You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Despite having one of the most advanced systems of medicine in the world, American consumers are increasingly turning to alternative medicine. Through a study of two alternative health networks, one "New Age" and the other conservative Christian, A Diagnosis for Our Times examines the health regimes followed by clients of alternative practitioners, the way people find meaning in non-Western and pre-modern health traditions, and the relationship between alternative health and other movements for change. In sharp contrast with other work on this subject, this book characterizes alternative health as a social movement and a "cultural laboratory" where people discover new values and new ways of living that may have larger implications. The authors discover surprising commonalities between the cultural left and the religious right when it comes to healthcare, and they evaluate the potential of alternative health to contribute to a new healthcare paradigm.
Maurice Ravel: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography concerning both the nature of primary sources related to the composer and the scope and significance of the secondary sources which deal with him, his compositions, and his influence as a composer and theorist.
Ideas about health are reinforced by institutions and their corresponding practices, such as donning a patient's gown in a hospital or prostrating before a healing shrine. Even though we are socialized into regarding such ideologies as "natural" and unproblematic, we sometimes seek to bypass, circumvent, or even transcend the dominant ideologies of our cultures as they are manifested in the institutions of health care. The contributors to this volume describe such contestations and circumventions of health ideologies, and the blurring of therapeutic boundaries, on the basis of case studies from India, the South Asian Diaspora, and Europe, focusing on relations between body, mind, and spirit in a variety of situations. The result is not always the "live and let live" medical pluralism that is described in the literature.
Roberson goes beyond the media presentation of the impact of Islam in the Middle East to consider the reality that lies behind it.
Providing insights into midwifery, a team of reputable contributors describe the development of nurse- and direct-entry midwifery in the United States, including the creation of two new direct-entry certifications, the Certified Midwife and the Certified Professional Midwife, and examine the history, purposes, complexities, and the political strife that has characterized the evolution of midwifery in America. Including detailed case studies, the book looks at the efforts of direct-entry midwives to achieve legalization and licensure in seven states: New York, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, and Massachusetts with varying degrees of success.
Vegetarianism seems to be increasing in popularity and acceptance in the United States and Canada, yet, quite surprisingly, the percentage of the population practicing vegetarian diets has not changed dramatically over the past 30 years. People typically view vegetarianism as a personal habit or food choice, even though organizations in North America have been promoting vegetarianism as a movement since the 1850s. This book examines the organizational aspects of vegetarianism and tries to explain why the predominant movement strategies have not successfully attracted more people to adopt a vegetarian identity.Vegetarianism: Movement or Moment? is the first book to consider the movement on a ...
The Management of Islamic Activism examines the relationship between the changing nature of state power and patterns of Islamic activism in Jordan. Using extensive fieldwork, the author demonstrates how regimes continue to constrain the organization of Islamic opposition even after the advent of political liberalization. In the case of the Jordanian regime, control has been maintained through the "management of collective action"—the regulation of opposition through a complex array of bureaucratic and legal mechanisms. More specifically, laws governing civil society organizations are manipulated to encourage the formation of moderate Islamic groups while disempowering more radical activists. As a result, the radical activists have formed informal social networks that operate outside the state's control. Composed of like-minded Islamists, these networks evade attempts to manage Islamic activism through a loose web of personal relationships, small group interactions, and informal meetings. A comparison of the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan demonstrates how state management strategies shape these patterns of social movement mobilization.
It is now generally accepted that the structure and function of the human body deeply influence the nature of human thought. As a consequence, our religious experiences are at least partially determined by our sensory organs, emotional programs, sexual sensibilities, and the neural framework of our brains. In Spirituality in the Flesh, Robert C. Fuller investigates how studying the body can help us to answer the profoundest spiritual questions. Why is it that some religious traditions assign spiritual currency to pain? How do neurochemically driven emotions, such as fear, shape our religious actions? What is the relationship between chemically altered states of consciousness and religious in...
Relying on a decade-long participant observation study, this book focuses on the salience of parent-child relationships for home schooling. Those experiences with traditional schools emerge as a major motive for home schooling. The quality of the relationships that develop between parents and children are the major predictor of a successful home schooling experience. Comparing the socialization between traditional schooling and home schools, Family Ties: Relationships, Socialization and Home Schooling investigates significant controversies in these two separate environments. Professor Gary Wyatt is able to represent a parent with both experiences and contends to dispel the typical home schooling critiques. The efforts of home schooling parents to negotiate favorable identities with others and the techniques used to manage the anxiety associated with this unconventional lifestyle are explored.
Over multiple successful editions, this distinctive text puts day-to-day life under the microscope of sociological analysis, providing an engaging treatment of situations and interactions that are resonant with readers’ daily experiences. Clearly written and well-researched, it reveals the underlying patterns and order of everyday life, employing both seminal classical works and contemporary analyses that define and embrace the theories and methods of symbolic interactionism. The latest edition provides fresh insights into patterns of behavior across a wide range of settings and circumstances, connecting our individual “selves” to such issues as the effects of power differentials on social situations, changing definitions of intimacy, varied experiences of aging and the life course, and the ongoing search for meaning. Boxed inserts highlight topics of related interest, while thought-provoking discussion questions encourage readers to apply chapter content to their daily experiences.