Download or read book The Social Life of Books written by Abigail Williams and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A lively survey…her research and insights make us conscious of how we, today, use books.”—John Sutherland, The New York Times Book Review Two centuries before the advent of radio, television, and motion pictures, books were a cherished form of popular entertainment and an integral component of domestic social life. In this fascinating and vivid history, Abigail Williams explores the ways in which shared reading shaped the lives and literary culture of the eighteenth century, offering new perspectives on how books have been used by their readers, and the part they have played in middle-class homes and families. Drawing on marginalia, letters and diaries, library catalogues, elocution manuals, subscription lists, and more, Williams offers fresh and fascinating insights into reading, performance, and the history of middle-class home life. “Williams’s charming pageant of anecdotes…conjures a world strikingly different from our own but surprisingly similar in many ways, a time when reading was on the rise and whole worlds sprang up around it.”—TheWashington Post

Download or read book The Social Lives of Animals written by Ashley Ward and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rat will go out of its way to help a stranger in need. Lions have adopted the calves of their prey. Ants farm fungus in cooperatives. Why do we continue to believe that life in the animal kingdom is ruled by competition? In The Social Lives of Animals, biologist Ashley Ward takes us on a wild tour across the globe as he searches for a more accurate picture of how animals build societies. Ward drops in on a termite mating ritual (while his guides snack on the subjects), visits freelance baboon goatherds, and swims with a mixed family of whales and dolphins. Along the way, Ward shows that the social impulses we’ve long thought separated humans from other animals might actually be our strongest connection to them. Insightful, engaging, and often hilarious, The Social Lives of Animals demonstrates that you can learn more about animals by studying how they work together than by how they compete.

Download or read book Social Lives written by Wendy Walker and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2009-08-12 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step into picture-perfect Wilshire, home to some of the most privileged people in the world, where one woman's desperate act could bring the precariously balanced social order crashing down... Wilshire, Connecticut, the gilded enclave of Manhattan's prosperous elite, appears to be a vision of suburban tranquility: the mansions are tastefully designed, the lawns are expertly manicured, and the streets are as hushed as the complexities in the residents' lives. While Wilshire's husbands battle each other in the financial world, their wives manage their estates and raise the next elite generation. Some women are envied, some respected, and others simply tolerated. But regardless of where they stand, each woman is defined by the world she inhabits and bound by the unyielding social structure that surrounds her. Rosalyn Barlow, the most envied woman in Wilshire, is waging a battle of social manipulation to silence the scandalous gossip that threatens her daughter's reputation while her self-made billionaire husband grows more and more distant in his young retirement. But for fourteen year-old Caitlin Barlow, navigating life as a teenager in a culture of wealth and sexual promiscuity has become far more perilous than either of her parents knows. Newcomer Sarah Livingston has nothing but disdain for everyone and everything around her and a growing terror at having another child in a world she's come to resent. As she is pulled into the Barlow family's storm, the walls begin to close in around her marriage and the life she once thought she wanted. And for Jacqueline Halstead, who's just discovered her husband is under investigation for fraud surrounding his hedge fund, saving her family from total ruin means doing the unthinkable - and shaking the Barlow family, Wilshire's insular community, and herself to the core.

Download or read book The Social Life of Water written by John R. Wagner and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everywhere in the world communities and nations organize themselves in relation to water. We divert water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers to our homes, workplaces, irrigation canals, and hydro-generating stations. We use it for bathing, swimming, recreation, and it functions as a symbol of purity in ritual performances. In order to facilitate and manage our relationship with water, we develop institutions, technologies, and cultural practices entirely devoted to its appropriation and distribution, and through these institutions we construct relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality. Relying on first-hand ethnographic research, the contributors to this volume examine the social life of water in diverse settings and explore the impacts of commodification, urbanization, and technology on the availability and quality of water supplies. Each case study speaks to a local set of issues, but the overall perspective is global, with representation from all continents.

