Wild rumors of a Devil Baby--a child who has miniature horns and a forked tail and appears in retribution for a husband's cruelty--at Hull-House brought a flood of curiosity-seekers to Jane Addams's door. To her surprise, many of the most adamant about seeing the Devil Baby were older, working-class, immigrant women. These women, usually rather ......
Ritual Medical Lore of Sephardic Women preserves the precious remnants of a rich culture on the verge of extinction while affirming women's pivotal role in the health of their communities. Centered around extensive interviews with elders of the Sephardic communities of the former Ottoman Empire, this volume illuminates a fascinating complex of ......
In the mid-1970s, David M. Schneider rocked the anthropological world with his announcement that kinship did not exist in any culture known to humankind. This volume provides a critical assessment of Schneider's ideas, focusing particularly on his contributions to kinship studies and the implications of his work for cultural relativism. ......
In this remarkable photodocumentary, Penny Coleman captures the faces and memories of the senior statesmen and women of the gay and lesbian community: a community that calls Greenwich Village - haven to the unorthodox and site of the famous Stonewall riots - its actual or symbolic home. In vivid detail, ''Village Elders'' describes what it was ......
Friends and cultural historians of many Indian families among the Sioux, Crow, and Shoshone-Bannock, Reginald and Gladys Laubin devoted their lives to preserving a vanishing culture by presenting authentic Indian dances, costumes, and songs. Through their performances, the Laubins helped white Americans to appreciate these expressions of Native ......
The civic sociology of Herbert Blumer speaks to the fundamental problem of modernity: how freedom and equity can be ensured when institutional and personal relations are threatened by disparate groups and factions--in short, by difference. Balancing essays on Herbert Blumer with Blumer's own writings on race relations, labor and management ......
Class, Power, and Religion in a Rural Community (rev. ed.)
First published in 1958, Small Town in Mass Society set community studies on a new course by placing the small town within the framework of large-scale, bureaucratic mass society. Drawing attention to the dynamics of class and ethnicity in relation to economics and politics, this landmark work was among the first to document the consequences of ......
Although the white separatist movement stereotype is that of a Southern phenomenon tied to an uneducated and disenfranchised segment of men, sociologists Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile show that the movement is in reality more complex and multifaceted. To compile this study, the authors interviewed more than 125 white separatists, ......
In the period of decolonization that followed World War II, a number of scholars, mainly Middle Eastern, launched a sustained assault on Orientalismthe theory and practice of representing the "East" in Western thoughtaccusing its practitioners of misrepresentation, prejudice and bias. An intense debate ensued, involving not only Orientalists but ......
