Download or read book Swedish Culture Myth and Realities written by Lisa Gutman and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Scandinavian Languages, grade: 1,7, Göteborg University (Cultural Sciences), course: Scandinavian Studies: Cultural and Social Perspectives, language: English, abstract: This essay provides insights about the myth and realities of Swedish culture – concerning sexuality and nature, Christmas, Midsummer, marriage and raising children as well lagom and standing in line. Many traditions, cultural habits and customs provoke a counteraction, a rebellion so to say. This might be the case in Swedish restrictiveness as well, when you look at young Swedes going out on a Saturday night. They are loud, drunk, refuse to form an orderly queue and they are certainly not always well-behaved, but more like children finally allowed to play outside after being held in a boring classroom all week.
Download or read book Challenging the myth of gender equality in Sweden written by Martinsson, Lena and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sweden is often considered one of the most gender-equal countries in the world and held up as a model to follow, but the reality is more complex. This is the first book to explode the myth of Swedish gender equality, both offering a new perspective for an international audience, and suggesting how equality might be rethought more generally. While the authors argue that the gender-equality mantra in Sweden has led to a society with increased opportunities for some, they also assert that the dominant norm of gender equality has become nationalistic and builds upon heteronormative and racial principles. Examining the changing meanings and parameters of gender equality against the country's social-democratic tradition and in the light of contemporary neoliberal ideologies, the book constitutes an urgent contribution to the debates about gender-equality policies and politics.
Download or read book Challenging the Myth of Gender Equality in Sweden written by Griffin, Gabriele and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2017-09 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sweden has the reputation of being one of the most gender-equal countries in the world, and it is often held up as a model for other societies--but the reality is much more complicated, as this volume shows. The first book to provide a thorough analysis of the myth of Swedish gender equality, it demonstrates how that dominant idea has become a form of heteronormative, racially specific nationalism that ultimately excludes those who fall outside the social norm.
Download or read book The Myth of Culture written by Nigel Barber and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-05-27 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before oxygen’s discovery, scientists invoked a mysterious inner principle of fire to account for burning. Today, scholars appeal to an analogously unscientific inner principle, known as culture, to account for human actions. So what is wrong with culture?! It extends from the contents of Petrie dishes to art galleries and is far too imprecise for scientific use. Science aims to separate causes from effects but social scientists use “culture” indiscriminately as both cause and effect making scientific progress impossible. Finally, culture is a smokescreen distracting us from the quest for objective influences on human behavior. (Polygamy is more about parasites than religion, for instance). This book is both a critique of culture-centered social sciences and the manifesto for a new approach - evolutionary social science - that synthesizes evolution and sociology. The author demonstrates that a natural-science approach to human societies helps us to understand social problems such as health inequality and violent crime. Written in a more high-spirited and accessible style than is customary for academic works, The Myth of Culture is a full-throttle indictment of ivory-tower social scientists whose arcane lore does more to feather their nests than to advance knowledge, or solve human problems. It should have broad appeal among college-educated people around the world.
Download or read book Cultural Conflict and the Swedish Sexual Myth written by Sven-Axel Mansson and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1993-07-13 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the past fifty years immigrants from 160 nations have transformed Sweden from an ethnically relatively homogeneous society into an intensely multi-ethnic one. By the beginning of the 1990s, more than one million out of a population of eight and a half million were immigrants or children of immigrants. By the early 1990s some ten percent of the Swedish population are foreign born. This change in Swedish life and culture results in considerable tension and misunderstandings. Perhaps, Mansson would contend, in no area is this more evident than in love relationships. In this book he sets out to explore different aspects of the encounter between immigrant males and Swedish sexual and cohabitation culture, and to analyze this encounter in relationship to the important elements in the cultural patterns and processes that have shaped and still shape immigrant male's gender-role specific socialization. In a world increasingly confronted with similar tensions and adaptations, this study is of considerable interests to sociologists and others concerned with contemporary multicultural society.
Download or read book The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserkr written by Roderick Dale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-24 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The viking berserkr is an iconic warrior normally associated with violent fits of temper and the notorious berserksgangr or berserker frenzy. This book challenges the orthodox view that these men went ‘berserk’ in the modern English sense of the word. It examines all the evidence for medieval perceptions of berserkir and builds a model of how the medieval audience would have viewed them. Then, it extrapolates a Viking Age model of berserkir from this model, and supports the analysis with anthropological and archaeological evidence, to create a new and more accurate paradigm of the Viking Age berserkr and his place in society. This shows that berserkir were the champions of lords and kings, members of the social elite, and that much of what is believed about them is based on 17th-century and later scholarship and mythologizing: the medieval audience would have had a very different understanding of the Old Norse berserkr from that which people have now. The book sets out a challenge to rethink and reframe our perceptions of the past in a way that is less influenced by our own modern ideas. The Myths and Realities of the Viking berserkr will appeal to researchers and students alike studying the Viking Age, Medieval History and Old Norse Literature.
