa. It also has a broader appeal to all those interested in the theorisation of identity, the practical application of archaeological theory to the study of material culture and the human relationship to the sensory nature of the sensory world.

"Deniers of climate change have benefited from political strategies developed by conservative think tanks and public relations experts paid handsomely by the energy industry. With this book, environmental activists can benefit from some scholarly attention turned to their efforts. This book exhibits the best that public scholarship has to offer. Its authors utilize sophisticated rhetorical theory and criticism to uncover the inventional constraints and possibilities for participants at various sites of the Step-It-Up day of climate activism. What makes this book especially valuable is that it is not only directed to fellow communication scholars, but is written in a clear and accessible style to bring the insights of an academic field to a broader public of activists committed to building an environmental social movement." - Prof. Leah Ceccarelli, University of Washington "This is an unusually interesting volume grounded in a sustained and coordinated analysis of the Step It Up campaign. Generating a multifaceted and shared archive for analyzing the SIU campaign on global warming, the volume's multiple authors critically examine intersecting dimensions of the SIU campaign-its persuasive strategies, organizational dynamics, and political practices for everyday citizens-with an eye on implications for enhancing the larger environmental movement. Readers with a practical and theoretical interest in social and political movements will find this book engaging and leavened with heuristic value." - Professor Robert L. Ivie, Indiana University, Bloomington

Language is central to human activity and is a fundamental expression of culture and a primary resource for social interaction. Learning the language of another culture is a very critical part of truly understanding the culture. This book examines the acquisition of Japanese as a second language. The ability to speak Japanese as a second language provides a great opportunity for opening a door into Japanese society and potentially gaining an in-depth experience of the Japanese culture and learning more about the Japanese people an experience one is unlikely to have without knowing the language. Given this, it is only natural to infer that language may be a key tool for breaking through intercultural boundaries. Language learning should therefore promote mutual understanding and, consequently, better and smoother communication in intercultural settings. Given the important implications of language on cultural understanding and improved communication in today s society, the process of second language acquisition deserves much attention. However, learning a second language is not usually an easy task. Attaining fluency in a language is one of the most complex skills a human being will ever acquire in their lifetime. When acquiring a first language as a child, the learning is rapid in the first four to five years of life; it takes place in a uniform manner and without much effort. Children around the world attain a high degree of success in their first language without instruction or corrective feedback. However, when it comes to the second, third, or any further subsequent language acquisition that begins after adolescence, such language learning requires much greater effort, with the ultimate attainment varying dramatically from one individual to the next from bare minimum to near-native independent of learner motivation and effort expended. Understanding second language (L2) attainment is thus a critical area of study. This study hypothesizes and tests the developmental stages of Japanese L2 verbal morphology and syntax within the framework of processability theory. It looks at four longitudinal studies (of one Portuguese as first language [L1], one French L1, and two English L1 learners of Japanese). Additionally, one cross-sectional study was undertaken to validate whether the results gained from the longitudinal studies could be generalized. Learning Japanese as a Second Language: A Processability Perspective makes a substantial contribution to second language acquisition (SLA) studies, especially for its discussion of speech processing involved in L2 sentence production and because it accounts for learning a language which is typologically distant from the native languages of the learners. The long-range perspective offered by data covering periods of up to three years is very unusual and thus highly valuable in the SLA context, where many studies are only cross-sectional or, at best, only cover a short time span. The longitudinal studies in this book are further buttressed by a cross-sectional study that supports generalizations from the findings. In addition, the author used original and inventive tasks to elicit data on structures such as passive and causative that are notoriously hard to elicit. The author also shows the various developmental stages and how these were used to measure the language development of both second language learners and bilingual speakers. This book will be an important reference for anyone working in the SLA and JSL fields, postgraduate students of Japanese and second language acquisition, and Japanese language professionals such as teachers of Japanese, JSL textbook writers, or English-Japanese translators.

