Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Customs & Traditions

Slogans such as "Let's put Christ back into Christmas" or "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" hold an appeal to Christians who oppose the commercializing of events they hold sacred. However, through a close look at the rise of holidays in the United States, Leigh Schmidt show us that commercial appropriations of these occasions were as religious in form as they were secular. The rituals of America's holiday bazaar that emerged in the nineteenth century offered a luxuriant merger of the holy and the profane--a heady blend of fashion and faith, merchandising and gift-giving, profits and...

For many Southern men living in or close to rural landscapes, hunting is a passion. But it is not a timeless activity in a cultural void. Whether pursuers of fox or raccoon, deer or rabbits, quail or dove, Southern hunters reveal for Stuart Marks complex patterns of male bonding, social status, and relationships with nature. Marks, who has written two outstanding books on hunting in Africa, was born and has long lived in the South. Examining Southern hunting from frontier times through the antebellum era to the present day, he shows it to be a litmus test of rural identity. "Drawing on the...

The collection is particularly strong in farming and...

Tip-toeing at Gittisham, tree-dressing at Aston-on-Clun, coconut dancing in Bacup and clipping-the-church at Painswick are all rituals peculiar to their localities, annual contributions to the extraordinary fabric of English social life. These are a few of the dozens of quaint and curious traditions still carried on in the towns and shires of England and which are described in this book. It also explains the origins of well-known customs like maypole dancing, well-dressing and rush-bearing, and it indicates when and where these events may be witnessed.
Not all these customs go back to...

This book is about hunting and hunters -- a fundamental but understudied aspect of Canadian history, culture, and society. The Culture of Hunting in Canada presents a wide range of essays by practitioners as well as scholars of hunting, and from lobbyists both for and against hunters.

The essays collected here highlight important events and issues -- both historic and contemporary -- regarding the culture and practice of hunting. Topics addressed include hunting identities; conservation and its relationship to hunting; tensions between hunters and non-hunters and between...

Before the 1940s, ninety per cent of Mennonites in North America lived on farms. Fifty years later, less than ten per cent of Mennonites continue to farm and more than a quarter of the population - the largest demographic block - are professionals. Mennonite teenagers are forced to contend with a broader definition of community, as parochial education systems are restructured to compete in a new marketplace. Women are adopting leadership roles alongside men. Many Mennonites have embraced modernity.

Leo Driedger explores the impact of professionalism and individualism on Mennonite...