Download or read book Wired for Culture Origins of the Human Social Mind written by Mark Pagel and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating, far-reaching study of how our species' innate capacity for culture altered the course of our social and evolutionary history. A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why? Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.
Download or read book Brain and Culture written by Bruce E. Wexler and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008-08-29 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research shows that between birth and early adulthood the brain requires sensory stimulation to develop physically. The nature of the stimulation shapes the connections among neurons that create the neuronal networks necessary for thought and behavior. By changing the cultural environment, each generation shapes the brains of the next. By early adulthood, the neuroplasticity of the brain is greatly reduced, and this leads to a fundamental shift in the relationship between the individual and the environment: during the first part of life, the brain and mind shape themselves to the major recurring features of their environment; by early adulthood, the individual attempts to make the environment conform to the established internal structures of the brain and mind. In Brain and Culture, Bruce Wexler explores the social implications of the close and changing neurobiological relationship between the individual and the environment, with particular attention to the difficulties individuals face in adulthood when the environment changes beyond their ability to maintain the fit between existing internal structure and external reality. These difficulties are evident in bereavement, the meeting of different cultures, the experience of immigrants (in which children of immigrant families are more successful than their parents at the necessary internal transformations), and the phenomenon of interethnic violence. Integrating recent neurobiological research with major experimental findings in cognitive and developmental psychology—with illuminating references to psychoanalysis, literature, anthropology, history, and politics—Wexler presents a wealth of detail to support his arguments. The groundbreaking connections he makes allow for reconceptualization of the effect of cultural change on the brain and provide a new biological base from which to consider such social issues as "culture wars" and ethnic violence.
Download or read book Nazi Culture written by George Lachmann Mosse and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George L. Mosse's extensive analysis of Nazi culture - ground-breaking upon its original publication in 1966 - is now offered to readers of a new generation. Selections from newspapers, novellas, plays, and diaries as well as the public pronouncements of Nazi leaders, churchmen, and professors describe National Socialism in practice and explore what it meant for the average German.
Download or read book Material Culture in the Social World written by Tim Dant and published by McGraw-Hill Education (UK). This book was released on 1999-08-16 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This should become a core text for second year courses in sociology and cultural studies... it synthesizes a vast body of literature and a complex range of debates into a text which is at once accessible, engaging and stimulating... it will lead to students seeing and thinking about the material world in a totally new light and can be used as a way into key theoretical debates." Keith Tester, Professor of Social Theory, University of Portsmouth In what ways do we interact with material things? How do material objects affect the way we relate to each other? What are the connections between material things and social processes like fashion, discourse, art and design? Through wearing clothes, keeping furniture, responding to the ring of the telephone, noticing the signature on a painting, holding a paperweight and in many other ways, we interact with objects in our everyday lives. These are not merely functional relationships with things but are connected to the way we relate to other people and the culture of the particular society we live in - they are social relations. This engaging book draws on established theoretical work, including that of Simmel, Marx, McLuhan, Barthes and Baudrillard as well as a range of contemporary empirical work from many humanities disciplines. It uses ideas drawn from this work to explore a variety of things - from stone cairns to denim jeans, televisions to penis rings, houses to works of art - to understand something of how we live with them.
Download or read book Culture Truth written by Renato Rosaldo and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2001-03-15 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exposing the inadequacies of old conceptions of static cultures and detached observers, the book argues instead for social science to acknowledge and celebrate diversity, narrative, emotion, and subjectivity.
Download or read book Art Culture and International Development written by John Clammer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Culture is not simply an explanation of last resort, but is itself a rich, multifaceted and contested concept and set of practices that needs to be expanded, appreciated and applied in fresh ways if it is to be both valued in itself and to be of use in practical development. This innovative book places culture, specifically in the form of the arts, back at the centre of debates in development studies by introducing new ways of conceptualizing art in relation to development. The book shows how the arts and development are related in very practical ways – as means to achieve development goals through visual, dramatic, filmic and craft-inspired ways. It advocates not so much culture and development, but rather for the development of culture. Without a cultural content to economic and social transformation the problems found in much development – up-rooting of cultures, loss of art forms, languages and modes of expression and performance – may only accelerate. Paying attention to the development of the arts as the content of development helps to amend this culturally destructive process. Finally, the book argues for the value of the arts in attaining sustainable cultures, promoting poverty alleviation, encouraging self-empowerment, stimulating creativity and the social imagination, which in turn flow back into wider processes of social transformation. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter make this book ideal to help foster further thinking and debate. This book is an inspiring read for postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of development studies, cultural studies and sociology of development.