The Victorian freak show was at once mainstream and subversive. Spectacles of strange, exotic, and titillating bodies drew large middle-class audiences in England throughout much of the nineteenth century, and souvenir portraits of performing freaks even found their way into Victorian family albums. At the same time, the imagery and practices of the freak show shocked Victorian sensibilities and sparked controversy about both the boundaries of physical normalcy and morality in entertainment. Marketing tactics for the freak show often made use of common ideological assumptions-compulsory female domesticity and British imperial authority, for instance-but reflected these ideas with the surreal distortion of a fun-house mirror. Not surprisingly, the popular fiction written for middle-class Victorian readers also calls upon imagery of extreme physical difference, and the odd-bodied characters that people nineteenth-century fiction raise meaningful questions about the relationships between physical difference and the social expectations that shaped Victorian life. The academic discipline of disability studies has emerged in the last few decades to encourage aesthetic, philosophical, and political discussions of the significance of disability and physical difference. This field ultimately seeks to expand the rights and social roles offered to those whose bodies defy the norm, but it also explores the subtle ways in which art, literature, spectacle, and other cultural traditions encode physical difference with ideological meaning. Just as feminism, queer theory, and other areas of cultural study have addressed both specific representations of the body and the larger systems of social power that shape how we see and interpret physicality, so too does disability studies seek both the reexamination of cultural works in light of physical difference and the illumination of ways in which physical bodies unlock or foreclose access to power. This book applies the practices of disability studies to the context of Victorian popular fiction. It offers new ways of reading the works of some of the nineteenth century's most beloved writers through their approach to physical difference. It also seeks to renew critical interest in popular novels that, while rarely taught in the academic world, still paint complex, intriguing portraits of Victorian ideology and experience. This book is primarily an aesthetic analysis of freak show imagery as it appears in Victorian popular fiction, including the works of Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Guy de Maupassant, Florence Marryat, and Lewis Carroll. It argues that, in spite of a strong nineteenth-century impulse to define and defend normalcy, images of radical physical difference are often framed in surprisingly positive ways in Victorian fiction. The dwarves, fat people, and bearded ladies who intrude on the more conventional imagery of Victorian novels serve to shift the meaning of those works' main plots and characters, sometimes sharpening satires of the nineteenth-century treatment of the poor or disabled, sometimes offering new traits and behaviors as supplements for restrictive social norms. In particular, this book points out unexpected connections between the cultural iconography of the freak show and fiction's response to middle-class ideals for women and girls. It argues that images of positively-encoded difference-such as the exaggerated nurturance of Dickens's fat women and the traditionally-male strengths of Collins and Marryat's bearded ladies-nudge Victorian ideology towards more inclusive and flexible gender norms. The Victorian Freak Show will interest scholars of nineteenth-century fiction, as well as readers concerned with disability rights or the relationship between ideology and the body.

This book introduces the resources of contemporary social system theory, as pioneered by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann and associated theorists. Luhmann's theory is very different from the general systems approach that dominated sociological thought for several decades after the Second World War. Norms and functions are not seen as fundamental premises of social systems and social order. Rather meaning, communication, and observation are set into the core of social life and its analysis. Meaning is seen as a medium that couples psychic and social systems or consciousness and communication. Observation is described as the introduction of distinctions and selections, and communication is the basic operation that connects observations and thereby allows for the emergence of observers: persons, interaction systems, organizations, and functional subsystems of society, such as the economy, politics, law, and art. Society itself is conceived as the encompassing unity of all communication, a universal set of references that makes observation and communication possible. Modern system theory does not join the quest for essential variables such as norms, values, or institutions. It selects observations and depicts their connectivity, their potential for processing information, building expectations about meaning in the world, and for structuring social systems. Contemporary social systems theory tries to explain the probability of the improbable: that communication occurs and reproduces a universe of meaning in which observers may orient themselves. Social system theory incorporates fresh insights from cognitive biology, the philosophy of consciousness, phenomenology, distinction theory, socio-cybernetics, and constructivism to explain the emergence of society. The authors of Observing Society describe how the theory moves beyond traditional sociological paradigms that attempt to explain social order and understanding with presumptions of intersubjectivity, collective conscience, communicative rationality, or normative consensus. Observing Society: Meaning, Communication, and Social Systems concisely outlines how social system theory offers sociologists an integrated set of practical and general analytical concepts, a promising agenda for scholarly inquiry, and a cutting-edge description of modern society. Using clear illustrations and effectively citing original material previously unavailable in English, Lee and Brosziewski carefully explain the logic of drawing distinctions to make observations, the concepts of meaning and communication, the forms of communication media such as speech and writing, the evolution of forms of organizing society, the functional differentiation of modern systems, and how social system theory informs sociological research and methodology. This book will hold significant relevance for collections in sociology, philosophy, German studies, European studies, and culture and media studies.

