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Retirement brings with it the promises of leisure and freedom as well as the risks of boredom and isolation. When retirees rid their schedules of anything resembling the kinds of obligations that once had been imposed by work, they will experience a sometimes-uncomfortable absence of structure. In The Experience of Retirement, the distinguished sociologist Robert S. Weiss provides a detailed description of how some people plan their retirement, what life in retirement is like, and what makes for a fulfilling retirement. His engaging book can thus serve as a most useful guide. Weiss shows us both retirement's benefits and its possible costs, both the relief retirees can feel once free of work...
Behind the White Picket Fence: Power and Privilege in a Multiethnic Neighborhood
In Fixing Families, Jennifer Reich takes us inside Child Protective Services for an in-depth look at the entire organization. Following families from the beginning of a case to its discharge, Reich shows how parents negotiate with the state for custody of their children, and how being held accountable to the state affects a family.
Charismatic Christianity is the most recent and fastest growing expression of Pentecostal religion in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Ghana's capital, Accra, the charismatic churches dominate the religious scene. This book focuses on the gender discourses of Ghana's new churches, and considers charismatic perspectives on womanhood, manhood, marriage and family life. Offering a fresh perspective on the organisational structures of the charismatic churches, this study looks at the leadership roles of female pastors and pastors' wives, and draws attention to the links between female leaders and spiritual power. By highlighting the importance of spiritual power in interpreting gendered social change, the book sheds new light on the socio-cultural role of Ghana's new churches.
Providing an ethnographic account of the everyday life of a household of artisans in the Telangana state of southern India, Chandan Bose engages with craft practice beyond the material (in this case, the region's characteristic murals, narrative cloth scrolls, and ritual masks and figurines). In situating the voice of the artisans themselves as the central focus of study, simultaneous and juxtaposing histories of craft practice emerge, through which artisans assemble narratives about work, home, and identity through multiple lenses. These perspectives include: the language artisans use to articulate their experience of materials, materiality, and the physical process of making; the shared and collective memory of practitioners through which they recount the genealogy of the practice; the everyday life of the household and its kinship practices, given the integration of the studio-space and the home-space; the negotiations between practitioners and the nation-state over matters of patronage; and the capacities of artisans to both conform to and affect the practices of the neo-liberal market.
Following World War II, Japan's postwar constitution forbade the country to wage war or create an army. However, with the emergence of the cold war in the 1950s, Japan was urged to establish the Self-Defense Forces as a way to bolster Western defenses against the tide of Asian communism. Although the SDF's role is supposedly limited to self-defense, Japan's armed forces are equipped with advanced weapons technology and the world's third-largest military budget. Sabine Frühstück draws on interviews, historical research, and analysis to describe the unusual case of a non-war-making military. As the first scholar permitted to participate in basic SDF training, she offers a firsthand look at an army trained for combat that nevertheless serves nontraditional military needs.
While "economic forces" are often cited as being a key cause of language loss, there is very little research that explores this link in detail. This work, based on policy analysis and ethnographic data, addresses this deficit. It examines how neoliberalism, the dominant economic orthodoxy of recent decades, has impacted the vitality of Irish in the Republic of Ireland since 2008. Drawing on concepts well established in public policy studies, but not prominent in the subfield of language policy, the neoliberalisation of Irish-language support measures is charted, including the disproportionately severe budget cuts they received. It is argued that neoliberalism’s antipathy towards social pla...
The exciting diasporic sounds of the London Asian urban music scene are a cross-section of the various genres of urban music that include bhangra "remix," R&B and hip hop styles, as well as dubstep and other "urban" sample-oriented electronic music. This book brings together a unique analysis of urban underground music cultures in exploring just how members of this "scene" take up space in "super-diverse" London. It provides a fresh perspective on the creativity of British South Asian youth culture, and makes a significant sociological intervention into this area by bringing the focus back onto urgent issues of "race" ethnicity alongside class and gender within youth cultural studies.
This book explores the prevailing role of rites of passage, ritual, and ceremony in contemporary children’s lives through the lens of modern-day incarnations of uniformed youth movements. It focuses on the socialising ritual and customary practices of present-day grass-roots Scout and Guide groups, asking how Britain’s largest and best-known uniformed youth organisations employ ritualised activities to express their values to their young members through language and gesture, story and song, dress, and physical artifacts. The author shows that these practices exist against a backdrop of culturally-constructed beliefs about what constitutes the ‘good child’ and ‘good childhood’ in twenty-first century Britain, with in-movement practices intended to help children develop positively and prepare for social life. The book draws on case study accounts of group performances, incorporating the voices of children and adults reflecting on their practices and experiences.
Discusses the role of gender in social research in the field, focusing on the researcher's experience of his or her own gender and that of the respondent.