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Modern Folk Devils builds on Stanley Cohen's theory on folk devils to discuss the contemporary constructions of evil. It illustrates how the notion of devilry animates the ideas of otherness and evil throughout the world.
The devilish has long been integral to myths, legends, and folklore, firmly located in the relationships between good and evil, and selves and others. But how are ideas of evil constructed in current times and framed by contemporary social discourses? Modern Folk Devils builds on and works with Stanley Cohen’s theory on folk devils and moral panics to discuss the constructions of evil. The authors present an array of case-studies that illustrate how the notion of folk devils nowadays comes into play and animates ideas of otherness and evil throughout the world. Examining current fears and perceived threats, this volume investigates and analyzes how and why these devils are constructed. The...
Detailing the history of a well-known phenomenon of post-socialism - cross-border petty trade and smuggling - as the history of a practice in daily life from a gendered perspective, this book considers how changes in these practices in a particular border region, between Belarus and Lithuania, have been accompanied, and to some extent provoked, by changes in the border regime. It looks at how the selective openness of the Belarus-Lithuania border worked during different periods over the last twenty years and how it influenced the involvement of different social groups in shuttle trade practices. Foremost, this book considers how political borders implement and/or intensify social boundaries and suggests that the selective openness of political borders, a prerequisite for the existence of female shuttle trade activities, is primarily built upon people’s social characteristics. However, it claims that what can be seen as the grounds for growing inequality at a global level, at a local one may have an important resourceful meaning for various social groups including those usually perceived as disadvantaged, such as widowed female retirees or unemployed single women with children.
Brauchler examines the Indonesian decentralisation process and the revival of tradition and cultural self-determination in the Moluccas. Tuori studies restatements and codifications of customary laws in Africa. Harboe Knudsen considers European Union regulation of the marketing of dairy products in Lithuania. Douglas and Hersi examine the attitudes of Muslims to the smoking of khat. Simarmata studies the contrast between Indonesian state law and local officials' practice regarding natural resources use in East Kalimantan.
This book examines how the peripheral can be incorporated into ethnographic research, and reflects on what it means to be on the periphery—ontologically and epistemologically. Starting from the premise that clarity and fixity as ideals of modernity prevent us from approaching that which cannot be easily captured and framed into scientific boundaries, the book argues for remaining on the boundary between the known and the unknown in order to surpass this ethnographic limit. It shows that peripherality is not only to be seen as a marginal condition, but rather as a form of theory-making and practice that incorporates reflexivity and experimentation.
Based on detailed ethnographic material, "New Lithuania in Old Hands" analyzes the impact that European Union accession has had upon the country's aging smallscale farmers, and describes how the reality of Lithuania's EU membership has been a far cry from the scenarios of wealth and overabundance once promised. The text reveals that, in many instances, membership has resulted in a return to subsistence production, increased insecurity and a reinforcement of kinship obligations. Thus instead of treating the European Union as an elite project and voicing the support of various other segments of the population, this volume shows how broad parts of the rural population have been affected by and engaged in processes of change following Lithuania's accession - changes that threaten to have a large impact upon the future of the country's family structures and its farming demographic.
Over the last two decades, Eastern European countries have experienced extensive changes in geo-political relocations and relations leading to everyday uncertainty. Based on ethnographic cases, this anthology explores how grey zones of governance, borders, relations and invisibilities affect everyday life in contemporary Eastern Europe.
This book is about the flourishing scrap recycling industry, reconstruction, and state-making in Iraqi Kurdistan within the wider conditions of the war economy, ruination, and state disintegration in Iraq. Through a dialectical relationship between the afterlife and continuity of war over distinct but conjoined landscapes, it examines industrial work, labouring, and statelessness on a frontier territory near the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS). By documenting the advance of the global steelmaking industry, the spread and erosion of selective state sovereignty, and the struggle of dispossessed workers, the book sketches the economic geography of a contemporary market expansion over the northeast of Iraq in a relational and dynamic way.
Do you look back at your sex ed classes and wonder WTF?! Are you a parent looking at your kid’s curriculum and asking the same question? Sex Education 101 is less of a how-to of sex education and more of a why. Why does abstinence-only sex ed receive so much federal funding? Why do instructors show gross images of STIs to scare students? And the answers, believe it or not, have a lot to do with folklore. Folklore—informally transmitted traditional culture—has a lot to say about sex. And it is often people’s first point of contact with information and messages about sex. Folklore encompasses urban legends, moral panics, and rumors, which influenced early U.S. policies around sex, and also includes jokes, raunchy folk songs, and beliefs and slang about menstruation or STIs. And thus, folklore shapes sex ed classrooms and school sex ed policies. This book is a series of essays for anyone interested in folklore about sex, the history of sex education, and how we keep repeating history from 100 years ago in our approaches today. Whether you are a scholar of books or a scholar of life (or both), you’ll find something satisfying between the sheets of Sex Education 101.
The post-Soviet years have widely been interpreted as a period of intense moral questioning, debate, and struggle. Despite this claim, few studies have revealed how this moral experience has been lived and articulated by Russians themselves. This book provides an intimate portrait of how five Muscovites have experienced the post-Soviet years as a period of intense refashioning of their moral personhood, and how this process can only be understood at the intersection of their unique personal experiences, a shared Russian/Soviet history, and increasingly influential global discourses and practices. The result is a new approach to understanding everyday moral experience and the processes by which new moral persons are cultivated.