Download or read book Social Psychology of Culture written by Chi-Yue Chiu and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the speed of globalization accelerates, world cultures are more closely connected to each other than ever before. But what exactly is culture? It seems to be involved in all psychological processes, but can its psychological consequences be studied scientifically? How can cultural differences be described without reifying culture and reinforcing cultural stereotypes? Culture and mind constitute each other, but how? Why do humans need culture? How did the evolution of the mind enable the development of human culture? How does participation in culture transform the mind, and how does the mind process and apply culture? How may culture become a resource for pursuing valued goals, and how does culture become part of the self? How do culture travelers navigate cultures and negotiate multiple cultural identities? The authors of this volume offer a refreshing theoretical perspective and organize seemingly disparate research evidence into a coherent body of psychological knowledge. With its accessible language and lively narrative, this volume engages its readers in an intellectual journey through the fascinating research literatures in psychology, anthropology, and the cognate disciplines. This book will make an ideal textbook for senior undergraduate and graduate courses on psychology and culture, cultural studies, cognitive anthropology, and intercultural communication.
Download or read book Creator Culture written by Stuart Cunningham and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores new perspectives on social media entertainment There is a new class of cultural producers—YouTube vloggers, Twitch gameplayers, Instagram influencers, TikTokers, Chinese wanghong, and others—who are part of a rapidly emerging and highly disruptive industry of monetized “user-generated” content. As this new wave of native social media entrepreneurs emerge, so do new formations of culture and the ways they are studied. In this volume, contributors draw on scholarship in media and communication studies, science and technology studies, and social media, Internet, and platform studies, in order to define this new field of study and the emergence of creator culture. Creator Culture introduces readers to new paradigms of social media entertainment from critical perspectives, demonstrating both relations to and differentiations from the well-established media forms and institutions traditionally within the scope of media studies. This volume does not seek to impose a uniform perspective; rather, the goal is to stimulate in-depth, globally-focused engagement with this burgeoning industry and establish a dynamic research agenda for scholars, teachers, and students, as well as creators and professionals across the media, communication, creative, and social media industries. Contributors include: Jean Burgess, Zoë Glatt, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Brent Luvaas, Carlos A. Scolari, Damián Fraticelli, José M. Tomasena, Junyi Lv, Hector Postigo, Brooke Erin Duffy, Megan Sawey, Jarrod Walzcer, Sangeet Kumar, Sriram Mohan, Aswin Punathambekar, Mohamed El Marzouki, Elaine Jing Zhao, Arturo Arriagada, Jeremy Shtern, Stephanie Hill
Download or read book Contours of Culture written by Robbie B.H. Goh and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume discusses the urban history and cultural landscape of Singapore in relation to theories of textual dialogics, multiculturalism and the cultural and political unconscious. Multidisciplinary in approach, it takes as its data not only government policy and official discourses, and the more quantitative elements of population census information on religion, income, race and nationality, but also a wide range of related cultural discourses in film, literature, media texts, social behaviour and other interventions and interpretations of the city. The main parameters of Singapore’s socio-national construction—public housing, social elitism, racial and linguistic plurality and their management, colonial remnants and their transformation—are explained and analysed in terms of Singapore’s colonial past, its rapid modernization, and its current push to compete as a global city and tourist destination. This multidisciplinary book should be of interest to a correspondingly wide readership, including architects and urban planners, political scientists, cultural analysts and theorists, colonial discourse scholars, urban geographers and sociologists, Asian studies specialists, graduate and undergraduate students in the above areas, and a general readership interested in cities and cultures. “This is a remarkable book. By taking a series of readings of Singapore’s urban culture, it chronicles the emergence of a new city form which, through the coming together of quite particular narratives of modernity, nationhood and identity may well be providing a much more general spatial model for Asian cities. Simultaneously, it provides a gripping account of how to read the possibilities and tensions that this model throws up.” —Nigel J. Thrift, Oxford University “Goh’s theoretically sophisticated and creative analysis of Singapore’s society, space and culture and his brilliant critique of the city’s official policies of self-representation is a marvellous tour de force. An astute urban semiotician and interpreter of cultural signs, Goh draws on films, figures and fiction to provide a fascinating reading of a city preparing for global competition. Questions of ethnicity, class, sexuality, national identity, architecture and space are brought together in an imaginative—as well as provocative—exercise of symbolic explication and analysis. Essential for studies of Asian urbanism and a model for students of the (so-called) ‘global city’.” —Anthony King, State University of New York at Binghamton “In Contours of Culture Robbie Goh has achieved what many specialists in cultural studies have attempted only metaphorically, by successfully fusing the materiality of spatiality with the symbolic realm of cultural processes. The result is an absorbing and nuanced interpretation of the meaning of the landscapes of Singapore, where space serves as a text that reflects and reproduces the political cultures of a global city in a state of constant re-invention.” —David Ley, University of British Columbia, Canada
Download or read book For the Culture written by Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2022-03-23 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the relationship between social justice, Hip-Hop culture, and resistance
Download or read book Understanding the Culture written by Jeff Myers and published by David C Cook. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing issues such as gender identity, abortion, technology, and poverty, Dr. Myers challenges readers to ask: How can an authentic Christian worldview provide a compassionate, effective witness in culture today? Dr. Myers first shows readers what they can learn from Christian history—and why today’s issues might not be as new as they seem. Then he takes them through the significant topics that affect them every day, offering biblical ideas for conversing with others in an increasingly hostile culture. This capstone book to a groundbreaking worldview trilogy equips readers to apply a bold Christian witness to their relationships with loved ones, neighbors, and colleagues.
