Suitably Modern

Suitably Modern

Author: Mark Liechty

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-11-10

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 069122174X

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Suitably Modern traces the growth of a new middle class in Kathmandu as urban Nepalis harness the modern cultural resources of mass media and consumer goods to build modern identities and pioneer a new sociocultural space in one of the world's "least developed countries." Since Nepal's "opening" in the 1950s, a new urban population of bureaucrats, service personnel, small business owners, and others have worked to make a space between Kathmandu's old (and still privileged) elites and its large (and growing) urban poor. Mark Liechty looks at the cultural practices of this new middle class, examining such phenomena as cinema and video viewing, popular music, film magazines, local fashion systems, and advertising. He explores three interactive and mutually constitutive ethnographic terrains: a burgeoning local consumer culture, a growing mass-mediated popular imagination, and a recently emerging youth culture. He shows how an array of local cultural narratives--stories of honor, value, prestige, and piety--flow in and around global narratives of "progress," modernity, and consumer fulfillment. Urban Nepalis simultaneously adopt and critique these narrative strands, braiding them into local middle-class cultural life. Building on both Marxian and Weberian understandings of class, this study moves beyond them to describe the lived experience of "middle classness"--how class is actually produced and reproduced in everyday practice. It considers how people speak and act themselves into cultural existence, carving out real and conceptual spaces in which to produce class culture.


Book Synopsis Suitably Modern by : Mark Liechty

Download or read book Suitably Modern written by Mark Liechty and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suitably Modern traces the growth of a new middle class in Kathmandu as urban Nepalis harness the modern cultural resources of mass media and consumer goods to build modern identities and pioneer a new sociocultural space in one of the world's "least developed countries." Since Nepal's "opening" in the 1950s, a new urban population of bureaucrats, service personnel, small business owners, and others have worked to make a space between Kathmandu's old (and still privileged) elites and its large (and growing) urban poor. Mark Liechty looks at the cultural practices of this new middle class, examining such phenomena as cinema and video viewing, popular music, film magazines, local fashion systems, and advertising. He explores three interactive and mutually constitutive ethnographic terrains: a burgeoning local consumer culture, a growing mass-mediated popular imagination, and a recently emerging youth culture. He shows how an array of local cultural narratives--stories of honor, value, prestige, and piety--flow in and around global narratives of "progress," modernity, and consumer fulfillment. Urban Nepalis simultaneously adopt and critique these narrative strands, braiding them into local middle-class cultural life. Building on both Marxian and Weberian understandings of class, this study moves beyond them to describe the lived experience of "middle classness"--how class is actually produced and reproduced in everyday practice. It considers how people speak and act themselves into cultural existence, carving out real and conceptual spaces in which to produce class culture.


Suitably Modern

Suitably Modern

Author: Mark Liechty

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9789937800457

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Book Synopsis Suitably Modern by : Mark Liechty

Download or read book Suitably Modern written by Mark Liechty and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


Ayurveda Made Modern

Ayurveda Made Modern

Author: R. Berger

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2013-09-16

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1137315903

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This book explores the ways in which Ayurveda, the oldest medical tradition of the Indian subcontinent, was transformed from a composite of 'ancient' medical knowledge into a 'modern' medical system, suited to the demands posed by apparatuses of health developed in late colonial India.


Book Synopsis Ayurveda Made Modern by : R. Berger

Download or read book Ayurveda Made Modern written by R. Berger and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-09-16 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the ways in which Ayurveda, the oldest medical tradition of the Indian subcontinent, was transformed from a composite of 'ancient' medical knowledge into a 'modern' medical system, suited to the demands posed by apparatuses of health developed in late colonial India.


Modernity and the Holocaust

Modernity and the Holocaust

Author: Zygmunt Bauman

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780801487194

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A new afterword to this edition, "The Duty to Remember--But What?" tackles difficult issues of guilt and innocence on the individual and societal levels. Zygmunt Bauman explores the silences found in debates about the Holocaust, and asks what the historical facts of the Holocaust tell us about the hidden capacities of present-day life. He finds great danger in such phenomena as the seductiveness of martyrdom; going to extremes in the name of safety; the insidious effects of tragic memory; and efficient, "scientific" implementation of the death penalty. Bauman writes, "Once the problem of the guilt of the Holocaust perpetrators has been by and large settled... the one big remaining question is the innocence of all the rest--not the least the innocence of ourselves."Among the conditions that made the mass extermination of the Holocaust possible, according to Bauman, the most decisive factor was modernity itself. Bauman's provocative interpretation counters the tendency to reduce the Holocaust to an episode in Jewish history, or to one that cannot be repeated in the West precisely because of the progressive triumph of modern civilization. He demonstrates, rather, that we must understand the events of the Holocaust as deeply rooted in the very nature of modern society and in the central categories of modern social thought.


