Society and Culture

This book considers the politics of patronage appointments at the universities in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and St Andrews. The book explores the ways in which 388 men secured posts in three Scottish universities between 1690 and 1806; from the purge following the Revolution of 1688 to the end of Henry Dundas's political career. Most professors were political appointees vetted and supported by political factions and their leaders. This study explores the improving agenda of political patrons and of those they served and relates this to the Scottish Enlightenment. The book argues that what was happening in Scotland was also occurring in other parts of Europe where, in relatively autonomous localities, elite patrons also shaped things as they wished them to be. The role of patronage in the Enlightenment is essential to any understanding of its origins and course. This book is based on much archival study and adds substantially to what is known about the Scottish professorial during the period.

Cuban Costumbrista writers reported the strong presence of African traditions developed by slaves and by freed Blacks as agents of a vigorous popular culture that was highly visible throughout the nineteenth century. In their handling of Black themes, Costumbristas addressed four main subjects: (1) the particularities of the sugar-cane plantation, rich in slave cultures (as performed in different formats of acculturation by both African and Creole or Cuban-born slaves); (2) the development of religious systems within rural and urban settings; (3) documentation of Black musical expressions; and (4) the incorporation of certain Black social types as literary characters, as workers of specific trades assigned to slaves or to freed Blacks, or as marginal outcasts living in slum areas of major Cuban cities. Afro-Cuban Costumbrismo intends to examine the special qualities that the nineteenth-century Costumbristas observed as eyewitnesses of the making of a new racial hybridity, known today as “mulattoness.” Although mulattoness was a racial concept handled in various types of documents (for example, in ecclesiastical and civil regulations against mixed marriages), it was in Costumbrista literature that the concept took on literary presence. Although Blacks as depicted by Costumbristas had little literary significance, their presence in these politically infused texts covertly addresses the influence of Black Creole culture on developing Cubanía.

This book compares Cuban American and African American religiosity, arguing that Afro-Cuban religiosity and culture are central to understanding the Cuban and Cuban American condition. The book interprets this saturation of the Afro-Cuban as transcending race and affecting all Cubans and Cuban Americans in spite of their pigmentation or self-identification. Building on a historical overview of the intersection of race, religion, and nationhood, the book explores the manner in which devotion to La Caridad del Cobre, popular religion, and Cuban letters inform an Afro-Cuban theology. This interdisciplinary study draws from various theological schools as well as the disciplines of history, literary studies, and ethnic studies. The primary discipline is systematic theology, with special attention to black and Latino/a theologies. Far from being disconnected subfields, they are interrelated areas within theological studies. The book provides a broad overview of the Cuban and Cuban American communities, emphasizing the manner in which the intersection of race and religion has functioned within the construction of Cuban and Cuban American identities. The Roman Catholic Church's role in this history, as well as the preservation of African religious practices and consequent formation of Afro-Cuban religions, are paramount. Also new is the collaborative spirit between black and Latino/a that underlines this work. The book proposes an expansion of racial identity recognizing the different cultures that exist within U.S. racial contexts—specifically a model of collaboration versus dialogue between black and Latino/a theologies.

During the half-millennium from the eleventh through the sixth centuries BC, the power and the glory of the imperial pharaohs of the New Kingdom crumbled in the face of internal crises and external pressures, ultimately reversed by invaders from Nubia and consolidated by natives of the Nile Delta following a series of Assyrian invasions. Much of this era remains obscure, with little consensus among Egyptologists. Against this background, the author reconsiders the evidence and proposes a number of new solutions to the problems of the period. He also considers the art, architecture, and archaeology of the period, including the royal tombs of Tanis, one of which yielded the intact burials of no fewer than five pharaohs. The book is extensively illustrated with images of this material, much of which is little known to non-specialists of the period. An examination (evidenced on monuments and inscriptions) of how the many kings of this period should be fitted into the dynastic structure listed by Manetho. By the author of the bestselling Amarna Sunset and Poisoned Legacy.