Download or read book Israel the Sword and the Harp written by Ferdynand Zweig and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 1970 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A World of Their Own Making written by John R. Gillis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses ritual events we regard as family traditions and how they must be open to perpetual revision so we can satisfy our human needs and changing circumstances.
Download or read book The Myth of Wu Tao tzu written by Sven Lindqvist and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'During the Tang dynasty, the Chinese artist Wu Tao-tzu was one day standing looking at a mural he had just completed. Suddenly, he clapped his hands and the temple gate opened. He went into his work and the gates closed behind him.' Thus begins Sven Lindqvist's profound meditation on art and its relationship with life, first published in 1967, and a classic in his home country - it has never been out of print. As a young man, Sven Lindqvist was fascinated by the myth of Wu Tao-tzu, and by the possibility of entering a work of art and making it a way of life. He was drawn to artists and writers who shared this vision, especially Hermann Hesse, in his novel Glass Bead Game. Partly inspired by Hesse's work, Lindqvist lived in China for two years, learning classical calligraphy from a master teacher. There he was drawn deeper into the idea of a life of artistic perfectionism and retreat from the world. But when he left China for India and then Afghanistan, and saw the grotesque effects of poverty and extreme inequality, Lindqvist suffered a crisis of confidence and started to question his ideas about complete immersion in art at the expense of a proper engagement with life. The Myth of Wu Tao-tzu takes us on a fascinating journey through a young man's moral awakening and his grappling with profound questions of aesthetics. It contains the bracing moral anger, and poetic, intensely atmospheric travel writing Lindqvist's readers have come to love.
Download or read book Re Activating Critical Thinking in the Midst of Necropolitical Realities written by Marina Gržinić and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-09 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume takes as its starting point the question of whether there is a pluriversal generation, a younger group of scholars who do not necessarily collaborate or know each other, but who are currently forming a radical structure that is viral in thought production and reflective on the current global recalibration of social relations, brought about by the necropolitical and necrocapitalist governmentality emerging worldwide. The 23 articles assembled in this volume transcend geographical boundaries, conceive of the world as a single entity, and develop strategies for radical change. They are presented in five subchapters with two lines of demarcation, one for entry, invention, and potentiality, and the other for a grim threshold.
Download or read book Brit Myth written by Chris Rojek and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2008-02-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world sees Britain through the antics of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the stiff-lipped, painfully class-conscious societies depicted in Gosford Parkand Remains of the Day, and the scathing diatribes of American Idol’s Simon Cowell. The images being projected from the island nation of England are so disparate these days that it’s hard to know what to think of the British. Chris Rojek explores this dilemma, looking at the myths, misconceptions, and stereotypes of the British. Drawing upon a wide range of sources in pop culture, politics, art, and history, Rojek examines how Britons are viewed both at home and abroad. From Austin Powers to King Arthur and Albion, and from Big Brother to international opinion polls, Rojek investigates what it means to be British in a globalized, multicultural world. Brit-Myth deftly avoids extreme nationalism or abstract scholarship, offering a new conception of Britishness that transcends race and emphasizes the integral role of individualism and nonconformity in British identity. Full of thought-provoking insights and engaging anecdotes, Brit-Myth will entertain both Anglophiles and those who want to learn more about the land under the Union Jack.
