Every day we hear this idea expressed and witness its reality in our lives-through the people we meet, the products we buy, the foods we eat, and the movies we watch. In this bold look at the cultural effects of a shrinking world, leading cultural theorist Arjun Appadurai places these challenges and pleasures of contemporary life in a broad global perspective.Offering a new framework for the cultural study of globalization, Modernity at Large shows how the imagination works as a social force in today's world, providing new resources for identity and energies for creating alternatives to the nation-state, whose era some see as coming to an end. Appadurai examines the current epoch of globalization, which is characterized by the twin forces of mass migration and electronic mediation, and provides fresh ways of looking at popular consumption patterns, debates about multiculturalism, and ethnic violence. He considers the way images-of lifestyles, popular culture, and self-representation-circulate internationally through the media and are often borrowed in surprising (to their originators) and inventive fashions.Appadurai simultaneously explores and explodes boundaries-between how we imagine the world and how that imagination influences our self-understanding, between social institutions and their effects on the people who participate in them, between nations and peoples that seem to be ever more homogeneous and yet ever more filled with differences. Modernity at Large offers a path to move beyond traditional oppositions between culture and power, tradition and modernity, global and local, pointing out the vital role imagination plays in our construction of the world of today-and tomorrow.

    

    Urry develops this analysis through various levels - historical, economic, social, cultural and visual.Mass tourism is charted from its origins in the English seaside resorts to its development as a global industry. The economic impact and complex social relations involved in international tourism are explored. Changing patterns of tourism are shown to be connected to the broader cultural changes of postmodernism and related to the role of the service and middle classes. The author argues that we

    and around the world. In the process of understanding this social development, a wide range of theoretical perspectives including Marxian, Weberian, critical theory, and postmodern theory are applied. The book also looks at concepts such as hyperconsumption, implosion, time and space, and simulation . Enchanting a Disenchanted World connects the everyday world in a sociological and theoretical way, making it an ideal text for a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses including introductory sociology, sociology of consumption, social change, popular culture, sociology of leisure, social theory, and economic sociology. The book will also be of value to anyone interested in exploring a sociological analysis of the world′s changing and expanding patterns and places of consumption.

    The picture he creates in The Cocaine Kids is the story behind the headlines. The lives of these young dealers in the fast lane of the underground economy emerge in depth and color on the pages of this book.

    In this view, mass media advertising and market dynamics lead us to a constant search for new fashions, new styles, new sensations, and new experiences. In this volume, Featherstone examines the idea of a postmodern society. He explores the roots of consumer culture, how it is defined and differentiated and the extent to which it represents the arrival of a "postmodern" world. He examines the theories of consumption and postmodernism among contemporary social theorists and relates these to the actual nature of contemporary consumer culture. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism will interest academics and professionals in the areas of sociology, social theory, cultural studies, economics and anthropology. "Several of Mike Featherstone's chapters address topics that are immediately recognizable to marketing researchers. . . . In exploring these issues the author reveals a strong grounding in sociological theory and research, leading to some penetrating interpretive insights about contemporary consumer life. Uncovering the sociocultural significance of these particular consumption developments is Featherstone's chief concern. . . . He does an admirable job." --Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science "Featherstone neatly integrates recent ideas, models and writings concerning consumer capitalism, postindustrialism and postmodernity. . . . The author has taken great pains to develop (his) ideas clearly and to make the esoteric accessible to the literate." --Cooperative Economics News Service ". . . [Featherstone's book] can be recommended. . . . A worthwhile effort to open up a relatively undeveloped field." --Peter R. Grahame, Bentley College in Massachusetts ". . . precisely the sort of text which is necessary to read to escape from our productivist preconceptions. . . . The text must be recommended wholeheartedly to all those in industrial relations who wish to have their noninstitutional lives illuminated for them." --British Journal of Industrial Relations "Of great value to social scientists seeking a guide to the growing literature on the intersection of these two processes, which can no longer be considered peripheral concerns of contemporary sociology." --Humanity and Society

    presidents join the Thirteen Club? What is the only major New York hotel that has a thirteenth floor? In 13, a fascinating cultural history-cum-detective story, Nathaniel Lachenmeyer gets to the root of how one superstition—the fear of the number 13—developed among wildly divergent societies. A book about mythmaking, 13 explores why people believe what they believe, and the real reason Friday the 13th is the most unlucky day in the world.

    The author investigates three converging elements in his examination of human differences: individual attitudes and behaviors, cultural expectations, and institutional policies and practices. This examination provides the basis for the conceptual organization of the text.

    Two long essays: “The Idea of a Christian Society” (on the direction of religious thought toward criticism of political and economic systems) and “Notes towards the Definition of Culture” (on culture, its meaning, and the dangers threatening the legacy of the Western world).

    Drawing on the work of Kant's cosmopolitan doctrine and positions developed by Hannah Arendt, Seyla Benhabib explores how the topic has been analyzed within the larger history of political thought. She argues that many of the issues raised in abstract debate between universalism and multiculturalism can find acceptable solutions in practice.

    The Drive-By Truckers, as they named themselves, grew into one of the best and most consequential rock bands of the twenty-first century, a great live act whose songs deliver the truth and nuance rarely bestowed on Southerners, so often reduced to stereotypes.Where the Devil Don’t Stay tells the band’s unlikely story not chronologically but geographically. Seeing the Truckers’ albums as roadmaps through a landscape that is half-real, half-imagined, their fellow Southerner Stephen Deusner travels to the places the band’s members have lived in and written about. Tracking the band from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, to the author’s hometown in McNairy County, Tennessee, Deusner explores the Truckers’ complex relationship to the South and the issues of class, race, history, and religion that run through their music. Drawing on new interviews with past and present band members, including Jason Isbell, Where the Devil Don’t Stay is more than the story of a great American band; it’s a reflection on the power of music and how it can frame and shape a larger culture.

    

    The book is written by JD (James David by author's full name) Vance and in it the author tries to describe the overall life and struggles of people in post-industrial time in the United States. This book deals with the problems of white working-class and the book is not just some book where the author tries to describe lives of ordinary white people. The book is actually a memento and a message to the readers; in it Vance describes his life and his starts, especially growing up while being poor in Ohio. We can find out about this when we find out that Vance's family is of Scottish-Irish descent and that his ancestors have longer history of poverty and hard work that they need to endure in order to survive the hard times that were at hand. We also find out that since the 18th century many Scottish-Irish people were working as plantation workers, as miners and/or as millworkers. Because these people worked only the hardest jobs that hardly anyone else would take many people belittled them. Words like 'white trash, redneck' and/or 'hillbilly' were unfortunately a common everyday word for those people. Hillbilly Elegy is a fascinating work, not because it was written based on a true story but because it was written from a man who lived 'through' his story. The fact that the entire book contains a message is, of course, welcoming plus and something we want from literature of this genre. Here Is A Preview Of What You Will Get: In Hillbilly Elegy, you will get a summarized version of the book.In Hillbilly Elegy, you will find the book analyzed to further strengthen your knowledge.In Hillbilly Elegy, you will get some fun multiple choice quizzes, along with answers to help you learn about the book.Get a copy, and learn everything about Hillbilly Elegy.

    Man's longing for paradise.

    This title enables students to grasp key sociological concepts and learn the useful lesson that there is much that goes on in the social world that escapes the sociologically untrained eye.