The France of the Little-Middles

The France of the Little-Middles
Author: Marie Cartier
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2016-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785332295

The Poplars housing development in suburban Paris is home to what one resident called the “Little-Middles” – a social group on the tenuous border between the working- and middle- classes. In the 1960s The Poplars was a site of upward social mobility, which fostered an egalitarian sense of community among residents. This feeling of collective flourishing was challenged when some residents moved away, selling their homes to a new generation of upwardly mobile neighbors from predominantly immigrant backgrounds. This volume explores the strained reception of these migrants, arguing that this is less a product of racism and xenophobia than of anxiety about social class and the loss of a sense of community that reigned before.

The Pragmatics of Defining Religion

The Pragmatics of Defining Religion
Author: Platvoet
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 566
Release: 2018-11-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004379096

This volume promotes a pragmatic, anti-essentialist and anti-hegemonic approach to the problem of the definition of religion. It argues that definitions of religion are context-bound strategies for pursuing a variety of purposes, extra-academic as well as academic. Religions being immensely varied, complex and multi-functional phenomena, they need to be studied by several academic disciplines from many different perspectives. It is, therefore, legitimate and useful that many definitions of religions are developed. The volume has contributions from scholars in Philosophy of Religion, the Comparative Study of Religions, Anthropology of Religion, Sociology of Religion and Psychology of Religion. It has chapters on the polemics of defining religion in modern contexts, the history of the concept of religion, and the methodology of its definition; it includes several definition proposals.

Paris to the Moon

Paris to the Moon
Author: Adam Gopnik
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2001-12-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1588361381

Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner--in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans. In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light. Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades--but his was above all a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural and beautiful. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to enjoy a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café--a child (and perhaps a father, too) who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive. So, in the grand tradition of the American abroad, Gopnik walked the paths of the Tuileries, enjoyed philosophical discussions at his local bistro, wrote as violet twilight fell on the arrondissements. Of course, as readers of Gopnik's beloved and award-winning "Paris Journals" in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with day-to-day, not-so-fabled life. Evenings with French intellectuals preceded middle-of-the-night baby feedings; afternoons were filled with trips to the Musée d'Orsay and pinball games; weekday leftovers were eaten while three-star chefs debated a "culinary crisis." As Gopnik describes in this funny and tender book, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys--both hold new routines, new languages, a new set of rules by which everyday life is lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. "We went to Paris for a sentimental reeducation-I did anyway-even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we were expecting to learn, which I believe is why they call it an education."

Islamic Arms and Armor in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Islamic Arms and Armor in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Author: David G. Alexander
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2015-12-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1588395707

Armor and weaponry were central to Islamic culture not only as a means of conquest and the spread of the faith, but also as symbols of status, wealth, and power. The finest arms were made by master craftsmen working with the leading designers, goldsmiths, and jewelers, whose work transformed utilitarian military equipment into courtly works of art. This book reveals the diversity and artistic quality of one of the most important and encyclopedic collections of its kind in the West. The Metropolitan Museum's holdings span ten centuries and include representative pieces from almost every Islamic culture from Spain to the Caucasus. The collection includes rare early works, among them the oldest documented Islamic sword, and is rich in helmets and body armor, decorated with calligraphy and arabesques, that were worn in Iran and Anatolia in the late fifteenth century. Other masterpieces include a jeweled short sword (yatagan) with a blade of "watered" steel that comes from the court of Süleyman the Magnificent, a seventeenth-century gold-inlaid armor associated with Shah Jahan, and two gold-inlaid flintlock firearms belonging to the guard of Tipu Sultan of Mysore. Presenting 126 objects, each handsomely photographed and richly documented with a detailed description and discussion of its technical, historical, and artistic importance, this overview of the Met's holdings is supplemented by an introductory essay on the formation of the collection, and appendixes on iconography and on Turkman-style armor.

The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France

The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France
Author: Suzanne Desan
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 475
Release: 2006-06-19
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0520248163

Annotation A sophisticated and groundbreaking book on what women actually did and what actually happened to them during the French Revolution.

