This book decodes the ambivalence of gift-giving. It examines its socio-ethical and integrative potential. Following a short recollection of contemporary gift-giving, its motives, occasions and its rules, the reader is invited to travel back in time and space examining 'sacrifice', 'food-sharing', and 'gift giving' as those basic institutions upon ......
A primary resource of key statements on photographic meaning, representation and visual culture. The editors combine classic and contemporary essays from a range of scholars including Barthes, Sontag, Baudrillard and Mulvey. The reader is divided into three parts, which present the culture of the image and the making of meaning; the history and ......
In this fascinating volume Kenneth Doyle provides a conceptual framework for understanding: - the social meanings of money and property - the psychological, cultural, economic and political variables which contribute to these meanings The author advances the concept of money as talisman, by which individuals protect themselves from their ......
This collection contains twenty-seven new essays on American paranoia drawn from a range of disciplines, including American studies, film studies, history, literature, religious studies, and sociology. It's arranged by topic and largely in chronological order, explore manifestations of fear throughout the history of the United States. Approaching ......
In this fascinating volume Kenneth Doyle provides a conceptual framework for understanding: - the social meanings of money and property - the psychological, cultural, economic and political variables which contribute to these meanings The author advances the concept of money as talisman, by which individuals protect themselves from their ......
What is culture? How are we to understand the relation between social structure and culture in a world that is becoming increasingly global and which new technologies are making increasingly virtual? This text critically examines these questions and their implications for sociology and social theory. The contributors provide a critical ......
Based on more than ten years of field work, this is the only modern interpretive site report on the Sinagua culture. Lizard Man Village is one of many small settlements in the Flagstaff vicinity occupied by the Sinagua between AD 1050 and 1300. Generally considered affiliated with the Mogollon, the major archaeological culture group in central ......
The author of this work contends that an important responsibility of social enquiry is to engage critically with the moral difficulties and ethical dilemmas which have arisen with modernity. The book provides a wide-ranging and critical discussion of the respects in which issues of reflexivity, ethics and moral responsibility inform social and ......
In this major work, Zygmunt Bauman seeks to classify the meanings of culture. He distinguishes between culture as a concept, culture as a structure and culture as praxis and analyzes the different ways in which culture has been used in each of these settings. For Bauman, culture is a living, changing aspect of human interaction which must be ......
