Download or read book Embodying Modernity written by Daniel Silva and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embodying Modernity examines the current boom of fitness culture in Brazil in the context of the white patriarchal notions of race, gender, and sexuality through which fitness practice, commodities, and cultural products traffic. The book traces the imperial meanings and orders of power conveyed through “fit” bodies and their different configurations of muscularity, beauty, strength, and health within mainstream visual media and national and global public spheres. Drawing from a wide range of Brazilian visual media sources including fitness magazines, television programs, film, and social media, Daniel F. Silva theorizes concepts and renderings of modern corporality, its racialized and gendered underpinnings, and its complex relationship to white patriarchal power and capital. This study works to define the ubiquitous parameters of fitness culture and argues that its growth is part of a longer collective nationalist project of modernity tied to whiteness, capitalist ideals, and historical exceptionalism.
Download or read book Embodying Charisma written by Helene Basu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-03-11 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The continued vitality of Sufism as a living embodied postcolonial reality challenges the argument that Sufism has 'died' in recent times. Throughout India and Bangladesh, Sufi shrines exist in both the rural and urban areas, from the remotest wilderness to the modern Asian city, lying opposite banks and skyscrapers. This book illuminates the remarkable resilience of South Asian Sufi saints and their cults in the face of radical economic and political dislocations and breaks new ground in current research. It addresses the most recent debates on the encounter between Islam and modernity and presents important new comparative ethnographic material. Embodying Charisma re-examines some basic concepts in the sociology and anthropology of religion and the organization of religious movements.
Download or read book Jesus in Our Wombs written by Rebecca J. Lester and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Jesus in Our Wombs, Rebecca J. Lester takes us behind the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in central Mexico to explore the lives, training, and experiences of a group of postulants--young women in the first stage of religious training as nuns. Lester, who conducted eighteen months of fieldwork in the convent, provides a rich ethnography of these young women's journeys as they wrestle with doubts, fears, ambitions, and setbacks in their struggle to follow what they believe to be the will of God. Gracefully written, finely textured, and theoretically rigorous, this book considers how these aspiring nuns learn to experience God by cultivating an altered experience of their own female bodies, a transformation they view as a political stance against modernity. Lester explains that the Postulants work toward what they see as an "authentic" femininity--one that has been eclipsed by the values of modern society. The outcome of this process has political as well as personal consequences. The Sisters learn to understand their very intimate experiences of "the Call"--and their choices in answering it--as politically relevant declarations of self. Readers become intimately acquainted with the personalities, family backgrounds, friendships, and aspirations of the Postulants as Lester relates the practices and experiences of their daily lives. Combining compassionate, engaged ethnography with an incisive and provocative theoretical analysis of embodied selves, Jesus in Our Wombs delivers a profound analysis of what Lester calls the convent's "technology of embodiment" on multiple levels--from the phenomenological to the political.
Download or read book Embodying Modernity written by Heejeong Cho and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Embodying Modernity and Postmodernity written by Sandra C. Bamford and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of original essays critically examines the relationship between ritual, embodiment, and social change in the South Pacific. Over the past few decades, the societies of Melanesia have undergone profound and revolutionary social change. Encounters with colonialism, postcolonialism, and the forces of globalization have put indigenous peoples in touch with processes of state formation, late capitalist culture, and the emergence of a complex network of transnational identities. In addition to shaping the contours of the nation state, these developments are having a profound impact on the nature of embodied experience. In recent years, many Melanesian societies have witnessed the rise of charismatic Christianity, changing gender configurations, and the growing use of consumerism as a means of defining new social and political hierarchies. Embodying Modernity and Post-Modernity provides detailed analyses of those social changes that are becoming part of contemporary Melanesia. Written by experts with first-hand fieldwork experience, this volume furnishes novel insights concerning the social implications of modernity and postmodernity. More specifically, it addresses two interrelated themes: how the rise of new social and economic forms has influenced the ways in which Melanesians think about, experience and act upon their bodies, and the ways in which these new forms of bodily experience contribute to the emergence of new social and cultural identities. This book is part of the Ritual Studies Monograph Series, edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. "While this volume will be of particular interest for regional specialists and theorists of the body, it also makes important contributions to historical analysis of colonial and post-colonial interpretations of modernity and ritual studies. The editor also deserves credit for bringing together a cohesive text, one in which the articles usefully speak to and complement one another." -- Anthropological Forum "This book is a must read for scholars of Melanesia and all scholars of the Anthropology of the Body. There is much to be gleaned theoretically from these ethnographically rich essays." -- Oceania
Download or read book Embodied Modernities written by Fran Martin and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2006-07-31 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From feminist philosophy to genetic science, scholarship in recent years has succeeded in challenging many entrenched assumptions about the material and biological status of human bodies. Likewise in the study of Chinese cultures, accelerating globalization and the resultant hybridity have called into question previous assumptions about the boundaries of Chinese national and ethnic identity. The problem of identifying a single or definitive referent for the "Chinese body" is thornier than ever. By facilitating fresh dialogue between fields as diverse as the history of science, literary studies, diaspora studies, cultural anthropology, and contemporary Chinese film and cultural studies, Embodied Modernities addresses contemporary Chinese embodiments as they are represented textually and as part of everyday life practices. The book is divided into two sections, each with a dedicated introduction by the editors. The first examines "Thresholds of Modernity" in chapters on Chinese body cultures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a period of intensive cultural, political, and social modernization that led to a series of radical transformations in how bodies were understood and represented.The second section on "Contemporary Embodiments" explores body representations across the People’s Republic of China,Taiwan, and Hong Kong today. Contributors: Chris Berry, Louise Edwards, Maram Epstein, Larissa Heinrich, Olivia Khoo, Fran Martin, Jami Proctor-Xu, Tze-lan D. Sang, Teri Silvio, Mark Stevenson, Cuncun Wu, Angela Zito, John Zou.
