Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Customs & Traditions

"A watershed book ... an interdisciplinary array of essays highlights both the need for, and importance of, rights of passage to mark important transitions in our lives." -- Thresholds

Nostalgia for the imagined warm family gatherings of yesteryear has colored our understanding of family celebrations. Elizabeth Pleck examines family traditions over two centuries and finds a complicated process of change in the way Americans have celebrated holidays such as Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Chinese New Year, and Passover as well as the life cycle rituals of birth, coming of age, marriage, and death. By the early nineteenth century carnivalesque celebrations outside the home were becoming sentimental occasions that used consumer culture and displays of status and wealth to...

First published in 1937, this collection presents a series of vignettes on Japanese life and thought, taken from 25 years of the author's work for the Japanese tourist board between 1912 and 1937.

Dealing in subjects as diverse as wrestling, singing insects and Japanese humour, this reissue offers a fascinating insight into the life and culture of pre-World War Two Japan which is of great historical interest, not only to students of Asian studies but to all those interested in Japan, its people and its heritage.

Cultures of the City explores the cultural mediation of relationships between people and urban spaces in Latin/o America and how these mediations shape the identities of cities and their residents.

Addressing a broad spectrum of phenomena and disciplinary approaches, the contributors to this volume analyze lived urban experiences and their symbolic representation in cultural texts. Individual chapters explore Havana in popular music; Mexico City in art; Buenos Aires, Recife, and Salvador in film; and Asuncion and Buenos Aires in literature. Others focus on particular...

People in the ancient western world made a distinction between being fat and being a glutton, even when they valued self-control and criticized excessive behavior. Examining many works of early western cultures, this book shows how ancient views both confirm and challenge our contemporary assumptions about fat bodies and gluttons.

"Eating to Excess: The Meaning of Gluttony and the Fat Body in the Ancient World" explores the historical roots of the symbolic relationship between fatness, gluttony, and immorality in western culture. It includes chapters on Greek philosophy, medicine, and...