The Uses of the Folk introduces a new way of understanding the relationship between artists and populations designated as "the folk" and the scholars who define them. The issue begins with the premise that vernacular culture is an important tool through which communities assert their interests and identities within national and international politics. More than simply protecting or preserving traditions in the face of modernization, folk culture and state or academic interest in it gives many practitioners a rare but powerful voice within debates about modernity, national identity, and...

Created by George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward and sung by generations of black performers, Porgy and Bess has been both embraced and reviled since its debut in 1935. In this comprehensive account, Ellen Noonan examines the opera's long history of invention and reinvention as a barometer of twentieth-century American expectations about race, culture, and the struggle for equality. In its surprising endurance lies a myriad of local, national, and international stories.
For black performers and commentators, Porgy and Bess was a nexus for debates about cultural representation...

In The Making of a Counsellor case studies illustrate work done with impossible' clients; other essays about orphans and debtors, accountancy trainees and expatriate employees explore new ways of thinking about these groups of people. More traditional, perhaps, are essays about work with neurological patients, adolescent youth club members, traumatised families, and the chronically mentally ill. Each essay breaks fresh ground in understanding the complexity of the problems and the richness of the counselling relationship.
In vivid narrative, The Making of a Counsellor....