A most remarkable change took place in the first half of the twentieth century in China--women journalists became powerful professionals who championed feminist interests, discussed national politics, and commented on current social events by editing independent periodicals. The rise of modern journalism in China provided literate women with a powerful institution that allowed them articulate women's presence in the public space. In editing women's periodicals, women writers transformed themselves from traditional literary women (cainü) to professional women journalists (nübaoren) in the period of 1898-1937 when journalism became increasingly independent of and resistant to state control. The women's media writings in the early decades of the twentieth century not only reveal the historical diversity and complexity of feminist issues in China but also casts light upon important feminist topics that have survived the Nationalist, Communist, and economic reform eras. Today, public debate on women's issues in Mainland China and Taiwan is shaped by past feminist discourse and uses a vocabulary and language familiar to readers of an earlier era. This book examines how women journalists constructed Chinese feminism and debated patriarchy and women's roles in the newly created public space of print media during the period of 1898-1937. It studies Chinese women's public writings in periodicals edited and staffed by women journalists in four major urban centers-Shanghai, Tokyo, Beijing, and Tianjin at a time when urban society underwent major transformation and experienced drastic political, social, and cultural changes. The revolution that overthrew the imperial government in 1911; an attack on patriarchy by cultural radicals in 1915-1919; and the advocacy of nationalism, liberalism, socialism, and feminism by intellectuals who received a Western-style education all worked together to undermine the Confucian notions of gender hierarchy, spatial separation of the sexes, and female domesticity among the well-educated urban classes. Doors of political participation, public activism, and production cracked open for courageous women who ventured into urban public spaces. From 1898 to 1937, urban women of the upper, middle, and working classes became increasingly visible at modern schools, as well as in career and production fields, political activism, and women's movements. At the same time, women edited independent periodicals and championed women's rights. Women's periodicals provided a site where writers negotiated with nationalism, patriarchy, and party lines to define and defend women's interests. These early feminist writings captured how activists perceived themselves and responded to the social and political changes around them. This book takes a historical approach in its examination and uses gender as an analytical category to study the significance of women's press writings in the years of nation building. Treating women journalists as agents of change and using their media writings as primary sources, this book explores what mattered to women writers at different historical junctures, as well as how they articulated values and meaning in a changing society and guided social changes in the direction they desired. It delineates the transformation of women journalists from political-minded Confucian gentry women to professional journalists, and of women's periodicals from representing women journalists' views to addressing the concerns and needs of the majority of women. It analyzes how the concepts of "feminism" and "nationalism" were embodied with different--even contesting--meanings at given historical junctures, and how women journalists managed to advance various feminist agendas by tapping on the various meanings of nationalism. This is an important book for collections in Asian studies, journalism history, and women's studies.

This book, which emerged from conversation at the Institute of Conflict Research in Vienna, contains twelve carefully researched and well-written essays on the timely topic of the problem of prejudice. The contributors were chosen for their scholarly expertise in their particular fields. Taken together they provide an interdisciplinary approach, each casting light from a different angle on the problem of prejudice. The book is divided into two parts. Part one explores six particular manifestations of prejudice: anti-semitism; sexism and heterosexism; prejudice against the sick, old, and handicapped; religious prejudice; racism; and social class prejudice. Part Two further illuminates these prejudices by focusing upon them through six theoretical lenses: history and art history; social functionalism; social psychology; bioscience; law; and contemporary language behavior. The final thirteenth chapter summarizes the book's findings. This book has been introduced by essays setting this work in context and carefully defining the meaning of the word "prejudice." This handbook presents a valuable set of insights, explanations, and theories, which can be used to develop a set of "best practices". Academic by nature, this handbook will enable those who are interested in an educational agenda to find the necessary analytical tools. This book will be an essential addition for all collections in sociology and especially for scholars interested in anti-Semitism, sexism, heterosexism, disability studies, geriatrics studies; religious studies, history, art history, psychology, bioscience, law, and contemporary language behavior.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, over ninety-five percent of all the productive land in Ireland was in the hands of Anglo-Irish landowners. They lived in the 'big houses', some of which still exist today, resplendent within their walled estates. Many others are now only gaunt ruins silhouetted against somber Irish skies, victims of 'the troubles' in the 1920s. There is a continuing fascination with the history of the big house in Ireland. Much of this interest stems from the Anglo-Irish living in places apart, in their estates, often in remote areas of an undeveloped and hostile land. Part of the appeal is in the characters, neither wholly English nor Irish, who made up this landowning class in Ireland. However, another part, largely ignored until this study, is how many of these landowners not only met these challenges but achieved remarkable levels of self-sufficiency. It was their exploitation of technology that hugely bolstered their status and independence and enabled them to lead an exotic lifestyle in Ireland. Although much has been written regarding the social and political history of the Anglo-Irish in Ireland, little research has been conducted into the practical problems of living there. At a time when there were few roads, no railways, and sailing ships were the unreliable connection with England, existence might have been very basic indeed. Charles Carson uncovers and explains in simple terms the technologies employed, to not only make life bearable, but in some case to become a triumph over seemingly impossible odds. An appreciation of this background helps to explain the sense of status and independence that emanates from the big house in Ireland until their demise in the late twentieth century. Interdisciplinary investigative methods were used in this work. These included extensive archival research of estate papers throughout Ireland; fieldwork involving examination and photography of still-extant big house technology; and the use of published fictional and biographical big house material. Much additional insight, and suggestions for further research, resulted from visits to various big house locations. Owners, often descendants of the original families, or managers and ground staff, provided important local knowledge. Climbing amongst stored artefacts in cellars, barns, and subterranean tunnels helped to bring the past alive. Something of the ambiance of these explorations informs this book, thus helping towards an understanding of the fundamental importance of technology in underpinning the status and independence of the big house in Ireland. By examining the range, costs, and changing nature of the technologies employed, this book makes an important contribution to a deeper understanding of life in the big house in Ireland circa 1800 to circa 1930. Brief descriptions, accompanied by drawings or photographs, are employed to explain the operation, limitations, and improvements of many of the installations and techniques. These include water closets, pumps, cisterns, boilers, and firefighting equipment; open fires, hot air stoves, and central heating; walled gardens, hot walls and beds, warm air, steam, and hot water heating of glasshouses; the construction, location, stocking, and use of ice houses and ice; daylight enhancement, candle, oil, gas, and electric lighting; an optical telegraph, a church spire, engine driven equipment on the estate farm as well as mapping of bogs and their reclamation by wooden railways. Technology and the Big House in Ireland, c. 1800-c. 1930 is an important reference source for Irish study groups worldwide.