Book Synopsis Modernity and the Holocaust by : Zygmunt Bauman

Download or read book Modernity and the Holocaust written by Zygmunt Bauman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new afterword to this edition, "The Duty to Remember--But What?" tackles difficult issues of guilt and innocence on the individual and societal levels. Zygmunt Bauman explores the silences found in debates about the Holocaust, and asks what the historical facts of the Holocaust tell us about the hidden capacities of present-day life. He finds great danger in such phenomena as the seductiveness of martyrdom; going to extremes in the name of safety; the insidious effects of tragic memory; and efficient, "scientific" implementation of the death penalty. Bauman writes, "Once the problem of the guilt of the Holocaust perpetrators has been by and large settled... the one big remaining question is the innocence of all the rest--not the least the innocence of ourselves."Among the conditions that made the mass extermination of the Holocaust possible, according to Bauman, the most decisive factor was modernity itself. Bauman's provocative interpretation counters the tendency to reduce the Holocaust to an episode in Jewish history, or to one that cannot be repeated in the West precisely because of the progressive triumph of modern civilization. He demonstrates, rather, that we must understand the events of the Holocaust as deeply rooted in the very nature of modern society and in the central categories of modern social thought.


Driving toward Modernity

Driving toward Modernity

Author: Jun Zhang

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1501738410

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In Driving toward Modernity, Jun Zhang ethnographically explores the entanglement between the rise of the automotive regime and emergence of the middle class in South China. Focusing on the Pearl River Delta, one of the nation's wealthiest regions, Zhang shows how private cars have shaped everyday middle-class sociality, solidarity, and subjectivity, and how the automotive regime has helped make the new middle classes of the PRC. By carefully analyzing how physical and social mobility intertwines, Driving toward Modernity paints a nuanced picture of modern Chinese life, comprising the continuity and rupture as well as the structure and agency of China's great transformation.


Book Synopsis Driving toward Modernity by : Jun Zhang

Download or read book Driving toward Modernity written by Jun Zhang and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Driving toward Modernity, Jun Zhang ethnographically explores the entanglement between the rise of the automotive regime and emergence of the middle class in South China. Focusing on the Pearl River Delta, one of the nation's wealthiest regions, Zhang shows how private cars have shaped everyday middle-class sociality, solidarity, and subjectivity, and how the automotive regime has helped make the new middle classes of the PRC. By carefully analyzing how physical and social mobility intertwines, Driving toward Modernity paints a nuanced picture of modern Chinese life, comprising the continuity and rupture as well as the structure and agency of China's great transformation.


The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies

Author: Matthew V. Novenson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-04-08

Total Pages: 785

ISBN-13: 0192545345

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The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies brings together a diverse international group of experts on the apostle Paul. It examines the authentic texts from his own hand, other ancient texts falsely attributed to him, the numerous early Christian legends about him, and the many meanings that have been and still are made of these texts to give a twenty-first century snapshot of Pauline Studies. Divided into five key sections, the Handbook begins by examining Paul the person - a largely biographical sketching of the life of Paul himself to the limited extent that it is possible to do so. It moves on to explore Paul in context and Pauline Literature, looking in detail at the letters, manuscripts, and canons that constitute most of our extant evidence for the apostle. Part Four uses a number of classic motifs to describe what modern experts describe as 'Pauline Theology', and Part Five considers the many productive reading strategies with which recent interpreters have made meaning of the letters of Paul. It is demonstrated that 'reading Paul' is not, and never has been, just one thing. It has always been a matter of the particular questions and interests that the reader brings to these very generative texts. The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies thoroughly surveys the state of Pauline studies today, paying particular attention to theory and method in interpretation. It considers traditional approaches alongside recent approaches to Paul, including gender, race and ethnicity, and material culture. Brought together, the chapters are an ideal resource for teachers and students of Paul and his letters.


Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies by : Matthew V. Novenson

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies written by Matthew V. Novenson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-08 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies brings together a diverse international group of experts on the apostle Paul. It examines the authentic texts from his own hand, other ancient texts falsely attributed to him, the numerous early Christian legends about him, and the many meanings that have been and still are made of these texts to give a twenty-first century snapshot of Pauline Studies. Divided into five key sections, the Handbook begins by examining Paul the person - a largely biographical sketching of the life of Paul himself to the limited extent that it is possible to do so. It moves on to explore Paul in context and Pauline Literature, looking in detail at the letters, manuscripts, and canons that constitute most of our extant evidence for the apostle. Part Four uses a number of classic motifs to describe what modern experts describe as 'Pauline Theology', and Part Five considers the many productive reading strategies with which recent interpreters have made meaning of the letters of Paul. It is demonstrated that 'reading Paul' is not, and never has been, just one thing. It has always been a matter of the particular questions and interests that the reader brings to these very generative texts. The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies thoroughly surveys the state of Pauline studies today, paying particular attention to theory and method in interpretation. It considers traditional approaches alongside recent approaches to Paul, including gender, race and ethnicity, and material culture. Brought together, the chapters are an ideal resource for teachers and students of Paul and his letters.


Globalising Everyday Consumption in India

Globalising Everyday Consumption in India

Author: Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-21

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0429603517

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This book brings together historical and ethnographic perspectives on Indian consumer identities. Through an in-depth analysis of local, regional, and national histories of marketing, regulatory bodies, public and domestic practices, this interdisciplinary volume charts the emergence of Indian consumer society and discusses commodity consumption as a main feature of Indian modernity. Nationalist discourse was shaped by moral struggles over consumption patterns that became a hallmark of middle-class identity. But a number of chapters demonstrate how a wide range of social strata were targeted as markets for everyday commodities associated with global lifestyles early on. A section of the book illustrates how a new group of professionals engaged in advertising trying to create a market shaped tastes and discourses and how campaigns provided a range of consumers with guidance on ‘modern lifestyles’. Chapters discussing advertisements for consumables like coffee and cooking oil, show these to be part of new public cultures. The ethnographic chapters focus on contemporary practices and consumption as a main marker of class, caste and community. Throughout the book consumption is shown to determine communal identities, but some chapters also highlight how it reshapes intimate relationships. The chapters explore the middle-class family, microcredit schemes, and metropolitan youth cultures as sites in which consumer citizenship is realised. The book will be of interest to readers from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, geography, sociology, South Asian studies, and visual cultures.


Book Synopsis Globalising Everyday Consumption in India by : Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Download or read book Globalising Everyday Consumption in India written by Bhaswati Bhattacharya and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-21 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together historical and ethnographic perspectives on Indian consumer identities. Through an in-depth analysis of local, regional, and national histories of marketing, regulatory bodies, public and domestic practices, this interdisciplinary volume charts the emergence of Indian consumer society and discusses commodity consumption as a main feature of Indian modernity. Nationalist discourse was shaped by moral struggles over consumption patterns that became a hallmark of middle-class identity. But a number of chapters demonstrate how a wide range of social strata were targeted as markets for everyday commodities associated with global lifestyles early on. A section of the book illustrates how a new group of professionals engaged in advertising trying to create a market shaped tastes and discourses and how campaigns provided a range of consumers with guidance on ‘modern lifestyles’. Chapters discussing advertisements for consumables like coffee and cooking oil, show these to be part of new public cultures. The ethnographic chapters focus on contemporary practices and consumption as a main marker of class, caste and community. Throughout the book consumption is shown to determine communal identities, but some chapters also highlight how it reshapes intimate relationships. The chapters explore the middle-class family, microcredit schemes, and metropolitan youth cultures as sites in which consumer citizenship is realised. The book will be of interest to readers from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, geography, sociology, South Asian studies, and visual cultures.


The Twilight of Cutting

The Twilight of Cutting

Author: Saida Hodic

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2016-11-22

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0520291980

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"The last three decades have witnessed a proliferation of NGOs engaging in new campaigns to end the practice of female genital cutting across Africa. These campaigns have in turn spurred new institutions, discourses, and political projects, bringing about unexpected social transformations, both intended and unintended. Consequently, cutting is waning across the continent. At the same time, these endings are being disavowed by cross-continental discourses that argue that cutting has become an object of a neocolonial, racist gaze and Western interventionist zeal. What does it mean to say that while cutting is ending, the Western discourse surrounding it is on the rise? And what kind of a feminist anthropology is needed in such a moment? The Twilight of Cutting examines these and other questions from the vantage point of Ghanaian feminist and reproductive health NGOs that have organized campaigns against cutting for over thirty years. The book looks at these NGOs not as solutions but as sites of 'problematization.' The purpose of understanding Ghanaian campaigns, their transnational and regional encounters, and the forms of governmentality they produce is not to charge them with providing answers to the question, how do we end cutting? Instead, it is to account for their work, their historicity, the life worlds and subjectivities they engender, and the modes of reflection, imminent critique, and opposition they set in motion"--Provided by publisher.


