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Intimacies and Cultural Change
Exploring cultural transformations of intimacy in contemporary Mexico, Intimacies and Cultural Change examines the ways in which globalization and rapid cultural change have transformed the cultural meanings of couple relationships, sexuality, and personal life in Mexican society. Through a range of contemporary case studies, the book sheds light on the ways in which people draw on these cultural meanings in everyday life to account for their experiences and practices of intimacy in different social settings. An interdisciplinary volume, presenting the latest research on the region from experts working in diverse fields within the social sciences, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, geography and social psychology with interests in gender and sexuality, social change and contemporary intimate relationships.
Life Advice from Below
In Life Advice from Below, Eric C. Hendriks offers the first systematic, comparative study of the globalization of American-style self-help culture and the cultural conflicts this creates in different national contexts. The self-help guru is an archetypical American figure associated with individualism, materialism and the American Dream. Nonetheless, the self-help industry is spreading globally, thriving in China and other seemingly unlikely places. Controversy follows in its wake, as the self-help industry, operating outside of formal education and state institutions, outflanks philosophical, religious and political elites who have their own visions of the Good Life. Through a comparison o...
Imagining Society
Re-examining C.Wright Mills’s legacy as a jumping off point, this original introduction to sociology illuminates global concepts, themes and practices that are fundamental to the discipline. It makes a case for the importance of developing a sociological imagination and provides the steps for how readers can do that. The unique text: • Offers succinct and wide-ranging coverage of many of the most important themes and concepts taught in first year sociology courses; • Has a global framework and case material which engages with decoloniality and critiques an overly white, western and developed world view of sociology; • Is woven through with contemporary examples, from social media to social inequality, big data to the self-help industry; • Rethinks and re-imagines what a critically committed, politically engaged and publicly relevant sociology should look like in the 21st century. This is a lively, engaging and accessible overview of sociology for all its students, teachers and people who want to learn more about sociology today. It is a welcome clarion call for sociology’s importance in public life.
Quest for Dignity
Everything we hold sacred—morality, ethics, self-respect, truth, fairness, justice, equality, progress and dignity—stands violated in the presence of widespread poverty and deprivation. Why is it that our brilliant inventors, brightest entrepreneurs, cleverest businessmen, and most savvy political leaders, who can successfully build inexpensive rockets to take us to space and construct lengthy bridges across dangerous rivers, cannot eliminate poverty in their neighborhoods? Unless, of course, poverty is an acceptable byproduct of our economic progress. But this book is not about poverty. It is about dignity. It is about the deceptively simple idea that a basic income that enables payment...
Affective Capitalism in Academia
Drawing on affect theory and research on academic capitalism, this book examines the contemporary crisis of universities. Moving through 11 international and comparative case studies, it explores diverse features of contemporary academic life, from the coloniality of academic capitalism to performance management and the experience of being performance-managed. Affect has emerged as a major analytical lens of social research. However, it is rarely applied to universities and their marketisation. Offering a unique exploration of the contemporary role of affect in academic labour and the organisation of scholarship, this book considers modes of subjectivation, professional and personal relationships and organisational structures and their affective charges. Chapter 9 is available Open Access via OAPEN under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
The Shape of Spirituality
Around 20 percent of Americans fall into the category of “spiritual but not religious.” Yoga has become a ubiquitous pastime for middle-class Westerners. Mindfulness is increasingly incorporated into school curricula, sports programs, and even corporate culture. Hollywood icons and Silicon Valley trendsetters tout the benefits of a “spiritual” life. These developments reflect a widespread turn away from “religion” toward “spirituality.” Yet the nature of this spiritual turn is still poorly understood, and its consequences sorely underappreciated. The Shape of Spirituality brings together leading sociologists to challenge common notions that spirituality is individualistic, pr...
A Post-Neoliberal Era in Latin America?
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Ongoing conflicts between neoliberal and post-neoliberal politics have resulted in growing social instability in Latin America. This book explores the cultural dynamics of neoliberalism and anti-neoliberal resistance in Latin America as a complex set of interrelated cultural forms, examining the ways in which neoliberalism has transformed public discourses of self and social relationships, popular cultures and modes of everyday experience. Contributors from an international range of different disciplinary perspectives look at how Latin Americans construct subjectivities, build communities and make meaning in their everyday lives in order to analyse the discourses and cultural practices through which a societal consensus for the pursuit of neoliberal politics may be established, defended and contested.
Semiotics of Friendship
A friend should be able to be an attentive listener, which made semiotician Roland Barthes wonder in his intriguing dictionary of love, "cannot friendship be defined as a space with total sonority?". This volume takes on the encyclopedic task - in the sense of Umberto Eco, where an encyclopedia is a very complex sign - to explore friendship in detail, not only as a form of love but in all its complexity as a bond that connects people and forms communities. Semiotics, the study of signs and meaning-making, is used alongside insights from a wide range of friendship studies to create a far-reaching intellectual resonance, or sonority, around friendship as a central human experience. As a study ...
Ignorance is Bliss: The Chinese Art of Not Knowing
This book examines the popular, yet puzzling, Chinese saying Nande hutu 难得糊涂 to uncover how the ancient Chinese wisdom of not knowing is constructed, interpreted, practiced and valued in contemporary society. Originating in the calligraphy of Qing-dynasty scholar Zheng Banqiao, Nande hutu translates literally as: “hard to attain muddle-headedness”. Mieke Matthyssen traces the historical development of this saying and related philosophies to reveal a culturally conditioned, multi-layered inclination to different forms of not knowing. In contemporary society, she argues, this inclination forms part of a living art: in some respects, a passive, evasive strategy for self-preservation...
Lawful Sins
Mexico is at the center of the global battle over abortion. In 2007, a watershed reform legalized the procedure in the national capital, making it one of just three places across Latin America where it was permitted at the time. Abortion care is now available on demand and free of cost through a pioneering program of the Mexico City Ministry of Health, which has served hundreds of thousands of women. At the same time, abortion laws have grown harsher in several states outside the capital as part of a coordinated national backlash. In this book, Elyse Ona Singer argues that while pregnant women in Mexico today have options that were unavailable just over a decade ago, they are also subject to...