Many tombs dating to the Eastern Zhou (770-221 BCE) and Han (206 BCE-220 AD) periods contain musical instruments or their visual representations in the form of wood, stone, and ceramic figures, tomb tiles, and engravings. These finds suggest that music was viewed as an important part of the afterlife. While bells have survived more frequently than wooden instruments, and therefore have received the most scholarly attention, strings, winds, and drums are the focus of discussion in this book. The book examines the use of these three instrument types in both solo and ensemble music, as well as the social, ritual, and entertainment functions of each. When combined with bells (and chime stones), strings, drums, and winds appear to have been associated with formal ritual ceremonies. However, when appearing alone or in assemblages with other wooden instruments during Zhou, they appear to be connected with warfare and entertainment. By Han times, strings, winds, and drums seem to be associated almost exclusively with entertainment, pointing to a shift in the social life of the times. Another topic explored in this book is the association of musical instruments with wealth. When combined with bells and chime stones, they are only found in the wealthiest tombs. However, when found by themselves, strings, winds, and drums appear in small to large, modest to wealthy tombs, suggesting that they were available to a broad range of peoples in early Chinese elite society. This book analyzes an often disregarded aspect of early Chinese music, the role of strings, winds, and drums. Music in Ancient China will be a valuable book for those interested in ethnomusicology and music history, Asian art history and archaeology, and Asian studies.

This book is about Angolan literature and culture. It investigates a segment of Angolan history and literature, with which even Portuguese-speaking readers are generally not familiar. Its main purpose is to define the features and the literary production of the so-called 'creole elite', as well as its contribution to the early manifestations of dissatisfaction towards colonial rule patent during a period of renewed Portuguese commitment to its African colonies, but also of unrealised ambitions, economic crisis, and socio-political upheaval in Angola and in Portugal itself. Nineteenth-century Angolan society was characterised by the presence of a semi-urbanised commercial and administrative elite of Portuguese-speaking creole families--white, black, some of mixed race, some Catholic and others Protestant, some old established and others cosmopolitan--who were based in the main coastal towns. As well as their wealth, derived from the functions performed in the colonial administrative, commercial and customs apparatus, their European-influenced culture and habits clearly distinguished them from the broad native population of black peasants and farm workers. In order to expand its control over the region, Portugal desperately needed the support of this kind of non-coloniser urban elite, which was also used as an assimilating force, or better as a source of dissemination of a relevant model of social behaviour. Thus, until the 1850s great creole merchants and inland chiefs dealt in captive slaves, bound for export to Brazil via Cape Verde and São Tomé the tribal aristocracy and the creole bourgeoisie thrived on the profits of overseas trade and lived in style, consuming imported alcoholic beverages and wearing European clothes. After the abolition, however, their social and economic position was eroded by an influx of petty merchants and bureaucrats from Portugal who wished to grasp the commercial and employment opportunities created by a new and modern colonial order, anxious to keep up with other European colonial powers engaged in the partition of the African continent. This book thus considers the first intellectuals, the early printed publications in the country, and the pioneers of Angolan literature who felt the need to raise their roots to higher dignity. Thus, they wrote grammar, dictionaries, poetry, fiction, and of course, incendiary articles denouncing exploitation, racism, and the different treatment afforded by the colonial authorities to Portuguese expatriates and natives.

Written by Monica Biradavolu (a sociologist at Yale University), this innovative study examines the emergence and growing power of a new group of immigrant Indians to the United States: the transnational techno-capitalist class of entrepreneurs operating at the upper echelons of the hi-tech industry in Silicon Valley and Bangalore. Imbibing the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, recognizing the importance of building strong networks, and relying upon their educational qualifications, professional credentials and powerful yet invisible family support, Indians are playing a central role in redefining what it means to be an 'immigrant entrepreneur' from a 'developing country'. These powerful actors are negotiating on their own terms and forging their own transnational space in the global software industry to become a transnational capitalist class, with allegiance to global capitalism and a political project of pushing the ideas and ideals of capitalism in both their 'home' and 'adopted' countries. This an important book for those in ethnic and immigrant studies.