Download or read book Modernity At Large written by Arjun Appadurai and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Embodied Nation written by Simon Creak and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This strikingly original book examines how sport and ideas of physicality have shaped the politics and culture of modern Laos. Viewing the country's extraordinary transitions—from French colonialism to royalist nationalism to revolutionary socialism to the modern development state—through the lens of physical culture, Simon Creak's lively and incisive narrative illuminates a nation that has no reputation in sport and is typically viewed, even from within, as a country of cheerful but lazy people. Creak argues that sport and related physical practices—including physical education, gymnastics, and military training—have shaped a national consciousness by locating it in everyday experience. These practices are popular, participatory, performative, and, above all, physical in character and embody ideas and ideologies in a symbolic and experiential way. Embodied Nation takes readers on a brisk ride through more than a century of Lao history, from a nineteenth-century game of tikhi—an indigenous game resembling field hockey—to the country's unprecedented outpouring of nationalist sentiment when hosting the 2009 Southeast Asian Games. En route, we witness a Lao-Vietnamese soccer brawl in 1936, the fascist-inspired body ethic of the early 1940s, the novel modes of military masculinity that blossomed with national independence, the spectacular state theatrics of power represented by Olympic-inspired sports festivals, and the high hopes and frequent failures of socialist sport in the 1970s and 1980s. Of central concern in Creak's narrative are the twin motifs of gender and civilization. Despite increasing female participation since the early twentieth century, he demonstrates the major role that sport and physical culture have played in forming hegemonic masculinities in Laos. Even with limited national sporting success—Laos has never won an Olympic medal—the healthy, toned, and muscular form has come to symbolize material development and prosperity. Embodied Nation outlines the complex ways in which these motifs, through sport and physical culture, articulate with state power. Combining cultural and intellectual history with historical thick description, Creak draws on a creative array of Lao and French sources from previously unexplored archives, newspapers, and magazines, and from ethnographic writing, war photography, and cartoons. More than an "imagined community" or "geobody," he shows that Laos was also a "body at work," making substantive theoretical contributions not only to Southeast Asian studies and history, but to the study of the physical culture, nationalism, masculinity, and modernity in all modern societies.
Download or read book Deafening Modernism written by Rebecca Sanchez and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015-10-02 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deafening Modernism tells the story of modernism from the perspective of Deaf critical insight. Working to develop a critical Deaf theory independent of identity-based discourse, Rebecca Sanchez excavates the intersections between Deaf and modernist studies. She traces the ways that Deaf culture, history, linguistics, and literature provide a vital and largely untapped resource for understanding the history of American language politics and the impact that history has had on modernist aesthetic production. Discussing Deaf and disability studies in these unexpected contexts highlights the contributions the field can make to broader discussions of the intersections between images, bodies, and text. Drawing on a range of methodological approaches, including literary analysis and history, linguistics, ethics, and queer, cultural, and film studies, Sanchez sheds new light on texts by T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Charlie Chaplin, and many others. By approaching modernism through the perspective of Deaf and disability studies, Deafening Modernism reconceptualizes deafness as a critical modality enabling us to freshly engage topics we thought we knew.
Download or read book Architecture and Modernity written by Hilde Heynen and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000-02-28 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bridges the gap between the history and theory of twentieth-century architecture and cultural theories of modernity. In this exploration of the relationship between modernity, dwelling, and architecture, Hilde Heynen attempts to bridge the gap between the discourse of the modern movement and cultural theories of modernity. On one hand, she discusses architecture from the perspective of critical theory, and on the other, she modifies positions within critical theory by linking them with architecture. She assesses architecture as a cultural field that structures daily life and that embodies major contradictions inherent in modernity, arguing that architecture nonetheless has a certain capacity to adopt a critical stance vis-à-vis modernity. Besides presenting a theoretical discussion of the relation between architecture, modernity, and dwelling, the book provides architectural students with an introduction to the discourse of critical theory. The subchapters on Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, and the Venice School (Tafuri, Dal Co, Cacciari) can be studied independently for this purpose.
