The Social Life of Books


Book Description

“A lively survey…her research and insights make us conscious of how we, today, use books.”—John Sutherland, The New York Times Book Review Two centuries before the advent of radio, television, and motion pictures, books were a cherished form of popular entertainment and an integral component of domestic social life. In this fascinating and vivid history, Abigail Williams explores the ways in which shared reading shaped the lives and literary culture of the eighteenth century, offering new perspectives on how books have been used by their readers, and the part they have played in middle-class homes and families. Drawing on marginalia, letters and diaries, library catalogues, elocution manuals, subscription lists, and more, Williams offers fresh and fascinating insights into reading, performance, and the history of middle-class home life. “Williams’s charming pageant of anecdotes…conjures a world strikingly different from our own but surprisingly similar in many ways, a time when reading was on the rise and whole worlds sprang up around it.”—TheWashington Post




The Social Life of Water


Book Description

Everywhere in the world communities and nations organize themselves in relation to water. We divert water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers to our homes, workplaces, irrigation canals, and hydro-generating stations. We use it for bathing, swimming, recreation, and it functions as a symbol of purity in ritual performances. In order to facilitate and manage our relationship with water, we develop institutions, technologies, and cultural practices entirely devoted to its appropriation and distribution, and through these institutions we construct relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality. Relying on first-hand ethnographic research, the contributors to this volume examine the social life of water in diverse settings and explore the impacts of commodification, urbanization, and technology on the availability and quality of water supplies. Each case study speaks to a local set of issues, but the overall perspective is global, with representation from all continents.




The Social Life of Spirits


Book Description

Spirits can be haunters, informants, possessors, and transformers of the living, but more than anything anthropologists have understood them as representations of something else—symbols that articulate facets of human experience in much the same way works of art do. The Social Life of Spirits challenges this notion. By stripping symbolism from the way we think about the spirit world, the contributors of this book uncover a livelier, more diverse environment of entities—with their own histories, motivations, and social interactions—providing a new understanding of spirits not as symbols, but as agents. The contributors tour the spiritual globe—the globe of nonthings—in essays on topics ranging from the Holy Ghost in southern Africa to spirits of the “people of the streets” in Rio de Janeiro to dragons and magic in Britain. Avoiding a reliance on religion and belief systems to explain the significance of spirits, they reimagine spirits in a rich network of social trajectories, ultimately arguing for a new ontological ground upon which to examine the intangible world and its interactions with the tangible one.




Structures of Social Life


Book Description

Alan Page Fiske shares insight on the basic models of social relations in this “important book that will be of value to all psychologists with an interest in organization, culture, economic behavior, and decision making” (Richard E. Nisbett, University of Michigan). Structures of Social Life examines the relational models of social relationships, including how they are implicit in earlier social theories, how they have emerged into diverse domains of social action and though, and how they produce diverse and complex social forms. Aiming to create conversations and debate about social relationships and the models that structure them, Alan Page Fiske provides insight on the four elementary forms of human relations.




The Social Life of Achievement


Book Description

What happens when people “achieve”? Why do reactions to “achievement” vary so profoundly? And how might an anthropological study of achievement and its consequences allow us to develop a more nuanced model of the motivated agency that operates in the social world? These questions lie at the heart of this volume. Drawing on research from Southeast Asia, Europe, the United States, and Latin America, this collection develops an innovative framework for explaining achievement’s multiple effects—one which brings together cutting-edge theoretical insights into politics, psychology, ethics, materiality, aurality, embodiment, affect and narrative. In doing so, the volume advances a new agenda for the study of achievement within anthropology, emphasizing the significance of achievement as a moment of cultural invention, and the complexity of “the achiever” as a subject position.




The Social Life of Standards


Book Description

Standards. We apply them, uphold them, or fail to meet them. But how do they get made? The Social Life of Standards reveals how these political and technical tools for organizing society are developed, subverted, contested, and reassembled by local communities interacting with standards created by others. Using ethnographic approaches, contributors investigate biomedical, agricultural, and other contexts that reveal the mismatch between the inconsistent implementation of standards in the real world and the non-negotiable criteria presupposed by external forces. These cases support a reflexive process that involves local engagement at every stage in the production and application of standards.




The Social Life of Forensic Evidence


Book Description

In The Social Life of Forensic Evidence, Corinna Kruse provides a major contribution to understanding forensic evidence and its role in the criminal justice system. Arguing that forensic evidence can be understood as a form of knowledge, she reveals that each piece of evidence has a social life and biography. Kruse shows how the crime scene examination is as crucial to the creation of forensic evidence as laboratory analyses, the plaintiff, witness, and suspect statements elicited by police investigators, and the interpretations that prosecutors and defense lawyers bring to the evidence. Drawing on ethnographic data from Sweden and on theory from both anthropology and science and technology studies, she examines how forensic evidence is produced and how it creates social relationships as cases move from crime scene to courtroom. She demonstrates that forensic evidence is neither a fixed entity nor solely material, but is inseparably part of and made through particular legal, social, and technological practices.




Researching Social Life


Book Description

`This new edition of this excellent guide maintains the standard of the original whilst taking full account of developments in both methodological discussion and the techniques of social research. The organization of the text around the research process is a great strength of the text' - David Byrne, University of Durham Preview the Third Edition's opening chapter and guide to its teaching and learning features designed to stimulate student engagement with the content here The Third Edition of Nigel Gilbert's hugely successful Researching Social Life covers the whole range of methods from quantitative to qualitative in a down-to-earth and unthreatening manner. Gilbert's text offers the best coverage of the full scope of research methods of any of the leading textbooks in the field, making this an essential text for any student starting a research methods course or doing a research project. This thoroughly revised text is driven by the expertise of a writing team comprised of internationally-renowned experts in the field. New to the Third Edition are chapters on: - Searching and Reviewing the Literature - Refining the Question - Grounded Theory and Inductive Research - Mixed Methods - Participatory Action Research - Virtual Methods - Narrative Analysis A number of useful features, such as worked examples, case studies, discussion questions, project ideas and checklists are included throughout the book to help those new to research to engage with the material. Researching Social Life follows the 'life cycle' of a typical research project, from initial conception through to eventual publication. Its breadth and depth of coverage make this an indispensable must-have textbook for students on social research methods courses in any discipline.




There Goes My Social Life


Book Description

Stacey Dash didn't have the ideal American childhood. Growing up in the South Bronx, her friends were the hustlers, hookers, and gang members who struggled in the face of futility, who sold drugs instead of living on food stamps, who settled matters with fists, knives, and guns because it seemed their only option, who stood tall against broken dreams. Dash's rough upbringing shaped the rest of her life—her relationships, her politics, even her faith. She has seen how conservative and liberal policies play out in the real world, and her experiences have made her the proud conservative she is today. That's why Stacey Dash, a Fox News contributor and Hollywood actress best known for starring in the 1995 classic Clueless, is now telling her story. Amidst all the heated racial rhetoric and the divisive language that flows from T.V., the Internet, self-appointed black spokespeople, and even President Obama, Dash feels compelled to speak out and say something true about race, politics, and America.




The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces


Book Description

The Social Life Of Small Urban Spaces.