Stockton first made his reputation as "Fighting Bob" in the defense of Baltimore in the War of 1812, and, on his first naval command, he founded Liberia for freed slaves. Yet he also owned slaves on his sugar plantation in Georgia, and later probably used "rented" slave labor his in Virginia gold mines. As a naval officer, he chased pirates with the West Indies Squadron and may have been responsible for the death of Jean Lafitte; yet he acted like a pirate himself in ruthlessly protecting his Joint Companies' monopoly of railroad and canal traffic across New Jersey. Stockton achieved nautical design prominence by bringing John Ericsson to America to create the first steam-powered, propeller-driven warship and the most powerful cannon in the world. (Ericsson later designed USS Monitor in the Civil War.) However, in demonstrating his cannon to high government officials, the cannon backfired killing nearly half of President Tyler's cabinet. From Congress and the President, Stockton brought the invitation of annexation to Texas, but then he tried to initiate a war between Texas and Mexico that he would clandestinely underwrite with profits from his transportation monopoly. He sailed to California arriving at the start of the Mexican-American war so that he was the commander-in-chief of all US forces, and joined with John C. Fremont and his filibusters to take California for the United States-yet he never had specific orders to take California. Upon his return, he became the first naval officer to become a U. S. Senator, and then he sought the nomination for president twice: once on the 1852 Democratic Party ticket almost nosing out Franklin Pierce and once on the American Party or Know-Nothing ticket. His nomination from the nativist American Party is particularly ironic because he has been instrumental twelve years earlier in suppressing nativist riots in Philadelphia. In 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, New Jersey sent him as a member of a delegation to the Peace Conference in Washington that attempted to avert the Civil War. However at the peace conference, Stockton threatened to beat up a member who opposed his policies. Stockton eventually retired from public life to the New Jersey seashore where he founded the community of Sea Girt, and sat idle during the Civil War. He died in 1867 just after witnessing the expulsion of his son who had attempted to succeed him in the U. S. Senate. Historians of the Early Republic and antebellum naval operations will discover hitherto unknown or unappreciated materials and texts in the protean odyssey of this unsung American hero.

This book details a 2-year study that examined and compared the efficacy of an andragogical instructional methodology to that of a traditional, prescriptive, pedagogical, and militaristic format of basic police training. The study not only revealed that an andragogical approach yielded greater outcomes in terms of skills and competencies, but was preferred among recruits, in great part due to the emphasis placed on experiential learning and a collegiate and collaborative approach to learning. In his research, Robert F. Vodde identified six thematic, categorical constructs by which basic police training programs can be organized and administered, to include the importance for not only working within a quasi-military hierarchal organizational structure, but in preparing recruits for the emotional and physical challenges associated with police work. When properly administered, an andragogical approach represents a well-planned and skillfully orchestrated process that holistically integrates all aspects of the curriculum; one that capitalizes on the use of multi-sensory, experiential, hands-on learning activities that allow recruits to apply what they have learned. Considering the short and long-term impacts of basic police training, Vodde illuminates in this book that "an andragogical instructional methodology serves as a pragmatic, effective, and responsive approach to training"; it is one that creates a physical and psychological climate that takes into consideration the affective needs of the recruit, thus providing for a healthy, engaging, challenging, and collaborative atmosphere in which future police officers "develop a clear understanding and perspective of their role within the greater context of society."

Usually recognised as the first professional woman writer, Aphra Behn (1640 1689) has become a popular subject for academic study. Most scholars have concentrated on her poetry, her short stories, and her one full-length novel, finding fuel for arguments that suggest she was an early feminist or a proponent of anti-racism. Although there have been examinations of individual plays, the prefaces and epistles, as well as studies, none examine her plays against aspects of the cultural context of the time and the political background, which have usually been used as examples supporting a particular argument, in relation to certain events of the time. No one has considered her simply as a dramatist, or as one of the most prolific and popular amongst her contemporaries working in the theatre at a particular time in theatrical history, nor has anyone discussed how her plays reflect and use the changing staging methods to convey their themes. Moreover, because of her comparatively enormous output and her exceptionally detailed stage directions, Behn can be considered as an exemplar of the changes that occurred in the ways of staging on the Restoration stage. This is not something which has been done before. The study considers the ways in which Behn has constructed her plays and used their staging to ensure the perceptions and apprehensions she wants from that audience. It considers the ways in which her use of the scenic stage developed from contemporary staging, acting styles, and changing stage conventions and how she used these to contribute to the reception and understanding of her plays by the audience. This book thus considers the theatrical impact on the audience in the use of painted settings, discoveries and disclosure, disguises and dark scenes. The audience s reactions to events on stage are as much part of the theatrical experience as the dialogue and actions of the players, and are based on their implicit understanding of the relationship of their own life experiences to those shown on stage. And in almost all her plays Aphra Behn was showing the restoration audience their own lives and behaviour writ large. This is an important book for those in theatre, literature, and women s studies.

