In the cultural and social formations of the past, practices exist for the generation and integration of moments having and giving sense with the objective of strengthening the cultural and social cohesion. Such practices and processes have a constructive character, even if this is not always the intention of the actors themselves. As the production of sense is one of the central fields of action of cultural and political practice, the articles examine with an interdisciplinary perspective how, in different contexts, the construction of sense was organized and implemented as a cultural...

What do we know about the urban impoverished areas of the world and the living environment of its inhabitants? How did the urban poor cope with their surroundings? How did they interpret and adopt urban space in order to fight against their position at the periphery of society? This volume takes up these questions and investigates how far approaches of cultural sciences can contribute to overcome the exotification of the ghetto (Loic Wacquant) and instead to look at the heterogeneity and individuality behind the facades. It opens new perspectives for the research of poverty and inequalities...

This volume adopts a practical approach to cultural transfer and exchange through the concept of "memory box." Ideas of displacement, transfer, and cultural memory are explored through case studies in Scotland, Italy, and Germany, from Finland and France to the American colonies. The volume's contributors develop an understanding of memory boxes as cultural constructions involved in the process of making and disputing memory--yet that, simultaneously, are important agents for cultural transfer over space and time. The book emphasizes memory box as an idea that allows us to study the cultural...

How do historical sources narrate or recount deviance? Is there a relationship between the manner in which divergent behaviour is recounted and the type of source in which this behavior is presented? The articles in this book present examples of the recounting of deviance by using sources such as chronicles, travel accounts, and court records from 15th century England, 15th-16th century Germany, 17th century Spain, 17th-18th century Venice, and 17th--18th century Italy and France.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, musicians' mobilities and migrations led to widespread cultural exchange of music. Adopting viewpoints that reflect different methodological approaches and research cultures, this book presents studies on the scope, strategies, and artistic outcomes of mobile and migratory musicians as well as on the transfer of music. By looking at elite and non-elite musicians and their everyday mobilities to major and minor centers of music production and practice, new biographical patterns and new stylistic paradigms in Eastern, Western, and Southern Europe...