Boobs. Tits. Hooters. Knockers. Jugs. Breasts. We celebrate them; we revile them. They nourish us; they kill us. And regardless of what we call them, breasts have fascinated us since prehistoric times. This A-to-Z encyclopedia explores the historical magnitude and cultural significance of the breast over time and around the world. A team of international scholars from various disciplines provides key insights and information about the breast in art, history, fashion, social movements, medicine, sexuality, and more. Entries discuss depictions of breasts on ancient figurines, in Renaissance paintings, and in present-day advertisements. They examine how fashion has emphasized or de-emphasized the breast at various times. They tackle medical issues—such as breast augmentation and breast cancer—and controversies over breastfeeding. The breast as sexual object and even a site of smuggling are also covered. As a whole, the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Breast takes an engaging and accessible look at this notable body part.
Peter. Pecker. Wiener. Dick. Schlong. Penis. Whatever we choose to call it, the penis is more than just a body part. This A-to-Z encyclopedia explores the cultural meanings, interpretations, and activities associated with the penis over the centuries and across cultures. Scholars, activists, researchers and clinicians delve into the penis in antiquity, in art, in religion, in politics, in media, in music, and in the cultural imagination. They examine the penis as a problem, a fetishized commodity, a weapon, an object of play. Penile décor and fashions—from piercings to koteka—are treated with equal dignity. Explanation of common medical terms and not-so-common subcultural practices add to the broad scope of the book. Taken together, the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis offers refreshing, thoughtful, and wide-ranging insight into this malleable, meaningful body part.
Pop culture and the media today are saturated with the focus on the aesthetics of the human body. Magazines and infotainment shows speculate whether this or that actress had breast implants or a nose job. Americans are not just focusing on celebrities but on themselves too and today have unprecedented opportunities to rework what nature gave them. One can now drop in to have cosmetic surgery at the local mall. Contemplating the superficial nature of it all grows tiresome, and pop culture vultures and students can get a better fix for their fascination with the body beautiful through the cultural insight provided in this amazing set. Cultural Encyclopedia of the Body is a treasure trove of essays that explore the human body alphabetically by part, detailing practices and beliefs from the past and present and from around the world that are sometimes mind-blowing and eye-popping. Body parts are examined through a multifaceted cultural lens. Readers will explore how the parts are understood, what they mean to disparate societies, how they are managed, treated, and transformed, and how they are depicted and represented. The entries draw from many disciplines that are concerned to some degree or another with human bodies, including anthropology archeology, sociology, religion, political history, philosophy, art history, literary studies, and medicine. The encyclopedia proffers information on a number of cultures, tribes, and customs from East and West. Ancient practices to the latest fad, which in fact might continue ancient practices, are illuminated. Other considerations that arise in the essays include comparisons among cultures, the changing perceptions of the body, and issues of race, gender, religion, community and belonging, ethnicity, power structures, human rights.
Taking the concept of beauty seriously, this encyclopedia examines how humanity has sought and continues to seek what is "beautiful" in a variety of cultural contexts, giving readers an understanding of how to look at beauty both intellectually and critically. Is beauty ever more than "skin deep"? Arguably yes, considering that the concept of beauty—and the pursuit of it—has shaped cultures worldwide, across every time period, and has even served to change the course of history. Studying beauty practices yields insight into social status, wealth, political ideology, religious doctrine, and gender expectations, including gender nonconformity. A truly interdisciplinary text, Beauty around the World: A Cultural Encyclopedia presents an insightful perspective on beauty that draws from philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and feminist studies, giving readers a unique view of world beauty practices. This volume offers information about beauty practices from the past to the present in alphabetical entries that address terms and topics such as "beards," "dreadlocks," "Geisha," "moko tattoos," and "progressive muscularity." Readers will better comprehend how beauty shapes many social interactions in profound ways worldwide, and that the unspoken social agreements that shape ideals of attractiveness and desirability within any given culture can matter very much. The encyclopedia's entries challenge readers to consider the questions "What is beauty?" and "Why does it matter?" A comprehensive bibliography is a valuable resource for further research.