At first glance, several literary portrayals of Viking Age women represent them as kings, as warriors, and as inciters of violence, which seems to contradict the image of the passive, housebound female figure. However, those images need to be read and re-interpreted with a measured critical suspicion. For example, several scholars have argued that those images tell little about the real history of Scandinavian and European women but instead represent fantasies expressed by later male authors. In contrast to the literary portrayals, Viking Age women and European women in the Middle Ages stayed at home and were not allowed to let their voices be heard publicly. In this groundbreaking study by Scandinavian scholar, Lena Norrman, this book posits that women had ways to communicate their lore through visual representations such as weavings and embroideries. The Överhogdal tapestries were found in the northern part of Sweden and dated to circa 1000 AD. Woven with locally-dyed wool and linen, these tapestries and weavings have received relatively little scholarly attention. According to the author, the Överhogdal tapestries tell the story of Sigurðr the Dragon Slayer, a depiction that comes more than 200 years earlier than the oldest manuscript of this well-known legend, which was disseminated through different parts of Northern Europe as well in Iceland and Greenland. Equally important, these textile representations are told from a female perspective where the focus is on love, passion, honor and revenge instead of finding the gold, magical weapons and depictions of the killing of the dragon. Using a refreshing perspective, the author's reading of these textiles is based on theories of oral tradition. She contextualizes these tapestries as narratives in circulation, and more specifically, argues that they allow us to "see" or read women's stories despite the fact that women's voices were silent. Such untraditional outlets as weavings and miracle writings contradict the view of women as silent, passive participants in the events that shaped history. With respect to the Viking Age, this book shows that women had ways to communicate their lore through visual representations such as weavings and embroideries, which are a crucial object of this study. This is a critical reference for scholars in Scandinavian studies and Women's studies.

This book provides insight into the nature of the relationship between dialogue and care. The work is textured and mindful of the human need for authentic communication between embedded human communicative agents. This is because the authors are well-versed in the field, having published articles, books, and book chapters dealing with the cultivation of human communication and human relationships through aspects of care, dialogue, and other philosophical preconditions. This study approaches the relationship of care and dialogue through a constructive hermeneutic approach situated within the current historical moment, while relying on a rich and textured historical tradition of philosophical writings that invite new discussion on the value of this relationship. In a historical era of rapidly changing technologies, it is often easier to text, twitter, and e-mail in a hypertext mode that fails to acknowledge the dialogic potential in human relationships. This book reminds us that even in these technologically sophisticated times, we gain more in human relationships through care and dialogue than in quick, instant communication. It is unique from other books dealing with the relationship between dialogue and care in human relationships because it integrates literature involving communication ethics and philosophies of communication framed around the metaphor of "care" to provide a more textured insight related to human communication. The discussion is an alternative to a social scientific approach. Readers will gain a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the issue(s) involved from different perspectives. Many other books on these matters are also theoretically laden with deep philosophical concepts, but they are often devoid of connections to everyday experiences which limits application of the ideas. The authors address this by a text that explores those philosophical and theoretically laden concepts related to "care" in an applied manner, so that the practice of these ideas is situated within actual human interaction. This study provides an in-depth exploration specifically dealing with care as a philosophical and ethical paradigm for living in the world. This book is distinctive as it encompasses theorists/scholars from multiple perspectives that include sociological, psychological, philosophical, and from both social science and humanities approaches; all of which come together within a communication framework. The purpose of this book is to provide readers with the opportunity to consider multiple ways of enhancing human communication through discovering how the notion of "care" has the ability to shape and guide communicative exchanges. Care is posited as a philosophy of communication and more specifically as a communicative ethic that can be embraced in interpersonal and organizational communicative contexts. Our goal is to provide a textured understanding of "care" as it relates to human communication and as it is foregrounded in philosophical thought. This text will help develop philosophical understanding of this topic that is inescapably linked to human communication. This book will interest all in communication, sociology, psychology, and anthropology.

In this groundbreaking book, the author advocates that many relational collapses are the result of ineptitude rather than ill will. That is, they are the result of a lack of skills rather than a lack of goodwill. As this book puts it, many of society s relational problems may be competency related. This might be good news since competencies can be learned. The purpose of this book is to take a careful look at how such competencies can be developed. Beginning with the view that if such competencies can be learned, they must first be defined and have standards set for them, it asks the question, Can competency standards be designed for soft skills? It is argued that the answer is yes. Locating itself in the workplace context (where adults often spend most of their lives), but relevant to life in general, this book shows how theoretically sound competency standards can be developed for selected soft skills. This is done by adapting a methodology used to specify workplace competency standards. The book also notes a number of practical and ideological issues that must be considered at implementation. This book shows how standards for three such skills have been developed and provided with a preliminary workplace validation. The skills selected are related to interpersonal skills and are derived from the framework of emotional intelligence competencies popularised by Goleman. This is an important book for those in business studies.

