Culture and Political Economy in Western Sicily presents the relationship between the early colonial period, a time when Sicily exported wheat and animal products, and a later neocolonial period, during which manpower is the principal energy loss. The book discusses the rise and development of the Mafia; cultural codes that are important to contemporary social Sicilian organization; and the origins of these codes in early adaptations of the Sicilian people to externally generated political and economic forces. The text will be of value to sociologists, economists, historians, and people who want a deeper understanding of the Mafia.
Why cultures are different can be examined through the multifaceted lens of their currencies, their economic policies, and the very foundations of how money works. Anyone who has traveled abroad immediately senses the cultural differences, even before learning about the language, politics, or history of the people. The tourist is promptly faced with strangely priced goods and services, an unknown currency of dubious value, and an alien system of payment, trade, and exchange. An investigation into the origins and evolution of money explains much about the behavior of people and their culture. The collection of coins and money often begins with an inquiry into the history of a currency and other payment media used to resolve debts and exchange goods. Coin collecting can lead to a compelling interest in the study of cultural differences as numismatists have come to appreciate the semantic connection between numisma (coinage) and nomos (customs) with nonos (laws). Those interested in economics and business would find, through the study of numismatics, a wealth of information—the equivalent of a life-long education—not only in the study of coins and currencies, but also about people and their history. Culture is defined by the values, norms, and beliefs shared among its members and supported by its cultural institutions. A symbiotic relationship exists between a currency and its culture and society. The extent to which cultural institutions encourage and reinforce their economic foundations indicates the degree of a culture’s success or failure. This book offers insights into how cultural institutions can strengthen their citizens’ values and beliefs with that of their currency, and enhance the process of trade and exchange for the betterment and prosperity of its people. The Latin phrase “cui bono?” translates into “to whose profit or advantage?” Currencies and Cultures reexamines and challenges our current understanding of economic history—and provides insights into human behavior by following the money.
In the latest edition of their popular overview text, Erickson and Murphy continue to provide a comprehensive, affordable, and accessible introduction to anthropological theory from antiquity to the present. A new section on twenty-first-century anthropological theory has been added, with more coverage given to postcolonialism, non-Western anthropology, and public anthropology. The book has also been redesigned to be more visually and pedagogically engaging. Used on its own, or paired with the companion volume Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory, Fourth Edition, this reader offers a flexible and highly useful resource for the undergraduate anthropology classroom. For additional resources, visit the "Teaching Theory" page at www.utpteachingculture.com.
Among communist states, Romania is, in several respects, a unique case. Romania has been the only Warsaw Pact member to deviate consistently from Soviet foreign policy norms and, alone within Eastern Europe, to avoid oil imports from the USSR. The leadership of Nicolae Ceausescu since 1965 has, meanwhile, governed through a studious commitment to socio-economic centralization and control often reminiscent of' Stalinist orthodoxy. Intellectual freedom, artistic liberty and workers' rights have changed little relative to Poland, Hungary or the transient Prague Spring. Such international and domestic policy distinctions, as well as a record of impressive industrial growth, necessitate an effort to understand the dynamics of Romania's socio-economic and political life. This volume is meant to delineate trends in political, social and economic life which will constitute dynamic elements for the Romanian system during the 1980s and beyond. Contributors, all scholars with lengthy research experience in Romania, the Balkans and communist states generally, have sought to identify factors likely to be influential during this and ensuing decades. In that sense, this is a "predictive" volume containing not "crystal-ball gazing" but the careful identification and assessment of trends influencing Romanian foreign and domestic policies, economic and political performance, and societal transformations. By suggesting elements crucial to socio-economic and political change in Romania, we hope to make observing this intriguing communist state somewhat less haphazard and more systematic.
This collection addresses the world-wide pattern of falling birth rates. Fertility has commonly been treated from a specialized demographic perspective, but there is today widespread dissatisfaction with conventional demographic approaches, which are criticized for neglecting the cultural, social, and political forces that affect reproductive behavior. For their part, anthropologists have only recently begun to apply their characteristic approaches to the study of reproduction. Drawing on new ethnographic and historical research and on a variety of theoretical approaches, the contributors to this book indicate some of the ways in which demography might take into account historical processes, political forces, and cultural conceptions.
The Fabric of Cultures examines the impact of fashion as a manufacturing industry and as a culture industry that shapes identities of nations and cities in a cross-cultural perspective and within a global framework.
Between 1815 and 1861, American slaveholders and southern Italian landowners presided over the economic and social life of two predominantly agricultural regions, the U.S. South and Italy's Mezzogiorno. Enrico Dal Lago ingeniously compares these agrarian elites, demonstrating how the study of each enhances our understanding of the other as well as of their shared nineteenth-century world. Agrarian Elites charts the parallel developments of plantations and latifondi in relation to changes in the world economy. At the same time, it examines the spread of "paternalistic" models of family relations and of slave and free-labor management that accompanied the rise of large groups of American slaveholders and southern Italian landed proprietors in the early-to-mid-1800s. According to Dal Lago, the most articulate and enlightened members of both elites combined the pursuit of profit with the implementation of "modern" contractual practices in dealing with their workforces. Both elites also used their economic and social power for political advantage, opposing the intervention of their national governments in local affairs. The search for ever-better protection of their respective interests in slaveholding and landed property led ultimately to their support for the creation of two nations, the Confederate States of America and the Kingdom of Italy, both in 1861.Dal Lago brings together two subjects that have generated considerable debate and research: systems of slave and nominally free labor and the elites who employed them, and nineteenth-century nationalism. With its pathbreaking approach and singular and comparative insights, Agrarian Elites will inform not only American and Italian studies but also the very practice of comparative history.
This Handbook engages the reader in the major debates, approaches, methodologies, and explanatory frames within political anthropology. Examining the shifting borders of a moving field of enquiry, it illustrates disciplinary paradigm shifts, the role of humans in political structures, ethnographies of the political, and global processes. Reflecting the variety of directions that surround political anthropology today, this volume will be essential reading to understanding the interactions of humans within political frames in a globalising world.
Through research, historical narratives, and storytelling, historian and author Joseph Amato demonstrates how Americans with mixed ancestry and common origins might produce truly extraordinary family histories.
The ‘Southern Question' has been a major topic in Italian political, economic and cultural life for a century and more. During the Cold War, it was the justification for heavy government intervention. In contemporary Italy, a major part of the appeal of the Lombard League has been its promise to dissociate the South from the North, even to the point of secession. The South also remains a resonant theme in Italian literature. This interdisciplinary book endeavours to answer the following: - When did people begin to think of the South as a problem? - Who - intellectuals, statisticians, criminologists, political exiles, novelists (among them some important southerners) - contributed to the discourse about the South and why? - Did their view of the South correspond to any sort of reality? - What was glossed over or ignored in the generalized vision of the South as problematic? - What consequences has the ‘Question' had in controlling the imaginations and actions of intellectuals and those with political and other forms of power? - What alternative formulations might people create and live by if they were able to escape from the control of the ‘Question' and to imagine the political, economic and cultural differences within Italy in some other way? This timely book reveals how Southern Italians have been affected by distorted versions of a complex reality similar to the discourse of ‘Orientalism'. In situating the devaluation of Southern Italian culture in relation to the recent emergence of ‘anti-mafia' ideology in the South and the threat posed to national unity by the Lombard League, it also illuminates the world's stiff inter-regional competition for investment capital.
