In recent decades, the North American public has pursued an inspirational vision of successful aging-striving through medical technique and individual effort to eradicate the declines, ...vulnerabilities, and dependencies previously commonly associated with old age. On the face of it, this bold new vision of successful, healthy, and active aging is highly appealing. But it also rests on a deep cultural discomfort with aging and being old.The contributors toSuccessful Aging
as a Contemporary Obsessionexplore how the successful aging movement is playing out across five continents. Their chapters investigate a variety of people, including Catholic nuns in the United States; Hindu ashram dwellers; older American women seeking plastic surgery; aging African-American lesbians and gay men in the District of Columbia; Chicago home health care workers and their aging clients; Mexican men foregoing Viagra; dementia and Alzheimer sufferers in the United States and Brazil; and aging policies in Denmark, Poland, India, China, Japan, and Uganda. This book offers a fresh look at a major cultural and public health movement of our time, questioning what has become for many a taken-for-granted goal-aging in a way that almost denies aging itself.
Within both feminist theory and popular culture, establishing similarities between embodied practices rooted in different cultural and geo-political contexts (e.g. ‘African’ female genital cutting ...and ‘Western’ cosmetic surgery) has become increasingly common as a means of countering cultural essentialism, ethnocentrism and racism.
Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice examines how cross cultural comparisons of embodied practices function as a rhetorical device – with particular theoretical, social and political effects - in a range of contemporary feminist texts. It asks: Why and how are cross-cultural links among these practices drawn by feminist theorists and commentators, and what do these analogies do? What knowledges, hierarchies and figurations do these comparisons produce, disrupt and/or reify in feminist theory, and how do such effects resonate within popular culture? Taking a relational web approach that focuses on unravelling the binary threads that link specific embodied practices within a wider representational community, this book highlights how we depend on and affect one another across cultural and geo-political contexts.
This book is valuable reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers in Gender Studies, Postcolonial or Race Studies, Cultural and Media Studies, and other related disciplines.
Introduction: Feministm, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison 1. Comparing Cultures: Feminist Theory, Anti-Essentialism and New Humanisms 2. Critical Frameworks: Intersectionality, Relationality and Embodiment 3. Continuums and Analogues: Linking 'African' Female Genital Cutting and 'Western' Body Modifications 4. Constitutive Comparisons: Producing Muslim Veiling, Anorexia and 'Western' Fashion and Beauty Practices 5. Weaving Relational Webs: Theorising Cultural Difference and Embodied Practice
'...Demonstrates both robust theoretical knowledge and clarity of perspective...'
'...A highly complex endeavour and a thoroughly enjoyable read for the complexity of its debates, the clarity of its structure and argument, the scope of its critique and the development of the relational web, which is not just a theoretical model but a credible (collective) project for the future. Pedwell has argued her case convincingly but above all with modesty, in full awareness that her critique is not about discrediting previous efforts to address comparisons but about taking the debates to the next stage. The book is consistently mindful of the ethics relating to how this should be done.' -Angie Voela, University of East London in European Journal of Women's Studies vol 18 no 3
Carolyn Pedwell is Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Her research interests include feminist and postcolonial theory; gender, cultural difference and ‘the body’; and the transnational politics of emotion and affect. Her work has been published in Feminist Theory , Feminist Review , and Body and Society .
'Deliberative politics' refers to the role of conversation and arguments in politics. Until recently discussion of deliberative politics took place almost exclusively among political philosophers, ...but many questions raised in this philosophical discussion cry out for empirical investigation. This book provides the first extended empirical study of deliberative politics, addressing, in particular, questions of the preconditions and consequences of high level deliberation. Using parliamentary debates in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States as an empirical base, the authors measure the level of deliberation by constructing a 'Discourse Quality Index'. As deliberative politics moves to the forefront of political theory, this book makes an important contribution to deliberative democracy.