A groundbreaking work which was first published in Beirut in the year 2000 by Riad el-Rayyes, I Am You (Ana Hiya Anti) is the only novel in Arabic which deals exclusively with the subject of female homosexuality in the Middle East. This critical translation of Elham Mansour's Lebanese novel provides a rare insight into the prevalent attitudes towards lesbianism in the Arabic mainstream, whilst also casting a light on that which is often hidden from the public gaze-the lives of some gay and bisexual women. This long awaited critical translation provides the English reader access to a novel which deals candidly and positively with one of the most important and taboo issues of contemporary Arab society--(homo)sexuality. The novel is translated and introduced by Samar Habib (author of Female Homosexuality in the Middle East) with a foreword by Rebecca Beirne (editor of Televising Queer Women: A Reader)--both critical commentaries help the reader situate the novel within a dynamic historical framework and a broader LGBTIQ context. "This book provides a narrative that depicts everyday lives of lesbians in the Middle East, moving beyond seeing victims of homophobic laws, in order to explore their desires and the possibilities for living life outside societal parameters. I Am You is unique in that it is the first novel published in Arabic to truly take up lesbianism as an issue, and I would argue, a cause. For indeed, it is a highly political novel, questioning every prevailing societal belief about homosexuality, and contending that homosexuality is a natural phenomenon. As the first text of its kind, I Am You will no doubt one day take its place as a lesbian literary classic, but, more importantly, it outs lesbianism in the Arab world (and specifically, in Lebanon), acting as survival literature, and perhaps, opening up a door for further lesbian representation in Arabic culture." - Dr. Rebecca Beirne, Author of Lesbians in Television and Text after the Millennium and editor of TelevisingQueer Women: A Reader

David Foster is the most original, challenging, contradictory, risk-taking and infuriating Australian novelist of his generation. To date he has published twelve novels, three collections of novellas and short stories, two books of poetry, and a collection of essays, with several produced radio plays. Foster writes in an Australian tradition of idiosyncratic satire and comedy that may be traced through the work of Joseph Furphy, Miles Franklin, Xavier Herbert and David Ireland. His novels are the most wide-ranging and fearless of the Australian novels that have contributed to the late twentieth-century re-examination of Western ideologies and the literary forms in which they are expressed. In this first critical study of David Foster's works, Professor Susan Lever steers us into penetrating the mysteries of Foster's fiction, and provides guidance to readers willing to approach them. The book examines the contradictory nature of his commitments and interests as expressed mainly in his novels. Each of his works of fiction and poetry in the order of publication (except for The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross and The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover which are discussed with similar novels) are discussed. The development of Foster's philosophical ideas and technique as a novelist over the 35 years of his writing life to date is followed. The book also examines Foster's letters to Geoffrey Dutton early in his career; his interviews and essays provide some of the background to these novels. The book also furnishes a sense of the Australian context for his work. A brief biography of Foster's early life and a discussion of his approach to satire is also included.

This book is the only biography of the "Union Duke". It fully explores the principles and political life of Queensberry and the reasons for the Act of Union of 1707. It also addresses the issues of possible war between England and Scotland, the threat to the Hanoverian succession, and the constitutional and political battles fought out in the Scottish and English parliaments in 1695-1707. More importantly, this book is unique in that the research is based on the extensive archives at Drumlanrig castle (the home of the present Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry) to which no other historian of the Union has had recent access. The Duke of Queensberry and the Union of Scotland and England challenges the current historiography of the Union and provides a unique insight into the mind of Queensberry and other Scottish and English politicians with respect to the Union of 1707. This is an essential reference for all collections in European history as no other work on this subject deals with the development of Queensberry's political ideas and is based on the extensive primary sources available at Drumlanrig castle.