Download or read book Culture in Chaos written by Stephen C. Lubkemann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fought in the wake of a decade of armed struggle against colonialism, the Mozambican civil war lasted from 1977 to 1992, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives while displacing millions more. As conflicts across the globe span decades and generations, Stephen C. Lubkemann suggests that we need a fresh perspective on war when it becomes the context for normal life rather than an exceptional event that disrupts it. Culture in Chaos calls for a new point of departure in the ethnography of war that investigates how the inhabitants of war zones live under trying new conditions and how culture and social relations are transformed as a result. Lubkemann focuses on how Ndau social networks were fragmented by wartime displacement and the profound effect this had on gender relations. Demonstrating how wartime migration and post-conflict return were shaped by social struggles and interests that had little to do with the larger political reasons for the war, Lubkemann contests the assumption that wartime migration is always involuntary. His critical reexamination of displacement and his engagement with broader theories of agency and social change will be of interest to anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and demographers, and to anyone who works in a war zone or with refugees and migrants.
Download or read book Conceptualizing Culture in Social Movement Research written by B. Baumgarten and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume introduces and compares different concepts of culture in social movement research. It assesses their advantages and shortcomings, drawing links to anthropology, discourse analysis, sociology of emotions, narration, spatial theory, and others. Each contribution's approach is illustrated with recent cases of mobilization.
Download or read book Anthropology and Social Theory written by Sherry B. Ortner and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-30 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner draws on her longstanding interest in theories of cultural practice to rethink key concepts of culture, agency, and subjectivity.
Download or read book Social Cultural Anthropology written by George Allan Phiri and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Effective communication with the African society in the field of missions, church planting, and social development work has been and continues to be a great challenge, particularly to people from western cultural and language orientation. Africans are a we rather than I and a depended on rather than independent of society. The worldview of a traditional African in terms of society, relationships, and communication is communal. Certainly, the African perception of communalism affects how they communicate with the people of different cultural orientation. Africa has several cultures and people differ in their communication depending on their cultural orientation. However, there are universal African cultures that act as a framework for understanding key aspects of communication with Africans for successful missions, church planting, and social development work. This book, therefore, provides a strategy of understanding communication with the African society. The discussions in this book provide readers with different cultural orientations unique perception of the African society as s/he may be planning to communicate with the African society for missions, church planting, and social development work, even doing humanitarian ministry in African society. Although literacy levels have improved tremendously in most African countries, most of Africa is not a reading society. It is imperative to understand that most Africans still communicate orally and are not time conscious. Hence, effective communication in African societies ought to be based on storytelling rather than literature distribution, although this is in transition. In fact, Africans are oratory and good listeners. Thus, this book provides an understanding to people of different cultural orientations when they plan to communicate with the people in Africa.
Download or read book Culture and Social Behavior written by Richard M. Sorrentino and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005-03-23 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cross-cultural differences have many important implications for social identity, social cognition, and interpersonal behavior. The 10th volume of the Ontario Symposia on Personality and Social Psychology focuses on East-West cultural differences and similarities and how this research can be applied to cross-cultural studies in general. Culture and Social Behavior covers a range of topics from differences in basic cognitive processes to broad level cultural syndromes that pervade social arrangements, laws, and public representations. Leading researchers in the study of culture and psychology describe their work and their current perspective on the important questions facing the field. Pioneers in the field such as Harry Triandis and Michael Bond present their work, along with those who represent some newer approaches to the study of culture. Richard E. Nisbett concludes the book by discussing the historical development of the field and an examination of which aspects of culture are universal and which are culture-specific. By illustrating both the diversity and vitality of research on the psychology of culture and social behavior, the editors hope this volume will stimulate further research from psychologists of many cultural traditions. Understanding cultural differences is now more important than ever due to their potential to spark conflict, violence, and aggression. As such, this volume is a "must have" for cultural researchers including those in social, cultural, and personality psychology, and interpersonal, cultural, and political communication, anthropology, and sociology.
Download or read book Work Consumption and Culture written by Paul Ransome and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2005-01-19 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central question in Work, Consumption and Culture is whether consumption has now displaced production as the defining factor in the lives of those in the industrialized West. This book offers a comprehensive review of the key issues in the production/consumption debate, and where it might lead in the future. Key to Paul Ransome′s argument is the hypothesis that affluence is the crucial factor in the shift away from work and towards consumption. Uniquely emphasizing the links between work, consumption and culture, rather than keeping each element separate, the author looks at: - the changing significance of work in society - the meaning, growth and significance of affluence - the growing importance of consumption as a source of identity and its implications the impact of the shift to consumption on work/life balance Work, Consumption and Culture engages the reader with its lively debating style. It is an essential introduction for sociology and cultural studies students on courses relating to consumption and the role of work in contemporary society. `This book offers a balanced account of the changing importance of work and consumption in contemporary industrial society. Clearly written, the author identifies the central role that affluence plays in the relationship between work and consumption, and in the development of social life and individual identity′ - Professor Paul Blyton, Cardiff Business School
