In the Presence of Mystery

In the Presence of Mystery
Author: Michael H. Barnes
Publisher: Twenty-Third Publications
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2003
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781585952595

Goes to the very core of religious belief and practice, ranging from preliterate to modern culture. Barnes provides many bits of folk tales, myths, anecdotes, and literal illustrations to vividly present ideas.

Memetics

Memetics
Author: Tim Tyler
Publisher: Tim Tyler
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2011-08-19
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1461035260

Memetics is the name commonly given to the study of memes - a term originally coined by Richard Dawkins to describe small inherited elements of human culture. Memes are the cultural equivalent of DNA genes - and memetics is the cultural equivalent of genetics. Memes have become ubiquitous in the modern world - but there has been relatively little proper scientific study of how they arise, spread and change - apparently due to turf wars within the social sciences and misguided resistance to Darwinian explanations being applied to human behaviour. However, with the modern explosion of internet memes, I think this is bound to change. With memes penetrating into every mass media channel, and with major companies riding on their coat tails for marketing purposes, social scientists will surely not be able to keep the subject at arm's length for much longer. This will be good - because an understanding of memes is important. Memes are important for marketing and advertising. They are important for defending against marketing and advertising. They are important for understanding and managing your own mind. They are important for understanding science, politics, religion, causes, propaganda and popular culture. Memetics is important for understanding the origin and evolution of modern humans. It provides insight into the rise of farming, science, industry, technology and machines. It is important for understanding the future of technological change and human evolution. This book covers the basic concepts of memetics, giving an overview of its history, development, applications and the controversy that has been associated with it.

Culture and Human Nature

Culture and Human Nature
Author: Horace Kallen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2020-03-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000676455

This volume illustrates Melford Spiro's explorations of key relationships among culture, society, and human nature. He addresses such fundamental issues as the limitations of cultural relativism, the problem of explanation in the social sciences, and the importance of a comparative approach to the study of social and cultural system.

Sociological Worlds

Sociological Worlds
Author: Stephen K. Sanderson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1135966141

This reissue of the now classic Sociological Worlds (originally published in 1995) attempts to present a comprehensive picture of human social life--from the perspective of the comparative-historical revolution in sociology and presents some of the best theoretical and empirical work that is now being done by comparative-historical sociologists, as well as work by their close cousins, socio-cultural anthropologists. From this perspective, readers gain a picture of the major ways in which human societies differ. For this new library edition, Professor Sanderson has provided both a new preface and three contributions that did not appear in the original edition.

Handbook of Biblical Social Values, Third Edition

Handbook of Biblical Social Values, Third Edition
Author: John J. Pilch
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2016-11-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498289657

Values are culturally specific. This handbook explains select biblical social values in their Mediterranean cultural contexts. Some examples of values are altruism, freedom, family-centeredness, obedience, parenting, and power. Though the English words for the values described here would be familiar to readers (e.g., altruism) the meanings of such words differ between cultures. In the Mediterranean world, for instance, altruism is a duty incumbent upon anyone who has surplus. It is interpersonal and group specific. In the West, especially in the United States, altruism is impersonal and universally oriented generosity that operates in a highly organized context. This handbook not only presents the Mediterranean meanings of these value words but also contrasts those meanings with Western ones.

Analyzing Documentary Accounts

Analyzing Documentary Accounts
Author: Randy Hodson
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 100
Release: 1999-07-16
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780761917434

Although ethnographic evidence has accumulated in fields ranging from organizational studies to sociology, these studies have not been fully exploited except as sources of descriptive data. Analyzing Documentary Accounts provides researchers with complete guidelines from mining ethnographic data through the use of new analytic techniques. Readers will find Analyzing Documentary Accounts the key to unlocking the rich data sources available in ethnographic material. Using examples from human relations and Hodson's workplace files, author Randy Hodson explains the benefits and limitations of the quantitative analysis of extant bodies of ethnographic evidence, ways to do reliability and validity checks, methods for coding the data, methods for analyzing multiple ethnographic studies, and suggestions for effectively combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

Television for Women

Television for Women
Author: Rachel Moseley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2016-11-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317428471

Television for Women brings together emerging and established scholars to reconsider the question of ‘television for women’. In the context of the 2000s, when the potential meanings of both terms have expanded and changed so significantly, in what ways might the concept of programming, addressed explicitly to a group identified by gender still matter? The essays in this collection take the existing scholarship in this field in significant new directions. They expand its reach in terms of territory (looking beyond, for example, the paradigmatic Anglo-American axis) and also historical span. Additionally, whilst the influential methodological formation of production, text and audience is still visible here, the new research in Television for Women frequently reconfigures that relationship. The topics included here are far-reaching; from television as material culture at the British exhibition in the first half of the twentieth century, women’s roles in television production past and present, to popular 1960s television such as The Liver Birds and, in the twenty-first century, highly successful programmes including Orange is the New Black, Call the Midwife, One Born Every Minute and Wanted Down Under. This book presents ground-breaking research on historical and contemporary relationships between women and television around the world and is an ideal resource for students of television, media and gender studies.

Adolescence and Puberty

Adolescence and Puberty
Author: John Bancroft
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 318
Release: 1990
Genre: Adolescent psychology
ISBN: 0195053362

Scientists from 10 disciplines contribute essays which explore various aspects of this critical stage in human development, in a volume designed for the benefit of social and developmental psychologists, psychologists interested in sexuality studies, and child and adolescent psychiatrists.

The Oxford Handbook of Historical Ecology and Applied Archaeology

The Oxford Handbook of Historical Ecology and Applied Archaeology
Author: Christian Isendahl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2019-01-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0191653330

The Oxford Handbook of Historical Ecology and Applied Archaeology presents theoretical discussions, methodological outlines, and case-studies describing the field of overlap between historical ecology and the emerging sub-discipline of applied archaeology to highlight how modern environments and landscapes have been shaped by humans. Historical ecology is based on the recognition that humans are not only capable of modifying their environments, but that all environments on earth have already been directly or indirectly modified. This includes anthropogenic climate change, widespread deforestations, and species extinctions, but also very local alterations, the effects of which may last a few years, or may have legacies lasting centuries or more. With contributions from anthropologists, archaeologists, human geographers, and historians, this volume focuses not just on defining human impacts in the past, but on the ways that understanding these changes can help inform contemporary practices and development policies. Some chapters present examples of how ancient or current societies have modified their environments in sustainable ways, while others highlight practices that had unintended long-term consequences. The possibilities of learning from these practices are discussed, as is the potential of using the long history of human resource exploitation as a method for building or testing models of future change. The volume offers overviews for students, researchers, and professionals with an interest in conservation or development projects who want to understand what practical insights can be drawn from history, and who seek to apply their work to contemporary issues.