Encounters like this occur thousands of times across the United States in nail salons increasingly owned and operated by Asian immigrants. This study looks closely for the first time at these intimate encounters, focusing on New York City, where such nail salons have become ubiquitous. Drawing from rich and compelling interviews, Miliann Kang takes us inside the nail industry, asking such questions as: Why have nail salons become so popular? Why do so many Asian women, and Korean women in particular, provide these services? Kang discovers multiple motivations for the manicure-from the pampering of white middle class women to the artistic self-expression of working class African American women to the mass consumption of body-related services. Contrary to notions of beauty service establishments as spaces for building community among women, The Managed Hand finds that while tentative and fragile solidarities can emerge across the manicure table, they generally give way to even more powerful divisions of race, class, and immigration.

    Cyberbullying. Narcissism. Social media has become the dominant force in young people's lives, and each day seems to bring another shocking tale of private pictures getting into the wrong hands, or a lament that young people feel compelled to share their each and every thought with the entire world. Have smartphones and social media created a generation of self-obsessed egomaniacs? Absolutely not, Donna Freitas argues in this provocative book. And, she says, these alarmist fears are drawing attention away from the real issues that young adults are facing. Drawing on a large-scale survey and interviews with students on thirteen college campuses, Freitas finds that what young people are overwhelmingly concerned with--what they really want to talk about--is happiness. They face enormous pressure to look perfect online--not just happy, but blissful, ecstatic, and fabulously successful. Unable to achieve this impossible standard, they are anxious about letting the less-than-perfect parts of themselves become public. Far from wanting to share everything, they are brutally selective when it comes to curating their personal profiles, and worry obsessively that they might unwittingly post something that could come back to haunt them later in life. Through candid conversations with young people from diverse backgrounds, Freitas reveals how even the most well-adjusted individuals can be stricken by self-doubt when they compare their experiences with the vast collective utopia that they see online. And sometimes, as on anonymous platforms like Yik Yak, what they see instead is a depressing cesspool of racism and misogyny. Yet young people are also extremely attached to their smartphones and apps, which sometimes bring them great pleasure. It is very much a love-hate relationship. While much of the public's attention has been focused on headline-grabbing stories, the everyday struggles and joys of young people have remained under the radar. Freitas brings their feelings to the fore, in the words of young people themselves. The Happiness Effect is an eye-opening window into their first-hand experiences of social media and its impact on them.

     Provides students with a complete introduction to the anthropology of religion Uses worldwide ethnographies to illustrate the theory Includes extensive bibliographies and a list of films and videos that encourage students to explore the field further Encourages students to see that anthropology is not just about reading or doing fieldwork, but offers an enriching way of looking at the world Each chapter introduces the central theoretical ideas in the anthropology of religion and illustrates them with specific case studies, such as witchcraft in Cameroon, shamanism in the Arctic, or women's initiation ceremonies Links contemporary ideas and practices with the work of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars.

    Author Jeff Hobbs, writing with heart, sensitivity, and insight, stunningly captures the challenges and triumphs of being a young person confronting the future - both their own and the cultures in which they live - in contemporary America.Combining complex social issues with the compelling experience of the individual, Hobbs takes us deep inside these boys' worlds. The foursome includes Tiofilo, a nonchalant skateboarder harboring serious ambitions to attend an elite college despite a father who doesn't believe in him; Carlos, son of undocumented delivery workers, who aims to follow in his older brother's footsteps and attend Yale; Own, ambivalent about high school in general but still yearning to fulfill the expectations of his successful and loving parents; and Sam, devoted member of the academic decathlon team who lives in a tiny cramped apartment with his Chinese mother and Jewish father and cannot wait to have some independence.Filled with portraits of secondary characters including friends, peers, parents, teachers, and girlfriends, this masterwork of immersive journalism is both intimate and profound and destined to ignite conversations about class, race, expectations, cultural divides, and even the concept of fate. Hobbs's portrayal of these young men is not only revelatory and relevant, but also moving, eloquent, and indelibly powerful.ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Jeff Hobbs graduated with a BA in English language and literature from Yale in 2002, where he was awarded the Willets and Meeker prizes for his writing. He is the author of 'The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace' and 'The Tourists'. He lives in Los Angeles with is wife and two children.RUNNING TIME ➼ 12hrs.©2020 Jeff Hobbs (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio

    Long-established techniques are carefully explained as well as exciting new methods as the authors describe the ways in which archaeologists seek to explain and interpret the remote past of humankind

    Peep culture is reality TV, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, over-the-counter spy gear, blogs, chat rooms, amateur porn, surveillance technology, Dr. Phil, Borat, cell phone photos of your drunk friend making out with her ex-boyfriend, and more. In the age of peep, core values and rights we once took for granted are rapidly being renegotiated, often without our even noticing.With hilarious, exasperated acuity, social critic Hal Niedzviecki dives into peep, starting his own video blog, joining every social network that will have him, monitoring the movements of his toddler, selling his secrets on Craigslist, hiring a private detective to investigate him, spying on his neighbors, trying out for reality TV shows and stripping for the pleasure of a web audience he isn't even sure exists. Part travelogue, part diary, part meditation and social history, The Peep Diaries explores a rapidly emerging digital phenomenon that is radically changing not just the entertainment landscape, but also the firmaments of our culture and society.The Peep Diaries introduces the arrival of the age of peep culture and explores its implications for entertainment, society, sex, politics and everyday life. Mixing first-rate reporting with sociological observations culled from the latest research, this book captures the shift from pop to peep and the way technology is turning gossip into documentary and Peeping Toms into entertainment journalists. Packed with stranger-than-fiction true-life characters and scenarios, The Peep Diaries reflects the aspirations and confusions of the growing number of people willing to trade the details of their private lives for catharsis, attention and notoriety.Hal Niedzviecki is the founder of Broken Pencil magazine and has published numerous works of social commentary and fiction, including Hello I'm Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity and Look Down, This Is Where It Must Have Happened, which is also published by City Lights Publishers.

    Shipler makes clear in this powerful, humane study, the invisible poor are engaged in the activity most respected in American ideology—hard, honest work. But their version of the American Dream is a nightmare: low-paying, dead-end jobs; the profound failure of government to improve upon decaying housing, health care, and education; the failure of families to break the patterns of child abuse and substance abuse. Shipler exposes the interlocking problems by taking us into the sorrowful, infuriating, courageous lives of the poor—white and black, Asian and Latino, citizens and immigrants. We encounter them every day, for they do jobs essential to the American economy.We meet drifting farmworkers in North Carolina, exploited garment workers in New Hampshire, illegal immigrants trapped in the steaming kitchens of Los Angeles restaurants, addicts who struggle into productive work from the cruel streets of the nation's capital—each life another aspect of a confounding, far-reaching urgent national crisis. And unlike mostworks on poverty, this one delves into the calculations of some employers as well—their razor-thin profits, their anxieties about competition from abroad, their frustrations in finding qualified workers.This impassioned book not only dissects the problems, but makes pointed, informed recommendations for change. It is a book that stands to make a difference.

    Based in part on Dr. Ruby K. Payne's myth shattering A Framework for Understanding Poverty, Bridges reaches out to the millions of service providers and businesses whose daily work connects them with the lives of people in poverty. In a highly readable format you'll find case studies, detailed analysis, helpful charts and exercises, and specific solutions you and your organization can implement right now to: Redesign programs to better serve people you work with; build skill sets for management to help guide employees; upgrade training for front-line staff like receptionists, case workers, and managers; improve treatment outcomes in health care and behavioral health care; increase the liklihood of moving from welfare to work. If your business, agency, or organization works with people from poverty, only a deeper understanding of their challenges--and strengths--will help you partner with them to create opportunities for success.