Book Synopsis The Twilight of Cutting by : Saida Hodic

Download or read book The Twilight of Cutting written by Saida Hodic and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-11-22 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The last three decades have witnessed a proliferation of NGOs engaging in new campaigns to end the practice of female genital cutting across Africa. These campaigns have in turn spurred new institutions, discourses, and political projects, bringing about unexpected social transformations, both intended and unintended. Consequently, cutting is waning across the continent. At the same time, these endings are being disavowed by cross-continental discourses that argue that cutting has become an object of a neocolonial, racist gaze and Western interventionist zeal. What does it mean to say that while cutting is ending, the Western discourse surrounding it is on the rise? And what kind of a feminist anthropology is needed in such a moment? The Twilight of Cutting examines these and other questions from the vantage point of Ghanaian feminist and reproductive health NGOs that have organized campaigns against cutting for over thirty years. The book looks at these NGOs not as solutions but as sites of 'problematization.' The purpose of understanding Ghanaian campaigns, their transnational and regional encounters, and the forms of governmentality they produce is not to charge them with providing answers to the question, how do we end cutting? Instead, it is to account for their work, their historicity, the life worlds and subjectivities they engender, and the modes of reflection, imminent critique, and opposition they set in motion"--Provided by publisher.


Matchmaking in Middle Class India

Matchmaking in Middle Class India

Author: Parul Bhandari

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-02-01

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9811515999

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This book is an extensive and thorough exploration of the ways in which the middle class in India select their spouse. Using the prism of matchmaking, this book critically unpacks the concept of the 'modern' and traces the importance of moralities and values in the making of middle class identities, by bringing to the fore intersections and dynamics of caste, class, gender, and neoliberalism. The author discusses a range of issues: romantic relationships among youth, use of online technology and of professional services like matrimonial agencies and detective agencies, encounters of love and heartbreak, impact of experiences of pain and humiliation on spouse-selection, and the involvement of family in matchmaking. Based on this comprehensive account, she elucidates how the categories of 'love' and 'arranged' marriages fall short of explaining, in its entirety and essence, the contemporary process of spouse-selection in urban India. Though the ethnographic research has been conducted in India, this book is of relevance to social scientists studying matchmaking practices, youth cultures, modernity and the middle class in other societies, particularly in parts of Asia. While being based on thorough scholarship, the book is written in accessible language to appeal to a larger audience.


Book Synopsis Matchmaking in Middle Class India by : Parul Bhandari

Download or read book Matchmaking in Middle Class India written by Parul Bhandari and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an extensive and thorough exploration of the ways in which the middle class in India select their spouse. Using the prism of matchmaking, this book critically unpacks the concept of the 'modern' and traces the importance of moralities and values in the making of middle class identities, by bringing to the fore intersections and dynamics of caste, class, gender, and neoliberalism. The author discusses a range of issues: romantic relationships among youth, use of online technology and of professional services like matrimonial agencies and detective agencies, encounters of love and heartbreak, impact of experiences of pain and humiliation on spouse-selection, and the involvement of family in matchmaking. Based on this comprehensive account, she elucidates how the categories of 'love' and 'arranged' marriages fall short of explaining, in its entirety and essence, the contemporary process of spouse-selection in urban India. Though the ethnographic research has been conducted in India, this book is of relevance to social scientists studying matchmaking practices, youth cultures, modernity and the middle class in other societies, particularly in parts of Asia. While being based on thorough scholarship, the book is written in accessible language to appeal to a larger audience.


Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects

Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects

Author: Lynn Hollen Lees

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-12-21

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1107038405

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This is an innovative study of how British Colonial rule and society in Malayan towns and plantations transformed immigrants into British subjects.


Book Synopsis Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects by : Lynn Hollen Lees

Download or read book Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects written by Lynn Hollen Lees and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-21 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an innovative study of how British Colonial rule and society in Malayan towns and plantations transformed immigrants into British subjects.