Something Old, Something Bold

Something Old, Something Bold
Author: Beth Montemurro
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2006-04-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0813539447

Weddings in the United States are often extravagant, highly ritualized, and costly affairs. In this book, Beth Montemurro takes a fresh look at the wedding process, offering a perspective not likely to be found in the many planning books and magazines readily available to the modern bride. Montemurro draws upon years of ethnographic research to explore what prenuptial events mean to women participants and what they tell us about the complexity and ambiguity of gender roles. Through the bachelorette party and the bridal shower, the bride-to-be is initiated into the role of wife by her friends and family, who present elaborate scenarios that demonstrate both what she is sacrificing and what she is gaining. Montemurro argues that American society at the turn of the twenty-first century is still married to traditional conceptions of masculinity and femininity and that prenuptial rituals contribute to the stabilization of gender inequalities

Modernizing Localities in Poland

Modernizing Localities in Poland
Author: Waldemar Kuligowski
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2024-09-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1666950467

Modernizing Localities in Poland: A Never-ending Transformation investigates modern cultural traditions and their transformations in Poland. Designed as a series of case studies analyzing music festivals, city parades, rural rituals, and contemporary bachelorette parties, this book creates a rich panorama of Poland's cultural, social, and political transformations. The catalysts for these transformations are highway drivers, music festival and street parade participants, local activists and artists, reenactors of history and tradition. Thanks to their insight, the author describes local events and communities from the inside, focusing on the values and motivations that prompted their participation in Poland’s cultural traditions.

Marriage and Divorce in America

Marriage and Divorce in America
Author: Jaimee L. Hartenstein
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2023-08-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1440868379

This wide-ranging resource will help readers understand the history and current state of marriage and divorce in the United States, including their many cultural, economic, political, legal, and religious facets. Coverage includes information and insights on broad trends in relationships that are changing the landscape of American society, such as childcare, delayed marriages, blended families, and prevalence of marriage and divorce among various socioeconomic groups. In addition, the encyclopedia features in-depth entries covering high-interest issues that are shaping the character of marriage, divorce, relationships, and family life in the 21st century, including economic/legal topics (child support, prenups, divisions of assets in divorce, the wedding industry, no-fault divorce, legal representation in divorce, and economic independence as a factor in separations/divorce); other divorce factors (infidelity, parenthood, illness, domestic abuse, and child abuse); and a host of other legal/cultural issues, factors, and phenomena, both current and historical.

Corrupt Capital

Corrupt Capital
Author: Kenneth Sebastian León
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0429589379

This book offers a deep dive into the social, political, and economic forces that make white-collar crime and corruption a staple feature of the nightlife economy. The author, a former bouncer-turned-bartender of party bars and nightclubs in a large U.S. city, draws from an auto-ethnographic case study to describe and explain the routine and embedded nature of corruption and deviance among the regulators and the regulated in the nightlife environment. This text offers a contemporary and incisive theoretical framework on the criminogenic features and structural contradictions of capitalism. The author both describes and explains how the dominant political economy is rife with structural contradictions that, in turn, generate various manifestations of white-collar crime, organizational deviance, and public corruption. The author uses the bar and nightlife environment to empirically anchor these claims. Methodologically, the research is innovative in advancing inquiry into ethically and logistically challenging environments. The style of writing and framing of the text is one that punches upward and avoids the voyeuristic and reductionist tropes historically associated with "dangerous fieldwork." Through a range of disciplinary perspectives, Corrupt Capital offers both scholarly rigor and inviting prose to advance our understanding of crimes of the relatively powerful and powerless alike. An accessible and compelling text, this book will appeal to readers in criminology, sociology, law and society, political science, and all those interested in learning about the relationship between power, law, and routinized corruption in the nightlife economy.

Prenuptial Rituals in Scotland

Prenuptial Rituals in Scotland
Author: Sheila M. Young
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2019-10-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1793603871

The hen (or bachelorette) party, with its groups of visible, raucous women on trains, planes, and in public spaces is ubiquitous throughout the English-speaking world. The practice of the blackening, a unique form of kidnapping and “punishment” ritual, is limited to North Eastern parts of Scotland and to specific sectors of the population. Both are prenuptial rituals enacted by women. In Prenuptial Rituals in Scotland, Sheila Young produces a thorough description of how these two rituals were and are enacted and analyzes the ways these practices have changed through time as a social commentary. Young’s study provides valuable insights into identity, gender, social class, contemporary attitudes to ritual, and what it means to approach marriage in the twenty first century.