Die Lektüre des mittelalterlichen ›Nibelungenlieds‹ wurde seit seiner Wiederentdeckung im 18. Jahrhundert mit Vorstellungen von ›deutscher Kultur‹ und vom ›deutschen Volk‹ überblendet. Einen ...Höhepunkt dieser nationalistisch ausgerichteten Lektüre bildet die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, in der Rückgriffe auf die Nibelungen als Identifikationsmuster Hochkonjunktur hatten. Im Anschluss an Jacob Grimms Begriffsprägung des ›Nibelungischen‹ gehen die Beiträge des Bandes der umfassenden ›Nibelungisierung‹ der Gesellschaft in populären und wissenschaftlichen Diskursen zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus nach. Dabei wird das ›Nibelungische‹ als Zeichenvorrat begriffen, der in politisch instabilen Zeiten zur Aktivierung bereitsteht. Neuere Wiedererzählungen zeigen, wie mit dem Nibelungenstoff bis heute umgegangen wird und in welcher Weise ›Nibelungisches‹ nach wie vor wirksam ist.
This book presents a wide range of methodological perspectives on researching what teachers think and do in language teaching. It contains chapters by the editors and a leading expert in teacher ...cognition, as well as eight case studies by new researchers, accompanied by commentaries by internationally known researchers.
Co-published with AIEAInternational higher education has evolved, in some respects dramatically, in the decade since publication of the first edition of this handbook. The new issues, trends, ...practices and priorities of research that evolved over this time have in some instances been transformed by one of the most dynamic and tumultuous periods in the history of international higher education, brought on by the pandemic, a re-emergence of nationalism, and the recognition of the power imbalances between the developed economies and the global south, and racial inequities within and across borders. This new edition addresses the myriad changes across all aspects of international education, each chapter addressing to the extent possible the reality of the present in which they were written and offering some insights for the future. While updating a number of chapters from the first edition, it also includes a preponderance of new chapters written by contributors representing wider and more diverse backgrounds. In keeping with the first edition, the overall message is that the internationalization of higher education has a vital role to play in a world that is more interconnected than ever before. Recognizing changing economic, geopolitical, climatic, and public health issues, as well as the importance of international and cross-cultural collaboration to address global problems, this handbook offers a comprehensive range of models, data and ideas to stimulate new directions in the conception and practice of international education.This edition reflects today's concerns around inclusion, diversity and equity, and how international education is being changed by issues such as decolonization, the focus on learning outcomes, the impact of digital tools to enhance access and learning and collaboration such a virtual exchange, competition for resources, risk, new patterns of mobility, and new models such as joint programs and qualifications.As with the first edition, the cha
Ethnic groups increasingly seek empowerment by formally incorporating themselves, by deploying their sovereign status for material ends, and by copyrighting their cultural practices as intellectual ...property. Building on ethnographic case studies from Kenya, Nepal, Peru, Russia, and many other countries, this collection poses the question: Does the turn to the incorporation and commodification of ethnicity really herald a new historical moment in the global politics of identity?.
This book is a global comparative history of how "soft power" came to define the interregnum between the celebration of global capitalism in the 1990s and the recent resurgence of nationalism and ...authoritarianism. It brings together case studies from the European Union, China, Brazil, Turkey, and the United States.
Media and the Make-Believe Worlds of Children offers new insights into children's descriptions of their invented or "make-believe" worlds, and the role that the children's experience with media plays ...in creating these worlds. Based on the results of a cross-cultural study conducted in the United States, Germany, Israel, and South Korea, it offers an innovative look at media's role on children's creative lives.
This distinctive volume:
*outlines the central debates and research findings in the area of children, fantasy worlds, and the media;*provides a descriptive account of children's make-believe worlds and their wishes for actions they would like to take in these worlds;
highlights the centrality of media in children's make believe worlds;
emphasizes the multiple creative ways in which children use media as resources in their environment to express their own inner worlds; and
suggests the various ways in which the tension between traditional gender portrayals that continue to dominate media texts and children's wishes to act are presented in their fantasies.
The work also demonstrates the value of research in unveiling the complicated ways in which media are woven into the fabric of children's everyday lives, examining the creative and sophisticated uses they make of their contents, and highlighting the responsibility that producers of media texts for children have in offering young viewers a wide array of role models and narratives to use in their fantasies. The downloadable resources provide full-color images of the artwork produced during the study.This book will appeal to scholars and graduate students in children and media, early childhood education, and developmental psychology. It can be used in graduate level courses in these areas.