Download or read book The Social Life of Standards written by Janice E. Graham and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standards. We apply them, uphold them, or fail to meet them. But how do they get made? Through twelve ethnographic case studies, The Social Life of Standards reveals how standards – political and technical tools for organizing society – are developed, applied, subverted, contested, and reassembled by local communities interacting with norms often created by others. Contributors explore standards at work across different countries and contexts, such as Ebola biomedical safety precautions in Senegal, Colombian farmers contesting politicized seed regulations, and the application of Indigenous standards to Canadian environmental assessments. They emphasize the uncomfortable fit between the inconsistent implementation of standards in the real world and the non-negotiable criteria presupposed by external forces. The Social Life of Standards provides support for a reflexive process that involves local engagement. Ultimately, the goal should be to reach a balance between evidence-based science and the social contexts that can inform more useful and appropriate standards.

Download or read book Structures of Social Life written by Alan page Fiske and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1993-10-04 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan Page Fiske shares insight on the basic models of social relations in this “important book that will be of value to all psychologists with an interest in organization, culture, economic behavior, and decision making” (Richard E. Nisbett, University of Michigan). Structures of Social Life examines the relational models of social relationships, including how they are implicit in earlier social theories, how they have emerged into diverse domains of social action and though, and how they produce diverse and complex social forms. Aiming to create conversations and debate about social relationships and the models that structure them, Alan Page Fiske provides insight on the four elementary forms of human relations.

Download or read book The Social Life of Things written by Arjun Appadurai and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1988-01-29 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The meaning that people attribute to things necessarily derives from human transactions and motivations, particularly from how those things are used and circulated. The contributors to this volume examine how things are sold and traded in a variety of social and cultural settings, both present and past. Focusing on culturally defined aspects of exchange and socially regulated processes of circulation, the essays illuminate the ways in which people find value in things and things give value to social relations. By looking at things as if they lead social lives, the authors provide a new way to understand how value is externalized and sought after. Containing contributions from American and British social anthropologists and historians, the volume bridges the disciplines of social history, cultural anthropology, and economics, and marks a major step in our understanding of the cultural basis of economic life and the sociology of culture. It will appeal to anthropologists, social historians, economists, archaeologists, and historians of art.

Download or read book The Social Life of Achievement written by Nicholas J. Long and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when people “achieve”? Why do reactions to “achievement” vary so profoundly? And how might an anthropological study of achievement and its consequences allow us to develop a more nuanced model of the motivated agency that operates in the social world? These questions lie at the heart of this volume. Drawing on research from Southeast Asia, Europe, the United States, and Latin America, this collection develops an innovative framework for explaining achievement’s multiple effects—one which brings together cutting-edge theoretical insights into politics, psychology, ethics, materiality, aurality, embodiment, affect and narrative. In doing so, the volume advances a new agenda for the study of achievement within anthropology, emphasizing the significance of achievement as a moment of cultural invention, and the complexity of “the achiever” as a subject position.

Download or read book On the Social Life of Postsocialism written by Daphne Berdahl and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropologist Daphne Berdahl was one of the leading scholars of the transition from state socialism to capitalism in central and eastern Europe. From her pathbreaking ethnography of a former East German border village in the aftermath of German reunification, to her insightful analyses of consumption, nostalgia, and citizenship in the early 21st century, Berdahl's writings probe the contradictions, paradoxes, and ambiguities of postsocialism as few observers have done. This volume brings together her essays, from an early study of memory at the Vietnam War memorial in Washington, D.C., to research on consumption and citizenship undertaken in Leipzig in the years before her untimely death. It serves as a superb introduction to the development of the field of postsocialist cultural studies.

Download or read book The Social Life of Avatars written by Ralph Schroeder and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtual reality (VR) technology has been developed commercially since the early 1990s [1]. Yet it is only with the growth of the Internet and other high-bandwidth links that VR systems have increasingly become networked to allow users to share the same virtual environment (VE). Shared YEs raise a number of interesting questions: what is the difference between face-to-face interaction and interaction between persons inside YEs? How does the appearance of the "avatar" - as the graphical representation of the user has become known - change the nature of interaction? And what governs the formation of virtual communities? This volume brings together contributions from social scientists and computer scientists who have conducted research on social interaction in various types of YEs. Two previous volumes in this CSCW book series [2, 3] have examined related aspects of research on YEs - social navigation and collaboration - although they do not always deal with VRIVEs in the sense that it is used here (see the definition in Chapter 1). The aim of this volume is to explore how people interact with each other in computer-generated virtual worlds.

