Although the global food system increasingly is viewed as unsustainable for human and planetary health, the policy pathways for transforming the status quo are often highly contentious. This book ...brings together inter-disciplinary scholars to analyze the political economy dynamics central to food system transformation and to identify pathways for enhancing the political feasibility of necessary reforms. Drawing on original surveys, interviews, empirical modeling, and case studies from around the world, the book delves into the power dynamics, interest group coalitions, narratives, and institutional structures that shape decisions related to agricultural productivity, agro-industry, trade, and food consumption.
Communities of complicity Steinm, Hans
2013., 20130315, 2013, 2013-04-25, 20130101, Letnik:
10
eBook
Everyday life in contemporary rural China is characterized by an increased sense of moral challenge and uncertainty. Ordinary people often find themselves caught between the moral frameworks of ...capitalism, Maoism and the Chinese tradition. This ethnographic study of the village of Zhongba (in Hubei Province, central China) is an attempt to grasp the ethical reflexivity of everyday life in rural China. Drawing on descriptions of village life, interspersed with targeted theoretical analyses, the author examines how ordinary people construct their own senses of their lives and their futures in everyday activities: building houses, working, celebrating marriages and funerals, gambling and dealing with local government. The villagers confront moral uncertainty; they creatively harmonize public discourse and local practice; and sometimes they resolve incoherence and unease through the use of irony. In so doing, they perform everyday ethics and re-create transient moral communities at a time of massive social dislocation.
The Australian Country Girl: History, Image, Experience offers a detailed analysis of the experience and the image of Australian country girlhood. In Australia, 'country girl' names a field of ...experiences and life-stories by girls and women who have grown up outside of the demographically dominant urban centres. But it also names a set of ideas about Australia that is surprisingly consistent across the long twentieth century despite also working as an index of changing times. For a long period in Australian history, well before Federation and long after it, public and popular culture openly equated 'Australian character' with rural life. This image of Australian-ness sometimes went by the name of the 'bush man', now a staple of Australian history. This has been counterbalanced post World War II and increased immigration, by an image of sophisticated Australian modernity located in multicultural cities. These images of Australia balance rather than contradict one another in many ways and the more cosmopolitan image of Australia is often in dialogue with that preceding image of 'the bush'. This book does not offer a corrective to the story of Australian national identity but rather a fresh perspective on this history and a new focus on the ever-changing experience of Australian rural life. It argues that the country girl has not only been a long-standing counterpart to the Australian bush man she has, more importantly, figured as a point of dialogue between the country and the city for popular culture and for public sphere narratives about Australian society and identity.
This is the first in-depth study of Chinese bridal laments, a ritual and performative art practiced by Chinese women in premodern times that gave them a rare opportunity to voice their grievances ...publicly. Drawing on methodologies from numerous disciplines, including performance arts and folk literatures, the author suggests that the ability to move an audience through her lament was one of the most important symbolic and ritual skills a Chinese woman could possess before the modern era. Performing Grief provides a detailed case study of the Nanhui region in the lower Yangzi delta. Bridal laments, the author argues, offer insights into how illiterate Chinese women understood the kinship and social hierarchies of their region, the marriage market that determined their destinies, and the value of their labor in the commodified economy of the delta region. The book not only assesses and draws upon a large body of sources, both Chinese and Western, but is grounded in actual field work, offering both historical and ethnographic context in a unique and sophisticated approach. Unlike previous studies, the author covers both Han and non-Han groups and thus contributes to studies of ethnicity and cultural accommodation in China. She presents an original view about the ritual implications of bridal laments and their role in popular notions of "wedding pollution." The volume includes an annotated translation from a lament cycle. This important work on the place of laments in Chinese culture enriches our understanding of the social and performative roles of Chinese women, the gendered nature of China’s ritual culture, and the continuous transmission of women’s grievance genres into the revolutionary period. As a pioneering study of the ritual and performance arts of Chinese women, it will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of anthropology, social history, gender studies, oral literature, comparative folk religion, and performance arts.
We Are Virginians Phillips, Barbara
Southern cultures,
06/2023, Letnik:
29, Številka:
2
Journal Article
When Thomas brought his family to the farm, he came to a part of the Draper Mountain range standing high above the surrounding area at 3,360 feet above sea level-the highest point in Pulaski County. ...With the help of my great-uncle Randle, Granddaddy Russell had cut down timber on the land, milled it, and built with his own hands the existing four-bedroom, two-story farmhouse for his family. ...off we went, following Mama Russell like ducklings, past the little cornfield right there at the house, through the gate, past the smoke house, down the winding path by the weathered double-seater outhouse, past the chicken coop on the right side of the path, ducks and geese on the left, then the corncrib, veering right at the almighty pig pen and on to the cherry orchard, big vegetable garden, huge cornfield that fed all the farm animals, and meadow. For me, the pond was a magical place for fairies, wonder, and finding the occasional terrapin that I could bring up to the house and keep as a pet-of-the-day, returning it before dark.
Although rurality is often treated as an aspect of diversity, researchers disagree regarding whether the traditional rural values of self-reliance, distrust of outsiders, religiosity, centrality of ...family, and fatalism continue to differentiate rural versus urban undergraduates. The present study examined 1) whether differences in these values exist between rural and urban college students in the United States and 2) whether these rural values might mediate the association between geographic remoteness and posttraumatic stress symptom (PTSS) severity. College undergraduates in the United States who reported experiencing traumatic and/or stressful events (N = 213) completed measures of these constructs through an online survey. T-test results indicated that rural respondents had significantly higher levels of PTSS severity and distrust of outsiders and significantly lower levels of religiosity when compared with urban participants. After controlling for gender, distrust of outsiders and religiosity also emerged as significant mediators of the relationship between geographic remoteness and PTSS severity. Thus, despite research that highlights differences based on geographic location, similarities and differences exist for rural and urban undergraduates in the United States with regard to traditionally rural values. For rural undergraduate clients presenting with trauma symptoms, our results suggest that building trust and religious and/or spiritual self-care may be particularly critical.
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