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In 1996 over 16 million people visited Tokyo Disneyland, making it the most popular of the many theme parks in Japan. Since it opened in 1983, Tokyo Disneyland has been analyzed mainly as an example of the globalization of the American leisure industry and its organizational culture, particularly the "company manual." By looking at how Tokyo Disneyland is experienced by employees, management, and visitors, Aviad Raz shows that it is much more an example of successful importation, adaptation, and domestication and that it has succeeded precisely because it has become Japanese even while marketing itself as foreign. Rather than being an agent of Americanization, Tokyo Disneyland is a simulated "America" showcased by and for the Japanese. It is an "America" with a Japanese meaning.
Rather than focusing on the psychology of personal emotions at work, this study concentrates on emotions as role requirements, on workplace emotions that combine the private with the public, the personal with the social, and the authentic with the masked.
A reader for a sociology course, reprinting 23 articles from professional journals. They cover work as social interaction, socialization and identity, experiencing work, work cultures and social structure, and deviance at work.
With every passing year, more and more people learn that they or their young or unborn child carries a genetic mutation. But what does this mean for the way we understand a person? Today, genetic mutations are being used to diagnose novel conditions like the XYY, Fragile X, NGLY1 mutation, and 22q11.2 Deletion syndromes, carving out rich new categories of human disease and difference. Daniel Navon calls this form of categorization “genomic designation,” and in Mobilizing Mutations he shows how mutations, and the social factors that surround them, are reshaping human classification. Drawing on a wealth of fieldwork and historical material, Navon presents a sociological account of the ways genetic mutations have been mobilized and transformed in the sixty years since it became possible to see abnormal human genomes, providing a new vista onto the myriad ways contemporary genetic testing can transform people’s lives. Taking us inside these shifting worlds of research and advocacy over the last half century, Navon reveals the ways in which knowledge about genetic mutations can redefine what it means to be ill, different, and ultimately, human.
The Gene and the Genie looks at a genetic counseling program developed for a Bedouin community in Israel, where congenital hearing loss is passed through the generations at elevated rates. The program, modeled on an innovative and worldwide premarital counseling protocol developed by and for ultra-orthodox Ashkenazi Jews, takes into account arranged consanguineous marriages and Muslim opposition to abortion, weaving these community concerns into the genetic counseling. The situation is further complicated because hearing loss is not a life-threatening condition, which raises the question of which diseases should be screened for. The book describes these dilemmas and their consequences by fol...
The social and bioethical aspects of carrier testing and its assimilation by specific groups are examined through several qualitative case studies in traditional (religious, ethnic) as well as modern (secular-consumerist) communities in Israel and the U.S. Comparing the views of community members and health professionals, the analysis offers a new look on the relations between eugenics and "genetic responsibility."
A collection of studies in bioethics and society that goes beyond conventional medical ethics and suggests political, socio-legal, and empirical analysis.
How could late Qing China, a country bound largely by parochial ties of family, clan, and native place, produce a nationwide mass movement? Was this popular outburst symptomatic of a domestic "nationalist awakening," as historians of modern China claim, or a result of pressure from Chinese overseas suffering under harsh U.S. immigration laws, as students of American history contend? In considering these vying explanations for the boycott of American products, Wang identifies a coalition of interests that came together to shape the movement's strategy, objectives, and outcome. He explores the larger structural and organizational resources available to boycott organizers and participants and the role of this common experience in laying the groundwork for later reform and revolutionary movements.
A house is a site, the bounds and focus of a community. It is also an artifact, a material extension of its occupants' lives. This book takes the Japanese house in both senses, as site and as artifact, and explores the spaces, commodities, and conceptions of community associated with it in the modern era. As Japan modernized, the principles that had traditionally related house and family began to break down. Even where the traditional class markers surrounding the house persisted, they became vessels for new meanings, as housing was resituated in a new nexus of relations. The house as artifact and the artifacts it housed were affected in turn. The construction and ornament of houses ceased t...
The Themed Space: Locating Culture, Nation, and Self is the first edited collection focused on the significance of the theme space. The first section of the text discusses the ways in which theming acts as a form of authenticity. Included are articles on the theme park Dollywood, the historic Coney Island, the uses of theming in Flagstaff, Arizona, and the Las Vegas Strip. Section two considers theming as a reflection of nation, and its authors focus on Chinese theme parks and shopping malls, the Lost City theme park in South Africa, and the Ain Diab resort district in Casablanca. The third section of the book illustrates how theming often targets the person—whether famous or everyday. The...