    This is the America we believe in a nation of opportunity, constrained only by ability and effort. But during the last twenty-five years we have seen a disturbing opportunity gap emerge. Americans have always believed in equality of opportunity, the idea that all kids, regardless of their family background, should have a decent chance to improve their lot in life. Now, this central tenet of the American dream seems no longer true or at the least, much less true than it was. Robert Putnam about whom The Economist said, "His scholarship is wide-ranging, his intelligence luminous, his tone modest, his prose unpretentious and frequently funny," offers a personal but also authoritative look at this new American crisis. Putnam begins with his high school class of 1959 in Port Clinton, Ohio. By and large the vast majority of those students "our kids" went on to lives better than those of their parents. But their children and grandchildren have had harder lives amid diminishing prospects. Putnam tells the tale of lessening opportunity through poignant life stories of rich and poor kids from cities and suburbs across the country, drawing on a formidable body of research done especially for this book. Our Kids is a rare combination of individual testimony and rigorous evidence. Putnam provides a disturbing account of the American dream that should initiate a deep examination of the future of our country.

    The leading narrative history that students love to read, now made more relevant and accessible.

    Lists 1001 creative ways to show I love you under such headings as erotica, myths of romance, no-cost gestures, 1-800-ROM-ANCE, great escapes, and time for love, and includes romance coupons and true love stories.

    And they've always agreed on one goal: to get out of tiny Paris, Texas, and see the world. The school's foreign exchange program seems like the perfect escape: Piper will go to the original Paris; Mei will go to China; Cassidy will go to Australia; and Izzy, unable to afford the program, will stay at home. To add spice to their semester away, and to stay connected to their best friends, the girls start The International Kissing Club, a Facebook page where they can anonymously update one another and brag about all the amazing guys they're meeting. After all, these girls are traveling abroad: amazing guys abound at every turn! But sometimes fun, flirty vacation flings turn into more serious romances, and sometimes you don't return from abroad the same person you were. Will the girls' relationships-and their friendships-be able to survive?

    This account of an American institution explores the possibility that the magazine, in purporting to teach about distant cultures, actually tells us much more about our own. Lutz & Collins go inside the Nat'l Geographic Society to investigate how its photographers, editors & designers select images & text to produce representations of 3rd World cultures. Thru interviews with editors, they describe the process as one of negotiating standards of balance, objectivity, informational content & visual beauty. Then, in a close reading of some 600 photos, they examine issues of race, gender, privilege, progress & modernity thru an analysis of the way such things as color, pose, framing & vantage point are used in representations of non-Western peoples. Finally, interviewing readers, they assess how the magazine's cultural narratives are received & interpreted, & identify a tension between the desire to know about other peoples' ways & the wish to validate middle-class American values. The result is a complex portrait of an institution & its role in promoting a kind of conservative humanism that acknowledges universal values & celebrates diversity while allowing readers to relegate non-Western peoples to earlier stages of progress. We see the magazine & the Society as a middlebrow arbiter of taste, wealth & power. We get a telling glimpse into middle-class culture & all the wishes, assumptions & fears it brings to bear on armchair explorations of the world.

    She helps when the guys drink too much before a game. She tapes them up when they're injured. And in return, they watch her back. While most students spend their time partying, Lily spends her free time working. But her job as the assistant athletic trainer for the PSU football team comes with the benefit of being friends with every player on the team. Except the entirely too cocky, reckless, and charming golden boy of the team: Vincent Bradshaw. When they aren't spouting insults at one another, Vincent and Lily are doing everything in their power to avoid each other. That is, until Vincent gets injured.

    Some modern thinkers view it as the first work dealing with the social sciences of sociology, demography, and cultural history. The Muqaddimah also deals with Islamic theology, historiography, the philosophy of history, economics, political theory, and ecology. It has also been described as an early representative of social Darwinism.