Too often, approaches to dealing with the problems posed by the spread of HIV have been one dimensional, with the assumption that what works in one place will work in another. This book includes chapters representing a range of original ideas, methodologies, and suggestions that contribute to the field of AIDS research, both in Africa and beyond. The chapters examine such issues as HIV transmission, condom use, sexual patterns, male circumcision, political factors, gender, poverty, and behavioral change. The book features the research of those working in different countries in Africa, with different communities within those countries, and with different age, class, religious, and ethnic groups within those communities. These previously unpublished chapters also address the need for a greater anthropological perspective in the increasingly medicalized and politicized study of HIV and AIDS. As a whole, they pave the way for a deeper cultural understanding necessary to effectively reverse the catastrophic growth of HIV/AIDS on the continent.

There are approximately seven million adult gay and bisexual men in the United States and 120 million adult gay and bisexual men globally. This book explores the cultural dimensions of AIDS among men who have sex with men (MSM). The traditional emphasis in HIV/AIDS research within gay communities has focused on sexual behavior and psychological issues. Yet to better understand the social and cultural dimensions of the disease, and to halt the spread of HIV infection, it is essential to recognize and understand the culture of MSM. Cultural anthropologists, unquestionably, are in a unique position to achieve this understanding. The editor has gathered a diverse group of experts to contribute to this collection, and the volume features a wealth of scholarly data unavailable elsewhere.

Some of the most fascinating sculptures to have survived from ancient Egypt are the colossal statues of Akhenaten, erected at the beginning of his reign in his new temple to the Aten at Karnak. Fragments of more than thirty statues are now known, showing the paradoxical features combining male and female, young and aged, characteristic of representations of this king. Did he look like this in real life? Or was his iconography skillfully devised to mirror his concept of his role in the universe? This book presents the history of the discovery of the statue fragments from 1925 to the present day; the profusion of opinions on the appearance of the king and his alleged medical conditions; and the various suggestions for an interpretation of the perplexing evidence. A complete catalog of all major fragments is included, as well as many pictures not previously published.

This book presents a new framework for understanding the history of Algeria and its global connections from the late eighteenth century to the present day. It focuses on the movement of people within, but especially from and back to Algeria. These include immigrants crossing borders for purposes of work, education, or diplomatic or military service, and refugees fleeing political or religious oppression. This framework helps to bring out long term continuities in Algerian history and create an understanding of these continuities in a geopolitical context. The book examines both the political and economic factors that have affected Algerian border crossing, and the legal and institutional elements that have shaped it including international refugee law, trans-national Islamic movements, and great power conflicts. Algerians are understood as forming a global frontier society coming from an area where the Western and Islamic worlds have long experienced intensive interaction, sometimes resulting in a “clash of civilizations,” but at other times fostering interfaith dialogue and cultural syncretism. The book examines ways in which Algerians have interacted with “others”, notably through intermarriage, political alliance, and shared participation in music or theatre. The Algerian experience is viewed in a long term historical context in which there are cycles of opening when civil society is insulated from government authority, and of closing, with efforts to impose government control through means including arbitrary detention and torture.

This book explores how the Internet presents radical ways of organising and producing media that offer political and cultural alternatives, both to ways of doing business and to how we understand the world and our place in it. It is characterised by in-depth case studies. Topics include the media of new social movements and other radical political organisations (including the far right); websites produced by fans of popular culture; and media dedicated to developing a critical, ‘public’ journalism. The book locates these studies in appropriate theoretical and historical contexts, while remaining accessible to a student audience. Major themes include: the use of the Internet by political groups such as the anti-capitalist and environmental movements, as well as the far right; radical forms of creativity and distribution — the anti-copyright and sampling/file-sharing movements, and their role as cultural critics in a corporate world; the development and maintenance of a global, ‘digital public sphere’ of protest through such practices as ‘hacktivism’; the use of new media technologies to transform existing media forms and practices, such as news media and Internet radio.

This study, drawing on the latest research, tells the story of the decline and fall of the pharaoh Akhenaten's religious revolution in the fourteenth century BC. Beginning at the regime's high-point in his Year 12, it traces the subsequent collapse that saw the deaths of many of the king's loved ones, his attempts to guarantee the revolution through co-rulers, and the last frenzied assault on the god Amun. The book then outlines the events of the subsequent five decades that saw the extinction of the royal line, an attempt to place a foreigner on Egypt's throne, and the accession of three army officers in turn. Among its conclusions are that the mother of Tutankhamun was none other than Nefertiti, and that the queen was joint-pharaoh in turn with both her husband Akhenaten and her son. As such, she was herself instrumental in beginning the return to orthodoxy, undoing her erstwhile husband's life-work before her own mysterious disappearance.