Download or read book Social Life written by Matthias Benzer and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2019-09-02 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Social Life, the authors highlight, explain, and scrutinize socio-theoretical analyses of contemporary social relations and conditions - put forward by eight modern social theorists - and analyse how these have informed sociological inquiries into people’s lives in today’s social world. The book discusses the works of the following social theorists: Anthony Giddens Pierre Bourdieu Bruno Latour Donna Haraway Zygmunt Bauman Jean-Francois Lyotard Michel Foucault Jean Baudrillard In each chapter, the authors identify the key components of each theorist’s conception of society and apply the theories outlined to specific, modern phenomena. This connection with modern-day phenomena allows for a critical interrogation of issues in contemporary society, including: Inequality and Capital, Power, Fear and Terrorism, Immune System Discourse, Suffering, and Climate Change. Essential reading for all sociology students studying social theory and the works of modern social theorists.

Download or read book The Social Life of Spirits written by Ruy Blanes and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spirits can be haunters, informants, possessors, and transformers of the living, but more than anything anthropologists have understood them as representations of something else—symbols that articulate facets of human experience in much the same way works of art do. The Social Life of Spirits challenges this notion. By stripping symbolism from the way we think about the spirit world, the contributors of this book uncover a livelier, more diverse environment of entities—with their own histories, motivations, and social interactions—providing a new understanding of spirits not as symbols, but as agents. The contributors tour the spiritual globe—the globe of nonthings—in essays on topics ranging from the Holy Ghost in southern Africa to spirits of the “people of the streets” in Rio de Janeiro to dragons and magic in Britain. Avoiding a reliance on religion and belief systems to explain the significance of spirits, they reimagine spirits in a rich network of social trajectories, ultimately arguing for a new ontological ground upon which to examine the intangible world and its interactions with the tangible one.

Download or read book Best Friends Worst Enemies written by Michael Thompson, PhD and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2001-10-24 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Friends broaden our children’s horizons, share their joys and secrets, and accompany them on their journeys into ever wider worlds. But friends can also gossip and betray, tease and exclude. Children can cause untold suffering, not only for their peers but for parents as well. In this wise and insightful book, psychologist Michael Thompson, Ph.D., and children’s book author Catherine O’Neill Grace, illuminate the crucial and often hidden role that friendship plays in the lives of children from birth through adolescence. Drawing on fascinating new research as well as their own extensive experience in schools, Thompson and Grace demonstrate that children’s friendships begin early–in infancy–and run exceptionally deep in intensity and loyalty. As children grow, their friendships become more complex and layered but also more emotionally fraught, marked by both extraordinary intimacy and bewildering cruelty. As parents, we watch, and often live through vicariously, the tumult that our children experience as they encounter the “cool” crowd, shifting alliances, bullies, and disloyal best friends. Best Friends, Worst Enemies brings to life the drama of childhood relationships, guiding parents to a deeper understanding of the motives and meanings of social behavior. Here you will find penetrating discussions of the difference between friendship and popularity, how boys and girls deal in unique ways with intimacy and commitment, whether all kids need a best friend, why cliques form and what you can do about them. Filled with anecdotes that ring amazingly true to life, Best Friends, Worst Enemies probes the magic and the heartbreak that all children experience with their friends. Parents, teachers, counselors–indeed anyone who cares about children–will find this an eye-opening and wonderfully affirming book.

