Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Customs & Traditions

"Belcher s volume contains a much needed and extremely well-integrated overview and discussion of a vast inter-related West African culture complex that deserves and requires the kind of original, insightful treatment it receives here." David Conrad

Epic Traditions of Africa crosses boundaries of language, distance, and time to gather material from diverse African oral epic traditions. Stephen Belcher explores the rich past and poetic force of African epics and places them in historical and social, as well as artistic contexts. Colorful narratives from Central and West African...

Engagingly written and fully illustrated, Fast and Feast explores the medieval approach to food, its preparation, and its presentation. Since attitudes toward food were shaped by the religious and social ideas of the period, the medieval perspective is clearly developed for the modern reader and, in turn, sheds light on the character of life in the Middle Ages. The subject is examined from the varied points of view of all concerned: host, guest, cook, and servant.

Bridget Ann Henisch draws her material from a wide range of primary sources: devotional literature, sermons,...

This book provides the first comprehensive history of smokeless tobacco consumption from 1550 through the middle of the 20th century in Europe and North America. Focusing throughout on the individual consumer of tobacco, author Jan Rogonzinski presents and analyzes consumption data and summarizes the economic and other factors that have affected consumer choices. Of particular significance is a chapter on the governmental regulation of the marketing of tobacco that indicates an economic linkage between the new and the old worlds in the use of state-granted monopolies to market tobacco in...

After long weeks of boring, perhaps spoiled sea rations, one of the first things Spaniards sought in the New World was undoubtedly fresh food. Probably they found the local cuisine strange at first, but soon they were sending American plants and animals around the world, eventually enriching the cuisine of many cultures.

Drawing on original accounts by Europeans and native Americans, this pioneering work offers the first detailed description of the cuisines of the Aztecs, the Maya, and the Inca. Sophie Coe begins with the basic foodstuffs, including maize, potatoes, beans, peanuts,...

This is an anthropological study of boyhood in a group of related Igbo villages called Afikpo, in souteastern Nigeria. About half of the book is taken up with the description and analysis of adolescent initiation rites, providing a close and detailed view of rituals that for the most part have only been touched upon in literature.

The work makes use of psychoanalytic theory, with a logic that is grounded in data, blended with traditional cultural anthropological analysis. Ottenberg's understanding of the dynamics of the symbols and their unstated meanings contributes to the study of...

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The author presents us with the first collection of facts on the cultural aspects of food and eating among the Southern Bantu. She demonstrates conclusively that this universally neglected subject can and must be treated in the science of human civilization. This analysis considerably enlarges and deepens our conception of early human organization, especially in its economic aspect.

The first authoritative guide to how the world drinks, this reference details alcohol use in different countries and cultures. Variation is striking, with alcohol sometimes a food, a sacrament, a symbol, a tool, a tranquilizer, a medicine, a love potion, or an object of scorn--often with very different meanings and uses in a single country. This volume reveals multicultural and ethnic beliefs, practices, and attitudes about drinking around the world.

An extensive introduction discusses the close link between alcohol and culture and provides a foundation for the rest of the...

Tea is one of the world's most popular beverages, and the birthplace of tea is China. Until the 1830s, China was the only producer of tea, and today it remains the world's greatest producer and consumer. Tea in China is a history of China's national drink, where it came from, how it was drunk, and the place it has occupied in Chinese society from prehistory to the present.

Prehistoric use of tea by Peking Man and Laotian Man are discussed, as are the changing teas favored by the various dynasties. The role of tea in the spread of religions is reviewed, as is the impact of Chinese teas...

This is the one reference work that French teachers, students and librarians need for student assignments on the regions of France. A one-stop, easy-to-use reference guide organized by region, it offers in-depth and comprehensive coverage of the cultural life (including cuisine and recipes), customs, history, politics, and the economy of each region. There is no other reference work like it in either English or French. It makes the 22 regions of France accessible to students and others interested in modern and contemporary France, and helps them to understand the complexities of France...

This book offers a guided tour of the current state scholarship on daily life, including the knowledge that generated and suggestions for further research. Edited by Peter N. Stearns, the eminent social historian and Chair of the Advanced Placement World History committee.

The history of daily life is one of the fastest growing areas of student inquiry and popular interest. Little wonder it raises so many mesmerizing questions and makes the familiar fascinating. What does it mean, for example, that dolls for American girls in the 1870s and 1880s often came complete with caskets and...

With keen insight and subtle humor, John F. Kasson explores the history and politics of etiquette from America's colonial times through the nineteenth century. He describes the transformation of our notion of "gentility," once considered a birthright to some, and the development of etiquette as a middle-class response to the new urban and industrial economy and to the excesses of democratic society.