Download or read book The Dark Side of Modernity written by Jeffrey C. Alexander and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, one of the world’s leading social theorists presents a critical, alarmed, but also nuanced understanding of the post-traditional world we inhabit today. Jeffrey Alexander writes about modernity as historical time and social condition, but also as ideology and utopia. The idea of modernity embodies the Enlightenment’s noble hopes for progress and rationality, but its reality brings great suffering and exposes the destructive impulses that continue to motivate humankind. Alexander examines how twentieth-century theorists struggled to comprehend the Janus-faced character of modernity, which looks backward and forward at the same time. Weber linked the triumph of worldly asceticism to liberating autonomy but also ruthless domination, describing flights from rationalization as systemic and dangerous. Simmel pointed to the otherness haunting modernity, even as he normalized the stranger. Eisenstadt celebrated Axial Age transcendence, but acknowledged its increasing capacity for barbarity. Parsons heralded American community, but ignored modernity’s fragmentations. Rather than seeking to resolve modernity’s contradictions, Alexander argues that social theory should accept its Janus-faced character. It is a dangerous delusion to think that modernity can eliminate evil. Civil inclusion and anti-civil exclusion are intertwined. Alexander enumerates dangerous frictions endemic to modernity, but he also suggests new lines of social amelioration and emotional repair.
Download or read book Modernity and Postmodernity written by Gerard Delanty and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2000-04-19 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This accessible and comprehensive overview of the main issues on the modernity-postmodernity controversy is the first clear-sighted book on the subject. It surveys modern social theory, from Kant to Weber with economy and masterly precision. And evaluates the work of the Frankfurt School, Arendy, Strauss, Luhmann, Habermas, Heller, Castoriadis and Touraine, before moving on to consider the approaches of the leading writers on postmodenrity: Lyotard, Vattimo, Derrida, Foucault and Jameson. The result is a new way of conceptualizing the modernity-postmodernity debate, and an exciting new approach to the roots of contemporary social theory.
Download or read book Idols of Modernity written by Patrice Petro and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on stardom during the 1920s, this title reveals strong connections & dissonances in matters of storytelling & performance that can be traced both backwards & forwards, from the silent era to the emergence of sound.
Download or read book Disability postmodernity written by Mairian Corker and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 2002 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text looks at the study of disablity within the context of the "postmodern" world of the 21st century. The authors aim to demystify the concept of postmodernity and to suggest ways in which it fosters a holistic approach to the study of disability.
Download or read book Embodying Gender written by Alexandra Howson and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2005-04-13 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embodying Gender provides students and academics with a critical overview of body concepts in both sociology and in feminism. Previously, sociologists have attempted to gender the body and feminists have attempted to embody gender but Alexandra Howson′s accessible new text draws these two literatures together, pointing to ways of integrating feminist perspectives on the body into sociological theory. Surveying all the key concepts in the field, this book introduces us to an extensive range of ′narratives of embodiment′ and presents a full analysis of the most important texts in new feminist theories of the body. Key questions covered include: o What can sociology say about the body? o What impact has the body made on sociology? o What conceptual frameworks are used to address the body? How do these relate to issues of gender and embodied experience? o How do feminist conceptual tools sit within sociological analysis? Written in a clear, accessible style, Embodying Gender is an invaluable text for undergraduate students, postgraduates and academics in the fields of women′s and gender studies and sociology, and is particularly relevant to those specialising in sociology of the body, feminist theory and social theory.
Download or read book Emotions and Modernity in Colonial India written by Margrit Pernau and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-22 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With this pioneering project, Margrit Pernau brings the ‘history of emotions’ approach to South Asian studies. A theoretically sophisticated and erudite investigation, Emotions and Modernity in Colonial India maps the history of emotions in India between the uprising of 1857 and World War I. Situating the prevalent experiences, interpretations, and practices of emotions of the time within the context of the major political events of colonial India, Pernau goes beyond the dominant narrative of colonial modernity and its fixation with discipline and restrain, and traces the contemporary transformation from a balance in emotions to the resurgence of fervor. The current volume is based on a large archive of sources in Urdu, many being explored for the first time. Pernau grounds her work on such diverse sources as philosophical and theological treatises on questions of morality, advice literature, journals and newspapers, nostalgic descriptions of courtly culture, and even children’s literature. This close look into individual experiences, practices, and interpretations reveals the myriad emotions of the day, and the importance of these micro-histories in presenting an alternative account of colonial India.
Download or read book Being Modern written by Robert Bud and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2018-10-10 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early decades of the twentieth century, engagement with science was commonly used as an emblem of modernity. This phenomenon is now attracting increasing attention in different historical specialties. Being Modern builds on this recent scholarly interest to explore engagement with science across culture from the end of the nineteenth century to approximately 1940. Addressing the breadth of cultural forms in Britain and the western world from the architecture of Le Corbusier to working class British science fiction, Being Modern paints a rich picture. Seventeen distinguished contributors from a range of fields including the cultural study of science and technology, art and architecture, English culture and literature examine the issues involved. The book will be a valuable resource for students, and a spur to scholars to further examination of culture as an interconnected web of which science is a critical part, and to supersede such tired formulations as 'Science and culture'.