People everywhere have attempted to change their bodies in an effort to meet their cultural standards of beauty, as well as their religious and/or social obligations. Often times, this modification or adornment of their bodies is part of the complex process of creating and re-creating personal and social identities. Body painting has probably been practiced since the Paleolithic as archaeological evidence indicates, and the earliest human evidence of tattooing goes back to the Neolithic with mummies found in Europe, Central Asia, the Andes and the Middle East. Adornments such as jewelry have been found in the earliest human graves and bodies unearthed from five thousand years ago show signs of intentional head shaping. It is clear that adorning and modifying the body is a central human practice. Over 200 entries address the major adornments and modifications, their historical and cross-cultural locations, and the major cultural groups and places in which body modification has been central to social and cultural practices. This encyclopedia also includes background information on the some of the central figures involved in creating and popularizing tattooing, piercing, and other body modifications in the modern world. Finally, the book addresses some of the major theoretical issues surrounding the temporary and permanent modification of the body, the laws and customs regarding the marking of the body, and the social movements that have influenced or embraced body modification, and those which have been affected by it. All cultures everywhere have attempted to change their body in an attempt to meet their cultural standards of beauty, as well as their religious and or social obligations. In addition, people modify and adorn their bodies as part of the complex process of creating and re-creating their personal and social identities. Body painting has probably been practiced since the Paleolithic as archaeological evidence indicates, and the earliest human evidence of tattooing goes back to the Neolithic with mummies found in Europe, Central Asia, the Andes and the Middle East. Adornments such as jewelry have been found in the earliest human graves and bodies unearthed from five thousand years ago show signs of intentional head shaping. It is clear that adorning and modifying the body is a central human practice. Over 200 entries address the major adornments and modifications, their historical and cross-cultural locations, and the major cultural groups and places in which body modification has been central to social and cultural practices. This encyclopedia also includes background information on the some of the central figures involved in creating and popularizing tattooing, piercing, and other body modifications in the modern world. Finally, the book addresses some of the major theoretical issues surrounding the temporary and permanent modification of the body, the laws and customs regarding the marking of the body, and the social movements that have influenced or embraced body modification, and those which have been affected by it. Entries include, acupuncture, amputation, Auschwitz, P.T. Barnum, the Bible, body dysmorphic disorder, body piercing, branding, breast augmentation and reduction, Betty Broadbent, castration, Christianity, cross dressers, Dances Sacred and Profane, Egypt, female genital mutilation, foot binding, freak shows, genetic engineering, The Great Omi, Greco-Roman world, henna, infibulation, legislation & regulation, lip plates, medical tattooing, Meso-America, military tattoos, National Tattoo Association, nose piercing, obesity, permanent makeup, primitivism, prison tattooing, punk, rites of passage, scalpelling, silicone injections, Stalking Cat, suspensions, tanning, tattoo reality shows, tattooing, Thailand, transgender, tribalism.
In searching American literary landscapes for what they can reveal about our attitudes toward nature and gender, The Green Breast of the New World considers symbolic landscapes in twentieth-century American fiction, the characters who inhabit those landscapes, and the gendered traditions that can influence the figuration of both of these fictional elements. In this century, says Louise H. Westling, American literary responses to landscape and nature have been characterized by a puzzling mix of eroticism and misogyny, celebration and mourning, and reverence and disregard. Focusing on problems of gender conflict and imperialist nostalgia, The Green Breast of the New World addresses this ambivalence. Westling begins with a "deep history" of literary landscapes, looking back to the archaic Mediterranean/Mesopotamian traditions that frame European and American symbolic figurations of humans in the land. Drawing on sources as ancient as the Sumerian Hymns to Innana and the Epic of Gilgamesh, she reveals a tradition of male heroic identity grounded in an antagonistic attitude toward the feminized earth and nature. This identity recently has been used to mask a violent destruction of wilderness and indigenous peoples in the fictions of progress that have shaped our culture. Examining the midwestern landscapes of Willa Cather's Jim Burden and Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams, and the Mississippi Delta of William Faulkner's Thomas Sutpen and Isaac McCaslin and Eudora Welty's plantation families and small-town dwellers, Westling shows that these characters all participate in a cultural habit of gendering the landscape as female and then excusing their mistreatment of it by retreating into a nostalgia that erases their real motives, displaces responsibility, and takes refuge in attitudes of self-pitying adoration.
Family, Law and Politics, Volume II of the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, brings together over 360 entries on women, family, law, politics, and Islamic cultures around the world.
The first edition of the Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society was published in 2007 and received a 2008 Editors’ Choice Award from Booklist. It served as a general, non-technical resource focusing on cancer from the perspective of the social and behavioral sciences, exploring social and economic impacts, the “business” of cancer, advertising of drugs and treatment centers, how behavior change could offer great potential for cancer prevention, environmental risks, food additives and regulation, the relation between race and ethnicity and cancer risk, socioeconomic status, controversies—both scientific and political—in cancer treatment and research, country-by-country entries on cancer around the world, and more. Given various developments in the field including new drug treatments, political controversies over use of the vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix with young girls to prevent cervical cancer, and unexpected upticks in the prevalence of adult smoking within the U.S. following decades of decline, the SAGE Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society, Second Edition serves as an updated and more current encyclopedia that addresses concerns pertaining to this topic. Key Features: · Approximately half of the 700 first-edition articles revised and updated · 30+ new entries covering new developments since 2006 · Signed entries with cross-references · Further Readings accompanied by pedagogical elements · New Reader’s Guide · Updated Chronology, Resource Guide, Glossary, and through new Index The SAGE Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society, Second Edition serves as a reliable and precise source for students and researchers with an interest in social and behavioral sciences and seeks to better understand the continuously evolving subject matter of cancer and society.
