Culture as Comfort


Book Description

Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-136) and index.




Comfort in Contemporary Culture


Book Description

Comfort is a prominent and highly loaded concept, as popular discourses on cosy environments, safe spaces, but also the importance of ›getting out of your comfort zone‹ attest. This volume is the first to investigate ›comfort‹ as a cultural narrative and emotional touchstone in contemporary culture. Taken together, the contributions to the volume offer an overview of different approaches to and conceptualisations of comfort in linguistics, in literary, media, and cultural studies, and art history. They showcase how ›comfort‹ serves as a valuable lens to analyse contemporary artworks and developments, e.g. live theatre broadcasting or political interventions in the US-American media sphere.




Culture and Comfort


Book Description

In Culture and Comfort Katherine C. Grier shows how the design and furnishings of the mid-nineteenth century parlor reflected the self-image of the Victorian middle class. Parlors provided public facades for formal occasions and represented an attempt to resolve the often opposing ideals of gentility and sincerity to which American culture aspired. The book traces the fortunes of the parlor and its upholstery from its early incarnations in “palace” hotels, railroad cars, steamships, and photographers' studios; through its mid-century heyday, when even remote frontier homes could boast “suites” of red plush sofas and chairs; to its slow, uneven metamorphosis into the more versatile living room. The author argues that even as the home increasingly was seen as a haven from industralization and commercialization, its ties to industry and commerce—in the form of more affordable, machine-made furniture and drapery—became stronger. By the 1920s the parlor's decline signaled both a blurring of the Victorian distinctions between public and private manners and the transfer of middle-class identity from the home to the automobile. Describing the deportment a parlor required, the activities it sheltered, and the marketing and manufacturing breakthroughs that made it available to all, Culture and Comfort reveals the full range of cultural messages conveyed by nineteenth-century parlor materials.




Standing in the Need


Book Description

Standing in the Need presents an intimate account of an African American family’s ordeal after Hurricane Katrina. Before the storm struck, this family of one hundred fifty members lived in the bayou communities of St. Bernard Parish just outside New Orleans. Rooted there like the wild red iris of the coastal wetlands, the family had gathered for generations to cook and share homemade seafood meals, savor conversation, and refresh their interconnected lives. In this lively narrative, Katherine Browne weaves together voices and experiences from eight years of post-Katrina research. Her story documents the heartbreaking struggles to remake life after everyone in the family faced ruin. Cast against a recovery landscape managed by outsiders, the efforts of family members to help themselves could get no traction; outsiders undermined any sense of their control over the process. In the end, the insights of the story offer hope. Written for a broad audience and supported by an array of photographs and graphics, Standing in the Need offers readers an inside view of life at its most vulnerable.




Culture & Comfort


Book Description




Global Dexterity


Book Description

“I wrote this book because I believe that there is a serious gap in what has been written and communicated about cross-cultural management and what people actually struggle with on the ground.”—From the Introduction What does it mean to be a global worker and a true “citizen of the world” today? It goes beyond merely acknowledging cultural differences. In reality, it means you are able to adapt your behavior to conform to new cultural contexts without losing your authentic self in the process. Not only is this difficult, it’s a frightening prospect for most people and something completely outside their comfort zone. But managing and communicating with people from other cultures is an essential skill today. Most of us collaborate with teams across borders and cultures on a regular basis, whether we spend our time in the office or out on the road. What’s needed now is a critical new skill, something author Andy Molinsky calls global dexterity. In this book Molinsky offers the tools needed to simultaneously adapt behavior to new cultural contexts while staying authentic and grounded in your own natural style. Based on more than a decade of research, teaching, and consulting with managers and executives around the world, this book reveals an approach to adapting while feeling comfortable—an essential skill that enables you to switch behaviors and overcome the emotional and psychological challenges of doing so. From identifying and overcoming challenges to integrating what you learn into your everyday environment, Molinsky provides a guidebook—and mentoring—to raise your confidence and your profile. Practical, engaging, and refreshing, Global Dexterity will help you reach across cultures—and succeed in today’s global business environment.




The Comfort Women


Book Description

In an era marked by atrocities perpetrated on a grand scale, the tragedy of the so-called comfort women—mostly Korean women forced into prostitution by the Japanese army—endures as one of the darkest events of World War II. These women have usually been labeled victims of a war crime, a simplistic view that makes it easy to pin blame on the policies of imperial Japan and therefore easier to consign the episode to a war-torn past. In this revelatory study, C. Sarah Soh provocatively disputes this master narrative. Soh reveals that the forces of Japanese colonialism and Korean patriarchy together shaped the fate of Korean comfort women—a double bind made strikingly apparent in the cases of women cast into sexual slavery after fleeing abuse at home. Other victims were press-ganged into prostitution, sometimes with the help of Korean procurers. Drawing on historical research and interviews with survivors, Soh tells the stories of these women from girlhood through their subjugation and beyond to their efforts to overcome the traumas of their past. Finally, Soh examines the array of factors— from South Korean nationalist politics to the aims of the international women’s human rights movement—that have contributed to the incomplete view of the tragedy that still dominates today.




The Invention of Comfort


Book Description

Definitions of comfort changed over time, the author shows, and men and women sometimes interpreted comfort differently. He begins with a description of the material culture of heating and illumination in British and Anglo-American domestic environments during the postmedieval centuries, when comfort was primarily a moral term implying consolation and support. (Midwest).




Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience


Book Description

Shove maintains that habits are not just changing, but are changing in ways that imply escalating and standardizing patterns of consumption.




Becoming All Things


Book Description

WINNER OF THE 2022 ECPA CHRISTIAN BOOK AWARD FOR NEW AUTHOR Healthy relationships across cultures are possible. Dr. Michelle Reyes takes a close look at the concept of cultural accommodation found in Scripture—and especially in the letter of 1 Corinthians—to redefine how Christians interact with cultural narratives that are different from their own. Christians—whose standard of living is oneness in Christ, whose gospel is radically nonexclusive—should be at the frontlines of justice and of cross-cultural unity. But many of us struggle to reach outside of our own cultural bubbles and form real relationships that move beyond stereotypes and lead to understanding, healing, and solidarity across cultural lines. Why is that? Why is it so difficult to reconcile our call to be united in Christ with a celebration of different cultural expressions? What are the reasons for cultural differences and how do they so often lead to stereotyping, appropriation, gentrification, racism, and other forms of injustice? What does the Bible say about human beings as cultural image bearers? How do we reevaluate our awareness of culture identity in a healthy and constructive way? These are just some of the questions that Dr. Reyes explores as she faces the challenges surrounding cross-cultural relationships in America today and her thoughts on the way forward. Spoiler Alert! The way forward does require willingness to change. It requires embracing cultural discomfort. But by engaging with this book, you will be empowered to learn how to become all things to all people—that is: how to reflect Jesus' love in a multicultural, multiracial body of Christ and to share that love with a hurting world.