Stendhal

Stendhal
Author: Francesco Manzini
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1789141850

This is a book about the life and work of a singular writer, an author well-known for his biographies and travel writing but most famous for his novels The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma. As a child, Stendhal witnessed the unfolding of the French Revolution; as a young man, he served Napoleon first as a soldier and then as an administrator; and as a middle-aged man, he made it his task not to pursue his career, but instead to take as much paid leave as possible in order to be free and to be happy—and to write. Stendhal’s works often take the form of conversations with his readers—the “Happy Few” as he called them—about the things that matter most. He once claimed that he spent the majority of his life “carefully considering five or six main ideas.” This book makes clear what those main ideas were, why they mattered to Stendhal, and why they continue to matter to all of us.

Handbook for Liturgical Studies, Volume V

Handbook for Liturgical Studies, Volume V
Author: Anscar J. Chupungco
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 682
Release: 2016-03-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814662900

The final volume in the Handbook for Liturgical Studies series, Volume V: Liturgical Time and Space contains the concluding material for an integral study of the liturgy. It opens with a preliminary notion of time and space, before discussing in detail three types of liturgical celebrations on which time and space have a direct and particular bearing. The first of these is the Liturgy of the Hours. This topic is developed in the light of the early Christian tradition until the fourth century and its subsequent forms in both East and West. The second is the Liturgical Year, traditionally called the anni circulas. The development of the Liturgical Year during the first four centuries is reviewed. This is followed by adetaled study of the Byzantine, Roman, and non-Roman Western tradition. It concludes with the theology and spirituality of the Liturgical Year wherein the mystery of Christ as a saving event is made present in time, so that the faithful may lay hold of it through the Word and the sacraments. The theology of liturgical space is drawn from the mutual interaction between the assembled community, which gives meaning to the place of assembly, and the place itself, which upholds and signifies community. Articles and their contributors in Part I: Liturgy of the Hours are Liturgy of the Hours in the First Four Centuries," by Ruben Leikam, OSB; "Liturgy of the Hours in the East," by Robert Taft, SJ; "Liturgy of the Hours in the Roman Rite," by Ruben Leikam, OSB; "Liturgy of the Hours in the Non-Roman West," by Ruben Leikam, OSB; and "Theology of the Liturgy of the Hours," by Robert Taft, SJ Articles and their contributors in Part II: The Liturgical Year are "The Liturgical Year in the East," by Matias Auge, CMF; "The Liturgical Year in the East," by Elena Velkova Velkovska; "The Liturgical Year in the Roman Rite," by Matias Auge, CMF; "The Liturgical Year in the Non-Roman West," by Gabriel Ramis; "The Cult of Mary in East and West," by Ignacio Calabuig, OSM; "The Cult of Saints in East and West," by Philippe Rouillard, OSB; and "Theology of the Liturgical Year," by Matias Auge, CMF Articles and their contributors in Part III:Liturgical Space are "Dedication of the Church in East and West," by Ignacio Calabuig, OSM; "Liturgical Architecture in East and West," by Crispino Valenziano; and "Theology of Liturgical Space," by Cettina Militello. Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB, is the director of the Paul VI Institute of Liturgy in the Philippines and professor of liturgical inculturation at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in Rome. Among his publications are Liturgies of the Future: The Process and Methods of Inculturation andLiturgical Inculturation: Sacraments, Religiosity, and Catechesis, published by The Liturgical Press. "

Medicine in the Twentieth Century

Medicine in the Twentieth Century
Author: Roger Cooter
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 778
Release: 2020-08-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000150909

During the twentieth century, medicine has been radically transformed and powerfully transformative. In 1900, western medicine was important to philanthropy and public health, but it was marginal to the state, the industrial economy and the welfare of most individuals. It is now central to these aspects of life. Our prospects seem increasingly dependent on the progress of bio-medical sciences and genetic technologies which promise to reshape future generations. The editors of Medicine in the Twentieth Century have commissioned over forty authoritative essays, written by historical specialists but intended for general audiences. Some concentrate on the political economy of medicine and health as it changed from period to period and varied between countries, others focus on understandings of the body, and a third set of essays explores transformations in some of the theatres of medicine and the changing experiences of different categories of practitioners and patients.