A Cultural History of Marriage in the Age of Empires

A Cultural History of Marriage in the Age of Empires
Author: Paul Puschmann
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2021-11-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350179744

During the age of empires (1800–1900), marriage was a key transition in the life course worldwide, a rite of passage everywhere with major cultural significance. This volume presents an overview of the period with essays on Courtship and Ritual; Religion, State and Law; Kinship and Social Networks; the Family Economy; Love and Sex; the Breaking of Vows; and Representations of Marriage. Using this framework, this volume explores global trends in marriage. In nineteenth-century Western Europe, marriage was increasingly regarded as the only way to reach happiness and self-fulfilment. In the United States former slaves obtained the right to marry, leading to a convergence in marriage patterns between the black and white populations. In Latin America, marriage remained less common, but marriage rates were nevertheless on the rise. In African and Asian societies, European colonial powers tried to change indigenous marriage customs like polygamy and arranged marriages, but had limited success. Across the globe, in a time of turbulent political and economic change, marriage and the family remained crucial institutions, the linchpins of society that they had been for centuries.

Wannabes, Goths, and Christians

Wannabes, Goths, and Christians
Author: Amy C. Wilkins
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2008-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0226898482

On college campuses and in high school halls, being white means being boring. Since whiteness is the mainstream, white kids lack a cultural identity that’s exotic or worth flaunting. To remedy this, countless white youths across the country are now joining more outré subcultures like the Black- and Puerto Rican–dominated hip-hop scene, the glamorously morose goth community, or an evangelical Christian organization whose members reject campus partying. Amy C. Wilkins’s intimate ethnography of these three subcultures reveals a complex tug-of-war between the demands of race, class, and gender in which transgressing in one realm often means conforming to expectations in another. Subcultures help young people, especially women, navigate these connecting territories by offering them different sexual strategies: wannabes cross racial lines, goths break taboos by becoming involved with multiple partners, and Christians forego romance to develop their bond with God. Avoiding sanctimonious hysteria over youth gone astray, Wilkins meets these kids on their own terms, and the result is a perceptive and provocative portrait of the structure of young lives.

The Challenge of Progress

The Challenge of Progress
Author: Harry F. Dahms
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2019-11-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1787145719

Globalization has accelerated the process of social, political, cultural, and especially economic transformations since the 1990s. Examining the choices of modern society, Dahms and contributors ask: what are the social costs of “progress”?

Women and Sexuality

Women and Sexuality
Author: Kelly Campbell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2022-12-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1440873054

This important volume offers readers an in-depth understanding of women's sexuality around the world, bringing to light a history that is often suppressed. What is reproductive health like for women in other countries of the world? How are marriage and love viewed in other cultures? This volume examines aspects of women and sexuality across the globe. Each chapter in this volume focuses on a different world region, including North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and East Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania. The topics covered in each chapter include sexual attitudes and practices, the influence of religion on sexuality, sexual violence, reproductive health, love and marriage, and the media and sexuality. Specific country and cultural examples are interwoven such that readers come away with an understanding of the beliefs, practices, traditions, and customs that are common in each world region. Readers will be able to make cross-cultural comparisons, learning how the sexuality of women varies and yet is also the same from culture to culture. This volume is written in clear, jargon-free language, making it appropriate and useful for students and general readers.

The Tapestry of Culture

The Tapestry of Culture
Author: Abraham Rosman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2017-01-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1442252898

The most exciting thing about anthropology is that it enables the student to become acquainted with people of different cultures. The Tapestry of Culture provides the student with the basic concepts necessary to understand these different cultures while showing that cultural variations occur within certain limits. Though the forces of globalization have caused cultures of the world around us to become increasingly similar, the book shows that people nevertheless cling to ethnic identities, and their cultural distinctiveness. The tenth edition of this popular textbook incorporates new material throughout, such as ethnographic examples in every chapter; strengthened discussions of gender, transnationalism, and globalization; and more. To enhance the experience of both instructors and students, the tenth edition is accompanied by a learning package that includes an instructor’s manual with outlines, key terms, discussion questions, lists of films and other resources, and more; a test bank; and a companion website.