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Manners & Customs
The Meat Question: Animals, Humans, and the Deep History of Food by Josh Berson
A provocative argument that eating meat is not what made humans human and that the future is not necessarily carnivorous.Humans are eating more meat than ever. Despite ubiquitous Sweetgreen franchises and the example set by celebrity vegans, demand for meat is projected to grow at twice the rate of demand for plant-based foods over the next thirty years. Between 1960 and 2010, per capita meat consumption in the developing world more than doubled; in China, meat consumption grew ninefold. It has even been claimed that meat made us human-that our disproportionately large human brains evolved because our early human ancestors ate meat. In The Meat Question, Josh Berson argues that not only did meat not make us human, but the contemporary increase in demand for meat is driven as much by economic insecurity as by affluence. Considering the full sweep of meat's history, Berson concludes provocatively that the future is not necessarily carnivorous. Berson, an anthropologist and historian, argues that we have the relationship between biology and capitalism backward. We may associate meat-eating with wealth, but in fact, meat-eating is a sign of poverty; cheap meat-hunger killing, easy to prepare, eaten on the go-enables a capitalism defined by inequality. To answer the meat question, says Berson, we need to think about meat-eating in a way that goes beyond Paleo diets and PETA protests to address the deeply entwined economic and political lives of humans and animals past, present, and future.
ISBN: 9780262042895
Publication Date: 2019
Sacred and profane : unusual customs and strange rituals by Sachdeva, G. S. (Gurbachan Singh), author.
"The battle between scientific temper and superstition has raged since ages. One may believe that unusual rituals and customs are extinct in the times of artificial intelligence and bots, but it is far from the truth as this book will prove. As bizarre as it might seem, in France one can marry a dead person, and in Africa a married woman can marry another married woman as a practical way of solving the social problem of old-age neglect. This book is a collection of unusual superstitions, rituals and customs that are practiced by ordinary people all around the world. It should be read to build awareness about these rituals and to know about the many shades of faith in this world we inhabit"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9353885175
Publication Date: 2020
Boxes: A Field Guide by Edited by Susanne Bauer, Martina Schlünder, Maria Rentetzi
size. It invites us to step into the field, unravel how and why things are contained and how it might be otherwise. By turning the focus of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to boxing practices, this collation of essays examines boxes as world-making devices. Gathered in the format of a field guide, it offers an introduction to ways of ordering the world, unpacking their boxed-up, largely invisible politics and epistemics. Performatively, pushing against conventional uses of academic books, this volume is about rethinking taken-for-granted formats and infrastructures of scholarly ordering - thinking, writing, reading. It diverges from encyclopedic logics and representative overviews of boxing practices and the architectural organization of monographs and edited volumes through a single, overarching argument. This book asks its users to leave well-trodden paths of linear and comprehensive reading and invites them to read sideways, creating their own orders through associations and relating. Thus, this book is best understood as an intervention, a beginning, an open box, a slim volume that needs expansion and further experiments with ordering by its users.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781912729036
Publication Date: 2020
Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia by Adrienne Edgar (Editor); Benjamin Frommer (Editor)
Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia examines the practice and experience of interethnic marriage in a range of countries and eras, from imperial Germany to present-day Tajikistan. In this interdisciplinary volume Adrienne Edgar and Benjamin Frommer have drawn contributions from anthropologists and historians. The contributors explore the phenomenon of intermarriage both from the top down, in the form of state policies and official categories, and from the bottom up, through an intimate look at the experience and agency of mixed families in modern states determined to control the lives and identities of their citizens to an unprecedented degree. Contributors address the tensions between state ethnic categories and the subjective identities of individuals, the status of mixed individuals and families in a region characterized by continual changes in national borders and regimes, and the role of intermarried couples and their descendants in imagining supranational communities. The first of its kind, Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia is a foundational text for the study of intermarriage and ethnic mixing in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 1496220846
Publication Date: 2020