Download or read book The Social Life of Pots written by Judith A. Habicht-Mauche and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The demographic upheavals that altered the social landscape of the Southwest from the thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries forced peoples from diverse backgrounds to literally remake their worlds—transformations in community, identity, and power that are only beginning to be understood through innovations in decorated ceramics. In addition to aesthetic changes that included new color schemes, new painting techniques, alterations in design, and a greater emphasis on iconographic imagery, some of the wares reflect a new production efficiency resulting from more specialized household and community-based industries. Also, they were traded over longer distances and were used more often in public ceremonies than earlier ceramic types. Through the study of glaze-painted pottery, archaeologists are beginning to understand that pots had “social lives” in this changing world and that careful reconstruction of the social lives of pots can help us understand the social lives of Puebloan peoples. In this book, fifteen contributors apply a wide range of technological and stylistic analysis techniques to pottery of the Rio Grande and Western Pueblo areas to show what it reveals about inter- and intra-community dynamics, work groups, migration, trade, and ideology in the precontact and early postcontact Puebloan world. The contributors report on research conducted throughout the glaze producing areas of the Southwest and cover the full historical range of glaze ware production. Utilizing a variety of techniques—continued typological analyses, optical petrography, instrumental neutron activation analysis, X-ray microprobe analysis, and inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy—they develop broader frameworks for examining the changing role of these ceramics in social dynamics. By tracing the circulation and exchange of specialized knowledge, raw materials, and the pots themselves via social networks of varying size, they show how glaze ware technology, production, exchange, and reflected a variety of dynamic historical and social processes. Through this material evidence, the contributors reveal that technological and aesthetic innovations were deliberately manipulated and disseminated to actively construct “communities of practice” that cut across language and settlement groups. The Social Life of Pots offers a wealth of new data from this crucial period of prehistory and is an important baseline for future work in this area. Contributors Patricia Capone Linda S. Cordell Suzanne L. Eckert Thomas R. Fenn Judith A. Habicht-Mauche Cynthia L Herhahn Maren Hopkins Deborah L. Huntley Toni S. Laumbach Kathryn Leonard Barbara J. Mills Kit Nelson Gregson Schachner Miriam T. Stark Scott Van Keuren

Download or read book The Social Lives of Dogs written by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The groundbreaking, New York Times–bestselling book on canine behavior and how dogs become family from the author of The Hidden Life of Dogs. In the sequel to her New York Times bestseller The Hidden Lives of Dogs, anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas profiles the assortment of canines in her own household to examine how dogs have comfortably adapted to life with their human owners—and with each other. Thomas answers questions we all have about our dogs’ behavior: Do different barks mean different things? What makes a dog difficult to house-train? Why do certain dogs and cats get along so well? How does one of her dogs recognize people he sees only once a year, while another barks at strangers she sees every day? What leads to the formation of packs or groups? As Publishers Weekly raves, “no one writes with greater emotional intelligence about man’s (and woman’s) best friend than Thomas.”

Download or read book Illuminating Social Life written by Peter Kivisto and published by Pine Forge Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illuminating Social Life has enjoyed increasing popularity with each edition. It is the only book designed for undergraduate teaching that shows today's students how classical and contemporary social theories can be used to shed new light on such topics as the internet, the world of work, fast food restaurants, shopping malls, alcohol use, body building, sales and service, and new religious movements.A perfect complement for the sociological theory course, it offers 13 original essays by leading scholars in the field who are also experienced undergraduate theory teachers. Substantial introductions by the editor link the applied essays to a complete review of the classical and modern social theories used in the book.

Download or read book The Social Lives of Books written by Edward Frederick Finn and published by Stanford University. This book was released on 2011 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This project explores how changing models of literary production are blurring or erasing the divisions between authors, critics and readers. Millions of cultural consumers are participating in previously closed literary conversations and expressing forms of mass distinction through their purchases and reviews of books. These traces of popular reading choices constitute a fresh perspective on elusive audience reactions to literature and reveal evolving networks of conversation. Employing network analysis methodologies and 'distant reading' of book reviews, recommendations and other digital traces of cultural distinction, I develop a new model for literary culture in America today. Through readings of the fiction and reception of Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, David Foster Wallace and Junot Díaz, this model outlines the fundamental requirements for contemporary literary fame. My introduction outlines methodological tools I developed and situates them in the critical traditions of literary reception, cultural sociology and media theory before describing the digital ecologies that have emerged around literature online and their value. Chapter 1 explores the nature of literary fame through a case study of Thomas Pynchon, whose carefully guarded anonymity and ironic distance from capitalism are reflected in the networks his readers construct around his long, challenging books. In stark contrast, Toni Morrison, the subject of Chapter 2, has succeeded critically and commercially, tirelessly seeking out readers to form literary communities around her writing, most prominently through her collaboration with Oprah's Book Club. Chapter 3 considers David Foster Wallace and Junot Díaz and sets out a model for contemporary literary culture: a reading society that demands new forms of authorial reflexivity to mirror the collaborative, iterative nature of digital literary conversations. I conclude with a brief consideration of the exciting prospects and challenges for fiction in a world that reads more than ever but is growing disaffected with the material realities of literary production.