Political, economic and social barriers among Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada are giving way to global forces and the "global dreams" they inspire. This collection of original articles and essays examines popular culture, literature, theatre, belief systems, indigenous practices and questions of identity, exile and alienation. The interconnectedness and distinction of cultural production throughout the Americas, "transplanted" interests, the mediation of African and European influences, and the expression of shifting identities, all reflect the development of a new American neighbourhood.
Fast Cars, Clean Bodies examines the crucial decade from Dien Bien Phu to the mid-1960s when France shifted rapidly from an agrarian, insular, and empire-oriented society to a decolonized, Americanized, and fully industrial one. In this analysis of a startling cultural transformation Kristin Ross finds the contradictions of the period embedded in its various commodities and cultural artifacts—automobiles, washing machines, women's magazines, film, popular fiction, even structuralism—as well as in the practices that shape, determine, and delimit their uses. In each of the book's four chapters, a central object of mythical image is refracted across a range of discursive and material spaces: social and private, textual and cinematic, national and international. The automobile, the new cult of cleanliness in the capital and the colonies, the waning of Sartre and de Beauvoir as the couple of national attention, and the emergence of reshaped, functionalist masculinities (revolutionary, corporate, and structural) become the key elements in this prehistory of postmodernism in France. Modernization ideology, Ross argues, offered the promise of limitless, even timeless, development. By situating the rise of "end of history" ideologies within the context of France's transition into mass culture and consumption, Ross returns the touted timelessness of modernization to history. She shows how the realist fiction and film of the period, as well as the work of social theorists such as Barthes, Lefebvre, and Morin who began at the time to conceptualize "everyday life," laid bare the disruptions and the social costs of events. And she argues that the logic of the racism prevalent in France today, focused on the figure of the immigrant worker, is itself the outcome of the French state's embrace of capitalist modernization ideology in the 1950s and 1960s.
Political, economic and social barriers among Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada are giving way to global forces and the "global dreams" they inspire. This collection of original articles and essays examines popular culture, literature, theatre, belief systems, indigenous practices and questions of identity, exile and alienation. The interconnectedness and distinction of cultural production throughout the Americas, "transplanted" interests, the mediation of African and European influences, and the expression of shifting identities, all reflect the development of a new American neighbourhood.
"With this text, Sabloff not only provides insight into the study of relations between humans and the natural world, she lays a cornerstone for building a new structure for the study of anthropology itself."--BOOK JACKET.
Gary Krug demonstrates how communication technology must be studied as an integral part of culture and lived-experience. Rather than stand in awe of the apparent explosion of new technologies, this book links key moments and developments in communication technology with the social conditions of their time.
Change is a constant in today′s organizations. Leaders, managers, and employees must understand how to implement planned change and handle unexpected change. The Sixth Edition of Organization Change: Theory and Practice provides an eye-opening exploration into the nature of change by presenting the latest evidence-based research to discuss a range of theories, models, and perspectives on organizational change. Bestselling author, W. Warner Burke, skillfully connects theory to practice with modern cases of effective and ineffective organizational change, recent examples of transformational leadership and planned and revolutionary change, and best practices to successfully influence change. The fully-updated sixth edition includes a new chapter on current evidence about organization change, including reviews of prescriptive models of planned change, evidence-based principles of change management, the role of an organization′s history as part of the change process, and leaders′ impact on organizational change.
A book of theory and critical writing on art in Miami, Florida, including Charles Recher, Roxy Paine, Jens Diercks, Frederico Uribe, Normal Leibman, Salvador Dali, Guy Richards Smit, Diego Machado, and many more -- plus the city of Miami itself!
It is common wisdom that language is culturally embedded. Cultural change is often accompanied by a change in idiom, in language or in ideas about language. No period serves as a better example of the formative influence of language on culture than the Renaissance. With the advent of humanism new modes of speaking and writing arose. But not only did classical Latin become the paradigm of clear and elegant writing, it also gave rise to new ideas about language and the teaching of it. Some scholars have argued that the cultural paradigm shift from scholasticism to humanism was causally determined by the rediscovery, study and emulation of the classical language, for learning a new language opens up new possibilities for exploring and describing one's perceptions, thoughts and beliefs. However, the vernacular traditions too rose to prominence and vied with Latin for cultural prestige. This volume, number XXIV in the series Groningen Studies in Cultural Change, offers the papers presented at a workshop on language and cultural change held in Groningen in February 2004. Ten specialists explore the multifarious ways in which language contributed to the shaping of Renaissance culture. They discuss themes such as the relationship between medieval and classical Latin, between Latin and the vernacular, between humanist and scholastic conceptions of language and grammar, translation from Latin into the vernacular, Jewish ideas about different kinds of Hebrew, and shifting ideas on the power and limits of language in the articulation of truth and divine wisdom. There are essays on major thinkers such as Nicholas of Cusa and Leonardo Bruni, but also on less well-known figures and texts. The volume as a whole hopes to contribute to a deeper understanding of the highly complex interplay between language and culture in the transition period between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.
This book defines the broad parameters of social change for Native American nations in the twenty-first century, as well as their prospects for cultural continuity. Many of the themes Champagne tackles are of general interest in the study of social change including governmental, economic, religious, and environmental perspectives.
In this book experts in the environment, theology and science argue that the challenge posed to society by biotechnology lies not only in terms of risk/benefit analysis of individual genetic technologies and interventions, but also has implications for the way we think about human identity and our relationship to the natural world. Such a profound--they would suggest religious--challenge requires a response that is genuinely interdisciplinary in nature, a conversation that draws as much on expertise in theology and philosophy as on the natural sciences and risk assessment techniques. They argue that an adequate response must also be sociologically informed in at least two ways. First it must draw on contemporary sociological insights about contemporary cultural change, the complex role of expert knowledge in modern complex society and the specific social dynamics of contemporary technological risks. Secondly, it must endeavour to pay sensitive attention to the voice of the lay public in the current controversy over the new genetics. This book attempts to realise such an aim, as a contribution not just to academic scholarship, but also to the public debate about biotechnology and its regulation. Thus the collection includes contributions from scholars in a range of intellectual domains (indeed, many of the chapters themselves draw on more than one discipline in new and challenging ways). The book invites the reader to enter into this conversation in a creative way and come to appreciate more fully the many-sided nature of the debate.
