Studying Societies And Cultures Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Studying Societies And Cultures book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
"A thought-provoking, stimulating volume on the past, present and future of cultural materialism that is both laudatory of Harris' research strategy and critical of it." Paul Shankman, University of Colorado One of the most important anthropologists of all time, Marvin Harris was influential worldwide as the founder of cultural materialism. This book accessibly analyzes Harris's theories and their important legacies today. The chapters explore cultural materialism's epistemology and its relation to rational choice theory, Darwinian social science, and population pressures. The authors assess recent attempts to extend and reformulate cultural materialism and highlight cross-cultural, archaeological, and ethnographic applications of cultural materialism today.
"Too often cultural studies discourse seems cut off from wider developments in social theory. As a sociologist with a strong cultural studies sensibility, David Oswell is ideally placed to put this right. Through a series of well-judged and historically nuanced readings of cultural, social theory and critical philosophy, this book provides just the bridge between cultural studies and wider debates that we need" - Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science David Oswell has written a comprehensive introduction to cultural studies that guides the reader through the field′s central foundations and its freshest ideas. This book: Grounds the reader in the foundations of cultural studies and cultural theory: language and semiology, ideology and power, mass and popular culture. Analyzes the central problems: identity, body, economy, globalization and empire. Introduces the latest developments on materiality, agency, technology and nature. Culture and Society is an invaluable guide for students navigating the dynamic debates and intellectual challenges of cultural studies. Its breadth and unparalleled coverage of theory will also ensure that it is read by anyone interested in questions of materiality and culture.
In the Fourth Edition of Cultures and Societies in a Changing World, author Wendy Griswold illuminates how culture shapes our social world and how society shapes culture. She helps students gain an understanding of the sociology of culture and explore stories, beliefs, media, ideas, art, religious practices, fashions, and rituals from a sociological perspective. Cultural examples from multiple countries and time periods will broaden students′ global understanding. They will develop a deeper appreciation of culture and society, gleaning insights that will help them overcome cultural misunderstandings, conflicts, and ignorance; equip them to be more effective in their professional and personal lives, and become wise citizens of the world.
This innovative and provocative work introduces complexity theory and its application to both the study of language and the study of material culture. The book begins with a wide-ranging theoretical background, covering the areas of dialect geography, the anthropological study of material culture, and a general introduction to the study of complex adaptive systems. Following this general introduction, the principles of complexity theory are demonstrated in data drawn from linguistics and material culture studies. Language and Material Culture further highlights the principles of complexity through a series of case studies, using data from the Linguistic Atlas, colonial American inventories and the Historic American Building Survey. LMC shows that language and material culture are intertwined as they interact within the same cultural complex system. The book is designed for students in courses that focus on language variation, American English and material culture, in addition to general courses on applications of complex systems.
"A thought-provoking, stimulating volume on the past, present and future of cultural materialism that is both laudatory of Harris' research strategy and critical of it." Paul Shankman, University of Colorado One of the most important anthropologists of all time, Marvin Harris was influential worldwide as the founder of cultural materialism. This book accessibly analyzes Harris's theories and their important legacies today. The chapters explore cultural materialism's epistemology and its relation to rational choice theory, Darwinian social science, and population pressures. The authors assess recent attempts to extend and reformulate cultural materialism and highlight cross-cultural, archaeological, and ethnographic applications of cultural materialism today.
Society and culture are, together, the sea of people and institutions all around us that we sometimes call our "community. The society and culture of our local community might be made up of all the ways of small-town or suburban life, or perhaps all the ways of city life, or even the society and culture of a local neighbourhood in which we live. Culture consists of the beliefs, behaviours, objects, and other characteristics common to the members of a particular group or society. Through culture, people and groups define themselves, conform to society's shared values, and contribute to society. Thus, culture includes many societal aspects: language, customs, values, norms, mores, rules, tools, technologies, products, organisations, and institutions. Cultural Studies is an emerging area of research and teaching that brings in new perspectives to the study of culture and society. Cultural studies is an innovative interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that investigates the ways in which culture creates and transforms individual experiences, everyday life, social relations and power. Research and teaching in the field explores the relations between culture understood as human expressive and symbolic activities, and cultures understood as distinctive ways of life. Cultural life is not only concerned with symbolic communication, it is also the domain in which we set collective tasks for ourselves and begin to grapple with them as changing communities. This book is devoted to understanding the processes through which societies and the diverse groups within them come to terms with history, community life, and the challenges of the future. Combining the strengths of the social sciences and the humanities, this monograph draws on methods and theories from literary studies, sociology, communications studies, history, cultural anthropology, and economics. Cultural studies address new questions and problems of todays world. Rather than seeking answers that will hold for all time, cultural studies develops flexible tools that adapt to this rapidly changing world. This book is valuable to students navigating the dynamic debates and intellectual challenges of cultural studies. Its breadth and unparalleled coverage of cutting-edge theory will also ensure that it is read by anyone interested in questions of materiality and culture.
Culture, Leadership, and Organizations reports the results of a ten-year research program, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) research program. GLOBE is a long-term program designed to conceptualize, operationalize, test, and validate a cross-level integrated theory of the relationship between culture and societal, organizational, and leadership effectiveness. A team of 160 scholars worked together since 1994 to study societal culture, organizational culture, and attributes of effective leadership in 62 cultures. Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies reports the findings of the first two phases of GLOBE. The book is primarily based on the results of the survey of over 17,000 middle managers in three industries: banking, food processing, and telecommunications, as well as archival measures of country economic prosperity and the physical and psychological well-being of the cultures studied. GLOBE has several distinguishing features. First, it is truly a cross-cultural research program. The constructs were defined, conceptualized, and operationalized by the multicultural team of researchers. Second, the industries were selected through a polling of the country investigators, and the instruments were designed with the full participation of the researchers representing the different cultures. Finally, the data in each country were collected by investigators who were either natives of the cultures studied or had extensive knowledge and experience in that culture. A unique feature of this book is that while it is an edited book and many experts have written the different chapters, unlike other edited books, it is a fully integrated, seamless, and cohesive book covering the many aspects of the theory underpinning the GLOBE.
The scientific study of society is known as sociology. All spheres of human activity are continuously influenced by a complex interplay of individual agency and social structure. The study of society expands to the domains of health, economy, education, military and science. However, at its core, the field is focused on the study of culture, criminality and punishment, economy, family, gender and sexuality, health and illness, peace, war and conflict, etc. Sociological study and research is vital for educators, policy makers, legislators, non-profit organizations and non-governmental organizations, social workers and anyone with the inclination to resolve or address social issues. The central problems of sociological theory are concerned with the way to transcend, link or cope with the dichotomies of structure and agency, subjectivity and objectivity, and synchrony and diachrony. Modern sociological studies are advanced by the adoption of hermeneutic, philosophic and interpretive techniques as well as analytic, computational and mathematical approaches to the study of society and culture. This book is a valuable compilation of topics, ranging from the basic to the most complex advancements in the field of sociology. Different approaches, evaluations, methodologies and advanced studies have been included in this book. With state-of-the-art inputs by acclaimed experts of this field, this book targets students and professionals.
Culture and Leadership Across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies is the second major publication of GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness), a groundbreaking, large-scale project on international management research featuring contributions from nearly 18,000 middle managers from 1,000 organizat