Download or read book A Companion to the Classical Greek World written by Konrad H. Kinzl and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-01-11 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion provides scholarly yet accessible new interpretations of Greek history of the Classical period, from the aftermath of the Persian Wars in 478 B.C. to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. Topics covered range from the political and institutional structures of Greek society, to literature, art, economics, society, warfare, geography and the environment Discusses the problems of interpreting the various sources for the period Guides the reader towards a broadly-based understanding of the history of the Classical Age
Download or read book Leaders written by Stanley McChrystal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An instant national bestseller! Stanley McChrystal, the retired US Army general and bestselling author of Team of Teams, profiles thirteen of history’s great leaders, including Walt Disney, Coco Chanel, and Robert E. Lee, to show that leadership is not what you think it is—and never was. Stan McChrystal served for thirty-four years in the US Army, rising from a second lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division to a four-star general, in command of all American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. During those years he worked with countless leaders and pondered an ancient question: “What makes a leader great?” He came to realize that there is no simple answer. McChrystal profiles thirteen famous leaders from a wide range of eras and fields—from corporate CEOs to politicians and revolutionaries. He uses their stories to explore how leadership works in practice and to challenge the myths that complicate our thinking about this critical topic. With Plutarch’s Lives as his model, McChrystal looks at paired sets of leaders who followed unconventional paths to success. For instance. . . · Walt Disney and Coco Chanel built empires in very different ways. Both had public personas that sharply contrasted with how they lived in private. · Maximilien Robespierre helped shape the French Revolution in the eighteenth century; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi led the jihadist insurgency in Iraq in the twenty-first. We can draw surprising lessons from them about motivation and persuasion. · Both Boss Tweed in nineteenth-century New York and Margaret Thatcher in twentieth-century Britain followed unlikely roads to the top of powerful institutions. · Martin Luther and his future namesake Martin Luther King Jr., both local clergymen, emerged from modest backgrounds to lead world-changing movements. Finally, McChrystal explores how his former hero, General Robert E. Lee, could seemingly do everything right in his military career and yet lead the Confederate Army to a devastating defeat in the service of an immoral cause. Leaders will help you take stock of your own leadership, whether you’re part of a small team or responsible for an entire nation.
Download or read book Swedish Design written by Keith M. Murphy and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-22 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swedish designers are noted for producing distinctive and elegant forms; their furniture and household goods have an especially loyal following around the world. Design in Sweden has more than just an aesthetic component, however. Since at least the late nineteenth century, Swedish politicians and social planners have viewed design as a means for advocating and enacting social change and pushing for a more egalitarian social organization. In this book, Keith M. Murphy examines the special relationship between politics and design in Sweden, revealing in particular the cultural meanings this relationship holds for Swedish society. Over the course of fourteen months of research in Stockholm and at other sites, Murphy conducted in-depth interviews with various players involved in the Swedish design industry—designers, design instructors, government officials, artists, and curators—and observed several different design collectives in action. He found that for Swedes design is never socially or politically neutral. Even for common objects like furniture and other household goods, design can be labeled "responsible," "democratic," or "ethical"— descriptors that all neatly resonate with the traditional moral tones of Swedish social democracy. Murphy also considers the example of Ikea and its power to politicize perceptions of the everyday world. More broadly, his book serves as a model for an anthropological approach to the study of design practice, one that accounts for the various ways in which order is purposefully and meaningfully imposed by designers on the domains of human life, and the consequences those impositions have on the social worlds in which they are embedded.
Download or read book Women in the Viking Age written by Judith Jesch and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 1991 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through runic inscriptions and behind the veil of myth, Jesch discovers the true story of viking women.
Download or read book The S mi World written by Sanna Valkonen and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 699 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive and multifaceted analysis of the Sámi society and its histories and people, offering valuable insights into how they live and see the world. The chapters examine a variety of social and cultural practices, and consideration is given to environment, legal and political conditions and power relations. The contributions by a range of experts of Sámi studies and Indigenous scholars are drawn from across the Sápmi region, which spans from central Norway and central Sweden across Finnish Lapland to the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Sámi perspectives, concepts and ways of knowing are foregrounded throughout the volume. The material connects with wider discussions within Indigenous studies and engages with current concerns relating to globalization, environmental and cultural change, Arctic politics, multiculturalism, postcolonialism and neoliberalism. The Sámi World will be of interest to scholars from a number of disciplines, including Indigenous studies, anthropology, sociology, geography, history and political science.
Download or read book The Almost Nearly Perfect People written by Michael Booth and published by Picador. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED THE #1 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, A WITTY, INFORMATIVE, AND POPULAR TRAVELOGUE ABOUT THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES AND HOW THEY MAY NOT BE AS HAPPY OR AS PERFECT AS WE ASSUME Journalist Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians for more than ten years, and he has grown increasingly frustrated with the rose-tinted view of this part of the world offered up by the Western media. In this timely book he leaves his adopted home of Denmark and embarks on a journey through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes are, the secrets of their success, and, most intriguing of all, what they think of one another. Why are the Danes so happy, despite having the highest taxes? Do the Finns really have the best education system? Are the Icelanders as feral as they sometimes appear? How are the Norwegians spending their fantastic oil wealth? And why do all of them hate the Swedes? In The Almost Nearly Perfect People Michael Booth explains who the Scandinavians are, how they differ and why, and what their quirks and foibles are, and he explores why these societies have become so successful and models for the world. Along the way a more nuanced, often darker picture emerges of a region plagued by taboos, characterized by suffocating parochialism, and populated by extremists of various shades. They may very well be almost nearly perfect, but it isn't easy being Scandinavian.
