You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
In 1981, the European and World Values surveys started the empirical investigation of cultural values on a global scale. This volume builds upon the findings of these surveys and analyzes value change in a number of key countries around the globe. The authors track value change and stability in their respective countries during the last decade (the last two decades where data are available) of the 20th century. All authors have been actively involved in value surveys and have a great deal of expertise in countries that they write on. Thus, the volume is a valuable complement to studies that deal with the topic from a global perspective without providing any detail about individual societies. The countries covered are: Argentina, Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United States.
Presenting original, detailed studies of keywords of Danish, this book breaks new ground for the study of language and cultural values. Based on evidence from the semantic categories of everyday language, such as the Danish concept of hygge (roughly meaning, ‘pleasant togetherness’), the book provides an integrative socio-cognitive framework for studying and understanding language-particular universes. It is argued that the worlds we live in are not linguistically and conceptually neutral, but rather that speakers who live by Danish concepts are likely to pay attention to their world in ways suggested by central Danish keywords and lexical grids. By means of a sophisticated semantic methodology, the author accounts for the meanings of even highly culture-specific and untranslatable linguistic concepts. The book offers new tools for comparative research into the diversity of semantic and cultural systems in contemporary Europe. Additionally, it contributes to the emerging discipline of cultural semantics, and to the ongoing debates of linguistic diversity, metalanguage, and the use of linguistic evidence in studies of culture and social cognition.
This material on Scandinavian converts tells the unique story of how Europeans embrace a new religion and their tendency to adjust and modify the social message of their new religion to the social values handled by the society they live in.
In the past decade Muslims in Europe have been the subject of heated debates on the place and role of religion in the public space. Research into the issues involved has often used visible and formalised expressions of Muslim religiosity as its empirical point of departure. This book instead examines the microlevel workings of Muslim minority religiosity to offer a new perspective on these debates. Contributors to this volume examine the forms of Muslim religiosity which are not dependent on the official or semi-official settings of organised religion. These ethnographic studies investigate a range of examples of non-organised Islam, ranging from salafi-jihadism, to converts to Islam, to everyday spiritualities of Muslim in Europe. By exploring these neglected forms of Muslim religiosity, this book is able to build up a more nuanced picture of the role of Muslims in Europe. It will be of interest to academics, researchers and graduate students of Religion, Ethnic Studies, Migration Studies, Sociology and Political Science. This book was previously published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Little has been published in English about Islam in Denmark although interest grew after the cartoons crisis of 2005-6. Danish research on the subject is extensive, and this volume aims to present some of the most recent to an international audience. While many of the circumstances which apply across western Europe -- the history of immigration and refugees, settlement, the growth of Muslim organizations and international links, challenges of social and cultural encounter, and more recently Islam as a security issue -- also apply in Denmark, there are also differences. A small, compact country with no recent imperial history, Denmark's unified institutional, religious and social culture can ...
This book presents findings based on a unique source of insight into the role of human values--the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey, covering 78 societies containing over 80 per cent of the world's population. The findings reveal large and coherent cross-national differences in what people want out of life. Four waves of surveys, from 1981 to 1999-2001, reveal the impact of changing values on societal phenomena. Evidence from eleven Islamic societies demonstrates that a distinctive Islamic culture exists-but the democratic ideal is endorsed overwhelmingly. Other analyses examine Gender Equality and Democracy; Corruption and Democracy; Social Capital in Vietnam; the Clash of Civilization; political satisfaction in global perspective; Trust in International Governance; and Israeli and South African values.
Globalization is a predominant theme in contemporary educational and political circles. Research on globalization has become a political priority because the world has become a 'single place', as Roland Robertson formulated it, where events in any particular part of the world can, and often do, have political, economical and military consequences for the rest of the world. Discourse on globalization, however, has generally ignored the cultural consequences. Recent waves of violence that seem to be religiously fueled, if not motivated, among immigrants and refugees in Europe and their home regions in the Middle East, have demonstrated that we can only ignore culture, values and religion at ou...
This volume contains contributions from some of the leading names in British politics, covering several aspects of electoral politics.
This book develops a theory of existential security. It demonstrates that the publics of virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving toward more secular orientations during the past half century, but also that the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before. This second edition expands the theory and provides new and updated evidence from a broad perspective and in a wide range of countries. This confirms that religiosity persists most strongly among vulnerable populations, especially in poorer nations and in failed states. Conversely, a systematic erosion of religious practices, values and beliefs has occurred among the more prosperous strata in rich nations.
Tackles the challenge of dismantling the multicultural model without destroying diversity in European society* Have Europeans become hostile to multiculturalism? * When people vote for anti-immigration parties, do they also support their anti-multiculturalism policies? * And are right-wing extremists becoming the storm troopers of the struggle against diversity?In recent years, European political leaders from Angela Merkel to David Cameron have discarded the term 'multiculturalism' and now express scepticism, criticism and even hostility towards multicultural ways of organising their societies. Yet they are unprepared to reverse the diversity existing in their states. These contradictory choices have different political consequences in the countries examined in this book. The future of European liberalism is being played out as multicultural notions of belonging, inclusion, tolerance and the national home are brought into question.