This book examines why, when, how and where the scenic stage began in England. Little has been written about the development of theatrical scenery and how it was used in England in the seventeenth century, and what is known about the response to this innovation is fragmentary and uncertain. Unlike in Italy and France where scenery had been in use since the sixteenth century, the general public in England did not see plays presented against a painted location until Sir William Davenant presented The Siege of Rhodes at Lincoln''s Inn Fields in 1661. Painted landscapes or seascapes, perspective views of cities or palaces, lighting effects, gods or goddesses flying down on to the stage in a chariot, all these had only been seen before on the masque stage at court or in the occasional private play performance.This study argues that Sir William Davenant (1606-1668) was involved almost from the beginning of the process and that his influence continued after his death; that, although painted scenery as such would undoubtedly have appeared on the public stage after 1660, it would not have been in the same way, for Davenant made particular positive contributions which brought about certain changes in both the presentation and reception of plays which would not have happened as they did without his work and influence.This is new work which uses dramaturgical and scenographical analysis of selected plays and masques, against known theatrical history, to discover how the staging of painted settings was organised from c1605 to c1700. This kind of investigation into the links between masque staging and the staging of plays has not been done in quite this way before. The study begins with Davenant''s involvement with Inigo Jones and John Webb. It analyses the staging of the court masques and discusses what Davenant took from this and how he used the information. It suggests that the move towards verisimilitude in the drama on the scenic stage was due in part to Davenant''s imaginative use of certain of the physical components of masque staging in presentations by the Duke''s Company. It argues that he encouraged dramatists to integrate the scenery into their plots, particularly to provide for disclosures and discoveries, in ways not possible before. How, in so doing, he implicitly changed the stage conventions of time and place which audiences had accepted from the platform stage. It also argues that the parallel development of operatic spectacle derived mainly from the use by Killgrew and the King''s Company of the techniques for engineering the spectacular effects of the transformation scenes of the masque stage to embellish the heroic drama by Dryden and others. It suggests that the two staging methods combined in the later seventeenth century to give more sophisticated ways of using the scenery and thus involved the scenic stage with the dialogue and the action in all genres, but that such experimentation ended when financial and commercial considerations made it no longer viable. Nevertheless it concludes that, by the eighteenth century, theatre practitioners had learnt to use the stage craft and mechanical techniques of the masque stage to integrate the visual with the aural aspects of a production, and that dramatists, once concerned solely with the aural expression of their theme, had become playwrights who allowed for the visual elements in their texts. Over fifty illustrations exemplify the discussion. This is an important book in the history of theatre, essential background for the staging of the court masque, and for the scenography of the Restoration theatre.

Contemporary Arab American Women Writers: Hyphenated Identities and Border Crossings is a profound study of how contemporary Arab American women writers who have been marginalized and silenced, especially after 9/11, are pointing out the racism, oppression, and marginalization they experience in the United States and are beginning to uncover the particularities of their own ethnic histories. The book focuses mainly on four works by contemporary Arab American women writers: A Border Passage (1999) by Leila Ahmed, Emails from Scheherazad by Mohja Khaf, West of the Jordan (2003) by Laila Halaby, and Crescent (2003) by Diana Abu-Jaber, examining how each of these works uniquely tackles the idea of having a hyphenated identity--an identity that has been complicated by living in a hostile environment and living in a borderzone. In this book, the author articulately examines how Leila Ahmed, Mohja Khaf, Laila Halaby, and Diana Abu Jaber explore what it means to belong to a nation as it wages war in their Arab homelands, supports the elimination of Palestine, and racializes Arab men as terrorists and Arab women as oppressed victims, while investigating the themes of exile, doubleness, split vision, and difference. Using postcolonial and feminist literary theories, the author insightfully investigates how these Arab American women writers critique intellectual tendencies that might be understood as making concessions to Western and Orientalist fundamentalist regimes and movements that in effect abandon Arab women to their iron rule.

This highly acclaimed book brings the cumulative results of a century and a half of kinship studies in anthropology into the focus of current debates on the origin of modern humans in Africa and on an entangled bit of human evolutionary history commonly subsumed under the heading of the "peopling of the Americas." This erudite study is based on a database of some 2,500 kinship vocabularies representing roughly 600 African languages, 140 Australian languages, 500 Austronesian languages, 200 Papuan languages, 350 languages of Eurasia (excluding Indo-Europeans), 440 North and Middle American Indian languages, and 200 South American languages. This valuable reference will take the reader to the dawn of kinship studies in the 19th century Western science in order to elicit the wider context of anthropological interest in kinship systems and the interdisciplinary salience of the phenomenon of kinship. The book also examines the founder of kinship studies in anthropology, American lawyer and Iroquois ethnographer, Lewis Henry Morgan, and the circumstances of his life that generated his interest in human kinship. The study ventures into the intricacies of scientific and quasi-scientific debates in the 19th century, and treats 19th century science as embedded in a myth featuring divinity, humanity and animality as principal characters. This account is divided into four sections, each of which is structured as a triad (philosophy, psychology and physiology; logic, semiotics and reproduction; religion, hermeneutics and evolution; law, grammar and speech). This far-reaching historical journey aims at formulating an idea of what human kinship might be all about, especially in the light of the widespread uncertainties about this question caused by the constructivist turn in anthropology. Eventually our ideas regarding human origins, ancient population dispersals and the homeland of modern humans are inextricably linked to our ideas about kinship. As a book that brings together evolutionary and sociocultural anthropology, The Genius of Kinship will be a critical addition for all Anthropology collections.