Flamenco is renowned for its passion and flamboyance. Yet because it generates such visceral responses, it is often overlooked as a site for subtler discourses.

This absorbing book articulates powerful and convincing arguments on such key subjects as ethnicity, irony, authenticity, the body and resistance. Franco's 'politics of original sin' had left its mark on every aspect of Spanish life between 1936 and 1975, and flamenco music was no exception. Although widely portrayed as an apolitical, even frivolous form of entertainment, flamenco is shown here to have played a role in both...

Carnival songs resemble a tabloid newspaper in their verve, spirit and range of themes. They are a measure of social change and an annual summary of events and opinion. The songs involve considerable artistry and are renowned as well for their raucous humor and vulgar concerns. (Promiscuity and sexual misalliances are common subjects.)

Banned by Franco during the Spanish Civil War, the Cadiz carnival began a revival in the 1960's following decades of repression. This fascinating book examines carnival song and society during the last years of the Franco dictatorship and the...

As the 1994 World Cup Finals in the United States clearly demonstrated, football is the quintessential global game. One of the world's most popular arenas for the expression of conflict and emotion, it is virtually unparalleled as a site for cultural analysis. Players, officials, supporters and commentators all have key roles in a social drama incorporating the deeply symbolic and ritualistic. A powerful vehicle for ideals of masculinity, football also offers penetrating insights into the iconography of the body; manifestations of rivalry and conflict; discourses of knowledge; expressions...

As the 1994 World Cup Finals in the United States clearly demonstrated, football is the quintessential global game. One of the world's most popular arenas for the expression of conflict and emotion, it is virtually unparalleled as a site for cultural analysis. Players, officials, supporters and commentators all have key roles in a social drama incorporating the deeply symbolic and ritualistic. A powerful vehicle for ideals of masculinity, football also offers penetrating insights into the iconography of the body; manifestations of rivalry and conflict; discourses of knowledge; expressions...

This study, which breaks new ground in urban research, is a comprehensive and definitive account of one of the many communities of South Asians to emerge throughout the Western industrial world since the Second World War - the British Pakistanis in Manchester. This book examines the cultural dimensions of immigrant entrepreneurship and the formation of an ethnic enclave community, and explores the structure and theory of urban ritual and its place within the immigrant gift economy.

This compelling study of gender and sexual diversity in the Southern Philippines addresses general questions about the relationship between the making of gender and sexualities, the politics of national and ethnic identities and processes of cultural transformation in a world of contract labourers and transnational consumers. The book focuses, in particular, on the meaning and experience of local 'gays' -- transvestite/transgender-homosexual men -- who are at once celebrated as purveyors of beauty (defined in terms of a global American otherness) and valorized as impotent men and defiled...

'Development' is clearly a contentious concept. It is common knowledge that there is frequently a troubling divide between what Western developers think development entails and how those people affected understand the ensuing processes.

By treating development as problematic, this book seeks to generate new insights into the relationships between the various parties involved and to enhance understanding of the ways in which particular 'discourses of development' are generated. Authors raise provocative questions about the relationship of politics, power, ideology and rhetoric to the...

'Development' is clearly a contentious concept. It is common knowledge that there is frequently a troubling divide between what Western developers think development entails and how those people affected understand the ensuing processes.

By treating development as problematic, this book seeks to generate new insights into the relationships between the various parties involved and to enhance understanding of the ways in which particular 'discourses of development' are generated. Authors raise provocative questions about the relationship of politics, power, ideology and rhetoric to the...

- What makes people care about the environment?

- Why and how do different cultural groups value land in different ways?

With increasing international concern about green issues, and the apparent failure of mechanistic solutions to complex problems, Uncommon Ground provides a timely understanding of the cultural values that underpin human-environmental relations. Through a comparison of two very different groups, the Aboriginal people and the white cattle farmers in Far North Queensland, Uncommon Ground explores how the human-environmental relationship is culturally...

- What makes people care about the environment?

- Why and how do different cultural groups value land in different ways?

With increasing international concern about green issues, and the apparent failure of mechanistic solutions to complex problems, Uncommon Ground provides a timely understanding of the cultural values that underpin human-environmental relations. Through a comparison of two very different groups, the Aboriginal people and the white cattle farmers in Far North Queensland, Uncommon Ground explores how the human-environmental relationship is culturally...